This short (26-minute-long) album showcases four pieces for solo violin by the British-Iranian composer Soosan Lolavar, composed for the stunning violinist Sarah Saviet, who is based in Berlin and regularly performs with the Riot Ensemble. In fact, the second track, ‘Undone’, was the first of the four to be composed, during the 2020 lockdown as part of the Riot Ensemble's Zeitgeist series of works for solo performers.
The Zeitgeist series was written for musicians who, of necessity, were only able to make music on their own and share their art online. Lolavar explained in a video introduction that the title ‘Undone’ references how she was feeling during lockdown, when everything that kept her secure was being moved in a way that wasn't entirely comfortable.Footnote 1 Many of us will recognise her mixed feelings of vulnerability and destabilisation, combined with the odd normality of being at home all the time.
The most unusual feature of Every Strand of Thread and Rope is the tuning of the violin, which moves the instrument into territory closer to the viola. Laura Tunbridge's programme note explains that ‘Lolavar devised her initial pitch materials on the santoor, a hammered dulcimer that is tuned to a particular mode; in other words, it cannot modulate midway through a piece. She sent her ideas to Saviet, who explored them on a violin tuned down a minor sixth.’ This is scordatura taken to an extreme. Apparently, the use of tremolando and glissando ‘nod to traditional santoor techniques’, and ‘the emphasis on limited pitch materials relates to Iranian classical music and its melodic focus on the interval of a tetrachord’. This exploration of ideas from both Western and Iranian classical traditions is characteristic of Lolavar's musical style.
The extreme scordatura means the violinist does not have total control of the instrument: the looser strings produce unplanned pitch shifts and harmonics, but at the same time, things never completely fall apart, as it still sounds like a violin. ‘Undone’ has both ‘tense’ and ‘cantabile’ sections: the tense ones feature hushed, mysterious tremolandi interspersed with silences, giving the impression of suspended time; in the cantabile sections, the violin's line is raw, exposed and vibratoless, audibly breaking free of Western equal temperament. It seems to be constantly on the edge of breaking into a sustained melody, though the line is also undermined from within, interrupted by scratchy friction.
The other three pieces followed in 2022; all feature the same tuning as ‘Undone’ and are based on the same mode. ‘Warp’ focuses very much on the lower range of the instrument, which is greatly extended by the downward tuning, with the violin sounding like a rather saggy viola. Saviet's scraping of the strings, at first delicate but increasing in momentum, results in unexpected sounds, sometimes grainy and sometimes producing harmonics. The piece has an improvisatory feel: the score features shapes which suggest, but do not prescribe, what the performer should play.
‘Fibres’, the longest piece on the album at eight minutes in duration, is ‘meditative, light’ according to the composer, and again silence plays a significant role in the discourse. The piece is so intimate and fragile that it could only truly work as a recorded artefact; the music, shifting between natural and harmonic sounds, often exists on the border of inaudibility, and the listener is constantly aware of the physical motion of the violinist activating the bow against the string.
On the other hand, the performance direction for ‘Chainmail’ is ‘boldly, like a ritual’, and its loud dynamic level provides a refreshingly direct contrast with the fragility of much of the rest of this recording. The structure of ‘Chainmail’ is repetitive, almost minimalist in its effect, but the repetitions gradually become less exact and take us in different directions. About two thirds of the way through the piece, a striking rhythmic figure turns the detuned violin into a strident instrument, and shortly afterwards, the music ends abruptly. Saviet's committed performance powerfully conveys the ritualistic quality of this final work of the collection.
The title Every Strand of Thread and Rope is not only a metaphor; it aptly draws attention to the physical properties of the instrument. Saviet's violin is close mic'd, picking up every grain of the violin sound, all the friction of bow against string, all the harmonics, as if the sonority of the instrument has been magnified. It is refreshing to hear that something creative arose from the COVID-19 pandemic, and even more heartening that the more extroverted mood of the last piece on this album moves us back to music that would work well in live performance.
