Compact disc, 2018, Innova #994, available from Innova Recordings, 75 West 5th Street, #522, St. Paul, Minnesota, 55102, www.innova.mu/.

Reviewed by Ross Feller
Gambier, Ohio, USA

Esther Lamneck is one of only a handful of performers whose specialty involves performing on the tárogáto, a single reed woodwind instrument similar to a clarinet, originally used for folk music in Hungary and Romania. In addition to indigenous folk music appropriate to the tárogáto, Lamneck is intimately involved with advanced technologies and multimedia work, involving interactive technology research with the Eyesweb program, which allows for gestural control of live sound and video processing. Over the years she has established close working relationships with a variety of electroacoustic and computer music composers such as Cort Lippe and Mara Helmuth, and is also a longtime collaborator with experimental choreographer Douglas Dunn.

Lamneck’s work with the tárogáto has been reviewed before in the Computer Music Journal (Radford, Vol. 29, No. 4, Winter 2005). Her recently released album on Innova Recordings (#994) entitled Tárogáto Constructions includes compositions by six composers. Each composition involves significant, improvisational materials attributed to Lamneck that are chockfull of folk music references, extended techniques, and virtuosic, gestural and textural materials. As such, Lamneck’s role is more of a collaborator than a mere performer. It is not always clear from the liner notes what the exact nature of the collaborations entailed. Lamneck indicates that “all of the tárogáto music has been originally generated by me” and that “each composer has designed a musical world which reacts to what I play by triggering electronic sounds which then influence the direction of my improvisational composition.” So, the relationship was apparently a two-way, recursive street, between the soloist and each electroacoustic composer.

Because of its key structure the tárogáto is capable of producing numerous glissandi, as well as high frequency harmonics. Both can be heard throughout the album. The first track, Prelude, by Cort Lippe, sets the tone for the entire project. According to Lippe, “Esther was able to interact with the computer, not simply triggering, but continuously shaping the computer output, while I performed on the computer, musically reacting to Esther’s playing and the computer responses to her playing.” The sounds come directly from the tárogáto, stored sound material, digital synthesis algorithms, and standard processing techniques such as harmonization, delay, frequency shifting, phasing, and reverberation.

We hear the close miking of the tárogáto offset with spatialized reverb trails that sound as if they are occurring at a distance to the tárogáto. The tárogáto seems to cry out and bicker with itself. About halfway through the track Lamneck plays a series of shrill, high-pitched tones that are paired with computer-generated duplicates, resulting in an intense display of difference tones that pin you to your seat. Overall the piece is recorded at very hot levels, which underlines the bold and raw senses of the music. Cavernous sounds collide almost out of control. The formal structure includes many fragmented materials that don’t develop or progress in traditional ways. Like a verbose friend that takes over a party and never settles down, the piece never settles down or travels anywhere; it explores a kind of anguished, existential present tense. The ending seems to occur without any obvious musical motivation and hence, sounds both premature and surprising.

Lippe’s Duo, takes over where Prelude ended. We hear a similar approach to reverb and delay but the pitch materials are seemingly appropriated from the folk world, embellished with extended techniques. We also hear bubbling modulation sounds in the electronic part, emphasizing the liquid fluidity of the tárogáto part. Unlike the first track, this movement comes to a logical close. Overall, this track sounded more enticing than the previous track because of an inventive approach to the concept of the mélange.

Mara Helmuth’s piece Irresistible Flux was developed with Lamneck over several years and uses granular synthesis software, and Max patches with RTcmix scripts to produce a variety of real time transformations of the sound. Helmuth is perhaps best known for her contributions to the RTcmix language. Irresistible Flux is a hauntingly beautiful sound collage that opens with a sequence of plaintive sounding gestures, matched with minor mode pitch materials. These are processed using very wet trails of reverb with long delay times. At times the reverberant and delayed sounds threaten to supplant the live instrumentalist’s part. About a third of the way through the piece we hear a dominant-tonic melodic cadence that serves to complete the first section of the piece. Flanged sounds then occur, imparting an artificial quality to the piece until the live part returns shortly thereafter. We hear a plethora of trills and tremolos, some punctuated with controlled squeals in the highest register of the tárogáto, while others are captured by the computer and amplitude modulated or granulated to produce intriguing fluttering sounds. With the emphasis on unstable elements such as rapidly changing trills and tremolos I had the sense that it would have been even more powerful if Lamneck had utilized circular breathing to keep the flow and momentum constant. In the final minute, the materials die out as Lamneck plays a slow series of sustained tones that would also have sounded captivating elsewhere in the piece.

