Rosamunde Quartett, The Hilliard Ensemble - Boris Yoffe: Song Of Songs (2011)

The limitations of words tend toward failure in expressing the breadth of any creative endeavor. Describing the music of Boris Yoffe is an exceptional case, for here words risk expressing too much. Yoffe himself has lived a life of cutting to the chase. He was born in St. Petersburg in 1968, where he composed and premiered his first works just shy of his 15th birthday. He emigrated to Tel Aviv, completing a degree in composition, and then to Karlsruhe, Germany to study with Wolfgang Rihm. Rihm was struck by Yoffe’s individuality from day one, and includes an affectionate note to that effect in the CD booklet: “His music has great beauty. Can it be misunderstood? Oh yes. But it doesn’t complain. Stays beautiful and giving. Unmisunderstandable. With time also hardened, pointed.”

Yoffe writes one string quartet a day (each just a page long), as if it were scriptural meditation. Of those culled for the present disc, he notes, “For me this recording is a handwritten collection of verse, in which the quartet poems are accompanied by the tenderly coloured miniatures of the sung pieces.” Yoffe’s scores are bereft of dynamics, tempi, and directions, and so the Rosamunde Quartett and Hilliard Ensemble are to be commended for tending to them with so much heart.

I sought him but I found him not introduces the program with ashen strings before the Hilliards’ voices, after a pause, break through the gloom with their palatial moonlight. So does their antiphon continue in meditative interaction with the Rosamundes, whose occasionally sharper gestures merely emphasize a fundamental contemplation. Both registers exist in mutual exclusion, bonded in a reality where contact and surface are one and the same, and the experience of language turns in on itself. My own vineyard I did not keep, by contrast, reflects a less syllogistic approach to text and melody. Brief chains of overlapping voices grow like a vine along brick: filigree to a hardened exterior.

Yoffe allows fragrance to waft through the lattice of his notecraft and opens its interstices to further interpretation. I sleep, but my heart waketh takes this philosophy furthest in a veritable calligraphy of air, born of flesh and thought yet writ large on the wind. Pizzicati in this quartet-only piece feel not plucked but pulled, as if by gravity into a watery hermitage. Death as transfiguration.

My head is filled with dew, my locks with drops of the night is a river run so long that it births a canyon. It is a particularly affecting vehicle for countertenor David James, in whose throat resides angelic hues. This is the most contemplative piece on the album. Its heartbeat folds into strings in My soul went forth when he spoke, for which the body’s connection to a life divine charts an altogether deeper anatomy, one of which veins and arteries are spun from the Word and through which the blood of deliverance dreams like a promise kissed into cognizance.

Yoffe’s elastic sense of proportion confirms the sentiments of Paul Griffiths, who in his liner text characterizes this recording as “a sampling of eternity.” The only possible end result is another beginning.

Review by Tyran Grillo, ECMreviews.com

Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 1 from 15. November 2010

EAC extraction logfile from 25. October 2011, 20:13

Boris Yoffe / Song of Songs

Used drive : Optiarc DVD RW AD-7203A Adapter: 4 ID: 1

Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No

Read offset correction : 48
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000

Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 128 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files\FLAC\flac.exe
Additional command line options : -T "COMMENT=Ripped by GFox" -8 -V %s


TOC of the extracted CD

Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
1 | 0:00.00 | 12:39.27 | 0 | 56951
2 | 12:39.27 | 4:33.02 | 56952 | 77428
3 | 17:12.29 | 14:06.42 | 77429 | 140920
4 | 31:18.71 | 11:14.69 | 140921 | 191539
5 | 42:33.65 | 10:00.30 | 191540 | 236569


Range status and errors

Selected range

Filename D:\EAC\Boris Yoffe - Song of Songs.wav

Peak level 92.8 %
Extraction speed 0.7 X
Range quality 99.9 %
Test CRC 2F1A785F
Copy CRC 2F1A785F
Copy OK

No errors occurred


AccurateRip summary

Track 1 not present in database
Track 2 not present in database
Track 3 not present in database
Track 4 not present in database
Track 5 not present in database

None of the tracks are present in the AccurateRip database

End of status report

==== Log checksum C25EA5376F3532364D53C105152F94863473A95B1E4B03D57F65148310028D15 ====

foobar2000 1.3.8 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1
log date: 2015-12-12 02:40:28

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Analyzed: Boris Yoffe / Song of Songs
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

DR Peak RMS Duration Track
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
DR16 -3.63 dB -25.18 dB 12:39 01-I sought him but I found him not
DR15 -0.68 dB -24.19 dB 4:33 02-My own vineyard I did not keep
DR16 -2.32 dB -24.84 dB 14:07 03-I sleep, but my hert waketh
DR14 -3.60 dB -25.46 dB 11:15 04-My head is filled with dew, my locks with drops of the night
DR16 -0.64 dB -25.14 dB 10:00 05-My soul went forth when he spoke
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Number of tracks: 5
Official DR value: DR15

Samplerate: 44100 Hz
Channels: 2
Bits per sample: 16
Bitrate: 489 kbps
Codec: FLAC
================================================================================