Performed by NZTrio at their concert, 'Dramatic Skies: Cumulus', Auckland Concert Chamber, 16 November 2021.
NZTrio - Somi Kim, Ashley Brown, Amalia Hall Photo: Jen Raoult
New Zealand composer Alex Taylor wrote burlesques mécaniques for NZTrio in 2012.
He writes: “burlesques mécaniques is a collection of grotesque miniatures whose characters are not people or animals but dances. These dances have been mechanised, electrified, and often obscured by their own rhythmic impulse. Old forms are given new identities, freed from the confines of metric stability and the expectation that they be "danceable". The essentially mechanical, artificial aspect of music (and of art in general?) is embodied in the piano, here a brittle, seedy protagonist whose string limbs hover and flail about it. Conflicting rhythms dominate the surface, oscillating between insistent repetition and mad, angular flourishes. The generally jerky, muscular rhythmic material is periodically frozen throughout the work, most strikingly in the ninth movement (chain). Here a string of rich, impressionistic chords briefly reveals an alternative, interior world which is then rudely dismissed in an almost haphazard finale.”
Recorded by RNZ Concert, Auckland Concert Chamber, 16 November 2021
Producer: Tim Dodd; Engineer: Adrian Hollay
