Czernowin: Shifting Gravity

WERGO presents first recordings of chamber music works by the Israeli composer Chaya Czernowin. The eponymous series of works, 'Shifting Gravity', from 2008 connects the string quartets 'Anea Christal' with the compositions 'Sheva' and 'Sahaf'. The second part of the CD consists of the 'Winter Songs III' (2003). This WERGO production shows a different side of the artist who was born in Haifa in 1957 and who, up to now, has been appreciated mainly for her stage works, in particular for the much noticed music theatre play 'Pnima ... Ins Innere' or her adaptation of Mozart's 'Zaïde / Adama'. The instrumental works were all created after the music-theatre plays, associating notions like paralysis, adherence, proliferation. The field of tension resulting therefrom corresponds with Czernowin's own descriptions: 'Anea is the imaginary name of a 'music crystal' created from a latticework of corresponding musical gestures according to the model of an ionic crystal'. 'Winter Songs' are described by her as follows: 'The whole cycle reflects the aspect of winter which is about being pulled into the inner cave... At the same time, underneath, in the ground, the roots of life slowly grow stiff and blindly start to search for a path between the stones'.