CD Review

CD Review, early music, File Under?

András Schiff – Clavichord on ECM (CD Review)

J.S. Bach

András Schiff

Clavichord

 

He was the best organist in Europe and a mean harpsichordist too, but Johann Sebastian Bach loved playing the clavichord. The intimacy of its soft dynamic range, supple tone, and the ability to have an aftertouch with a slight vibrato made the instrument a distinctive one, ideal for small rooms: for practice or to be played for a few listeners. András Schiff has distinguished himself as one of the premiere Bach pianists of our time, making a convincing case for the music to be realized on a concert grand. He has recorded extensively for ECM’s New Series, the Goldberg Variations (2001)  the Six Partitas (2007), and both books of the Well-Tempered Clavier (2012). On Clavichord, he turns to the smaller instrument, playing a double CD recording of works eminently suited for it. In the program notes, Schiff says that he always begins his day with Bach. While he used to do so on the piano, it is now the clavichord that occupies his early hours. The period instrument used for the recording was built by Joris Potvlieghe in 2003 and is a replica of the unfretted Specken clavichord of 1743.

 

The clavichord thrives in contrapuntal textures of two or three voices. Thus Schiff has assembled a number of pieces without the thickened textures of the largest fugues. The standouts of the recording are the 2-part Inventions and 3-part Symphonias. Schiff adopts tempos that often are more deliberate than his renditions on the piano, reflecting the action of the clavichord. One can still play quickly, however, as he demonstrates with a fleet-fingered rendition of the F-major Invention. The architectural shaping of pieces like the E-flat major Sinfonia elucidates its form with consummate elegance. The Sinfonias in D and E both adopt dance rhythms, which are performed with verve.

 

Four Duets (BWV 802-805) demonstrate that even in a two-voice texture, Bach could create considerable contrapuntal interest and spicy chromatic inflections. Schiff plays these with a period-informed sense of fluidity of tempo. The Capriccio BWV 992 has a characteristic flair, with subtitles that detail a person being entreated by his friends not to undertake a journey. This is something we would more likely see from Beethoven or Schumann. The variations, on the tune Lontanza del fratello dilettissimo, include multiple arias and finish with a jaunty “Fuga al posta ” – a postcard from abroad!

 

Clavichord includes two particularly imposing pieces. The Ricercar á 3 is from the Musical Offering, the composer’s late career gift to Frederick the Great. The Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue (BWV 903) is a virtuosic masterpiece. Schiff digs in, relishing every moment and showing us the full capacity of the clavichord as an instrument that should be better known. 

 

  • Christian Carey 
by Christian Carey
CD Review, early music, File Under?

Mother, Sister, Daughter: Musica Secreta Sings the Stories of Women (CD Review)

Mother, Sister, Daughter

Musica Secreta, directed by Laurie Stras

Lucky Music

 

Over a career that spans thirty years, Musica Secreta has established themselves as one of the premiere all-female vocal ensembles. They have recorded a number of pieces by women, expanding the repertoire of Renaissance music and our understanding of the social, liturgical,  and artistic circles in which it was disseminated. The theme of this recording is “storytelling:” how stories, poems, and music were crafted to connect generations of women, hence Mother, Sister, Daughter as its title. While many of the pieces are anonymous, the circumstances in which they were copied and performed give clues as to their provenance. The recording isn’t strictly of works attributed to women – there are pieces by Antoine Brumel and Jean Mouton – but these also extol the relationships between women, particularly those who have entered a convent.

 

Missa de Beata Virgine is a partial setting of the Ordinary, containing a Kyrie and troped Gloria with extra texts that extol the Virgin Mary. Here as elsewhere, instruments are used to accompany and to flesh out the texture; organ in particular, but also harp (including bray harp and double harp), and treble and bass viols. This is consistent with the practice of music-making in convents. Musica Secreta has a well-blended sound with  just enough brightness in the sopranos and a warm timbre in the mezzo/alto cohort. The solo chants are prepared with the character of the individual voices in mind. One of the main selections, The Vespers of St. Lucy was likely composed in a convent devoted to St. Lucia in Verona. The notes, by ensemble director Laurie Stras, are fastidiously annotated: I would recommend reading them before diving in to listening. The Vespers include five brief movements that tell the story of St. Lucy. The full group’s singing is fetchingly contrasted with smaller subsections.  

 

Ave mater matris Dei, attributed to Jean Mouton, consists of vocal canons accompanied by the organ, the refrains opening up to sumptuous tutti. Virgo Maria speciosissima, attributed to Leonora d’Este, of that most famous of families, consists of overlapping waves in the voices performed with artful coordination by Musica Secreta. It is one of the standouts on the recording. 

