Natura Renovatur
Giacinto Scelsi (1906-1988) was born into an aristocratic Italian family, whose wealth allowed him to pursue and develop his musical proclivities without material constraints. His early works were influenced by Berg and Stravinsky, among others, but after suffering a mental and creative crisis during the 1950s, he discarded Western tradition and withdrew into outer and inner seclusion. Through travel and reading, he discovered Buddhism and Sanskrit; transformed by their spirituality, he conceived a new kind of music. This recording features six works dating from 1956 to 1970. Fascinated with pure sound, Scelsi spoke of "the inner life of tones," and a "third dimension" beyond pitch and rhythm. Regarding himself not as a composer or creator, but as an emissary passing on what he received in a state of meditation and oblivion, he turned to improvising: first on the piano, then on the ondiola, an electronic melody instrument which can sustain, change, increase, and decrease sound. He stopped writing down his improvisations, instead recording them on tape to be transcribed later. This terribly difficult task fell primarily to the composer Vieri Tosatti and the cellist Frances-Marie Uitti, one of Scelsi's foremost champions. On this disc, Uitti, originator of an innovative technique of playing with two bows, gives an astonishing performance of three unaccompanied pieces, one dedicated to her. The other pieces are arranged for 11 or 16 string instruments, a natural medium offering maximum sonic flexibility and timbral diversity. The music is indeed sheer sound, sustained and static, without form, phrasing, articulation, or counterpoint. Variety is produced through sometimes extreme changes of dynamics, registers and textures, micro-pitches, and sound effects from whispers to screeches. The effect is certainly singular as well as  mesmerizing.--Edith Eisler