THOMAS HUMMEL (b.1962): Aus Trachila for Speaker and Ensemble.

Description: A skilled practitioner of computer music techniques, Hummel has here created a work that recreates many of the fundamental aims of computer and electronic music, without the actual use of electronics. Unusual, distorting playing techniques transform the sounds of the ensemble instruments (which sometimes sound as though they are being played backwards on tape, or artificially shifted in pitch), and similarly the text - by Ovid - is performed by a narrator aptly described as a 'voice artist' in vocalizations that often seek (remarkably effectively) to emulate the whispering, scraping instrumental sounds. The piece raises questions of what the perception of speech, and of meaning, actually mean, and does so in a challenging and provocatively unfamiliar soundscape. Christoph Ogiermann (voice artist), Holst Sinfonietta. SACD hybrid.