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Rosamunde Quartett, The Hilliard Ensemble - Boris Yoffe: Song Of Songs (2011)

Posted By: Designol

Date: 26 Feb 2024 16:02:10

Boris Yoffee was born in Russia in 1968. There, he studied violin and composition and before the breakup of the Soviet Union he immigrated to Israel, where he studied at Tel Aviv University. In 1997, he moved to Germany to study composition with Wolfgang Rihm. By 2009, he had amassed an enormous number of short works. Thus, the performers who had been asked to record his Song of Songs looked through approximately 800 of them in order to select the pieces they wanted to perform.

The Rosamunde Quartet is a German string quartet that was formed in 1992; since the group disbanded in 2010, this is its last recording. The Hilliard Ensemble is a British male vocal quartet that is well known for its performance of Renaissance, medieval, and contemporary music. It has often performed the works of Arvo Pärt, whose music is somewhat similar to that of Yoffe.

The Song of Songs is scored for the unusual combination of four instruments and four voices, so it produces some interesting and unusual sonorities. There are five sections. The first, titled “I Sought Him but I Found Him Not,” is mostly instrumental after some vocal music at the beginning. It is followed by “My Own Vineyard I Did Not Keep,” which uses more of the Hilliard Ensemble’s opulent vocal resources. The third section, “I Sleep, but My Heart Waketh,” gives us more of the Hilliard Ensemble, as well as fine examples of the Rosamunde Quartet’s lucid playing. The fourth section, “My Head Is Filled with Dew, My Locks with Drops of the Night,” gives way to an enchanting dreamlike sequence of intertwining harmonies, while the fifth, “My Soul Went Forth When He Spoke,” concludes with an instrumental finale.

We are told that the text consists of Hebrew phrases from the Old Testament, but no libretto is supplied. The words are not easy to grasp, either, because the work was recorded in a setting with a very live acoustic. Yoffe uses the vocal soloists in the same way he uses the instrumentalists: He puts far more value on their sound than on the verbal message they convey. Yoffe’s works, like those of Pärt, are rooted in early music. The Song of Songs is sometimes reminiscent of Gregorian chant but it is also imbued with an idiomatic modernism. Yoffe also leaves a great deal to be supplied by the performers because he gives them no markings for interpretation; it is up to the performers to analyze the music and decide how it should be played. When another group performs the Song of Songs , it will most likely be quite a different piece.

The ambient sound is the result of having been recorded in an ancient church rather than a concert hall, and it fits the selections well.

Review by Maria Nockin, Fanfare

Review by Tyran Grillo, ECMreviews.com

The limitations of words tend toward failure in expressing the breadth of any creative endeavor. Describing the music of Boris Yoffe is an exceptional case, for here words risk expressing too much. Yoffe himself has lived a life of cutting to the chase. He was born in St. Petersburg in 1968, where he composed and premiered his first works just shy of his 15th birthday. He emigrated to Tel Aviv, completing a degree in composition, and then to Karlsruhe, Germany to study with Wolfgang Rihm. Rihm was struck by Yoffe’s individuality from day one, and includes an affectionate note to that effect in the CD booklet: “His music has great beauty. Can it be misunderstood? Oh yes. But it doesn’t complain. Stays beautiful and giving. Unmisunderstandable. With time also hardened, pointed.”

Yoffe writes one string quartet a day (each just a page long), as if it were scriptural meditation. Of those culled for the present disc, he notes, “For me this recording is a handwritten collection of verse, in which the quartet poems are accompanied by the tenderly coloured miniatures of the sung pieces.” Yoffe’s scores are bereft of dynamics, tempi, and directions, and so the Rosamunde Quartett and Hilliard Ensemble are to be commended for tending to them with so much heart.

I sought him but I found him not introduces the program with ashen strings before the Hilliards’ voices, after a pause, break through the gloom with their palatial moonlight. So does their antiphon continue in meditative interaction with the Rosamundes, whose occasionally sharper gestures merely emphasize a fundamental contemplation. Both registers exist in mutual exclusion, bonded in a reality where contact and surface are one and the same, and the experience of language turns in on itself. My own vineyard I did not keep, by contrast, reflects a less syllogistic approach to text and melody. Brief chains of overlapping voices grow like a vine along brick: filigree to a hardened exterior.

