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CD Review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Jeffrey Mumford – Echoing Depths on Albany

Jeffrey Mumford

Echoing Depths

Albany Records

Jeffrey Mumford’s music channels high modernism into imaginative works that are luminously textured. His latest Albany release, Echoing Depths, features two pieces for orchestra and another for piano and ensemble. All three are concertos, a form that befits Mumford’s penchant for virtuosity. 

The cello concerto Of fields unfolding … echoing depths of resonant light is dedicated to the composer Elliott Carter, a centenarian who passed away in 2011. Carter has been a key influence on Mumford’s music and was one of his composition teachers. Christine Lamprea is the soloist with the Detroit Symphony, conducted by Kazem Abdullah. Lamprea is a skilful cellist, and her intonation is clear, even in angular motives and widely stretched multi-stops. Her performance of the piece, energetic and crystalline, is reminiscent of Fred Sherry’s rendition of Carter’s Cello Concerto. Indeed, the piece itself channels Carter’s concerto style, with disparate scorings depicting various demeanors in a complex colloquy. Of Fields unfolding…’s several cadenzas are abundantly virtuosic, and Lamprea assays them with command. Detroit has become an imposing ensemble in recent years, and they address the considerable demands of the score with aplomb, Abdullah leading them in a rousing performance.

Becoming is a chamber concerto for piano. Winston Choi is the soloist with Ensemble dal Niente, conducted by Michael Lewanski. The overlapping of pitched percussion and piano creates a super instrument redolent of fleet and punctilious articulations. Choi has made a specialty of Elliott Carter’s music, and thus has an entryway to Mumford’s style that relatively few other artists have. His tone is brilliant and incisive, which better matches the correspondence with the percussionists. Ensemble dal Niente is a go-to group for contemporary music, and Lewanski is the conducting equivalent. Becoming is elegantly shaped and a microcosm of Mumford’s music writ large.

Mumford’s second violin concerto, Verdant cycles of deepening Spring, is the final work on the disc. Soloist Christine Wu joins the Chicago Composers Orchestra, conducted by Allen Tinkham. The ensemble is well-rehearsed, with corruscating entrances and complexly balanced timbres rendered with authority. Tinkham excels at dealing with the frequent tempo shifts and, once again, it is impressive how accurate the recording is. Wu is an imposing soloist, playing the mercurial passagework, wide leaps, and frequent dynamic contrasts with attitude and accuracy. She has a supple, versatile tone and embodies the sense of conflict that typifies the piece.

Echoing Depths has the high quality of performances that most composers dream of when putting together a portrait CD. Mumford’s chamber works were previously familiar to me, but this disc of concertos shows that his music is a powerful force when writ large. Recommended.

-Christian Carey

 



by Christian Carey
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, File Under?, Film Music

Skjálfti on Sono Luminus (Recording review)

Skjálfti 

Páll Ragnar Pálsson and Eðvarð Egilsson

Sono Luminus SLE-70031

 

Today, where the list of practitioners frequently overlap, how does film music translate to concert music adaptation? On the Sono Luminus release Skjálfti (translated: Quake), the Icelandic composers Páll Ragnar Pálsson and Eðvarð Egilsson present a compelling album length suite that is more ambitious than the clip show often heard on soundtrack recordings. 

 

The cello concerto Quake is Pálsson’s best known piece, but Skjálfti doesn’t feature music from it. Instead, it is from Tinna Hrafnsdóttir’s film of the same name, for which Pálsson and Egilsson composed the soundtrack. The album isn’t merely excerpts, but fully developed pieces based on the themes and mood of the film. Electronics, piano, strings, and subtle use of voices populate the music with a hybrid ensemble. It’s not dissimilar from the makeup of totalist ensembles such as Bang on a Can and Icebreaker, but the vibe is far more ambient than the prevailing one for these groups. 

 

“Saga” is one of the best movements of the work. It is like a mini-symphony, developing an ambitious amount of material in three minutes. “Safavél” and “Miklabraut” are other favorites, the former starting with a string and keyboard ostinato until, partway through, a pause, and then guitars and drums join. The accumulation of material and long crescendo is reminiscent of post-rock. Tortoise watch out. 

