Contemporary Classical

Contemporary Classical, Piano, Songs

Lucy Fitz Gibbon/Ryan MacEvoy McCullough: the labor of forgetting

The program so sincerely produced on the labor of forgetting, the debut release from False Azure Records, reminds me of Pauline Oliveros, who once said, “Listening is selecting and interpreting and acting and making decisions.” Indeed, the music of Katherine Balch (b. 1991) and Dante De Silva (b. 1978), in the handling of soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon and pianist Ryan MacEvoy McCullough, underscores the agency of listening as a process in physical flux, even when its subjects are fixed in time and space. The aural objects herein, as grandly interpreted as they are intimately assembled (if not the reverse), bend details into hooks on which we are invited to hang the keys of our distractions while not forgetting the darkness nipping at our heels.

De Silva’s Shibui (2009) opens in mourning, paying respects to Deborah Clasquin, a mentor for both De Silva as composer and McCullough as performer. The piece’s title, lifted from the Japanese tongue, refers to the tartness the latter might taste, but also to a quiet sense of understatement or even a sullen look. As an invisible integration of Bartók’s Élegy op. 8b no. 1, it barely bends under the weight of its allusions. Gentle chords are hammocks for the heaviest emotions, all of which are given rest until they can stand on two feet.

Four Years of Fog (2016) for just-tuned piano follows with a gaze into early adulthood. The whimsical tuning, contrived yet unabashedly beautiful, illuminates as much as it obscures. Subtitles like “Blissfully Ignorant” and “Sickness and Exile” read familiarly to anyone who has lived (or is living) those inevitable stages. And yet, as the octave ails behind closed eyes, we open our ears to a healing sound, unbidden to dance because the notes dance for us. Thus, are we born again, slapped in the rear like the piano at the end into self-awareness.

“Only once did she feel loved by a man / on what we might call / the wash of the cellular level.” So begins Balch’s estrangement (2020), which sets the poetry of Katie Ford (b. 1975) in an astonishing song cycle. Intended as the dark side of Schumann’s Dichterliebe, it turns the paradigm of north-bearing love into a spinning compass. Fitz Gibbon renders a body through her voice and McCullough the molecules it inhales and exhales. As in the textual play of György Kurtág, though with more attention to punctuation, Balch holds every syllable accountable for its unfolding, allowing the mind to fantasize and count it for reality. Fitz Gibbon clothes the words mindfully, flipping the operatic switch on and off at will, morphing from lullaby to whisper to microtonal shiver to aphasic slur without hesitation. This lends the bearer of language power over the flesh being described or unwritten. The fifth movement is especially impactful in its restraint, as is its successor, “the film,” in which the mise-en-scène of a relationship is repeated to the point of fallacy. The tenth movement, “only the song,” is the most visceral for its stops and starts, as if challenging sustained beauty as an illusory complex.

The final movement concedes that sustain, darkening it with images of disunity: “Sometimes she thought of her love for him / like a donated heart / preserved in a jar.” Hearing De Silva’s Shibui (reprised in just intonation) in closing, we feel the caps spun onto the jars of our own hearts. Birds in the background remind us of where we are and, more importantly, where we were never meant to go. We are always alone in our hearts, thus sung until the lungs of our identities empty themselves and move on without us.

If any of this seems morbid and hopeless, it’s because the honeycombed hardships of its upbringing are proven for their sweetness. Fitz Gibbon and McCullough, like the artists animating their throat and fingers, understand that the upswing of retrospection is fruitless without falling into lessons of self-reckoning. And while we may tell ourselves the pandemic is behind us, any act of restoration in its rubble is a lie without the mortar of care. Let this album be one slather in the right direction.

the labor of forgetting is released to the wider world on November 4, 2022.

Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Los Angeles, Opera

Pamela Madsen – Why Women Went West

On Saturday, September 17, 2022, the Meng Concert Hall at Cal State Fullerton was the venue for the world premiere of Why Women Went West, a new chamber opera by composer Pamela Madsen. The opera was presented in concert format, performing the musical elements and including the supplementary videos and electronics. Brightwork newmusic provided the main instrumental accompaniment from the stage with supporting musicians stationed all along the perimeter of the hall. Stacey Fraser, the acclaimed soprano, was the vocal soloist.

Why Women Went West is the story of Mary Hunter Austin, who left her Midwestern hometown in the late 19th century for a pioneer life in California and New Mexico. This is not a bawdy Calamity Jane-type send up of the wild west, but rather a deeply personal journey of self-discovery and hard-won independence. The story is filled with all the challenges and trauma experienced by self-reliant women of the time. Through this process, Mary Austin became a feminist, conservationist, writer and advocate for Native American and Spanish-American rights. The program notes state that the opera “…chronicles Mary Austin’s escape from persecution to transformation of white women’s privilege and passion for preservation of nature, history and indigenous culture.”

Why Women Went West is a two-act opera, with seven scenes in each act for a total running time of almost 90 minutes. Act I is titled “Leaving Home-Earth Horizon” and the first scene is “Echo: Empathy Superimposition.” This introduces the setting of the opera with a multimedia presentation consisting of video, sound track and electronics. The recorded accompaniment includes soprano Stacey Fraser, Aron Kallay on piano and the CSUF New Music Ensemble. The black and white video by Quintan Ana Wikswo shows scenes of mountains, forests and streams; a western landscape that is at once familiar, but at the same time fiercely primal, with a definite undercurrent of menace. Scenes of rough outdoor camping vividly depict the difficulties of traveling in such harsh terrain. The music here is ghostly and surreal, perfectly matching the images projected on the screen. Mary Hunter Austin’s journey through the west was clearly no vacation.

