CD: Chamber of Horrors
Composer Elena Kats-Chernin brings what always sounds like a European improvising-Romance sensibility to her work, but at the same time, she’s gone somewhere else with it. Perhaps because she lives at Coogee?
She uses unlikely mixes such as electronics and accordions in otherwise conventional orchestral compositions and then will turn to fully orchestrated and wondrous ballet music (for Meryl Tankard’s Wild Swans/Australian Ballet, for instance).
This time it’s chamber music, commissioned by the innovative Tall Poppies label. So Kats-Chernin has written a gorgeous suite for four basses (Keers Boersma, Damien Eckersley, Alex Henery and Kirsty McCahon); the title piece for Alice Giles’s harp and works for cello, viola and piano, notably cellist David Pereira on Wild Rice; and Velvet Revolution: a dramatic-cinematic piece featuring horn player Hector McDonald.
Chamber of Horrors (TP181) - Elena Kats-Chernin on Tall Poppies Records; in good music stores or www.tallpoppies.net