 

“Gleyma” is listed on the streamers as the hit tune. It begins with mysterious drones and pentatonic shimmering, to which is added an undulating guitar pattern, pattering percussion, and string synth pads. Ostinatos are a time-honored tradition, but they get bogged down in lots of film scores. Pálsson and Egilsson avoid this by creating asymmetric shifts in the texture. Here, a melody and counter melody wend their way around the chord progression in a pleasingly asymmetric fashion.

 

Skjálfti is an intriguing and enjoyable project: one hopes for further collaborations by the duo, both for film and concert music adaptation. 

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
Choral Music, Concert review, early music, File Under?

The Tallis Scholars at St. Mary the Virgin (Concert Review)

Photo: Rodrigo Pérez

 

Tallis Scholars, Peter Phillips, director

Church of St. Mary the Virgin

December 9, 2023

 

NEW YORK – It is the fiftieth anniversary of the renaissance ensemble the Tallis Scholars, directed during that entire time by Peter Phillips. Their annual December visit to St. Mary the Virgin Church in midtown often consists of a predominantly Marian program, both to suit that setting and church calendar. This year, there were two large pieces devoted to Mary – settings of Salve Regina by Jacob Obrecht (1457-1505) and Peter Philips (1560-1628; the early baroque composer, not the eponymous conductor of the Tallis Scholars). The bulk of the music was instead devoted to a different theme, “While Shepherds Watched,” with its centerpiece being Missa Pastoris quidnam vidistis by Jacobus Clemens Non Papa (c. 1510-1556; “not the pope” – Pope Clement – was thought to be an affectionate nickname). This parody mass, based on the motet Pastoris quidnam vidistis by Clemens, was recorded in 1987 by the Tallis Scholars. Its reappearance at the concert at St. Mary’s was a welcome return. 

 

The concert began with Clemens’s motet, a dramatic setting depicting the visitation of  angels to a group of shepherds, announcing the birth of the messiah and urging them to go and find him. The composer comes from the post-Josquin generation, the mid-period of the renaissance in which elaborate counterpoint often took precedence over clarity of text, but with considerable expressiveness achieved by musical atmosphere. 

 

The mass incorporates a number of aspects of the motet, its opening figure treated in a number of passages, sometimes the entire tune, and at others, its rising head motto. The Kyrie bustles with activity, free counterpoint encircled by imitation. The Gloria has a canon in the lower voices and an elaborated melody in the high soprano. As it is often performed, the final section, “qui tollis,” speeds up. Here, because of the prevalence of syncopation, the effect was thrilling. The jubilation of the shepherds at the motet’s close is mirrored in the exuberance of the Sanctus’ “Alleluia.” An extra bass part was added to the Agnus Dei, reinforcing the sonority of the close of the mass.

 

Three motets on the “While Shepherds Watched” theme ensued. One of the greatest Christmas motets from the renaissance in Iberia is the six-voice Quem vidistis, pastores by Tomás de Luis Victoria (1548-1611). The sopranos begin in canon, accompanied by a free part in the alto, suggesting, as compared with the text Clemens set, an early appearance of the angels. The three lower parts respond in an analogous configuration. The two trios then break out of mirrored deployments, speeding up in a nimble section that ends with a major cadence. The second part of the motet continues the mirroring effect, with the lower voices starting a new canon first, followed by the upper trio. After a spirited Alleluia section, the choir settled into a final set of phrases taking the text, “go and tell them,” finally arriving at another major cadence.

 

Two settings of Quaeramus cum pastoribus followed. It is a text in which an angel exhorts the shepherds to find the Messiah, followed by a refrain of Noés (noëls). Portuguese composer Pedro de Cristo (1545-1618) created a four-voice setting consisting of tightly spaced canons with the refrain moving to a sprightly triple meter. The Tallis Scholars reveled in its joyousness, but I can also imagine this motet being a good introduction to Renaissance Christmas music for an ambitious American church choir. Italian composer Giovanni de Croce (1557-1609), on the other hand,  sets the text in the Venetian style, with two quartets and much antiphony. The contrasting settings of the same text were a canny programming choice, and the singers thrived in this deployment.

 

Obrecht’s Salve Regina alternates chant and polyphony. It was performed with eloquent solemnity, providing a marked shift of demeanor. The Salve Regina by Philips, on the other hand, is a vibrant affair. Composed nearly a century after the Obrecht, it focuses on antiphonal polyphony rather than chant. Philips was a Catholic exile from England, and his Salve Regina setting has much in common with the Venetian polychoral style. 

