Composer: Caroline Shaw
Performer: Attacca Quartet
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Nonesuch
Release: 2022
Size: 1.04 GB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
Three Essays
01. First Essay (Nimrod)
02. Second Essay (Echo)
03. Third Essay (Ruby)
04. And So
05. Blueprint
06. Other Song
The Evergreen
07. I. Moss
08. II. Stem
09. III. Water
10. IV. Root
11. Cant voi l’aube
In 2019, Caroline Shaw and Attacca Quartet released their collaborative debut album, Orange, to great acclaim. It received unanimous press praise and climbed to the top of the classical charts, culminating in a Best Chamber Music Recording award at the 2020 Grammy Awards. Three years later, the leading composer of contemporary American music and the iconoclastic quartet are reunited to present the deeply moving Evergreen (Nonesuch Records).
“The Evergreen,” the centerpiece of the recording to which it gives its name, was inspired by Shaw’s walk in the woods on Galiano Island (Canada’s West Coast). The four-movement work, described by the composer as an offering to a tree, reflects the cycle of nature in perpetual rebirth: the instrumentalists alternate ponticello playing and strong nuances that provoke magnificent contrasts of dissonance. A complete and protean artist, Shaw also lends her voice to two sparkling melodies of purity, “And So” and “Other Song,” the latter already heard in a version for percussion on her previous album, Let’s the Soil Play Its Simple Part, which we awarded a Qobuzissime. For Caroline Shaw, inspiration can come from elements as diverse as food, visual arts or strange shapes found everywhere in nature. For “Three Essays,” it was a matter of retranscribing the prosody and linguistic rhythm of her favorite author, Marilynne Robinson: sumptuous glissandos respond to ultra-syncopated sequences, played staccato, before giving way to the slowness of the second movement, and then returning to a more sustained minimalist tempo in the third part. The triptych is a marvel of balance in its compositional diversity, with Attacca Quartet interpreting the score with a rare sensitivity. The album closes with a reinterpretation of a 12th-century poem attributed to the trouvère Gace Brulé, in an exquisite contemporary rendition that Shaw magnifies with her timelessly pure voice.
This second union between the composer and the quartet is a jewel of perfection that reaches an unprecedented level of refinement. There is no doubt that Evergreen will long remain a reference in contemporary chamber music. We can only hope that Shaw and Attacca Quartet will continue to work together as long as possible.