Month: December 2018

Best of, CD Review, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Opera

Noteworthy in 2018: Schell’s picks

Unlike those big-media favorites lists that appear in mid-December to grease the skids of the Great Shopping Season, my year-end reckonings dawdle until the last moment and don’t claim to define the best of anything. But with audio streaming, social media and other factors pushing the contemporary music landscape into an increasingly variegated but fragmented state, some measure of thoughtful inventorying seems both prudent and practical. In that spirit, here’s a biased and opinionated survey of albums and other media released in 2018 that made an impact on me.

Stage to screen

New music theater was a recurring theme during the year. Tops in prominence was the premiere of Kurtág’s Fin de Partie at La Scala, but we’re still waiting for that to be recorded. Another notable 2018 event was the US premiere of Saariajo’s chamber opera Only the Sound Remains (its European video release was one of my picks in 2017). Over in the UK, a string of high-profile operatic premieres—including Muhly’s Marnie, Dean’s Hamlet and Adès’s The Exterminating Angel—reached an apex with the captivating Lessons in Love and Violence by George Benjamin. Its libretto, which Martin Crimp adapted from Marlowe’s play Edward II, divides the palace intrigue into seven scenes, and shoehorned into a tight 90 minute span, the result invites comparisons with Wozzeck (though Berg, when faced with the insane King’s insistence that “I can hear drumming”, would surely have used the orchestra to depict his deluded reality, whereas Benjamin depicts things as they really are). Lessons is similar in style to Hamlet and Angel, but Benjamin’s textures are thinner and clearer, and thus seem more varied and communicative by comparison.

Lessons in Love and Violence (photo: ROH/Stephen Cummiskey)

You can view streaming video of the Royal Opera’s premiere production at medici.tv (subscription required) or purchase it on Blu-ray. Highlights include the powerful second scene where three peasants describe their impoverished agony to the callous Queen Isabel (played by Barbara Hannigan). One peasant asks why both the poor and the rich sleep three-to-a-bed (the latter alluding to Edward’s same-sex consort Gaveston). Another fine moment is the brief threnody for Edward that features cimbalom and Iranian tombak drums (one of the opera’s few nods to beat-driven vernacular music). Benjamin’s use of cimbalom and two harps is effective throughout: they seldom play simultaneously, but working in tandem they create a soundscape rich in struck/plucked string sonorities.

Musgrave with another famous female British politician (photo: John Stillwell/PA Wire)

Speaking of British royalty, there’s Thea Musgrave’s Mary Queen of Scots, wherein Scotland’s most famous female composer weighs in on its most famous female politician. The long-unavailable 1978 recording of this most admired of Musgrave operas has finally reappeared in celebration of her 90th birthday (Amazon, Spotify, YouTube). While Lessons in Love and Violence belongs to the Tippett tradition of English-language opera, Mary is squarely within the more conservative Britten lineage, but its style is still contemporary and unsentimental. My favorite moment comes in the ballroom scene where one courtier starts up a bawdy reel to disrupt Mary’s dance with a rival, the musics clashing like the men’s ambitions. Won’t someone revive this work onstage in lieu of yet another production of Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda?

Shell Shock (photo: Filip Van Roe)

In November 2018, while various world leaders were in France commemorating the end of WW1 (or in Trump’s case, hiding indoors from the rain), Parisian audiences took in a concert staging of Nicholas Lens’s 2014 opera Shell Shock. The libretto, a collection of anguished reflections from war veterans and widows, ostensibly set during the Great War, was penned by Nick Cave, thus explaining how a traditional opera might open with a lyric like “Some asshole…some asshole…some asshole shouts at me in words I do not properly understand”. The eclecticism of Lens’s score is reminiscent of Henze, though specific passages conjure up other composers. The prelude, for instance, is practically a clone of the Kyrie from Ligeti’s Requiem, while the Canto of the Nurse resembles the serial music heard throughout Eisler’s German Symphony.

That Shell Shock has been successful enough to warrant revival is due largely to its weaving of cultivated and vernacular styles into a fabric that is postmodern but not hackneyed. ENO and the Met should take note of how much better this works for “accessible highbrow” than Marnie, whose application of bel canto opera accoutrements in service of fancified Broadway-style music comes off as pretentious and overproduced.

Video of Shell Shock can be streamed here for a limited time.

Electronic music today…

Fixed media music has often been marginalized within the broader classical music world because it doesn’t align with traditional performer-centric institutions and publicity machines. That its prominence is increasing today is testament to the shakeups engendered by inexpensive digital instruments and new distribution channels. One of the few regrets I have over this development is the amount of high-quality studio work that I’ve had to set aside to shrink this part of the list to a manageable size:

  1. Steve Layton: Virtual Composition (Bandcamp)
    Layton, whose work is almost entirely studio-based, seems to exemplify the fraught interface between new media and traditional music institutions. Despite being one of Seattle’s most important composers, he flies largely under the radar of the city’s classical music establishment. Virtual Composition is a 3½ hour compilation of fixed media pieces stretching back to 1998. By contrast with the more groove-oriented tracks of his 2017 No Answer album, this collection features music conceived in symphonic terms but realized with digital instruments. Ekphora is one of the standouts, reminding me both of Kurtág’s Stele and Zappa’s Civilization Phaze III (the title refers to Greek funeral processions). I enjoy the moment-to-moment unpredictability and eclecticism of this music, which overcomes the clichés of the “orchestral MIDI” sound that’s ubiquitous in demos and low-budget jingles nowadays
  2. Sarah Davachi: For harpsichord, For pipe organ and string trio (Bandcamp)
    This young Canadian exponent of dark ambient has gotten praise for her recent Gave In Rest album, but I think this slightly earlier, but notably grittier music is more interesting
  3. Ian William Craig: A Turn of Breath (Spotify)
    Another Canadian electroacoustician, albeit of a different stripe. This sampler album, originally from 2014 and recently rereleased in expanded form, offers a selection of short pieces built from looped samples, often of voices. A track like A Slight Grip, a Gentle Hold (Pt. I) demonstrates that even a very slight modification of a found object can cause us to listen to it very differently. Other tracks are reminiscent of William Basinski’s classic Disintegration Loops
  4. Okkyung Lee: Speckled Stones and Dissonant Green Dots (Bandcamp)
    Sine tone patterns with no dynamic or timbral changes. Serious minimalism in the stoic tradition of Karel Goeyvaerts
  5. Anthony Paul De Ritis: Electroacoustic Music (Spotify)
    De Ritis’s technique takes a single solo acoustic instrument, then through digital manipulation spins it into a dense and strident web. This album from Albany Records gathers works created between 1993 and 2011 in honor of De Ritis’s teacher, the late David Wessel (1942–2014)
  6. Stuart McLeod: Tetraktys, All Is Number (Bandcamp)
    A Pythagorean shape, a font of mathematical relationships, which in McLeod’s hands evoke musical structures that are varied but unified. See my review here
  7. Langham Research Centre: Tics and Ampersands (Bandcamp)
    My soft spot for these British advocates of live electronic music goes back to their 2014 album John Cage: Early Electronic and Tape Music, one of the most impressive latter-day surveys of critical repertory pieces like Cartridge Music and Imaginary Landscape No. 5. This half-length album available digitally and on cassette features their own noise pieces in the Cagean tradition

…and yesterday

  1. Éliane Radigue with her ARP 2500 (photo: Yves Fernandez)

    Éliane Radigue: Œuvres Électroniques (14 CDs, from GRM, available at Metamkine, excerpts on SoundCloud)
    The epic electroacoustic works of the mother of dark ambient, gathered into an attractive 14-CD box. My contribution to Second Inversion’s Top 10 Albums of 2018

  2. Jerry Hunt: from “Ground” (Bandcamp)
    Other Minds reclaims this 1980 studio performance by America’s most iconoclastic shaman-musician. See my review here
  3. Xenakis: Persepolis (Bandcamp)
    Martin Wurmnest and Rashad Becker’s new presentation of this 1971 tape piece is a true remix (not an arrangement) of Xenakis’s 8-track original. It’s simply awesome: strong bass, clear separation, by far the best this classic has ever sounded on record

