GOOD AS NEW

The second album from the United Strings of Europe features original arrangements of existing works by artistic director Julian Azkoul – but more than this, the works are thematically linked by transformation and loss, as he tells Toby Deller

When the United Strings of Europe (USE) came to a residential part of north London in March 2021, it was to record their second album, Renewal. But they may have regretted the choice of title when the noisy reality of urban redevelopment suddenly intruded on the process.

‘We started recording and we were interrupted after about 45 minutes by some incredibly loud drilling,’ recalls Julian Azkoul, USE’s leader and artistic director, ‘or at least loud enough that it was disturbing the recording. This is the challenge of recording in the city, even at St Silas, a very nice church in Kentish Town where we also recorded our first album. It’s quite built-up around there. We had to put everything on hold while the engineer and producer went to talk to the guys who were working – they seemed to be cutting through the thickest piece of concrete anyone had ever come across.’

Fortunately, the negotiations were successful. After a few stressful hours of uncertainty, the group were able to resume work on Mendelssohn’s last quartet, as arranged for string orchestra by Azkoul himself, and complete it the following day, as planned.

‘I arrange quite a bit of music already for the ensemble, so I’ve always been interested in how arrangements can sometimes shed a different light on a piece of music and provide a different kind of insight to performers and listeners. But on top of the simple act of arranging, a lot of the repertoire we’ve picked for this album is about transformation, change or loss. The idea of renewal, we thought, was also pretty apt given the context of being in a pandemic and hopefully emerging from it, eventually.’

Soprano Ruby Hughes with Julian Azkoul

‘THE IDEA OF RENEWAL WAS APT GIVEN THE CONTEXT OF BEING IN A PANDEMIC AND HOPEFULLY EMERGING FROM IT’ – JULIAN AZKOUL

All the pieces on the album exist in other versions, some in arrangements by their composers, as with the string orchestra version (2014) of Caroline Shaw’s Entr’acte (originally for string quartet, 2011), and Osvaldo Golijov’s Three Songs (whose original 2002 version is for soprano and full orchestra, but which is here recorded in its 2009 string orchestra version). The other arrangements are by Azkoul, such as an instrumental version of a short piece originally written for unaccompanied male vocal ensemble, Joanna Marsh’s In Winter’s House (2019), produced with input from the composer. ‘It’s not a religious poem,’ says Azkoul of the Jane Draycott text originally set by Marsh, ‘but it paints a very wintry scene – desolate, but, as the poem says, with a child in this house who’s dreaming. We thought that tied in with the message of renewal. Whether the child is a symbol of spring or something else is up to each person to interpret.’

He has also included another transcription of a vocal piece, Shaw’s And the Swallow (2017), the final track on the album. Is there a particular appeal for string players in vocal music? ‘There’s so much commonality,’ he asserts. ‘String writing and vocal writing in many ways are very different, but in the way you think of range and how you deploy voices contrapuntally or even in harmony, there’s a lot of commonality. It’s particularly the timbre and the aesthetic of voices that I find so appealing.’

There are other aspects of this piece by Shaw that make it particularly suitable for the album. For one thing, it is a setting of Psalm 84, commonly included at dedications of new churches. Also, explains Azkoul, ‘The composer says quite clearly in an interview that it was inspired by the universal need for a home and by the Syrian civil war and refugee crisis, and the migrant situation on the southern border in the US as well. That particularly resonated with me because here we were during the pandemic, all at home, and it occurred to me more than once just how fortunate I was to have a home that I could be safe in and live in, and just how much more difficult the pandemic would have been for people who don’t have a fixed home, or are homeless, destitute or displaced.’

The United Strings of Europe at St Silas the Martyr Church, London, for the recording of Renewal

PHOTOS DIMITRI DJURIC

Azkoul, having said that, does add an important qualification. ‘I’m wary of seeing refugees and asylum seekers as this helpless bunch who have nothing and are bereft. They deserve our support because of what’s happened to them, but they should also be welcomed and encouraged by their country of destination to fulfil their potential.’ As a group dedicated to promoting musical and cultural cooperation, USE’s own involvement with refugees and asylum seekers, alongside its musical interest in themes surrounding migration (their first album was entitled In Motion), long pre-dates Covid-19. ‘We’ve had a long relationship in our outreach work with various minority groups, many of them refugees and asylum seekers. My mother’s a UN diplomat for the International Organization for Migration, so I’ve grown up being highly aware. And, of course, people’s awareness of how many really are displaced seems to be growing, especially now, with climate change.’

The theme of migration runs through Golijov’s Three Songs, reflecting the composer’s own mixed heritage. The texts he sets are in Yiddish, Galician and English respectively; Golijov, whose parents were Romanian Jews, grew up in Argentina and now lives in the US. The choice of piece also allowed USE to work with the Welsh soprano Ruby Hughes – another new departure, since it is their first collaboration. ‘There’s something appealing about working with a solo artist who has such clarity to what they are doing,’ says Azkoul. ‘She has a pure timbre but it’s also very distinctive – it’s unmistakably her. It’s so exciting to work with someone who’s distinctive in that way.’

And she’s not just distinctive but confident enough to add her own adjustments to Golijov’s setting: ‘She changed some of the vocal lines,’ explains Azkoul. ‘The second song, “Lúa descolorida”, which means “discoloured moon” in Galician, originally ends in a very high tessitura for the soprano. It’s quite strong and brilliant, and Ruby decided that she would like to end on a more intimate note, so sings it down the octave. Golijov wrote to me and said: “I wish I’d thought of that!” The purity of her voice, particularly at that moment, is beguiling and she draws the listener in.’

There were other changes while preparing for the sessions too, thanks to the newness of the arrangements and the fact that, unlike with In Motion, USE had not had the opportunity to perform the music before recording it. ‘There was a lot of figuring out and tinkering during the rehearsals because what you think is going to sound good doesn’t necessarily work. Even during the recording we made changes. That whole final passage of the first movement of the Mendelssohn in the first violins, which is fiendishly difficult –I was going to play that solo. We decided, during the recording sessions, that everyone in the section was going to play, and it sounds brilliant.’

Indeed, I tell Azkoul how struck I was by how involved the players were during the session I attended, and I wondered if the fact they were dressed all in black was to encourage them to treat it as if they were performing. In fact, Azkoul admits, that was because the sessions were being filmed for presentational material. ‘But,’ he adds, ‘I was surprised looking back at the video from the sessions: it really looks like we’re performing. I wasn’t expecting that. You do get the occasional eye-roll when something goes wrong in a take you know you’re going to have to stop, which in a performance you wouldn’t do. But I agree with you. I guess that’s just how we play!’

WORKS Golijov Three Songs for soprano and string orchestra Marsh In Winter’s House (arr. Azkoul) Mendelssohn String Quartet no.6 in F minor op.80 (arr. Azkoul) Shaw Entr’acte (string orchestra version). And the Swallow (arr. Azkoul)

ARTISTS Ruby Hughes (sop) United Strings of Europe/Julian Azkoul (violin)

RECORDING VENUE St Silas the Martyr Church, London, UK

RECORDING DATES 8–9 and 25–26 March 2021

CATALOGUE NO. BIS-2549

RELEASE DATE 7 January 2022