Subsequent scenes in Act I built on this sense of danger and the ominous. The musicians, having taken their places on stage at the close of the introductory video, begin with loud drumming and dark piano lines. The soprano vocal starts off in a low register but the overall feeling becomes a bit brighter with the entry of a reassuring violin passage that combines nicely with Ms. Fraser’s clear articulation and strongly expressive singing. More dark scenes follow, sometimes with video and other times without – often with the soprano voice but at other times with just the instrumental ensemble. “The Birds Here”, scene IV, features a video of hawks hunting above a mountain stream, “Owl’s Breath” was next and featured some really frightening scenes of young white owls. The instrumental ensemble, dominated by the bass clarinet of Brian Walsh, created a skittering cacophony of sounds that added to the unnerving imagery. Clearly, traveling through the 19th century American western wilderness was a formidable undertaking both physically and spiritually, forming the crucible for Mary Austin’s re-invented identity.

Scene VI, “The Necessary,” opens with video of a tree-filled landscape featuring roots and leaves in a series of darkly Gothic images. There is spoken text and the Brightwork ensemble enters, with soft vocals from Ms. Fraser underneath. The video ceases; it is as if the great weight of a difficult westward journey has finally been lifted. The acoustic ensemble now dominates, adding a welcome measure of optimism. The sweetly sung vocal line weaves in and around with beautiful harmony and the overall feeling becomes resolutely hopeful. High arcing soprano lines, confidently sung, add to a sense of deliverance and attainment – the long westward odyssey has been successfully completed. The final scene is stronger still, with stirring music that brings Act I to it’s reassuring conclusion.

The buoyant finish of the final two scenes of Act I, after what had been a long series of darker settings, makes for a contrast that is all the more striking for the listener. Composer Madsen’s expressive sense of harmony and control of texture is brilliantly fluid, with each scene carefully crafted so that the shadows in the music are not tedious or oppressive. The affirming relief felt in the music of the last two scenes of Act 1 proves most effective and is all the more gratifying as a result.

Act II has the title “The Land of Little Rain – California to the Land of Journey’s Ending-New Mexico”. The music of the opening scenes immediately establishes an exotic feel with a maraca and spoken text that describes an arid and inhospitable land. The feelings from these opening scenes in Act II, however, are more settled and secure, as if the trials of surviving in the wilderness are past and Mary Austin Hunter has now arrived and is successfully embedded into new cultural surroundings.

“Prayer for My Daughter” Scene III is especially powerful with Ms. Fraser’s expressive soprano voice paired with a lovely violin accompaniment. There is the pathos of powerful loss in this, but at the same time strength in the soprano line that rises ever-upwards, bringing out Ms. Fraser’s masterful command of her voice through all registers. This piece is perhaps the most moving of the entire opera and was beautifully effective. “57 Buzzards”, part of Scene IV, features sharp twittering from the woodwinds, percussion and the musicians surrounding the audience. There is a confused feeling to this and the instruments seem to be in opposition to the spoken text, with the bird sounds representing chaos.

The climax of the opera occurs in Scene V, “The Consecrating Mother / Mary, Mary by Herself.” A softly pensive piano and cello accompany Stacey Fraser singing the words of Mary Austin Hunter. The feeling is now one of accomplishment and hopefulness, it is as if Mary has finally arrived at the conclusion of her spiritual journey, having worked out her sense of independence and identity. The singing is beautiful, confident and dramatic with accompaniment to match. “Going West”, the final scene, is a stately summing up of the protagonist’s resolve to discover herself through the physical challenges of the wilderness and by assimilation into a new cultural context.

Why Women Went West, as given in this concert format, builds a solid musical foundation for the future staged production. The scoring, playing and singing are all on a very high order as are the video, electronics and sound engineering. Why Women Went West was funded with support from the National Endowment of the Arts, Opera America and the Wurlitzer Foundation. The libretto and text were by Pamela Madsen (after Mary Austin Hunter) and Quintan Ana Wikswo. Additional texts by T.S. Eliot, Terri Niccum and W.B. Yeats. Jen Kutler realized the electronics.

Pamela Madsen will be the featured guest composer in residence at Operation Opera, Cal State University Sacramento next year. A fully staged premiere of Why Women Went West is in the planning stage for their Opera Festival, to be held in early June 2023.

A video of the concert version is now available here.

Brightwork newmusic is:
Sarah Wass, flute
Brian Walsh, clarinets
Shalini Vijayan, violin
Ashley Walters, cello
Nick Terry, percussion
Aron Kallay, piano

The CSUF New Music Ensemble
Eric Dries and Pamela Madsen, directors

ACO, Ambient, Chamber Music, Classical Music, Commissions, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Flute, New York

Carnegie Hall: Highlights of contemporary music in the 2022-2023 season

Claire Chase

Ironically, the first concert of flutist Claire Chase’s reign as Richard and Barbara Debs Creative Chair at Carnegie Hall in the 2022-23 season focuses on a dead composer. In honor of the groundbreaking composer and accordionist Pauline Oliveros (1932-2016), on January 21, 2023 Chase and friends perform an all-Oliveros concert. In addition to Chase (credited as performing “air objects”), instrumentalists include percussionists Tyshawn Sorey and Susie Ibarra and Manari Ushigua, leader of the Sapara Nation in the Ecuadorian Amazon, who has the intriguing credit of “Forest Wisdom Defender”.

Oliveros was hugely influential on the contemporary music scene. She was especially noted for “deep listening,” a term that Oliveros herself coined, referring to an aesthetic based upon principles of improvisation, electronic music, ritual, teaching and meditation.

The performance will be in Zankel Hall, reconfigured to a theater-in-the-round setup with the performers in the center of the hall. Several other contemporary music program in January will take place in the “Zankel Hall Center Stage” milieu, including performances by yMusic (January 19), Third Coast Percussion (January 20), Rhiannon Giddens (January 24) and Kronos Quartet (January 27).