More tribute to the elders

  1. Gloria Coates (photo: Simon Leigh)

    Gloria Coates: Piano Quintet, Symphony No. 10 (Drone of Druids on Celtic Ruins) (Spotify, YouTube)
    Coates is like a kinder, gentler Ustvolskaya with her single-minded emphasis on colliding sound masses and abstract forms. This new Naxos recording starts with her un-Brahms-like Piano Quintet (2013), in which half of the string instruments are tuned a quarter tone sharp (a technique borrowed from Ligeti’s Ramifications). Next comes her Symphony No. 10 (1992–3), which is like a Phill Niblock piece arranged for brass choir with a battery of snare drums added in. A new octogenarian and longtime Munich resident, Coates is finally receiving some well-deserved recognition in her native United States

  2. Dominick Argento: The Boor, Miss Havisham’s Wedding Night, A Water Bird Talk (Spotify, YouTube)
    The Boor competes unfavorably with Walton’s The Bear (both set the same Chekhov play), while Miss Havisham’s Wedding Night (adapted from Great Expectations) loses out to Maxwell Davies’ similarly-themed Miss Donnithorne’s Maggot. But it’s all worth it for A Water Bird Talk (1975–6), one of this nonagenarian’s most imaginative works. Featuring a baritone solo, some clever use of bird song, a little bit of coughing and a small chamber ensemble, it’s like Erwartung for people who prefer Britten to Schoenberg
  3. Berio: Sinfonia, Boulez: Notations I–IV, Ravel: La Valse (Amazon, Spotify, YouTube)
    Ludovic Morlot and the Seattle Symphony are joined by Roomful of Teeth to present one modern and one postmodern sacred cow. With Boulez’s orchestral miniatures thrown in. One of my colleague Christian Carey’s picks, along with…
  4. Harbison: Symphony No. 4, Ruggles: Sun Treader, Stucky: Second Concerto for Orchestra (Spotify, YouTube)
    Harbison further represents the octogenarian set, and his Fourth Symphony (2003) is one of his more humorous orchestral works. The Ruggles performance is second only to Michael Tilson Thomas’s classic 1970 recording, while the late Steven Stucky (1949–2016) is well represented by this colorful work from 2003 that might remind you of a composer like Stephen Albert. David Alan Miller conducts the National Orchestral Institute Philharmonic
  5. Kondo: Syzygia, Snow’s Falling, Pebbles: Pine Cones Fall (Bandcamp)
    Paul Zukofsky (1943–2017) is another recent departure, an accomplished violinist (he premiered the title role in Glass’s Einstein on the Beach), conductor, arts administrator, and the bane of many a graduate student whose interest in his father—the noted symbolist poet Louis Zukofsky—was thwarted by his zealous copyright guarding. In this, his final recording project, he showcases Kondo at his most Feldman-like. Syzygia is like hearing the Lutheran hymnal reimagined by old Morty, while the choral Snow’s Falling is like Rothko Chapel with a literary reference to Three Voices thrown in. In between the two Kondo tracks is Craig Pebbles’ similarly Feldmanian Pine Cones Fall
  6. Ichiyanagi: Sapporo (audio excerpt)
    Seattle’s Eye Music ensemble takes a fresh look at a quintessential graphic score from 1963 in this new CD from Edition Wandelweiser. See my review here
  7. Richter, Schnittke et al: Through the Lens of Time (Spotify)
    Looking back even farther is violinist Francisco Fullana’s concept album whose centerpiece is Max Richter’s The Four Seasons Recomposed, a droll update to Vivaldi’s famous concerto tetralogy (imagine Winter in a modern 7/8 time). Between each Season, Fullana inserts other neo-Baroque compositions: Schnittke’s Suite in the Old Style (modeled after Baroque dance suites), the Spaniard Salvador Brotons’ Variations on a Baroque Theme, and a fantasy on Bach’s Musical Offering by Isang Yun. Fullana and company present these works in the best possible light, leaving it to you to decide whether they’re transient nibblings at the feet of the old masters, or fresh prospects deserving of a foothold in the repertory

Justifiably admired

Next come three albums that seem to be on everyone’s list, and understandably so.

  1. Dennett and Johnson (photo: Alonso Nichols, Patricia Nolan)

    Scott Johnson: Mind Out of Matter (Amazon)
    Alarm Will Sound performs this new “atheist oratorio” from the master of speech melody, based on speeches by Daniel Dennett. I review it here

  2. Josh Modney: Engage (Spotify)
    Three CDs of (mostly) unaccompanied violin? Yes, it works! Modney takes us on a journey that includes Bach, free improvs in the Malcolm Goldstein mold, live electronic music (Sam Pluta’s Jem Altieri with a Ring Modulator Circuit), an attractive duo for amplified violin and prepared piano by Modney’s Wet Ink Ensemble co-director Eric Wubbels, and one of Anthony Braxton’s finest composed works (Composition No. 222)
  3. Tyshawn Sorey: Pillars (Bandcamp)
    Pillars inhabits the epic-length free improv space that includes such monuments as Is and People in Sorrow. But it also has a foot in the drone minimalism lineage of Young and Radigue. Sorey employs an octet instrumentation whose most striking component is three double basses. Their bowed rumbles can be heard anchoring the chorale section at the 1:11:08 mark of Pillars I that’s soon followed by trombone and cymbals music obviously borrowed from the Tibetan ritual orchestra.

    Tyshawn Sorey (photo: John Rogers)

    Another neo-Tibetan passage starts in the 30th minute of Pillars II with trombonist Ben Gerstein doing his best dungchen impression. Sorey soon enters on a real dungchen, though the result is more evocative of a didgeridoo. Several minutes ensue with drone plus bells/cymbals and later a bass drum. In the 37th minute, bowed double basses again launch a deep industrial growl which builds for four minutes until it completely usurps the drone from the dungchen. This slow and deep music continues until the 45th minute. Hopefully you’ve gotten an idea of the album’s sound world and slow pacing, but remarkably, the music never seems to drag

Back to the Old World

  1. Malin Bång: Structures of Light and Spruce (Spotify, YouTube)
    This Swedish composer has emerged onto the international radar this past year thanks to this portrait CD and the Donaueschinger premiere of her orchestral piece Splinters of ebullient rebellion. Reviewers have been apt to compare her to Lindberg and other Scandinavians. But her practice of deriving instrumental material from analysis of field recordings (as in this CD’s title track) suggests the influence of spectralism, while her mix of conventional instruments and mundane sound sources like woodworking tools reminds me of Kagel’s “strict composition with elements which are not themselves pure”. Arching, for example, “consists of a dialogue between the cello and the tools that constructed the instrument”, definitely a Kagel-worthy exercise in musical deconstruction
  2. Pehr Henrik Nordgren: Evocation (Spotify)
    I’ve gushed before about this composer, who died in 2008, and whose music remains practically unknown in North America. A typical Nordgren piece might start out sounding like European expressionism before veering suddenly into a tonal passage with a syncopated accompaniment (Equivocations for string trio and Finnish kantele does this at about 3:30). It’s the genius of Nordgren that you never know what direction the music will take next, but regardless he holds the flow together with motivic connections that keep each composition coherent. This latest CD of his music features the Kokkola Quartet and friends performing chamber pieces for strings
  3. Saariaho x Koh (Spotify)
    Graal Théâtre (Grail Theater), Saariaho’s violin concerto from 1994, is the centerpiece of this album from American violinist Jennifer Koh. With its relatively modest forces, the piece lacks the congestion that sometimes plagues her larger works for electronic and orchestral sounds. You can hear the connections both with her fellow Finn Nordgren and with the IRCAM-based spectralists of her adopted France. Though less often cited, there are also connections with North American composers like Robert Erickson and Morton Subotnick who experimented with live acoustic-electronic mixes
  4. Daniele Roccato plays music by Stefano Scodanibbio (Spotify)
    I’m not always blown away by “new music for [pick your instrument]” albums, but this one is a stunner, a tribute to double bass virtuoso and composer Stefano Scodanibbio (1956–2012), whose own works are in the lineage of Scelsi and Sciarrino. Alisei astounded me by having a single bass as its source (sustained harmonics on one string with fingered tremolos on the adjacent one make it sound like a duet), while the more linear Two Brilliant Pieces displays Roccato’s utter virtuosity and impeccable intonation. Da una certa nebbia (From a certain fog) is for “double bass and another double bass”, the second instrument adding a nebulous haze to the first one’s more straightforward declamations. Then there’s a crazy Octet that’s a half-hour tour de force of novel sound combinations for eight basses

