Celli Monighetti LCMS 1202****

This CD stems from a concert given last October in Drogheda by Eamonn Quinn’s enterprising Louth Contemporary Music Society.

Celli Monighetti explore the textures and colours of a cello octet in works by Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky (whose LCMS commission, Viderunt Omnes, re-envisions the medieval world of Perotin as a kind of seraphic dance, with fluctuating backgrounds and delicate percussion); Franghiz Ali-Zadeh (whose Shyshtar Metamorphoses is full of impassioned intertwining); Sofia Gubaidulina (who adds otherworldly waterphones to cello sextet and solo cello in On the Edge of the Abyss, and combines low calm and high flickering with imploring solos and explosive interludes in Mirage: The Dancing Sun); and Alexander Knaifel (whose short, slow doleful chorale, O, Comforter, adds up to more than the sum of its parts).

First-rate performances. url.ie/fztt