Chisholm, E: Simoon

Playing, singing and conducting are all excellent; Jane Irwin rises impressively to the challenge of the wide soprano-to-mezzo range of Biskra’s part, with Damian Thantrey’s Guimard equally secure... — BBC Music Magazine, January 2017, 4 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 18th Nov 2016
Catalogue No: DCD34139
Label: Delphian
Length: 48 minutes

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Chisholm, E: Simoon

Work length48:26

$16.00

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Damian Thantrey (baritone), Jane Irwin (soprano), Philip Sheffield (tenor), Charlie Drummond (soprano)
Music Co-OPERAtive Scotland
Ian Ryan
Recorded: 8 June 2015
Recording Venue: Live recording, Western Baths, Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom

Scene 1: Introduction

Track length3:44

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Scene 1: La ilaha illa'llah! (Biskra, Yusuf)

Track length3:13

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Scene 1: Biskra! Do you still know how to hate? (Yusuf, Biskra)

Track length1:18

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Scene 1: Ever since my eyes first fell upon you (Yusuf, Biskra)

Track length1:39

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Scene 1: I am going now to sleep beside the spring (Yusuf, Biskra)

Track length2:02

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Scene 1: My eyes are already beginning to see red (Biskra, Yusuf)

Track length4:01

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Scene 2: The Simoon is here (Guimard, Biskra)

Track length2:36

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Scene 2: That was the dog that bit you! (Biskra, Guimard)

Track length3:13

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Scene 2: Biskra, Biskra, Biskra, Simoon, Simoon (Biskra, Guimard, Yusuf, Voice)

Track length3:28

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Scene 2: I am Ali the guide (Biskra, Guimard)

Track length4:53

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Scene 2: I hear the murmuring of a spring (Guimard, Biskra)

Track length3:26

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Scene 2: What do you see now? (Biskra, Guimard)

Track length5:37

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Scene 2: Now you are dying, Frank (Biskra, Guimard)

Track length2:06

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Scene 2: Can you hear the drums? (Biskra, Guimard)

Track length1:57

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Scene 2: Yes, you are dead! (Biskra, Guimard)

Track length1:53

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Scene 3: Simoon! Simoon! (Biskra, Yusuf, Guimard)

Track length3:20

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The Simoon - the violent, hot wind that blows in the North African desert gives its name to August Strindberg's psychological drama, published in 1889 and later described by the Glaswegian composer Erik Chisholm as 'exciting and frightening'. Third in a triptych of operas which the composer wrote after his move to South Africa in the late 1940s, his adaptation of Strindbergs play evokes the desert setting through a blend of the Hindustani scales he had studied in wartime India and a skilful use of free twelve-tone technique, but was never performed with orchestra in his own lifetime. Restored here to full colour, this terrifyingly compact fifty-minute work reveals Chisholms ability to create music of extraordinary sensuality in which the senses are hideously deceived, the intense exoticism both beautiful and a parody of its own beauty. Psychologically brutal, its sensuality feeds upon death, while its subject matter was as thoroughly topical in its own time as it is resonant today, turning as it does on a confrontation between faiths and on the consequences of colonial aggression. Simoon presents no easy answers, but this brave work gives powerful expression to powerful emotions and beliefs; it is an undoubted twentieth-century masterpiece.

Reviews

January 2017

Playing, singing and conducting are all excellent; Jane Irwin rises impressively to the challenge of the wide soprano-to-mezzo range of Biskra’s part, with Damian Thantrey’s Guimard equally secure and accurate

January 2017

Jane Irwin gives a fearless performances as Biskra, Damian Thantrey is bruised and swaggering as Guimard and Philip Sheffield is a sensitive Yusuf…Ian Ryan [conducts] Music Co-OPERAtive Scotland, a collective of Scottish Opera’s freelance players who clinch the taught [sic], simmering angularity as well as the glittering refinement of Chisholm’s ensemble-writing

May 2017

one of the most striking features of Chisholm's score is its highly imaginative orchestration for a chamber ensemble, shimmering with colour, menace and atmosphere. Chisholm's score is illuminated by brilliant and uneasy flashes of instrumental colour.

Opera Now May 2017

Jane Irwin sings Biskra with a confident soprano, occasionally chopping her phrases awkwardly, but she throws herself into the fray with gusto, as does baritone Damian Thantry as the unfortunate Guimard

The National

A stunning work: one which demonstrates why Chisholm is beyond doubt Scotland’s leading modernist composer.

Chisholm, E: Simoon

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