A Dark Flaring marks the Signum Quartett’s return to ECM’s New Series after debuting for the label with striking performances on Erkki-Sven Tüür’s acclaimed chamber music recording Lost Prayers (2020). Here, the quartet has put together a unique programme dedicated to South African composers, born in the 20th century, whose works for string quartet are united by the way they blend respect for the past with an instinct for the future in a wide-flung idiomatic scope. The grid of references unravelled between the six composers here – their dates of birth span from 1903 to 1983 – is as geographically wide as it is idiomatically deep, with large musical bridges connecting inspirations ranging from South African Xhosa and Zulu traditions through the late Renaissance to 19th century Romanticism as well as 20th century impressionists and minimalists. There’s even a nod to popular culture, as Matthijs van Dijk’s (rage) rage against the borrows inspiration for its title from the rock group Rage Against The Machine.
The complicated historical and in the same breath cultural backdrop that goes hand in hand with musical repertory composed over this specific period, in the South African context, is not only impossible to ignore but moreover serves as catalyst, canvas and disrupter – sometimes all at once – for most of the music presented here. The country after all didn’t become united until 1910, when South Africa was declared a self-governed country under the Commonwealth in the aftermath of the Anglo-Boer Wars. Apartheid ensued following the World Wars – racist segregational policies that lasted until 1990 and continue to be worked through, digested and dealt with today.
Whether writing at home or abroad, all six composers reflect their country’s complex and troubled history through music which is strikingly original. As Shirley Apthorp notes in the CD’s liner note, Mokale Koapeng’s Komeng, which opens the disc, “owes what is perhaps this recording’s most overt debt to the ancestors, drawing for its inspiration on ‘Umyeyezelo’, a celebratory song by Nofinishi Dywili.” Dywili was particularly accomplished in her use of complex polyrhythms, which Koapeng acknowledges by setting triple against duple metre. As Apthorp writes. “’Umyeyezelo’ is a song for the completion of Ulwaluko, the Xhosa initiation ritual which marks the transition from boyhood to manhood. ‘Komeng’ treats Dywili’s melody gently, using rocking rhythmic figures and col legno, a technique of striking the string with the wood of the bow, a direct invocation of the Uhadi.”
The programme continues with Matthijs van Dijk’s aforementioned rage, a piece that reflects the composer’s multi-disciplinary background by its use of a variety of techniques and sounds, densely packed into this explosive one-movement work. Similar in its dynamic scope, yet far more Romantic in its formal fabric, Arnold van Wyk’s Five Elegies For String Quartet (1940-1941) represent some of the earliest repertory here, only surpassed by Priaulx Rainier’s Quartet For Strings, which she completed in 1939. A student of Nadia Boulanger, among others, Rainier, as some of the other composers included here, moved to England for her studies. She lived there for most of her life, creating music that always remained, in one way or another, tied to the earliest music she heard growing up in Zululand, South Africa. As with many of the other works in this programme, the South African roots of the music can be found most prominently in its rhythmic components, bound to ostinatos and repetition.
Great variety in form and texture invigorate the Signum Quartett in its performances here, seemingly inciting a whirlwind of emotions as they travel across these broad musical streams. Gramophone magazine has described the quartet’s sound as “passionate, often brilliant, but also clear and lean” and their sensitive approach to these dynamically contrasting works is further evidence of the quartet’s accomplished craft. They excel with precision also in “iinyembezi”, a composition by Péter Louis van Dijk, which owes its heritage to John Dowland’s “Flow My Tears” on the one hand, and Xhosa tradition on the other. Downland’s theme is extrapolated through a series of variations, while an extended pizzicato section evokes the sound of the Mbira – the African thumb piano. What seems couldn’t be further musically apart, here unites coherently on the brink of tonality.
And like the works of his fellow compatriots, Robert Fokkens’s Glimpses of a half-forgotten future can’t evade a certain dichotomy in its musical inspirations either, with debt owed to Western classical composers John Cage, Morton Feldman and French spectralists, while at the same time drawing inspiration from the Xhosa Uhadi – the South African musical bow whose build and percussive qualities are reminiscent of the Brazilian Berimbau. Fokkens contextualises his string quartet – a stark reflection on the inevitability of our own demise – with the poem that gives this album its name:
Through now's incessant numbness
Flickers a glint,
A startling glimmer,
A dark flaring...
The album was recorded at Sendesaal Bremen in March 2022. The CD includes liner notes by South African journalist and music critic Shirley Apthorp.
