Michael Jarrell, Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff | reviews, news & interviews
Michael Jarrell, Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff
Michael Jarrell, Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff
Swiss spectralist composer strong on sonority but not structure
Wednesday, 13 October 2010
Michael Jarrell: 'As thrilling and instantaneous as a tidal wave or an avalanche'© C. Daguet / Editions Henry Lemoine
Music, Wagner famously pronounced, is the art of transition. For the Swiss composer Michael Jarrell, by contrast, music is “the art of punctuation”. On the one hand, how to get from one thing to the next; on the other hand, how to separate one thing from the next. But in the end the problem is much the same: how do we make sense of large chunks of time that contain nothing but music?
Music, Wagner famously pronounced, is the art of transition. For the Swiss composer Michael Jarrell, by contrast, music is “the art of punctuation”. On the one hand, how to get from one thing to the next; on the other hand, how to separate one thing from the next. But in the end the problem is much the same: how do we make sense of large chunks of time that contain nothing but music?
Prisme, on the other hand, is what you’d expect of a piece where, more or less, the accompaniment has simply been left out
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