“I’m honored to be the 2022-2023 Richard and Barbara Debs Creative Chair at Carnegie Hall this season,” wrote Chase on Facebook. “Each of the projects on this series has collaboration at its core, and I’m gobsmacked to get to share the stage with some of the most inspiring musicians in my orbit—people who have changed the way I play, changed the way I listen, and who continue to blow the roof off of the imaginations of everyone in earshot.”

Chase is fortunate to have Carnegie’s backing for this season’s chapter of her 24 year-long commissioning and performance project, Density 2036.  Beginning in 2013, Chase has commissioned a new body of solo flute repertoire every year; she’ll continue the process through 2036, the 100th anniversary of Edgard Varèse’s groundbreaking flute solo, Density 21.5. The decades-long project has given a unique framework for Claire Chase’s performance career.

The two “Density” programs are highlights of the entire Carnegie season, and they’re worth waiting for. On May 18, Chase performs Varèse’s Density 21.5 alongside works for flute and electronics that she commissioned over the past ten years, by Felipe Lara, Marcos Balter, Mario Diaz de Leon, George E. Lewis and Du Yun. The sound artist and percussionist Levy Lorenzo handles the live electronics. On May 25, Chase, along with cellists Katinka Kleijn and Seth Parker Woods, pianist Cory Smythe, and electronics artist Levy Lorenzo performs the world premiere of a Carnegie Hall commission by Anna Thorvaldsdottir.

The Paris-based Ensemble Intercontemporain, in its first Carnegie Hall performance in two decades, appears on March 25. The ground-breaking group, founded in 1976 by Pierre Boulez, brings a program that includes the New York premiere of Sonic Eclipse, by EIC’s music director Mattias Pintscher, alongside Dérive 2 by Boulez; and the ensemble reaches back a century to include Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra.

I’ll never forget the first American Composers Orchestra concert at Carnegie that I attended, over 20 years ago. I marveled at the fact that every composer was in attendance (except Charles Ives, and he had a good excuse). Since then, I’ve eagerly looked forward to ACO’s offerings at Carnegie. On October 20 the orchestra, led by Mei-Ann Chen, gives the world premiere of a new work by Yvette Janine Jackson (co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall), and brings a host of guest performers to the Perelman stage: Sandbox Percussion (performing Viet Cuong’s Re(new)al -you’ll be seeing his name more and more, mark my words), the Attacca Quartet (performing an as-yet untitled new work by inti figgis-vizueta), and cellist Jeffrey Zeigler (featured in the New York premiere of Last Year by Mark Adamo). On March 16, Daniela Candellari conducts premieres by George Lewis, Ellen Reid, and Jihyun Noel Kim, and Modern Yesterdays by Kaki King, with the composer on guitar. As far as I can predict, none of these composers will have an excuse as good as Ives if they don’t show up.

The long-lived quintet-of-color, Imani Winds performs new and recent music at Zankel Hall on April 25. Vijay Iyer continues to prove his mettle as a versatile composer with Bruits; also on the program are The Light is the Same by Reena Esmail, and Frederic Rzewski’s Sometimes.

There are many other concerts that showcase living composers at Carnegie this season, including a good number of regional and world premieres commissioned by the institution itself. Composers from Thomas Adès to Caroline Shaw to Michi Wiancko are featured; details are at this link. A complete calendar with program details and ticket information is at this link.

CD Review, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Los Angeles

Jack Curtis Dubowsky – Bolsa Chica Calm

Jack Curtis Dubowsky has been a familiar presence in Los Angeles contemporary music for many years. He may be best known for his original scores for vintage silent films, as well as for performing them live while projecting the movies in various outdoor venues around town. Dubowsky has also scored feature films, orchestral and chamber works, as well as choral music including the acclaimed Harvey Milk: A Cantata. He is a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and the author of three books.

Bolsa Chica Calm is Dubowsky’s latest electro-acoustic album, and he writes that this music “…references ambient, environmental, and experimental music, from vaporwave to Wendy Carlos’ Sonic Seasonings.” The album comprises two 30-minute pieces – Bolsa Chica Surf and Bosa Chica Rain – both inspired by the composer’s avid passion for surfing and the Orange County coast.

Bolsa Chica Surf opens the album and appropriately begins with the calming regularity of waves lapping on the beach. Synthesized instruments soon enter in their turn, with gentle harmonies and simple melodies. The new phrases are independent and repeat so that each entrance adds a new layer of sound to the growing texture. Some high-pitched electronics whirl in the air, and might be sea birds calling across a beach. The soft, pulsing undercurrent of the surf forms a foundation on which the instruments are heard, and this produces a pleasing California sensibility. The repeating phrases of the music complement the patterns in the surf – seemingly the same but each having individual differences. This synchronization of the musical with the natural engages the listener in the same way as standing on a beach watching the waves roll in – all similar in form but separately distinctive.

As the piece continues, a harp is heard repeating a simple ascending phrase, accompanied by lower register electronics and the surf sounds. Three-note bell tones are soon heard dominating at the top of the texture. The tempo has increased slightly and there is a more purposeful feeling as the acoustic instrument sounds enter, each with its own repeating phrase. This pattern produces a feeling of quiet meditation on the beach, even as the piece is one long crescendo, building as instruments join in with new sounds.

At about the halfway mark everything fades to a moment of silence, then a new piano phrase is heard with the harp. There is a steady repeating phrase in each voice with only elementary harmony in the simple piano chords. A cello begins with rich deep tones in slow, stately passages. A flute enters on top, arcing above and there is a more conventional feel to this section with familiar instrumentation and fewer electronics. At 24:33 a distinctive electronic voice enters with sustained tones, changing the mood a bit. Towards the finish the percussion enters, and the feeling becomes one of expectation. A broad tutti chord is a final flourish, and then only the surf sounds continue for a few moments more.

