MUSICAL LIMBO Music criticism and writing about music 01-08-2022
MUSICAL LIMBO - Music criticism and writing about music
Review of Julia Hartig's Dark Velvet CD, 01-08-2022
By Srdjan Teparic
English translation:
Dark Velvet is the name of a CD by violinist Julia Hartig. It contains compositions by contemporary domestic and foreign authors who were important to this violinist during her artistic career, which is what the subtitle, musical autobiography, also speaks about. And indeed, nostalgia is the basic feeling that permeates the album, where all the works are performed like suggestive stories, episodes from one life. Reineke Broekhans, piano, and Maja Bogdanović, cello, participated in the interpretation of these stories.
The eponymous composition that opens the release, Dark velvet by Isidore Žebeljan, was written in 2006 for piano and is presented on the album in an arrangement for violin and piano by Veljko Nenadić, from 2021. If Gustav Mahler's adagios are synonymous with sentimentalized lyrics burdened with a sense of melancholy, then the same could be said for the homage to the aforementioned composer, with the title track indicating just one of the many characters presented on the release. Like the intro track to a rock album, it's actually a simple prelude to the dramatic performance that follows.
Tibor Hartig, Julia Hartig's father, was a cellist and composer, a prominent musical personality of Novi Sad. In this edition, two of his compositions, Monologue for solo violin from 1993 and Dialogues for violin and cello from 1990, both written for Julia Hartig, were premiered. A monologue is a set of interrupted verbal statements that move in free directions, skillfully combined into a whole through interpretation. The second composition, Dialogues, indicates improvisations on a given theme, i.e., instrumental conversations between Tibor and Julia Hartig are recorded through three movements in a way that would be the closest to the original jam session, as stated by the artist herself. Inspired by Hartig's Monologue, Rudolf Brucchi composed a miniature Guslarska for Julia Hartig in 1993, which also premiered at this edition. As far as the performance of music for a solo melodic instrument is concerned, this is where the performer needs to show his skill, because by the nature of things, it is most difficult to create a narrative where the interpreter must simultaneously create a relationship between the accompaniment and the melody, build dialogues, connect melodic units and much more. In all of the above, Hartigova showed mastery with unequivocally clearly highlighted characters, such as the dance that emerges after the epic storytelling in Guslarska, or the simple, nostalgic melody in the track A Song for Isidora by the Greek-Dutch composer Kaliopa Coupaki from 2020. years.
Two more compositions for solo violin can be heard on Julia Hartig's compact disc. One is based on the motifs of the Mexican folk song When the Moon Rises (De Jaque, Sal, Gala y Luna is the original title of the composition) by Juan Felipe Waller from 1997, while the other, premiered The Music of Erich Zann by Florian Magnus Maier from 2022 it owes its title to a short story by H. P. Lovecraft. The Mexican-Dutch composer Waller states that together with Hartig, he learned how to build a well-designed musical statement, so the first mentioned composition is fascinating precisely because of the art of combining short ornamental rhetorical statements into a single whole. The work of the Dutch author is of a completely different nature and it seems to evoke Paganini's story about the violinist and the devil presented through a sensibility close to the genres of metal music, while in one segment, it seems to imitate squeaks and noises that we could easily imagine as samples of electronic music.
The central part of this edition is Aleksandra Vrebalov's composition Constellation Hartig for violin and prepared piano from 2021. And while we could experience the performances of all the works mentioned so far as storytelling, in this composition, which lasts about fourteen minutes, the images and narration are presented in a different way. Deeply imbued with a sense of nostalgia, Hartig's interpretation seems like an intimate confession in which meditative, joyful and sad, exalted or static images-feelings alternate, performed in incredibly well-sculpted sfumato, which ends with a minimalistic ostinato repetition of a melodic-rhythmic pattern brought to the highest degree of intensity. If postmodernism implied collage sequences in which the author retreated into the background, in this composition, which is actually an intimate confession, the author is passive in a completely different way. Through the emotional turmoil, the performer makes us wonder whose emotion is actually represented, and we get the answer to this question when we finally realize that we are the ones whose sensibility has been touched to the limit.
The young Serbian composer Veljko Nenadić dedicated the composition Air & Riffs from 2022 to Julia Hartig. In this diptych, the colours that shine through the static texture in the first movement are replaced by the rapid passage movements of the piano and the narrated, at times screaming violin part in the second movement, which not only indicates the sensibility of the modernist composers implied by the composer, but in it as if you can feel the nervous, aggressive spirit of genres that are performed with electric guitars, bass and drums, and Hartig clearly knew how to incorporate it into the piece of a young, talented composer. And like any good album, Dark Velvet also has a hit - Oh, Die, My Love for piano, violin and female voice. It's a transcription of the last song from Rukoveti Isidore Žebeljan, Hey honey, done by the composer herself. Julia Hartig sang, with a full and powerful voice, expressively and meaningfully, as she presented herself as a violinist in this edition.
Julia Hartig's Dark Velvet album was recorded in March 2022 for the Austrian publishing house Challange Records. We should praise the production's well-constructed sound space, which comes to the fore, especially in compositions for solo violin, so that echoes, aliquots and everything that belongs not only to sound but also to silence, are also audible. In this way, Hartig was able to create different stories and, finally, participate in what she herself called an autobiography. The album can be listened to via Deezer, Spotify, Tidal, and Apple Music platforms, but of course, that is not the only fact that makes it serious. The content is what makes the quality, so we could say that this is an exceptional album on which top interpretations of the works of contemporary authors have been realized. Sound creations of new music that promise to last and be listened to for years are few today. Through an exceptional set of melodies, colours, harmonies, conversations and images, listeners will really be able to discover something new on the Dark Velvet album every time.