 

After sustained applause, the Tallis Scholars performed a brief but pleasing encore, Salva Nos by French composer Jean Mouton (1459-1522). The piece gave the group’s lower voices considerable attention, its final chord richly sepulchral. Fifty years into their tenure, the Tallis Scholars and Phillips remain an energetic and authoritative presence. 

 

-Christian Carey

 

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

Gerald Cohen – Voyagers (CD Review)

 

Gerald Cohen

Voyagers

Innova Records

 

One can think of few chamber ensembles better suited to contemporary music than the Cassatt String Quartet. Their intonation, musicality, and interpretive powers are superlative. Composer Gerald Cohen has enlisted them to record three of his pieces on Innova, two originally commissioned for Cassatt. 

 

Cohen describes himself as a storyteller, both in his vocal and instrumental music. The three distinct narratives here are populated by musical quotations relevant to them, yet they never seem like pastiche. The title work is about the two Voyager spacecrafts, which were sent out into our solar system with a golden record of musical examples. The hope was that they could be played by any extraterrestrials that might be encountered, and give a sense of the cultural life on planet Earth. 

 

The piece is for clarinet – played by Narek Arutyunian –  and quartet. Four attacca movements each transform the material from a different selection on the gold record. “Cavatina” deals with the analogous section from Beethoven’s String Quartet Op. 130. Cohen also imagines it as the beginning of the spacecrafts’ journey. Shadowy harmonies and a limpid high violin line start the movement, which over the course of nine-and-a-half minutes treats Beethoven’s music in a highly individual way. 

 

The second movement, “Bhairavi,” deals with a raga. Arutyunian embodies the complex scalar patterns of the music with nuanced shaping, as do the members of the quartet. The accompaniment is deliberately simple – pizzicato repeated notes. As the movement develops, there is hocketing of the tune between the various players. “Galliard” is the quartet’s Scherzo movement, based on “The Fairy Round” by renaissance composer Anthony Holborne. Scraps of the tune are exchanged contrapuntally in a humorous, whirling dance. “Beyond the Heliosphere” concludes the quartet with sustained pitches in a complex of intricate harmony, a descending melody, sometimes winnowed down to just a minor third interval, passing from part to part. The Cavatina theme, followed by a high note from bass clarinet, send the Voyagers continuing on their journey.

 

Playing for Our Lives is a piece for quartet about the Terezin concentration camp, a “show camp” where the Red Cross was allowed admittance to see better conditions than the hellish death camps where prisoners would later be deported. Music-making was encouraged, and many pieces created in Terezin have survived, demonstrating the talent and resiliency of their creators. By far the most famous is Viktor Ullmann, whose opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis has entered the repertory. While in the camp, Ullmann arranged Beryozkele (“Little Birch Tree”), a popular Yiddish song. Cohen uses the song’s melody as a touchstone in the first movement. Other songs that are quoted are Czech, Hebrew, and Yiddish songs. The second movement “Brundibar,” takes as its title that of the children’s opera composed by Hans Krása.” The title of the entire work, Playing for our Lives, is based on a quote by one of the few survivors of the orchestra that played at Brundibar’s premiere, Paul Rabinowitsch, a then 14-year old trumpeter. The adolescent feared playing wrong notes, lest he be deported by the SS for his mistakes.

 

At first I found the last movement’s inclusion of the Dies Irae from Verdi’s Requiem to be curious, but recognized after a few listens that is a response to the SS officers who ran the camp, that they would be called to account for their evil deeds. Cohen’s music embodies the twentieth century neoclassicism and folk influences of the composers at Terezin, all the while presenting an eloquent rejoinder to hate and anti-Semitism.  Thus, it is a timely work. 

 

The recording closes with an unusual ensemble grouping: the Cassatt Quartet is joined by trombonist Colin Williams in a heterogenous quintet, “Preludes and Debka.” Once again, the connection to the present is palpable. A debka is a Middle Eastern circle dance, performed both by Jewish and Arab people at social gatherings, such as weddings. Sometimes the trombone is used for bass pedals, but more often it plays melodies as doublings or in counterpoint. Cohen manages to balance things well so that the trombone doesn’t overwhelm the strings, and Williams plays his solo turns, including a mid-piece cadenza, with supple lyricism. After the cadenza is a long, moody duet between first violin and trombone, a break in the dance rhythms. Gradually, the dance rhythms reinsert themselves into the texture, with an accelerando back into the debka. Apart from a few interjections of the slow central music, it whirls until the piece’s coda, where there is another lyrical interruption, and the dance comes to a jaunty conclusion. 

