Violist Kim Kashkashian’s 16th recording for ECM, Neharót, meanders through a menagerie of culture-specific laments and prayer-song (Armenian, Israeli and Kurdish, among others). The record’s most compelling track, Israeli composer Betty Olivero’s “Neharót, Neharót” (Hebrew for “rivers, rivers”), refers to the streams of tears shed for the victims of Lebanese violence in 2006.
Olivero leads the Detroit-born violist through a piece that alternately wails in desperation and exalts in hope. Kashkashian expertly inhabits the writing with a tone somewhat resembling the Swedish nyckelharpa. The rosin-on-steel strings murmur, augmenting the composition with immediacy and realism. The 57-year-old traverses Olivero’s gauntlet of a score with enviable dominance over the fingerboard, while the continuity through inaudible bow changes gives the impression that Kashkashian is performing with a seven-foot-long Sartory.
Tigran Mansurian’s “Three Arias,” which he wrote for Kashkashian and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, feels monochromatic by comparison, resulting in a sluggishness that’s no fault of the performance. Yet Kashkashian’s ability to wordlessly evoke intense yearning, even supplication, elevates Neharót as one of the year’s finest albums and another triumph for ECM.
- Doyle Armbrust
published in Time Out Chicago on September 23rd, 2009