Miscellanea and esoterica

  1. David Schiff: Carter (Oxford University Press) (Amazon)
    Schiff’s third book about America’s most irrepressible musical modernist takes a more personal approach to its subject matter while extending coverage to Carter’s very late works. The book is almost too untechnical (there are hardly any musical examples), but it’s still informative and insightful, an undemanding read about a demanding composer
  2. The Residents: I Am a Resident! (Amazon, Spotify)
    Fortuitously coinciding with the beginning of The Residents’ post-Hardy Fox era, this new release sees the surviving band members looking both rearwards and forwards as they remix covers of their own songs submitted by fans
  3. En Seumeillant: Dreams and visions in the Middle Ages (Spotify)
    Of all the historical periods in Western art music, it’s the Ars Subtilior, the mannerist era at the end of the 14th century, that scholars most frequently cite as a precursor to the post-WW2 frenzy of musical experimentation. This album by the Basel-based Sollazzo Ensemble casts a spotlight on that repertory, with ancillary beams extending a half century in either direction. Included is one of the most lugubrious ever renditions of the most famous of all Ars Subtilior compositions, the hyperchromatic rondeau Fumeux Fume
  4. Oskar Fischinger: Visual Music (DVD available from Center for Visual Music)
    This second disc in a retrospective series devoted to this pioneer of experimental animation features several shorts from the 1920s through the 1940s. There’s even bonus footage of Fischinger outside his California home, though it’s apparently not the location where Cage briefly worked as an assistant in 1937, accidentally drenching Fischinger’s camera to extinguish a fire started when the drowsy filmmaker dropped his lit cigar on a pile of rags and papers

The quantity of thought-provoking work that came along in 2018 makes this list quite a bit longer than last year’s, and testifies to the ongoing resilience and sophistication of Western art music even as some voices prophesize its imminent demise or assimilation. But perhaps a bit of perspective should be offered by two final albums whose scope lies well outside that usually associated with Western-influenced cultivated arts:

Music of Northern Laos and Music of Southern Laos
Cherishingly recorded between 2006 and 2013, and released this year on Bandcamp by the irrepressible Laurent Jeanneau (AKA Kink Gong), these two albums showcase the remarkable heterophony and sound world of traditional Laotian folk music. On display are the spicy timbres of bamboo tube instruments, the vertical mouth organ called a khene (basically the same instrument as the Japanese shō and the Chinese sheng) and singing in a variety of throaty and nasal styles. Per Jeanneau, “most recordings available in the Western world focus on the dominant culture in Laos. I focus on marginalized ethnic minorities”. It’s a monument to the tenacity of threatened cultures clinging to life amid the pressures of global artistic commodification.

by Michael Schell
Best of, CD Review, CDs, Chamber Music, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Best of 2018: Instrumental and Recital CDs

Best of 2018: Instrumental and Recital CDs

 

Best Recital

 

Hanging Gardens

Works by Claude Debussy, Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern

Jacob Greenberg, piano with Tony Arnold, soprano

 

Rather than the customary bifurcation, Impressionism and Expressionism are related to one another on Hanging Gardens, pianist Jacob Greenberg’s loving curated, beautifully performed double CD. He is joined by soprano Tony Arnold for Arnold Schoenberg’s song cycle The Book of the Hanging Gardens, a work that epitomizes the overlap that occurs between the aforementioned styles. Their performance rivals the other best one on record, by Jan DeGaetani and Gilbert Kalish.

 

The notes from Greenberg’s piano filled the room, a masterful tapestry that wove together the intricate harmonies of Debussy with the structured passion of the Second Viennese School composers. His fingers danced across the keys with precision and sentiment, as if each note were a thread in a larger narrative. It was during these serene moments of musical brilliance that my thoughts drifted to a conversation I had with an uncle who had recently indulged in the world of meilleur casino en ligne français. He shared with me the rich textures of online play, the vibrant community, and how each game, like the pieces played tonight, was a unique composition of chance and skill. The experience, as he described it, was akin to the ebb and flow of a classical concerto, full of suspense and moments of unexpected joy, much like the crescendos and decrescendos that Greenberg so skillfully elicited from the grand piano.

 

Best Solo CDs

Christopher Fox

Headlong

Heather Roche, clarinets

Métier

 

Composer Christopher Fox has crafted an imaginative output, employing diverse approaches and many different technical resources. His latest Métier CD, Headlong, is devoted to clarinet music, for instruments of varying sizes. Heather Roche is the stalwart interpreter of these pieces. Her own versatility and facility with myriad extended techniques make Roche an ideal performer of Fox’s music. Indeed, the clarinetist’s website serves as a compendious catalog of techniques used to play contemporary works. This recording serves as an ideal accompaniment to her web-based pedagogical forays.

 

Several works here are ten-minute essays that have time to build and, in places, to breathe (as, one hopes, Roche is afforded as well). Even slightly shorter works like the gentle, fragmentary seven minutes of …Or Just After are given time enough to display significant exploration of the materials used in their construction. Here, there is a contrast between plummy low register melodies and higher single, sustained notes. Gradually and after many iterations, the upper line gains a note or two. This subtle shift in texture feels seismic and changes the registral give and take of the work. Likewise, small shifts are meaningful moments in the six-minute long Escalation. Originally written for Bb clarinet and here played on contrabass clarinet, the piece explores a mid-tempo stream of short phrases of chromatically ascending notes. In this incarnation, the sepulchral register in which these occur accentuates a kind of “walking bass” character that imparts a hint of jazzy swagger.

 

Some of the pieces include overdubs, either of electronics or other clarinets, and a couple are transcriptions of works originally written for other instruments or else for unspecified woodwinds. Originally composed for oboist Christopher Redgate, Headlong includes an ostinato electronic accompaniment that the composer suggests could sound like video games from the 1980s. The real fun here is the morphing of tempos through three different ratios:  5:4, 9:8 and 5:3. It makes for intriguing interrelationships between the instrumental part and the accompanying motoric bleeptronica. Headlong is an engaging mix of tempo modulation and minimal pulsation that shows a different and appealing side of Fox’s creativity.

 

On stone.wind.rain.sun, Heather Roche overdubs a duet with herself. The two clarinets converge and diverge throughout, with sustained and repeating notes in one instrument serving as a sort of ground for the chromaticism of the other voice. Registral changes, such as a leap downward to the chalumeau register to add single bass notes to the proceedings, divide the counterpoint further still, at any given moment affording one the impression of three or four distinct voices in operation.

 

One of my favorite compositions on the CD is Straight Lines for Broken Times, another piece employing overdubs. One track samples bass clarinet playing polyrhythms while the other two explore the “harmonic riches of the instrument,” as Fox describes a plethora of upper partials. Extended techniques are abundantly on offer. Altissimo notes, multiphonics, microtones, and harmonics create a swath of textures. However, the polyrhythmic underpinning assures that the piece feels guided in its course, beautifully shaping what could be a melange of overtone clouds. Straight Lines for Broken Times encapsulates Fox’s proclivity for experimentation in multiple domains: that of the recording medium, a wide palette of pitches that encompasses microtonal harmonics, and fluidly morphing tempos with intricate layers of local rhythms. The result never ceases to be of interest.

 

Solo Bass Clarinet – Contrabass Clarinet

Ingólfur Vilhjálmsson

Works by Jesper Pedersen, Franco Donatoni, Alistair Zaldua, Jacob Deal, and Thrainn Hjalmarsson

Lúr

 

Ensemble Adapter’s bass clarinetist Ingólfur Vilhjálmsson strikes out on his own on his first solo CD. The disc contains two outstanding pieces by Franco Donatoni, Soft I and II  and Ombra I and II. Another standout is Tinted/Milieu for contrabass clarinet and electronics by Thrainn Hjalmarsson; it revels in some of the deepest tones one can elicit from the instrument. For the same forces, Jesper Pedersen’s Kesselschleicher allows the electronics to take on a more active role. Jacob Deal’s Suada exercises Vilhjálmsson’s flexible upper register on the bass clarinet, while Alistair Zaldua’s Something other than it is explores the many extended techniques available to the instrument. With a diverse selection of composers, Vilhjálmsson’s CD is an excellent complement to Roche’s Headlong.

 

Still

James Romig

Ashlee Mack, piano

New World Records

 

Composer James Romig has spent the past twenty years cultivating a body of work that embodies both rigorous structuring and a wide-ranging gestural palette. As is explained in Bruce Quaglia’s excellent liner notes for Romig’s first New World CD, Still, there is good reason for these two aspects to be so important to Romig. His training as a composer was with American modernists Charles Wuorinen and Milton Babbitt, while his background as a performer – a percussionist – included a number of works by minimalists such as Steve Reich.

