CD Review

CD Review, File Under?, Piano, Twentieth Century Composer

Donald Berman plays Ives (CD Review)

Donald Berman

Ives

Avie, 2024

 

Pianist and scholar Donald Berman has made a special inquiry into the music of American hyper-modernist composers, Charles Ives chief among them. This year marks the sesquicentenary of Ives’s birth, and Berman celebrates the occasion with an Avie CD of the original piano version of St. Guadens (“The Black March”), best known as one of the movements of the orchestra piece Three Places in New England, and his own scholarly edition of the totemic Piano Sonata No. 2, Concord Mass., 1840-1860, usually known by its nickname, the “Concord Sonata.”

 

One of the challenges of these pieces is the importance of spatiality in Ives’s approach to composition. In the liner notes, Berman acknowledges this, stating the goal of creating “three-dimensional” versions of the programmed works. In a two-channel stereo recording of a stationary piano, one cannot hope to mirror the spatiality of the orchestral version of Three Places in New England, where voices move through the orchestra and are bent in a simulacrum of the doppler effect. The piano score for St. Gaudens attempts this through shifts of register, texture, tempo, and dynamic that provide impressive contrasts. Civil War era songs and one by Stephen Foster are quoted. St. Gaudens is named after the statue on Boston Common of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, the first of all African-American soldiers. Their history was a bloody one, and, in a moving performance, Berman leans into the bellicose sections and allows for the softer ones, particularly the diaphanous coda, to emerge as wisps of sound.

 

St. Gaudens is a fine introduction to Ives’s approach at the piano, but the Concord Sonata presents his aesthetic writ large. Each of the four movements is dedicated to American transcendentalists: Emerson, Hawthorne, the Alcotts, and Thoreau. Transcendentalism was an important philosophical trend that shaped the thought of many Americans: philosophers, poets, novelists, artists, and, especially in Ives’s case, musicians. His concept of transcendentalism in music involves the aforementioned soundworld, as well as liberal quotation of sacred and secular tunes, often overlapping. At three quarters of an hour long, the stamina required by the piece is most formidable. 

 

Berman possesses both the virtuosity and interpretative acumen to give the sonata one of its most compelling recordings to date. “Emerson,” the sprawling eighteen-minute long first movement, could easily sound amorphous, but the pianist finds the formal boundaries and grounding lines in its diverse material. Some performers of Ives, perhaps giving recourse to the cranky elements of his biography, don’t understand the musicality that can be brought to bear instead of stentorian caricature. Indeed, Berman’s performance of “Emerson” captures dynamic nuances that few others adopt. In “Hawthorne,” Berman prioritizes bold rhythmic cross-accentuations and dramatic shifts from impressionist-tinged solos to a dissonant passage from one of Ives’s favorite songs, “They Are There.” There is a fair bit of proto ragtime in the latter part of the movement, as well a march filled with multiple quotes shifting kaleidoscopically. It ends with a bold, ascending chromatic scale.

 

“The Alcotts” is the briefest of the four movements, balancing hymnody, parlor piano of a Scottish cast, and a reharmonized rendition of the motive from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. There is also a melody often used by Ives, “the Human Faith” theme. The final movement, “Thoreau,” begins with the diaphanous music that Ives often uses to depict walking in nature, in this case, likely Thoreau’s beloved Walden Pond. In a gradual buildup, whole tone scales vie against chromaticism, and the Beethoven 5th Symphony motive returns to announce the final section. The coda brings the piece back to the Walden Pond music, as if a ruminative walk has found Thoreau returning to his cabin. Berman’s keen sense of molding frequent contrasts into a narrative concludes the piece with a thoughtful portrait of the most emblematic transcendentalist.

 

Berman’s Ives CD is one of my favorites thus far in 2024. Highly recommended.

 

  • Christian Carey  

 

  



by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?, Piano, Twentieth Century Composer, Violin, Vocals

Hannigan and Chamayou Perform Messiaen (CD Review)

Messiaen

Barbara Hannigan, soprano

Bertrand Chamayou, piano

Charles Sy, tenor; Vilde Frang, violin

Alpha (ALPHA1033, 2024)

 

Soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan is an extraordinarily talented and versatile performer. Bertrand Chamayou is a superlative player of the French repertoire. Putting  the two together in a recital of vocal works by Olivier Messiaen is inspired programming. The CD’s gestation is detailed in Hannigan’s program note, which describes the two artists’ first meeting and subsequent decision to collaborate. The soprano’s longtime duo partner, Reinbert de Leeuw, was too ill to continue performing, and by the time that Messiaen was recorded, it was after his passing. The sessions were done on de Leeuw’s piano at his home, a fitting tribute. Hannigan’s first impression of Chamayou’s playing was its “liquescent legato,” which she would emulate when they performed. This is certainly the case on Messiaen, where the soprano’s sound seems to celebrate a sense of luxuriant line.


