...Mais les images restent...

Ernesto Molinari (clarinet), Thomas Demenga (cello), Marino Formenti (piano), WDR Sinfonieorchester, Peter Rundel (conductor)

1. Aus Bebung
   for clarinet and cello
2. Assonance lll
   for bass clarinet, cello and piano
3. ...mais les images restent...
   for piano
4. ...Es bleibt eine zitternde Bebung...
   (Nachlese lll)
   for clarinet, cello and orchestra

...the attention given to textures and sound colours, which focus attention on the moment more than on their direction, as if the motion - the agitated figures, the virtuosic runs - were only the immersed part of a deeper structure.

Philippe Albèra

...prisme / incidences...

Emmanuel Pahud (flute), Paul Meyer (clarinet),
François Leleux (oboe), Hae-Sun Kang (violin),
Marino Formenti (piano), Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Pascal Rophé (conductor)

1. ...prisme / incidences...
   for violin and orchestra
2. Sillages
   for flute, clarinet, oboe and orchestra
3. Trois Etudes de Debussy
   Pour les notes répétées (orchestration)
4. Pour les sonorités opposées (orchestration)
5. Pour les accords (orchestration)
6. Abschied
   for piano and orchestra

In Jarrell's music, one encounters this love for the craft of composition in the way he utilises instruments. This goes hand in hand with the concern to write not only for specific performers, but also with them in a genuine process of collaboration. Such an approach is inseparable from the claim to expressivity, the claim of a subjectivity which has reconquered its own spontaneity, of a music that is more immediate, more transparent, at once carnal and sensitive.

Philippe Albéra

Echo

Françoise Kubler (soprano), Armand Angster (clarinet), Ensemble Accroche Note, Ensemble Linea,
Jean-Philippe Wurtz (conductor)

1. Assonnance III
   for bass clarinet, cello and piano
2. Eco II B
   for soprano and instrumental ensemble
3. Aus Bebung
   for clarinet and cello
4. Trei II
   for soprano and 5 instruments
5. Essaims-Cribles
   for bass clarinet and ensemble

Michael Jarrell's music is characterised by mystery and elegance: the mystery of a fire beneath the ice, passion behind seeming tranquillity, elegance in the form, acoustic choices and developments. Mystery and elegance that prevail over a highly personal universe that the five pieces on this recording illustrate in a way that is rich, contrasted and remarkably homogeneous. indeed, round the distinctive voice-clarinet pivot of the Ensemble Accroche Note and its founders Françoise Kubler and Armand Angster, one discovers the essential qualities of a career elaborated primarily in the demanding and delicate practice of chamber music.

Antoine Gindt

Michael Jarrell

Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, David Shallon (conductor), Ernesto Molinaro (bass clarinet),
Michael Stirling (cello), Ensemble Modern,
Peter Eötvös (conductor), Sharon Cooper (soprano), Orchestre Südwestfunk, Arturo Tamayo (conductor)

1. Instantanés
   for orchestra
2. Assonance II
   for bass clarinet
3. Assonance V
   ...chaque jour n'est qu'une trêve entre deux nuits...
   ...chaque nuit n'est qu'une trêve entre deux jours...
   for cello and 4 ensembles
4. ...d'ombres lointaines...
   for mezzo-soprano and large orchestra

Wrinting is always rewriting. He says so himself - « composition resembles an arborescent system » - and this is what he does when he (re)writes. And this is what I shall do here, by writing on, next to, in the margin of his graphs. About his biography, his works, their recording which is yet another rewriting in which he has taken part.

And if he is not alone in rewriting, if others write after or following him - as the performers do, magnificently -, he has never been alone in writing. The writing-machine, like the typewriter, implies two hands. Two, for « while one hand writes (...), the other takes away » as says Freud in the Note on the magic block, and does not Jarrell himself say he sees his work of writing « as a kind of autoanalysis »?

He therefore does not write alone. This I know for having seen his sketches, the notes jotted down on « postcards » which he sends himself. From him to him, they are two at least. Sometimes three: as we know since Trei II, which contains three languages, three languages he refuses to translate except into numbers he destines to rhythm, which all are « exterior influences ». One for the other.

Before Trei II, came Trei. This is the numeral principle, the law of serial numbers. But Trei does not exist, at least publicly (as in a catalogue, an edition, a record, a concert). Trei has remained in a pre-textual state. Pre-Trei II. And so it goes on. Always these Roman numerals (there are now eight Assonances) which refer to ever older traces in his work. Some visible, some buried, but all pointing to a before state, as if it were impossible to reach the source. No initial point. And he says so: « I do not wish to construct each piece from point zero ».

This is why he says he is fascinated by Giacometti, and by others who « tirelessly pursue the same idea ». Like them, he claims: « I consider the Assonances series, which I call "my sketchbooks", as a right: the right to concentrate on one idea and feel free within it ».

Peter Szendy

Michael Jarrell

Pierre Strauch (cello), Daniel Ciampolini (percussion), Michel Cerutti (percussion), Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano), Florent Boffard (piano), Gérard Buquet (tuba),
Christophe Desjardins (viola), Emmanuelle Ophèle (flute), Didier Pateau (oboe), Ensemble intercontemporain, Peter Eötvös (conductor)

1. Assonance V
   ...chaque jour n'est qu'une trêve entre deux nuits...
   ...chaque nuit n'est qu'une trêve entre deux jours...
   for cello and 4 instrumental ensembles
2. Assonance VIIb (Rhizomes)
   for 2 pianos, 2 percussions and electronics
3. Assonance IV
   for viola, tuba and electronics
4. Congruences
   for midi flute, oboe and ensemble

This disc provides yet another example of the diversity and quality of inspiration to have emerged from the musical world's most distinguished experimental laboratory, Ircam, and its attendant demi-monde.
Jarrell makes use of electronics in all but one piece, generally by way of enriching textures and adding spatial and timbral effects rather than as an integral part of the compositional material. Actual musical material tends to consist of small cells, though a fragmentary impression is avoided by frequent diversions into motoric rapid-moving patterings and patternings which propel the music dynamically, conventional harmonic progression being largely absent. Ultimately, though, it is the composer's acute sense of tone color and the delicate and sensitive treatment of timbre that provide the music's most compelling qualities.

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