NONDOR NEVAI / THE RESTAURANTS - The A Capella Cantata (CD)
United States | Avantgarde
Detailed Description
"Had this Cantata been composed centuries ago, it would have been entitled 'The A Capella Cantata for Mixed Trio & Wounded Orchestra'.
'A Capella' because the accompanying concerto, being prerecorded and preformed posthumously on tape, cannot respond to the vocal, making it creatively unaccompanied.
'Cantata' because, though my orchestra is empty, the void acts as a contra puntal space between the live choral and canned orchestral aspects.
Lucky for you this Cantata was not composed centuries ago, or it would be a piece of shit instead of a masterpiece. Now you like the contrapuntal to include formal or conceptual tensions in addition to the tonal to the rhythmic, don't you.
This performance, captured in it's entirety in a few hours, emplifies the bellacose cowardice of The Restaurants who would not wage this aleatorical duel unless they had secured victory firsthand. The vocalist was partially alive, but the reverb pedal was entirely inert, deserving no credit. The initial six movements of this Cantata were recorded in one take. Only the internecine pauses have been omitted. Nothing was prepared, there was no rehearsal, neither orchestra nor composer knew of their forthcoming infliction; a specific deprivation designed to allow the long dead to give birth. This record documents the survivorless battlefield where the draft-age orchestra is decimated movement by movement, in a process that antagonizes the minimal and the maximal, the musical and the nonmusical, the mediocre and the atrocious. For enemies & 'friends' alike, this is a marraige to be thought of, not so much as losing a daughter, as losing a life."
