Month: July 2023

Contemporary Classical

Eisler at 125

Hanns Eisler’s biography might be better known than his music, at least on this side of the Atlantic. Born in 1898, he was German/Austrian, half-Jewish, a committed student of Schoenberg, and a staunch communist. He maintained a lifelong collaboration with Brecht, and like the latter, fled the Nazis for America in the 1930s, where he took up shop in Hollywood, composing well-regarded scores for numerous minor films before being hounded out of the US by post-War anti-communist hysteria. He ended up resettling in the short-lived and little-missed Deutsche Demokratische Republik (East Germany) whose national anthem he penned while languishing under the yoke of Soviet-bloc artistic and political oppression. He died there in 1962.

Eisler’s 125th anniversary this month, coupled with a new recording of his magnum opus, the Deutsche Sinfonie, provides an opportunity to revisit the legacy of this controversial musician, a task facilitated by Brilliant Classics’ ten-CD Hanns Eisler Edition, released in 2014 and featuring several generations of eastern German recordings, many of them originally issued on the Berlin Classics label. Eisler’s life and career followed a similar path to Kurt Weill’s through the latter’s premature death in 1950, and indeed the conventional wisdom tends to regard Eisler as a poor man’s Weill. Traversing these recordings for the first time in several years leads me to conclude that in this particular case, the conventional wisdom is pretty accurate.

Aside from his film scores, Eisler is best remembered for his many Brecht settings, ranging from simple lieder for voice and piano, through cabaret-style theatrical works using a small orchestra, on up to full-fledged martial protest songs for chorus and instruments. The essence of Eisler is the genre of cynical but tuneful cabaret song that’s closely associated with Weill. CD 6 of Hanns Eisler Edition features Gisela May’s classic renditions of many of these songs, and hearing her is a genuine treat. Her clear diction, appropriate use of sprechgesang, and obvious enthusiasm for the material come bubbling through, and the reworked sound of these recordings, mostly from the 1960s, is better than one might expect from a budget label. Among May’s interpretations is the anti-war song O Fallada, da du hangest, which refers to the Goose Girl story recounted by the Brothers Grimm.

CD 7 conveys a generous dose of old Irmgard Arnold tracks as she works her way through the Hollywood Liederbuch. After this come a few tracks with Eisler himself singing songs like Die Ballade vom Wasserrad (a kind of Brechtian Gretchen am Spinnrade).

Hanns Eisler: Die Ballade vom Wasserrad

Some of the most poignant of Eisler’s songs are his late Brecht settings: post-Holocaust poems like In the flower garden. Many others, such as the selections from Die Rundköpfe und die Spitzköpfe (Round Heads and Pointy Heads) are pretty indistinguishable from Weill’s brand of modernist-tinged cabaret, right down to the working class “pit combo” ensemble. Complementing this instrumentation are the many settings for voice and piano. Eisler may have been one of the very last composers to contribute meaningfully to the Romantic art song for this combination, a genre that has since become ossified and moribund.

After landing in the DDR, Eisler’s music got a lot more didactic and tonal. Mitte des Jahrhunderts (Middle of the Century, dating, appropriately enough, from 1950) is heard on CD 9, and it’s a good example of the simplified style. It’s a choral cantata with an interposed orchestral Etude that sounds more like Prokofiev than Weill. CD 10 continues the trend, focusing on choral arrangements of moralizing songs, including a few of Eisler’s most famous agitprop specimens, which to be sure, often originated in the 1930s. One thing Eisler did get out of his stint as DDR’s most internationally prestigious composer (most of his eminent colleagues having long since fled to the West) was the material support of the Communist regime in making these recordings. Aside from the East German national anthem (Auferstanden aus Ruinen, inexplicably omitted from Brilliant’s collection) Eisler’s most famous tune is probably his setting of Brecht’s Und weil der Mensch ein Mensch ist (AKA United Front Song) with its characteristic refrain “Drum links, zwei, drei”. CD 10 (and the set) concludes with a suitably militaristic choral rendition of it. The irony of deploying march rhythms and unison singing in the service of ostensibly anti-authoritarian texts is self-evident. And whereas Eisler’s Weimar-era kampfmusik used instrumental combos and ragtime/jazz-influenced rhythms to connote underclass origins, the effect here is more evocative of a frenzied mob or struggle session.

CD 10 also includes a handful of English-language performances, such as From Narrow Streets and Hidden Places and The Flame of Reason.

So much for the stereotypical Eisler. What’s striking to me, though, is how much instrumental music he left us. Brilliant Classics includes much of it here, mainly suites arranged by the composer from his many film and stage scores. These are a delight to listen to, both because they’re unfamiliar and because they’re more harmonically advanced than his better-known vocal works. Eisler’s Hollywood scores are particularly obscure today because they mainly went into films that did not become classics. The lively Nonet No. 2, culled from his music for the 1941 film The Forgotten Village (itself a curious example of ethnofiction, with a voice over written by John Steinbeck) is characteristic of this style, which shares a common lineage with early Hindemith (e.g., his Kammermusik No. 2 from 1925).

It’s in these works that Eisler’s debt to Schoenberg comes through most vividly. Vierzehn Arten den Regen zu beschreiben (Fourteen Ways to Describe the Rain), composed for a Joris Ivens film, recalls Schoenberg’s Suite, Op. 29, but benefits from Eisler’s penchant for solo winds and open textures (by contrast with Schoenberg’s frequently turgid orchestration). It’s worth recalling that Weill’s earliest canonical music is also heavily indebted to Schoenberg, and many of Eisler pieces for mixed chamber ensemble bear a close resemblance to the sound world of Weill’s youthful Violin Concerto.

