Paul Whitty - THIRTY-NINE PAGES - D. Morgan (violin), M. Dullea (piano)

ID: MSV28509 (EAN: 809730850929)  | 1 CD | DDD
Released in: 2009

LABEL:

METIER

Subcollection:

Violin

Composers:

WHITTY, Paul

Interprets:

DULLEA, Mary | MORGAN, Darragh

Other info:

Paul Whitty works with both amplified and electronic music with ensemble [rout] (CD29001) and with acoustic instruments as in de-coding skin (CD25021). Recently Paul has been engaged in a series of interventions in pre-existing scores - undertaking an almost archaeological examination of the materials found there. Thirty-nine pages filters and re-organises each page of the Henle Edition of Cesar Franck's Sonata for Violin and Piano in A Major. Fragments of the Franck can be heard emerging - a single note, a chord, a phrase - from the often stark and simple textures of the surrounding material. This recording is superbly performed by artists who have built fine reputations in the world of new music.

Track list:
Whitty, Paul : Thirty-Nine Pages, for violin & piano (after Cesar's Violin Sonata in A major)

“Morgan and Dullea’s playing is absolutely perfect here, retaining an essential objectivity while attending precisely to every detail of this poised and intricate music” -Tim Rutherford-Johnson (Musical Pointers)

“Violinist Darragh Morgan and pianist Mary Dullea go to work on this intriguing material with panache. The work is beautifully performed and spaciously recorded.... a delicately put together and intricate set of movements” - Catherine Nelson (The Strad)

“Certainly a good bet for the musically adventurous” - Chris Spector (MidWest Record)

“An oddly engaging work... sufficient material to keep one wanting to hear more. The music is compelling in a strangely hypnotic and disturbing way. You [must] listen to it and give the music time to get inside you. The performances are very fine.” - Bob Briggs (Musicweb)

“This music poses as many questions as it answers. Whitty is playing games with our memories - both our assumptions about what we think 19 th century music might sound like, and about how his music restructures the debris.” - Philip Clark (The Wire)

LIVE PERFORMANCE REVIEW (24 September 2009)
"The small performance space downstairs at Schott's is becoming an essential site to catch chamber works from the interesting fringes of the British new music establishment; it's a shame that the concerts aren't more widely advertised.
It was certainly a pleasure to hear Whitty's piece ( previously reviewed on CD ) in this context, performed alongside the Franck that provided its raw materials, and up close to the performers. Thirty-nine pages takes each page of Franck's score, subjecting them to different processes of deconstruction (such as rearranging each note on the page in the order highest to lowest, or just playing all the As). The result is like a bed after the sleeper has awoken and left: a partial imprint, a scent, perhaps a hair on the pillow. It's not enough to reconstruct the person, but you can tell that someone has been there.
But Whitty's piece also has a reciprocal influence on how we hear the Franck, atomising it, remapping its material units, highlighting new aspects (registral strata, degrees of resonance, etc) while suppressing others (phrase structure, harmonic progressions, etc). In the small, tinny space of the Schott basement one became even more aware of tiny disturbance of tone than on the recording: the ring of an occasional open string in thirty-nine pages projected far out of the music, suggesting a whole new layer of material qualities within the Franck. Whitty not only seeks the essence of his Romantic material, but finds in that discovered essence things one may not expect, casting an interesting perspective on how we hear the nineteenth-century today." - Tim Rutherford-Johnson (Classical Pointers)