Christopher Tarnow
New Music
This remarkable new disc of duets by the German team of theremin player Carolina Eyck and pianist-composer Christopher Tarnow is a sneaky delight — you’ll come for the novelty, but stay for the music. The notion of chamber music for this unusual electronic instrument, whose metallic swoops and burbles are most closely associated with science fiction movies, may seem like an improbable stunt at first. But Eyck’s virtuoso mastery of the instrument, and Tarnow’s beautifully expressive (if occasionally overwritten) music, make a powerful case for taking the proposition seriously. Whether out of artistic conviction or simply strategic canniness, Tarnow puts his music very much in the stylistic mainstream — with their mildly dissonant harmonies and melodic fervor, these sonatas sound like something Hindemith might have written. The difference is that the theremin’s sonorities are unique, combining the throatiness of a viola, the silvery sparkle of a flute and the aggressive presence of a trumpet into something all its own. Eyck and Tarnow put those resources to use in music that is ingenious, rhapsodic and wonderfully propulsive.
— Joshua Kosman