Gity Razaz was born in Tehran, where she spent her formative years before moving to the United States in 2002. Razaz’s identity as an immigrant is integral to her artistic work, in terms both of the subject matter that attracts her and the musical structures she employs. The relationship between the grounded and the ephemeral inhabits much of her music: her choice of titles reveals a poetic sensibility, but her music is never purely cerebral. Instead it is often anchored by the visceral, as with the punchy rhythms and earthy colours of The Strange Highway for cello octet. That piece, which has given name to the album, takes its inspiration from a poem by the Chilean author Roberto Bolaño. Two other works on the disc also have extra-musical roots: Legend of Sigh is a retelling in music of an Azerbaijani folktale while Metamorphosis of Narcissus was inspired by the famous painting by Salvador Dalí. In both these works Razaz embraces electro-acoustic techniques as a means of enhancing her palette.

The five works on the disc were composed between 2007 and 2020, with the earliest piece being Duo for violin and piano. The latest work is Spellbound, a solo for viola inspired by the mournful sound quality of Persian instruments such as the ney and kamanche.

An exciting young Dutch-based ensemble, performing on gut strings, brings flair and historically informed style to four little-known examples of repertoire from the dawn of the string quartet. Founded while it's members were students of the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague, the Butter Quartet gives vibrant historically-informed performance focusing on Classical-era repertoire. Within it's short history, the Quartet has appeared at several important early-music festivals. At the 2019 York Early Music International Young Artists Competition, they were awarded a place in the prestigious EEEMERGING+ professional development scheme for young European ensembles. With this collection of rarely heard 18thcentury quartets from Italy, the Butter Quartet makes a thrilling debut on record. The individuality of each composer is accentuated by their mutual juxtaposition. In their booklet essay for the album, the Quartet members recount combing libraries for early quartets which have been overshadowed by Haydn's mastery of the genre. All of the composers featured in Scintilla were famous violin virtuosi, with the exception of Boccherini who was a cellist. Their work as performers was inseparable from the music they composed. Italian galant music and performers were characterized by gorgeous tone, operatic sensibilities, and elegant ornamentation. An E flat major Quartet by Gaetano Pugnani (1731-1798) retains traces of Baroque grammar to it's phrasing, while a C minor Quartet by Boccherini (1743-1805) is marked by the surges of pathos that belong to the key signature as reinterpreted by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. Maddalena Sirmen (1745-1818) wrote six quartets of which No.5 in F major is a remarkably close-woven and reflective work, hardly a display piece in the tradition of her teacher Tartini but touched throughout with the spirit of subtle innovation we associate with Haydn. Finally, the C major Quartet of Felice Giardini (1716- 1796) is distinguished by an unusually rich viola part which may arise from the circumstances of it's composition in London, where the composer played his violin with both the painter Thomas Gainsborough and the Prince of Wales, who became King George IV

American Chamber Music

John D. Gottsch (*1950) was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, and shortly afterward his family moved to Florida. He spent his youth in the lake country of Florida, swimming with alligators and always looking down when in woods or a swamp to avoid rattlesnakes and water moccasins. He traveled many of the rivers of the state which would begin in the back country and eventually empty into the Gulf or the Atlantic. These explorations of Florida gave him an enduring love for the beauty and wildlife of the state. Gottsch now splits his time between Baltimore and Key West. He has been a lifelong composer, and his compositions reflect his deep appreciation of the outdoors.

Hélène Clément, violist with the Doric String Quartet, is the current holder of the viola previously owned by both Bridge and Britten. Her ambition, quickly formed once she first played this instrument, has been to create a testament to both composers and the instrument that binds them all together. This recording, where Hélène is joined by pianist Alasdair Beatson and Dame Sarah Connolly, is the realization of that ambition. Hélène writes: ‘Frank Bridge owned and played the beautiful viola made by Francesco Giussani, in Italy, in 1843. Benjamin Britten was Frank Bridge’s most beloved pupil, and Bridge gave him the viola as a parting gift when Britten had to embark on a ship’s journey to the United States at the outbreak of the Second World War. The composers were never to see each other again. To record the viola repertoire of both composers, producing the very sound that they would have had in their ears, the sound that inspired their love for the instrument and its special language, became a priority for me.’

REVIEW:

The soul of this beautifully constructed recital is the luminous variety Hélène Clément extracts from the 1843 Giussani viola owned by Frank Bridge and passed on to his favorite pupil, Benjamin Britten. The anguished overlapping of mezzo and viola at the climax of ‘Where is it that our soul doth go?’ is one of many revelations on the disc.

-- BBC Music Magazine