CD 8 features solo piano music from the 1920s, closely modeled after Schoenberg’s groundbreaking Op. 19/23/25 pieces. Many compositions in this style emerged from the interwar Germanosphere, but Eisler’s are among the best that weren’t written by Schoenberg, Berg or Webern. This music delights in its unabashed atonality, shorn of the constraints of functional harmony like a nudist shorn of uncomfortable clothes. It occasionally suffers from the same rhythmic rigidity that disfigures much of Schoenberg’s serial music: endless bars of 2/4, 3/4 and 4/4 time with steady eighth notes.

A mid-century German Symphony?

Most of Eisler’s works are miniatures or collections of miniatures. And they tend to be repetitive forms like strophic songs or variation sets (c.f., the aforementioned Vierzehn Arten). Eisler seemed most comfortable in short formats, relying on brief characteristic musical gestures, and an ever-vibrant range of instrumental color (hence the eagerness to employ mixed chamber ensembles). There’s one big exception to this though: the Deutsche Sinfonie, Eisler’s most musically ambitious and distended work. It occupies all of CD 3 in Brilliant Classics’ set in a 1974 recording that features multiple East Berlin musicians under Max Pommer, and is also available in a 1989 live performance featuring Günther Theuring and the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra that’s just been released by Capriccio (an Austrian label specializing in lesser-known European modernist works such as Henze’s Das verratene Meer, Schulhoff’s Flammen and Wellesz’s The Sacrifice of the Prisoner).

Basically, the Sinfonie is an 11 movement oratorio for soloists, speaker, chorus and orchestra. It lasts over an hour, setting several anti-fascist texts by Brecht and one by the Italian novelist Ignazio Silone. Its sound world is comparable to Schoenberg’s Jacob’s Ladder or A Survivor from Warsaw as they might have been adapted by Weill and Brecht. Originally composed in 1935 and 1936, with new movements added as late as 1957, the Sinfonie is “full of political warning to the German people and to those Communists in lock-step with Moscow” as Steve Schwartz puts it. Several of Brecht’s texts tell of German concentration camps, which it’s worth remembering were first opened in 1933, well before Kristallnacht.

Eisler’s works don’t rise above the agitprop as well as Weill’s, and Deutsche Sinfonie can seem as preachy as the most sycophantic cantatas of Shostakovich and Prokofiev. Nevertheless it’s one of his most musically compelling works, containing many fascinating and unnerving moments. It seems to be a precursor to works like Henze’s 9th Symphony, and probably deserves to be more widely heard, at least on disc.

The Sinfonie‘s Praeludium opens with a slow mournful theme entrusted to the violas, kind of a twelve-tone echo of Mahler’s 10th Symphony.

Eisler: Deutsche Sinfonie

A bit of worldly buildup and subsidence sets the stage for the chorus’s entry: a homophonic setting of verses from Brecht’s Germany (Oh Deutschland, bleiche Mutter! Wie bist du besudelt, meaning “Oh Germany, pale mother, how you sit defiled”). The quotation of the Internationale in the trumpets at 4:50 is obvious to anyone who still recognizes that tune. Less familiar nowadays is its counterpoint in the trombones, which quotes a lament for the martyrs of the 1905 Russian Revolution that became known in German as Unsterbliche Opfer (Immortal Victims) and which is also quoted in Hartmann’s Concerto Funèbre and Shostakovich’s 11th Symphony.

Hanns Eisler: Deutsche Sinfonie

All but the last of the Sinfonie‘s movements are twelve-tone, displaying Eisler’s characteristic implementation which emphasizes traditional tonal relationships and the facile extraction of short riffs. A good example of the latter is in the second movement, Brecht’s To the fighters in the concentration camps, a passacaglia over a ground constructed from two pairs of repeated half-steps (which in turn spell out a transposition of the famous B-A-C-H motif). Brecht’s poem features the notable line Verschwunden aber Nicht vergessen (“gone but not forgotten”).

Hanns Eisler: Deutsche Sinfonie

Next up is the first orchestral interlude, called Etude 1. Eisler appropriated this lively movement from the finale to his Orchestral Suite No. 1 (track 4 on CD 1). It leads directly into Brecht’s Erinnerung (Remembrance), commemorating a suppressed anti-war demonstration in Potsdam. It’s set as a kind of post-Mahlerian funeral march. Next comes In Sonnenburg, named after one of the Nazi’s first internment camps. In the 1958 published edition from Breitkopf & Härtel this is cast as a baritone solo, but both Pommer and Theuring do it as an alternating duet between soprano and baritone soloists. On the word leer (“empty”) in ihre blutigen Hände aber immer noch leer sind (“their bloody hands are still empty”) the singer is instructed to perform a fascist salute.

The second orchestral interlude, Etude 2, follows. It appears to have been originally composed for this piece, and is in two broad sections: slow-fast. The main motivic idea is two descending major thirds separated by a minor second (e.g., D♯-B-D-B♭), an idea also foregrounded in the second movement. Movement 7 is Burial of the Troublemaker in a Zinc Coffin, the “troublemaker” being a worker demanding to be paid his wages and be treated as a human being. The chorus dramatically personifies the compliant mob with “He was a troublemaker. Bury him! Bury him!”. Male and female soloists are heard here too, lending the movement quite a bit of coloristic variety. Like several of the other movements, this one frequently has a martial feel to it. After the choral admonition that “whoever proclaims their solidarity with the oppressed will be put into a zinc box like this one”, the movement ends with another soft and resigned funeral march, this one emphasizing triplet rhythms on the first and second beat.

Next up is a four-part cantata-within-an-oratorio, appropriately called Peasant Cantata. It’s the only movement with a non-Brecht text, excerpted from Silone’s 1936 novel Bread and Wine (which the US surreptitiously disseminated among Italian partisans to gin up anti-Mussolini support during WW2). It too opens with march rhythms. Part three uses two male speakers accompanied by strings and soft humming in the women’s chorus. The fourth part is yet another march.

The movements have been getting longer and more complex as we go on, and at 15 minutes, the Worker Cantata (AKA Das Lied vom Klassenfeind or Song of the Class Enemy) is the longest individual movement in all of Hanns Eisler Edition. At last the composer puts forth an extended organic structure, melding stanza form with elements of traditional sonata form. After an orchestral introduction, the mezzo-soprano delivers what sounds like a strophic song, with a folk-like, though serial, melody in straightforward 2/4 time.

Hanns Eisler: Deutsche Sinfonie

The continuation descends stepwise.

Hanns Eisler: Deutsche Sinfonie

After two statements of this comes a new idea, one of those jaunty workers’ marches harkening back to Eisler’s Weimar days. The text here is passed to the baritone who sings a new tune, but then ends with the same continuation theme as the soprano.

Hanns Eisler: Deutsche Sinfonie

An orchestral passage recalls the march and leads to a climax after which (at 5:29) comes one of the Sinfonie‘s most effective moments: a soft kettledrum roll on low A♭ providing the sole accompaniment for the choir as they dramatically enter with a chorale-like setting of “and as the war was about to end”. Some developmental passages follow, climaxing with the mezzo-soprano and baritone soloists singing in octaves (a doubling previously avoided in the Sinfonie). Fragmentation of earlier material in the choir takes us to a scherzo section in 3/4 time (8:26), which features new material and alternation between soloists (still singing in octaves) and chorus.

We arrive back at the march song which, as before, is entrusted to the baritone. An out-of-tempo quasi recitativo passage in the mezzo-soprano leads to the coda, which Eisler launches by having the chorus alternate lines with one of the speakers from the Peasant Cantata. The apogee comes with a repetition of the march idea with the chorus delivering the closing line “and the class enemy is the enemy”.

Movement 10 is the last of the orchestral interludes. Originally conceived as the finale, it’s of also extended length (nearly ten minutes, making it one of the longest instrumental tracks in the collection), using a structure that approximates sonata form. We start right out in allegro 3/4 time. After some introductory bars, a low string ostinato sets in, over which the main theme is stated by a solo horn (at 0:25). If it sounds vaguely familiar it’s because it uses the same row as the viola melody that opens the Praeludium. The first trumpet immediately inverts the tune, and later the violins restate it in its original shape. The tempo slackens for the second theme, heard in clarinets in thirds (at 1:50). Sudden timpani strokes (4:23) herald a change to duple time. At 5:09 Eisler returns to triple time, and starts to develop the first theme, in both original and inverted form as before. At 6:10, the trumpet develops the second theme in canon with the horns. The meter continues to switch between duple and triple, and the development become more fragmentary and the texture thinner until we’re left with an accompanied cadenza for solo violin. The coda reprises the main theme and its dotted rhythm amid multiple layers of crescendo’ing counterpoint, leading to a conclusion which, while not exactly triumphant, is rather more upbeat than most of what we’ve heard before. I personally find the mood of this movement a bit out of character with the rest of the sprawling Sinfonie, despite its motivic integration. An interesting detail reported by David Drew is that the three orchestral movements make up a sort of symphony within the oratorio, with Etude No. 2 taking the role of both scherzo and slow movement.

The work ends with a surprisingly brief choral Epilog, little more than a fragment built atop an A-E♭-F♯ ostinato in the low strings that underpins Brecht’s “this is what you get” lament for the German war dead (the complete text in German is Seht unsre Söhne, taub und blutbefleckt vom eingefrornen Tank hier losgeschnallt! Ach, selbst der Wolf braucht, der die Zähne bleckt, ein Schlupfloch! Wärmt sie, es ist ihnen kalt! Seht unsre Söhne, the key words meaning “See our sons”). This movement was tacked on in 1957, years “after the fact” on the occasion of the work’s publication and full premiere. It’s actually an arrangement of the introduction to Eisler’s cantata Bilder aus der Kriegsfibel, which is heard on CD 9. In its resigned ambiguity it seems to sum up the despair Eisler must have felt toward the end of his life, when so many of his personal and ideological dreams lay shattered. Indeed the compositional history of the Deutsche Sinfonie is itself a microcosm of Eisler’s plight: composed mainly in exile, unperformable in Germany during the Nazi era, and upon Eisler’s return promptly suppressed by communist censors for its Schoenbergian atonality in keeping with the Soviet-imposed dogma that Eisler himself had helped promulgate through his enthusiastic endorsement of the Zhdanov doctrine at the 1948 International Congress of Composers in Prague—a cautionary precedent to today’s bilateral attacks on artistic and academic freedom.

Thanks to a modest cultural liberalization in 1958 the work was finally unveiled, but by that time Brecht was dead and the basic anti-Nazi message was no longer as topical.

Hanns Eisler and Bertolt Brecht in 1950 (photo: German Federal Archive)

Risen from the ruins?

Eisler’s music may not be of the same caliber as Schoenberg’s or Weill’s, but it’s good enough to repay the time spent listening through these recordings. As with most Brilliant Classics releases, Hanns Eisler Edition comes with a few cut corners, notably the lack of song texts and translations. But you do get extensive program notes by Günter Mayer (which can be downloaded, along with track listings, from Brilliant’s Web site). And the budget price certainly makes it a compelling purchase for almost anyone interested in 20th century music—at least if you’re able to approach Eisler’s didacticism in the same spirit that freethinkers are obliged to employ when appreciating musical settings of religious texts. Spend a couple weeks with the Eisler oeuvre, then go on to Brilliant’ Paul Dessau Edition and the new recording of Dessau’s Lanzelot to complete your tour of the DDR’s musical mini-heyday.

by Michael Schell
CD Review, early music, File Under?

Orlando Consort Continues Their Machaut Edition (CD Review)

Orlando Consort

Machaut: The Fount of Grace

Hyperion Records

Matthew Venner, countertenor; Mark Dobell and Angus Smith, tenors; Donald Greig, baritone

 

Guilliame de Machaut (1300-1377) was a supremely talented poet and composer. He was an innovator, creating the first polyphonic Mass and developing polyphony in chansons as well. After Machaut, there is little evidence of composers in the Medieval era who set their own words to music. Works devoted to courtly love make up the majority of his output. Fount of Grace adds several topics to that of love poems: devotional and historial components loom larger than on other recordings of Machaut by Orlando Consort. 

