A composition for string quartet and trumpet in 9 parts by German composer Bojan Vuletic, a work inspired by and dedicated to Paul Celan, performed with the MIVOS String Quartet & Nate Wooley, and premiered in NYC's Issue Project Room.
Format: CD Condition: New Released: 2012 Country: Germany Packaging: Cardstock gatefold foldover Recorded on June 19th, 2011 by Marc Urselli at EastSide Sound, New York City.
Atemwende is the first large composition of Bojan Vuletic's cycle RecomposingArt. This first piece takes as its inspiration poetry by Paul Celan. The music was premiered and recorded in New York City by Nate Wooley and the MIVOS string quartet.
"Atemwende marks the beginning of an ambitious effort by Yugoslavian composer Bojan Vuletić: a set of 12 compositions inspired by artists working in poetry, literature, visual art, photography, theater and dance. Written in nine parts and dedicated to the Romanian poet Paul Celan, the suite is played quite beautifully by trumpeter Nate Wooley with the Mivos Quartet.
A pairing of trumpet and string quartet is both unusual and challenging: the former could easily overwhelm the latter without half trying. Not that Wooley is the sort of musician to let that happen. He can play softly without losing articulation and his extended techniques let him breathe easily alongside the strings. It seems likely, in fact, that the piece was written with him in mind: Wooley and Mivos gave it its premiere at Issue Project Room in June of 2011 and the CD was recorded the following day.
The disc opens with a lovely piece built from prolonged tones, slowly folding the inhalations and exhalations of the horn in among the quartet's lines. The second piece sets strings and trumpet in a sort of round robin of phrases. By the third the group has become an integrated quintet of soundmakers, exploring quieter and less strictly musical textures. From there the group is opened to mournful melodies, romantic sways and occasionally harsh passages. If a bit disjointed at times, it's nevertheless quite striking.
The composing itself is dramatic and sometimes quite beautiful, and also a bit puzzling - at least once attempts are made to take it apart and put it together again. It doesn't quite hang together as a single work even though it's presented as such, closer to a series of studies in texture between breath and brass on the one hand and bows and strings on the other. Inclusion of some of Celan's poetry would have gone a long way toward framing the music. That's an obstacle to understanding the work, but it's not a problem in the music. As a set of short compositions (between 3 and 11 minutes) it works wonderfully well and, of course, it doesn't need to be more than that. And even without the source material, it might best be seen as a set of poems, not tied together linearly but connected in feel."-Kurt Gottschalk, The New York City Jazz Record