United Strings of Europe: Renewal
BIS

Led by director and violinist Julian Azkoul, United Strings of Europe (USE) delivers sterling performances of material by four composers on its follow-up to 2020's debut album In motion. Works by Joanna Marsh, Caroline Shaw, and Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy are given wonderful readings by the ensemble, but it's Osvaldo Golijov's Three Songs that is the album's crowning achievement. The pairing of soprano Ruby Hughes with the string orchestra makes for music of remarkable poignancy and grandeur, and Renewal stands out all the more for including a performance so resonant.

Central to the recording's impact is the fact that many arrangements by Azkoul were created for the compositions, including Marsh's In Winter's House and Shaw's and the swallow, both of them originally written as choral works; the latter's well-known Entr'acte, on the other hand, was conceived for string quartet but is heard on Renewal in Shaw's own string orchestra arrangement. Whereas Golijov conceived his Three Songs for soprano and string orchestra, Mendelssohn's String Quartet No. 6 in F minor, Op. 80 naturally required a new arrangement for the USE. That so much of the recording involved upgrades explains in part why Renewal was chosen as the album title. As important, however, to its selection are themes of recovery and rebirth, both obviously relevant to the pandemic experience and the isolating lockdowns it brought with it.

Originally set to text by Oxford-based poet Jane Draycott, Marsh's In Winter's House exudes the majesty and mystery of an ancient folk song. After a restrained opening voicing of the plaintive motif, the music gracefully blossoms into a sweeping arrangement for thirteen strings. Each of the five verses expands on that initial musical statement in a different way, the result an enigmatic yet nonetheless stirring expression. Shaw's star has risen astronomically, but a single listen to Entr'acte is all that's needed to appreciate why. While every work she creates speaks to her deep absorption of the classical repertoire, her compositions bear a distinctive personal stamp. Entr'acte reveals how effectively she draws inspiration from her predecessors in the creation of something new, in this case the piece written after she heard the Brentano Quartet perform Haydn's String Quartet Op. 77, No. 2. Also consistent with Shaw's approach, Entr'acte incorporates a number of gestures—bow noises, slides, pizzicato, and harmonics, to name four—but never for mere effect. All such treatments are deployed in service to the compositional concept, and despite its abundant contrasts in tone, tempo, and dynamics the work retains its cohesive character.

Though its songs were written for different occasions and they use texts from different writers, namely Sally Potter, Rosalia de Castro, and Emily Dickinson for, respectively, “Night of the Flying Horses,” “Lúa Descolorida” (Colourless Moon), and “How Slow the Wind,” Golijov's Three Songs creates the impression of a single work. It captivates from the start when the first song begins with an unaccompanied Hughes singing a Yiddish lullaby, “Close Your Eyes,” and then, with the USE's principal violinist Elitsa Bogdanova joining her, shifting into a stirring doina (a slow and mournful Gypsy genre). The stately central movement proves even more moving when Hughes' haunting vocal conveys tenderness and despair and with maximum control. No moment on the recording is more powerful than this one, which is also perhaps the album's most intimate. The tone of the concluding part is consistent with the others, and Hughes again delivers a vocal of unerring pitch and shape.

That Mendelssohn's F minor String Quartet, one of his final works, was composed immediately after the unexpected death of his beloved sister, the composer Fanny Mendelssohn, lends extra gravitas to the material and makes the USE's performance all the more forceful. Pushing past twenty-six minutes, the four-part work is abundant in contrasts of dynamics and texture, and Azkoul's arrangement shines a light on different USE sections and players. The passionate opening alternates between moments of relative calm and turbulence as the music surges forth at times ferociously. The frenzy of that introduction carries over into the scherzo, which makes the tender lyricism of the third movement more affecting as a result. After an intense final movement that moves as breathlessly as the opening two, Renewal concludes with Shaw's gorgeous and the swallow, whose tone of plaintive yearning is rooted in two things from which she drew inspiration, the Syrian refugee crisis and the humanitarian crisis at the USA's southern border.

March 2022