Esther Lamneck: Tárogáto Constructions

Compact disc, 2018, Innova #994, available from Innova Recordings, 75 West 5^th Street, #522, St. Paul, Minnesota 55102; www.innova.mu/.

Esther Lamneck is one of only a handful of performers whose specialty involves performing on the tárogáto, a single-reed woodwind instrument similar to a clarinet, originally used for folk music in Hungary and Romania. In addition to indigenous folk music appropriate to the tárogáto, Lamneck is intimately involved with advanced technologies and multimedia work, involving interactive technology research with the EyesWeb program, which allows for gestural control of live sound and video processing. Over the years she has established close working relationships with a variety of electroacoustic and computer music composers such as Cort Lippe and Mara Helmuth, and is also a longtime collaborator with experimental choreographer Douglas Dunn.

Lamneck's work with the tárogáto has been reviewed before in the Computer Music Journal (Radford, Vol. 29, No. 4, Winter 2005). Her recently released album on Innova Recordings (#994) entitled Tárogáto Constructions includes compositions by six composers. Each composition involves significant, improvisational materials attributed to Lamneck that are chock-full of folk music references, extended techniques, and virtuosic, gestural and textural materials. As such, Lamneck's role is more of a collaborator than a mere performer. It is not always clear from the liner notes what the exact nature of the collaborations entailed. Lamneck indicates that "all of the tárogáto music has been originally generated by me" and that "each composer has designed a musical world which reacts to what I play by triggering electronic sounds which then influence the direction of my improvisational composition." So, the relationship was apparently a two-way, recursive street between the soloist and each electroacoustic composer.

Because of its key structure, the tárogáto is capable of producing numerous glissandi, as well as high-frequency harmonics. Both can be heard throughout the album. The first track, Prelude, by Cort Lippe, sets the tone for the entire project. According to Lippe, "Esther was able to interact with the computer, not simply triggering, but continuously shaping the computer output, while I performed on the computer, musically reacting to Esther's playing and the computer responses to her playing." The sounds come directly from the tárogáto, stored sound material, digital synthesis algorithms, and standard processing techniques such as harmonization, delay, frequency shifting, phasing, and reverberation.

We hear the close miking of the tárogáto offset with spatialized reverb trails that sound as if they are occurring at a distance to the tárogáto. The tárogáto seems to cry out and bicker with itself. About halfway through the track Lamneck plays a series of shrill, high-pitched tones that are paired with computer-generated duplicates, resulting in an intense display of difference tones that pin you to your seat. Overall, the piece is recorded at very hot levels, which underlines the bold and raw senses of the music. Cavernous sounds collide almost out of control. The formal structure includes many fragmented materials that don't develop or progress in traditional ways. Like a verbose friend that takes over a party and never settles down, the piece never settles down or travels anywhere; it explores a kind of anguished, existential present tense. The ending seems to occur without any obvious musical motivation and hence, sounds both premature and surprising.

Lippe's Duo takes over where Prelude ended. We hear a similar approach to reverb and delay but the pitch materials are seemingly appropriated from the folk world, embellished with extended techniques. We also hear bubbling modulation sounds in the electronic part, emphasizing the liquid fluidity of the tárogáto part. Unlike the first track, this movement comes to a logical close. Overall, this track sounded more enticing than the previous track because of an inventive approach to the concept of the mélange.

Mara Helmuth's piece Irresistible Flux was developed with Lamneck over several years and uses granular synthesis software and Max patches with RTcmix scripts to produce a variety of real-time transformations of the sound. Helmuth is...