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Guest review by Michael Johnson

It is a rare occurrence for me to slide a CD into my player and fall immediately under the spell of haunting, hypnotic music I had never heard before. But “Anima Mea” (La Musica LMU 094), performed by the Pascal Trio and the young counter-tenor Paul Figuier, did just that. I replay the full 72 minutes almost every day and have not yet tired of it.

Denis Pascal, pianist in his family trio and a leading promoter of the CD project, tells me this music “creates a space in which one can get a glimpse of another world.”

The recording marks a few important firsts. Composers Bruno Coulais and Jean-Philippe Goude created their contributions expressly for this disc, and thus can claim World First recordings. In addition, the Goude version of Gerard Leane’s Salve Regina is reworked for this recording.

Taken together, the spiritual and sacred themes, beautifully vocalized by Figuier, leave the listener transported into a poetic melancholy mood suddenly shifting to a brisk and lively piece by Arvo Pärt.

The over-all style is a unique form of minimalism. The sustained repetition is evident in the most surprising selection, “My Heart’s in the Highlands” based on the words borrowed from Scottish national poet’s work of the same name and set to the haunting music of Pärt.

Figuier renders the score in English, in a powerful but controlled high-pitched voice – long passages on a single note, backed up by the Pascal brothers and their father. The heartfelt strings and piano interpretation would leave a modern Scot an emotional wreck.

Denis Pascal has been close to Figuier since the beginning of the singer’s career. Now Pascal calls his counter-tenor performance “magnificent”, a voice with “very great expressivity”. Figuier’s growing reputation places him alongside such counter-tenors as Philippe Jarousky, Alex Luna and Andreas Scholl.

The trio comprises a rare family gathering of accomplished musicians. Pianist Denis Pascal and his two sons – violinist Alexandre and cellist Aurélien – form a unique ensemble bonded by years of common musicianship from childhood onward.

The title of the CD, “Anima Mea” (“My Soul” in English), was chosen to evoke spirituality, religious or not, evanescence, invisibility and the meaning of Salve Regina – thee traditional Magnificat in praise of the Virgin Mary, love and devotion.

An exceptionally thoughtful booklet accompanies the CD including biographies of players and composers, analysis by Yutha Tep, and the full texts in Latin, French and English.

As one French critic put it, “For anyone who loves meditative music chiseled in crystal, ‘Anima Mea’ is a stop not to be missed.”

Paul Figuier, counter-tenor
Trio Pascal

MICHAEL JOHNSON is a music critic and writer with a particular interest in piano. He has worked as a reporter and editor in New York, Moscow, Paris and London over his journalism career. He covered European technology for Business Week for five years, and served nine years as chief editor of International Management magazine and was chief editor of the French technology weekly 01 Informatique. He also spent four years as Moscow correspondent of The Associated Press. He is a regular contributor to International Piano magazine, and is the author of five books. Michael Johnson is based in Bordeaux, France. Besides English and French he is also fluent in Russian. In 2024, he co-published with Frances Wilson ‘Lifting the Lid: Interviews with Concert Pianists’

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This week I was delighted to attend a concert to launch British pianist Richard Uttley’s new CD Ghosts and Mirrors. Richard is a passionate advocate of contemporary piano music, and this CD, his third, follows his previous recordings with its focus on contemporary and 20th-century music. In addition to works by Toru Takemitsu and Luciano Berio, the disc includes the first recordings of Marvin Wolfthal’s Lulu Fantasy and Mark Simpson’s Barkham Fantasy which was written especially for Uttley and was premiered at the Royal Festival Hall in 2010.

Richard explains the title of his CD as “the works collected here [are] are reflection on something”, and the “ghosts” appear, in part, in memoriam to departed composers, namely Messiaen (Takemitsu/Rain Tree Sketch II and Murail/Cloches d’Adieu, et un Sourire). There are more metaphoric ghosts and reflections here too: Thomas Ades harks back to the Mazurkas of Chopin and Szymanowski in his Op. 27 Mazurkas, while Marvin Wolfthal’s Lulu Fantasy is a paraphrase on themes from Berg’s opera which charts the rise and horrific fall, ending in death at the hands of Jack the Ripper, of its eponymous heroine. In Mark Simpson’s Barkham Fantasy, the work opens with a fragment of an “alberti bass”, an eighteenth-century musical device in which chords are broken or arpeggiated to create continuous sound.

It can be hard to present a programme entirely comprising contemporary music in concerts (witness the BBC’s anxieties about this in its Proms broadcasts this year – more on this issue here) and some performers seek new ways to present contemporary programmes which challenge and excite the eyes as well as the ears. Thus, Richard Uttley, was joined onstage by Nat Urazmetova, a visual artist, who created the artwork for the CD, and who designed and mixed live visuals as Richard played. These were not a simple “accompaniment” to the music, but rather had been designed to reflect not only the mood and characteristics of the pieces performed (a selection from the CD), but also textures, colours, dynamics and articulation. From trembling, pulsing sea anemones to a dizzying, plane’s eye view of London at night, the frenetic rhythm of a weaving machine to an unsettling tour of a ruined Gothic church, these visuals enhanced and informed the music, without detracting it from it. Perhaps the most powerful was the film which accompanied the Lulu Fantasy, suggesting the horrible fate of the protagonist through shuddering black and white images, hinting at sexual depravity and violence.

It was evident throughout the performance that Richard really enjoys the challenges, both musical and technical, of playing this kind of repertoire. His total immersion in and understanding of this music produced a performance that was entirely convincing, and, more importantly, extremely absorbing.  A pristine sound, clean articulation and broad dynamic range combined to create one of the most exciting concerts of contemporary music I have attended. I was pleased to find even more to delight and intrigue in the CD, which is also elegantly designed with copious and intelligent liner notes by Richard, with contributions from the composer’s themselves.

Recommended.

‘Ghosts and Mirrors’ is available on the ARC label

www.richarduttley.com