Jazz Akhunov: Jazz; Messiaen: Quatuor pour la fin du temps – Louange à l’Éternité de Jesus; Poulenc: Violin Sonata Julia Igonina (violin), Maxim Emelyanychev (piano) Aparté AP 329 63:11 mins
This is not jazz. The album’s title comes from Sergey Akhunov’s cycle Jazz, commissioned by violinist Julia Igonina and pianist Maxim Emelyanychev. Akhunov’s prompt was Henri Matisse’s book of the same name, featuring cut-out paper collages. Akhunov thought it would be interesting to likewise ‘compose music that has nothing to do with jazz, and to call it “Jazz”’. Rather than depicting the pictures themselves, the 15 pieces take Matisse’s titles as starting points, any kinship coming from an ability to create compelling miniatures from deceptively simple means. There is a general mood of mildly melancholic reflection, notably in the stillness of the framing ‘Lagoon’ triptych, but also pieces such as ‘Pierrot’s Funeral’ with its sublimely beautiful conjunction of slow-moving violin over gently meandering piano. Igonina combines a mellow luminescence with a sense of yearning, while finding grit for such interjections as the quirky insistence of ‘The Horse, the Rider and the Clown’ or the nimble flitting of ‘Flight of Icarus’.
She is equally impressive in Poulenc’s Sonata. The outer movements have spirited vigour without harshness, while the limpid textures of her gut strings mingling with the seasoned colours of Emelyanychev’s 1908 Blüthner piano perfectly capture the understated aching heart of the central ‘Intermezzo’. Emelyanychev is typically superb throughout, seeming at times to strum the strings directly, and a finely-judged performance of the ‘Louange’ from Messiaen’s Quartet provides a suitably mesmerising end.
Christopher Dingle