Bolsa Chica Surf is a minimal, but pleasant rending of a quiet day on a California beach. The patterns of the waves and the music imitate one another and merge in the ear to form a continuum of music and nature. This is not dramatic or technically flashy, but is rather a peaceful echo of nature that leaves room in the mind of the listener for quiet meditation.

Bolsa Chica Rain is similarly structured, but evokes an entirely different range of emotions. The sound of a steady rain softly drumming on a metal roof is accompanied by some marvelously liquid percussive sounds. Violins and a cello join in with a mournful melody that perfectly captures the disappointment one feels at having to change outdoor plans because of the weather. At about 3:00, what sounds like a dulcimer enters with repeating phrases that float above sustained tones from synthesized horns. A wood block adds a strong beat as the rain has now receded into the background. Repeating bell-like phrases are heard at the top of the texture and a series of descending notes by the keyboard add to the layers of sound. By 7:00 these sounds have faded and after a momentary pause, the keyboard issues a run of solitary chords that create a slightly more somber mood – like when you feel trapped indoors by the rain. Electronic tones now offer a slightly brighter feel and new layers appear in simple, but uplifting passages. The strings enter again, now providing real optimism as if you have found something interesting to do indoors. As Bolsa Chica Rain continues on, it imparts that sense of liberation you might feel upon realizing that being stuck inside all day because of the rain isn’t so terrible after all.

The architecture of both pieces in Bolsa Chica Calm is similar; they are built up with layers of changing and independent phrases as various instrumental groups enter and fade out. This makes for accessible and engaging music without being boring or repetitive. The patterns in the music mirror the patterns of nature, and this imparts a welcoming sense of serenity. Bolsa Chica Calm is just that, and much needed in our often frenetic lives.

Bolsa Chica Calm is available for download here.

CD Review, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, File Under?

Christopher Trapani – Horizontal Drift (CD Review)

 

Christopher Trapani

Horizontal Drift

New Focus Records

 

Christopher Trapani’s latest portrait recording for New Focus features pieces for solo instruments, several with electronics. The composer’s work with microtones and hybrid tuning systems is spotlighted. Trapani has a compendious knowledge of microtonality, and he brings it to bear eloquently in the programmed pieces.

 

The album’s opener, Târgul, is written for vioara cu goarna, a Romanian variant on the stroh violin, a violin with an added horn to provide greater projection. It also can provide fascinating timbres, as Maximilian Haft’s performance illuminates. Dan Lippel plays the title track on quarter tone guitar, abetted by real time electronics edited by a Max patch. It is a standout piece, with sinuous passages of quarter tones and glissandos followed and morphed by electronics. The use of complex arpeggiations is riveting. 

 

Linear A is performed by clarinetist Amy Advocat. It uses still another tuning, the Bohlen-Pierce scale, which repeats at the twelfth instead of the octave. The electronics provide clarinet duets that make the already surreal environment of the scale enhanced by buzzing overtones. Lots of florid playing, which Advocat executes with aplomb. 

 

Lost Time Triptych is an amalgam of influences. Written as a companion piece for Gerard Grisey’s Vox Temporum, it has three detuned pitches that play a pivotal role in the music. Each of the Triptych’s movements is subtitled with a phrase from Bob Dylan. Marilyn Nonken plays the piece with detailed balancing of its intricate harmonies and supple dynamic shading. Forty-Nine, Forty-Nine is for a 31-tone equal tempered Fokker organ that is controlled by MIDI rather than an organist. With a feisty analog demeanor, 

 it is reminiscent of some of the electronic pieces from the Columbia-Princeton Center, 

 

The recording closes with Tessaræ, a piece written for the viola d’amore. This instrument has sympathetic strings, and Trapani deploys it to emulate folk music from Turkey and India that also has instruments with sympathetic strings. The viola d’amore’s capacities for harmonics and drones are set against a mournful mid-register melody. It is an affecting work that demonstrates Trapani’s capacity for emotional writing as well as technical innovation. Marco Fusi plays with a strongly delineated sense of the counterpoint employed in the piece.

 

Horizontal Drift is a compelling recording, demonstrating Trapani’s craft and imagination in equal abundance. Recommended. 


Contemporary Classical

The Proms Ades et al, Public Service Broadcasting, Aretha Franklin

The Prom on August 26 was presented by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, and their conductor, Nicholas Collon, joined by violinist Pekka Kuusisto. The program opened with La Mer by Debussy, which was given an extremely shaped and nuanced and always beautiful sounding performance. It was followed by Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending in a very beautiful and thoughtful and very quiet and moving performance featuring Kuusisto. The Vaughan Williams and Märchentänze by Thomas Adès made a very interesting and thought provoking paring. The Vaughan Williams, written just before the first world war, was one of his first works to deal with his interest in English folksong. It incorporated the essence of his experience of folk music into the substance of the piece, not quoting any particular folksongs but having the sense of that music permeate the whole of the work. The Adès, which was written in 2020 for violin and piano and was orchestrated a year later, and was receiving its first UK performances, quotes quite a few particular folksongs explicitly, and deals with them as found material which can be used and manipulated but whose substance is not part of the essential character and concerns of the music, and is always held at an emotional distance, always quotation, always ironic. The work is always expertly, to say the least, realized and brilliantly orchestrated and always engaging and entertaining. The performance was on an equally expert and compelling level. Both of those performances–the Vaughan Williams and the Adès–were completely true to the character and intent of the music. The concert concluded with a completely spellbinding performance of the Sibelius Fifth Symphony.