 

After thirty-five years, Orlando Consort gave their last performance on June 7, 2023. The Fount of Grace is the tenth of eleven recordings of Orlando’s survey of Machaut. The title references a name for the Virgin Mary, to whom some of the programmed works offer devotions, explicitly or in a veiled fashion.

 

Le lay de la fonteinne is the most overtly religious, petitioning the Blessed Virgin for love and grace. Like traditional lays, the rhythm scheme and melodic framework are complex, with different rhythms and melodies in each couplet, apart from the first and last, which provide a refrain to begin and end the piece. Odd-numbered lines are monophonic, while even-numbered lines are performed as three voice unison canons; a reference to the trinity that, late in the piece, is supported by an evocation of its formula. The singing of the canons is quite beautiful, with the overlapped lines delivered with clear diction and vivacious rhythms. At over twenty-four minutes in duration, it is by far the program’s longest work and, thematically, its centerpiece.

 

Machaut also references occurrences of his day, a particularly fraught time in France, beleaguered with plague, pestilence, and the Hundred Year’s War, which at the time of these compositions was going quite badly for the French. The motet Tu qui gregem/plange regni/Apprehende arma is an example. It references taking up arms against the foe at a point during the Hundred Years War when the nobles of France were in desperate straits, with some taken hostage by the English forces. Likewise, Christe qui lux/Veni creator spiritus/Tribulatio proxima est implores Christ to be with those in danger. The counterpoint, which includes canonic and free passages, is finely knit, with upper voices Matthew Venner and Mark Dobell leading off the proceedings with an ardent duo that, soon enough, is accompanied by the other voices in fascinating overlapping relations. The ballade Donne Signeurs, urges noblemen to be good to their subjects. A sustained tune sung by tenor Angus Smith, an upper register melody performed by Venner, and harmonies incorporated by the other vocalists, with a sonorous bass line by Donald Greig, create a fascinating, vibrating texture. 

 

Courtly love is not neglected on the program. Two versions of the Rondeau Tant doucement me sens emprisonnez are included, one for two voices and the other four. The theme of being imprisoned by love is a venerable one among chansons, and this text expresses it well. The duet’s two voices move at different rates, with a fetching melismatic top voice. The quartet is even more varied in rhythmic activity. With Tant doucement … Machaut creates a tour-de-force times two in the chanson genre.

 

The Orlando Consort still sound in fine voice and will be sorely missed. At least we have one more Machaut recording to which to look forward. 

 

-Christian Carey



by Christian Carey
CD Review, Chamber Music, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Minimalism

Manchester Collective – Neon (Recording Review)

Manchester Collective

Neon

Bedroom Community

 

Alex Jakeman, Flute; Oliver Pashley, Clarinet; Rakhi Singh, Violin; 

Hannah Roberts, Cello; Beibei Wang, Vibraphone; Katherine Tinker, Piano 

 

Manchester Collective’s fourth recording, Neon, includes totemic pieces by Steve Reich and Julius Eastman, as well as works by Hannah Peel and the first concert music composition by Lyra Pramuk. It is a well-considered and excellently performed program.

 

The centerpiece is Steve Reich’s Double Sextet, a work for two “Pierrot plus Percussion” ensembles that won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize. The piece can either be performed live by twelve musicians or by a single sextet against an overdubbed rendition of the second grouping. Manchester Collective opts for the latter. The performance is so tight that the lines between live and recorded are erased. This is due in no small part to the energetic and laser beam focused playing of violinist Rakhi Singh and cellist Hannah Roberts. Double Sextet is one of the best of Reich’s later compositions and this performance is a welcome addition to his recording catalog. 

 

Julius Eastman’s “Joy Boy” begins with vocal improvisations that display a surprisingly Reich-like harmony. Pitched percussion and repeated ululations bring the performance to a cadence point, after which the instruments vie for dominance in the texture. The second section is based on just a few harmonies, but their elongation and the sudden eruptions that periodically occur keep things interesting. 

 

In an affectionate homage, Hannah Peel tropes ideas and sounds from Steve Reich in the recording’s title piece. We are treated to some flavors reminiscent of Double Sextet, but also samples from Shinjuku train station, a nod, albeit a far less angsty one, to Reich’s Different Trains. Peel is expert at bringing together these disparate strands. The first movement, “Shinjuku,” is ostinato filled and brightly hued. The second movement, “Born of Breath,” has some lovely clarinet writing for Oliver Pashley, a fine player with excellent control of limpid runs and upper register forays. Flutist Alex Jakeman is compelling too. Here she contributes shorter lines, often dramatic in the timing of their appearances. Less minimal in design than the other movements, it has a beguiling ambience. The finale, “Vanishing,” features vibraphone and piano, played with keen attention to dynamic shadings by Beibei Wang and Katherine Tinker, with repeated patternings from the rest of the group coalescing into a lovely surface.

 

Lyra Pramuk produced Neon and, encouraged by the group, tried her hand at creating a composition for them. A producer, vocalist, performance artist, and composer of electronica, it is not surprising that she excels in adding another component to her polyartist career. Of her work Quanta, she says,  “There is no universal time. Quanta explores the notion that each of us has an individual sense of how time traces through our lives.”

 

The ticking of a grandfather clock opens the piece, at first keeping strict time, then devolving into varying tempos, and finally stopping. Sustained tones emerge from the grandfather clock’s ticking, followed by a diatonic duet for clarinet and cello. Shimmering vibraphone announces the return of the rest of the ensemble, playing extended triadic harmonies to accompany successive solos from each of the wind and string players. The language is lush, with overlapping lines from the entire group creating a tapestry of interwoven melody. The next section adds flute trills, glissandos, and pizzicato to further enhance the texture. A long decrescendo compresses the material until it vanishes. Pramuk’s Opus 1 suggests she should add more concert music to her resume. 