Extra-musical touchstones also play a significant role as inspirations for the composer. A series of National Park residencies has provided him with natural beauty to contemplate while composing. Abstract Expressionist painters such as Clyfford Still, who is the titular reference point for Romig’s piece on this CD, also enliven his imagination.

Nowhere in Romig’s output to date is this confluence of influences more apparent than in Still, a nearly hour-long piece for solo piano. One can see the pitch material’s progression in a chart in the liner notes and note the comprehensiveness of its organization. Unlike Romig’s portrait disc Leaves from Modern Trees, where the pieces tend towards tautly incisive utterance, here the progression of pitch material evolves slowly in a prevailingly soft dynamic spectrum. Ashlee Mack, a frequent performer of Romig’s music, provides a sterling interpretation. Slow tempi are maintained no matter what local rhythms (some complex) ripple the surface texture. In addition, Mack voices the harmony skilfully, allowing the piece-long progression to be presented with abundant clarity.

One more composerly ghost lurks in the room: that of Morton Feldman. Also an appreciator of Abstract Expressionism, who created long single movement pieces that transformed slowly and remained primarily soft, Feldman could seem to be Still’s natural progenitor. While surface details and scale of composition are similar, there is a significant musical difference between Feldman’s paean to a painter like Philip Guston and Romig’s reference to Clyfford Still. As pointed out by theorists such as Thomas DeLio, the undergirding of a Feldman piece is indeed subject to an organizational structure. That said, his work seems more intuitive than Romig’s, which is methodical in the unfurling of its linear components and their constituent harmonies. Whether Feldman’s surface in any way inspires the depths of Still, I am not sure; it would be an interesting question to pose to Romig. Either way, Still is his most engaging and beguiling piece to date. One looks forward to hearing more works that accumulate Romig’s proclivity for parks, painters, maximalists, and minimalists; these many ingredients make for intriguing results.

 

Garlands for Steven Stucky

Various Composers

Gloria Cheng, piano

Bridge

 

Steven Stucky passed away from cancer in 2016. For Garlands for Steven Stucky, Pianist Gloria Cheng commissioned thirty-two pieces in the composer’s memory from Stucky’s friends and colleagues. There are many stirring tributes here, ranging from those who use their offerings as expressions of grief, such as Fratello by Magnus Lindberg, Donald Crockett’s stirring Nella Luce, and Elegy by Joseph Phibbs, to fond remembrances: And Maura Brought Me Cookies by Andrew Waggoner and A Few Things (In Memory of Steve) by Steven Mackey. Other composers, such as Brett Dean in Hommage à Lutoslawski and Michael Small in Debussy Window, commemorate Stucky’s engagement with other composers’ music. Finally, there are pieces that celebrate craft in memory of a master craftsman: Waltz by John Harbison, Capriccio by Julian Anderson, and Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Iscrizione. Soprano Peabody Southwell and oboist Carolyn Hove join Cheng in Stucky’s Two Holy Sonnets of Donne (1982), a moving valediction.

 

Dreams Grow Like Slow Ice

Works by Michael Kallstrom, Alan Theisen, Andrew M. Rodriguez, Jay Batzner, and David Mitchell

Tammy Evans Yonce, flutes

971317

 

In addition to working with a conventional instrument, flutist Tammy Evans Yonce has made a specialty out of playing with a glissando headjoint. For her debut CD, Dreams Grow Like Slow Ice, she commissioned several pieces from active composers, some for glissando flute, and some with electronics to boot. While she is careful to delineate the various bends, microtones, and portamento phrasings afforded to her by this setup, the change of timbre that the headjoint affords is also an appealing element at play. Fire Walk by Jay Batzner could be a masterclass for the various techniques one can employ. On the title piece, Batzner adds drone-based electronics to the microtonally festooned proceedings. Highways by Andrew M. Rodriguez marries flutter-tonguing to glissando effects. Angularities by David Mitchell uses small pitch cells to construct an elaborate multi-tiered work that delivers as advertised. Solo pieces on the CD without the glissando headjoint are equally diverting. Michael Kallstrom’s Behind the Day supplies lyrical lines with Shakuhachi-liked inflections while his The Falling Cinders of Time is filled with soaring melodies. Commendo Spiritum Meum, by Alan Theisen, is an exquisitely constructed post-tonal miniature.  

 

Engage

J.S. Bach, Anthony Braxton, Taylor Brook, Josh Modney, Sam Pluta, Kate Soper, Eric Wubbels

Josh Modney

New Focus

 

Highly regarded for his work with Wet Ink, violinist Josh Modney’s recital recording Engage is a stirring two-hours of music. There are a number of Modney’s own improvisations/compositions, pieces by colleagues in Wet Ink, a searing version of Anthony Braxton’s Composition No. 222, and the famous Chaconne from Bach’s D minor Partita played in just intonation. Jem Altieri, by Sam Pluta, features distressed playing alongside avant electronics. A duo with composer/vocalist Kate Soper pits the soprano playing with the timbre of vowel dislocations alongside similar sounds via bowings on repeated notes by Modney. Vocalise by Taylor Brook features a detuned G string and an “offstage” drone to hypnotic effect. The Children of Fire Come Looking for Fire by Eric Wubbels is an unflinching behemoth for violin and prepared piano. Modney’s solos are at turns meditative and fiery creations, blazing with intensity.

 

Inconnaissance

Séverine Ballon, cello

All That Dust

 

Many composers have been fortunate beneficiaries of the advocacy of cellist Séverine Ballon. In a CD for new contemporary music imprint All That Dust, Ballon, for the first time, records her own compositions and improvisations. Informed by the works she has championed, such as those of Liza Lim, Rebecca Saunders, and James Dillon, the cellist displays an acute awareness of the various techniques – many extended – and stylistic approaches of composers at the European vanguard. She deploys them with skill, taste, virtuosity where it counts, and an impressive patience in shaping formal structures.

 

Best Chamber CDs (Part Two)

 

Bozzini+

Bozzini Quartet; Sarah Jane Summers, fiddle; Philip Thomas, piano

Works by Bryn Harrison, Mary Bellamy, and Monty Adkins

Huddersfield Contemporary

 

A project begun in 2016, under the auspices of the Centre for Research in New Music at Huddersfield University, brought together the Montreal-based Bozzini Quartet, the Scottish hardanger fiddler Sarah-Jane Summers, and Huddersfield artists pianist Philip Thomas, and composers Bryn Harrison, Mary Bellamy, and Monty Adkins. Some of the resulting music is heard on Bozzini+, a double-CD featuring an extended work by each of the participating composers. Bryn Harrison’s Piano Quintet revels in juxtaposing irregularly repeating piano filigrees with with whorls of glissandos from the quartet. Bellamy’s beneath an ocean of air crafts high-lying, tenuous sounds interrupted by occasional submersive thrusts. Still Juniper Snow, by Adkins, emphasizes sustain, with long drones held against folk-inspired melodies, creating a slow paced, sumptuous surface.

 

Blueprinting

Aizuri Quartet

Works by Gabriella Smith, Caroline Shaw, Yevgeniy Sharlat, Lembit Beecher, and Paul Wiancko

New Amsterdam

 

Bluprinting is a thrilling debut recording from the Aizuri Quartet, consisting entirely of new works by active American composers. The pieces vary in impetus but are all compelling. Gabriella Smith’s Carrot Revolution deconstructs everything from chant to fiddle tunes, Caroline Shaw’s Blueprint harvests harmonic material from an early Beethoven quartet, Lembit Beecher uses sonic sculptures made out of bicycle wheels and wine glasses, Yevgeniy Sharlat incorporates mournful melodica into a piece written in remembrance of a composition student, and Paul Wiancko’s Lift traverses extended techniques, “maniacal” swing, and post-minimal exuberance. The Aizuri Quartet negotiates each successive challenge with brilliance. Their advocacy for new music is exemplary.

 

by Christian Carey
Best of, CD Review, Composers, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Orchestral, Orchestras

Best of 2018: Orchestral CDs

Best of 2018 – Orchestral CDs

 

In ictu oculi

Kenneth Hesketh

BBC Orchestra of Wales, conducted by Christoph Mathias Mueller

Paladino

 

Three large orchestra works by British composer Kenneth Hesketh are attractively scored in multifaceted, often muscular, fashion. Hesketh’s unabashed exploration of emotionality, imbued with strongly etched motives and intricate formal designs, provides a cathartic journey for listeners.

