Rebecca Saunders: Joins forces with musikFabrik for "Stirrings Still"

March 3rd 2008, by Tobias |

Rebecca Saunders and New Music ensemble musikFabrik (German for “Music Factory”) have released a CD containing new works by the English composer. “Rebecca Saunders: Stirrings Still”, published on Wergo, contains five pieces, all but one scored very recently, making the album an up-to-date overview of her current projects. Included on “Stirring Still” are “Blaauw for double-bell trumpet” (2004), “Blue and Gray for two double basses” (2005), “Duo for violin and piano” (1996/rev. 1999), “Vermilion for clarinet Bb, electric guitar and violoncello” (2003), and the title track, “Stirrings Still for five players: alto flute, oboe, clarinet in A, piano and crotales” completed two years ago. As the titles already indicate, colours are again at the heart of Rebecca Saunders’ oeuvre, which seems to set an instrumental machinery into action to bring out particular timbres in full flourish (even the outwardly odd name “Blaauw” is a slightly misspelled version of the Dutch term for “Blue”). Another reference point for these pieces, as before, is Samuel Beckett, as Wergo points out.

“What we call silence is for me comparable to a dense knot of noise, frequencies, and sounds,” says Rebecca Saunders. “From this surface of apparent silence I try to draw out and mould sound and colour." A possible parallel between these concise tracks of between nine and fifteen minutes’ length and the literary efforts of Samuel Beckett, according to Wergo, lies in “the increasing sparseness of a language that gradually shuts out the inessential and ornamental.” The synaesthetical use of colours, meanwhile, is conceptually linked to artists from Goethe to Kandinsky.

“Stirring still” was a full-fledged co-operation between Rebecca Saunders and the musikFabrik, who were in close contact during the entire time of its creational process. Also involved was German broadcaster Deutschlandradio, who co-produced the album.

Homepage: Wergo Records
Homepage: musikFabrik