 

Neon features a thoroughly engaging program and talented ensemble. Recommended.

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?, jazz

Ralph Alessi Quartet on ECM (CD Review)

Ralph Alessi Quartet

It’s Always Now

ECM CD

 

Trumpeter Ralph Alessi brought a passel of originals to his latest recording date, his fourth for ECM, It’s Always Now. Most are single-author compositions, but a few are collaborations with pianist Florian Weber. The two are joined on the recording by double bassist Bänz Oester and drummer Gerry Hemingway. It is a formidable lineup, one responsive to and supportive of each others’ playing. 

 

Coauthored with Weber, “Hypnagogic” opens the album, with whole-tone arpeggiations from Weber and repeating notes from Alessi creating a mysterious atmosphere. Alessi’s lines unfurl into passages morphing the scale patterns Weber uses, imitating elements of his intro and exploring upper register sostenuto. It is a beguiling way to begin. “Old Baby’s” loping tempo and bluesy cast alludes to jazz styles past. Still, the player’s keep these tropes within their own modern language. Oester and Hemingway assert themselves on “Residue,” creating a powerful sound and corruscating rhythms. The solos are correspondingly boisterous. 

 

“The Shadow Side” is an appropriately named mysterious ballad with wide ranging solos from both Alessi and Weber. The title tune, coauthored with Weber, features Alessi playing in the upper register with exquisite control. Slow, soft, inside-the-piano work and thick chords create complex textures. “Diagonal Lady” begins with Oester playing a fine solo with terse melodies and glissandos. It concludes with arco low notes. Alessi explores an anapestic cry and Weber ghosts his melodies.

 

“Everything Mirrors Everything” is a nice change of pace, literally. It begins with an uptempo moto perpetuo. The solos maintain a bebop tempo, Alessi using a mute and firing off line after line in fiery fashion. At the tune’s conclusion, he references the moto perpetuo line and Hemingway’s cymbal’s sizzle away. Short and sassy, “Ire” has a duet of its tart tune by Alessi and Weber, which is then taken out of phase by the duo, Weber adding stabbing comping. 

 

Two extended outings, “His Hopes, His Fears, His Tears,” and “Hanging by a Thread” show the capacity of the quartet to develop small pieces of initial material into larger forms. Here as elsewhere, the simpatico interaction between Alessi and Weber is formidable. Likewise, the interactions between Oester and Hemingway never fail to impress. Hemingway has long been a favorite of mine, and hearing Oester’s lines curl around the pulse the drummer sets down, moving into his own line of syncopations to add another rhythmic layer, is a highlight of both tunes. Weber’s solo on “His Hopes… presents virtuosity in full flourish. “Hanging by a Thread” is another tune where a chromatic melody outlines an uptempo pulse. Alessi begins and is joined by Weber in a follow the leader duo. After the intro, the pace slows, and Weber takes a solo set of variations of the tune. Alessi sequences the tune in his solo and overblows stentorian high notes. He is joined by Weber and the tempo picks up to a rapid pace, florid lines breathlessly flowing. Glissandos from the trumpet heralds a new section and the rest of the quartet plays a vigorous ostinato. Alessi locks in with the patterning of the others, Weber returning to with the chromatic tune, and then Alessi repeating it one more time to conclude.

 

The recording’s last cut, “Tumbleweed,” another authorial collaboration with Weber, has a delicate melody built of latticed repeating cells. As in the past, Alessi and Weber trade angular lines, the trumpeter’s tone plummy in contrast to the silvery sound he often evokes. Rather than explore all of the tune’s potential, it finishes after a tantalizing three minutes.

 

It’s Always Now is one of my favorite recordings thus far in 2023. Recommended.

 

-Christian Carey



by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?, jazz

Coltrane and Dolphy – Evenings at the Village Gate (CD Review)

Evenings at the Village Gate

John Coltrane with Eric Dolphy

McCoy Tyner, piano; Reggie Workman and Art Davis, bass; Elvin Jones, drums

Impulse! Records

 

Evenings at the Village Gate is a rarity that was curated by the New York Public Library. It is taken from test recordings of the Village Gate’s sound system by producer Richard Alderson. Recorded on a single ribbon microphone, it documents eighty minutes of John Coltrane’s 1961 residency at the venue, performed by the all-too-briefly united quintet lineup that augmented Coltrane’s quartet with multi-reed performer Eric Dolphy. Bassist Jimmy Garrison is absent, replaced by Reggie Workman and, on the only live recording of “Africa,” the addition of Art Davis to make a two bass grouping. Pianist McCoy Tyner and drummer Elvin Jones complete the group.

 

Hearing Coltrane and Dolphy soloing on “My Favorite Things” is an inspiring listen, the former’s breathless phrasing on soprano saxophone and the latter’s flute jabbing at melody notes, juxtaposed with fleet arpeggiations. Dolphy and Jones create a polymetric construction that buoys the tune’s excitement. Coltrane played “My Favorite Things” many times. Later in 1961 he would record iconic renditions at the Village Vanguard. However, the version from the Gate finds his response to Dolphy’s artistry giving the tune an entirely different flavor.

 

Dolphy plays the melody on “When Lights Are Low,” on bass clarinet and explores the upper register of the instrument with impressive control. Likewise, Coltrane’s solo pulls melodic variations out of the stratosphere and brings them down to earth with lightning fast scales. Tyner takes an imaginative solo that explores extended harmonies and variations on the tune. Tyner’s solo on Impressions is also a standout, punctuating the rhythms that Jones emphasizes with short motives as well as virtuoso filigrees and seamless octaves.

