Wamba by Ohana on Harpsichord

Wamba from Deux Piece for Clavecin (1982-83) is the first movement from the suite and is deeply reminiscent of Ohana's composition from 1968 "Carillons Pour Les Heures Du Jour Et De La Nuit". Wamba is a much later work and his maturity as a composer is much more clear. In this piece and in Wamba, Ohana is trying to replicate majestic sounds of church bells. This is an age old feat, composers such as William Byrd were attempting to do this in the renaissance period and other keyboardists such as François Couperin followed suit. Ohana's pieces are more deeply sonorous and avant garde in style. Ohana wrote the piece based on the bells of the Eglise Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois in Paris then transcribed it for harpsichord. There is a theory that Ohana heard an insect of some form buzzing inside the bell which accounts for some of the smaller sounds heard in the piece outside of the crashing thunderous sonorities that are heard throughout the piece. Wamba is an incredibly free piece for the performer, there are numerous occasions were the harpsichordist is able to utilize his own choice of rhythm and harmonies and it has many wonderful uses of tone clusters to really bring out the sound of the instrument. Recorded live in concert, San Francisco Conservatory of Music 2011 . Music and notes by Contemporary Harpsichordist Christopher D. Lewis on my own Eric Herz Harpsichord with 16'

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• wamba
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[jvinikour]

Very nice - the beginning really is reminiscent of Carillons. The Herz sounds very fine.

[gidimeir]

Enjoyed the piece, your playing and your sound on your Hertz (and Mme's 16' - "the low register")