If it is surprising that a female vocal ensemble specialising in contemporary music did not come about until 1986, there’s little doubt that Belcanto have occupied the position with skill and an adventurous approach to repertoire, of which the present disc offers only a partial overview.
The opening setting of Haim Alexander’s Mein blaues Klavier sets a robust cantilena against spirited interlocking syllables and a resourceful backdrop of untuned percussion. ‘An meine Freunde’ pursues a more quixotic direction, its oddly impersonal dovetailing of speech and song becomes a little undifferentiated over its 10-minute span. ‘Ouverture’ is animated, even restive, while ‘Mein Herz ruht mude’ closes the sequence in mellifluous eloquence. Playing this work separately from the remaining items would seem advisable.
Konrad Boehmer’s miniature is a densely wrought but luminous harmonic study, the composer at home with finespun vocal polyphony. Fabrizio Casti is more rhetorical in feeling, his piece the closest here to the repertoire of Belcanto’s musical forebears – the Schola Cantorum of Stuttgart. Wolfgang Rihm derives much from this tradition in Seraphin–Stimmen, using it to fiercely personal ends: from the stark, Birtwistle-like chanting at the outset, through a succession of static clusters and a lengthy central silence punctuated only by the striking of claves, to an ethereal closing sequence which rises and falls inexorably in intensity.
Sound and presentation are up to ECM’s usual high standards. Given the number and variety of composers to have written for Belcanto, a follow-up disc will hopefully be forthcoming