UNG Luminous Spirals

By Richard Whitehouse
The Classical Review

Cambodian-born but US-domiciled for over four decades, Chinary Ung (b.1942) has pursued a distinctive and steady evolutionary path that has won more in the way of admiration than of recognition – a balance that Bridge is clearly determined to redress with this second disc devoted to his music in what one hopes will be another of this enterprising label’s ongoing series.

The period covered by the five works (1985-2004) is one in which Ung gradually re-appropriated his heritage, for all that the Cambodian song in Child Song is enfolded in an audibly Western contemporary idiom. It was through his continuing Spiral series that Ung found the means to bring East and West into productive accord: hence the subtle gamelan resonance drawn from the clarinet quartet in Spiral VI, or the almost tangible allusions to koto and shakuhachi evoked by guitar and cello in Luminous Spirals; also, the soprano part (tackled here by the redoubtable Lucy Shelton) in …still life after death that conveys the atmosphere of a Tibetan funerary ritual with powerful import.

With its complex interplay of Buddhist as well as Hindu attributes, Cambodian culture is itself a fusion of remarkable richness and variety – something of which is evoked in Oracle, the final and also most inclusive work here, and much of whose impact could only have been occasioned by Ung’s belated return to his homeland shortly before. In particular, the recourse to chanting and spoken interjections by the performers pointedly avoids the self-consciousness that so often affects such attempts in Western art music. It emerges instead as an integral and vital component of a sonic tapestry in which the timbral possibilities of the instrumental sextet are exploited with uncommon assurance and sensitivity. This piece alone is worth the acquisition of this disc, in which the Da Capo Chamber Players do full justice to Ung’s musical vision and are recorded with the requisite clarity and definition.

Adam Greene’s readable booklet note sets the scene in all respects, and the disc can be confidently recommended to initiates and newcomers alike. World Music in the fullest and most creative sense.