FIVE

Macedonian-born composer and violinist Mihailo Trandafilovski has performed all over the world as part of the celebrated Kreutzer Quartet and in collaboration with many other artists. On his new album FIVE, he presents a collection of recent work revolving around several different ideas: networks, the physical properties of sound, and the way in which polarity can be an organizing principle. Full of mercurial energy and richly nuanced sound worlds, his debut innova album shows Trandafilovski’s compellingly hallucinatory music in dazzling detail.

“Arc-en-ciel”, inspired by Giacinto Scelsi’s work of the same name, opens the record and is performed by Trandafilovski and Peter Sheppard Skærved of the Kreutzer Quartet. The two violins spark dazzling spectral colors from the most simple of materials. Continuing in the Scelsi and Radulescu vein, “Magnets, Lava, Crystals”, for clarinet and string quartet, explores the contrasting images of crystal (“a self-organizing system”) and flame (“order out of noise”) as described by Italo Calvino in Exactitude to describe models in biology, language, and literature.

The multi-part “(S)PACING” began as a pedagogical piece for two cellos that would introduce students to contemporary technical challenges, but became something more in the process. The piece demands a physical performance that involves stomping, white noise and other extended techniques to create a unique choreography. “Ripple Effect” -- for solo piano -- makes use of the instrument’s sustain pedal to explore two harmonic planes: the spare surface material and the more complex harmonic relationships that build over the course of four movements.

Based on haiku poems by the Macedonian writer Vladimir Martinovski, “CHETIRI (FOUR)” was commissioned by the New London Chamber Choir and combines a large vocal group with a string quartet to create parallels and juxtapositions between Martinovski’s texts and Trandafilovski’s music.