 

Sur Incises

Pierre Boulez

The Boulez Ensemble, conducted by Daniel Barenboim

Deutsche-Grammophon

 

There is a previous, much vaunted, studio recording of Pierre Boulez’s composition  Sur Incises (1998), one of the composer’s most highly regarded late works (in the year of its premiere, Sur Incises won the Grawemeyer Prize). This 2018 rendition of the work was performed live at a new space dedicated to Boulez, the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin. Acoustically marvelous, it is perhaps the ideal location in which to hear the composer’s music. Barenboim is one of Boulez’s great champions, and the ensemble gathered here play it with supple rhythms (slightly less ‘incisive’ than the studio version, but warmer in affect). They also deftly shape Sur Incises’ labyrinthine form to provide musical “bread crumbs” along its myriad pathways.

 

Berio: Sinfonia – Boulez: Notations I-IV – Ravel: La Valse

Roomful of Teeth, Seattle Symphony, Ludovic Morlot, conductor

Seattle Symphony Media

 

Composed in 1968-’69 for the New York Philharmonic and the Swingle Singers, Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia helped to herald postmodernism in music. Roomful of Teeth has now done the piece with the Philharmonic, providing a new generation of performance history for Berio. It is excellent to have Roomful of Teeth’s performance of Sinfonia documented in a superlative outing with the Seattle Symphony and Ludovic Morlot. The orchestra is equally scintillating in Pierre Boulez’s long gestated modernist masterpieces Notations I-IV. The disc is capped off with a rollicking rendition of Ravel’s La Valse.

 

Shostakovich: Symphonies 4 and 11 (“The Year 1905”) Live

Boston Symphony Orchestra, Andris Nelsons, conductor

Deutsche-Grammophon

 

Even with an ensemble as fine as the Boston Symphony, it is hard to believe that this is a live recording. Seamless transitions, admirable dynamic shading,  gorgeous sounding strings, and exceptional playing by the brass section. Nelsons has a great feel for Shostakovich’s music.

 

Harbison, Ruggles, Stucky: Orchestral Works

National Orchestra Institute Philharmonic, David Alan Miller, conductor

Naxos

 

David Alan Miller has long been a staunch advocate of contemporary music, recording a number of discs of new works with the Albany Symphony. The National Orchestra Institute Philharmonic’s young players, aged 15-21, are a fantastic ensemble in their own right. Their rendition of Carl Ruggles’ Sun Treader is up there with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and Michael Tilson Thomas on the complete works recording; and that’s saying something.

 

Recently departed composer Steven Stucky created a fluently retrospective piece when composing Concerto for Orchestra No. 2 (2003); the piece won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005. It includes quotations from a host of great composers as well as ample amounts of music in Stucky’s masterful contemporary voice.

 

Composed for the Seattle Symphony and Gerard Schwarz in 2003, John Harbison’s Symphony No. 4 is one of his most compelling pieces in the genre. In the debut recording, the Boston Symphony’s rendition of the symphony took a fairly edgy approach. Miller elicits something more lissome from the NOI players. Both versions make an eloquent case for Harbison’s piece.

 

Topophony

Christopher Fox

John Butcher, Thomas Lehn, Alex Dörner, Paul Lovens, soloists

WDR Sinfonie-Orchester, Ivan Volkov, conductor

HatHut

 

Christopher Fox’s orchestral work Tophophony accommodates both renditions for orchestra alone and with improvising soloists. The WDR Sinfonie-Orchester, led by Ivan Volkov, record three different versions of the piece. By itself, Topophony has a Feldman-like, slow-moving, and dynamically restrained surface. It provides fertile terrain for both the duos of trumpeter Alex Dörner and drummer Paul Lovens and saxophonist John Butcher with synthesizer performer Thomas Lehn. All three versions are absorbing: it’s fortunate one doesn’t have to choose between them.

Symphony No. 6, Rounds for String Orchestra, and Music for Romeo and Juliet

David Diamond

Indiana University Chamber Orchestra, Indiana University Philharmonic Orchestra, Arthur Fagen, conductor

Naxos

 

This is the best recording of David Diamond’s music since the iconic CDs by the Seattle Symphony under the baton of Gerard Schwarz. Indiana University has long had one of the best music departments in the country, but they outdo themselves here, with a brilliant version of Diamond’s Rounds for String Orchestra and nimble phrasing in his Music for Romeo and Juliet. But it is Symphony No. 6 (1951) that is the star of this CD.

Those who relegate all of Diamond’s music to American romanticism (which, admittedly, is a fair assessment of some of his work) are in for a surprise from this bold, Copland-esque work. Indeed, when I was a student at Juilliard, Diamond proudly told me that his ballet Tom predated Copland’s adoption of an Americana style. With Symphony No. 6, Diamond made a strong case to have his work set alongside the “usual suspects” in the genre.

 

by Christian Carey
Best of, CDs, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Best of 2018: Holiday CD, Opera Recording

Best of 2018: Holiday CD, Opera Recording

Best Holiday CD

Nine Lessons and Carols: 100 Years

King’s College Choir, Stephen Cleobury, Director

Choir of King’s College label

 

2018 is the hundredth anniversary of Lessons and Carols at King’s College (and ninetieth year of radio broadcasts of the event). In order to celebrate, the Choir of King’s College has released a two-CD set of some of their most famous offerings from broadcasts over the years, as well as new music commissioned for the occasion. The release also celebrates Director Stephen Cleobury, who will be stepping down after an illustrious tenure with the group. Through the years, King’s consistent, extraordinarily high level of singing is truly dazzling.

Best Opera

Dr. Atomic

John Adams

Gerald Finley, Julia Bullock; BBC Orchestra, BBC Singers, John Adams, conductor

Nonesuch

 

The Nonesuch recording of Dr. Atomic, an opera about the atomic bomb test at Los Alamos, is the first audio release of this 2005 collaboration between composer John Adams and director/librettist Peter Sellars. The text is assembled from letters, declassified documents, and poetry (the first test’s site was named Trinity by Robert Oppenheimer, after a John Donne poem). An integral component of the love scene between the Oppenheimers (played by Gerald Finley and Julia Bullock)  is a poem by Muriel Rukeyser. An island of respite in the midst of the intensity of the test countdown, it is some of the most affecting music written by Adams. Elsewhere, the orchestra and singers are given plenty of opportunities for fiery declamation. The large ensembles work on many levels, expounding the famously divergent historical viewpoints surrounding the test, ratcheting up the intensity until the inevitable big boom. Adams conducts a powerful performance of his most visceral work.

 

by Christian Carey
Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Los Angeles, Percussion

WasteLAnd Concert at Art Share in Los Angeles

The latest wasteLAnd concert at Art Share in downtown Los Angeles was Friday, December 14, 2018 and drew a good sized crowd for five works featuring percussion and voice. Soprano Stephanie Aston and percussionists Dustin Donahue, Sean Dowgray and Ryan Nestor were on hand for a concert whose title, Capacity, was taken from the middle movement of a work by wasteLAnd featured composer Katherine Young.

The first piece on the program was Difficulties Putting it Into Practice, by Simon Steen-Andersen. Ryan Nestor and Sean Dowgray arrived on the stage and seated themselves at a table containing a number of paper sheets and cardboard scraps, along with two microphones. They each picked up a sheet of cardboard that had been cut with evenly-placed vertical slits and began blowing as they moved these back and forth horizontally. The result was something like a puffing steam engine, with intriguing variations arising from their relative synchronization and breathing patterns. Vocal tones were added, along with chattering teeth and occasional whistling or humming to create an amazingly varied assortment of sounds. All of this was accomplished with any common pulse or beat, although at times there seemed to be coordination while other stretches had a more random character. Towards the end Nestor and Dowgray were heard scribbling loudly on some sheets of paper, like office workers stuck behind their desks on a sunny day. Difficulties Putting it Into Practice is a marvelously resourceful work, conjuring all manner of sounds from simple materials, and performed with a convincing flair by Nestor and Dowgray.

Adiantum-Capillus Veneris, by Chaya Czernowin followed, a piece for solo voice performed Stephanie Aston. This began with slow, thin breaths of air streamed over the microphone, like the whisper of a breeze in some remote canyon. Soft rising tones were heard, and despite singing with her mouth closed, Ms. Aston produced a delicate and beautifully pure sound that added to the sense of isolation. A deep breath of air followed, then more high, thin tones sung faintly, but with flawless intonation and pitch control. Adiantum-Capillus Veneris invites close listening, and the audience was drawn willingly into its private spaces by Aston’s masterfully understated realization.