 

I couldn’t help imagining people from throughout the Middle East’s various faiths coming together and dancing. It seems far away at this writing, but Cohen’s eloquent piece stirred this hope in me. Cohen is a gifted storyteller and an equally formidable composer. The Cassatt Quartet once again prove to be stalwart advocates for contemporary music. Voyagers is one of my favorite releases of 2023.

 

-Christian Carey

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

Anna Lapwood – Luna (CD Review)

 

Luna

Anna Lapwood

Chapel Choir of Pembroke College, Cambridge

Sony Classical

 

At 27, organist Anna Lapwood is a rising star, performing at the BBC Proms and recently being given the RPS Gamechanger Award at The Royal Philharmonic Society Awards. For her latest Sony recording, Luna, Lapwood focuses on transcriptions, a venerable tradition in organ music. Most of the transcriptions are Lapwood’s, and they prove that she knows the possibilities of pipe organs inside and out. Alongside staples of the classical repertoire, the organist plays a number of pieces from popular and film music. The blend of old and new transcriptions, as well as original organ works, creates a varied and attractive program. It celebrates the night sky, in a many-hued rendering.

 

Max Richter is an electronic musician whose work focuses on post-minimal ostinatos. The transcription of his On the Nature of Daylight layers wordless chorus – the Chapel Choir of Pembroke College, Cambridge –  on top of a chaconne in the organ in a sumptuous translation. Minimalism in general sounds great on pipe organ, and transcriptions of Philip Glass’s Mad Rush and Ludovico Einaudi’s Experience sound great here.

 

Film music also makes an impression. “Flying,” from James Newton Howard’s score for Peter Pan, is treated with contrasting stops and buoyant passagework combined with vigorous pedal motives. Dario Marinelli’s “Dawn,” from the score for Pride and Prejudice, employs the decorative chromaticism of the nineteenth century, making it an excellent choice to transcribe in the style of the French organ school.

 

In recent years, there has been a renaissance of the African-American Florence Price’s music. Her “Elf on a Moonbeam,” taken from the composer’s Short Organ Works, begins with incantatory arpeggios, gradually introducing an ascending melody accompanied by gospel-inflected chords. The central section contains puckish staccato harmonies, followed by a whole-tone transition that leads back to the gospel passage to conclude. Perhaps at some point Lapwood will record Price’s whole collection; Elf on a Moonbeam makes it seem promising.

 

“Grain Moon” by Olivia Belli is a mysterious, modally-inflected piece for which Lapwood employs the great variety of flute stops at her disposal. “Dreamland,” by Kristina Arakelyan, is filled with diaphanous textures and flowing arpeggios. Ghislaine Reece-Trapp’s “In Paradisum” contains several attractive melodies, and Lapwood distinguishes each with a different registration, providing a listening tour of the chapel organ at the Royal Hospital School, built in 1993 by Hill, Norman, and Beard.

 

My favorite piece on the recording is Ēriks Ešenvalds’s “Stars,” on which Lapwood again directs the Chapel Choir of Pembroke College, Cambridge. A work in the polychordal style, it contains stacked ascending entries and wide dynamic swells. The accompaniment is subtle, but includes a single-note refrain that distinguishes it from a merely supportive role. Ešenvalds is one of the most talented composers working today, and the choir does sterling work with the piece.

 

Popular classics, the Bach/Gounod Ave Maria, Chopin’s Nocturne No. 2 in E-flat Major, and, to close the album, a version of Debussy’s Clair de Lune, are all given sensitive performances. Lapwood is a gifted organist, and Arc also shares with us her talents as transcriber and choral conductor. It is one of my favorite recordings of 2023.

 

-Christian Carey



by Christian Carey
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, File Under?

Steve Lehman and Orchestre National de Jazz (CD Review)

Steve Lehman and Orchestre National de Jazz

Ex Machina

Pi Recordings

 

Saxophonist Steve Lehman not only has chops as a jazz musician, he is a trained composer with a background in electronics. Ex Machina is his most ambitious project to date, with electronics developed at the premiere new music center IRCAM in Paris. They respond live in performance to the spectral harmonies and polyrhythms made by the orchestra. While live electronics have been emanating from IRCAM for some time, Lehman’s electronics are neatly incorporated into both composed and improvised textures.

