Come In!

A couple of CDs arrived in the mail on Friday. One comprises three works by contemporary Russian composer Vladimir Martynov (b. 1946). The disc, like the first and longest of the pieces thereupon is entitled Come In! This work in six short movements, scored for string orchestra, solo violin and celesta, sounds, at first hearing, rather like an exercise in retro-romantic kitsch, and a repetitious one at that, but, with repeated listening, one can begin to hear considerably more. Certainly the melodies seem syrupy and old-fashioned at times, but then there is also an insistent tapping-on-the-door motif, where a chiming celesta accompanies a clapping of woodblocks, which has no such nostalgic connotation, and, as one listens all the more, the piece’s rapturous yet patient exploration of a few themes yields a different sweetness, one of delicately reiterated bliss.

In connection with a different piece, Martynov wrote the following:

It feels ridiculous trying to be a composer when you exist in a post-composition era, writing and pretending to ignore the fact that the age of the composer has already passed. But it's not that simple to deny the composer in oneself. Not everyone has had the luck to meet one's own Vanya Rublow.

The reference to Vanya Rublow, we learn, by way of a footnote, comes from a work of Daniil Kharms’ (1905-1942) entitled Four illustrations on how a new idea disconcerts someone who is not prepared:

Composer: I am a composer.
Vanja Rublow: I think you are shit!
Composer, barely breathing, falls to the floor and is carried out.

In fact I hadn’t ordered this disc for its title-track, which I’d heard before, on Gidon Kremer’s release Silencio. I was more interested in hearing the other two pieces, intriguingly titled Autumn Ball of the Elves and L'après Midi du Bach respectively. On initial acquaintance, I’m none too sure what to make of either piece: the former work juxtaposes a rather heavy-handed minimalism with more straight-faced classical lyricism, whereas the sawing violins in the latter piece at times almost resemble sitars, at least to my uneducated ears. My first impressions were of fascination and impatience mixed.

The other CD that arrived on Friday, was, not very coincidentally, Kremer’s latest release Happy Birthday, a collection of, amongst other things, sets of variations on hackneyed musical themes such as Happy Birthday itself, God Save the King, and Auld Lang Syne. The works are variously frivolous and witty, but are all performed with affection and virtuoso panache by Kremer’s ensemble. Coincidentally, the CD booklet contains a brief text on the subject of coincidence by Daniil Kharms entitled Connection which ends thus:

… 18. After the concert, they went home in the same tramcar. But driving the tramcar right behind them was that very same conductor who had once sold the violinist’s coat at the flea market. 19. So there they are, riding late one evening about the city - in the car ahead are the violinist and the delinquent’s son; right behind them is the tramcar driver, the former conductor. 20. They all ride on but none of them know what connection there is among them, nor will they know until they die.