Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

"Hollows out of time" is a new work by Aria-nominated composer Erik Griswold, commissioned by HLC for the 2018 launch of Bruce Wolfe's new chamber music building, Lagavulin. "Hollows" combines the unusual and percussive sounds of the prepared piano with string quartet, resulting in a fresh take on a traditional ensemble. Camerata String Quartet manages to produce an impossible range of tone colours, at times blending seamlessly with the piano's intricate, percussive ostinatos, and at other times taking flight on its own, building up soulful and joyous layers of texture. Together, Griswold and Camerata capture a huge variety of musical styles, from blues (Blues intrusion) and bossa nova (Águas do tempo), to renaissance (Palestrina's squeaky wheel), hard bop (Relativity Trane), and even hard rock (Another stone in the wall).

"Hollows out of time" takes its title from the venue for which it was composed, Lagavulin, meaning "hollow before the mill," and is at the same time a nod to Griswold's composition teacher Roger Reynolds, whose haunting string orchestra piece "Whispers out of time" won the Pulitzer Prize in 1989. Recorded in Lagavulin just after the premiere, engineer Myles Mumford has recreated the intimate acoustic of the room superbly.

Palestrina's squeaky wheel (2:43) -- Humid hours (4:07) -- Water dripping into stone (4:24) -- Rock pools (2:28) -- Blues intrusion (2:35) -- Whorls and eddies (3:10) -- A touch of noir (4:22) -- Drifting clouds (4:31) -- Relativity Trane (2:40) -- Another stone in the wall (3:41) -- Águas do tempo (3:09).