{"id":17126,"date":"2014-01-21T08:46:51","date_gmt":"2014-01-21T13:46:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/?p=17126"},"modified":"2014-01-21T08:56:03","modified_gmt":"2014-01-21T13:56:03","slug":"album-review-the-mp3-shuffle-and-serendipity-align-nick-storring-and-george-frideric-handel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2014\/01\/21\/album-review-the-mp3-shuffle-and-serendipity-align-nick-storring-and-george-frideric-handel\/","title":{"rendered":"Album review: The MP3 shuffle and serendipity align Nick Storring and George Frideric Handel"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Toronto<\/a>
Toronto composer-performer Nick Storring.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the analogue era, there is no way that Toronto performer-composer Nick Storring would have found himself alongside George Frideric Handel on my audio system. But that’s before iTunes and its ilk came along and started mixing things up.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, I was on the fifth or sixth listen of Bespoken plays Nick Storring & Daniel Brandes<\/em>, released a couple of months ago by Halifax label Divorce records, when my careless setup caused iTunes to insert the Allemande from a Handel keyboard suite into the mix.<\/p>\n

I’d been trying to decide how much of the Bespoken album I truly liked. The playlist mishap made me realise that it’s best appreciated in doses — the same as Richard Egarr’s eloquent and adept harpsichord interpretations of Handel, released last week.<\/p>\n

\"Bespoken<\/a>The Bespoken album is a whole lot of noodling, divided into two long pieces: Storring’s Aigre Douce<\/em> (Sour Sweet), which comes in four movements, and Brandes’s Intimations of Melody<\/em>. (Bespoken is the name of the ad hoc band the two artists created to perform this music.)<\/p>\n

Both pieces are extended noodlings that pick up fragmentary note patterns, fondle them creatively for a few minutes, then cast them aside in a search for fresh material to introduce into the loosely woven strands of sound.<\/p>\n

My favourite of these sonic meditations is the very first: the opening movement of Aigre Douce<\/em>. It opens with plucked string sounds (an autoharp, perhaps?), cello, piano, melodica, with its breathy, raw-silk attack, and other sounds I can’t identify.<\/p>\n

The music doesn’t go anywhere; it simply is. But this state of suspended animation is brilliant in how it manages to approximate a sense of motion, as well. And, after about 16 minutes, it knows exactly when to say goodbye. It’s aural wallpaper, but it is also something more, something quietly enchanting, like watching flames dancing in a fireplace, or waves gently lapping at pebbles on a lakeshore.<\/p>\n

The rest of the album failed to endear itself, despite my best efforts to accept its languid meanderings into my personal space.<\/p>\n

Then the surprise: the plucked strings in the first movement of Aigre Douce<\/em> are, as it turns out, a natural match for the casual pace of a baroque Allemande being played on the plucked strings of a harpsichord — especially by a master musical rhetorician like Egarr.<\/p>\n

\"handel\"<\/a>Egarr knows there is no such thing as strict tempo in this music. Rather, he gives it the gentle push-pull of fine dialogue.<\/p>\n

I love everything that historically informed performance practices have done for pre-19th century music, and I enjoy the harpsichord, but I can only take its insistent tinkling for a few minutes at a time when it’s used as a solo instrument rather than as an invaluable partner in ensemble performance.<\/p>\n

Then along come people like Egarr, who find a tempi and phrasing that transform that tinkly insistence into seductive insinuation.<\/p>\n

I ultimately prefer hearing this keyboard music sensitively played on a modern grand piano, but for anyone who wants to hear it at its most historically ingratiating, Egarr’s 8 ‘Great’ Suites for Keyboard<\/em> by Handel — released by Harmonia Mundi — is a huge treat.<\/p>\n

And I have iTunes to thank for smashing Storring and Handel together in such an unlikely and enchanting way.<\/p>\n

It really is a brave new world.<\/p>\n

+++<\/p>\n

For more on the Bespoken album, click here<\/a>. (Last fall’s release included a small run of cassette tapes, for anyone too young to have ever tried to scroll a tangled mess of poop-brown plastic strand back around its rickety plastic spool.)<\/p>\n

For all the details on Egarr’s latest, you can visit Harmonia Mundi’s unbelievably annoying website here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

John Terauds<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the analogue era, there is no way that Toronto performer-composer Nick Storring would have found himself alongside George Frideric Handel on my audio system. But that’s before iTunes and its ilk came along and started mixing things up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17130,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[117,75,36,81,46,51,52,63],"tags":[6480,206,4388,4390,4387,1514,1522,4389,6471,2831],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2014\/01\/storring.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-4se","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17126"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17126"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17137,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17126\/revisions\/17137"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17126"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=17126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}