It was a little over two years ago that i was introduced to the orchestral triptych Core – Turn – Boost by Swiss composer Dieter Ammann, on an album of live recordings by the Basel Sinfonietta conducted by Baldur Brönnimann. Recorded in May 2023 to celebrate the composer’s 60th birthday, it also included his violin concerto unbalanced instability. That album blew my mind – it still does – and went on to become my Best Album of 2023. You can therefore imagine my anticipation a few months back when i heard about a new studio recording of these works, performed by Orchestre de la Suisse Romande conducted by Jonathan Nott. This time, the triptych is preceded by Ammann’s orchestral work glut. Glut is absolutely the right word.
Beginning this album with glut has a markedly different effect than the violin concerto did on the Basel disc. Where the concerto acted as a cross between an aperitif, a herald and a warning, glut is more like a an invitation, which is to say that it serves as an accessible way in to the album. In terms of musical language, it’s worth noting that the first two parts of the triptych that Ammann composed, Boost and Core, date from 2001-2, and they contain by far its most volcanic music. Turn, which would become the middle section, was composed in 2010, and has a much greater emphasis on gentler, more sustained sounds and potentially lyrical ideas. (i described before how these three pieces work convincingly as a symphony in all but name, with Turn as its ‘slow movement’.) Composed in 2016, glut is chronologically closest to Turn, and exhibits a similarly reduced intensity. To write those words seems rather absurd when discussing Ammann’s music – its levels are pitched way beyond what many composers seem to countenance – but it’s all relative, and in this context, glut is an excellent entrance, and would also make a good starting point for anyone unfamiliar with Ammann’s work.
Where the triptych is volatile, glut is restless. Yet there’s a grandness to it and, more than anywhere else in the music on this album, a pervading sense that something tangibly harmonic lurks deep below, quietly guiding at least some of what’s playing out on the surface. A great deal of the work indicates uncertainty: sounds are tremulous, points of focus smeared, continuity disrupted by shock accents. Yet its narrative is one continually oscillating between driving on and holding back. The former acts to foreshadow the epic enormity of Core and Boost, all chatter and volatility, fanfares and punch. The latter, however, is what really prevails, both speaking through the mayhem as well as on its own terms. (The oscillation also foreshadows the essential behaviour of Turn). A little under three minutes in, the music collapses back, small details emerge, and through some subsequent poundings it’s as if a seventh chord were being clarified. Improbably, we’re in a place of float, one of many that permeate glut, introducing almost impressionistic periods of repose, far from the messy counterpoint and scurrying ideas.
The work’s middle sequence, essentially a development with wild percussion clatter at its centre, is more erratic, though even here Ammann moderates its repetitions and rapidity with the opposite. The pace chugs, rhythmic brass reports are answered by music that glistens, softening into something vaguely solemn. We finally hear real lyrical clarity (particularly in the winds), that sense of a harmonic foundation stronger than ever. Distant bells and returning smeared pitches suggest a recapitulation of sorts, made richer and more playfully complicated, and just two minutes before the end, the orchestra lets rip a jaw-dropping cry that in lesser hands would be the work’s final gesture. It’s not; those harmonic traces continue through an exquisite coda discreetly underpinned by pivoting tritones, shivering but radiant above.
It’s worth mentioning that there’s another recording of glut available. The piece was commissioned as part of a series called ‘Œuvres Suisses’, all the compositions of which can be streamed online. The performance of glut is the world première from May 2016, by Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich under Markus Stenz. i won’t digress about it now, but it’s a very fine performance, not as overwhelming nor as detailed as OSR, but excellent nonetheless.
i’ve written at length about the triptych in my 2023 review and Best Albums list, so rather than repeat myself, i’d recommend consulting those articles for in-depth information about the three works. It’s been interesting to compare this new studio recording of Core, Turn and Boost with those 2023 live performances. The first thing to note is duration, as Jonathan Nott gets through them faster than Brönnimann (Core by almost 90 seconds, Boost by over 2½ minutes; Turn is basically the same). One of the side effects of this – and being studio recordings this makes sense – is that Ammann’s music generally comes across as more ordered and polished, not quite organised exactly but there are times when there’s a slight but noticeable diminishing of the raw power demonstrated by Basel. That being said, these are unequivocally first-rate performances by OSR, exhilarating from start to end.
