Adrián Demoè — Zamat

Zamat brings together three modern chamber works from Slovak composer Adrián Demoè. The pieces have runtimes between ten and thirty minutes, with the tone hovering between fragile, felt, and melancholy pressing.  They are all played with skill and emotional depth by the highly respected modern ensemble Apartment House.

The CD album appears on the always worthy Another Timbre- been presented in the label house style sparse white mini gatefold packaging. This features on its front cover a black and yellow artwork of a sprawled shape, which seems water warped.

The pieces here date from between 2023 and 2024. First up we have the title track, which is the shortest of the three tracks at just under the eleven-minute mark. It’s for clarinet, bass clarinet, viola, and cello. It’s built around a plucking/ hovering tone- initial it repeats the same glum note pattern, but as we go on this shifts slight- either adding in subtle pitch shift, longer sustain, or more lenghty silence between the repetition. To me the track gives the feeling of trying to change/ alter something- be it an emotional mood, or difficult situation- but you just keep get stuck like a fly in a web, not far from where you first started.

Next, we have “Gebrechlichkeit”- this is for  two violins, a viola and a cello. It’s built around a locked sweeping/ swooning tone, which has moments of dwelling dirge-ness or sudden breaks of silence. This piece is very heavy with it's pressing/ pushing down melancholy vibe- as you progress through the track it just seems to get heavier and heavier with this bleak pressing feeling- it also seems as if the instruments are slowing/ becoming more starkly pulled out/ malevolent, though this could well be a sonic illusion. Towards it’s end we get suddenly very loud sustain, really making you jump- as you are so used to the lulling sonic greyness…though it fairly soon returns to it's orginal state, as the track comes to an end.

Finally, we have “...o protón jasu....” which is for two clarinets, a viola and a cello. It opens up with a slowly warbling and whistling pitch- which seems to slowly waver & haze-out it’s self- feel fraught and fragile, yet at points  it’s  quite shrill. As things develop there’s hints of an  almost harmonic simmer to proceedings- though it still all remains in the higher tonal range. Of the three tracks here, this is the most semi-hopeful, but it’s a hope that is warped and wavered- so as to create a feeling of forlorn and fragile decline.

Zamat features three effective journeys into sombre and lightly seared chamber music. This is now the third album I’ve heard  from Mr   Demoè, and if you’re a fan of string/ wind bound modern classic music- his work will appeal,