United Strings of Europe: Hommages
BIS

Hommages is a splendid addition to the four earlier recordings by the United Strings of Europe (USE) on BIS, with its latest augmenting works by Dobrinka Tabakova (b. 1980), Osvaldo Golijov (b. 1960), and Olli Mustonen (b. 1967) with Igor Stravinsky's neo-classical ballet Apollon musagète. The collection makes good on the London-based company's mission to combine the new with the familiar and to experience the latter in a different way. That applies in this case to the Stravinsky work, which appears here in a new arrangement by the ensemble's artistic director and lead violinist Julian Azkoul. On the sixty-eight-minute release, the USE pays homage to the great Russian but also fellow twentieth-century composers Carlos Gardel and Astor Piazzolla.

The USE's a flexible and malleable unit that adjusts its ensemble design to match a given work. While that's obvious when it comes to Mustonen's Apotheosis for four cellos, it's as true for the other pieces. Rather than being performed by a full string orchestra, Apollon musagète features six players, two violins and cellos, viola, and double bass. Golijov's Last Round and Mustonen's Nonetto II use the largest number of resources in featuring nine. Of course Azkoul appears on all of the pieces except for the cello-arranged work. A key selling point for the release is that in addition to the world première recording of the Stravinsky arrangement, Hommages includes world première recordings of Tabakova's Organum Light and Apotheosis for four cellos.

Organum Light (2014) sets the tone with a commanding setting inspired by Einstein's theory of quantum light, the austere work's design reflecting the composer's words “musically the instruments weave their individual lines to create one whole, as the individual photons combine to make light.” A dignified folk quality and sense of mystery inform the performance, which is a prototypical illustration of the USE's capacity for inducing entrancement. One hardly needs to review the text Golijov wrote for Last Round (1996) to know it's indebted to Nuevo tango legend Astor Piazzolla when the connection's established incontrovertibly by the character of the work. Golijov's words do, however, provide background for why the piece was written and how it came to be. Titled after a short story by Julio Cortázar, its second movement, which Golijov wrote the year after Piazzolla's career-ending stroke in 1990, was composed first, with the first following to complement it. Just as Cortázar's piece concerns boxing, so too does Golijov's when it pits two quartets against each other in what he describes as “a sublimated tango dance.” While the jagged rhythms and razor-sharp flourishes that give “Movido, urgente” furious drive are quintessential Piazzolla, the angst-ridden second movement, “Muertes del Angel (Deaths of the Angel),” draws on the song “Mi Buenos Aires querido” that Gardel wrote in the 1930s. The affection Golijov has for the great tango master comes through in every second of this deeply felt homage, during the second movement especially.

Nearly a hundred years after its birth, Stravinsky's Apollon musagète (1928) has lost none of its bewitching power. As rewarding as it is to hear the work in its string orchestra guise, Azkoul's transcription is effective when the aesthetic purity of the writing lends itself naturally to a chamber-sized treatment. The material and performance seduce the moment the opening tableau's regal “Naissance d'Apollon” initiates the piece. While the neo-classical realm inhabited is light years removed from Le Sacre du printemps, the writing is, of course, unmistakably Stravinsky's. The solo violin that introduces the second tableau's “Variation d'Apollon (Apollon et les Muses)”— Azkoul's, presumably—keeps the entrancement going, and the work's potent spell remains in place for the full measure of the half-hour rendering. The gentle melodies flowing through “Pas d'action (Apollon et les trois Muses: Calliope, Polymnie et Terpsichore),” the swoon generated by “Variation de Calliope (l'Alexandrin),” the radiant figures animating “Variation de Polymnie,” the majesty of “Variation d'Apollon,” the fragile lyricism of “Pas de deux (Apollon et Terpsichore)”—all such details cumulatively reaffirm the work's status as a Stravinsky classic.

Mustonen's two pieces come last, the first, Nonetto II (2000), a fifteen-minute work that advances from the disquieting shriek and irregular pulse of the “Inquieto—” and fiery and somewhat Beethoven-esque “Allegro impetuoso” movements to the ethereal, Schubert-evoking splendour of the “Adagio” and the furious attack of the “Vivacissimo.” Never is the USE's thrust more pronounced than in the finale of Nonetto II, as good an example as any of the power the ensemble's capable of producing. Subtitled In memoriam Pablo Casals, Apotheosis for four cellos (2022) provides a satisfying resolution to the collection in the earnestness and dignity of its expression. It's no slight upon Tabakova, Golijov, and Mustonen to say that Apollon musagète is the album's standout; after all, most Stravinsky works dwarf those paired with them. That said, the pieces by the others are all credible in different ways and offer terrific showcases for the USE's playing.

May 2025