CD Review | Canadian Mosaic, Canadian Sinfonietta Chamber Players

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Canadian Mosaic

Canadian Sinfonietta Chamber Players, Ronald Royer, conductor; Stephen Tam, flute; Kaye Royer, clarinet; Kristin Day,  bassoon; Joyce Lai and Alain Bouvier, violins; Ian Clarke, viola; Andras Weber, cello; Talisa Blackman, piano; composers An-Lun Huang, Ronald Royer, Tak Ng Lai, Michael Pepa, Bruno Degazio  

Akashic Classics, 2024

This disc presents a diverse collection of music by Canadian composers. While the pieces differ from each other stylistically, there is a subtle, yet solid through line which connects them all. An-Lun Huang’s Seven Canadian Folk Songs in Chinese Style and Tak Ng Lai’s Romance No. 2 for Violin and String Ensemble are composed in a traditional Chinese style, with many pentatonic scales. Michael Pepa’s Liliane, on the other hand, is a harmonically dense art song based on the prayer of an 11-year- old girl, Liliane Gerenstein, whose family has been sentenced to death by Nazis. 

While these pieces are by no means groundbreakingly original, each is very solidly composed. Canadian Mosaic is firmly anchored in a 20th-century aesthetic, with dense harmonic language and fragmented melodies. Unlike quite a bit of contemporary music, these pieces are by no means inaccessible to an everyday listener. For instance, Ronald Royer’s Mirage and Night Star have dense harmonies which flirt with—but do not veer completely into—atonality. Both pieces have strong musical themes which anchor the listener throughout the pieces, and there is a strong sense of musical drive from beginning to end. These are cinematic pieces of music that test the capacities of the listener without overstraining them. 

The pieces on this album all have very strong orchestration. Huang’s Folk Songs and Bruno Degazio’s Pilgrimage both contain a dynamic sense of movement and playful dialogue between the soloist and chamber players. The percussiveness of the piano, lushness of the strings, and lyrical quality of the clarinet all balance each other very well in Pilgrimage. This piece retains the intimacy of chamber music yet also has the outward, forward-moving energy of a larger orchestral work. 

The pieces themselves are very well-performed, and one can hear the investment of each instrument not only in each particular part but in the sound of the group as a whole. This is a very fine chamber group, and one gets the sense that the composers worked closely with the performers throughout the recording process to achieve a polished, unified and professional performance of each work.