The program consists of two song cycles, Chants de Terre et de Ciel (1938) and Poèmes pour Mi (1937), and the scene La Mort du Nombre (1930). All have texts written by the composer, with imagery and reference points taken from the New Testament. Chants de Terre et de Ciel, “Songs of Earth and Heaven,” is substantial, containing six songs but lasting over a half hour. The music celebrates the birth of his only son, Pascal. It begins with Bail Avec Mi, (pour ma femme), “A Pact with Mi (for my wife).” Mi was Messiaen’s nickname for his wife Claire Delbos, a composer in her own right whose works he championed. It has the quality of a recitative, the piano playing birdsong adornments. The rest of the cycle concerns Pascal, in the next three songs as a celebration of his arrival and life. The last two songs take a turn. Minuit pile et face (pour la Mort), “Midnight Heads and Tails (for Death),” is a nightmarish view of death, and it is followed by an ecstatic vision of the afterlife, Résurrection (pour le jour de Pâques), “Resurrection, for Easter Day.” These last two might seem incongruous, but what parent doesn’t fear the death of their child? And Messiaen devotedly looks to the promise of the Resurrection; he hopes and trusts that it will be experienced by his child. 

 

Poèmes pour Mi is dedicated to Delbos. It is about their romantic love and, as the cycle proceeds, a sense of the agape love that embodies both families on earth and the family of believers in union with the divine. The nine songs are split into two books, the first consisting of four and the second of five. This helps to underscore the move from eros to agape, from earthly to spiritual love. Messiaen recommended that the part be for a dramatic soprano, which is not how I would describe Hannigan’s voice. However, she declaims the forte passages strongly without ever pushing, maintaining the aforementioned liquescent legato. The piano part requires frequent shifts in demeanor, as Messiaen’s predilection for composing blocks of sound rather than formal throughlines is omnipresent. Possessing a seemingly endless reservoir of resources, Chamayou provides a different touch and timbre for each new section. There are several recordings of this cycle that I admire. In my estimation, Hannigan and Chamayou’s rendition has significant differences in approach but equals the benchmark recording by Phyllis Bryn-Julson and Mark Markham (Music and Arts 912). 

 

La Mort du Nombre (The Death of the Number) includes two guest artists, tenor Charles Sy, a frequent collaborator of Hannigan’s, and violinist Vilde Frang, acquainted with Chamayou but new to working with the soprano. Both acquit themselves memorably in this comparative rarity from Messiaen’s early catalog. In the part of the Second Soul, Sy plaintively sings a text floridly rich with allegory about being kept distant from God. The First Soul, sung by Hannigan, urges her counterpart to take courage and stay the course, gently declaiming a recitative of koan-like aphorisms. Chamayou is then given a virtuosic part to accompany Sy. Frang follows with an interlude that is accompanied by music in the piano filled with the coloristic harmonies Messiaen used to represent resurrection. Hannigan joins, singing an arioso over whole-tone arpeggiations from the instruments, the poetry describing “an eternal spring.” La Mort du Nombre betrays its youthful naivete in places, but it also reveals a number of musical and textual reference points that would remain constants for Messiaen’s entire career. Well worth reviving.

 

The recording is distinguished by sterling production values, affording the performers a resonant, yet not overly reverberant, acoustic, that captures even the most subtle dynamic shifts. One hopes that Messiaen is just the beginning of the musical partnership of Hannigan and Chamayou. It is one of my favorite CD’s thus far in 2024.

 

-Christian Carey, Sequenza 21


by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?, Orchestras, Twentieth Century Composer

Falletta Conducts Foss on Naxos (CD review)

Lukas Foss – Symphony 1

Amy Porter, Flute; Nikki Chooi, Violin

Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, JoAnn Falletta, conductor

Naxos American Classics

 

Lukas Foss (1922-2009) was an omnivorous composer who, over the course of his career,  went through multiple style periods. When he was a teenager, he studied with Hindemith at Yale and then made close contacts at the Berkshire Music Center (now Tanglewood) with Serge Koussivitzky, Aaron Copland, and Leonard Bernstein (a lifelong friend and supporter). In the 1940s, his music resembled the Americana and neoclassical styles being pursued by a plethora of American composers. In Ode (1944, revised 1958) Foss clearly adopted Americana’s signatures, with thunderous brass and timpani, and intricate string and wind lines. There are tonal centers, but ones elaborated by polytonal chords. While one could imagine this kind of material sounding triumphal, there is instead a portentous atmosphere, and with good reason. Foss was inspired to write Ode to lament the loss of Allied soldiers during the Second World War. On this Naxos CD, JoAnn Fallatta leads the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra in a muscular performance with brilliant tone and clear balancing of the various sections.

