The six compositions on Strenuous Pleasures, an album of recent chamber music by composer Eric Moe, are consistently finely crafted works organized around intricately interwoven rhythms embodied in contrasting instrumental colors. This is exemplified by the title track, composed in 2010 for clarinet, violin, cello, piano, flute, and percussion. The piece opens with a perpetual motion rhythmic counterpoint distributed among the strings and winds, pushed along by a prominent snare drum. A quiet middle section is held in a tense equilibrium by pulsing piano part, after which the piece returns to a strong, syncopated forward motion riding on the sounds of a drum kit. Spirit Mountain for flute, oboe and English horn, bassoon, piano and percussion, is also from 2010 and plays out along similar lines but with a focus on the sometimes subtle timbral differences separating the various winds. Welcome to Phase Space (2014) for piano trio is a more conventionally lyrical piece highlighting Moe’s handling of melody, but it too contains an undercurrent of compressed rhythmic energy thanks to an insistent, almost nagging, piano part. Deep Ecology, an electroacoustic piece composed in 2020 for cello and fixed media, is something of an outlier. Its focus is largely on melody and atmosphere, with cellist David Russell playing a somber opening statement over a skittering and burbling backdrop of field recordings and instrumental sounds. After having established a reflective mood in this way the piece turns around to pick up a rhythmic urgency as it unfolds, the cello doing its part by contributing rapid tremolo bowing over recorded percussion.
The album also includes Demon Theory (2013) for piano and alto saxophone, and 2015’s What Instruments We Have Agree, for bass clarinet, violin, viola, and piano.
Daniel Barbiero
Avant Music News 