 

The first track “39” contains a solo by Lehman that strides the boundaries of inside and outside. Indeed much of the music here refuses to be easily categorized. While there are bespoke elements and post-tonal verticals, there are also soloists that swing and passagework that couldn’t have existed without big bands past.

 

The motoric plays a role as well. In “Los Angeles Imaginary,” one can hear the fracas of the freeways in polyrhythmic ostinatos from the rhythm section, while electronics and the horn section supply car horns and bleary trumpets a sliver of noir. “Chimera” is more mysterious, with pitched percussion mixing with gong-like electronics. Morse code percussion and repeated notes from the saxophones and trumpets succeed this, once more dealing with rhythmic layering. A florid vibes solo is the tune’s centerpiece. 

 

“Jeux D’Anches” has repeated harmonic cells and furious drumming, over which a soaring trumpet solo and another vibes solo, after which the sections undertake the chordal repetitions, with a tuba alongside in off-kilter fashion. Before moving into a swelling jazz band section, “Les Treize Soleils” opens with a hat tip to Boulez, flute and electronics creating a modernist environment. Similarly, “Alchimie” juxtaposes modern classical gestures with a swinging backbeat.

 

Two long-form suites, “Speed-Freeze Parts 1 and 2” and “Le Seuil Parts 1 and 2” are Ex Machina’s culmination. The first opens with a slow repeated series of pitches in a small collection of instruments, Lehman’s saxophone among them, with vibrato prevalent. Quick-silver passages are juxtaposed with the slow material, with disjunct solos gradually accumulating, including an extended one for trombone. A Zappa-esque coda finishes the first part. The second part exudes funkiness from the band alongside another set of pitched percussion interjections. A baritone saxophone solo starts low and then uses pitch bends and squalls at its peak, joined by Lehman to trade licks. The tenor saxophonist then stretches out, playing exuberantly over off-kilter rhythms and chordal horn sections. Lehman’s solo concludes with caterwauling and nimble alternate scales. The various sections alternate quick repetitions, interrupted by the spacious pitched percussion interludes of the first part. Once again, low brass takes over the foreground, continuing to be juxtaposed with the percussion ostinato and repeated brass chords. The flutes return, descending in chromatic runs until subsumed by low brass and repeated vibraphone clangs.

 

“Le Seuil” begins with long electronic tones interrupted by splashy brass. Glissandos appear, only to have fortissimo brass provide a rejoinder. Clusters in the piano are repeated over sustained bass drones and haloed by electronics and microtonal horn lines. A loping trombone solo is swiftly interrupted by a slice of the full band. The music slides into a mystifying demeanor, one that mirrors the opening of “Speed-Freeze.” Single vibraphone notes and recessed wind chords are accompanied by extensive electronic punctuations. A trumpet call announces the end of the section. Part two begins with shimmering electronics, a thrumming bass line, a second ostinato in the piano, and an aggressive trombone solo. Chordal crescendos buoy the trombone’s closing gestures, and then angular counterpoint and a cascade of synth sounds take over, with the inexorable bass line continuing to pulsate, then sustain. Combined harmonies from electronics and the ensemble swirl into a brief denouement.

 

Lehman’s art combines the most sophisticated means, notable in terms of its harmonic construction, sophisticated rhythms, and employment of technology. In an excellent collaboration, Orchestre National de Jazz meets every challenge he poses. Ex Machina is one of my favorite releases of 2023.

 

-Christian Carey

 

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

Brabant Ensemble Sings Guerrero (CD Review)

Guerrero: Missa Ecce Sacerdos Magnus, Magnificat, and Motets

Brabant Ensemble, directed by Stephen Rice

Hyperion

 

The Spanish Renaissance composer Francisco Guerrero (1528-1599) does not have the profile or deep discography he deserves. Brabant Ensemble, directed by Stephen Rice, seek to raise the former and enhance the latter with Missa Ecce Sacerdos Magnus, Magnificat, and Motets, a Hyperion CD of pieces by Guerrero that have not previously been recorded. While hearing them is past due, it is welcome all the same.

