Dark Velvet in Gramophone Magazine

Dark Velvet: An Autobiography in Music in Gramophone Magazine

Music often means more when shaped by personal experience, as this album of compositions for solo and duo combinations performed by violinist Julija Hartig, pianist Reineke Broekhans and cellist Maja Bogdanović attests. Subtitled ‘an autobiography in music’, the programme’s 10 pieces were either written or arranged for Hartig, each one adding its own narrative strand to an interconnected journey linking the Serbian violinist’s Yugoslav heritage with subsequent musical life and activities in the Netherlands, where she has lived since 1994.

The most obvious autobiographical thread is seen in Hartig’s inclusion of two pieces by her father, Tibor, the expressively angst-ridden Monolog for solo violin contrasting with a more conversational and neoclassical tone heard in Dijalogi for violin and cello, the music’s repartee-like nature aided by Hartig and cellist Bogdanovic´’s slick exchanges.

Several pieces on the album were either written by or are linked to Serbian composer Isidora Žebeljan, described by Robert Hugill as ‘a vivid and restless talent’. Žebeljan’s Dark Velvet was originally written for solo piano (and often performed by her in that version) but appears here in a new arrangement for violin and piano by one of the composer’s pupils, Veljko Nenadić. Composed as a homage to Mahler (with Messiaen’s presence never far from the surface), its poignancy is further intensified by Žebeljan’s death in 2020 at the age of only 53. An arrangement of Žebeljan’s ‘Oh, die, my love’, taken from the composer’s Rukoveti song-cycle, sung and played by Hartig, is given an almost Kopatchinskaja-like treatment.

A further tribute to Žebeljan’s legacy is provided by Greek composer Calliope Tsoupaki’s folk-imbued A Song for Isidora, while her presence is sensed in Nenadić’s Air & Riffs for violin and piano, a dreamlike opening section transforming into something altogether more nightmarish by the end. For me, at least, the main highlights belong to Aleksandra Vrebalov’s evocative, soundscape-like Constellation Hartig for violin and prepared piano, and Florian Magnus Maier’s The Music of Erich Zann for solo violin – the latter a visceral 10-minute tour de force that impressively harnesses both compositional and violinistic layers of virtuosity.