The Prom on August 30 was an single hour-long work, This New Noise, by Public Service Broadcasting, (actually the program credited J. Willgoose, Esq. as the composer and JF Abraham as the arranger) a London-based musical group, described in the program as being ‘indie-rock,’ whose four members are known by their stage names: J. Willgoose, Esq, Wrigglesworth, J F Abraham, and Mr.B, assisted by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Jules Buckley. Public Service Broadcasting incorporates archival recordings, news and otherwise, visual clips, and their own original music, which is somewhat poppy and repetitive, in their work, which might be considered collage-like. Their works, including their debut ‘album’ Inform– Educate– Entertain, The Race for Space (marking the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing), and Every Valley (on the rise and fall of the Welsh coal-mining industry), have won prizes, including the Progressive Music Awards, and have developed a large and enthusiastic following, at least judging from the completely packed out Albert Hall.

This New Noise, a BBC commission, receiving its first performance, was a celebration of the centennial of the BBC, and consisted of eight sections: Ripples in the Ether (Towards the Infinite, This New Noise, An Unusual Man, A Cello Sings in Daventry, Broadcasting House, The Microphone (The Fleet is Lit Up), A Candle Which Will Not Be Put Out, and What of the Future?. There was little, if any, manipulation of the archival recordings (in some of there other work, which I looked into later, there was some manipulation); sometimes the music underscored, as it were, moments in those clips and sometime it simply provided an underlay. The archival visual elements were also presented more or less intact. None of the sections actually ended; they just stopped. After a while this became a little irritating, but it made one very aware that there was really no shaping at all to any of the piece, the music didn’t at all provide this, is simply went on, usually very repetitively.

The whole work was intended as a celebration of the BBC and a warning not to let it go away. There was a very powerful statement by Wilgoose in the program: “It is, in my view, a simple and unarguable fact that if the BBC continues to be whittled away–potentially until it expires–there will be many areas it covers, and functions it provides, that will simply cease to be. No private organization, motivated by profit alone {he had previously quoted a statement by James Murdock at the Edinburgh International Television Festival of 2009: ‘The only reliable, durable, and perpetual guarantor of independence is profit.’}, would fund the BBC Proms season; nor Radio 3, nor 4, nor 6 Music (without whose patronage our band wouldn’t exist); nor the BBC orchestras (including the one performing so skillfully tonight); nor any of the multiple commercially unappealing but culturally vital services the BBC provided to us on a daily basis for what–when compared with other much lauded delivery systems–amounts to a pittance. It will leave a vacuum, a void; there will be no more ripples in the ether, no more public-minded attempts to improve the education and experience (and cohesion) of this country. There will simply be an empty stage, and perhaps the scale of the BBC’s influence and importance will only be truly felt if it does disappear.” The end of the whole evening acted out, in farewell symphony manner, the prophecy of the empty stage. It was possibly the most effective moment of the piece. Nothing else came up to that, and none of it equaled the power of Wilgoose’s prose.

The Proms on August 22 was billed as Aretha Franklin: The Queen of Soul. It commemorated the eightieth anniversary of Franklin’s birth, and her death four years ago, and featured Sheléa, along with a group billed as Gospel choir, led by Vula Malinga, none of whose members were named, and the apparently newly formed Jules Buckley Orchestra, conducted by Jules Buckley. The evening included seventeen songs representing just about every facet of Aretha’s career and repertory. Sheléa was personable hostess for the show, as well as being a formidable singer, who was certainly up to the task of evoking Franklin’s presence through her songs. During the second half of the concert, when Sheléa was making her third costume change, the Gospel choir performed Spanish Harlem and Day Dreaming and the individual singers, uncredited, proved that they could claim and hold a stage as well. The whole evening was completely enjoyable. The object of the evening, of course, was to evoke Aretha by covering her songs in her manner. One of her great talents was to cover songs by other singers and to so make them her own and they were at least as powerful and memorable as the originals, sometimes better. Even though it’s something of an aside and unnecessary I am adding here a list of what I think are the very best Aretha covers, in order: Long and Winding Road (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8oz1qZljz4), The Tracks of My Tears (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XJfYpeCr4s), Oh Me Oh My (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMrVtFmVrcU), The Border Song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-8e9WINAho), Brand New Me (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmJRsdYXAg0), I Say a Little Prayer for You (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8y0onSG3kg), April Fools (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trNhaxZvFVk).

All three of these concerts are available on the BBC Sounds website (https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds), as are the concerts I wrote about earlier. In fact, every Prom is there, and available for quite a long time.






Contemporary Classical

The Proms: Turnage, Walker, Smyth, and Feldman at Cafe Oto

The Prom on Monday, August 15, presented by the BBC Symphony, conducted by Sakari Oramo, opened with the first UK performance of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Time Flies, a joint Commission from the BBC, the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, and the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra which is based in Hamburg. Each of the three movements represents one of the cities involved, London, Hamburg, and Tokyo, respectively. The piece is for a very large orchestra, used with a certain amount of skill and verve. The London movement is fast, and, so we’re told, jaunty in an English kind of way; the second is slower and more solemn and serious and a little overly long, as, one supposes, fits Hamburg. The last movement is jazzy and swinging, as is supposed to accurately represent Tokyo (?), All three of the movements operate on the basis of asserting material, fragmenting it and then subjecting it to canonic treatment–-at great length– especially in the last movement Across the whole piece one struggles to find any hint of substance. Tracing two other threads for this Prom season, that of concertos for unusual solo instruments, and the celebration of the 150 anniversary of the birth of Vaughan Williams, the second work on the program was the Vaughan Williams Tuba Concerto, with Constatin Hartwig soloist. The concerto is a late work, and it has all those hallmarks; a lovely folksy slow movement and a snappy last movement that has been described (by Michael Kennedy, I think) as being Bottom and the fairies. Constatin Hartwig’s playing was, to put it mildly, admirable; he added as an encore a very very fancy arrangement by Lars Holmgaard of Blackbird by Paul McCartney. The concert concluded with a very moving performance of the First Symphony of Elgar.

The Prom on August 16, presented by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Vasily Petrenko, opened with Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring, in the version that, a long time ago used to be the only version, for full orchestra, lasting just under half an hour, the sort of suite, not the whole ballet. The concert ended with the Fifth Symphony of Prokofiev. In between those two pieces was the Trombone Concerto by George Walker, with soloist Peter Moore. The concerto is in three movements and last about seventeen minutes. The first movement pits a lively propulsive rhythmic music against a more singing material, leading to a climax that highlights the singing quality of the trombone, before sliding back into the initial faster rhythmic music. The second movement, relatively short, is completely singing and heartfelt. The final movement’s initial and dominant quality is cheerful and march-like, and it continually interrupted by a more aggressive, jerkier, slightly syncopated music, with the first music winning out. The concerto is not only a very impressive show piece for the trombone, but it is continually engaging as a piece of music. Moore, whose performance was a knock out, played as an encore Clef Study No. 18, by David Uber.

Ethel Smyth is known more as a sort of blip on Virginia Woolf’s biography ( “An old woman of 71 has fallen in love with me…It is like being caught up by a giant crab.”) than as one of the most important British suffragettes or as a composer. She was, in fact, not only a quite accomplished composer, but a fairly important one. The Prom on August 20, presented by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Symphony Chorus, conducted by Sakari Oramo, featured Smyth’s Mass in D major, following the Debussy Nocturnes. Tovey compared the Smyth Mass favorably to Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, and it is of a similar scope and length. That Smyth intended it not as music that could actually be used liturgically, but rather as a grand oratorio on the text of the mass is proved by the fact that she felt that in its liturgical order the mass doesn’t have a splashy enough ending and, therefore, decided to move the Gloria to the end of the piece. In any case, although it maybe does go on a little too long, the Mass is fairly impressive. The orchestration is consistently luminous, and there are one or two really striking and wonderful moments, most especially in the Gloria when the four soloists are suddenly singing the Domine Fili unigenite unaccompanied. The Kyrie, which was a slowly unfolding closely argued span leading to a substantial climax, is also impressive. The performance was as fully committed and as good as one could ever hope to hear.

On August 21 at Café Oto, Tania Caroline Chen performed Morton Feldman’s Triadic Memories. Feldman described the piece and its workings: “In Triadic Memories… there is a section of different types of chords where each chord is slowly repeated. One chord might be repeated three times, another seven or eight – depending on how long I felt it should go on. Quite soon into a new chord I would forget the reiterated chord before it. I then reconstructed the entire section: rearranging its earlier progression and changing the number or times a particular chord was repeated. This way of working was a conscious attempt at “formalizing” a disorientation of memory…” Chen’s performance was completely engrossing and compelling, soon after it started causing one to stop noticing and forget over its 90 or so minutes’ length the obvious deficiencies of the piano it was being played on. It was a memorable experience.





Contemporary Classical

The Proms–Saariaho, Vaughan Williams, Mazzoli

Prom 37, presented by the Royal Northern Sinfonia, conducted by Dinis Sousa, was a late morning concert. It included a performance of the Oboe Concerto by Ralph Vaughan Williams, with soloist Nicholas Daniel, which was part of a thread for the season featuring concertos for less usual solo instruments as well as being part of the celebration of the 150th anniversary of Vaughan Williams’s birth. The concerto is in three movements and is relatively brief–19 minutes. It’s also musically quite concise (except maybe for the last movement) and as well conceived for the instrument as one could wish. It’s a lovely piece, with all the good and bad connotations of that description. The performance was as good as one could ever hope to hear. The program also included an arrangement of an arrangement of the final aria of Kaija Saariaho’s fist opera, L’amour de loin, from 2000. The first arrangement, entitled Vers toi qui es si loin, made by the composer in 2016, was a more straightforward excerpting of the aria for soprano with a reduced orchestration of strings, harp, and piccolo. The second arrangement–same title– which she made in 2018, presented here, recast the soprano part for solo violin, and allows an even greater sense of distance and musical space. The piece is, in fact, magical, and that quality was enhanced by the playing of the soloist, Maria Wloszczowska, who was also the leader (i.e. concertmaster) of the orchestra. In this concert it was followed without a break with the Beethoven Fourth Symphony. The playing of the Royal Norther Sinfonia all the way through the concert, which opened with the Haydn Sixth Symphony, was strikingly beautiful.

The Prom later that night, presented by the Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Santtu-Matias Rouvali, was maybe the most egregious example of sticking a modern piece in between two crowd-pleasers, maybe hoping that the audience won’t notice. The concert started with twenty five minutes of excerpts from Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky and ended, after intermission, by forty-five minutes of excerpts from Romeo and Juliet by Prokofiev. (In an interview included in the program, Rouvali said he thought the programming of the ballet music would ‘fit well with that kind of audience and setting,’ which aside from being condescending, seems to reflect a lack of knowledge of the history and traditions of the Proms.) After the Tchaikovsky and before intermission, Jennifer Koh and the orchestra played the first European performance of the Violin Concerto ‘Procession’ of Missy Mazzoli, which was a BBC co-commission with the National Symphony Orchestra (of Washington, D. C.), and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Given the placement of the concerto in terms of the repertory of the concert, it’s hard to know exactly what the people who put together the program thought about the expectations they might be setting up by putting in quite large type an excerpt from the review of its first performance in the Washington Post, which began ‘Koh..attacked short solos as if she were sawing through a pipe…”

Conceived and written during the covid pandemic lock down, the five movements of the piece represent a move towards healing, which is led by the violin, who Mazzoli describes as ‘a soothsayer, sorcerer, healer, and pied piper-type character.’ The first movement, ‘Procession in a Spiral,’ which is relatively slow, processes in circles, as if getting nowhere. The second is dedicated to St. Vitus, the patron saint of dance, and is, as one might expect, lively and rhythmic. The third, ‘O My Soul,’ is a deconstructed hymn. The fourth, ‘Bone to Bone, Blood to Blood’ referring to a 9th-century incantation for curing broken limbs, is another fast movement. The final movement, ‘Procession Ascending’ is the material of the first movement reorganized and given direction, so that the violinist, as Mazzoli says, ‘leads the orchestra straight into the sky.’ Koh’s playing was resplendent and compelling, and that of the orchestra was equally beautiful. I was not able to locate a moment which sounded as though anybody was sawing through a pipe.


Contemporary Classical

The Proms and Dave Smith

Unlike last summer, when the Proms was somewhat restricted, at least in terms of the size of the audience, and with a number of programs being somewhat shorter and without intermission, this year everything seems to be in full swing again. Certainly the house was packed on August 10 for the concert by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Symphony Chorus, conducted by Ryan Wigglesworth. This concert sandwiched the new work, Pearl by Matthew Kaner, a BBC commission and first performance, between Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration and Holst’s The Planets. For the stretch of the few days around this concert, this seemed to reflect a programming strategy of hiding, maybe, new pieces among big audience pleasers, not necessarily, at least immediately, related.

Pearl sets extracts of a translation into modern English by British Poet Laureate Simon Armitage of a medieval poem by the anonymous “Gewain Poet,’ which tells the story of a grief-stricken jeweler who revisits the place of the death of a girl, who may be his daughter, who he calls his ‘Pearl.’ The jeweler falls asleep, and in his dream he walks through a magical landscape where he encounters his ‘Pearl’ standing across a river. After discussing his grief and her present setting, ‘where misery and melancholy never come near,’ he attempts to join her, but he awakes, reconciled to her death. Kaner’s work is striking for its faultless word setting (faultlessly and beautifully rendered by the faultless Roderick Williams), and by many instances of imaginative and brilliant orchestral and choral writing. Its effect was somewhat lessened for this listener by its harmonic immobility.

Rather than sandwiching in the Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Archora, a BBC Commission which was receiving its first performance on the Prom on August 11, presented by the BBC Philharmonic, conducted by Eva Ollikainen, between two wildly popular works, the Elgar ‘Cello Concerto and the Sibelius Second Symphony, this concert began with the new piece. Archora, Thorvaldsdottir wrote in her note, ‘centers around the notion of primordial energy and the idea of an omnipresent parallel realm–a world both familiar and strange, static and transforming, nowhere and everywhere at the same time.’ It does, in fact, have that quality, being at the same time inchoate and constantly engaging, both elusive and compelling. Its instrumental writing was beautiful and impressive and its narrative trajectory, timeless in a good sense, deeply compelling. It was followed by a very beautiful and memorable performance of the Elgar, by ‘cellist Kian Soltani.

On August 13, the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra made its Proms debut under its Chief Conductor Marin Alsop. Their program included, along with The Miraculous Mandarin by Bartok, the Prokofiev Third Piano Concerto, with Benjamin Grosvenor, and the Dvorak Seventh Symphony, the first UK performance of Heliosis by Hannah Eisendle. Heliosis is medical term for sunstroke, and Eisendle’s note of the piece seemed to promise some kind of post-apocalyptic sound world (‘…the music depicts a dirty, sultry, sticky-soot kind of summer…rhythmic material explodes, conveying inflamed senses and the wavering between clear wakefulness and exhausted surrender. We hear a glint of dust in the fiery wind—a billow of heat over asphalt runways.’), where “the string represent the sonic topography of the desert landscape,’ and “they often play on and behind the bridge–the rasping sound representing the intensity of the sun.’ There was, in fact, a certain continuous rhythmic complexity and intensity always present, but the material (the notes, for lack of a better word) evoked The Miraculous Mandarin, or The Rite of Spring, or The Dance in the Gym from West Side Story. This listener kept wishing for something closer to what the description seemed to promise.

On August 12, Dave Smith presented a recital of his music at Schott’s Recital Room. The program consisted of the three parts of his Piano Concert No. 9: On the Virtue of Flowers, On the Virtues of Forests, and On the Virtues of Wild Birds, each one about a half hour in length. The music, which was constantly engaging, didn’t necessarily conform to the quickest and easiest expectations. These forest were in a neighborhood not too far from Gershwin, and the wild birds in question were not in the neighborhood of Messiaen’s–no bird songs were damaged in the making of this piece. Each of the three segments was always interesting and always satisfying. The end of On the Virtues of Wild Birds was particularly striking and memorable.

Choral Music, Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Los Angeles, Orchestral

Pamela Madsen – Oratorio for the Earth

The world premiere of Oratorio for the Earth by Pamela Madsen was heard in the Meng Concert Hall at Cal State University, Fullerton on May 14, 2022. If you couldn’t make it to the performance, a video of a quite satisfactory quality is now available online. This seven-movement oratorio is scored for a full orchestra, a large chorus and six vocal soloists who are the Hex Ensemble. The work offers a dramatic commentary on the uncertain state of nature and the earth in a time of portentous climate change. While the scope and scale of Oratorio for the Earth is daunting, composer Madsen’s score has risen to the challenge and the musicians have delivered a powerful and moving performance.