 

The other prominent collections on the recording are two sets of Vespers from San Matteo in Florence, dedicated to Saint Clare. After a plainchant opening is the beautiful Mundi totius gloriam, with high-lying dovetailing lines alternating once again with chant. The group chants are paced with a welcome sense of forward momentum. The hymn En praeclara virgo Clara and a Salve sponsa Dei setting conclude the second set of Vespers with radiant polyphonic singing. 

 

A contemporary piece, commissioned by the ensemble from Joanna Marsh, completes the CD program (two additional pieces are available on the digital recording). The Veiled Sisters explores the entire compass of the group, beginning with a low-lying melody in the altos that is succeeded by upper register divisi. The two then meld into a formidable tutti. Marsh deftly incorporates contemporary harmonies and expanded ranges while using the resources of Musica Secreta is a way consistent with their approach on the rest of the recording; organ accompanies them and the alternation of textures creates a connection between old and new. 

 

In recent years, research and performance of women’s music from the Renaissance has come a long way, in no small part to Musica Secreta and Laurie Stras. It is heartening to learn that, even five hundred years ago, the stories women told to one another provided strength, agency, and, in the case of song, great beauty. 

 

-Christian Carey



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

Clarinets and More Clarinets: Alder plays Chrysakis (CD Review)

Milieu Interieur

Jason Alder, clarinets

Clarinet music by Thanos Chrysakis

 

Thanos Chrysakis is a prominent composer from Greece who works in electroacoustic music, as a performer and creating sound environments, as well as writing contemporary concert music. He relishes small combinations; solo and duet writing feature prominently in his output. Milieu Interieur is a full length recording of music for clarinets, performed by Jason Alder. Chrysakis has composed five pieces for Bb, bass, and contrabass clarinet of significant duration for solo works. The versatility with which he approaches these pieces, as well as his detailed knowledge of the inner workings of the clarinet, make this a diverting listen. 

 

Fáessa is for solo Bb clarinet and it passes eleven minutes in duration. Here as elsewhere, extended techniques abound: microtones, multiphonics, glissandos, and the like. Fáessa is a showcase of fluidity, with smooth movement between pitches and micro-intervals, interrupted intermittently by passages of multiphonics. It moves through the entire range of the instrument. Alder’s altissimo playing is seemingly effortless. 

 

There are two versions of the title piece, one for bass and another for contrabass clarinet. The first begins in the lowest register, sustained, then trilling. An angular melody punctuated by glissandos becomes the principal linear element. Luster-toned overblown notes create an interlude, then trilling and bass growls return. Another passage features a conjunct passage of multiphonics. The melody returns in a baritone register. Fluttering notes conjoined with multiphonics create a singular timbral passage. Despite the variety of these modes of playing, Chrysakis uses repetition and registral development to create a coherent, albeit labyrinthine, formal design. The second half features long, sustained notes, a slowed down version of the material from earlier. Seamless shifting between registers is another calling card for Alder’s playing. A rapturous section of repeated notes throughout the compass is juxtaposed with disjunct arpeggiations in a coda that concludes with a clangorous bass note. Millieu Interieur 2 is half the length of the first piece and revises its form to reposition material in different places. The sound of the altissimo register of this instrument is extraordinary, perhaps equaling its tremendous, sonorous bass notes.

 

Noctilucent Clouds is for two overdubbed bass clarinets. Slow-paced trilling and oscillations of micro-intervals are set against repeated notes in the upper register. When the two instruments reach detuned unisons, blurred repeated notes, and sustained multiphonics in coordination, there is a shivery effect. Fleet melodic passages alternate with these passages of slowly evolving textures. In addition to these sections of close-spaced duets, there are also registrally distinct colloquies, where bass notes provide a pedal over which the second instrument deals with spectral overtones. Dovetailing howls then pursue one another, only to be succeeded by a low register duet. Detuned intervals, mostly in rhythmic unison, bring the piece to an evocative close.

 

Thunderous repetition of bass notes, followed by upper register multiphonics, provides a dramatic opening for the album closer, Μαύρο Φως/Dark Light for contrabass clarinet. Repeated notes in the bass become one of the principal gestures, as do trills, bent small intervals, and the aforementioned multiphonics. The sound of the contrabass clarinet is extraordinary: vivid and powerful. A brief disjunct gesture is interpolated with the aforementioned materials. This signature device of Chrysakis provides a post-tonal melodic foil to the effects-based writing. There’s even a brief jazzy variant on the gesture. Sustained multiphonics return, crescendo and diminuendo shaping them to conclude the piece.

