Gramophone – September 2019

gramophone.co.uk GRAMOPHONE SEPTEMBER 2019 69

Erika Fox – like
Alexander Goehr,
four years her senior –
came to England with
her family as a small child in the 1930s, to
escape Nazi persecution. She has declared
that ‘my music owes almost nothing to
Western musical tradition, and almost
everything to my childhood memories of
Jewish liturgical chant and fragments of
Hasidic melody’. Nevertheless, the four
compositions on this disc, written between
1980 and 2005, have a much wider
expressive profi le than such purely ethnic
aspects might suggest; and with that
profi le comes impressive technical
resourcefulness. It’s all a long way from
mere idiosyncrasy.
Take Quasi una cadenza, a 13-minute
piece for clarinet, horn and piano, which
manages to transform the expansive
sense of freedom that cadenzas in
concertos often display into a shapely
structure that builds to a powerfully
dramatic conclusion. The material,
conveying an engaging variety of moods,
has the kind of rhapsodic spontaneity that,
in the earlier Paths Where the Mourners
Tread, leads to a certain looseness of

form. But even there – the title is a line

from Philip Larkin – the blend of the

elegiac and the abrasive is compelling,

and very well conveyed by these

performers in a recording that catches

the evolving interactions of the ensemble

with vivid immediacy.

You might expect a composition called

On Visiting Stravinsky’s Grave at San

Michele to intensify the elegiac tone but

it is launched with a positively jaunty

idea – the composer calls it ‘bold and

direct’ – as if to encapsulate that special

Stravinskian energy and confi dence which

Fox has found inspiring. Here too an

unambiguously positive spirit is at work,

and the formal plan of bringing initial

contrasts gradually closer together, so that

difference transforms into connectedness,

is particularly satisfying.

The last two works both have wartime

associations. In Malinconia militaire, from

2003, Fox channels her concerns over

the Iraq war through music inspired by a

poem called ‘Webern Opus 4’ by Amelia

Rosselli, an Italian writer and musician

whose father and uncle were murdered for

their resistance to Mussolini, while Café

Warsaw 1944 references a poem by

Czesπaw Miłosz mourning friends who

did not survive the Second World War.

In both, Fox does justice to these potent

poetic resonancesintexturesthatmove

persuasively betweenhauntinglaments

and vigorous affirmations–andtheuse

of percussion inCaféWarsaw 1944 is

especially telling.Onthisevidence,more

of Erika Fox’s musicondiscwouldbevery

welcome. ArnoldWhittall

Holliger.Kurtág

‘Zwiegespräche’

Holliger Airs. BerceusepourM.Lecture.DieRos’

(Angelus Silesius).SonateKurtágAngelus

Silesius: Die Ros’. EinenAugenblicklang.... Ein

Brief aus der FerneanUrsula....fürHeinz....Der

Glaube (Péter Bornemisza).Hommageà Elliott

Carter. ... (Hommageà Tristan).Innomine–

all’ongherese (Damjanichemlékkö).Kroó

György in memoriam.LorandGaspar:Désert.

Rozsnyai Ilona in memoriam.... einSappho-

Fragment. Schatten.... summaiaa BP.Versetto

(apokrif organum)

Sarah Wegener sopHeinzHolligerob/corang/pf

Marie-Lise Schüpbachob/corang

Ernesto Molinari bcl/contrabasscl

ECM New Series F 4818265 (74’• DDD)

This disc celebrates

the 80th birthday of

Heinz Holliger, and

although it explores

CHAMBER REVIEWS

THISIS

Rediscover Sir Simon Rattle’s

first concert as Music Director

of the LSO

lsolive.co.uk

Available 6 September

Blu-ray + DVD