Two works by Chaya Czernowin in their first recordings: HIDDEN (2013-14), a quartet for strings and electronics lasting over forty minutes, played by the JACK Quartet, and Adiantum Capillus-Veneris (2015/16), three "Etudes in Fragility" for amplified voice and breath, sung by the mezzo-soprano Inbal Hever. Space and gesture are at the centre of both. Shifts of perspective keep the listener unsure which gestures will come forward and which will recede.
Czernowin was born in Haifa on 7 December 1957 and studied in Tel Aviv, in Germany on a DAAD fellowship, and in California, where she took her doctorate. Her teachers included Abel Ehrlich, Dieter Schnebel, Brian Ferneyhough and Roger Reynolds. She won the Kranichsteiner Musikpreis at Darmstadt in 1992, and since 2009 she has been Walter Bigelow Rosen Professor of Music at Harvard. The JACK Quartet here is Christopher Otto and Ari Streisfeld, violins, John Pickford Richards, viola, and Kevin McFarland, cello. The electronics come from IRCAM, with computer music design by Carlo Laurenzi and sound engineering by Jérémie Henrot. Both works were recorded on 11-13 April 2016 in the Kammermusiksaal of Deutschlandfunk in Cologne, during the Forum neuer Musik 2016 on Jewish identities, co-produced with Deutschlandradio.
HIDDEN deals with things never shown whole, perceived at most as shadowy intimations. Czernowin calls it "a slowly unfolding, 45-minute listening experience that permits our ears to turn into eyes". Sounds reach the listener from loudspeakers around the space, rustling, crackling, murmuring and throbbing. The piece moves from slow breathing to a loud, shattering climax. In Adiantum Capillus-Veneris (Maidenhair Fern) voice and breath are equally important, and the breathing is precisely notated. Hever describes performing it as "very sensual, very familiar, and very physical, but also quite unprotected". The second study is more percussive, and in the third the breath becomes a counterpoint to the voice.
HIDDEN was commissioned by IRCAM and first performed by the JACK Quartet on 21 June 2014 in the Espace de projection at IRCAM, during the ManiFeste festival. In MusicWeb International, Stephen Greenbank wrote that "The Jack Quartet deliver a compelling reading".
Hybrid SACD, Wergo WER 7355 2, released in 2017, with a 26-page booklet and notes by Harald Hodeige.
