Su	Mo	Tu	We	Th	Fr	Sa
31	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30	1	2	3	4

Escher String Quartet, Paulina Swierczek, Miranda Cuckson & Jacob Greenberg - Anthony Cheung: All Roads (2022)

Posted By: delpotro

Date: 10 Aug 2022 19:39:36

Escher String Quartet, Paulina Swierczek, Miranda Cuckson & Jacob Greenberg - Anthony Cheung: All Roads (2022)
WEB FLAC (tracks) - 270 Mb | MP3 CBR 320 kbps - 168 Mb | Digital booklet | 01:09:59
Classical | Label: New Focus Recordings

Composer Anthony Cheung releases All Roads, a follow up to FCR215 Cycles and Arrows. Featuring performances by the Escher Quartet, violinist Miranda Cuckson, soprano Paulina Swierczek, and pianists Jacob Greenberg, Gilles Vonsattel, and Cheung himself, All Roads encapsulates Cheung's penchant for drawing on broad sources of inspiration and filtering them through an incisive and discriminating compositional process to produce substantial, structurally airtight works.

There is a rich continuum of possibility when a composer references a pre-existing piece in a new composition. One can present the material literally, as in a set of variations, or one can subsume it entirely, using it as an unseen point of contact for the generation of material for the piece. On All Roads for piano and string quartet, Anthony Cheung leans towards the more obscured end of the spectrum as he uses Billy Strayhorn’s poignant Lotus Blossom as a muse and a structural guide for the piece. The result is an infusion of sorts - the melodic and harmonic components of Strayhorn’s iconic song have seeped into Cheung’s composition, traced obliquely into momentary gestural contours and echoed in strains of distant memory. The pervasive melancholy in Strayhorn’s original work is at the essence of All Roads, as heard in the searching quality of the opening movement and the subsequent “detours.” But Cheung also pushes against its expressive edges, exploring which emotional corners the material will allow him to inhabit, such as the accumulating dialogue of swells in “Forking Paths,” the restless figuration in “Estuary,” and the insistent angularity of the final movement, “Convergence.”

Elective Memory for violin and piano also has a pre-existing piece as its source of inspiration, Beethoven’s Sonata op. 96. With the clever title (a composite of “selective memory” and Goethe’s concept of “elective affinity”), Cheung also alludes to the bond between the composer and iconic Romantic poet that culminated in a series of meetings in 1812, the same year op. 96 was written. He embeds flashes of material from op. 96 into the work, allowing them to evolve in dialogue both between the violin and piano as well as with various elected affinities of his own, notably an earlier violin sonata he wrote at age 18. The result is a work that, despite direct references to op. 96, embodies Goethe’s ruminative character more than the heroic teleology commonly associated with Beethoven’s middle period.

In the two movement violin work Character Studies, dialogue takes place internally within the solo part. The first movement, “Dramatis Personae,” features quick changes in character, imitating a stage actor playing multiple roles, shifting back and forth seamlessly between divergent personalities. The second movement begins linearly, steadily developing a shrouded, lyrical melodic idea before ephemeral arpeggios dance an airy ballet with textural interjections.

The nature of translation and its capacity to generate a palimpsest of meaning lies at the heart of All Thorn, but cousin to your rose, a setting of texts by Vladimir Nabokov, Alexander Pushkin, Edgar Allan Poe, and…Google Translate. Initially, Cheung planned to feed texts through Google Translate and set the resultant text, playing a modern game of telephone shaped by Big Tech. But he stumbled upon a polemical essay on translation by Nabokov, a topic that became a point of fixation for the Russian author. Nabokov’s investigation into the shades of diligence and authenticity in translation, and his subsequent efforts in the medium, provide a rich source of text material for a multifarious vocal part, navigating between speech, sprechstimme, wordless vocalization, and conventional singing. Cheung did not entirely abandon his initial idea of co-opting Google Translate however. In the opening movement some of the text is the product of feeding a Shakespeare couplet into the algorithmic tool, translating it into multiple languages, and then back into English. The result is not unlike Cheung’s progressive transformation of Strayhorn’s Lotus Blossom, as it inherits increasing degrees of distance from the original that Cheung sets with sensitivity and wry humor.

Indeed, translation emerges as a conceptual through line on the album. From the wisps of subconscious remembrance in All Roads to the response to Beethoven’s op. 96 in Elective Memory to the meta examination of reinterpretation itself in All Thorn, Cheung is fascinated with the subtle shifts in phenomena that happen through revisitation and recollection, using music as a metaphor to draw our attention to a process that is constantly happening all around us in big ways and small.