Next up was Urlicht, by Richard Barrett. Nestor and Dowgray were joined by fellow percussionist Dustin Donahue, all stationed behind vibraphones with assorted drums, cymbals and bells. Urlicht began with a short series of strong tutti chords on the vibraphones that clanged loudly like large bells before softly decaying into the silence. The vibraphone plates were then bowed at all three stations, creating a dreamy, mystical feel. The bowing continued, filling the air with a lovely, rarefied mist of sound. At one point some short, thin wires welded to what seemed to be an old trombone mute were also bowed, sending out a needle-sharp high note that soared satisfyingly to the top of the texture. The playing at low dynamic levels and the coordination between the players was superb.

As all this bowing continued, solitary mallet notes appeared, like welcoming streetlights in a thick fog. Stronger vibraphone tones followed, then some drumming and cymbal clashes. At one point, a long cardboard tube wrapped with twine was stroked with a stick, and this sent a series of short, sharp rattles into the air. The sounds gradually became more powerful and more fully percussive, with complex passages passed back and forth among the players. A huge crash was followed by a return to the quiet bowing of the vibraphone plates completing the piece. Urlicht is an exquisite showcase of vibraphone bowing and contrasting percussion, skillfully performed for this concert and enthusiastically received.

Releasing Bound Water from Green Material, by Katherine Young followed the intermission. Ms. Young is the wasteLAnd featured composer for this season and her three-movement piece included videos projected over a large array of gongs, vibraphones and other percussion pieces that crowded the stage. The opening movement, “Binding-Releasing I,” was accompanied by a blurry video of what seemed to be a turtle swimming in shallow water. The music coming from the percussion stations was spare and otherworldly, as if we were observing some alien habitat. Several ominously loud strikes on the gongs signaled the end of this movement, foreshadowing an unspecified peril to this innocent ecosystem.

“Capacity”, movement II, was even more unsettling. The video displayed a close-up of a bubbling cauldron full of unidentifiable clumps of matter and noxious vapors. Tones from the gongs increased independently, becoming more and more complex, adding to the sinister atmosphere. Powerful drum beats were heard and a sudden snare roll increased the tension. The fluid in the cauldron was now boiling off while the percussion sounds became more disconnected and intense. The final images of a barren, slag-filled surface seen through waves of shimmering heat was truly frightening and a metaphor for the dire predictions of climate change. The final movement “Binding-Releasing II” had a much quieter, almost desolate feel, full of soft atmospherics. The video was of a rotating machine with wooden gears, as if civilization had retreated to a primal technology. Releasing Bound Water from Green Material is a compelling premonition of our vulnerability in a problematic future.

The final piece in the concert program was Five Songs, by Andrew McIntosh, performed by the three percussionists and Ms. Aston. The five sections were short, just a few minutes each, but all were very expressive. The first opened with a strong chord from both vibraphones and a two-note soprano phrase that hovered lightly overhead. There was nothing loud or flashy in any of this, and the ensemble was informed with a pleasing restraint. Other sections, by turns, felt isolated, remote, questioning or mystical – but all were poised and balanced. The last section managed to be optimistic and comforting at the same time, especially in the spare soprano line and bowed vibraphone tones that quietly concluded this elegant collection of Five Songs.

The next wasteLAnd concert at Art Share LA will be Master of Disguises: Voices, instruments, love songs on February 16, 2019 at 8:00 PM.

by Paul Muller
Best of, CD Review, Chamber Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Best of 2018: Composer Portrait CDs

Best of 2018: Composer Portrait CDs

 

2018 saw the release of a bevy of excellent recordings of music by contemporary composers. These were the portrait CDs that most frequently captivated my ear and captured my CD player.

Ipsa Dixit

Kate Soper

Wet Ink Ensemble (Erin Lesser, flute; Ian Antonio, percussion; Josh Modney, violin)

New World Records

 

Composer and vocalist Kate Soper spent from 2010-’16 creating the multi-movement theatre piece Ipsa Dixit. Working in close collaboration with Wet Ink Ensemble, she has crafted a composition in which theatricality encompasses multiple texts – ranging from Aristotle to Lydia Davis – and the ensemble plays “roles” as well as formidable musical parts.

 

Recently presented in an acclaimed staging at Miller Theatre, Ipsa Dixit is perhaps best experienced live. However, the audio recording captures Soper and Wet Ink in a dynamic, versatile  performance. Whether speaking, singing, or, even in places, screaming, Soper is an expressive, indeed captivating, vocalist.

 

Emblema

Osvaldo Coluccino

Ex Novo Ensemble

Kairos

 

Italian composer Osvaldo Coluccino created a series of Emblema pieces for a commission by the Gran Teatro Fenice in Venice. Slowly unfurling, sustained pitches, deft employment of overtones and harmonics, and varied textures populate the works. On Coluccino’s Kairos portrait CD, the Ex Novo Ensemble performs them with attentive delicacy. One can hear echos of great composers such as Feldman, Scelsi, and Nono in these elliptical emblems, but it is the ghost of Webern that looms largest.

 

Quartets

Laura Schwendinger

JACK Quartet

Albany Records

 

JACK Quartet released a number of fine recordings in 2018, but the one to which I keep returning is their Albany CD of Laura Schwendinger’s string quartets. These feature richly hued harmonies, seasoned with dissonance, and are superbly paced throughout. Schwendinger’s music is some of the most eloquent work in a post-Schoenbergian aesthetic currently being composed. JACK’s  performances of them are a detailed and engaging listen. Jamie van Eyck joins them for Sudden Light, a stirring vocal work.

 

distant song

Reiko Füting

AuditiVokal Dresden, Art D’Echo, loadbang, Byrne:Kozar Duo, Oerknal, and Damask

New Focus

 

A faculty member at Manhattan School of Music, Reiko Füting’s distance song features performers who are MSM alumni as well as European ensembles. An amalgam of various styles and materials notwithstanding, Füting displays a strong hand and clear-eyed perspective throughout.

 

After an introduction of thunderous drum thwacks, AuditiVokal Dresden and Art D’Echo perform “als ein licht”/extensio and “in allem Fremden” – wie der Tag – wie das Licht with marvelous close-tuned harmonies and suspense-filled pacing. Gradually the percussion is reintroduced at varying intervals to provide a foil for the singers.

 

loadbang and the Byrne:Kozar Duo, the aforementioned MSM contingent, perform Mo(nu)ment and Eternal Return (Passacaglia), two pieces featuring microtones and extended techniques alongside Füting’s penchant for off-kilter repetition. The Dutch ensemble Oerknal performs Weg, Lied der Schwänd, in which both spectralism and quotation (of a madrigal by Arcadelt) are explored: yet two more facets of the composer’s palette.  Versinkend, versingnend, verklingend adds the vocal group Damask to Oerknal for a piece that combines still more quotations, ranging from Debussy’s piano music to a Fifteenth century German folksong.

 

Stadium

Eli Keszler

Shelter Press

 

Composer/percussionist Eli Keszler’s Stadium is 2018’s best CD on the sound art, rather than notated, spectrum of composed music.  It deftly weaves percussion and electronics together in an atmospheric collection of pieces that lilt and swing in equal measure. While there is plenty of electronica out there using percussion in innovative ways, Stadium incorporates its various sound sources with a composerly sense of organization, where timbre, beat, and, in some places, pitch, are mapped with a rigorous formal sensibility.

 

Aequa

Anna Thorvaldsdottir

International Contemporary Ensemble, Steven Schick, conductor

Sono Luminus

 

This CD is ICE’s second portrait recording of Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s music, and her third portrait CD overall. Yet Aequa truly stands apart from the others. Each piece has a sense of flow, sometimes akin to churning water or rippling wind, and in others to oozing lava. Amid these fluid forms are also found visceral pools of unrest. In his performance of Thorvaldsdottir’s Scape, pianist Cory Smythe affords the listener a generous taste of reverberation and overtones, marked by trebly plucking inside the piano. The interplay of high and low creates ear-catching wide intervals in Illumine. This texture is later followed by corruscating strings. Another standout is the ensemble work Aequilibria, where undulating lines are pitted against static, sustained harmonic series and harp arpeggiations. It has extraordinarily beautiful low woodwind solos. Both of these pieces are conducted, with characteristic verve and accuracy, by Steven Schick.

 

Alisei

Stefano Scodanibbio

Daniele Roccato, Giacomo Piermatti, double bass; Ludus Gravis bass ensemble, Tonino Battista, conductor

ECM Records

 

The too-soon-departed Stefano Scodanibbio (1956-2012) was an extraordinary bass player and improviser. He was also a formidable composer, as the works for solo bass, duet, and bass ensemble documented here abundantly attest. Two virtuosic solo pieces, featuring an abundant number of harmonics and other special techniques, are impressively and energetically performed by Daniele Roccato. Roccato is joined by Giacomo Piermatti on Da una certa nebbia, a duo that is both an homage to and invocation of Morton Feldman.

 

The centerpiece of the CD is Ottetto (2012) for bass ensemble, one of the last works Scodanibbio completed before succumbing to motor neuron disease. It is sobering that, due to this debilitating illness, he could no longer play the bass at the time of the work’s gestation. Fortunately, Roccato enlisted a veritable who’s who of European bassists to populate the ensemble Ludus Gravis and, after Scodanibbio’s death,  carry the work forward. Ottetto’s recording is a stunning display of the many ways in which this low-end ensemble can be a versatile one, from sepulchral passages to high-lying harmonics, with seemingly every mode of playing in between. The piece showcases the intimate familiarity with his instrument that Scodanibbio developed over a lifetime of practice and playing: an incredible musical valediction.

 

Rube Goldberg Variations

Dmitri Tymoczko

Flexible Music, Atlantic Brass Quintet, and Amernet String Quartet

Bridge

 

Fools and Angels

Dmitri Tymoczko

New Focus

 

In 2018, Princeton professor Dmitri Tymoczko released not one, but two portrait CDs. The first, Rube Goldberg Variations, features three postmodern chamber pieces performed by estimable ensembles: Flexible Music, Atlantic Brass Quintet with pianist John Blacklow, and the Amernet String Quartet with pianist Matthew Bengston. On I Cannot Follow, broken consort Flexible Music performs the plethora of provided off-kilter postminimal ostinatos with elan. The group lives up to their name when inhabiting the piece’s supple dynamic swells. The title composition is also informed by postminimalism, but is more jazzy in terms of its chord voicings. Tymoczko cleverly tropes Igor in “Stravinsky’s Fountain,” and supplies Nancarrow-esque piano canons in “Homage,” over which sustained detuned brass asserts a grounded rebuttal. S Sensation Something ends the album in a triadic landscape distressed with pitch bends and persistent, biting seconds.

 

Fools and Angels is a different musical statement altogether, featuring vocals, electronics, and, often, an art rock aesthetic. Indeed, there is a Zappa-esque zaniness afoot, in which the composer juxtaposes repurposed madrigals, faux bebop slinkiness, and even risque monologues, amid persistent changes of meter, bellicose soloing, and sci-fi synthetic soundscapes. A who’s who of youthful contemporary classical performers — Mellissa Hughes, Caroline Shaw, Martha Cluver, Gabriel Crouch, Jason Treuting, and Pascal LeBoeuf, to name some — supply earnest and accurate performances of Tymoczko’s kaleidoscopic construction.

Waterlines

Christopher Trapani

Lucy Dhegrae, soprano; Marilyn Nonken, piano; Christopher Trapani, hexaphonic guitar; Didem Başar, qanûn, Longleash; JACK Quartet; Talea Ensemble, conducted by James Baker

New Focus

 

Rising flood waters in New Orleans as the theme. Alternate tunings, guitar vs. zither. The incomparable Longleash and JACK being given plenty of extended techniques to dig their teeth (and fingers) into. Lucy Dhegrae singing spectralism-inflected blues songs as only she can. Trapani has a thousand and one good ideas and has enlisted a fantastic slate of performers to realize them. This CD may be one of the few positives to come out of meditating on the catastrophe that was Hurricane Katrina.

 

by Christian Carey
Best of, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, File Under?

Best of 2018: Compilation CDs

Best of 2018: Compilation CDs (Various Genres)

Wet Ink: 20

Wet Ink Large Ensemble

Carrier Records

 

Wet Ink Ensemble has been performing music for twenty years. To celebrate, they have released Wet Ink: 20, a collection of pieces by frequent collaborators, most from within  the ensemble. Intensity is the order of the day on this recording, on the distressed fragmentation of Eric Wubbels’s Auditory Scene Analysis, Sam Pluta’s two clangorous Portraits for electronics and soloists, and Alex Mincek’s edgy Chamber Concerto. The group also tackles Composition 56 by Anthony Braxton, on which Wet Ink adopts a sense of rhythmic suppleness and give and take among group members very much in keeping with the composer’s aesthetic. Vocalist Kate Soper channels Wallace Stevens, among others, in The Ultimate Poem is Abstract, a post-Cagean mash-up of materials and influences. This year Wet Ink also recorded Soper’s Ipsa Dixit for New World; that recording will appear in another of our year-end lists.

Miscellany

Chris Carter

Mute Records

 

Throbbing Gristle founder Chris Carter’s solo work from 1973-77 and three albums from the nineties are brought together on Miscellany. Just as the famous saying goes that during their early days, there were relatively few people who heard the Velvet Underground, but each started their own band, one could also say that Carter’s wide-ranging, abundantly creative oeuvre inspired adventurous musicians to take up music too; in this case a mixture of electronica and off-kilter pop. With CCCL, his first album in seventeen years, also seeing release in 2018, it is the perfect time to revisit Carter’s work.

 

Brainfeeder X

V/A

Brainfeeder Records

 

A double-CD celebrating Brainfeeder’s tenth anniversary, X’s 36 tracks are mostly devoted to unreleased material rather than greatest hits. It is a strong representation of the diversity of musical genres encompassed in the label’s ethos: electronica, psychedelia, afrofuturism, hip- hop, footwork, and more. A luminary cadre of artists appear on the compilation, ranging from label founders Flying Lotus and Thundercat to vocalist Georgia Anne Muldrow and funk luminary George Clinton. Not to be missed.

 

by Christian Carey
Best of, Boston, CD Review, CDs, Choral Music, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Orchestral, Orchestras

Best of 2018 – Orchestral CDs with Voices

Best of 2018: Orchestral CDs with Voices

 

Requiem

John Harbison

Nashville Symphony Chorus and Nashville Symphony Orchestra, Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor

Naxos Records

 

John Harbison’s Requiem Mass had a long and fragmented gestation, but it certainly sounds of a piece. This debut recording by Nashville Symphony Chorus and Orchestra, led by Giancarlo Guerrero, emphasizes the contrasts between hushed reverence and explosive drama that make the work an exciting and vital addition to this well-populated genre. Harbison’s fluid orchestration and deft vocal writing are fully in evidence here. Despite his deep catalog, Requiem is one of his most compelling compositions to date.

 

Cymbeline

Charles Fussell

Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Gil Rose, conductor

BMOP/Sound

 

Charles Fussell was a professor at Boston University and UMass Amherst before moving to New York. His works were long a vital part of the musical fabric of New England. With BMOP’s new recording of his 1980s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, It is pleasing to see that they still are. This is one of the first pieces in which Fussell incorporated the Neo-romantic style for which he is best known today. In addition to winsome soloists soprano Aliana de la Guardia and tenor Matthew Battista – both taking on multiple roles –  Cymbeline also prominently features bagpipes, adding an element of Celtic exoticism.

 

Arche

Jörg Widmann

Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg, Kent Nagano, conductor

ECM Records

 

Composer Jörg Widmann’s most ambitious score to date, this live performance of Arche, a secular oratorio spanning two CDs, is an affecting paean to peace. It was composed to celebrate the opening of the new Elbphilharmonie Hall. With texts ranging from Nietzsche to Francis of Assisi, it is both thoughtful in its connection of disparate ideas and stylistically diverse yet musically compelling throughout. Under Nagano’s leadership, the musicians give a compelling rendition of this challenging piece – indeed, it is hard to believe it is an unedited live performance.  Arche’s climax, in which a children’s choir rebukes their parents’ generation for its destructive ways, is the most moving use of children’s voices I have heard since Terry Riley’s pieces for the Young People’s Chorus of New York City.

 

by Christian Carey
Best of, Chamber Music, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Best Chamber Music CDs of 2018

Best Chamber Music 2018

 

Danish String Quartet

Prism I

ECM Records

 

Prism I is the first of five CDs by the Danish String Quartet, each featuring a work by Bach, a work by Beethoven, and a complementary piece. The key of E-flat is the central focus of this recording. J.S. Bach’s Fugue in E-flat major (transcribed from Book Two of the Well-Tempered Clavier) is a buoyant opener. Shostakovich’s last string quartet, in E-flat minor, vividly contrasts with it. Shostakovich brings together pensive passages, a funeral march, and what appears to be a reprise of the “knock on the door” from the Eighth Quartet, meant to describe the danger of the secret police to the composer: all intimations of fragility and mortality.