 

With the rhythm section laying down a rock solid groove, “Greensleeves” starts with florid elaborations from Coltrane, only later revealing the Dorian tune with fewer adornments, Dolphy interjecting bass notes at its conclusion. Tyner takes an extensive, well-developed solo, once again saving the tune for last. Dolphy’s solo plays with an angular tune that he develops in multiple registers, moving to the melodic refrain and then howling high notes. Coltrane matches these with altissimo shredding of his own. The two then join in a colloquy of blindingly fast arpeggios and overblowing. Coltrane takes the tune one last time, followed by a decrescendo from the rhythm section to conclude. Dolphy’s addition to the proceedings is felt profoundly.

 

The recording of “Africa” apparently is the only live rendition extant. This is the only tune from the Village Gate sessions on which Coltrane plays tenor saxophone. In addition to the upper register playing and quicksilver scales he already displayed on soprano, his playing here also involves long melodic lines and low register punctuations. Workman and Davis trade off arco and pizzicato playing, remaining two distinct voices in the music. Jones drops out to allow them the chance for an extended duet. Tyner performs trills, chord solos, and repeating soprano register patterns. Jones is exuberant in exploring tremendously syncopated rhythms, particularly in his own solo turn. Coltrane and Dolphy create a contrapuntal duet to close the tune, rhythm section roaring beside them. It seems a pity that more live versions of “Africa” have yet to be uncovered, as this is certainly a highlight of the recording.

 

Evenings at the Village Gate is a treasure trove that provides a different perspective on 1961, a pivotal year in Coltrane’s development of an extended approach to live performance. Had Dolphy lived longer, one imagines he could have played an integral part in Coltrane’s later ensembles and recordings. For now, we must content ourselves with what is here, which is quite substantial and essential listening.

 

-Christian Carey

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, Dance, File Under?

Thomas Adés – Dante (CD/DVD review)

Thomas Adés 

Dante

Los Angeles Master Chorale, Los Angeles Symphony, Gustavo Dudamel, conductor

Nonesuch CD

 

Thomas Adés

The Dante Project

London Symphony Chorus, Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Koen Kessels, conductor

Opus Arte Bluray DVD

 

It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to use Dante as the centerpiece of one’s own creative work. Thomas Adés has courage in spades, as he has created an ambitious  ballet based on the Divine Comedy, for dancers, chorus, and orchestra, commemorating the 700th anniversary of the poet’s death. Two documents of the piece are currently available, a Nonesuch recording of the Los Angeles Symphony, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, and an Opus Arte Bluray DVD.

 

Dudamel is firmly in command of the concert version of Dante, balancing its powerful, often intricate, orchestration. The vivid imagery of the poem is ideal material for Adés to use the leitmotifs that so often appear in his theatrical work. In The Inferno section, the “Abandon All Hope” motif, which opens the ballet, is memorable in its angst-filled stridency, “The Ferryman” contains a recurring melody with exquisite writing in the winds, and the Dies Irae is given a set of suitably diabolical variations. “Paolo and Francesca – the endless whirlwind,” is dervish like in its peregrinations. “The Pope’s Adagio – Head First,” contains a soaring, neo-romantic melody. Immediately followed by “The Hypocrites – coated in lead,” which nicely juxtaposes the Pope’s music with slowly moving, low register chromaticism and an inexorable drumbeat. “The Thieves – devoured by reptiles” depicts the chase between condemned and tormentors in a quick dance that, more than anything else in the ballet, channels Tchaikovsky.

 

Some truly terrifying music ensues: the timpani and howling lower brass for “The suicides,” followed by cymbals and upward wind glissandos, has echoes of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. “Satan – in the lake of ice” closes the Inferno section with a harrowing slow movement with dissonant brass chorales juxtaposed with shimmering high winds and strings. It is among the most moving sections of the work.

 

Recorded voices of an ancient Syrian Jewish prayer are intoned at the beginning of Purgatorio, its accompanying music depicting “Dawn on the Sea of Purgatory,” with the sound of recorded waves and modal interludes that resemble the scales being chanted. Voices reappear in “Valley of Flowers” alongside a Middle Eastern dance with ebullient percussion in whirling patterns that gradually speed up, only to be replaced by a slow cadenza. Recorded voices continue their singing and the strings take a long-threaded melody on “The Healing Fire.” Purgatorio in its final three movements begins to depict the uplift of souls to heaven. “The Earthly Paradise” uses a melody from the recorded voices in a brass-forward quick section that ends with a flourish. “The Heavenly Procession” slows the tempo back to that of the initial chanting of the prayer, which is accompanied by chiming punctuations, haloing strings, and an eloquent horn solo. “The Ascent” is triumphant, filled with ringing changes and ascending scales imitated in all the sections of the orchestra.

 

What follows is a compositional tour-de-force.  Paradisum is cast in a single, 27-minute long movement, with the following subsections, “Awakening – Moon – Mercury – Venus – Sun – Mars – Jupiter.” A slow build begins with “Awakening” that continues throughout, with a registral ascent and marshaling of forces culminating in the addition of chorus. Dudamel paces the piece with an exquisite sense of its long architecture, making sure that there is intensity left by the time the music reaches “Jupiter.” Adés’s incorporation of transformed versions of previous leitmotifs provides Paradisum with a sense of closure.  

The Opus Arte Bluray DVD features the Royal Ballet’s Edward Watson in his last performance after twenty-seven years as a principal dancer. Directed by Kevin O’Hare and choreographed by Wayne McGregor, it is a beautifully danced and visually arresting production. Watson, as Dante, and Gary Avis as Virgil, wear tunics, Avis’s gold and Watson’s moving from aqua to half-red/half aqua in Purgatorio, and entirely red in Paradisum. Likewise, the dancers in Inferno wear charcoal body suits and those in Purgatorio and Paradisum are, respectively, light tan and then white. The symbolism of color is complemented by solo and group dancing that varies from undulating modernism to, by the score’s conclusion, more traditional ballet. Sarah Lamb dances the part of Beatrice with graceful versatility, and Dante’s love for her is depicted in affecting choreography. Throughout, McGregor, with a keen ear for its orchestration, captures the essence of Adés’s score.