Yoffe allows fragrance to waft through the lattice of his notecraft and opens its interstices to further interpretation. I sleep, but my heart waketh takes this philosophy furthest in a veritable calligraphy of air, born of flesh and thought yet writ large on the wind. Pizzicati in this quartet-only piece feel not plucked but pulled, as if by gravity into a watery hermitage. Death as transfiguration.

My head is filled with dew, my locks with drops of the night is a river run so long that it births a canyon. It is a particularly affecting vehicle for countertenor David James, in whose throat resides angelic hues. This is the most contemplative piece on the album. Its heartbeat folds into strings in My soul went forth when he spoke, for which the body’s connection to a life divine charts an altogether deeper anatomy, one of which veins and arteries are spun from the Word and through which the blood of deliverance dreams like a promise kissed into cognizance.

Yoffe’s elastic sense of proportion confirms the sentiments of Paul Griffiths, who in his liner text characterizes this recording as “a sampling of eternity.” The only possible end result is another beginning.

Review by Tyran Grillo, ECMreviews.com

Boris Yoffe at Allmusic
Boris Yoffe at Wiki

Rosamunde Quartett at Allmusic
Rosamunde Quartett at Wiki

The Hilliard Ensemble at Allmusic
The Hilliard Ensemble at Wiki

Rosamunde Quartett:
Andreas Reiner, violin
Diane Pascal, violin
Helmut Nicolai, viola
Anja Lechner, violoncello

The Hilliard Ensemble:
David James, countertenor
Rogers Covey-Crump, tenor
Steven Harrold, tenor
Gordon Jones, baritone
Recorded November 2009 at Propstei St. Gerold

Tracklist:

01. I sought him but I found him not (12:39)
02. My own vineyard I did not keep (04:33)
03. I sleep, but my heart waketh (14:06)
04. My head is filled with dew, my locks with drops of the night (11:14)
05. My soul went forth when he spoke (10:00)

EAC log

Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 1 from 15. November 2010

EAC extraction logfile from 25. October 2011, 20:13

Boris Yoffe / Song of Songs

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Used output format : User Defined Encoder
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Additional command line options : -T "COMMENT=Ripped by GFox" -8 -V %s

TOC of the extracted CD

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1 | 0:00.00 | 12:39.27 | 0 | 56951
2 | 12:39.27 | 4:33.02 | 56952 | 77428
3 | 17:12.29 | 14:06.42 | 77429 | 140920
4 | 31:18.71 | 11:14.69 | 140921 | 191539
5 | 42:33.65 | 10:00.30 | 191540 | 236569

Range status and errors

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Test CRC 2F1A785F
Copy CRC 2F1A785F
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AccurateRip summary

Track 1 not present in database
Track 2 not present in database
Track 3 not present in database
Track 4 not present in database
Track 5 not present in database

None of the tracks are present in the AccurateRip database

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DR log

foobar2000 1.3.8 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1
log date: 2015-12-12 02:40:28

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Analyzed: Boris Yoffe / Song of Songs
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

DR Peak RMS Duration Track
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
DR16 -3.63 dB -25.18 dB 12:39 01-I sought him but I found him not
DR15 -0.68 dB -24.19 dB 4:33 02-My own vineyard I did not keep
DR16 -2.32 dB -24.84 dB 14:07 03-I sleep, but my hert waketh
DR14 -3.60 dB -25.46 dB 11:15 04-My head is filled with dew, my locks with drops of the night
DR16 -0.64 dB -25.14 dB 10:00 05-My soul went forth when he spoke
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Number of tracks: 5
Official DR value: DR15

Samplerate: 44100 Hz
Channels: 2
Bits per sample: 16
Bitrate: 489 kbps
Codec: FLAC
================================================================================

All thanks to original releaser

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