 

The disc concludes with the first of Beethoven’s late quartets, Op. 127 in, you guessed it, E-flat major. Writing for strings, it  is fascinating to note how these composers have responded to this key. E-flat can be tricky: the instruments only have thirds (G and D), not roots, of the tonic and dominant triads to play as open strings, which lends interesting chordal voicings to these pieces. From the muted angst of the Shostakovich quartet’s opening to the nobility and grandeur embodied by Beethoven’s finale, the Danish Quartet are expressive and authoritative throughout. Looking forward to what else will be refracted through the Prism series.

 

Marsyas Trio

In the Theatre of Air

NMC Recordings

 

A CD of flute, cello, piano trios by female composers (mostly British), In the Theatre of Air is thoroughly engaging.  The title work by Hilary Tann is filled with the calls of various birds, ranging widely from goldfinches and starlings to white owls and wild geese in a poetic manner that, while quite distinct from Messiaen’s birdsong transcriptions, is eminently evocative. Laura Bowler’s Salutem provides a forceful representation of multiple epochs of human civilization, affording the ensemble the chance to let loose: even scream with abandon.

 

Several Concertos by Judith Weir gives each member of the trio a virtuosic solo turn. York Minster by Georgia Rodgers plays with off-kilter ostinatos, creating a loping groove with incisive punctuations. An arrangement of Thea Musgrave’s Canta, Canta is an all-too fleeting visit with this composer; a miniature finely sculpted with undulating, overlapping lines. Two charming short works by the Nineteenth century American composer Amy Beach round out the program.

In the Theatre of Air will likely provide a number of listeners with an excellent entrée into the music of these must-hear composers. The Marsyas Trio are formidable advocates for contemporary music.

 

Duo Gazzana

Ravel, Franck, Ligeti, Messiaen

ECM Records

 

In their third recording for ECM, the violin-piano Duo Gazzana (Natascia and Raffaella) assay one of the great warhorses of the standard repertoire, the César Franck Sonata in A-major. Their rendition, full of life and long-breathed lines, rivals and bests many of the totemic recordings of the piece. The other works on the CD are under-programmed pieces by iconic composers, mostly early in their respective catalogues. Ravel’s Sonata Posthume, composed in 1897 but not published until after his death, is a lovely example of his early incorporation of stylistic hallmarks of Impressionism.  Duo for Violin and Piano, filled with Bartokian ostinatos,  was written by Gyorgy Ligeti to be performed by another famous composer: Gyorgy Kurtag. This is its first recording — it certainly merits a second and a third. Theme and Variations by Olivier Messiaen was written in 1932, but its musical language sounds of a piece with his more mature works, like Quartet for the End of Time and Vingt Regards, both from roughly a decade later. From their very first recording until now, Duo Gazzana have programmed imaginatively: this disc is exceptional both in terms of imagination and execution.

 

by Christian Carey
Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Los Angeles

Scott Worthington, Hex Vocal Ensemble at Monk Space

The December Tuesdays@Monk Space concert was titled Grinding Sounds, Repeating Patterns and Sonorous Incantations and was curated to take advantage of the friendly acoustics of Monk Space for just such music. As Aron Kallay noted in the program notes: “Not every hall is good for every combination of instruments and in many ways Monk Space takes this to the extreme. Two things the space absolutely loves are low strings, and voice.” Accordingly, Scott Worthington was on hand with his electrified contrabass and the Hex Vocal Ensemble provided the sonorous incantations.

The first piece was I Feel Pretty, by David Lang, for acoustic or amplified double bass. Worthington’s bass was fitted with a pickup that fed directly into a PC. Sounds from the bass were recorded, processed and then broadcast from the speakers on-stage after a delay of a second or two. The opening double-stopped phrases were low, rough and gnarly as well as absent of melody. The speakers multiplied the deep texture so that it was almost as if the audience were confronted by a growling bear. At times the piece gathered itself into a nicely pulsating groove, and there were often intriguing harmonies that arose between the acoustic bass and the process electronics in the speaker. David Lang is generally known for his sensitive and empathetic music, but I Feel Pretty seemed to be joyfully the opposite. As expertly realized by Worthington, I Feel Pretty was a reminder that beauty need not be delicate to be appreciated.

Next up was Mint Conditioner by Alexandra Gardner, also for doublebass and accompanied by recorded samples from the speakers. This opened with a deep creaking sound, as if a large rope or cable were being drawn taut. This established a feeling of tension as Worthington’s acoustic bass entered with sustained low notes followed by rapid passages. The speakers then issued a series of otherworldly tones that were musically complimentary, but at the same time in stark contrast to the earthy timbre of the bass; it was an encounter of the primal with the far future. At times, the piece had a jazzy, African feel that developed a gentle groove, masterfully conjured by Worthington. Towards the end, the acoustic and recorded sounds blended together with a broad, soothing feel that turned just a bit sorrowful at the finish. Mint Conditioner skillfully blended recorded sounds with live acoustic playing, with the result often greater than the sum of its parts.

Home, by Jenny Olivia Johnson followed and this opened with slow, double-stopped tones. The electronics were configured to process the acoustic sounds, then loop them through the speakers with a one or two second delay. The low notes added an element of sadness while the electronics contributed a somewhat bleary sensibility. Various sounds followed, including some rough, sawing noises and a series very high pitches that stood out like screams from the otherwise dense texture. As the piece proceeded the drama increased, and a number of amazing effects were produced by Worthington and the computer. At the finish, high screaming tones dominated, a fitting climax to the ever-rising tension. Home is one long crescendo, artfully constructed and adroitly played. Worthington’s efforts were met with sustained applause.

After the intermission the Hex Vocal Ensemble took the stage to perform – a cappella – the Sonorous Incantations section of the program. Hex specializes in music from, and inspired by, Meredith Monk. Their first piece was After persimmons by Li-young Lee, composed by Carolyn Chen, which opened with long soprano phrases followed by the lower voices entering in counterpoint. At times, the soaring phrases by the soprano arced brilliantly overhead while the other voices continued with independent melodies. The interweaving of the various lines was precisely sung and resulted in an intriguing and constantly changing surface texture. After persimmons by Li-young Lee is beguiling music which took full advantage the vocal finesse of the Hex Ensemble.

Hee-oo-hm-ha, by Toby Twining was next, and this had a bright, up tempo and contemporary feel with vocalise in place of words. The strange syllables and phrases were crisply delivered and generally infectious. There were stretches of full harmony at times, but the sunny optimism and rhythmic groove of Hee-oo-hm-ha was pleasantly reminiscent of doo wop street singing. Strong applause followed this piece.

Dolmen Music, by Meredith Monk, followed with cellist Gina Kodel joining the singers on stage. Dolmen Music is normally learned and sung by rote, but the Hex Ensemble had notated the entire 25 minutes of vocal parts. High, thin pitches from the cello began the piece with a remote, windswept feeling as if we were in some distant and barren landscape. The higher voices entered with a sound like the far off howling of coyotes in the desert night and the lower voices answered with garbled phrases. There were no intelligible words in any of these passages and the Hex Ensemble convincingly created the sense that we were witnessing the primal incantations of an ancient culture. As the piece progressed, variations emerged in the vocal sounds including rhythmic syncopation, broad tutti stretches in full harmony, conversational passages between groups of voices and strong solos. The cello was often tacet, but deep double-stopped chords and extended techniques were regularly mixed into the vocal flow. The vocal lines were often independent and complex, but all were successfully navigated by the Hex Ensemble. At the finish, all were heard in full voice, creating a powerful climax. Dolmen Music and the Hex Ensemble delivered up a unique musical sound world, full of fundamental passion.

The final work in the program was Music for people who like the future, by Andrew Hamilton and this opened in a series of declarative passages with repeated words. It was a difficult to make out the text – it was part yelling, part cheering and part singing – all in a wonderful mix of sounds. A strong beat kept the piece on course, adding to an insistent and urgent feel. The tempo and volume increased towards the finish; a reminder that the future will not arrive quietly. Music for people who like the future brought a hopeful measure of confidence to what seems, these days, to be such a bleak uncertainty. The Hex Ensemble provided the needed flair and enthusiasm for this welcome message and sustained applause followed.

The next concert at Monk Space will be on January 8, 2019 and feature performances by the Grammy Award-winning ensemble PARTCH.

by Paul Muller