Indies Rec.
Jirí Pavlica and Hradist'an and Filharmonie Brno : Chvení (CZ,2008)***°'
Airplay : Tr.1, “Aeolian Prelude” 6 min, Tr.6, “Altai,Altai” 7 min
This is an extremely ambitious project crossing bridges to so many classical styles, poetry, folk and ethnofolk references, I can hardly grab its purpose because it is as if my mind is stretched to many areas, from which I also feel I hardly have enough cultural background to grasp them enough to recognise the story context what have brought all these together, or is it coincidence ? It surely was meant as a deliberately composed and arranged challenge for the big orchestra to be confronted with these meeting points, managed in a 5-part suite, and where the crafty, powerful and expressive classical orchestra manages with strength to give renewed nutrition in their own roots, as if only given new soil.
The first, impressive intro, performed by the full orchestra, is composed in the Aeolian scale, with building up overtone overlaps, swelling filmic and with expressionist classical tensions with a seemingly spiritual or super-natural effect of a tension that can almost be felt physically in the air and body.
On the poetic (song) dialogue the expressionist orchestra seeps through or goes into a challenging dialogue with a different world with a more folk basis and instruments. It also features choral arrangements.
On the dialogue with the past, older music styles (old liturgical singing with Constantinople elements and Christian Orthodox Slavic references, as well as a part with more medieval dance arrangements), are combined with the orchestra (with Old Czech and old Slavic texts in song form).
On the ethnic dialogue, there were invited throat singers from the Altai region, with a song from that region, which becomes orchestrated after their lead contribution, with a second orchestral part, which is a mix of styles in a more European tradition, including rather heavy court Baroque expressive elements made from the ethnic film context.
Last part of the suite is a song and choir driven statement that brings many of the aforementioned genres, and more, once more together as an ode that all this can survive in one context, with all variations still recognisable.
