Artist/s: Luke Altmann (composition), Konstantin Shamray (piano)
Category: Classical, New Music
Label: De la Catessen Records DLC002
Reviewed by Roger Cui
“An intimate and emotional encounter with stillness, bleakness and sentimental contemplation. From the struggles of social isolation (COVID-19), Altmann released this set of selected piano solo pieces, which is illustrated by Shamray with intense passion and introspection.”
In the inner-city of Adelaide existed an art studio called De la Catessen. In 2005, Luke Altmann transformed De la Catessen into an experimental music venue and presented over 200 new music events in four years, featuring performances by composers and musicians from around the world. In March 2021 he relaunched De la Catessen as a record label, pressing LPs of music by artists who performed there. Altmann’s Idle Hands album was recorded there in 2020.
Luke Altmann
Luke Altmann hails from Port Adelaide, and is an Australian composer with high reputation, which rests on two decades of regular appearances on Adelaide’s chamber music concert programs. He is a member of the new music organisation The Film since 2005. His concert and film music compositions have been nominated for APRA and AACTA. His feature film credits include the cinematic documentary the Leunig Fragments and the psychological drama Fell. His music has been performed, recorded and broadcast by many renowned artists such as the Benaud Trio, Greta Bradman, Kristian Chong, Zephyr Quartet and Alex Tsiboulski. In this recording, the much adored and celebrated Siberian born Russian pianist Konstantin Shamray plays a selection of twelve emotionally intimate and musically intriguing piano solo works.
Konstantin Shamray
The album showcases Altmann’s compositional styles ranging from contemporary, to minimalistic, and to film music. Its track listing includes twelve pieces divided into four groups. The first piece stands alone and is named a sort of introduction. Group two consists of five pieces named idyll, crosscurrents, the right environment, sprite mockery and berceuse. The third group contains three little pieces in minimalist style of composition, and are named as I, II, and III. The album ends with three selected pieces which came from the cinematic documentary Leunig Fragments. They are called: it comes back, distilled and light-hearted, and the age of Joan.
A sort of introduction sets the bleak and contemplative mood of the album. One line of melody that circles around the lower register of the piano is countered by another line, which illuminates high above in the descant section of the piano. At times they resonate with each other. Other times they tussle with one another as if in a tug-of-war.
The idyll shone a beam of light that gave me warmth after the darkness of the introduction. The happiness, peacefulness and picturesque sounds of this piece led me towards a feeling of eternity.
Conflicting sentiments are present in the next piece, crosscurrents. Through the continuous moving lines of music in the descant and middle section of the piano, the under-current of the ocean projects no huge collisions above. Yet gentle waves coming from different directions meeting in the middle disband as quickly as they gather.
The right environment is the longest piece in Idle Hands. The contemplativeness of this album is fully explored in this piece. It begins with congruous harmonies in the middle and lower register of the piano. An isolated line of high notes develops halfway through the piece and often conflicts with the harmony below. This ‘problem’ is obviously intentional and finds no resolution until the end.
Sprite mockery is the next piece, and a short one at that. It is beautifully composed and played. For me, the mockery is depicted by a roll of ornaments in the high register of the piano, which contrasts to the well-behaved music below and projects a funny and playful atmosphere.
The Idle hands finishes with a berceuse, which translates to “lullaby”. The dissonance in Altmann’s composition suggests a lullaby not for the faint-hearted. The harmonious accompaniment complements an estranged melody, which creates tension amidst a lullaby environment. This effect projects a discomfort that deprives the listener of absolute relaxation.
The next group contains Altmann’s more contemporary writing in piano music. The pieces are simply named as I, II and III. I is an extremely brief piece clocking just under one minute. Rather minimalistic in the style of writing, it is perhaps conceived by Altmann as a prelude to the following pieces.
II continues the sparse style of minimalistic writing from I. The dissonance and tritones are even more apparent in II, as the music develops.
III is a much more uplifting march-like miniature piece: a piece in ternary form with a soulful slow second subject, which eventually returns back to a recapitulation of the first subject. An abrupt ending in the bass finishes this minimalistic group of three pieces.
The last section of the album contains three selected pieces from Altmann’s film music writing in the Leunig fragments. These display Altmann’s talent at writing film scores for the piano. The Leunig fragments was a cinematic documentary by Kasimir Burgess on the life of the Australian veteran cartoonist Michael Leunig. I must confess that at the time of writing this review, I have not yet seen the documentary. Thus, it is difficult for me to judge the three selected piano pieces within the context of the cinematography of the documentary. But I would very much like to commend Shamray’s wonderful piano playing. In distilled and light hearted, the crystal clear repetition of notes was dynamically well controlled. This shows Shamray’s extreme precision and sensibility in finger control and touch.
This CD album displays a wide spectrum of Luke Altmann’s achievement in composition for the piano, and an extremely high level of pianism and insightful musicianship from Konstantin Shamray. It is a wonderful artistic expressive output at this physically and psychologically difficult time.