Here is an album which will become your essential “go to” drive-time music, especially for long travel at night, or when you simply need especially beautiful music. The replay button will need to be close by.
Established now as one of Australia’s longest standing contemporary composers, Linda Kouvaras has over 60 recordings and publications of her piano compositions and has become a “foremost feminist musicologist”. Toccata Classics (London) has released the first of a multi-album project that includes Kouvaras’ complete solo piano works and chamber music from 1990 – 2024. Kouvaras’ compositions express her quintessential philosophy and her sensitivity to the female spirit. This first album creates a truly Australian atmosphere, where her music and poetry are expressive and intelligently structured works performed by her internationally recognised colleagues: Coady Green, piano, Justin Kenealy, saxophone, and Linda Barcan, mezzo-soprano.
Three St Kilda Sketches (1994/97) for solo piano brings a magical iridescence of sound with gentle starry night phrases, thoughtful resonance and echoes setting a romantic and tranquil scene. No 1 Andante is a most captivating night-piece with clarity and freshness in the calm night air. No 2 Dark, Manic, Turbulent conjures the spontaneity of sweeping ocean waves against higher chords, restless and searching, energetic and natural. No 3 Animato is a most virtuosic piano work, at times a rhapsodic and shimmering piece expressing the changing moods and dynamism of those inner city places with an edgy and exciting nightlife.
Commissioned by Coady Green for Duo Eclettico (Green and multi-award winning saxophonist Justin Kenealy), Night Pieces: Reflections after COVID-19 (2020) for soprano sax and piano are five pieces that are exemplary in tonal production, showing the Duo’s excellent musical rapport, in engaging and soulful contemporary Australian composition. The first, Shelter In Place, highlights Kenealy’s superb pitch and evocative tone in beautiful penetrating melodic illustrations. In Isolation, the solo sax opening theme is haunting and sensual, gently expanding its search for cadence and destination. The piano first enters in “isolation” with light chordal accompaniment and lyrical simplicity, offering a steady rhythmic partnership, human togetherness and musical companionship. You will want to press that replay button again for this magical piece.
Reach Out is a most appealing contemporary ballad style, engaging, evocative and tender, slightly in the style of a “torch song” for saxophone. Elegy offers a lilting and sensitive piano accompaniment for the sweet, sad chromaticism of soprano sax in another beautiful and soulful recording. Kouvaras has given the fifth Night Piece, Hope, positive assertive opening chords, with both instruments rising intermittently and repeatedly, exploring new horizons until grandiose piano chords and double octaves lead the Duo to a surprising, gently satisfying closing sigh.
In Art & Life: Song Cycle for mezzo-soprano (1999) mezzo-soprano Linda Barcan gives a very powerful and affective voice to the situations and deep feelings surrounding the hopes and predicaments in women’s lives. Six art songs offer fine poetry and emotive, honest text, passionately voiced by Barcan’s authoritative and passionate communication and clear articulation, with Green’s most sympathetic piano accompaniment and partnership. Texts by Diane Fahey are moulded sensitively in the music of No 1. Sleeping Girl – “an absent light deepens the shadow on silken neck and brow…” and No 2. Lullaby – “may your journey through dreams be of a young hero … not yet suspecting the dragons behind rocks”. Kouvaras’ music is most colourfully strong and stirring for Bronwyn Bartal’s texts for No 3. Woman’s Predicament – “woman crying but unable to speak…” where ominous repeated piano patterns support rising pitches in intense short vocal lines with darker, suggestive crescendos. Bartal’s strong text for No. 4 Party Lines and Deaf Ears was given more strident, vibrancy and almost angry piano accompaniment at times, with emotive half-spoken words of struggle and defence – “now listen closely and read these lips”. Women’s struggle and pain could be felt in the music. Kouvaras wrote the texts for the last songs. No. 5 Art and Life, is an intimate and personal language with wide vocal lines sweeping to intense peaks. Sadness, inner conflict and desolation is felt as “the woman staring at another wall…sees the art which is called on to give solace again”. The cycle closes with light, bubbling piano and colorful key changes for No 6 Distant Lullaby, where the words to a child: “you needn’t be afraid … one day you will play in the rain”, brings a classical freshness and simplicity of melodic line.
Completing this very substantial 15-track collection, Shoalhaven Nightpainters for solo piano draws upon repeated sequences of chords and rising scales, capturing the composer’s feeling for the broad Australian landscape, its vastness and infinite starry skies. A central contrasting section is coloured with the memories of the artists who left the cities as artists-in-residence at Bundanon, NSW, where Kouvaras also drew inspiration for her composing.
With the second album (of this 8-part series) to be released soon, this is a significantly rich and rewarding gift from a prolific Australian contemporary composer.
Image supplied.
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Julie McErlain reviewed ”Linda Kouvaras: Instrumental Music, Chamber Works and Songs, Vol. 1 “, issued by Toccata Classics, 2024.
