PROVOCATIVE THOUGHTS: 
The late Patric Standford may have written these short pieces deliberately to provoke our feedback. If so, his success is reflected in the rich range of readers' comments appearing at the foot of most of the pages.
Together
KEITH BRAMICH listens to Arnaud Fillion's 'Kune'
'... surprisingly accessible, varied, mostly traditional sounding and upbeat.'
When albums used to arrive on plastic, with a paper booklet, it was easy to identify the product being sold or reviewed. One of the problems of reviewing albums in our digital world is that it can sometimes be difficult to know exactly what one is reviewing. This is somehow true of this recent album of the music of French composer and musician Arnaud Fillion-Robin, born in Annecy in 1979, and also known as 'Arnito' and Arnaud Fillion. He's known for his work in the jazz, world music and classical genres, and has produced twenty-two albums of his own music.
First of all, what exactly is this music, and in which languages is it being sung? Is it a choral-orchestral work with vocal soloists, consisting of the eleven pieces supplied in the download I received? The composer describes it as a 'unique songbook', translated from the original French into about fifty languages by volunteers all over the world. Elsewhere it's described as 'a multi-language music creation for peace, written for choir, soloists and symphony orchestra'. The information provided with my eleven received tracks is quite sparse, but information about this project is also available in various places online.
Kune, the title of this work, dating from 2018, means 'together' in Esperanto. Using many languages, it seems, the performers sing about peace and humankind's common concerns, and everything - recording, score and performing materials - appears to be available for free, for the common good.
What wasn't at all clear to me is which languages are being used at which time in which movements - perhaps performing alternatives are provided, I thought? - or how the performance and recording came to be staged last year in Ukraine. Surely there's a story here, but this isn't made clear.
The album is provided to the public via a series of streaming services, and distributed via Naxos, including being available free and unrestricted on YouTube in two forms: one equivalent to the audio tracks I received for review from the first recording, but also as a complete video of a performance, both made in Lviv, Ukraine, in 2023.
There's no 'booklet' with the recording as such, but a press release and a composer biography are available, and a full score of the music is available online. Studying the score and watching the video make things much clearer ... the orchestral forces would best be described as a chamber orchestra, and the choir in Lviv was quite small - twenty-three singers, including the soloists.
The score also details the many languages used. Often these are very small fragments of text in each language, and sometimes there are several languages sounding simultaneously, which to my ear is quite confusing. In the movement Lemah cai ('Promised Land'), for example, one can hear Azeri, Dioula and Serbian language text being sung more or less at the same time, or rather one would be able to hear this if the choir bass section had actually sung what's in the score. We mustn't be too hard on them ... who knows under what conditions they had to rehearse and perform in Lviv, courtesy of Mr Putin?
Listen — Arnaud Fillion: Lemah cai (Kune)
(Phasma-Music 081 track 7, 3:00-3:54) ℗ 2024 Phasma-Music :
The album begins with Tara udayo ('Stars are born'), featuring a dramatic orchestral introduction before the choir enters, singing, in order of first appearance, in Russian, Greek, Malagasy, Hungarian, Lingala, Spanish and Nepali.
Listen — Arnaud Fillion: Tara udayo (Kune)
(Phasma-Music 081 track 1, 1:10-2:07) ℗ 2024 Phasma-Music :
This is followed by the reflective Yalnız değiliz ('Never alone') beginning with alto solo and harp, then becoming a duet with tenor and further instruments. Soon the full choir and orchestra is in play. Here the languages used are Turkish, Persian, Swahili, Burmese and Kannada.
Listen — Arnaud Fillion: Yalnız değiliz (Kune)
(Phasma-Music 081 track 2, 1:59-2:57) ℗ 2024 Phasma-Music :
The experience then continues with Bukhnees iluu ('Beyond all'), sung in Hindi, Swedish, Bahasa Indonesian, Igbo, Mongolian, Hebrew and Arabic, Jituwa ('Harmony') sung in Hausa, English, French, Hungarian, Japanese, Portuguese, Romanian, Italian and Spanish, and Ima to yu toki ('The present', or literally 'Now and then' in Japanese), with words in Oriya (Odia), Dutch, French, Japanese and English.
Das Übel soll weichen von hier ('The evil must depart from here' or 'Let the evil go elsewhere'), sung in German, Georgian, Catalan, Polish and Vietnamese, begins with the instruction to create 'figurative orchestral improvisation on the theme of "Evil"', producing the least tonal sounding effect in the whole piece.
Listen — Arnaud Fillion: Das Übel soll weichen von hier (Kune)
(Phasma-Music 081 track 6, 0:00-0:51) ℗ 2024 Phasma-Music :
The final movements are Lemah cai ('Promised Land'), Ainga vaovao ('A new start' or 'Saving breath'), Maytan risunchis ('Where are we going'), Occhi chiusi ('Eyelids closed') and finally Kokama putulu ('Become dust').
Listen — Arnaud Fillion: Kokama putulu (Kune)
(Phasma-Music 081 track 11, 2:17-3:06) ℗ 2024 Phasma-Music :
Overall, the music is surprisingly accessible, varied, mostly traditional sounding and upbeat. This is a credible project which is very listenable.
Copyright © 5 October 2024
Keith Bramich,
Herefordshire, UK
