Intrigue and violence in Caroline Shaw: The Wheel from I Giardini — album review

Throughout the past century American composers have showed a splendidly uninhibited attitude towards their calling. Some, such as Gershwin and Bernstein, forged a hotline to a populist audience. Others, such as Ives and Cage, ploughed individual experimental furrows.

This refusal to fall into neat categories continues unabated. Caroline Shaw has crossed many musical boundaries, going on tour with Kanye West, writing film scores, playing as soloist in her violin concerto and composing a wide range of works across the classical spectrum.

This latest disc brings together a selection of her small-scale pieces, mostly focusing on the cello. The French collective I Giardini write that they fell in love with Shaw’s music from the first notes and the works they have chosen offer “a journey along seemingly familiar paths, but with the promise of constant new discoveries en route”.

The album takes its title from The Wheel (2021) for cello and piano, which opens with a Baroque solo cello line, over which other ideas gradually circle. In Shaw’s words, it gives “the feeling of walking alone through the city at night accompanied by one’s inner voices and reflections”.

Making much of little is the discipline that binds each of the six pieces together. Gustave Le Gray takes a Chopin mazurka and weaves Shaw’s own ideas over and around it. Limestone & Felt contrasts hard and soft surfaces on solo cello and viola. All are intriguing, sometimes violent, sometimes tender, and all get admirable performances from I Giardini.

★★★★☆

‘Caroline Shaw: The Wheel’ is released by Alpha