Swapping to the Future Dream, a cable that is almost laughably slight compared to the heavyweight American offering, is sonically and musically transformative. The space within the stage opens out, clearly defining the position of the two instruments, the guitar with its horizontal strings, the cello standing vertical. The AQ cables certainly placed the instruments, but they failed to define relative size, or deliver anything like the degree of spatial focus and information. But more problematic was their failure to capture the musical relationship between the two instruments, the tonal distinctions, the different way in which they generate their notes. The Future Dreams perfectly capture the plucked notes of the guitar, the drawn bow of the cello. The two players are in rhythmic lockstep, their musical conversation, phrasing and the expressive input they inject into their note shape and spacing making for an intimate, lucid and emotive performance.
Put the Future Dream alongside the AQ cables and it either lacks or sheds weight, depending on your point of view. There’s no escaping the fact that the American cables offer significantly greater body and presence – but at what musical cost? Perhaps a more sensible comparison is with the Brandt cables that match the effortlessly expressive musical flow of the Crystals, but combine it with a warmer, more natural harmonic development. Where they can’t compete is in terms of resolution, something that is almost brutally apparent on piano. The AQ cables succeed in making Clifford Curzon’s gracefully fluid Mozart Piano Concerto No20 (with Benjamin Britten and the ECO, Decca/Esoteric ESSD90014) sound plonky and mechanical, the orchestral backing thick and stiff. It takes the Future Dreams to restore Curzon’s deft finger-work, mastery of note weight and phrasing, the ECO’s fluid and finely graduated accompaniment – not to mention reminding us that Britten was no mean conductor, as well as a composer.
The more you pare away the music, the more obvious the Crystal’s strengths become. Claire Huangci playing the piano transcription of Rhapsody In Blue is the perfect case in point (Made In USA, Alpha Classics 1071). The clarity with which the Future Dreams track not just the weight and impetus of the individual notes, but their decay and the space between them invests the performance, with poise, delicacy, purpose and sensitivity. They capture the scale and vibrant, layered complexity of her Yamaha piano. The cables’ ability to reveal subtle micro-dynamic shifts brings an articulate flexibility and constantly evolving sense of pace to proceedings, pulling in the listener as easily as it reveals Huangci’s impressive expressive range. The variation in note-weight, attack and spacing is what makes this performance special, bringing a new, almost playful perspective to the familiar music – a perspective that seems just right.
Once identified, that expressive range, dynamic discrimination, textural and tonal separation and the overall sense of space and order translate easily and identifiably to larger and more complex works. The Rachel Podger/Brecon Baroque discs, with their intricate arrangements and overlapping iinstrumental lines are an obvious example, but don’t make the mistake of assuming that these cables are all about small scale, acoustic music. Just as the Future Dreams capture the sheer energy and vivacity of Amandine Beyer and Gli Incogniti, so their quick, responsive clarity brings purpose and direction to music as varied as the Basie Big Band and Crowded House. The pulsing, undulating rhythm of ‘Fall At Your Feet’ (Woodface, Capitol EST 2144) has rarely throbbed with such a licentious groove, the slurred limp of ‘Whispers And Moans’ sounded so insistently seductive. The sparky piano stabs and broken line that open ‘Beaver Junction’ (Farmers Market Barbeque, Analogue Productions APLP874-45) have a natural sense of space and timing that speaks volumes about the temporal security and articulation that the cables bring to the system as a whole.
