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Heloise Werner: Phrases

£19.06

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Label: Delphian

Cat No: DCD34269

Barcode: 0801918342691

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 1

Genre: Vocal/Choral

Release Date: 24th June 2022

Artists

Heloise Werner (soprano)
Amy Harman (bassoon)
Lawrence Power (violin, viola)
Calum Huggan (percussion)
Colin Alexander (cello)
Laura Snowden (guitar)
Daniel Shao (flute)

Works

Aperghis, Georges

Recitation 3
Recitation 8
Recitation 9
Recitation 11

Frances-Hoad, Cheryl

Something More Than Mortal

Leith, Oliver C.

yhyhyhyhyh

Mitchener, Elaine

whetdreem

Muhly, Nico

Benedicite Recitation

Multiple composers

Syncopate (Heloise Werner, Zoe Martlew)

Stephenson, Josephine

Comme l'espoir/you might all disappear

Werner, Heloise

Confessional
Like Words
Mixed Phrases
Unspecified Intensions

Artists

Heloise Werner (soprano)
Amy Harman (bassoon)
Lawrence Power (violin, viola)
Calum Huggan (percussion)
Colin Alexander (cello)
Laura Snowden (guitar)
Daniel Shao (flute)

About

Luminous and daring, this celebration of Héloïse Werner’s multifaceted gifts is nourished by rich dualities. Phrases reveals Werner as both singer and composer, as an artist shaped by both her native France and her adopted UK, and as a soloist of captivating individuality who is also an intrepid collaborator. The solos and duos that make up the album comprise five of Werner’s own compositions, four of Georges Aperghis’s avant-garde classic Récitations, and six newly commissioned works, by composers ranging from Elaine Mitchener and Nico Muhly to Oliver Leith. The calibre of Héloïse’s instrumental partners in the duos reflects the degree to which this extraordinary young performer is already valued and cherished by her peers.

Sound/Video

Paused

1

Werner: Like Words
2

Stephenson: Comme l’espoir/you might all disappear
3

Werner/Mertlew: Syncopate
4

Frances-Hoad: Something More Than Mortal
5

Muhly: Benedicite Recitation
6

Aperghis: Récitation 3
7

Aperghis: Récitation 8
8

Werner: Unspecified Intentions
9

Aperghis: Récitation 9
10

Aperghis: Récitation 11
11

Werner: Confessional
12

Leith: yhyhyhyhyh
13

Mitchener: whetdreem
14

Werner: Mixed Phrases

Europadisc Review

As co-director of the experimental quartet The Hermes Experiment, composer-soprano (as well as occasional cellist) Héloïse Werner’s name will already be familiar to more adventurous listeners from two recordings on Delphian, ‘Here We Are’ and ‘SONG’. Now she releases her debut solo album on the same label, and with it bolsters her reputation as one of the most gifted and versatile vocal artists of her generation. The album’s title, ‘Phrases’, alludes to the building blocks of both words and music, and the programme presents solos and vocal-instrumental duos by Werner herself and seven other contemporary composers, most of them in premiere recordings.

The works range from the immediately inviting (Werner’s own Like Words for soprano and bassoon, which opens proceedings, and Cheryl France-Hoad’s Something More Than Mortal for solo voice), via the more meditative (Comme l’espoir/you might all disappear for voice and guitar by Werner’s long-time musical friend Josephine Stephenson), to pieces which explore the limits and connections between spoken word and music (four of Georges Aperghis’s Récitations, and Werner’s own Confessional). There are pieces where language and music seem to be in a process of disintegration (Oliver Leith’s yhyhyhyhyh for voice and detuned, gamba-like cello) and have even broken down altogether (Elaine Mitchener’s whetdreem for barely articulate vocal noises in the space between consciousness and sleep, against a backdrop of precisely specified sound effects including an array of ticking timepieces).

The common factor across this kaleidoscopic programme is Werner’s extraordinary vocal virtuosity and range, which has invited comparisons with such luminaries as Cathy Berberian and Meredith Monk, and which brings to all these works a sense of commitment and collaboration that is constantly fascinating and engaging. In works that so often rely on the play of words and/or musical cells, she brings a sense of playfulness and colour, relishing the microstructures and fragmentation while sustaining a longer expressive arc. It takes an artist of great inner confidence to project convincingly the self-referential texts common to many of these pieces, and Werner does so triumphantly.

Her collaborators include bassoonist Amy Harman (masterly in the instrument’s upper register in Like Words), guitarist Laura Snowden, flautist Daniel Shao (in Nico Muhly’s captivating Benedicite Recitation, whose opening echoes that of Like Words), and cellist Colin Alexander (who also provides the excellent booklet notes). Percussionist Calum Huggan coordinates the multiple sound effects of whetdreem, while Lawrence Power takes up both violin and viola in the disc’s longest work, Werner’s mesmerisingly brilliant Mixed Phrases on a text by Arthur Rimbaud, commissioned by Power as part of a lockdown project.

While all these duos introduce extra layers of sonority and meaning, the solo vocal items – with Aperghis’s Récitations and Werner’s Unspecified Intentions at their heart – are themselves so richly colourful and brilliantly inflected that, however far from conventional ‘musicality’ they might stray, their virtuosity and multi-layered references ensure the listener’s continued attention. The way in which Aperghis fragments and intercuts words and musical cells in spirals of varying intensity and speed presents a kind of microcosm of the album as a whole. Constantly challenging our expectations, this disc brims over with the best sort of surprises. By turns startling, hypnotic, exuberant and disturbing, it deserves to be heard by anyone with an interest in the art of vocal virtuosity, and in the way that words and music – together and individually – can construct meaning.

Supported by a range of organisations including the RVW and Ambache trusts and the PRS Foundation, and splendidly recorded by the Delphian team, this is one of the most stunning debut albums we’ve heard in a very long time, a magnificent achievement by Héloïse Werner and her musical collaborators.

Reviews

The point where language and music collide is an abiding preoccupation for the French-born, London-based Héloïse Werner, whose new solo album, Phrases (Delphian), displays her versatility as a singer and composer, but as musical catalyst too. ... Werner’s four songs (including Syncopate, with Zoë Martlew), from vocal acrobatics to verbal confession, and Récitations by the Greek experimental composer Georges Aperghis complete this distinctive album. Fiona Maddocks

The Observer 11 June 2022

The French soprano and composer’s debut disc is an engrossing exploration of the range of the human voice, which Werner pushes to its limits and beyond on works by herself and those of fellow visionaries such as Josephine Stephenson, Cheryl Frances-Hoad and Nico Muhly. ... Her readings of four of Georges Aperghis’s 1978 Recitations and Elaine Mitchener’s whetdreem typify a satisfylingly hair-raising voyage to wilder shores.

The Sunday Times

It is hard not to be in awe of Héloïse Werner: a soprano of extraordinary range, tone and vocal abilities, possessing a seemingly inexhaustible expressive range, whether singing, speaking or – as in Elaine Mitchener’s curious, nightmarish, baffling whetdreem – sighing, moaning, and is that snoring at one point? ... It is Werner’s own pieces that I will come back to most often, though: Mixed Phrases, Unspecified Intentions and especially the opening track for voice and bassoon, Like Words, with the terrific Amy Harman as her partner. ... Delphian’s sound is first-rate, catching the full dynamic range and every nuance of Werner’s voice. Guy Rickards

Gramophone July 2022