)
Clara Iannotta explains that she composes obsessively, delving to the point of absurdity into a small detail that catches her eye, usually an imperfection, which she insists on expressing as fully as possible. She claims that her writing allows her to plumb her innermost self, discovering unknown places she's not always ready to reveal. Her works teem with a breathtaking richness of sound, achieved through extensive instrumental interplay and the use of numerous peripheral objects, affirming that her music is to be seen as well as heard. Although the listener is deprived of the spectacle of the musicians in action, this magnificent monographic CD remains a fascinating listening experience.
MOULT (2018-2019) for chamber orchestra, the work that gives its name to the disc, performed by the WDR Sinfonieorchestrer under the baton of Michael Wenderberg, is a long continuum of sound that evokes the process of molting, beginning with sighs, whispers, caresses, grinds, pinches, tinkles, rubs, scrapes and scratches. After a moment's focus on the ostinato of a high-pitched piano note, several explosions testify to both the violence of the transformation and the fragility that follows. Several other phases follow, punctuated by sudden shocks, without the sound ever dying out, sustained by chiselled, organic and virtuoso writing.
paw-marks in wet cement (ii) (2015-2018), for piano, two percussion instruments and amplified orchestra, is performed by Wilhem Latchoumia and L'Instant Donné conducted by Aurélien Azan-Zielinski. Inspired by the work of Irish poet Dorothy Molloy, the composition ("Des pas dans le ciment frais") is like an invention of music, from the impulse of an original movement to the continuous spinning of materials. In a second phase, the piano insinuates rhythmic punctuations that are amplified in resonance by the granular orchestral textures, in a concertante dialogue.
Clara Iannotta evokes the image of a dust-filled room for Troglodyte Angels Clanck By (2015), in which the eye, at first lost, gradually becomes accustomed to distinguishing materials and luminosities. Indeed, this piece for amplified ensemble, whose title is also inspired by Dorothy Molloy, played by the Klangforum Wien conducted by Enno Poppe, presents several highly diversified phases: a glittering rain of percussive sounds, mineral resonances followed by a chaotic swarming crossed by screams. It is as if we are entering the heart of the stone, capturing its soothing inner resonance.
Is it really necessary to know that the composer starts from the "Courante" and "Double" of Johann Sebastian Bach's Partita no. 1 for solo violin to unfold her writing for string orchestra in dead wasps in the jam-jar (ii) (2016)? Performed by the Münchener Kammerorchester under the direction of Clemens Schuldt, this murmuring work once again conjures up the idea of a deep-sea dive, in the speleology of a sigh explored in all its phases, including the most violent, and in the shimmer of a fabulous underwater world. Ending with the creaking, dull rumbling and high-pitched squeaking of a rusty mechanism, the music struggles to fade away, and the emotion never leaves us.
Clara Iannotta's sonic jungle imposes itself on the listener as a listening-universe, an all-encompassing experience where temporality, space and materials open up an introspective journey that's hard to resist.
Guillaume Kosmicki
