Christopher Tyler Nickel (1978-)
Suite pour 2 hautbois et 2 cors anglais
Symphony pour chœur de flûtes

Roger Cole, hautbois
Karin Walsh, hautbois
Beth Orson, cor anglais
Erin Marks, cor anglais
Sarah Jackson, piccolo
Christie Reside, flûte
Rosanne Wieringa, flûte
Laura Vanek, flûte
Paul Hung, flûte
Anne-Elise Keefer, flûte alto
Paolo Bortolussi, flûte basse
Clyde Mitchell, direction

Singulièrement productif (de nombreux albums, des centaines de musiques pour le cinéma ou la télévision), Christopher Tyler Nickel (1978-) propose, sur cette réédition, deux œuvres pour ensembles à vent, publiées initialement en 2019 et ici soigneusement remasterisées. Les quatre mouvements de la Suite pour 2 hautbois et 2 cors anglais se fondent, chacun, sur une des prières chrétiennes qui tiennent le plus à cœur au compositeur canadien : au moyen d’instruments qu’il affectionne d’autant plus qu’ils l’ont accompagné tout au long de sa formation musicale, il travaille le contraste pour communiquer, d’une façon non figurative, l’émotion et l’esprit de ces moments touchants de la liturgie. Avec la Symphonie pour chœur de flûtes (flûtes en do, piccolo, flûte alto et flûte basse), Nickel s’attache, au travers du développement des différents thèmes, à élargir la palette sonore d’un ensemble aux timbres naturellement homogènes et la richesse émotionnelle d’une pièce d’envergure (35 minutes) dont la dynamique des quatre parties, va d’anguleuse à dramatique, en passant par introspective et vive. (Bernard Vincken)

Canadian composer Christopher Tyler Nickel’s penchant for imaginative combinations of instruments translates to his latest release, Music for Woodwind Choirs, which includes “Suite for Two Oboes and Two English Horns”, and “Symphony for Flute Choir”.lineAward-winning Canadian composer Christopher Tyler Nickel’s penchant for imaginative combinations of instruments translates to his latest AVIE release, Music for Woodwind Choirs. Each movement of the “Suite for Two Oboes and Two English Horns”, takes its title from four prayers in the Christian liturgy – Kyrie, Dies Irae, Lacrimosa, Gloria – each one an abstract representation of the overall spirit and sentiment of these devotions. Christopher’s “Symphony for Flute Choir” is a larger scale work for four flutes, plus piccolo, alto and bass flutes, that embodies an emotional breadth on a symphonic scale.lineThe Suite for Two Oboes and Two English Horns (2017), consists of four movements that take their titles from the Christian liturgy. Each movement is an abstract representation of the overall spirit and emotion of each of these prayers. The movements consist of what I find to be four of the most poignant as well as contrasting of the prayers: the Kyrie, the Dies Irae, the Lacrimosa, and ending with the Gloria. Having played the oboe and English horn throughout my formative musical years through to my completion of university, I have an inherent love for these instruments and writing for them. Oboists lack a large selection of serious repertoire for choirs of their instruments and my hope is that this piece will help fill some of that need in additional to encouraging others to write for this fascinating timbral combination. The Symphony for Flute Choir (2017) is a larger scale work for standard flute choir consisting of four movements. In composing this piece, my goal was to give the flute choir a serious piece of music with the emotional breadth that comes in writing a piece of a symphonic scale. As with most of my music, there is no programme or narrative to this piece. Rather, the movements revolve around often angular ideas, many mixed asymmetric metres, and contrasts between slow, sometimes emotionally ambivalent sections and more driving and jagged movements of ever-increasing amounts of tension.