Ofer Pelz: Trinité
New Focus Recordings

As I listen to the five pieces on Trinité, Ofer Pelz strikes me less as composer (though he assuredly is that) than sound explorer, someone engaged in setting forth a particular ‘problem' and examining it from a number of different angles. A highly developed sensitivity to timbre and texture are also central to these settings, with the Israeli-born (in 1978) and Montréal-based composer fortunate to have the Meitar Ensemble as his partner for the recording. Operating out of Tel-Aviv, the group features five instrumentalists—two strings (violinist Moshe Aharonov, cellist Jonathan Gotlibovitch), two woodwinds (flutist Roy Amotz, clarinetist Gilad Harel), and piano, the latter played by artistic director Amit Dolberg—who're augmented by the strings of Quatuor Ardeo on the album's closing piece; conductors Guy Feder, Pierre-André Valade,and Renaud Déjardin also contribute to separate performances on the fifty-two-minute release, the second issued under Pelz's name.

His unusual background naturally informs the character of his music, and as such his studies at places such as the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, IRCAM in Paris, and the University of Montreal (where he earned his doctorate in Composition) have profoundly influenced the music he creates. Consistent with its creator's cross-cultural worldview, Trinité was recorded in three different countries. By his own account, Pelz's music traffics in what he calls ‘unstable repetition'—elements that transform through repetition, and in so doing sustain palpable tension. A spatial dimension also permeates his approach in the way elements inhabit shifting positions.

The opening Backward inductions orients the listener to his electroacoustic approach when prepared piano patterns appear, their rapid flow accompanied by percussion sounds triggered by contact mics and the title referencing a structural design that sees the piece unfolding in reverse from a set of originating patterns. Notes are removed and directions altered, the result a dizzying constellation of dynamic movement. The even headier Chinese Whispers derives its title from the familiar game (aka “telephone”) wherein transformations emerge as material's passed from one person to the next. Here, of course, it's the original sound cell that undergoes mutation, with changes arising in separate sections over eleven minutes. It's highly possible, however, that your attention will less focus on monitoring that particular process than simply attending to the ever-changing sound design. Fragments of strings, piano, flute, and clarinet interlace rapidly during the first half before the tempo slows and the presentation shifts to long, tension-tightening glissandos and breathing-related effects.

September 2021