COMPOSERS: Terterian
LABELS: ASV
WORKS: Symphony No. 3; Symphony No. 4
PERFORMER: Armenian PO/Loris Tjeknavorian
CATALOGUE NO: CD DCA 986
Such manifestly eccentric music defies rational analysis. The Third Symphony opens with the sort of manic percussive assault you would expect from a teenager let loose on a drum kit for the first time. After an exhausting three minutes it subsides into several minutes of near-silence, finally broken by the strident nasal squawking of a battery of shawms and other Eastern double-reed instruments. Any hope that this might lead somewhere recognisably musical is shattered by the mayhem that ensues. The percussion re-enters, joined by whooping horns, braying trombones, and primordial squeaks from the woodwind. An almost completely static slow movement is followed by a finale whose fabulous barrage of sound teeters on the brink of total chaos. In the single-movement Fourth Symphony, ghostly musical fragments drift in and out of a mesmerising spectral backcloth that scarcely changes over the half-hour duration. You could reject such music out of hand, but in fact it is oddly compelling. Christopher Lambton
Terterian
Such manifestly eccentric music defies rational analysis. The Third Symphony opens with the sort of manic percussive assault you would expect from a teenager let loose on a drum kit for the first time. After an exhausting three minutes it subsides into several minutes of near-silence, finally broken by the strident nasal squawking of a battery of shawms and other Eastern double-reed instruments. Any hope that this might lead somewhere recognisably musical is shattered by the mayhem that ensues.
Our rating
3
Published: January 20, 2012 at 2:28 pm