Jacaszek
Treny

THE REVIEW

There are nights when the full moon is as beautiful as a Sphinx. Nights where the otherworldly calm of its light is obscured, filtered, chiseled, hidden, and revealed by passing clouds laden with omens and something; something that is completing a cycle of rotation, something that is taking its course.

Neither serene, nor impassive. As the enigma is proposed, the forehead of the Sphinx is, in turn, furrowed, crossed by heavy shadows: what kind of Oedipus will it have to contend with this time?

An infinite desolation, penetrating and questioning, continuously shaped and remodulated by leaden accumulations dancing around it.

This perpetual alternation of disguises/revelations constitutes the heart of the eleven adagios of "Treny". Fragile lunar cartilages irradiated by the suspended composure of a small string ensemble; violin, cello, a spectral alto vocalist, and vague hints of piano that insinuate a silvery and vibrant light among the meshes of collected landscapes.

A vespertine chamber music bathed in the dense and tingling digital details offered by Michał Jacaszek; a dark, vaporous electronic sound, on the edge of dark ambient that, however, does not constrain the sound within the coils of long enveloping drones.

The Polish composer rather seeks to use his synthetic arsenal to characterize the life of individual pieces with a shadowy and syncopated rhythm - and yet always inclined towards lethargy. Like the lunar eye at the mercy of the clouds, the light emitted by the strings is always in slow but steady evolution, thanks to the play of masks imposed by electronic concentrations/dilations.

And although particularly intense violin lines or female vocalizations sometimes tip the balance towards peaks of emotional poignant yearning, the true merit of "Treny" lies rather in a subtle melancholy poised between quiet despair and restless awareness.

Like a Sphinx posing an enigma knowing how irrelevant it is to solve it but being aware of how laden it is with something; something that is completing a cycle of rotation, something that is taking its course.

The real difficulty is not knowing if we will obtain or become what we seem to want, but the absolute certainty that there was a time we were someone we will never return to be again.