Core is arguably the one of the three where that reduction in power is felt most, yet the performance has its own advantages. There’s a visceral quality to Ammann’s often unusual timbres, heard from the outset in the work’s weird opening gesture and a kind of noise-melody that here sounds like it’s made out of focused air. More importantly – and this ties in superbly with the inclusion of glut at the start of the album – they bring out a pronounced brightness, even before the first minute has passed, with triadic hints that point ahead but also back to glut. Now, the massive clamour that breaks out shortly after seems like an extension of that brightness, and this applies later, such as around three minutes in, where pulses are released and it’s as if more triadic elements were breaking through. The reduced duration of this performance also plays a part in ratcheting up its intensity.
Something akin to this brightness also comes through strongly in Turn, reinforcing the continuity across the works. OSR bring a nice sense of opulence to the opening section, like it’s sounding from within, caught in a large amount of densely compacted stuff. The brass are noticeably more audible in this recording, bringing clarity to inner details, which is especially telling at the frequent points when Ammann pulls everything back. This is a work, like glut, carefully held in check, and when the unnerving eruptions subside there are some delicious small-scale sounds that emerge, sometimes revealed as distinct strata, as in the beautiful calming at around the four minute mark. Lyricism is definitely lurking here, that same possibility as before of harmonies just out of reach, delicately undermined by growly bass phrases.
What i love about this performance is its attitude of all or nothing, Nott making Ammann’s pauses into a truly halting sense of progress, rendering it more contemplative. That reaches its apotheosis in a shimmery clusterscape two-thirds through, where volatility is matched by dronal behaviour, as if the energy was being channelled back in rather than being released, becoming vaporous and shining a minute or so later. The ending is exquisite, improving on the Basel recording by making it a shimmer of clashing notes that slowly focus into unison.
The harmonic / triadic hints continue in OSR’s performance of Boost, strongly stated at the start, both in the sustained opening chord and alongside the gentle fanfaric touches that come shortly after. i’ve described this work before as something of a synthesis of Core and Turn, and that comes across here too. Subtle evocations of Stravinsky in the winds speak clearer here (listen from 90 seconds in), just one of several lyrical threads that jostle next to lively percussion ideas. Nott strikes an excellent balance between momentum and reflection; the power level is by now undeniable, but the emphasis – continuing on from everything that’s gone before – is on the lyrical ideas. As such, its volatile narrative and irrepressible playfulness to an extent take second place, being wilful excursions from and unbridled bridges between something potentially more transcendent. The strings pushing forward halfway through is a good example, a more focused kernel in the midst of effervescent, buzzing activity, which in turn seems to be affected by it, becoming focused and becalmed.
All the same, Boost has that name for a very good reason, and its latter stages assume nothing less than dithyrambic levels of caprice. There’s a bit of tension in the way some accents punch out eight or nine minutes in, before a huge, final shining moment, which here is genuinely stunning. Whereupon Nott and OSR launches into the most uproariously gleeful party atmosphere, rhythms and accents spilling and slapping all over the place, in a brief but potent display of utter abandon. The ending, where everything gets held up, is made into a prolonged tease, with the closing octave leap a pure tongue-in-cheek moment – look, after all those triadic hints, a kind of cadence! – that descends through rumble to its final sound, like the world’s softest spit.
Considering the ferocity and volatility of this music, it’s impressive and very surprising that there should be two recordings available. Glut is therefore an album to be vociferously celebrated, being as it is an unexpectede second opportunity to revel in Dieter Ammann’s stunning orchestral music, which in terms of both its beauty and its fearlessness stands out from most of his peers. There’s something quintessential about it, a combination of raw power and measured beauty that makes one think of the same duality in nature. i think that’s what characterises these two recordings too: where Brönnimann and Basel favour the power (but sound beautiful), Nott and OSR favour the beauty (but bristle with energy). We’re so lucky to have both.
Released by Schweizer Fonogramm, Glut is available on CD and download.
