BRAM VAN CAMP (b.1980): The Feasts of Fear and Agony for Soprano and Ensemble, Music for 3 Instruments for Clarinet, Violin and Piano, Improvisations for Solo Violin.

Description: van Camp's music is rigorously organized, yet paradoxically one often feels a sense of improvisatory freedom. The song cycle is based on poems of Paul van Ostaijen, described by the composer as possessing intrinsic musical structure, and graphic indications that suggest pitches and dynamics in its layout on the page (a sample is reproduced on the back of the booklet). The music is unashamedly atonal, with strong echoes of Second-Viennese methods, especially in the treatment of the voice - highly expressive and extrovertly emotive, with sprechstimme, whispers, shouts and technically challenging leaps and intervals. The trio is a more introverted work, with a curiously homogeneous texture, the instruments (those of Bartók's Contrasts here blended and contrasting very little, with extended techniques further blurring he boundaries between them. The solo violin piece reflects the composer's own experience as performer on the instrument, with conscious homages to solo violin works of the past, absorbed into Van Camp's own idiom. Liesbeth Devos (soprano), Het Collectief; Vykintas Baltakas.