Tracklist:
01. Cheung: All Roads: Introduction. First Detour
02. Cheung: All Roads: I. Forking Paths
03. Cheung: All Roads: Interlude. Second Detour
04. Cheung: All Roads: II. Circuitous Routes (Winding Passacaglias)
05. Cheung: All Roads: Interlude. Third Detour
06. Cheung: All Roads: III. Estuary
07. Cheung: All Roads: Interlude. Fourth Detour
08. Cheung: All Roads: IV. Convergence
09. Cheung: Elective Memory: I. Aubade, for a Golden Age
10. Cheung: Elective Memory: II. Broken Scherzo. Tripping Up, Falling Down
11. Cheung: Elective Memory: III. Nocturne. Half-Remembered
12. Cheung: Character Studies: I. Dramatis Personae
13. Cheung: Character Studies: II. —
14. Cheung: All Thorn, but Cousin to Your Rose: Three Grades of Evil
15. Cheung: All Thorn, but Cousin to Your Rose: Hear the Sledges with the Bells
16. Cheung: All Thorn, but Cousin to Your Rose: What Is Translation?
17. Cheung: All Thorn, but Cousin to Your Rose: How Sad Your Apparition Is to Me

auCDtect

–––––––––––-

DON'T MODIFY THIS FILE

–––––––––––-

PERFORMER: auCDtect Task Manager, ver. 1.6.0 RC1 build 1.6.0.1
Copyright © 2008-2010 y-soft. All rights reserved

ANALYZER: auCDtect: CD records authenticity detector, version 0.8.2
Copyright © 2004 Oleg Berngardt. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2004 Alexander Djourik. All rights reserved.

