VAN DER AA Up-Close

Multimedia concerto Up-Close off tour and now on DVD

Record and Artist Details

Composer or Director: Michel van der Aa

Genre:

Opera

Label: Disquiet Media

Media Format: CD or Download

Media Runtime: 31

Mastering:

Stereo
DDD

Catalogue Number: DQM04

Tracks:

Composition Artist Credit
Up-Close Michel van der Aa, Composer
Amsterdam Sinfonietta
Candida Thompson, Violin
Michel van der Aa, Composer
Sol Gabetta, Cello
Vakil Eelman, Zeus
Michel van der Aa’s enterprising synthesis of sound and vision continues with a work which transcends its hybrid nature in audacious fashion. Performed around western Europe (including London’s Barbican Hall), Up-Close (2010) emphasises equally his abilities as film-maker, engineer and composer. It might ostensibly be thought a cello concerto: the combative first movement prefaced by a solo introduction and the energetic finale followed by an evocative postlude, with the fugitive slow movement framed by interludes where Van der Aa’s trademark laptop electronics are to the fore. Yet this half-hour piece is inextricably linked to a film which enters into the interior psyche of the woman on screen, with objects common to both constituting the link between two parallel worlds. It is the way these worlds constantly alternate on the way to their climactic superimposition which turns an outwardly abstruse conception into an engrossing and unsettling experience.

In the securing of which cellist Sol Gabetta has the crucial role – moving as she does with enviable dexterity between platform and film-screen, though without any impairing of either her commitment or musicianship in what is a fluent and dynamic account of an imaginative score. Nor should the contribution of the Amsterdam Sinfonietta be underestimated, its playing as secure as might be expected from an ensemble which has several excellent releases (on Channel Classics) to its name. Both recording and presentation are fully on a par with earlier issues on Van der Aa’s own Disquiet label, of which Up-Close is undoubtedly the most impressive yet.

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