 

Milieu Interieur is a masterclass in clarinet writing and playing. I am eager to hear Alder play more. Performers, composers, and listeners should take note of it.

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?, jazz, Piano

Benjamin Lackner – The Last Decade (CD Review)

Benjamin Lackner

Last Decade

Benjamin Lackner, piano; Mathias Eick, trumpet; Jérôme Regard, bass; Manu Katche, drums

ECM Records

 

Pianist Benjamin Lackner makes his ECM debut with Last Decade. Joined by a stalwart group of collaborators, many of them ECM alumni who have appeared on many of the label’s releases, Lackner is in an ideal situation to present his compositions, as well as one by bassist Jérôme Regard. A few of the constraints the pianist placed on himself, no electronics, a staple of his previous recordings, and the addition of trumpeter Mathias Eick to his usual piano trio format, have afforded him the chance to stretch. Lackner has described rethinking harmonic voicings and allowing space for a melodic voice as aspects that were spurred on by Eick’s presence.

 

Lackner’s originals move away from his prior post-jazz leanings back toward the modern jazz tradition. The recording’s opener, the smoky “Where Do We Go from Here,” begins with a slow tempo trumpet solo with a memorable melody that is then deconstructed by Lackner, with the two exchanging mid-tempo lines.Katche and Eick are well known to each other, having played on many ECM albums together, some as leaders and others as collaborators. Regard has been the bassist in Lackner’s groups since 2006. The two duos combine as an acoustic quartet that is distinctive and well-attuned. Lackner’s flourish-filled solo on “Circular Confidence,” followed by the slow build solo that follows from Eick, who emulates the climax of the piano material, is an engrossing piece. “Hung up on that Ghost” includes prominent bass pedals and a slow intro from Lackner, followed by a mid-tempo main section in which Katche provides variety from the kit. Gerard and Lackner continue their colloquy with burnished melodic play from the bassist. Eick’s belated arrival is no less welcome, his solo here angular, adding motives for the others to explore only scarcely outlined in the changes. The group ends up playing their material in counterpoint, creating a quilt of amalgamated textures.

 

The title track begins with a chordal presentation of the melody, with Gerard and Katche creating an undulating rhythmic canvas. Lackner’s solo gradually moves through 3:2 passage work to fleetly rendered arpeggiations. As it builds, the pianist burrows into the middle of the piano, ferreting out chromatic seconds. Eick’s solo instead begins with a light touch, gradually moving into the upper register but maintaining a piano dynamic. The piece ends with his solo, Katche providing a snatch of sizzle as punctuation.

 

Gerard’s composition “Émile” finds the bassist playing a funky solo reminiscent of his work with Lackner on previous outings. It is succeeded by the album closer, “My People.” Initially tried out in rehearsal in the polyrhythmic meter 11/4, the recording’s introduction instead shows a free rhythmic context in which Katche guides them without a strict time. Eick’s solo responds to this wayward context with free jazz lines that eventually are coaxed by the drums into a swinging post-bop essay. Lackner interposes lines with Eick, the two here playing some of the most creative music on the album. The tempo and demeanor shifts to a mournful minor-key ballad, sending the conclusion satisfyingly sideways.

 

-Christian Carey

by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?, jazz

Whit Dickey Quartet – Root Perspectives (CD Review)

Whit Dickey Quartet

Root Perspectives

Tony Malaby, tenor saxophone; Matthew Shipp, piano; Brandon Lopez, bass; Whit Dickey, drums

TAO Forms CD

 

Drummer Whit Dickey has put together a formidable quartet for Root Perspectives, a release on his TAO Forms label. Joining Dickey are tenor saxophonist Tony Malaby, pianist Matthew Shipp, and bassist Brandon Lopez, all stalwart players of ecstatic jazz. While the musicians have worked with each other in various contexts, this particular configuration is new. They find their footing fast. 

 

Malaby is versatile in his approaches to playing. Howling high notes, skronk squalls, and chromatic scalar work are the stock in trade of free jazz, and he excels in this area. But there are also places where he allows the plummy mid-register of his saxophone to bloom, creating lyrical melodies as interludes between more assertive soloing. Tiis is particularly evident in the coda of the first track, “Supernova,’ where Malaby conjures a beautiful melody out of the ether and Shipp follows suite with diaphanous accompaniment. Shipp too uses an array of approaches, from stentorian rearticulated verticals to fleet-fingered soloing and dazzling arpeggiations. He and Lopez frequently make a play for the lower register, each incorporating gestures from the other to develop. Lopez also frequently directs the harmony to surprising places, bitonal, extended thirds, and mixed interval chords. Dickey is a powerful drummer, but a sensitive one too. He listens carefully to the gestures played by the rest of the quartet, sometimes incorporating them, at others prodding the quartet to take up one of his own rhythmic motives. 

 

The recording consists of four pieces. You don’t have to get too far into the opening piece, “Supernova,’ to realize the specialness of this session. It is never about showing off, but instead about listening to one another and creating dialogue. The next piece, “Doomsday Equation,” plays with punctuated lines from Malaby and Shipp alongside an inexorable funeral march from Dickey, Lopez, and Shipp’s left hand. “Swamp Petals” provides a suave demeanor with polyrhythmic playing from Dickey and a solo from Malaby that takes from the tradition of modern, rather than experimental jazz, to build a formidable solo. As the piece reaches its midpoint, Malaby plays with overtones, restoring a sense of the experimental. Dickey takes a solo, a gradual build with subtle high harmonics from Lopez alongside. The focus gradually moves to the bassist, who creates a swath of overtones  before ceding territory to a storming section led by Malaby and Shipp. Altissimo howls take Malaby things as far away from the opening tune as possible. “Swamp Petals” closes as a complete transformation. 

 

The final piece, “Starship Lotus” begins with a cool effect: bass harmonics are combined with saxophone overtones. Meanwhile, Shipp keeps a steady pulse with chords while Dickey provides fills that offset it. Malaby offers an ascending melody and Shipp moves his chord scheme upward to accommodate. The two then create swaths of melodic exchanges while Lopez and Dickey swing with abandon. The quartet then coordinates interlocked ostinatos followed by a limpid solo from Shipp. When Malaby returns, he repeats a melodic cell at various pitch levels to develop a solo which then tapers off into sustained notes. It builds to a fierce crescendo, with overblowing creating vibrant multiphonics. The rhythm section takes the foreground, with a nimble solo from Lopez that includes double stops, and multiple tempo streams from Dickey. Malaby and Shipp return with material similar to the opening, with the addition of thunderous hammer blows from Shipp, that presents the quartet at its most powerful. A brief denouement for drums brings “Starship Lotus” to its conclusion. Root Perspectives is excellent in its variety of interactions and superlative in the quality of its music-making. Recommended.

 

-Christian Carey 



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

Duo Gazzana on ECM (CD Review)

Duo Gazzana

Kõrvits/Schumann/Grieg

ECM Records

 

Sisters Natascia Gazzana, violinist, and Raffaella Gazzana, pianist, have recorded a number of releases for ECM that program a combination of great romantic chamber works and contemporary fare. On their latest, they present romantic works by Robert Schumann and Edvard Grieg alongside contemporary pieces by Tõnu Kõrvits. The latter does a great deal to balance the former two, providing a less effusive tone and tangy harmonies.

 

Kõrvits’s Stalker Suite (2017) opens the recording. It was written for the Duo Gazzana and dedicated to the filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. The piece is titled after the film Stalker, which has its own distinctive score, but Kõrvits does not quote from it, rather taking moods and reference points from the film as springboards into original music. Kõrvits combines harmonies and gestures from romantic tonality (a linkage with the recording’s other works) and with post-tonal crunches and extended techniques such as col legno glissandos and strummed piano bass strings. After the mysterious atmosphere of the suite’s first movement, “Into the Zone,” the second, “The Room,” takes on an Ivesian cast, exploring two against three rhythms and a haunting melody. Natascia Gazzana gets a solo turn in the third movement, “Monologue,” which begins with melodic fragments that combine and build into an ascending line of considerable beauty, adorned by harmonics and double stops. The final movement, “Waterfall,” incorporates whole tone scales and other signifiers of water borrowed from Debussy and Ravel. Descending octave passages in the violin are tightly tuned, and limpid flurries in the piano’s right hand provide a lovely sense of lassitude. 

 

The Schumann Sonata in A Minor for Violin and Piano (1851) is one of the composer’s finest pieces of chamber music. Cast in three movements, it is filled with interpenetration within and between sections, most famously having the first theme from movement one returning near the very end of the piece’s conclusion. Schumann also crafts several of the themes to be well suited for canonic deployment, which he does throughout the piece. The work is dedicated to Clara, for whom Schumann wrote a formidable piano part, making the piece a true duet. After the complex sonata construction of the first movement, the second movement is a fascinating amalgam of slow movement and scherzo – almost like  the second and third movement forms of a four movement work are bound together. It also explores some distant key relationships. The final movement has rondo-like features, but is far more motivically diverse than the average final movement, incorporating various thematic transformations, including the aforementioned return of material from movement one. Duo Gazzana provides an abundantly clear interpretation that underscores all of the dynamic contrasts as well as counterpoint and intricate harmonies.

 

Four Notturni (2014) by Korvits follows. Spare, song-like, with evocative melodies that often take a Messiaen-like or Bartokian modal cast. Elsewhere polytonal and polyrhythmic facets coexist, once again creating an Ivesian cast. The final nocturne somewhat resembles a Debussy prelude. Despite all of these surface influences, Korvits creates in a space all his own. Duo Gazzana are fine muses for him.

 

The recording concludes with Grieg’s Sonata in C-minor for Violin and Piano (1887). It is interesting to hear this paired with the Schumann sonata. Grieg’s frequent alterations of motives and rhythmic patterning owe a debt to Schumann. The first movement opens with a muscular theme that is succeeded by a number of smaller, often furtive moments. Natascia Gazzana’s sumptuous tone in high-lying passages complements Raffaella Gazzana’s richly sonorous playing. The intervening 36 years between the Schumann and Grieg sonatas had ceded at least one half of the playing field to Richard Wagner, and passages in Grieg’s sonata employ the cascades of diminished seventh chords and spacious breaths between phrases found in Wagner’s operas. The other side of romanticism, the Brahmsian, isn’t ignored, with a number of secondary motives sounding like the folk material of his colleague Dvořák. Thus, the piece is a bounty of disparate musical material. 

 

The second movement also makes a nod to the Schumann piece, combining slow and scherzo material, marked “alla Romanza.” A true “hit tune” of the late nineteenth century, in E-flat major instead of tonic, is haloed with tenderly voiced harmonies. A central melody takes up the scherzo rhythm with violin pizzicatos, then a minor key variant on the motive, with  the piano playing a syncopated tune. After a modulatory transition, the original motive returns, with tremolos in the piano and the violin arcing higher and higher, providing an angelic demeanor. The coda contains a series of deceptive harmonic moves succeeded by a widely spaced cadence and breathtaking altissimo E-flat from the violin.

 

The final movement opens vigorously with a bravura melody exchanged between the two instruments. A gentle segue is followed by juxtapositions of C-minor dance passages and a burnished tune in A-flat that deftly deploys the violin’s g-string. The sense of syncopation of the pulse in the piano energizes much of the movement. Once again, with tremolando piano and the theme hit back and forth, the piece returns to C-minor. A harmonic sequence populated with dance rhythms brings the proceedings through a series of modulations and then quickly articulated modulations, each of which underscores a bit of the preceding material. A-flat puts up quite a fight for supremacy, and the piece remains in major, but concludes elsewhere. The second theme returns, ascending to the soprano register to arrive at a strong cadence. One may think things are concluding, but this material in turn is pushed away by a coda that ends in C-major, providing a triumphant conclusion. The Piano Concerto is Grieg’s most well-known piece. In terms of construction and memorable melodies, the Sonata might well be its equal. In the hands of Duo Gazzana, it turns to gold.

 

-Christian Carey

 

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

Jennifer Grim – Through Broken Time (CD Review)

Jennifer Grim

Through Broken Time

Jennifer Grim, flute; Michael Sheppard, piano

New Focus Recordings

 

In Anthony Barrone’s astute liner notes, he describes Through Broken Time, flutist Jennifer Grim’s New Focus recording as a mixture of pieces that explore Afro-modernism and post minimalism. I would suggest that classic modernism also plays a role in these varied and compelling pieces for solo flute, overdubbed flutes, and flute with piano accompaniment.

 

Case in point is Tania León’s Alma. Her propensity for Mediterranean rhythms and melodies is on display, but in places it is subsumed by post-tonal gestures and irregular rhythms. Balancing the piece’s digressive narrative, Grim and pianist Michael Sheppard demonstrate a simpatico pairing. The earliest piece on the recording is Alvin Singleton’s Argoru III (1971); the rest have been written in the past fifteen years. Gestural angularity, trills, microtones, bends and florid lines, with suddenly appearing altissimo pitches, make this challenging both from a technical and interpretive standpoint. Grim does an admirable job shaping the piece to create a sensitive performance. Would love to hear more first-rank players tackle this piece.

 

Julia Wolfe’s Oxygen: For 12 Flutes (2021) is a brand-new piece for overdubbed instruments. At fifteen and a half minutes, it is the longest piece on the recording. Even with overdubs, one senses the exquisite breath control required in each part. Whorls of ostinatos are offset by melodies in quarter note triplets. The central section thins down to just the slow melody and then resumes in a buoyant dance with mouth percussion. Gradually, the slow melody does battle with rocketing upward gestures and trills. A new ostinato goes from bottom to top, once again juxtaposing the low melody and trills as a cadence point. Thinning out the texture to the slow melody and a number of polyphonic lines and soprano register flurries, the last few sections then build several of the previous segments into new combinations. The slow melody is presented in the bass register, accompanied by it in halved values in the treble in an oasis before the finale, a pileup of material that displays all twelve flutes, punctuating the close with a bevy of trills.

 

David Sanford’s Klatka Still (2009) is a two-movement piece, dedicated to trumpeter Tony Klatka. The first combines a solemn chorale-like passage in the piano with disjunct gestures in the flute. The duo finish the movement returning to the note A-flat again and again, almost obsessively. The second movement gives the piano a shuffle rhythm. After a cadenza, that flute takes up a moto perpetuo with a bit of swing alongside the piano. Then another cadenza with interpolations by the piano. Gradually the duet evolves into descending third gestures in the piano which spurs still another ostinato in the flute. The duo adopt and then discard a number of tempos, each developing one of the segments of the material presented at the movement’s beginning. Finally, the first ostinato locks in, with the flute adorning it with high trills, leading to an abrupt close.

 

Allison Loggins-Hull’s Homeland (2017) has the benefit of the composer being an accomplished flutist as well. It is expertly composed for the instrument, giving Grim a score to relish: which she does. Like so many of Loggins-Hull’s pieces, it meditates on race, grief, and impoverishment. Homeland’s subtext considers the mournful experience of being deprived a home, from those stolen for the slave trade to the survivors of Hurricane Katrina. The piece is a compelling testament to mourning, with a soulful yet undefeated character.

 

Valerie Coleman’s Wish Sonatine (2015) is inspired by Fred D’Aguiar’s eponymous poem about the Middle Passage of the Atlantic Slave Trade. Coleman depicts both the creaking of the slave ship’s hull and djembe rhythms from the homelands of the enslaved. Score markings suggest the struggles she depicts: “Defiant,” “Chaotic, gradually more anxious,” and “With fierce indomitability to survive.” Emotive and programmatic, Wish Sonatine vividly communicates the type of engagement she seeks.

 

The piece closes with a new work by David Sanford, commissioned by Grim, Offertory I and II (2021). The first movement knits together spare melodies, often doubling flute and piano. Muted repetitions in the piano and supply lyricism in the flute bring the movement to a close. The second begins with a solo cadenza that is fleet, combining post-bop and post-tonality. The piano chimes in with tense intervals and succinct gestures, the two combine into a Calder mobile of busy overlaps and alternating gestures. The piano gets its own solo turn, the two eventually coming together on unison rhythms but disparate gestures – spaced chords from the piano, and trills from the flute. The piano takes on a muscular strut while the piano adopts another jazz-tinged solo. Descending whole tone patterns followed by a terse game of hide and seek ends the piece, and the recording, with a button. A well-curated and admirably well-performed collection, Grim’s Through Broken Time shares a bevy of repertoire that should be in any new music flutist’s folder.

 

-Christian Carey

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

Hilary Hahn – Eclipse

Hilary Hahn

Eclipse

Hilary Hahn, violin; Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Andrés Orozco-Estrada

DG CD/DL

 

Hilary Hahn is making a reputation programming famous classics paired with twentieth century works. A previous release featured Sibelius and Schoenberg, while her latest recording, Eclipse, programs Antonin Dvorak’s Concerto in A minor, Pablo de Sarasate’s Carmen Fantasy, and Alberto Ginastera’s Violin Concerto. While some listeners may come for the Dvorak, they may well be glad to learn of the Ginastera. 

 

Andrés Orozco-Estrada leads the Frankfurt Radio Symphony in a well-shaped and keenly executed rendition of the Dvorak, providing explosive brass cadence points to set up Hahn’s cadenzas and interludes with sumptuous strings and warmly lyrical winds. Hahn adopts a similar approach, with passages of aching delicacy as well as those of laser beam accuracy. While Dvorak has been well-served on recordings, Hahn offers a performance that stands up to the best.

 

Ginastera created a variety of different music throughout his career. By the time he wrote the Violin Concerto for the New York Philharmonic, in 1963, his music had taken a more modernist cast, with post-tonal and microtonal elements alongside vestiges of tonality. The structure of the concerto is fascinating, front-loaded with an eleven-part first movement that begins with an incredibly difficult cadenza. True to form, Hahn plays it with liquescent tone and supple virtuosity. A series of etudes, based on material from the cadenza, follow, each employing a different technique: chords, thirds, other intervals, arpeggios, harmonics, and quarter tones. The first movement ends with a coda, marked maestoso, alternating emphatic gestures from the orchestra with gestures from the cadenza. 

 

The second movement is for a smaller cohort of the orchestra, twenty-two players for the number of first desk performers in the New York Philharmonic. The movement is reminiscent of the Berg Violin Concerto and Schoenberg’s Klangfarben pieces, mysterious and expressionist. Partway, an eruption from the orchestra is negated by a held, altissimo register note from the violin. Calmness pervades for some time, with the harp taking the fore, only to be drowned out again by percussion. The violin and orchestra engage in a duel between angular solo gestures and riotous punctuations. The strings and pitched percussion accompany the soloist in an evocative coda. The third movement is split into two sections, the first a scherzo played sempre pianissimo, with a number of percussive gestures that recall the Central American folk music Ginastera employed earlier in his career. The violin contributes rollicking lines and its characteristic held high notes and long trills. The solo then adds glissandos, harmonics, and a new filigreed melody. The second section is in perpetual motion with flurries from the soloist punctuated by emphatic attacks from the orchestra. A quote from Paganini’s 24th Etude is added to the mix. The work ends abruptly, triumphantly. Fantastic piece, tour de force performance. 

 

The disc concludes in a playful spirit, with Sarasate’s Carmen Fantasy, which treats the hit tunes of Bizet’s masterpiece as material for a violinist to show off their chops. Alongside the daunting technical challenges are tuneful passages, the Habanera and Toreador Song noteworthy standouts. Sarasate’s orchestrations are transparent and fleet-footed, which the Frankfurt orchestra executes with pliancy and balance. Hahn captures the spirit of this work, its Iberian inflections, dances, and effusive passagework. Great fun and an impressive closer. 

 

Hilary Hahn’s commitment to programming twentieth century repertoire is laudable. It would be all too easy for a performer of her stature to program warhorses exclusively. Hahn’s continued imaginative reach makes Eclipse a special recording. 

 

-Christian Carey



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

Favorites 2022: Louis Armstrong – “A Cool Yule”

Louis Armstrong

Louis Wishes You a Cool Yule

Verve

 

It is hard to believe that the late Armstrong never put out a Christmas album. He did, however, record a number of Christmas singles, including a duet with Ella Fitgerald and sides with the Commanders. Louis Wishes You a Cool Yule brings together his interpretations of holiday songs in beautifully remastered vinyl and CD versions. Cool Yule has quickly ascended to multiple top 10 positions, including Best Holiday Album, on the Billboard charts, the best his work has done in nearly fifty years. 

 

The title track is a mischievous arrangement with incendiary horn charts played by the Commanders.“‘Zat You, Santa Claus” a boisterous jump blues with minor key changes that makes one, just for a moment, wonder if a burglar has replaced Santa in the chimney. Ella Fitzgerald and Armstrong sing the romantic ballad (a bit uptempo) “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm.” When they harmonize, they sound simply magical. Velma Milton provides a sultry take on “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” while Armstrong puns and supplies a few double entendres for good measure. On songs that are chestnuts, ”Winter Land,” and “White Christmas,” Armstrong responds to the ardent character of the arrangements with a romantic tone buzzing with vibrato.

 

The recording includes a previously unreleased track: Armstrong’s rendition of “A Visit from Saint Nicholas,” more popularly known as “A Night Before Christmas.” It is a tender hearted reading gently backed by slow riffs,  aimed at childrens of all ages with a bit of swing in their step. While it is not exactly a song for Christmas, the recording also includes Armstrong’s famous rendition of “What a Wonderful World,” sixty-five years after it was first recorded. 

 

On the recording, Armstrong’s  instrumental collaborators include the bands of Benny Carter, Gordon Jenkins, and the group The Commanders. All present a good understanding of Armstrong’s flexible use of tempo and lilting phrasing. This collection presents an entertaining look at his musicality and an excellent accompaniment to any holiday gathering. One of our favorites in 2022.

 

-Christian Carey 

 

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

Favorites of 2022: Heiner Goebbels and Ensemble Modern – A House of Call

A House of Call. My Imaginary Notebook.

Heiner Goebbels

Ensemble Modern, Vimbayi Kaziboni, conductor

ECM Records

Heiner Goebbels’ A House of Call is an evening length collaboration with Ensemble Modern, an group with which he has collaborated on a number of projects over a thirty-five year period; this is their fourth CD for ECM. Subtitled “My Imaginary Notebook,” a reference to John Cage’s roaratorio via Finnegans Wake by James Joyce, the piece brings together several stylistically distinct sections, notably troping pieces associated with the ensemble. Sound recordings that Goebbels has collected over the years, many of folk music-making, are a significant part of the House of Call’s source material. They range from Kazakh, Iranian, Georgian, and Armenian folk songs to poetry and texts by Heiner Müller, Samuel Beckett, and Jalaluddin Rumi. 

 

These recordings are accompanied by vivid orchestrations, amplifying their intensity without diminishing their distinct flavor. Perhaps in part because of the collaborative nature he adopts with the ensemble, Goebbels is the master of this type of amalgam.  The piece is cast in four large sections: Steiner, Scherer, Papier; Grain de la Voix; Wax and Violence; When Words Gone. Each contains three to four movements that survey a kaleidoscopic array of material. The first movement “Introit: A Response to Répons” combines tropes on Pierre Boulez’s totemic piece with recordings of Cassiber, Goebbels’s rock band from the 1980s. Répons is central to the repertoire and aesthetic of Ensemble Modern, and they incorporate the additions and variations fluidly. In Immer den Gleichen Stein, Müller’s deadpan recitations are juxtaposed with boisterous instrumental attacks. The section’s third movement, “Under Construction,” subtitled “Berlin 2017,” is the 21st century version of Copland’s cityscapes, with the ensemble creating a riot of urban noises; clearly in the midst of a traffic jam. In the coda, we get a small taste of respite.

 

Grain de la Voix (a reference to Roland Barthes) has four sections featuring vocal recordings. It begins with a 1916 recording in Mannheim of Giorgi Nareklishvilli, a prisoner of war, singing a keening melody often accompanied by dulcimer and accordion but periodically interrupted by abrupt and explosive outbursts. Next is a 1925 recording of Amrey Kashaubayez, a Kazahk singer. After an extended introduction, the singer enters with haunting, high-lying melismas, to which for a moment the ensemble cedes terrain. An imitative instrumental interlude builds to a fortissimo climax, upon which the voice returns, forward in the mix and ardently intoning. Led by brass swells, the coda descends into a maelstrom, capped off by a final vocal phrase that sounds choked with laughter. “1346” is a performance of Rumi by Iranian musician Hamidreza Nourbakhsh. His incantatory chanting, rife with runs, is shadowed and imitated in an imaginative piece of scoring. The final movement, Krunk, is less tempestuous, featuring harp and dulcimer gently accompanying a recording from 1914 of the great Armenian musician Komitas alongside one from 1917 of Zabelle Panosian. This synthetic duet is most fetching.

 

Part three, Wax and Violence, brings together a mashup of vocalists, including German recordings from the turn of the twentieth century in “”Toccata – Vowels/Woven,” and Namibian vocalists in “Achtung Aufnahme”  and “Nun Danket Allen Gott.” To to transform the composition, Goebbels begins to treat the source materials with greater liberty, recalling the techniques of musique concréte. The final movement of the section, Tí gu go Inîga Mî, explores a grainy recording from Farm Lichtenstein bei Windhoek in 1931 of the singer Haneb alongside percussion and a tangy chord progression. The Ensemble retorts with a howling mix of free jazz and cabaret. 

 

Named after a Samuel Beckett poem later recited, the final section, When Words Gone begins with Bakaki – Diálogo, recorded in 1931 in Quebrada Isue by Victor and Luciano Martinez. It contains murmured hocketing between two voices accompanied by an ambling ostinato. “Schläft ein Lied in allen Dingen” features texts by Joseph von Eichendorff recited by Margaret Goebbels, accompanied by particularly spooky music. “Kalimerisma,” recorded in 1930 in Kalymnos, Eskaterina Mangouli performs a passionate and oftentimes chromatic song that is given restrained accompaniment, light percussion and pizzicato cello. The piece’s conclusion, “What When Words Gone,” gives the entire ensemble, apart from the brass, the vocal role, with slowly repeating pitches in each phrase in an intricate pattern. Much of it recalls Feldman, a frequent Beckett collaborator. It finally settles into a two–chord repetition that ends hanging on an extended harmony. 

 

Goebbels outdoes himself here, with perhaps the most far flung references and imaginative scoring he has found to date. Collaborating with Ensemble Modern for over thirty-five years has yielded fresh sounds and scoring approaches, not an easily comfortable working relationship. A House of Call is one of our Favorites of 2022.

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey