Contemporary Classical

Composers, Contemporary Classical, Deaths, File Under?

RIP Oliver Knussen (1952-2018)

Knussen Honorary Doctorate RAM July 2018
Oliver Knussen received an honorary doctorate from the RAM on 5 July 2018.

Saddened to learn of the passing of composer and conductor Oliver Knussen. One of the truly great musicians of our time, Knussen had received an honorary doctorate from the Royal Academy of Music, where he was Richard Rodney Bennett Professor of Music, just a few days ago.

A renowned pedagogue as well as a superlative conductor of contemporary music, Knussen held positions with such organizations as London Sinfonietta, Aldeburgh Festival, Tanglewood, BBC Symphony, and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group.

While not as prolific as some of his contemporaries, his catalog included a number of high quality works. Knussen will be remembered for compositions such as his two Maurice Sendak operas – Where the Wild Things Are and Higglety Pigglety Pop – orchestra pieces such as the Horn and Violin Concertos and Fanfare with Fireworks, and his settings of Walt Whitman and, in a Requiem for his late wife Sue, Emily Dickinson and W.H. Auden. Knussen’s final work, O Hototogismu!, consisted of adaptations of 17th-19th century Haiku poems for soprano and ensemble. It was premiered at Aldeburgh in June 2017.

by Christian Carey
Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Los Angeles

Open Source at Coaxial Arts

On June 19, 2018, Coaxial Arts was the venue for a program of noise, experimental music and sound. The snug downtown Los Angeles location filled up with a congenial crowd of the knowledgeable and the curious for a concert presented by the wulf titled Open Source: Anderson, Hutson, Shiroishi, Smith. An impressive array of cables, synthesizers, mixing boards, computers and radios was spread over several tables, including a large reel-to-reel tape loop. Casey Anderson, William Hutson, Stephanie Cheng Smith and Patrick Shiroishi were on hand to bring it all to life.

The evening began with Duo by Anderson and Smith, opening with Anderson’s signature use of an amplified transistor radio tuned to a local AM station. Electronic synthesizers joined in with beeps and squeals, projecting an exuberantly spacey feel. Ms. Smith added some scratching and scraping sounds from an amplified violin, inserting some tension. Casey Anderson then contributed a series of long, solemn tones on soprano saxophone and this seemed to bring a measure of stability to the strident electronic sounds that otherwise dominated. More radio stations were heard, contributing a sense of fuzzy normality. The piece seemed to swing back and forth between the swirling whirlpool of electronic sounds and the more familiar sounds of violin, saxophone and AM radio. At the finish, the electronics seemed to prevail by sheer power, even as a long mournful wail was heard from the soprano saxophone. Duo is an apt metaphor for modern life, pulled between the forces of chaos we cannot control and the refuge we gain by retreating into our own humanity.

Quartet followed the intermission, and for this all four players took their places. Ms. Smith continued with her violin and synthesizer, along with Anderson’s soprano sax, electronics and radio. The quartet was rounded out with Patrick Shiroishi playing alto and sopranino saxophones and William Hutson, who presided over a reel-to-reel tape recorder modified to move a large tape loop around two music stands placed several feet apart. Quartet was an expanded variant of Duo and began with the snatches of AM radio and a low humming from the electronics. There was a quietly mysterious sputter coming from the tape loop as well as more beeps and squawks from the synth. The alto and soprano saxes joined in, contributing a sustained warbling that was very effective and added a welcome human dimension to the otherwise exotic collection of electronic sounds.

As the piece proceeded, the saxophones increased their presence with a stimulating free form section that was very effective. The entry of the sopranino, with its very high register, often took on the character of the electronic sounds, especially in short, choppy passages. This made for an intriguingly  hybridized texture as Shiroishi repeatedly drove his saxophone into the pitch domain of the electronics. Quartet surged back and forth and when the electronics dominated, there was a sense of tension and stress. When the saxophones were stronger there was a more welcoming feel, and when the AM radio was played there were the sounds of the banal and the familiar. Quartet wandered freely from one pole to the other, challenging the listener to navigate the line between the anxious and the accustomed.

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

John Adams: Violin Concerto (CD Review)

John Adams Violin Concerto

Violin Concerto – John Adams

Leila Josefowicz, violin

St. Louis Symphony, David Robertson, conductor

Nonesuch CD

Some recordings become touchstones in one’s collection. Despite there being several fine renditions out there, the 1996 Nonesuch CD of Gidon Kremer playing John Adams’ Violin Concerto (1993), with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s conducted by Kent Nagano, is an abiding favorite of mine. Now, more than twenty years later, Nonesuch has bested its own best with the release of Leila Josefowicz’s recording of the concerto with the St. Louis Symphony, conducted by David Robertson.

Josefowicz is front and center in the mix. Since the violinist plays nearly constantly in the piece, and tends to evoke the actions of the orchestra more so than one finds in traditional concertos, this seems entirely appropriate. Her rendition of the piece is filled with crisply fluent runs and fluid dynamic shifts. The first movement is appropriately dramatic in cast, the second takes on a poignancy that is most affecting, and the finale is truly a bravura showcase for the soloist. In addition to the vibrant energy of Josefowicz, under Robertson the St. Louis Orchestra gives a performance that is both dynamically potent and attentive to detail.

While repetition remains an important component of Adams’ music, the Violin Concerto is a watershed piece for the composer in that breaks out of the boundaries of post-minimalism into a more versatile gestural language than he had previously used. In addition to this change in rhythmic practice, the concerto features greater chromaticism than one had previously heard in pieces by the composer. He fluently wends his way through a variety of key centers – there are even moments where post-tonality reigns supreme over triadic writing. These facets of his writing have only blossomed in the ensuing years. However, it is pleasing to be reminded of their roots in the concerto, particularly by such a persuasive account of the piece.

john-adams-doctor-atomic-450

This is the label’s thirtieth CD of music by Adams; their connection to the composer dates back to the 1986 recording of Harmonielehre. On June 29th, 2018, Nonesuch will release yet another recording of music by Adams, and a particularly noteworthy one: the premiere CDs of his 2005 opera Dr. Atomic. More about that soon.

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

Ghost Ensemble: We Who Walk Again (LP Review)

Ghost Ensemble - We Who Walk Again
We Who Walk Again
Ghost Ensemble
Indexical LP/Download

Since 2012, New York’s Ghost Ensemble has pursued a deep listening ethos that incorporates a range of repertoire, both pieces by ensemble members and works by composers such as David Bird, Kyle Gann, Giacinto Scelsi, and Gerard Grisey. Any ensemble in the US that references “deep listening” invariably is also interested in Deep Listening, the piece that evolved into a discipline and subsequent body of musical and theoretical work from sound artist Pauline Oliveros.

Since its inception Ghost Ensemble has been associated with Oliveros’ work, both her compositions and sound practices. It is fitting that We Who Walk Again, their debut recording, features the first studio recording of the Oliveros piece “Angels and Demons.” A text score from 1980, its primary guideline is as follows: “any sound that has been heard inwardly first may be made.” Players may take on the role of “Angels,” the meditation’s “guardian spirits,” or Demons, “individual spirits of creative genius;” they may also switch back and forth between roles. Here the piece manifests itself in an initial testing out period of slow individual tones that is gradually varied by means of timbre, density, and use of dissonance. Starting in the Feldman realm of spare pianissimo fragments, a long range crescendo shapes the piece. It is enabled by successively more penetrating held pitches, extended techniques, syncopated percussion, and an eventual blossoming of rangy melodic gestures. A belated denouement supplies a few furtive valedictions, but no dramatic close is supplied (nor does one seem necessary).

The group’s oboist Sky Macklay is also a composer on the rise, with a number of high profile performances and commissions to her credit. Macklay’s 60 Degree Mirrors revels in extended techniques available to winds. Her command of multiphonics and microtones on the oboe is prodigious and she gives flutist Martha Cargo a detailed part as well. The piece also has spectral roots, with shimmering overtones, particularly “crunchy” upper partials, demonstrating an edgier side of the “deep listening” continuum. 60 Degree Mirrors is not just technically sophisticated; it has considerable dramatic heft and proves to be a thrilling listen.

Ghost Ensemble founder, accordionist and composer Ben Richter, provides the recording’s other piece, Wind People. More than double the length of the Macklay and Oliveros performances, it affords the group the opportunity to stretch out and engage in the shaping of a larger arc. Long glissandos played by bassist James Ilgenfritz provide a particularly resonant touchstone, and similar sliding tones from violist Hannah Levinson and cellist Maria Hadge underscore its structural character. Meanwhile, the winds explore all manner of overtones, sometimes punctuating the proceedings with held pitches appearing in contrast to the yawning slides, at others engaging in pitch bends of their own. Percussionists Chris Nappi and Damon Loren Baker provide under-girding drums, subtle yet insistent. Richter and harpist Lucia Helen Stavros sometimes pepper the texture with melodic gestures, but more often are the harmonic “middle” that sustains the fabric of the piece. Over time, sustain becomes a powerful force traversing all instruments and registers, and sumptuous overtone chords saturate the work. A coda provides a long diminuendo in which overtones fade into thrumming drums, drones, and string glissandos. Wind Music is a well-crafted and eloquent work.

Of Wind Music, Richter says that he sought to “draw a sense of peace and comfort from our smallness, transience, and fragility in the face of an overwhelming immensity, the music mirroring the constant ebb and flow visible when zooming in or out to quantum or geological time.”

Amid today’s tumult, drawing peace and comfort from deep listening is a worthy goal, one that Ghost Ensemble appears poised to attain often.

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, File Under?, jazz, Post Modern, Recordings

Tangents – Bodies (CD Review)

Tangents - New Bodies - cover scan

Tangents
New Bodies
Temporary Residence Ltd.

Australian instrumental quintet Tangents return with their fourth album via Temporary Residence. It is their finest work in some time, with an even broader palette of materials and stylistic reference points that are adroitly incorporated. The combination of cello, especially favoring pizzicato, and synth melodies remains, but along for the ride are prepared piano sounds, angular bass interjections, and skittering beats. Electric guitar textures and and undulating patterning are propelled by muscular acoustic drums.

Indebted to post-rock, jazz, alt-electronica, and a dose of contemporary classical sounds, it transcends these various categorizations and their carbon dating to create music that is entirely fresh and of the moment. Recommended.

by Christian Carey
Composers, Concert review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, New York

Da Capo Players at Merkin Hall (Concert Review)

Da Capo Chamber Players Perform a Potpourri of American Works

Da Capo Chamber Players

Da Capo Chamber Players

Merkin Concert Hall

June 4, 2018

NEW YORK – Themed programs and portrait concerts are all the rage these days. As such, it is refreshing when an ensemble goes eclectic, presenting a diverse array of music. Such was the case on Monday, June 4th, when Da Capo Chamber Players performed eight pieces by living American composers who write in a plethora of styles. Consisting of violinist Curtis Macomber, cellist Chris Gross, flutist Patricia Spencer, pianist Steven Beck and joined by guest artists soprano Lucy Shelton, clarinetists Marianne Glythfeldt and Carlos Cordeiro, and percussionist Michael Lipsey, the musicians are a formidable cadre of some of New York’s best new music performers. This was handily demonstrated in all of the works on offer at Merkin — how often can you depend on that level of consistency?

Few groups perform the rhythmic patternings of minimalism more assuredly than the Da Capo Players. Here they clearly delineated the differences between various types of ostinatos. Sweet air (1999) by David Lang juxtaposed its repetitions with distressed dissonances, In the sole premiere on the program, Dylan Mattingly’s Ecstasy #3 (2018) presented passages filled with an alt-folk-inflected melody. An arrangement by Robert Moran of Philip Glass’s Modern Love Waltz (1980) may have explored repetition in the most straightforward way of the pieces here, but its fluid playfulness made it a fetching addition to the proceedings.

The modernist wing of composition was represented too. Elliott Carter’s Canon for Four (1984) received an incisive rendition, with the contrapuntal details of the work vividly underscored. Tanoa León’s One Mo’ Time (2016) mixed a varied palette of chromaticism with inflections of gospel and jazz. She is one of the best at allowing these two traditions to coexist in her music in organic fashion. Christopher Cerrone supplied one of the evening’s most imaginative works. Hoyt=Schermerhorn for keyboard mixed a gradual build-up of soft textures that was somewhat indebted to the works of Feldman but through quicker changes of harmony. Over time, effects such as reverb and treble register loops brought the piece from its eighties origins into the twenty-first century. Amalgam (2015) by Taylor Brook, was the concert’s most experimental piece, with the players (and soprano Lucy Shelton) moving from disparate roles to unison playing, then heterophonic treatment of the piece’s melody. Amalgam is a fascinating composition that certainly proved to be a successful experiment for Da Capo.

The concert’s standout was Romancero (1983), for soprano and ensemble, settings of four medieval poems thought to be from the Sephardic Jewish tradition by Mario Davidovsky. Shelton was as expressive as ever and well-matched for the angular challenges posed by Romancero’s post-tonal pitch vocabulary. Her voice ranged from delicately floating pianissimo passages to forceful forte declamations. The instrumental parts are quite demanding as well, reminiscent of the complexly articulate language of Davidovsky’s electroacoustic Synchronisms. Shelton is a frequent collaborator with Da Capo (see a recent video of their rendition of Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire below), and their association showed in the intricate interplay between voice and instruments: a gem of a performance.

As if to remind us of the celebratory catholicity of taste that bound together the disparate strands of this program, its finale was the brief, yet brilliantly multi-faceted, Encore (1991) by Bruce Adolphe. Composed to celebrate the Da Capo Players’ twentieth anniversary, it has remained a staple of their repertoire. It is hard to believe that the group has now been going for 48 years. Based on the vigor with which they performed at Merkin Hall, the sky’s the limit for their upcoming golden anniversary season.



[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vw-OItKIZMc&w=560&h=315]

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

Reinier van Houdt at Dog Star 14

The 14th annual Dog Star concert series rolled into The Wild Beast at CalArts on June 9, 2018 and featured the Los Angeles appearance of the noted Dutch pianist Reinier van Houdt. A fine crowd assembled in The Beast despite a brush fire that shut down two lanes of the local freeway. Four contemporary solo piano pieces were on the program as well as Concert for Piano and Orchestra, by John Cage.

Layers for Piano, by Nomi Epstein, opened the program and began with a series of soft, single notes followed by brief chords. A deep rumble was occasionally heard in the lower registers, but the opening pattern of a few notes plus a simple chord persisted as the piece proceeded. The phrasing was consistently spare but engaging, with a quietly mysterious feel. The emotional delivery was impressive given the economical use of sound and masterfully restrained touch by van Houdt. The soft nebulous edges of Layers for Piano artfully evoked a comfortable float on a feathery cloud.

More quiet music followed with Pythagorean Study for piano and electronics, by Andrew Young. Short two-note chords separated by silence were repeated, as if some signal were being transmitted. As the piece proceeded this muted pattern repeated, with the notes changing pitch or played in a different register. The overall effect was to create a wistfully nostalgic sensibility from just this simple construct. The soft keyboard playing by van Houdt was the critical element here, and the listening was like basking in a collection of warm memories. Also, by Jennie Gottschalk followed and this displayed a similarity to the Young piece in that it consisted of quietly simple chords. These included dissonance as well as a somewhat darker tone in the lower registers. Although carefully subdued, Also contained a slightly sinister feel that was enhanced by the accelerando towards the finish. Rapid high and low notes completed the drama at the ending.

Trapani, by Jerry Hunt followed, and this 1989 solo piano piece provided a lively contrast to the more reserved music heard in the program to this point. Strong tremolos rippled through the highest and lowest registers of the keyboard producing an agitated feel full of anxiety and tension. A great wash of notes continued with a distinctly fluid feel, like some darkly churning waterway in full flood. The dynamics rose and fell like a surging tide, cresting to an impressive level, only to pull back again. The texture was a mass of continuous motion, as if driven by waves on a stormy sea. The extended tremolos, the variations in volume and intensity were all skillfully executed by van Houdt, whose precise control over the keyboard never wavered. Trapani is an expressive and animated conjuring of the powerful natural forces at work all around us.

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by Paul Muller
Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, Ojai

At the 2018 Ojai Music Festival

June 7, the opening day of the 2018 Ojai Music Festival, featured the usual welcome variety of lectures, interviews and pop-up concerts as well as performances of music by two notable mid-20th century Italian experimentalists. The first day of the festival was picture perfect and a large crowd milled about the outdoor venues, meeting and greeting. There was little evidence of the disastrous Thomas Fire of five months prior, and spirits were as sunny as the weather.

At 6:00 PM, Luciano Berio’s challenging Sequenza IXa for Clarinet, played by Vincente Alberola, was heard from the Libbey Park gazebo, to good effect. The amplification and the open spaces were nicely matched and Alberola’s precise articulations and dynamic nuances were clearly heard throughout the scattered crowd. This sensitive and virtuosic performance was received with enthusiastic applause.

At 7:30 PM somewhat larger crowd gathered for La lontanaza nostalgica utopica futura by Luigi Nono featuring Festival Music Director Patricia Kopatchinskaja on violin and Los Angeles-based composer Scott Worthington at the controls of the electronics. The program notes proclaimed: “A dynamic duet between solo violin and spatial amplified sound transforms the Libbey Park into an all-encompassing and immersive aural environment.” A seemingly tall order, but the array of large speakers positioned around the space and the formidable sound system panel looked promising. La lontanaza nostalgica utopica futura consists of 8 recorded tracks and a solo violin, and these were seamlessly integrated into the speaker system so that good hearing in the open spaces of the park was not an issue.

The piece began with the speakers filling the space with the soft sounds of what seemed to be string players warming up or tuning. A few odd words were heard, then some thumps and squeaks before a series of rapidly complex runs in the violin established an air of suspense and uncertainty. The recorded sounds often came from single speakers in opposite corners of the space, and this added spatial perception to the overall experience. The crisp precision of the live violin phrases was helpfully distinct from the recording. There is little form or structure evident in this work – at times the sounds were fast and intense while at other times slower and softly atmospheric. The violinist moved randomly about to a series of music stands located throughout the area, and this served to increase the sense of mystery. The crowd followed Ms Kopatchinskaja in a great mass, cell cameras in hand, but this did not disturb the performer whose furtive movements added to the drama of the moment.

This is complex, nuanced music, with stretches of quiet tension mixed with sharply phrased passages brimming with anxiety. I first heard La lontanaza performed indoors, in a converted warehouse and the atmosphere there gave the piece a sense of tension that was distinctly urban. Outdoors in Libbey Park the music lost none of its power, but rather emerged as more rustic and primal. In Ojai, even the ambient noise from the streets and some quiet talking among the crowd fit right in with the recordings, and actually added to the performance. As the afternoon light faded, Ms Kopatchinskaja became a spirit-like presence moving among the darkened trees. A long, looped final violin note signaled the conclusion of the piece and the crowd slowly dissipated, as if released from a magical spell.

The Ojai Music Festival runs through Sunday, June 10.

Photos courtesy of Bonnie Wright. Used with permission.

by Paul Muller
Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Events, Los Angeles

Southland Ensemble at Automata

The 14th annual Dog Star Orchestra concert series kicked off on Saturday, June 2, 2018 at Automata in Chinatown. A new music tradition, the Dog Star series this year will present nine concerts over two weeks at various venues around Los Angeles. This occasion was a performance by the Southland Ensemble of Byzantine Rites, a new work by Laura Steenberge. A standing room-only crowd wedged itself into the cozy spaces of Automata to experience a remarkable exploration of medieval chant, contemporary music and a wide variety of engaging visual manifestations.

Byzantine Rites is the result of research by the composer into seventeen settings of the medieval Byzantine chant Cherubic Hymn. Byzantine Rites is, in fact, Byzantine in its very structure: there are five separate movements – having five different embedded sections within – all performed serially without pause. Different combinations of instruments were used including woodwinds, strings, percussion and horns fashioned from PVC pipe. A number of physical objects were employed as well, lights, wide rolls of aluminum foil, several large bags of plastic straws and a suspended microphone lowered into a large cardboard tube.

As Ms. Steenberge wrote in the program notes: “The Byzantine aesthetic seeks never-ending, constantly unfolding symbolism, layering image, sound, light, space, smell, movement and text. Each action has both a pragmatic and a symbolic function.” Accordingly, the space at Automata was fully exploited for this aesthetic incorporating instruments, voices and various physical objects, At the rear of the stage was a high balcony, accessed by stairs behind a wall, and this allowed the performers to occupy different places and levels for different actions.

Byzantine Rites begins with a simple chant melody on a bass flute that instantly establishes a strong sense of the mystical. The humming of notes into the instrument while it was played and the solemn ringing of chimes added an exotic feel. As this was proceeding, plastic straws were dropped from the raised balcony down to the stage, impinging on a microphone. The amplified patter provided an intriguing percussive element to the texture as well as a dramatic visual component to the scene. The rain of straws increased, and soon great clumps were sent falling downward from above. The overall pattern for Byzantine Rites was immediately established to include musical, physical and visual elements throughout.

Another section of the piece featured more flute melody and the hoisting of a length of PVC pipe up to the balcony using a long rope. The pipe was cut into roughly one foot pieces and sent back down to the stage where they were played like an old rams horn trumpet. These sounds were looped and then mixed together with a live bassoon and saxophone. The long, sustained tones created some interesting harmonic patterns and included an effective dissonance that supplied a more contemporary feel.

In a later section, strings and voices refocused to the original medieval sensibility with drones and a warm harmony, while large rolls aluminum foil were unfurled from the balcony down the back wall to the stage. Two electric lights suspended from long cords were then lowered along the foil. In the darkened spaces these looked very much like candles shining out in some dim cathedral interior. The solemn music, the staging on different levels, the physical and the visual components of Byzantine Rites all contributed to the impression that a sort of liturgy was occurring.

Towards the finish a large cardboard tube was hung from the balcony and a microphone lowered within to create various tweets and sounds from feedback. This was accompanied by the strings, continuing with the quietly calm melody, while the woodwinds played long, slow tones that hinted at anxiety as they fell in and out of dissonance. It was as if the old, comfortable world of the Byzantine medieval was giving way to an apprehensive present. The music ceased and the lights along the foil dimmed to complete darkness at the end. Byzantine Rites is an extraordinary combination of the old, the new, the musical and the visual, all artfully combined to create an experience that engages the senses, the emotions and the memory.

The Southland Ensemble is:

Casey Anderson
Jennifer Bewerse
Eric KM Clark
Orin Sie Hildestad
Jonathan Stehney
Cassia Streb
Christine Tavolacchi

with special guest Cody Putman

The Dog Star Orchestra concert series continues through June 16 at various locations around Los Angeles.

 

by Paul Muller
Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Just Intonation, Los Angeles

The Cantata at REDCAT

The much anticipated work The Cantata or, You are the star in God’s eye, by Wolfgang von Schweinitz was performed May 23, 2018 at the REDCAT venue in Disney Hall. A joint production of wasteLAnd and Microfest, the evening featured the wasteLAnd collective musicians conducted by Nicholas Deyoe and the recorded voice of Friederike Mayröcker’s original text with the English translation projected on a large screen. A fine crowd filled REDCAT to hear this extraordinary piece as it explored the intersection of Austrian avant-garde literature and 21st century music written in just intonation.

The Cantata has its origins in the prose of Friederike Mayröcker, considered one of the most important figures in post-war Austrian letters. Her poetry and radio plays have been a part of contemporary European literature since 1946, and the libretto for The Cantata was written as a remembrance of her long-time partner, the Viennese poet Ernst Jandl. This was produced by Bavarian Radio in 2003 with original music scored by Wolfgang von Schweinitz. Mayröcker once described her artistic process in Heimspiel (the Journal of the Austrian public radio station) as “I live in pictures. I see everything in pictures, my complete past, memories are pictures. I transform pictures into language by climbing into the picture. I walk into it until it becomes language.” Accordingly, the text of The Cantata is filled with all sorts of vivid imagery: organic, concrete, abstract and spiritual. Written shortly after the passing of Ernst Jandl, the text includes a number of arias that are especially moving –  even religious – inspired by the cantatas of JS Bach.

For this performance, the music for The Cantata was completely revised between 2016 and 2017 for the wasteLAnd collective. As von Schweinitz wrote in the program notes: “When I rewrote the score for the wasteLAnd collective, I left the temporal and harmonic structure of the composition in its original form, as well as most of the soprano part, with just a few minor modifications for Stephanie Aston’s voice, but two of the ensemble parts are entirely new, and I’ve drastically changed the other four parts, adding a lot of new melodic and harmonic details in the attempt to improve the elegance and efficiency of my counterpoint – with the aim of trying to optimize the chances for the musicians to accomplish all of their tuning and performance tasks with greatest success and pleasure.”

The Cantata opens with the recorded text of Friederike Mayröcker’s libretto, spoken by the poet in German. The English translation by Donna Stonecipher was projected on a large screen behind the musicians. The music began with a warm, nostalgic feel and a beguiling sweetness that perfectly captured the forest and flowers described in this initial part of the text. The work proceeded with continuously spoken words accompanied by long stretches of instrumental and vocal music. Sometimes the feeling was wistfully regretful while at other times more forceful and dramatic, but always driven by the imagery of the prose. The arias were most particularly powerful when they dealt with the sacred and the metaphysical, the music soaring like a luminous chorale tune in a solemn Passion. Ms. Aston, coping with an almost continuous vocal line that often included great jumps in pitch, brilliantly applied her strong and agile voice to the expressive libretto. The powerful brass section of the wasteLAnd collective provided a solid foundation of German sensibility. For the mostly English-speaking audience, the unconventional pitches and harmonies in the tuning actually served to intensify the sense of immersion in another culture, and nicely complimented the elegant German prose heard in the recording. A profound silence was observed at the conclusion of this work, followed by loud cheering and sustained applause. The Cantata or, You are the star in God’s eye is a moving journey through poignancy and sorrow as seen through the words of Friederike Mayröcker and felt in the music of Wolfgang von Schweinitz.

by Paul Muller