Release Date: 02 February 2024
Label: Etcetera
Packaging Type: Digipak
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 8711801018010
Genres: Classical Chamber Music
Description
"Resistance," the debut album of cellist Natania Hoffman and pianist Monika Dars, examines the charged feelings provoked by four complex, painfully strong, and deeply human pieces written by 20th-century composers living in the Soviet Union and Third Reich; it also examines 21st-century reactions and resistance to that very music, revisiting one work in the form of a new composition.
Engaging with conflict in all its complexity, the album grapples with the question at the core of modern discourse about art: should the art of an invading country be banned to send an unequivocal message, or can art speak for its own sake and tell a story rich with its own meaning? And could the suppression of art based on nation of origin endanger freedom of thought, just as populism and extreme nationalism endanger democracy and human rights?
On a musical level, each piece includes jarring, violent, and confrontational passages contrasted moments of timeless beauty, vulnerability, and even inner peace. Conflict and ambiguity are woven into the texture of the album; famously, Galina Ustwolskaya refused a marriage proposal by Dmitri Shostakovich, calling their relationship "one of the worst things that ever happened to me." This album places their beautiful, albeit strikingly different cello-piano music side by side. A satiric song by Mordechai Gebirtig, the most prominent musical voice of the Krakow ghetto, interrupts Joel Hoffman's "Zapyskis," a work named after an idyllic Lithuanian village where Hoffman's Jewish ancestors once lived.
This album aims to channel the idea that resistance can be used as the entryway into something deep, instigating discussion and marking the interesting, the unexplored, the revelatory through a cathartic program marked by moments of both desperate struggle and ineffable beauty.
Tracklisting
Musica Gloria, Nele Vertommen, Beniamino Paganini
Luc Berge, Jan Michiels, Inge Spinette, Ilse Eerens
Ryelandt Trio, Linde Verjans, Seamus Hickey
Jonas Seeberg
Bruno Monteiro, Joao Paulo Santos
Hendrickje Van Kerckhove, Eddy Vanoosthuyse, Severine Sierens, Hannelore Vermeir, Hans Ryckelynck,
Nuno Cernadas
Amy Norrington, Piet Kuijken
Katharina Sames; Mari Inoue
Duo Wang-Zadra
Mariani Klavierquartett
Alexandre Debrus & Gauvain de Morant
Christiana Coppola; Ludovica De Bernardo
Gidon Kremer, Kremerata Baltica
Denis Plante; Stephane Tetreault
Takacs Quartet, Marc-Andre Hamelin
