Armand Coeck - Wouter Vercruysse
Nightbird
© 2008 auurk records (634479693434)
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Enchanting music, with a sensible touch, moving melodies; as if originating from ancient times, honouring the endangered, though cruel beauty of Nature.
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Nightbird is a CD-tribute to the complete oeuvre of works for cello by Armand Coeck. All of the works were written in collaboration with cellist Wouter Vercruysse; who, not coincidentally, gave the premieres of these works.
Some lines of a review by S James Wegg (Canada)
"Collaboration of the highest order
In the careers of many musicians there comes a special moment when they suddenly realize that they are artists first, instrumentalists second. (For composers that transition signals the beginning of having something to say rather than making something to play.)
... Curiously, when the cello is joined by one guitar the Spanish-tinged music brings a gallery of images to mind making this sort of writing well suited for further expansion into the fertile mind of a choreographer; when a pair of six-string fretted instruments—Gino Herman completes the roster of performers—are melded with a smooth finger board and just four high-tension “wires” (the unabashedly romantic “Ballade”—with a hint of Grieg’s “Death of Ase” lurking deep in the melodic weeds) the soundscape cries out for a big screen treatment to do justice to the wide variety of visual representations that the trio evokes; yet when left truly seul (most notably and delectably “Ave Nocturna”) the beautifully crafted lines—spun out with care by Vercruysse as the listener eagerly awaits the next forward push or mystical flight of fancy—slip comfortably into the realm of pure music where no other stimulus could add anything further to the inherent meaning.
“Madreselva” (Mother of the Forest, also solo cello) is a marvellous mix of lines that truly breathe (if only more string players knew that especial art) and near-tribal declamation that fades away so effectively that all that remains is the resin. ...
The closing “Rosa Mystica” (Coeck’s re-entry into the universe of composition after a three-year hiatus) lifts off with a stoic introduction then easily rolls along sporting a new-found confidence and a higher-range cello that has a vocal-like hue which could well have come from the Virgin Mary’s lips
Many years apart—as measured in age—Coeck and Vercruysse are clearly cut from the same cloth."