I’ve occasionally mentioned the Octandre Ensemble – particularly their advocacy of Frank Denyer, like last month – but not the music composed by their co-director, Christian Mason. Time – Space – Sound – Light is a new disc/download from Winter & Winter dedicated to Mason’s works for chamber groups with members of Octandre. Recorded in a Bavarian villa last summer, the set of works presented here recreates a potted version of a concert given in the same venue several years earlier. The sequencing of works is ideal, unfolding and then contracting as an extended suite. The attributes listed in the album title informs the understanding of Mason’s music, with its clean presentation of direct and associative qualities working in a close relationship. The set begins curiously but vividly with A kingfisher dives into the sun…, a strongly evocative pastoral recording of birds and insects on a summer’s day without any perceptible artifice. The following piano piece … just as the sun is always… sustains the feeling of open space with long, resonant pauses between its chiming chords. You can pick out resemblances and possible influences, particularly of European composers with interests in Asian music and thought – Messiaen’s bell-like harmonies, Scelsi’s unhurried pacing, Vivier’s sense for ritual – while still finding Mason has his own perspective on these traits which makes his voice identifiably unique. The use of piccolo and percussion in the ensemble work I wandered for a while… is the closest he gets here to anything resembling high-brow exotica, offset by the return of the bird sounds and electronic processing to extend the acoustic space. Cello, flute, piano and bells are the predominant instruments throughout the album. Mason’s talent for making sparing use of sound to maximum effect is heard in wandered and the succeeding Remembered Radiance, where cello, bells, piano and harmonica (without electronics) slowly build intense heat with increasingly stark timbres. Cellist Corentin Chassard gives a forceful soliloquy in the solo work Incandescence, emerging from silence with increasingly esoteric harmonics enriching the tonality and coloration as he drives towards the conclusion. Two shorter works conclude the set: Heaven’s Chimes are Slow is a relatively compressed and agitated duet for flute and piano (on all works the flautist is Audrey Milhères, with Joseph Houston on piano), before Chassard returns with a retuned cello for Bird learning to fly, transforming the instrument with a ghostly accompaniment of buzzing and distempered multiphonics before coming to a sudden stop.