 

The ensemble has an exquisite blend, doubtless helped in part by being populated by performers who also collaborate together in other ensembles, notably the Ashby sisters (Stile Antico). Rice selects tempos that are measured, never rushed, resulting in clarity of textual utterance. Contrapuntal entrances are seamlessly coordinated.

 

The motets are artfully crafted. Gaude Barbara features diverse smaller groupings of the ensemble, with lines shifting between them, creating a varied texture. It is an effusive opener for the recording. The six-part Simile Est Regnum Caelorum is similarly jubilant, juxtaposing homophonic and polyphonic entrances, with frequent cadential elisions.

 

Quomodo Cantabimus Canticum Domini, on the other hand, uses lines from Psalm 137, one of the most wrenching of those lamenting the Babylonian captivity. Here, the upper voices move through a plangent harmonic sequence, the basses held back until the words “In a strange land.” The staggering of entrances creates a feeling of isolation and confusion, which fits the words perfectly. Ductus est Jesus, a setting of the text of Jesus’s temptations in the wilderness, nearly steps out of the Renaissance frame in its theatricality of utterance, with dramatic depictions of Satan’s suggestions and resolute rejoinders from Christ. O Crux Splendidior is doleful yet dignified, with melancholy harmony supported by flowing lines.

 

Missa Ecce Sacerdos Magnus is a five-voice (the altos divisi throughout) cantus firmus mass. In addition to melodic material from the chant’s incorporation, the chant text is sung at times by some of the parts instead of the text of the Ordinary of the mass. Depicting the “great priest” in a text primarily from Ecclisiastes, the chant is a clear reference to Christ and also to its dedicatee, Pope Gregory VIII.

 

The Kyrie manages some rhythmic shaping to accommodate the entire chant melody. Free material against it includes a soaring soprano line, which then descends in a quarter note sequence imitated in the tenor and bass voices. The Gloria is one of the first sections of a piece on the recording in which homophony and paired question and answer phrases dominate, rendering the text compactly. The Credo, on the other hand, is an expansive rendering that takes its time with the various textual allusions. My favorite movement is the Sanctus – Benedictus, which contains a brilliant, canonic Osanna that is performed gloriously by the Brabant Ensemble. The luminous Agnus Dei returns to the chant text and expands to six voices. Canonic entries and rhythmic variations allow for considerable pliancy, with a vibrant soprano line leading the mass to an extended final cadence.

 

A second set of motets reveals the variety of approaches that Guerrero adopted. Peccantem Me Quotidie is even just as  emotive as Ductus est Jesus, depicting a penitent’s fear of Hell and implorations for mercy. The five-voice Beatus Es Et Bene Tibi Erit is a compact setting with an effusive closing section. Quae Es Iste Tam Formosa is an early work, with paired entrances reminiscent of earlier composers and considerable dissonance in its second part. Even though these techniques would be dispensed with in Guerrero’s later music, the motet is well-constructed and attractive. 

 

Magnificat Secundi Toni is an alternatim setting for four voices, with the sopranos dividing in the last verse to reinforce the sonority. The chant verses are used as material for the polyphonic sections, making the Magnificat an economical setting that, like the most contrapuntal sections of the mass, demonstrates Guerrero’s mastery of technique. 

 

The Brabant Ensemble are extraordinary advocates. Hopefully, the pieces programmed here will gain wider currency.

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?, Piano

Bruce Liu – Waves (CD Review)

 

Bruce Liu

Waves

Deutsche Grammophon

 

At twenty-six years of age, pianist Bruce Liu has already received much acclaim, most prominently by winning the Chopin Competition. His recital disc, Waves, released on Deutsche Grammophon, could easily have been a selection of familiar finger busters from the center of the classical repertoire and been quite popular. Instead, it is a program of French composers: Jean-Phillippe Rameau, Maurice Ravel, and Charles-Valentine Alkan. 

 

Liu’s Rameau performances take into account the resonance of a modern grand piano, but his tempos, phrasing, and ornaments are well-informed by historical performance practice. The rondeau was a specialty of Rameau’s, and two from his third volume of pieces for harpsichord, Les tendres plaintes and Les Cyclopes, are intricate in their motivic development. Liu’s rendition of the Gavotte and six Doubles from Nouvelle suites de pièces de clavecin, RTC 5, creates an exciting buildup from the doubles. Les sauvages is played with particular dexterity, while the Minuets from RT6 display a jaunty suavity. From the same volume, La Poule serves as an incisive close to the album.

 

Miroirs, by Ravel, is the highlight of the recording. Liu’s keen understanding of the varied moods and timbral hues of Ravel’s music, such as the rolling waves of Une barque sur l’océan, the off-kilter rhythms and jocularity of Alborada del gracioso, and the beautiful bell tones summoned in La vallée des cloches, displays significant depth of interpretive powers. The suite’s virtuosic demands include nimble passages, challenging pedaling, and detailed balance requirements. The pianist conquers all of these in an emotive rendering that is a distinctive addition to recorded outings of Miroirs. 

 

Alkan’s music is not as well known as the other two composers, but the championing of his work by Liu may introduce it to a number of listeners. The Barcarolle from Recueil des chants has a mysterious character. Among the several harmonic twists and turns is a propensity for the flatted-seventh of the mixolydian mode. If this miniature serves as an amuse-bouche, the other Alkan piece on the recording is a seven-course dinner: 12 Etudes in All the Minor Keys, Op. 39, no. 12, le festin D’Ésope. A theme with twenty-five variations, it is stunningly challenging, and also quite diverse in the moods and techniques displayed as the piece progresses. In places there is Lisztian virtuosity, elsewhere dissonant treatment of the theme with crunching seconds alongside it that seems to presage the work of Busoni. When Variation 25 concludes, the listener will likely be exhilarated, if slightly exhausted. I can’t even imagine how Liu feels. 

 

The quality of performance and versatility of repertoire make this one of my favorite recordings of 2023.

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
File Under?, Guitar, jazz

The Sorcerer – Gábor Szabó (LP Review)

The Sorcerer – Gábor Szabó (Impulse)

 

Hungarian guitarist Gábor Szabó performed the music on The Sorcerer in 1967 at the Jazz Workshop, Boston. His first live recording as a leader, Szabó is joined by guitarist Jimmy Stewart, bassist Louis Kabok, percussionist Hal Gordon, and drummer Marty Morrell. Szabó plays a diverse array of originals, standards, and even a pop tune by Sonny Buono. 

 

It’s fair to say that not many jazz artists have recorded “The Beat Goes On,” but here it is stripped of its sentimental associations, with the emphasis being instead on its backbeat and effusive duo guitar solos. The pairing of Szabó and Stewart is particularly simpatico, with the guitarists trading solos, playing duets, and comping in distinct styles. 

 

“Little Boat” is a samba that gives Gordon and Morrell the opportunity to create a duet of their own, with energetic, overlapping polyrhythms. “Lou-ise” by Stewart embodies Latin rhythms of a gentler variety and is a great showcase for the guitarist. Cole Porter’s “What is This Thing Called Love” begins with a dovetailing guitar duet followed by a buoyant solo by Szabó. Another duet, and Stewart takes a turn. All the time, the rhythm section is bolstering them with a stronger backbeat than one usually hears in performances of standards: rockin’ and rollin’ with Cole. The guitarists trade fours with Morrell, and then bring a bifurcated version of the tune back to close. 

 

Szabó’s “Space” incorporates inflections from Hungarian music as well as swelling sustained guitar notes. The syncopated beats of folk dancing played by Szabó in modal and harmonic minor scales, Gordon’s triangle and cymbals, and repeated harmonies from Stewart combine in the most imaginative arrangement on The Sorcerer. The lilting Parisian ambience of “Stronger Than Us,” by Francis Lai and Pierre Barough, wafts through a circle fifths progression that is ready fodder for soloing.

 

“Mizrab,” by Szabó, refers to the type of plectrum used on some Iranian and Indian instruments. Once again, the guitarist channels melodic patterns and rhythmic grooves of a different culture, his playing reminiscent of ragas, with Gordon undertaking a rendition of traditional tabla playing. The seven-minute piece is the most developed of any on the album. In an extended closing section, a decrescendo yields to sustained tones and a subdued version of the tune. “Comin’ Back,” a brief rock ‘n’ roll chorus by Clyde Otis and Szabó serves as a rollicking coda to the date.

 

The quality of the mix is excellent, as are the original liner notes and artwork. It is one of my favorite recordings of 2023.