Photo: David A. Beloff

Three Early American Pieces (1944-1945, orchestrated in 1989) finds Foss returning to early material, three pieces for violin and piano. Rather than score the work in his late style, Foss returned to the sound world of his early music. No. 1 Early Song: Andante is reminiscent of the neo-classicism of Hindemith, with paired flutes playing an introduction followed by a supple violin solo accompanied by modal writing in winds and strings that concludes with a propulsive dance section. No. 2 Dedication: Lento has a pastoral quality. Vaughan Williams is not a composer usually associated with Foss, but there is more than a whiff of The Lark Ascending in Early Song. No. 3, Composer’s Holiday: Allegro, in an obvious nod to Copland’s Rodeo (1942), is an ebullient hoe-down. In all three, violinist Nikki Chooi plays the violin solo part with artful phrasing and ebullient demeanor.

 

The First Symphony (1944) was written (as was Ode) during a residency at the MacDowell Colony. It is the apotheosis of Foss’s Americana and neoclassical period. The piece is conservatively made, with four movements that correspond to those expected in a symphony by Mozart or Beethoven: The first movement has an andantino introduction followed by an allegretto sonata form, the second is an adagio, the third a scherzo, and the finale mirrors and recalls the first movement, with an andante introduction followed by an allegro finale. Many American neoclassicists employed tried and true formal designs, but the harmonies and rhythms that caught their ear were decidedly from the twentieth century. There is an interesting dichotomy in Foss’s First Symphony, between Hindemith’s sense of balance and Stravinsky’s zest for innovation. Adding a bit of Americana á la Copland, and Foss provides a comprehensive picture of his influences in the mid 1940s. The symphony is a stalwart addition to the mid-century  repertoire. Falletta leads the Buffalo Philharmonic in an ideal rendition of the piece.

 

Renaissance Concerto comes from the 1980s, when Foss had moved through two decades of experimentation at UCLA and Buffalo and begun to write works in a postmodern style that channeled early music. The composer likened it to a “handshake across the centuries.” The soloist, flutist Amy Porter, is a marvel, providing the microtonal inflections, frequent trills, and liquescent phrasing that this piece requires. She has an extraordinarily beautiful tone as well. The first movement, Intrada, begins with a long cadenza followed by a dancing section based on the English song The Carman’s Whistle, which was arranged for harpsichord by William Byrd. The cadenza returns and then dance and flute solo are juxtaposed, with the rest of the orchestra first shadowing and then boisterously accompanying the soloist. It ends with a delicate and slow passage for the soloist alone. The second movement, Baroque Interlude, is based on L’Enharmonique, a harpsichord piece by Rameau. The flutist plays a set of variations on the tune that twist and turn through a series of harmonic shifts and embellishments, while the orchestra provides a puckish accompaniment. The third movement, Recitative, is based on the lament aria from Monteverdi’s Orfeo. Rife with pitch bends and chromaticism, it replicates the keening of Orpheo in the opera, when he has realized that Eurydice has died. Porter and the orchestra provide a captivating rendition of the section. The finale, Jouissance, is based on a bawdy round from early seventeenth century composer David Melvill. Percussive extended techniques are added to the flute’s kit bag of extensions, and feisty lines from Porter contend with a web of counterpoint from the orchestra. A fugue rife with syncopation supplies the piece’s climax, after which the flute and tambourine provide a boisterous duet. The piece concludes with tightly overlapping melodies in the ensemble while the flute, with a bevy of ornaments, deconstructs the tune.

 

Like many of the chameleon-like identities Foss adopted, the concerto provides a window into his perspective on music of the past. In most of his late music (apart from a few pieces, like Solo Observed, that dally with minimalism), he approaches earlier composers’ music with curiosity, interested in mining their works’s capabilities and putting his unique stamp on the results. One hopes that Falletta revisits Foss on recording – often.

 

-Christian Carey

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

Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard and Quatuor Bozzini – Colliding Bubbles: Surface Tension and Release (CD Review))

Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard and Quatuor Bozzini – Colliding Bubbles: Surface Tension and Release (Important)

Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard is a composer based in Copenhagen. On his latest EP he joins forces with the premiere Canadian string quartet for new music, Quatuor Bozzini, to create a piece that deals with the perception of bubbles replicating the human experience. In addition to the harmonics played by the strings, the players are required to play harmonicas at the same time. At first blush, this might sound like a gimmick, but the conception of the piece as instability and friction emerging from continuous sound, like bubbles colliding in space and, concurrently, the often tense unpredictability of the human experience, makes these choices instead seem organic and well-considered. As the piece unfolds, the register of the pitch material makes a slow decline from the stratosphere to the ground floor with a simultaneous long decrescendo.  The quartet are masterful musicians, unfazed by the challenge of playing long bowings and long-breathed harmonica chords simultaneously. The resulting sound world is shimmering, liquescent, and surprising in its occasional metaphoric bubbles popping.

  • Christian Carey

 

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

Kronos Says Goodbye to Two Members After a Hello to Moondog and Sun Ra

Kronos Says Goodbye to Two Members After a Hello to Moondog and Sun Ra

Credit: Lenny Gonzalez

Many are celebrating the tenures of two members of Kronos Quartet – violinist John Sherba and violist Hank Dutt – who are, after more than forty-five years, retiring from the group at the end of June.

 

As a valediction, I have been listening to and enjoying recordings from throughout their catalog. I am impressed by how enduring the quartet’s creative vitality and imagination has persisted, even on their most recent outings.

 

Joined by the Ghost Train Orchestra and a number of guest vocalists, last Fall Kronos released Songs & Symphoniques: The Music of Moondog. Louis Hardin, AKA Moondog, AKA The Viking of Sixth Avenue, shares moments of whimsy and often playful titles. Artists could take that an imprimatur to always playfully play it, but not on Songs & Symphoniques. Indeed, I’ve long been impressed with Moondog’s self-taught craft. His madrigals and canons, written down in Braille and then “translated” for seeing musicians, are at times quirky, but are often substantial pieces. Kronos and colleagues emphasize this, as well as the emotive character of his songs’ lyrics.

 

 

Rufus Wainwright joins with a backing vocal chorus and a number of the instrumentalists in one such canon, “Be a Hobo.” While maintaining the canonic structure, it is arranged to allow close-miked Wainwright to act as its focal point, thus functioning as both song and contrapuntal excursion. Marisa Nadler performs “High on a Rocky Ledge” with her characteristic dark-hued lyricism, adding duplicate vocal tracks for the chorus. The quartet and an electric guitar play the tune’s descending riff and a series of Tin Pan Alley chords to flesh out the piece. “I’m This, I’m That” features a gravelly-voiced, affecting rendition by Jarvis Cocker. Contributing an alto lead vocal and joined by other singers for a round, Petra Haden also memorably channels Annie Ross in her high soprano line on “Down is Up,” giving it the flavor of a cappella jazz.

“Enough About Human Rights” is a humorous text that is delivered with a wink by Karen Mantler and the quartet, who double on the vocal chorus. The song asks about the rights of a long list of animals, even skunks and bats, pointing out an even-handed ecological mindset that is a throughline in Moondog’s writings. She also sings on “Coffee Beans.” After a jaunty 6/8 groove is introduced by drums,  jazz-inflected sax chords, pizzicato strings, and, ultimately, a wayward tune, Mantler sings a round about how to make the best coffee. At the conclusion, a harmonica solo adds a lilting counter-melody. Joan as Police Woman uses overlapping voices and vocoder to create a round on “Why Spend a Dark Night with You?” Hand-claps underscore the syncopation while electric guitar, saxophone, and the quartet add additional wisps of tunes, and then a raucous interlude. Mantler resumes the round in its former context, but in a new key, to conclude. A favorite is the duet between Sam Amidon and Aoife O’Donovan on “Behold.” Celtic folk fiddling style both in a solo and in the quartet accompanies their singing. Amidon takes the first verse in hyperkinetic fashion, O’Donovan’s rendition of the second resembles some of the inflections in the strings. The third verse treats the melody as a round, and the quartet provides a bluesy chord as a button.

 

In addition to the vocal turns, several well-conceived instrumentals are performed by Kronos and Ghost Train. “The Viking of 6th Avenue” is a calling card piece of Moondog’s; this was his nickname and mentions his stomping grounds. The arrangement incorporates pitched percussion instruments – xylophone, metallophones – that he performed when busking, but it also has a full jazz arrangement and the quartet playing in contemporary classical fashion – an extraordinary mash-up of styles that befits the polyglot musical approach to composition of Moondog. “Bumbo” features the lower brass alongside, again, high pitched percussion, with a Latin-tinged groove that supports saxophone and guitar solos. There’s a bit of Rain Dogs-era Tom Waits here, and one imagines that the Moondog albums might well have been on his mind when creating the Tom trilogy in the 1980s.

 

The recording concludes with another vocal track; Joan as Policewoman sings on “All is Loneliness,” which is one of the most poignant of Moondog’s creations. It is in canon, with saxophones and strings delivering the first few entrances gently, and Joan as Policewoman entering soon after with serene, sustained singing of the motive. It is a moving closer to a recording that reveals Moondog’s multitudes.

Out this month is another recording: Outer Spaceways Incorporated – Kronos Quartet and Friends Meet Sun Ra. This double LP is the fifth in Red Hot’s Sun Ra series, and by far the most substantial. Once again, prominent collaborators join the quartet to create new renditions of Sun Ra’s music as well as new compositions that both channel the visionary artist and extend his legacy.

 

The title track begins with spoken spacey glissandos in the strings, and a muted trumpet call. Then the vocalist Georgia Anne Muldrow sings the tune, doubled by Harrington, with supple tone and elegant phrasing. The arrangement by Jacob Garchik recasts the piece with emphatic music for strings but retains its linear gestural vocabulary. Electronic musician Jlin, known for her work with post-classical materials and creation of footwork singles, provides vociferous string chords and hand drums in her composition “Maji.” Laraaji adds synths and the flavor of New Age electronica on “Daddy’s Gonna’ Tell You No Lie.”

 

“Blood Running High” incorporates two hip hop artists – RP Boo and the duo Armand Hammer – rapping over a sax section and the quartet. Sun Ra’s spoken word recitations have undeniably been an influence on hip hop and here there is a tip-of-the-hat here in return. Moor Mother, DJ Haram, and 700 Bliss add reverberant production, samples, and rapping to “Secrets of the Sun.”

 

The centenarian bandleader of the Sun Ra Arkestra, saxophonist Marshall Allen, also appears on the recording. He joins Sex Mob and Laurie Anderson for “Images Suite,” one of two extended tracks on the CD. Post-bop horns and otherworldly electronics combine in a savory concoction that embodies the juxtapositions inherent in the music-making of Allen’s ensemble. Anderson adds treated vocals, and chimes accompany trumpeter/arranger Steven Bernstein. Allen gets multiple solo turns, displaying a rich tone undiminished by age. Anderson joins Allen and Kronos on “Phenomenon” and “The Wuz.” The resulting amalgam pays tribute to the eclecticism intrinsic to Sun Ra’s music while maintaining the tension between the various contributors’ own approaches. “Love in Outer Space,” featuring keyboards by Trey Spruance, imparts the tune with piano, organ, and synth playing that revels in Sun Ra signatures.

 

 

A second extended cut ends the recording with, appropriately enough, “Kiss Yo’ Ass Goodbye.” It is a lyric from Sun Ra’s famous and much-covered song “Nuclear War,” and here as well the notion of apocalypse is explored through the lens of Afrofuturism, in which the escape to space may be the only thing saving us from annihilation. The quartet is joined by Terry Riley, playing keyboards and singing, and vocalist Sara Miyamoto. It opens with portentous straight tone slides, almost like an air raid siren, which are joined by quick singing of the title in saucy fashion. The strings and percussion provide intense accompaniment and the glissandos change direction alongside an Ivesian amalgam of melodic fragments and a coda of overlapping voices (shades of Moondog’s canons).

 

 

 

From its outset and for a half century, Kronos has made many “cover albums.” Outer Spaceways Incorporated is among its most successful in terms of concept and execution. The quartet will continue performing and recording with two new members, violinist Gabriela Díaz and violist Ayane Kozasa.

 

-Christian Carey

 

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

Caroline Shaw & Sō Percussion – Sing On (Video)

Photo: Adam Sliwinski

Composer, vocalist, and instrumentalist Caroline Shaw rejoins Sō Percussion for Rectangles and Circumstance, a new full length recording out today on Nonesuch. To celebrate the release, a video for the lead-off single, “Sing On,” has been released on YouTube today.

Rectangles and Circumstance combines imaginative percussion writing with abundant electronics and Shaw’s pop-adjacent singing. Shaw takes on an assured and distinctive role. Her voice is sometimes treated to make it nearly unrecognizable. Elsewhere, her singing is presented in its natural, fetchingly lyrical guise. Sō has developed a sound world that befits Shaw’s heterogeneous compositions, using a plethora of pitched percussion, drums, and electronics. Whether the music leans towards pop, classicism, or totalism, it is uniformly engaging. Recommended

-Christian Carey

 

 

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, Los Angeles, Strings

John Luther Adams – Waves and Particles

Cold Blue Music has released Waves and Particles, a new CD by John Luther Adams featuring the JACK Quartet. This new album by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Adams explores the deeper levels of elemental nature through extraordinary musical expression. The composer writes: “Waves and Particles was inspired by quantum physics, fractal geometry, and noise – which function as elemental metaphors in my music.” This is realized by the renowned JACK Quartet who artfully extract new and exceptional sounds from the standard string quartet. This new album follows three previous CDs by Adams, released by the Cold Blue label and recorded by the JACK Quartet.

Particle dust, track 1, opens with a rapidly repeating tutti phrase that carries a strong sense of power and motion. The dense texture and churning sound is reminiscent of Steve Reich’s classic Different Trains. The music is dominated by this texture and surges forward without melody or counterpoint like a swirling cloud of particles. Pauses occur, filled with softly ethereal sustaining tones that break up the hard driving tutti sections. The texture alternately thins and swells depending on various combinations of string parts. At 4:20 a few seconds of silence is heard followed by a series of delicate sustained tones, as if the piece is gathering its breath. The fast growling in the cello returns as the other parts enter, building the intensity. The playing by JACK is rapid but always under control. Particle dust is engaging without convention and compelling in its purpose.

Spectral waves follows and, by contrast to the first track, begins with a lush sustained chord that slowly increases in volume. The smooth tones gradually change in color and evoke a warm, welcoming feeling. Introspective and nostalgic, never fast or flashy, spectral waves shares the same gentle sensibility as heard in The Wind in High Places and other John Luther Adams string pieces. The parts blend well together and the result is a soothing bath of beautiful sounds. Velocity waves, track 3, returns to the rapid and rugged textures of particle dust. The fast chugging sounds in the cello are offset by slowing notes in the higher registers. The tempo gradually slows as the dynamics decrease. The phrasing surges and swells, only to fall back again in a repeating pattern. These cycles seem to vary in pitch, velocity, acceleration and deceleration. At 4:20 the sounds turn languid and soft for a short stretch, but soon recover their previous energy. At times, the tempo in the lower strings is slowing while that in the violins is increasing – and then they reverse. The final dash to the finish in the lower strings perfectly captures the concept of a velocity wave. The unexpected charm of velocity waves is the direct result of the precise and disciplined playing by the JACK Quartet.

Tridac waves, track 4, is next and opens with low sounds, increasing in volume and pitch, then reversing. The effect is like that of a sluggish siren but with an urgent and immediate unease. These siren-like sounds proceed in layers and in different registers. This pattern continuously repeats, but splits between the parts; some times the higher registers dominate while at other times the lower strings lead. Tridac waves is full of unusual and alarming sounds, skillfully conjured from conventional string instruments.

Murmurs in a chromatic field, track 5, features a series of scary sustained tremolos that immediately produce a dark, spooky feeling. The tones and timbre are unusual for strings and might well have been electronically synthesized. As the piece proceeds, the sounds and pitches become more alien and spacey. Some conventional chords are heard from time to time, giving the rest of the piece some harmonic context. Brief silences appear between the longer stretches of sound, and this adds to the sense of mystery. More pauses follow, in a similar pattern and the silences get longer towards the fading finish. Murmurs in a chromatic field is an apt title for this piece – it is quietly intimate and beautifully performed.

Particles rising is the final track on the album and opens with short bursts of four delicate violin notes. This is followed by a pause, then repeated several times. The second violin joins in with same rhythm, and in harmony. The viola and cello enter, in turn, until all four parts are engaged in sustained tones and a lovely warm harmonic wash. Fast skittering notes in the upper voices are heard, culminating in a strong and continuous fiddling in all four parts. The lower strings soon dominate with a strong dynamic and a full, growling texture. Short stretches of quiet sustained tones in harmony punctuate the harsher sounds, offering the listener a fine contrast. All of this is played with skillful ensemble despite the absence of a leading melody or strong pulse. Particles rising is a muscular piece appropriate to a strong physical phenomenon, but never overwhelming or alien in character.

This album is full of remarkable sounds that the composer extracts from the conventional string quartet. Quantum physics, fractal geometry, and noise are part of the natural world, yet we know of them only abstractly by scientific observation and measurement using complicated machines. Can these phenomena be treated in the same way as mountains, forests, rivers and oceans? The music in this album, although often powerful, is never distant or intimidating. Rather it shares the same welcoming warmth of other string quartets by Adams, inspired by the conventional natural world. Waves and Particles makes a strong case that we need to embrace the totality of nature, even down to its elemental particles.

The JACK Quartet is:

Christopher Otto, violin
Austin Wulliman, violin
John Richards, viola
Jay Campbell, cello

Waves and particles is available directly from Cold Blue Music and from US retailers by Naxos and other music outlets.

by Paul Muller
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Richard Baker – The Tyranny of Fun (CD Review)

Richard Baker 

The Tyranny of Fun

NMC Recordings

 

Composer and conductor Richard Baker (b. 1972) has been an important fixture on the British new music scene for over a decade. While The Tyranny of Fun refers to a work on the recording, it also could be seen as an analog for Baker’s mixture of fierceness and whimsy in many of his pieces. He had the right teacher – Louis Andriessen at the Hague – to develop this sort of emotional dichotomy in his work. He has also championed composers like Gerald Barry and Philip Venables, who both walk an eclectic tightrope in their respective oeuvres.

 

The recording opens with Baker playing Crank, a brief piece for a diatonic music box that emphasizes playful delicacy. Made out of material from Andriessen, it in no way sounds like a student work. Crank is immediately followed by the far more forceful Motet II, an instrumental work (note the paradox), played by the contemporary ensemble CHROMA, conducted by the composer. Cast in six movements, Motet II is Baker’s Covid piece: like so many others, he was confined to his home during the worst of the pandemic, responding with a work that stretched his language to a viscerality that is both challenging and moving.

The title piece was commissioned by the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, conducted on the recording by Finnegan Downie Dear and adorned with live electronics by Nye Parry. The concept of fun as tyranny resonates with the endless birthday parties and children’s activities that a friend of Baker’s, who coined the phrase, meant. One can also look at it as the exhausting approach to consumption and the relentless pursuit of faux connectivity through electronic devices that has plagued our era. 

 

The first movement’s refrain is a pulsating bass drum, reminiscent of a car driving past with a thunderous subwoofer engaged. Horn solos and low harp are juxtaposed with Stravinskyian terse melodies from flutes and piccolo. It is night music for an oversaturated urban landscape. In the second movement, low winds provide a minor third ostinato while strings deploy descending glissandos and pizzicatos, and brass undertake short blasts. The electronics are more prominent with cascades of chords and blurting melodies. The bass drum effect appears at particular points, this time accompanied by a syncopated, jazz-inspired arrangement. The low winds morph from interval to a swinging riff that is regularly interrupted by synthesizer in a modernist vein. The percussion is filled out to make a bespoke kit to accompany the arrangement. Partway through, fragments of the aforementioned are juxtaposed, often alternating rapidly. Learning to Fly finishes with a slow drag groove, followed by an accelerando, ending with the thrumming bass drum and two cymbal strikes. 

 

Angelus is a finely textured piece for the percussionist group Three Angels. Chimes reminiscent of the Angelus bells – a Sunday night tradition in Ireland – and pitched percussion are built over a staggered eighth note rhythm. In its latter half, shifts of instrumentation and accentuation provide surprising moments in this otherwise quite subdued work. It closes with chiming, leaving us to the contemplation of the Angelus experience. 

 

Learning to Fly is a three-movement piece for BCMG, once again conducted by Dear. It is Baker’s music appearing as totalist in style, with the first movement featuring basset clarinet, played by Oliver Janes and horn solos (the latter playing a blues scale), a Downtown groove from the percussion, repeated notes in the winds, and Hammond organ stabs. Marked “Boisterously,” it behaves as advertised. A raucous set of horn calls and high flutes in an ever-quickening accelerando closes the first movement, which leads attacca into the next, marked “Somnolent.” Janes plays a mysterious solo that is accompanied by pitched percussion and high flutes (mimicking their previous lines). Lurching winds and sustained harmony end the second movement pianissimo. A slap attack announces the last movement, subtitled “Suddenly Awake,” succeeded by a repeated-note filled solo from Janes accompanied by puckish percussion. Tutti chords and then horn solos are both added to the solo plus percussion cohort. Bass drum, cymbals and tutti brass overtake the proceedings in stentorian fashion. In the midst, the basset clarinet emerges, supported by the other members of the wind cohort. A slow horn solo and chimes announce a change in section in which the basset clarinet plays throat tones and then a high melody of oscillating seconds accompanied by whistle rods. This enigmatic conclusion is suddenly terminated with a forte triangle attack. Learning to Fly is a substantial work that demonstrates Baker’s formidable capabilities as an imaginative orchestrator with a keen sense of pacing.

 

The late Sir Stephen Cleobury conducts the Choir of King’s College in one of Baker’s relatively few choral works, To Keep a True Lent. This setting is of a fascinating poem by Robert Herrick, which discusses that a fast based on spiritual contemplation is more important than abstaining from meat during Lent; a forward-thinking theological text. Repeating dyads and trichords create a canvas for the melody, which ricochets from part to part rapidly, with textual utterances equally quicksilver in their presentation. Its brusque post-minimalism suits the demands of the texts and is performed by King’s with impressive diction and intonation. 

 

Homagesquisse and Hwyl fawr ffrindiau close the recording with two short works, again for BCMG conducted by Dearie. The first was written for a 2008 visit by Pierre Boulez to receive an honorary doctorate from the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. It is a trope of Boulez’s Messagesquisse, containing brief excerpts from the piece and a similar hexachordal construction. Beyond that, Baker remains steadfast to his own compositional predilections, with pervasive shifts of dynamics and musical material that accumulate into a prismatic whole. The second, its title in Welsh befitting Baker’s own background and where he currently lives, is a translation of the children’s song “Goodbye Friends” (which is “Goodnight Ladies” outside of Wales). Baker himself trained as an oboist and this valedictory piece features the instrument. The farewell was to Jackie and Stephen Newbould, who served as Executive Producer and Artistic Director of BCMG, and were stepping down from their roles. Descending lines, including glissandos, in the oboe are then ghosted by other winds. The piano plays a prominent role, both in supporting the others with ground bass and chordal harmonies, and in a brief interlude that recalls the childrens’ song. The ensemble halts, leaving only a pianissimo descending minor third in the marimba to finish this artfully touching work. 

 

The Tyranny of Fun is a generous sampling of Baker’s music, which is some of the most compelling written by his generation of British composers. BCMG performs with consummate skill and musicality. This is one of my favorite CDs thus far in 2024.

 

-Christian Carey



by Christian Carey
CD Review, Cello, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Guitar, Minimalism

David Crowell – Point Cloud (CD Review)

David Crowell
Point/Cloud
Better Company Records

Composer and multi-instrumentalist David Crowell has minimalist bona fides: he played in the Philip Glass Ensemble for nearly a decade. But Crowell draws from a number of traditions in his work: prog rock, jazz, folk, and other contemporary classical idioms. His latest, Point/Cloud, features works for percussion, guitars, and a moving finale for voice, cello, and Crowell’s instrumentation.

Sandbox Percussion performs Verses for a Liminal Space. At nearly a quarter of an hour, it shows Crowell’s keen sense of pacing. He conceives of the piece as being cast in three verses. There is a totalist ambience to its opening, with forceful drums combined with pitched percussion to rousing effect. The middle of work is a beautiful slow section. The drums gradually recede to only articulating emphasized beats, and then fall into silence. Pitched percussion arpeggiations and a repeated semitone form a ground that gradually adds melodic content and bowed crotales. Shimmering glockenspiel transitions the work back to the fast tempo, with cascading riffs in the xylophone and the drums gradually returning, first just to accentuate and then to provide hemiola as metric undergirding. The pitched percussion likewise engages in metric transformations. Just when it seems that things are about to heat up, Verses suddenly ends, denying expectations. This is a common feature of Crowell’s music, and it reminds me of Schumann’s Papillions, where each movement feels like entering and exiting a room. The door closes and the sound world changes.

The title work for overdubbed guitars is played by Dan Lippel. Cast in three movements, it begins with a classical guitar solo that is soon joined by electric guitars in cascading repetitions and arpeggiated harmonies. The influence of Electric Counterpoint is clear. Crowell, however, also incorporates prog rock elements reminiscent of Steve Howe and Steve Hackett, particularly in the supple middle movement. However, in the final movement polyrhythmic ostinatos return the music to the orbit of Steve Reich. Lippel plays all the various components of this considerable challenging work with precision, employing a variety of timbres and dynamic shadings.

Lippel is joined by another guitar virtuoso, Mak Grgic, on the classical guitar duo Pacific Coast Highway. Once again, polyrhythms are omnipresent, and there is a sense of jazz and flamenco à la the Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin, and Pace de Lucia Friday Night in San Francisco album. The playing is authoritative, nuanced, and propulsive.

Vocalist and cellist Iva Casian-Lakoš collaborates with Crowell on the final piece, 2 Hours in Zadar. The work contrasts with the rhythmic effervescence of the previous three, moving at a slow tempo and exploring gradually evolving textures. The text is by Casian-Lakoš’s mother, Nela Lakoš. The piece begins with a sample of Nela Lakoš speaking Croatian. Casian-Lakoš plays shards of tunes and glissandos, singing with an exquisite fragility. Crowell’s sustained electronics and frequent wide glissandos, some manipulated samples of the voice, ghost the singing and cello lines, creating a compound melodic framework that is both colorful and vulnerable in presentation. Crowell hews closer to Sigur Rós than the influences found in the previous pieces. It provides the program with a touching valediction. Point/Cloud is uniformly excellent, a recording that is among my favorites thus far in 2024.

Christian Carey

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

C.P.E. Bach Symphonies on Harmonia Mundi

Carl Philip Emanuel Bach

Symphonies from Berlin to Hamburg

Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin

Mayumi Hirasaki and Georg Kallweit, concertmasters

Harmonia Mundi

 

Carl Philip Emanuel Bach (1714-1788) was the middle of Johann Sebastian Bach’s three surviving sons. His music occupies the period between the baroque and classical, often called the galant or rococo style. It truly is a transitional era, with the development of the orchestra, symphony, and a move toward more homophonic textures. Several recordings of his works have recently been issued, and it is nice to see this talented composer having a moment. 

 

Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin is a conductor-less ensemble led, as was the custom then as well, by its concertmasters Mayumi Hirasaki and Georg Kallweit. Their latest recording for Harmonia Mundi is a program of seven of C.P.E. Bach’s symphonies, Symphonies from Berlin to Hamburg, written for strings and continuo. Three date to early in his career (from 1738-1768), when he was in Berlin writing for the court, and the rest from the period of 1768 onwards, when he was Kapellmeister in Hamburg. 

 

All of them are cast in three movements – fast-slow-fast – and, as one can gather from the number of them on a single disc, are significantly shorter than those of the classical era. Their first movements are kinds of proto-sonatas, in which thematic development is truncated and themes are presented quickly and succinctly. 

 

That doesn’t mean that C.P.E.’s orchestral works are lacking in invention or surprises. There are also a number of harmonic shifts where a quick transition – in the C major H.649 symphony with just a single bass note – turns the music sideways. One trick that I particularly admire is the foreshadowing in the second movement of material that is reimagined for the last one. 

 

Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin recorded the program over a significant time period, with younger players, such as concertmaster Mayumi Hirasaki, joining part way through the process. This has led to a well-considered and exquisitely well-prepared recording. Symphonies from Berlin to Hamburg is not only an excellent introduction to the symphonic approach of the galant style, it is a compelling document suggesting that C.P.E. is a worthy successor to his famous father and precursor to the classicism of Haydn and Mozart. Recommended.

 

Christian Carey

 

 

by Christian Carey