Musical America Reviews 'Insects & Machines' Album
Review by Clive Paget, Musical America
“Born in Canada, Vivian Fung studied at the Julliard School and currently lives in California. In her latest recording, Insects & Machines, her finely crafted music references a wide range of cultural experiences—her family escaped the Cambodian genocide—but her four string quartets, recorded by Canada’s Jasper String Quartet, feel rooted in a mid-20th-century European tonality. The likeable First Quartet suggests the influence of Bartók or early Ligeti. The writing is skillful and appealing—the pizzicato third movement is a peach—culminating in a swirling, slashing Perpetuum mobile.
Fung’s Asian heritage informs String Quartet No. 2, which she bases around a Chinese folksong. It’s a warm, sometimes wistful affair in six descriptively titled movements that segue one to the other. “Of the Wind” erupts with rushing, scalar effects, while trills and glissandos evoke the sounds of nature in “Of Birds and Insects.” Stamping rhythms underpin “Of Tribes and Villages,” and the work returns to the ancient Chinese melody in “Of Ghosts and Memories.” The Jaspers prove especially adept at mood painting while taking technical hurdles in their stride.
In the single-movement Third Quartet, microtonal techniques suggest non-Western musical modes, although its language is more suggestive of, say Penderecki, than any specifically Asian model. The writing is bold, multifaceted, and direct, and equally so in the scabrous opening to the Fourth Quartet (also in one movement). Bearing the album’s title as its subtitle, the work was inspired by a walk through a tropical jungle, the string players buzzing and whirring throughout. If you don’t know Fung’s music, the time has come to listen.”