Haimovitz’ Third PRIMAVERA Album

About two and a half weeks ago, PENTATONE released the third of six albums that, when complete, will account for the 81 new solo compositions commissioned by and for cellist Matt Haimovitz, all sharing the title PRIMAVERA. This past March this site discussed the content of the first and second albums, preceded by a report of Haimovitz’ solo recital for San Francisco Performances at the end of February. The title of the new album is PRIMAVERA III – the vessel.

Like the first two albums, the third is currently available only for download. The above hyperlink leads to the MP3 Album Web page created by Amazon.com. Once again, no digital booklet is included with the download. Fortunately, there is, once again, a PENTATONE Web page that provides the track listing, an adequate account of all of the tracks, and a hyperlink for further information. In terms of my personal context, this new release includes one of the works that was given its world premiere performance as part of Haimovitz’ February recital, “Philip’s Song,” composed by Philip Glass.

courtesy of PENTATONE

As was discussed in the account of that recital, the name of the Primavera Project comes from the title of a massive canvas by Sandro Botticelli, which is probably his best-known painting. The project itself was a call-and-response undertaking, the response being a large-scale painting by contemporary artist Charline von Heyl inspired by Botticelli’s Primavera. Each album, in turn, accounts for composer commissions that were based on a specific region of von Heyl’s canvas. Each of those regions, in turn, is presented as the “album cover” (which can be seen above but not included in the full-album download Amazon Web page).

Readers may recall that I listened to the first two albums in this series in reverse order, beginning with PRIMAVERA II – the rabbits. Five of the tracks on that album had been included in Haimovitz’ recital and had not yet faded from memory. Unfortunately, without that memory of the performance experience, PRIMAVERA I – the wind failed to hold my attention over the course of its fourteen tracks. The new release has only ten tracks; but I found myself having to contend with what I like to call “one-damned-thing-after-another mode.”

The Primavera Project is clearly an ambitious undertaking; but i am beginning to wonder whether the idea looked better “on the drawing board” than it did when confronting the listener through recordings, if not through recital settings.