Gabriel Vicéns (b.1988)
Mural
rec. 2022, Bunker Studios, New York City, USA
Stradivarius STR37292 [70]
Gabriel Vicéns, a Puerto Rican composer and guitarist now resident in America, is a jazz musician by training and a classical one by inclination. He is a visual artist, too, so the disc’s title and the subtitle Mural in Time make much sense. Also, Mural is the first piece here, for clarinet, violin and piano.
Tim Rutherford-Johnson begins his booklet essay – from which I will quote, with thanks – by highlighting the work of the artist Pat Lipsky born in 1941 and her rainbow-like wave paintings. They have played a strong part in influencing Vicéns the artist and the composer. Vicéns says he was ‘wowed’ by Schoenberg as a student, particularly the Five Piano Pieces and especially the ‘spacing of the sonorities’. Later, he discovered Morton Feldman and his use of musical ‘space’. One might also describe some aspects of Vicéns’s music as ‘minimalist’.
Vicéns has made four jazz albums in previous years. The publicity describes this disc as ‘immersive and mood-inducing’ and ‘spanning a four-year period’ 2019-2022. The description certainly applies to the first work here. It falls into two sections, one over a C pedal, the other at first pierced by silences and jagged harmonies as in Feldman’s music. These elements build and form a final complex climax.
Another interest and influence, as the composer admits, is Webern illustrated with a personal type of pointillism. This is particularly audible in Carnal for violin and piano. The harmonic basis remains the same, but revoiced under the violin’s extreme use of register and almost desiccated rhythm. That is rather like the damaged and faded ancient murals which so fascinate the composer. The same could be said of first part of Sueños Ligados [linked dreams] where the ‘Feldman like fascination with uneven rhythms’ adds to the pointillism between the three instruments. The second half is contrasted by a set of ostinato bell-like chords of great beauty.
All of these characteristics occur in the longest piece here, El Matorral [the scrubland] scored colourfully for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano and vibraphone. It begins with a running ostinato section in which we are asked to picture ‘the image of a man running through and becoming lost in the El Yunque forest in northeastern Puerto Rico’. That is suddenly followed by a Feldmanesque section of almost complete stasis with just a little melodic ornamentation. This moves into the last part of a repeated chordal sequence with uneven rhythmic patterns. I can see a connection with Pat Lipsky: one colour positioned onto or directly beside another, complementing certainly, but also contrastingly interesting.
In Una Superficie Sin Rostro [a faceless surface] for solo piano, the contemplative, Feldman’s pointillistic sound world is especially strong. Yet Vicéns seems to tire of it and builds the counterpoint both in volume and activity before letting it die down.
Going into too much detail about the remaining two works would largely repeat the comments above. Ficción is colourfully scored for wind quintet, and for me is the most Schoenbergian of the seven works. Finally, we have La Esfera [the sphere] for cello and piano. Insofar as you can say that Webern’s music is an extension of Schoenberg’s, this work could be seen as an extension of Webern’s. The difference lies in that it begins pointillistically, develops and collapses, builds and then dissipates.
If, as I assume, the composer supervised these outstanding, brilliantly prepared performances, they may be, as it were, authentic. The music is intriguing, but it keeps you at arm’s length.
Gary Higginson
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Contents
Mural (2021) for clarinet, violin and piano
Sueños Ligados (2020) for violin, cello and piano
El Matoral (2022) for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano and vibraphone
Una Superficie Sin Rostro (2020) for solo piano
Carnal (2019) for violin and piano
Ficción (2021) for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn
La Esfera (2021) for cello and piano
Performers
Roberta Michel (flute)
Raissa Fahlman (clarinet)
Joenne Dumitrascu (violin)
Adrianne Munden-Dixon (violin)
Rocío Díaz de Cossío (cello)
Wick Simmons (cello)
Julia Henderson (cello)
Corinne Penner (piano)
Mayumi Tsuchida (piano)
Mikael Darmanie (piano)
John Ling (vibraphone)
David Bloom (conductor)
Nu Quintet: Kim Lewis (flute), Michael Dwinell (oboe), Kathryn Vetter (clarinet), Tylor Thomas (bassoon), Blair Hamrick (horn)