 

Do I prefer the audio recording or the film? Glad to not have to choose, as they are both excellent documents. Dante is a major work by Adés, and one of his best to date. Highly recommended. 

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Chamber Music, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Rock

Balmorhea – Pendant World on DG (CD Review)

Balmorhea

Pendant World

Deutsche-Grammophon

 

In recent years, Deutsche-Grammophon has been releasing crossover albums incorporating the work of pop/electronic artists, particularly those who sit in the post-rock and ambient pockets. Balmorhea, the band name for the trio Rob Lowe, Michael A. Muller, and Aisha Burns are an ideal grouping for this type of project. Their work has long been influenced by classical music and their arrangements are well wrought. In 2021, their first recording for DG, The Wind, made a strong impression. If anything, their latest for the imprint, Pendant World, is even stronger. 

 

Guests artists from the A-list of contemporary classical music join them, including cellist Clarice Jensen, percussionist Jason Treuting, vocalist Lisa Morgenstern, and guitarist Sam Gendel. Lower and Muller handle keyboard duties, and Burns contributes violin. Many of the songs are aphoristic, but even the smallest slices of music yield atmospheric moments. “Nonplussed,” Pendant World’s opener, clocks in at a mere forty-one seconds, but Treuting’s chimes and gradually accelerating drums give it a striking resemblance to a locomotive gearing up to leave the station. “Range” is a showcase for  Gendel’s arpeggiated guitar, with supple strings in the background and a brief piano bridge between the guitar solos. Less than two minutes, it would make an excellent cut for a film score. “Fire Song” too, is short yet memorable. It features Gendel, this time taking on a more melodic role with plaintive harmonies behind him.

 

Pendant World doesn’t just contain morsel-sized pieces. “Step, Step, Step” is a showcase for the band and all of their guests. Solos ricochet between them, with Burns a particular standout and Treuting providing an ardent motor. The arrangement is well-conceived: the concert music analog to a post-rock anthem. Similarly, “Oscuros” is for the ensemble, with a repeated note piano riff girding the verses and strings taking up a variation of the tune in a subdued middle section. At the end of the piece, the piano takes the foreground again with a harmonically tweaked, more fully realized version of the tune. 

 

The final piece,”Depth Serenade”  features Balmorhea with Burns and Jensen handling string duties. The violin and cello melodies are beautiful, set against ambient keyboards. The overall effect has echoes of Gavin Bryars’s Sinking of the Titanic and Harold Budd’s work, but the sound world of Balmorhea commingles with them, and doesn’t merely co opt past sounds. It ends with repeated shimmering piano chords and soaring strings..

 

Pendant World makes a strong case for the vitality of crossover in a contemporary classical context. One hopes Balmorhea will continue in this vein.

 

-Christian Carey



by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?, Pop, Rock

Dear Tick – Emotional Contracts (CD Review)

Deer Tick

Emotional Contracts

ATO Records

 

Deer Tick’s first post-pandemic recording, Emotional Contracts (ATO), is produced by veteran Dave Fridmann, who has manned the console for the likes of Sleater-Kinney, The Flaming Lips, and Spoon. It retains many aspects of the sound Deer Tick has developed over the past two decades. A number of the songs are rousing rock anthems with a tinge of alt-country. “If I Try to Leave” falls into this category, but its lyrics chaff against the music’s uplifting demeanor, with the narrator asking how they would cope if they left their life, family and all, behind. The lyrics of “If She Could Only See Me Now” are those of a traditional rock breakup ballad, but the music and vocal provide an indignant sneer, suggesting this relationship is truly in the rearview mirror. 

 

The lineup for Deer Tick has been steady. The band’s founder singer/guitarist John McCauley is joined here by guitarist Ian O’Neil, drummer Dennis Ryan, and bassist Christopher Ryan. The group also enlists guest artists, Steve Berlin (Los Lobos), who adds keyboards and saxophone to some of the tracks, and background vocalists Courtney Marie Andrews, Kam Franklin, Angela Miller, Sheree Smith, and Vanessa Carlton.

 

Deer Tick has a reputation for creating music that is a bit scruff, rough around the edges even after it is recorded. One would imagine that their previous recordings involved tightening things up a bit during their sessions. In something of a role reversal, the band rehearsed (by their own admission, over rehearsed) the ten songs on Emotional Contracts for months in their slapdash rehearsal space in Providence, Rhode Island. When Deer Tick arrived in the studio to record, Fridmann had to encourage them to let go of the process, to allow the songs to redevelop into finished projects. The addition of the aforementioned guests opens up the sound. For instance, “Running from Love” has multiple vocalists and a chorus cooing in the background, and takes on a soul vibe.  The first single from Emotional Contracts was co-written by McCauley and O’Neil, with the latter taking lead vocals. A heavy rock beat on the verse is disrupted on the chorus by a Latin rhythm on the keyboard. The rhythmic juxtaposition is in part because the lyric sends us “South of the border,” but it also demonstrates the narrator’s fraught emotional state while dealing with trauma from earlier in life. “Grey Matter” leans into Deer Tick’s abiding affection for country.

 

“Once in a Lifetime” isn’t a cover. This original by McCauley features a jaunty bassline, tightly interlocked guitar parts, accordion, and dulcet vocal harmonies on the chorus. “My Ship” is a brief, doleful mid-tempo ballad with McCauley’s voice placed lower than usual. It includes varied harmonies that allow the band to delve into classic pop territory. 

 

“The Real Thing, “ the final track on Emotional Contracts, is a nine-minute opus addressing depression, from which McCauley has long suffered. He adds an edge to his voice, while the drums and bass hold down an inexorable groove, and guitars overlap and punctuate the proceedings with clarion chords. The middle section amplifies McCauley’s voice into a distorted mic, which is then responded to by his regular voice in a pain-filled hook. Guitars crest and then are abruptly cut off, only to have the hook return in full throttle. A nettled version of the melody appears in a guitar solo offset by a new keyboard riff, creating a long, instrumental coda. The song denies easy solutions, instead using the sharing of pain as catharsis. 