The structure of the piece is text-book oratorio, with four set-piece chorus movements interspersed with vocal solos and smaller settings by the Hex Ensemble. There are also spoken texts that function as recitative. The larger choral movements begin in winter and circle around to summer, following the seasons. The wide-ranging texts include sacred Latin as well as the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, Robert Frost, Sitting Bull, Walt Whitman, Sara Teasdale, Mary Hunter Austin and William Butler Yeats. According to the program notes: “Oratorio for the Earth is part of a tryptic of concert-length works focusing on Earth and the environment…”

The news about nature, the earth and climate has been discouraging for at least a decade, and “Lost Horse Mine Lament”, the opening movement of Oratorio for the Earth, clearly reflects this. Church-like chimes are heard as the chorus sings softly in Latin “Truth, the light, the truth and the life – let there be light.” This continues in a warm, full harmony with the higher voices ultimately dominating. The singing turns pensive and a syncopated accompaniment in the percussion adds to the interesting harmonies in the chorus. The chorus is always very much in the foreground while the orchestral accompaniment is appropriately restrained. Molly Pease sings a beautiful mezzo-soprano solo based on a sorrowful Rilke text at the quiet finish. Throughout this movement, and through the entire oratorio, the large orchestra never overpowers the singing. This careful balance is primarily due to the skillful conducting of Kimo Furumoto, aided by the fine acoustic of the concert hall.

The succeeding movements generally follow the somber tone of the opening. “O, Lacrimosa: Ah, But the Winter”, the second movement, has an almost melancholy feeling with solemn piano chords and vocal lines that separate into layers, weaving in and out. The somber Rilke text portrays winter as death before the coming spring. “Center of all Centers”, movement III, is more unsettled, with dissonance in the orchestra and a soaring vocal line arcing above with text by Robert Frost. As with other movements, the orchestra is subdued, with only the occasional forte phrase. Towards the middle of this movement, there is a sudden tempo change as the rhythms become more active. A soloist sings from text by Rilke “Suddenly, from all the green around you, something – you don’t know what – has disappeared;” The chorus joins in full harmony and the feeling is one of an awakening as the text speaks of plants about to spring forth. The orchestra crescendos along with the chorus as this movement reaches its climax.

“O Lacrimosa: O, tear-filled figure”, movement IV, follows and this is a fine contrast to the previous chorus. The opening consists of short vocal phrases by the women soloists with only a few piano notes in accompaniment – the orchestra is tacet. A gentle soprano solo enters with the text “O tear-filled figure who, like a sky held back, grows heavy above the landscape of her sorrow.” More female singing is heard, layered in contrasting registers with a beautiful high soprano line. Movement V opens with a cautionary text by Sitting Bull: “Behold my friends, Behold my friends. They claim our mother Earth for their own.” The ominously deep chords in the piano nicely compliment the bass-baritone soloist and higher voices join in to create an austere harmony. The text soon turns to a Latin Adoramus te and this presents an intriguing fusion of traditional Christian liturgy and Native American spirituality: Christ’s sacrifice and redemption in the context of nature’s springtime renewal. The singing here by the Hex Ensemble is masterfully controlled and complimented by the suitably spare orchestral accompaniment.

The extraordinarily deep bass of James Hayden opens Movement VI “Now the Hour Bows Down” with Rilke’s dramatic text sung in German. This movement was commissioned by Nicholas Isherwood, another bass with an extraordinary vocal range. The orchestra gradually joins in adding anxiety and the feeling now becomes one of almost total despair. At this moment of deep anguish, the female voices enter in hopeful harmony and the text shifts to Psalm 69. Soon, male and female voices join together to sing “Save me O Lord, for the waters have come into my soul.” The deep bass is now singing purposefully in English as the volume builds and confidence increases. This is a welcome ray of optimism shining out at the end of what is probably the darkest movement in the entire oratorio.

The table is now set for the final redemptive movement, “Earth Horizon”, beginning with spoken text from Walt Whitman’s “A California Song! Song of the Redwood Trees.” This describes the fall of a dying redwood in the forest, accompanied by the orchestra and chorus. The feeling is at once sad and triumphant as the choral singing gradually increases in strength and optimism. The ensemble is both stirring and beautiful, without overwhelming the mood. As the choral text turns to “There Will Be Rest”, by Sara Teasdale, a sense of serenity runs through the layers and waves of music that flow outward. A series of orchestral trills and purposeful phrases are heard as the singing shifts to Rilke’s “All Is Love”. The chorus escalates the dynamic dramatically, then subsides as the text of “Earth Horizon” by Mary Hunter Austin is spoken. This is the philosophical core of the entire piece, articulating the disappointment in our treatment of the environment but leaving room for optimism; nature will recover and humans can re-establish a mutually beneficial relationship with the earth. This is followed by a haunting alto solo, soon joined by the full orchestra and chorus singing a soothing text by W.B. Yeats. With a gentle crescendo, the final movement – and Oratorio for the Earth – is completed.

With great power comes great responsibility. Perhaps the most impressive thing about Oratorio for the Earth is the discipline and restraint in both the writing and performing. The vast musical forces at the disposal of composer Madsen could well have spun out of control given the solemn subject of this work. The use of the orchestra, chorus and soloists is precisely balanced and provides a pleasingly varied sequence of movements. The many texts are used to good effect and the orchestral accompaniment always makes space for the chorus and soloists. The overall emotional arc of the oratorio is masterfully crafted and makes the final movement that much more memorable. Large-scale contemporary music is seldom heard these days but Oratorio for the Earth shows that this form can still deliver a compelling message.

The full video of Oratorio for the Earth is available here and the program notes are here. The movement titles and sung text are helpfully displayed on the screen, and this is especially useful for some of the quiet choral pieces – the chorus is seated well to the back of the stage and the softer words are sometimes difficult to hear. The program notes contain the complete set of the texts and these can be easily followed to mark when changes occur within the movements. There is also a complete list of the performers and the technical crew. The sound, video engineering, lighting and stage management are all first rate and free of any distractions. The video of Oratorio for the Earth is a fine production of a large, complex work and provides a clear conduit for the artistry on stage.

The HEX Ensemble is:

Joslyn Sarshad, soprano
Molly Pease, soprano
Lindsay Patterson Abdou, alto
Fahad Siadat, tenor, director
Scott Graff, baritone
James Hayden, baritone
Andrew Anderson, piano

The concert program listing all the performers is available here.