KNEHANS Backwards from Winter • Judith Weusten (sop); Antonis Pratsinakis (electric vc); Douglas Knehans (electronics) • ABLAZE 00054 (61:07 Text and Translation)

An astonishingly visceral Winterreise for the 21st century, Douglas Knehans’s Backwards from Winter is a single woman’s reflection on a love relationship—a space for grief, and her negotiating of that grief. It is scored for solo soprano (“Woman”); there is a part for “Man” as exteriorized in the form of an electric cellist who also sings, and an electronic component. There is also a video, which sadly is absent in this audio release, although its contents are described in the booklet and a YouTube video of the Australian premiere is available.

The superb libretto is by Juanita Rockwell: Each scene is cast in three Tanka verses (a 31-syllable precursor to Haiku; the word “tanka” means “short poem”). The journey begins with “Winter” and moves through the seasons, with the first three seasons followed by a section that remembers it (so, “Winter” is followed by “Remembering Winter” and so on); with the coming of “Spring,” however, the music moves to “Remembering Everything.” The setting is “the landscape of memory and presence.” Tracing a year backwards, from the grief through to the loss itself (“Autumn,” where she lost him in a storm) through to a passionate “Summer” to their budding love in “Spring,” this is a remarkable journey. The emotional effect of the time-reversal is astonishing, as it enables us to hear the joy of first encounter and subsequent love in a totally different manner. The shimmering “Summer” is nevertheless underpinned by a palpable sadness, and when the two voices (soprano and singing cellist) enter together, the effect is stunningly powerful. The opening out into “Spring” is superbly managed through the active electric cello; later, a dark processional around the lines “we stand on the shore, / lilac blossoms ev’rywhere,” with muffled percussion-like sounds (imagine the dead thwacks of Mahler’s 10th Symphony, but on a gong, if you will). It is here the electronica makes its presence known most obviously—swirling lines interacting with the electric cello as the voice swoops hither and thither, sometimes to stratospheric regions. If the repetitive phrases of the electronics and cello refer to Minimalism, it is a highly individualized Minimalism. (One might posit that the repeated slow scales towards the end make reference to Satyagraha, for example, with Knehans grounding the sound through a registrally-emphasized bass note.)

This performance took place in Tasmania in June 2018, shortly after the work’s world premiere in New York’s Thalia Theater on 25/5/2018, during the New York Opera Fest. The recording is stunning, as is the standard of performance from both live musicians; it is hard to credit that this is indeed live from that perspective. Weusten in particular seems to have limitless stamina. One of Knehans’s finest musical statements, this is a stunning release. This is what contemporary opera should be like.

—Colin Clarke