 

On Emotional Contracts, Deer Tick creates a melange of exuberance and pathos. 

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
Contemporary Classical

Joe Hisaishi: A Symphonic Celebration

Many people’s first exposure to the world of Studio Ghibli and its star director, Hayao Miyazaki, was My Neighbor Totoro. For me, it was Laputa: Castle in the Sky. I will never forget my reaction to the opening sequence, during which Sheeta, the sole living heiress of the eponymous all-but-forgotten realm, falls from an airship. As she hurtles toward the earth below, eyes closed as if resigned to this tragic fate, her crystal necklace begins to glow, imbuing enough power in its slender cord to bring her to the softest of landings into the arms of protagonist Pazu.

Nothing prepared me, however, for the music of Joe Hisaishi. Such emotional circuits are part and parcel of his scoring at its most glorious: building a free fall of anticipation before settling into the inner lives of Miyazaki’s timeless characters. And surely, this conspectus from Deutsche Grammophon provides a long-overdue account of Hisaishi’s melodic gifts. A Symphonic Celebration reminds us of one key reason why Miyazaki’s oeuvre owns so much valuable real estate in the hearts of children and adults alike. Each image has a song.

While Michael Beek’s liner notes rightly place Miyazaki/Hisaishi among the ranks of Spielberg/Williams, Zemeckis/Silvestri, Burton/Elfman, and Fellini/Rota, I might also add Lynch/Badalamenti, especially since the latter dream team closely mirrors the creative process of Hisaishi, who has often composed music for a Miyazaki picture based only on sketches and ideas before a single frame is drawn. Beek goes on to characterize the album’s program as “Joe Hisaishi’s musical vision freed from the bounds of film, but this time given even more space and, if it’s at all possible, even more heart and soul.” This is at once to the album’s credit and detriment.

But first, the music, which begins where it must: with Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), their inaugural collaboration. As the first of ten reimagined suites, it packs a punch of tympani and orchestral splendor that resolves into the clarion strains of what may be Hisaishi’s most timeless theme. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra artfully brushes in the details under the composer’s baton. The addition of choir adds a surreal sense of humanity to music for a film that still feels quite distant from who we are now, yet so familiar, while the children’s singing is a haunting remnant of carefree abundance. This sets a tone that can be difficult to read because the suites often shift so quickly from one motif to the other that one’s memories of certain scenes and characters get interrupted. Still, there are some stunning passages to savor, especially in the finale, that recapture some of the magic.

Just as Nausicaä finds its groove toward the end, Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989) is refined from note one, as the wide-eyed wonder of the titular witch setting off for the adventure of independent living blossoms across the foreground. The percussive touches and fervent string playing give way to a creamy center, while the solo violin of Stephen Morris carries a rich emotional cargo. An especially successful arrangement.

Princess Mononoke (1997) tills martial ground, cultivating the soprano of Grace Davidson, who does a splendid job with the Japanese intonation, as also in Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea(2008), while The Wind Rises (2013) introduces the mandolin of Avi Avital for a more cobblestoned sound. The latter points to Miyazaki’s fascination with flight and air travel, as played out further in Castle in the Sky (1986), which is smart for opening with Pazu’s bugled morning call but less so for taking up the theme with choir when the piano was so crucial to the original soundtrack. Moreover, the concluding melodrama feels rather out of character with the film’s tender heart. Thankfully, we get plenty of Hisaishi at the keyboard in Porco Rosso (1992), which evokes its quirky mélange with tasteful subtlety, taken up by clarinet and strings.

The biggest disappointment is Howl’s Moving Castle (2004), which has so much grace and poise in the original, yet here, despite being the longest of the program, seems rushed. That said, it does contain some of Hisaishi’s most masterful work, especially “Merry-Go-Round of Life,” which gloriously consummates a flirtatious appearance early on.

Spirited Away (2001) gives us more of Hisaishi’s distinctive pianism (again, this connects him to Badalamenti, whose keyboard playing was always so grounded in the soul), paired with the breathy vocals of Hisaishi’s daughter, Mai Fujisawa (who also sang the original Nausicäa theme). Her voice is auto-tuned, which is rather odd in a classical album, even as it plays creatively with the fringes of a genre that has grown with the times. If anything, this pop sensibility gives it an interesting appeal.

And so, we return to My Neighbor Totoro (1988), a story seared into my memory after seeing the film literally hundreds of times when it was the only one my three-going-on-four-year-old would watch at the time. Miyazaki himself once characterized Totoro as the embodiment of Japan in its transition into modernism, as evidenced by his parallels with Alice in Wonderland and Mary Poppins, and I have grown to appreciate its depths far more as an adult. Originally shown as the B picture of a double feature after Grave of the Fireflies (directed by studio mate Isao Takahata), it contrasted the reality of a war-torn Japan with the fantasy of a rural imaginary in anticipation of a hopeful future. Hisaishi adds to such inversions, beginning his suite under cover of night, whereas the film opens in the brightness of day.

Perhaps the ultimate question regarding A Symphonic Celebration is whether this music would survive without its cinematic associations. While my bias as someone in whose fibers frames of Miyazaki’s films are deeply embedded leads me toward a “no,” time will tell how it reads to new listeners as a standalone experience. Given that the arrangements are so far from home, I yearn for the moving images and their original sound palettes—missing, for example, the electronics that make Nausicaä and Totoro such delightfully nostalgic productions of their time. And while one could make a strong case for including the Totoro theme song in English since it was such an international success (even if the tessellated choral arrangement lacks the charm of Sonya Isaacs in the Disney dub), I wonder what meaning the English version of Ponyo’s theme song offers to someone ignorant of the film, or to Japanese fans, for that matter. Of course, we cannot necessarily expect the colors and textures to be the same. Still, I would recommend that anyone new to Joe Hisaishi watch, rewatch, and absorb Miyazaki’s films long before putting this album in cue.

by Tyran Grillo