FILE: 17 - Escher String Quartet, Paulina Swierczek, Miranda Cuckson, Jacob Greenberg - Cheung- All Thorn, but Cousin to Your Rose- How Sad Your Apparition Is to Me.flac
Size: 16695510 Hash: F1880F3D3433F9C77D7061C36B193DA7 Accuracy: -m8
Conclusion: CDDA 100%
Signature: E814F782DCEC5247F3DF77146A7D80617616E789
FILE: 16 - Escher String Quartet, Paulina Swierczek, Miranda Cuckson, Jacob Greenberg - Cheung- All Thorn, but Cousin to Your Rose- What Is Translation.flac
Size: 9220029 Hash: C12345BA15E5EEE8E4DAABB34B8FAC1D Accuracy: -m8
Conclusion: CDDA 87%
Signature: E1C6214984B3423CF2BB1FD568DF86A455CD5B3D
FILE: 15 - Escher String Quartet, Paulina Swierczek, Miranda Cuckson, Jacob Greenberg - Cheung- All Thorn, but Cousin to Your Rose- Hear the Sledges with the Bells.flac
Size: 7347018 Hash: DE7F09419172644A2705AF24E19B647D Accuracy: -m8
Conclusion: CDDA 100%
Signature: B2742892CEF282EBCCE88DDF8A86EC327CB4B444
FILE: 14 - Escher String Quartet, Paulina Swierczek, Miranda Cuckson, Jacob Greenberg - Cheung- All Thorn, but Cousin to Your Rose- Three Grades of Evil.flac
Size: 29941394 Hash: AF6EC812652242248D0B503B1A87D9AF Accuracy: -m8
Conclusion: CDDA 100%
Signature: 4036B41D1F62115D671DE048579E91D2493B3514
FILE: 13 - Escher String Quartet, Paulina Swierczek, Miranda Cuckson, Jacob Greenberg - Cheung- Character Studies- II. —.flac
Size: 17620341 Hash: A4E54CB3DED6DBFCFFF9B35880031120 Accuracy: -m8
Conclusion: CDDA 100%
Signature: EEAB14B4B159B30EA6271D2C1DF3E7B91EBCCDF1
FILE: 12 - Escher String Quartet, Paulina Swierczek, Miranda Cuckson, Jacob Greenberg - Cheung- Character Studies- I. Dramatis Personae.flac
Size: 16194662 Hash: 9C49ED69EB4294ABCA06A320DDCF6380 Accuracy: -m8
Conclusion: CDDA 100%
Signature: BC0B9682818BEC6DF053DC41ED98A7C8E31E63D1
FILE: 11 - Escher String Quartet, Paulina Swierczek, Miranda Cuckson, Jacob Greenberg - Cheung- Elective Memory- III. Nocturne. Half-Remembered.flac
Size: 20471285 Hash: 8B0A31DC863DC9A91631FE17E3FF4F6D Accuracy: -m8
Conclusion: CDDA 100%
Signature: 7F5012AEF515FAC8A4BA45700FDD88BAC04EF040
FILE: 10 - Escher String Quartet, Paulina Swierczek, Miranda Cuckson, Jacob Greenberg - Cheung- Elective Memory- II. Broken Scherzo. Tripping Up, Falling Down.flac
Size: 27301246 Hash: 20C5C220A7BC98FC8269B5B99DFAFEF5 Accuracy: -m8
Conclusion: CDDA 86%
Signature: 1BA4A90A744E3B724DFC94543408019811291EDC
FILE: 09 - Escher String Quartet, Paulina Swierczek, Miranda Cuckson, Jacob Greenberg - Cheung- Elective Memory- I. Aubade, for a Golden Age.flac
Size: 25954587 Hash: 1AA911D5C1393929C0DC1507C9D7A758 Accuracy: -m8
Conclusion: CDDA 100%
Signature: 84820A1F006EC2EA2759D217ABE02502634F3401
FILE: 08 - Escher String Quartet, Paulina Swierczek, Miranda Cuckson, Jacob Greenberg - Cheung- All Roads- IV. Convergence.flac
Size: 34114060 Hash: C4F7DCE3F7F31F3716E739D83CB891B3 Accuracy: -m8
Conclusion: CDDA 100%
Signature: 8FA3D4C133DB65068E183EA7465A48ACCC4243B7
FILE: 07 - Escher String Quartet, Paulina Swierczek, Miranda Cuckson, Jacob Greenberg - Cheung- All Roads- Interlude. Fourth Detour.flac
Size: 6940090 Hash: C1393273F4A2F334D177E751FC12DF69 Accuracy: -m8
Conclusion: CDDA 100%
Signature: 12CCB3AB2630465C974F1AB9A2B6BA47CCE996AF
FILE: 06 - Escher String Quartet, Paulina Swierczek, Miranda Cuckson, Jacob Greenberg - Cheung- All Roads- III. Estuary.flac
Size: 14079388 Hash: 856677D817C84B3C9AB3D9A45994D217 Accuracy: -m8
Conclusion: CDDA 100%
Signature: CC0971B11778F9202FA636073087863FEEB4A04C
FILE: 05 - Escher String Quartet, Paulina Swierczek, Miranda Cuckson, Jacob Greenberg - Cheung- All Roads- Interlude. Third Detour.flac
Size: 2618279 Hash: 23C2524FB1B78B5219B3592F01B665FB Accuracy: -m8
Conclusion: CDDA 100%
Signature: D069F3F8EA2012B5DE014E5994D94F8B3BF144C3
FILE: 04 - Escher String Quartet, Paulina Swierczek, Miranda Cuckson, Jacob Greenberg - Cheung- All Roads- II. Circuitous Routes (Winding Passacaglias).flac
Size: 17988255 Hash: 3499DFEBC53D457C64EE4DF690A139E2 Accuracy: -m8
Conclusion: CDDA 100%
Signature: EF80928C22AF5B2666CFF970BC1E5D63609F8F5A
FILE: 03 - Escher String Quartet, Paulina Swierczek, Miranda Cuckson, Jacob Greenberg - Cheung- All Roads- Interlude. Second Detour.flac
Size: 7958251 Hash: 880EC820BBC5403C412A62AACFF155A1 Accuracy: -m8
Conclusion: CDDA 100%
Signature: BD6B49BA23082D3CC153DB0CD368AEEB7F3F2020
FILE: 02 - Escher String Quartet, Paulina Swierczek, Miranda Cuckson, Jacob Greenberg - Cheung- All Roads- I. Forking Paths.flac
Size: 14830977 Hash: C3358617CD54914CC9A03351403B66C2 Accuracy: -m8
Conclusion: CDDA 100%
Signature: B89E4449E7C01710760A0983154DDF6D5BD0B4D3
FILE: 01 - Escher String Quartet, Paulina Swierczek, Miranda Cuckson, Jacob Greenberg - Cheung- All Roads- Introduction. First Detour.flac
Size: 4975126 Hash: 8C60749A0F47D17FF36C1D569D3787AC Accuracy: -m8
Conclusion: CDDA 99%
Signature: D095A49E9E31D351B9675F8DE82C12B2F92E3599

Anthony Cheung Escher String Quartet Paulina Swierczek Miranda Cuckson Jacob Greenberg FLAC MP3 Lossless 2022 Classical Classical Music Contemporary Classical