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Holt: Meandres
Product Notes
A mesmerising piano cycle by the master
of Dutch minimalism.
'I write music like this not because I'm
isolated,' Simeon Ten Holt once said. 'I'm
isolated because I write music like this.'
And yet, since his death in 2012,
performances and recordings of his music
have multiplied like one of his motivic
cells, gathering energy and momentum to
spread the reputation of a composer who
took the rhythmic precepts of American
minimalists such as Reich and Glass, and
coloured them with a European-Romantic
glow of harmony.
Composed in 1995-97 for four pianos,
Meandres is another monumental yet
approachable piano cycle in the mould of
his celebrated Canto Ostinato, more
complex and more chromatic than the
earlier cycle but sharing with it a hypnotic
clarity and an improvisatory freedom which
leaves a good deal of liberty to the
performers. At first, there is no melody, in
the usual sense of the word. However, over
time, a pattern emerges like a puzzle taking
shape before the listener.
The title refers to the meandering course of
rivers, which takes them to mountain slopes
as well as lowlands. 'Because it is like a
work in progress which never reaches
closure,' remarks the composer, 'the
meandering structure of the piece is quite
demanding on the performers. It is the
condensation of an inquiry into the very
limits of time and space.'
This recording of Meandres was made in 1999
by a team of Dutch pianists who had all worked
with Ten Holt on his music, and accordingly it
vibrates with disciplined authenticity. Sharp
accents continually break and articulate the line
and the restatement of the germinal motif, but
it always loops back to a cadence which Robert
Schumann would have recognised. Combining
Baroque rigour with early-Romantic harmony
and late-20th-century form, Meandres is both
post-modern and timeless as an extension of
piano literature.
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