The music of Jean Barraque (1928-73), a self-confessed romantic who sought to emulate the expressive scope of Beethoven through an essentially modernist language, charts a course of fervent ambition and impressive failure. His first acknowledged piece, the Piano Sonata (1952), declares his position unequivocally. It is a fascinating if frustrating work, the attempt to re-create the sonata dynamic in the discontinuous medium of total serialism opening up a gap between conception and realization, which Litwin’s scrupulous but literal reading only underlines. Roger Woodward’s long-deleted recording (HMV, 1/74) rightly emphasizes the silences that overwhelm the aggressive first movement and account for the inward musings of its successor, ironically making the whole structure more coherent in the process.
Apart from the brief but explosive electronic Etude, the only other composition of Barraque’s early maturity is Sequence, a darkly expressive song-cycle whose combination of voice with an ensemble rich in percussion was to be developed on a far more extensive scale in … au dela du hasard (1958). This was the first of his works to draw its text from Hermann Broch’s novel The Death of Virgil, a meditation on the relationship between creativity and destruction, henceforth to dominate his output (and seemingly his life too). In its epic grandeur and emotional intensity, … au dela was to remain Barraque’s definitive statement and, in the context of mid-twentieth-century music, a significant one.
Neither of the subsequent Broch-derived works has this same potency. Chant apres chant suffers from the polarity between its expressive but fragile vocal line and a flamboyant but expressively inert percussion sextet. Le temps restitue, completed in 1968, is another all-embracing concept, but the text’s urging towards a unity of time and knowledge is repeatedly undercut by the music’s fatalistic, even defeatist tone. Surprising then that, in the same year, Barraque realized a purely instrumental and immediately engaging work – the Concerto for clarinet, vibraphone and six instrumental groups. With its jazz-inflected, subtle and animated discourse, this work seems to offer a creative lifeline which the composer was unable to follow.
High points? Certainly the spine-chilling sequence in … au dela (tracks 9 and 10) and the Concerto’s closing five minutes, with its individual blend of humour and eloquence, demonstrate the emotional range of this music. Even so, it has little chance of finding favour if the performances fail to meet its many challenges. Klangforum Wien, together with some excellent soloists, do it full justice (Ensemble 2e2m’s tepid accounts of the last two pieces are easily surpassed), securing a strong recommendation for works that, while in no sense a comfortable listen, are compelling and at times moving. In what would have been Barraque’s 70th year, it is a worthy tribute.'