Best known for his work with The Cure, keyboardist and pianist Roger O’Donnell has also been busy in recent years composing orchestral works. While already having an impressive catalogue of solo releases under his belt, this collaboration with Julia Kent is something different again, and it’s certainly a far cry from his early days working with The Thompson Twins and The Psychedelic Furs, and owes more to classical and the avant-garde than anything mainstream or rock orientated.
Each of the album’s nine pieces was written for piano and two to four cellos, all of which are played by Julia. Then pair worked with Roger writing and sending the piano files from his studio in rural Devon to Julia, who recorded her parts in her studio in New York. Despite their geographical distance, it feels as though they were in the same room.
‘Love and Other Tragedies’ draws its inspiration from a number of classical stories, with the album effectively composed of three ‘suites’: the first, consisting of ‘Isolde’, ‘Tristan’ and ‘Marke’. The Celtic legend has inspired many retellings, including Wagner’s three-piece opera penned between 1857 and 1859, and is also noteworthy for inspiring one of Salvador Dali’s most ambitious works.
|
It seems entirely fitting, for this too is a highly ambitious work. Each of the three movements within the suite reflect different moods, reflecting the characters, and it’s this capacity to subtly interpret preexisting material in musically articulate was that makes ‘ Love and Other Tragedies’ such a magnificent album.
O’Donnell’s piano work is delicate and evocatively melancholy without being overtly sombre rings out while Kent’s cello work softly entwines around it.
The final triptych, ‘Orpheus and Eurydice’, inspired by the legend which dates back to Virgil in circa 29BC, is an exquisitely tempered and truly magnificent work that’s haunting, powerful and gently moving.
|
