Anamnesis, Ecumenical Mysteries
CD Anamnesis, Ecumenical Mysteries (first version, 1992)
Published by Victo, Canada, 1996
Performed by Ritual Nova Ensemble:
Jaroslava Benka – soprano
Mihal Budimski – violin
Nebojša Pandurović – cello
Srdjan Dalagija – piano
Ljubomir Živković – persussion
Boris Kovač – reeds
1 The Voice
2 The Travel
3 White Cities
4 The Singing
Description
Anamnesis has a clearly chamber music set up, solemn atmospheres, minimalist innuendos, quasi-orchestral sonori-ties. Its evocative sonic landscapes, of a tormenting beauty, could be viewed as part of the ongoing spiritual renewal characteristic of many contemporary East-European composers such as Arvo Pärt and Henryk Górecki.
Nevertheless, Kovac’s music language is far more impure and contaminated. It reveals the composer’s Serbian, Hungarian and Rumanian roots and discloses similarities with the darker side of Rock In Opposition (bands such as France’s Art Zoyd and Belgium’s Univers Zero, which, paradoxically, were the less «rock» of the groups involved), as well as with the Third Ear Band, combined with the manifest influence of Béla Bartók and Balkan folk music. As Boris Kovac stated : «Music is the last consolation between heaven and earth»; Anamnesisis indeed consolatory and its implications are extremely poignant: a hymn to acceptance, dialogue and understanding coming from a tortured and torn land.
Fabrizio Gilardino, from the CD booklet