According to the liner notes, Con forze che si svolgono sferiche by Paola Lopreiato employs techniques in which “the sounds are processed and altered using unexpected effects, broken, complicated by particular resonance (and) forced breaks.” The piece opens with sustained, frequency-modulated tones in the background. Juxtaposed over this Lamneck enters with a slowly moving series of melodies that are periodically destabilized via sample and hold-like processing. The sounds overlap and patiently evolve over the course of the piece. Occasionally they are interrupted by wave-like or rain-like sounds in the electronic part. Delay is used to poignantly create a multi-layered texture. Both Lamneck and Lopreiato allow for things to happen at a slower pace than in the previous works. This allows the listener some reflection time, while listening to, and engaging with, the moment-to-moment changes. The sustained texture makes the faster materials sound more significant, in relief. Toward the end of the piece we hear percussive, snapping sounds sounding as if the recording equipment had been intentionally tapped. The piece ends with what sounds like a single tap on the inside of a piano with the sustain pedal held down. Interestingly, this seems to present the preceding materials in a way that doesn’t necessarily resolve the tension wrought.

For Sergio Kafejian’s piece Construçäo the composer built an interactive system that was modeled after Lamneck’s performance on the tárogáto. This piece begins with a sparse, fragmented texture utilizing the tárogáto processed with moderate amounts of reverb. The fragments were captured and spatially varied, at times sounding like the Doppler effect, mixed with soft FM synthesis sustains. One can imagine these materials being created with a UPIC (Unité Polyagogique Informatique CEMAMu) type device in which the composer simply draws lines that are iconically related to the sounds they generate. Lamneck’s improvisational playing is distinctly reminiscent of certain horn players from Chicago’s AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians). Toward the end of the piece the layers of material continuously build until being abruptly cut-off.

Jorge Sosa’s Enchantment begins in true concerto fashion with the synthetic orchestra setting the stage for the soloist’s entrance. The slow pace and lack of a sense of pulse conjures up a timeless quality. The heavy use of reverb and delay threatens to take over the piece, but is countered by the live part, and recordings of a woman singing passionately. The recorded vocals appear, ghostlike, as an echo of the tárogáto part, matching the tárogáto’s speech resemblance characteristics. Toward the middle of the piece the tárogáto part becomes more active, supported in part by fragments of the vocal recordings. Then the texture thickens, which offers a subtle contrast to the opening part. The tárogáto utters a long crying sound, followed by more vocal sustains in its wake. This was a poignant moment in the piece, producing a strong sense of cause and effect that is, more often than not, obfuscated, in the other pieces on this album. Following this we hear an amalgam of soloist versus ensemble materials, signifying the notion of a cadenza. Overall, this track was one of the most convincing, since it allowed for things to happen at a relaxed pace, rather than force the issue with bluster.

The final piece from this collection, Alfonso Belfiore’s Quanti di luce e suono, offers a focused approach to extended techniques along with the ubiquitous heavy dosage of reverb. At 12 minutes in length it is the longest piece on the album. The electronic part features an effective use of tintinnabulation underneath the live tárogáto part. Periodically the piece sounds like it ends, only to start back up again. This approach plays with the listener’s sense of form and expectation. After the second time this happens we hear a long sustained tone played by the tárogáto that intriguingly evolves into an unstable split tone, which is then further embellished with mordant-like materials. The tárogáto part sounds more introspective than in the other tracks, as if it is having a conversation with itself. The electronic part stays mostly in the background, using bell-like sounds to underscore the tárogáto’s resonance. This track, like the penultimate track, was one of the highlights of this album because of how it allowed materials to develop, as Lemneck explored an inward, compact world of sound that was wholly convincing.

All the works on this album use texture as a primary compositional strategy. The large-scale forms are mostly static, filled with materials such as rapidly changing trills and tremolos that refuse to ‘progress’ or develop. Hence, we are in the presence of certain standard-bearers from current free improvisational and live-interactive practices blended together. The musical gestures heard on this album are clearly derived from the world of free improvisation but composed as such, rather than occurring as some kind of default value. This is perhaps what Lamneck meant when she referred to the notion of “improvisational composition” in the liner notes. Whichever word goes first, improvisation or composition, the works on this album were developed over lengthy periods in which rehearsals and performances took place, allowing for the honing of each piece’s basic concept. This begs the question of whether the works can be considered as finished entities, or as works in progress. If you’re largely unfamiliar with free improvisational or live-interactive practices, this album will be revelatory for you.