 

-Christian Carey



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

What of Words and What of Song – Juliet Fraser on Neos (CD Review)

 

 

What of Words and What of Song

Juliet Fraser, vocalist

With Mikael Rudolfsson, trombone, Helen Bledsoe, bass flute, and Uli Fussenegger, double bass

NEOS Music 

 

Soprano Juliet Fraser is one of very few performers who could successfully present the challenging program on What of Words and What of Song (NEOS Music). It consists of works by European composers born in the 1950s and 1960s: Rebecca Saunders, Enno Poppe, Beat Furrer, and Chaya Chernowin. Fraser doesn’t just sing them, she inhabits the pieces with encompassing dramatic commitment. 

 

“O,” by Rebecca Saunders, features swooping glissandos and breath slides, alongside untexted sections that not only include vowels, but lip and throat trills, gasps, quick-rendered gibberish, overtones, and throat singing. Fraser makes these seemingly incongruous elements cohere into an expressive presentation that imparts a dramatic shape despite lacking a perceptible text. It ends with an ascending glissando that suggests a question mark. O Yes and I, also by Saunders, is a successor to O, in which its material is repurposed for a duet with bass flute, here played by Helen Bledsoe. Bledsoe is a worthy collaborator, mimicking Fraser and alternatively serving as a foil. She also has impressive control with the instrument, playing securely in a wide dynamic range with stentorian attacks that can be challenging on this large member of the flute family.

Enno Poppe’s Wespe (“Wasp”) uses undulating pitches to describe the insect’s path. Gradually, consonants are added and additional motives suggest a wasp lighting from place to place, occasionally buffeted by the wind. It is subtle in its programmatic use of vocalise, but the result is beguiling 

 

Trombonist Mikael Rudolfsson joins Fraser for Spazio Immergente I (“Immersive Space”) by Beat Furrer. Muted trombone lines swoop around swelling high notes from Fraser. The soprano then sings repetitions that mirror the gestures in the trombone. The mute comes off, and there is a more competitive stance between the performers and a role reversal, the trombone undertaking swells while Fraser performs digressive riffs. Eventually, the two are joined in performing long glissandos, Fraser arriving at some of her highest notes as Rudolfsson then undertakes low pedal tones. A coda replete with staccato culminates with a flurry of fortissimo attacks in altissimo gestures from Fraser and glissandos and blats in the bass from Rudolfsson. 

 

Adiantum Capillus-Veneris I (“Maidenhair fern”) is by Chaya Czernowin. Maidenhair ferns are distinctive in their ability to shed rainwater without getting wet. The ferns grow in many places in the world, including Israel, where Czernowin is from and first saw them. The piece is marked,”for voice and air.” The use of exaggerated inhalations and exhalations serves as an extra “voice.” There is a watery ascent of breath at the beginning that is then replaced with sung ascending glissandos, each with pauses for breath. The rate of change gradually speeds up, followed by whooshes and ha’s. Then blowing outward between silences. The watery ascent continues, held at the end each time in emphatic fry. A long breath serves as a transition to the voice’s return to singing ascending glissandos; the two are then juxtaposed. Descending minor thirds add a final motive to the mix. The opening ascent and fry return, and the piece closes in whorls of air. Czernowin has likened Adiantum Capillus-Veneris I to a line drawing or small painting; this is an excellent analogy for the deployment of its detailed material. 

 

The last piece on the recording is Lótofagos I (lotus-eaters) for soprano and double bass by Beat Furrer. Fraser’s collaborator here is Uli Fusseneger, who is a stellar player. Lotus-eaters are people from an episode in Homer’s Odyssey who ate only lotuses, which caused them to forget. Today, the term connotes an indolent pleasure-seeker. The texts, for here words are recognizably employed, are by José Ángel Valente. It is a strange story, rendered with a gradual buildup from cooing to fortissimo keening, and softly rendered tight dissonances and double-stops to full chords on the double-bass. Furrer’s take appears to embody the fear of loss of recognition rather than a sense of peaceful rest. Little shared motives seem to dissolve over the course of the piece; another framing of forgetting, here as oblivion. As the piece goes on, language is lost in places to lip trills and isolated vowels, with the poem seeming to dissolve too. 

 

The four composers here are imaginative in their conceptions of vocalism beyond language. Fraser embodies each of their pieces compellingly, with impressive attention to details of vocal, musical, and expressive elements. What of Words and What of Song is one of my favorite releases I have encountered in 2023.

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey