Classical Music, Contemporary Classical

Gas Attack Monday (Local Joke)

Well, I see Chamber Music America is having its annual conference in the Center of the Universe this week, beginning on Thursday.  I wasn’t invited this year.  Last year, Alex Shapiro and Drew McManus and I did a dynamite panel on blogging to an SRO room.  Alex and Drew were wonderful and, frankly, I thought I was pretty damned clever but three or four people complained on their evaluation sheets that I had said rude things about our esteemed President.  Or, maybe, it was the part where I took a picture of the room and said I had been asked to do so by the National Security Agency.  Kind of thing that has kept me out of the big time.

Who wants to review a new Charlemagne Palestine recording?  Don’t say yes if you’ve been a disappointment to me already.

I was reading my copy of pinknews.uk this morning and came across this story about the forthcoming civil partnership ceremony of the composer Sir Peter Maxwell-Davies and his partner, Colin Parkinson.
 

by Jerry Bowles
Ambient, Classical Music, Competitions, Composers, Contemporary Classical

‘Neath the Shade of the Old Walnut Tree

Back in July, nine students associated with AAIR, the independent radio station of London’s Architectural Association School of Architecture, spent several days recording natural and man-made sounds to create an extensive sonic map of Capri, the island, not the car or the pants.   The result is Radiocapri.

Now they’re inviting all of us to “remix” the sounds of the island in their cleverly named “International Remix Competition A.”  Here’s the best part:  the winning entry will be picked by Brian Eno, Arto Lindsay and Ryuichi Sakamoto.

The winner will get fame, fortune and more attractive lovers, plus a spot on an upcoming Radio Anacapri recording.  Deadline is January 31.  Details are here.

by Jerry Bowles
Awards, Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical

Musical Mashup or Composers Say the Darndest Things

From the CBC:

Toronto composer James Rolfe has won the $7,500 Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music for his contemporary work raW, the Canada Council for the Arts announced Thursday.

raW, written during the buildup to the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, won the award designed to encourage the creation of new Canadian chamber music. It was chosen from a field of 115 new compositions.

The work “was written by filtering J. S. Bach’s Second Brandenburg Concerto through Bob Marley’s War (first movement), Burning Spear’s The Invasion (second movement), and John Philip Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever (third movement),” Rolfe said. 

Does anybody remember who I gave Lee Hyla’s latest CD to review?  Hope it wasn’t Evan since he’s wandered off somewhere until February. If it was somebody else, please review it because I promised.  

I have a bunch of new stuff lying around although some of you still owe me from last year.  How about this one:  John Cage’s Postcard from Heaven for 1-20 harps?

 

by Jerry Bowles
Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers

Calling All Clarinetists

Our friend Marco Antonio Mazzini is inviting all clarinetists to participate in the first “Musical Marathon – Prize for Most Creative Interpretation” contest that will take place on the web, from January 10th to August 10th, 2007.  Each contestant must make and submit a recording of “Convalescencia“, a solo clarinet piece by Argentinean composer Juan María Solare. This score is available HERE. All the details are here. 

“The title of this event focuses on the ‘creative’ word:  the piece we selected can be played (technically) by any average clarinet student, but the fun is…what to do with it,”  Marco says.  “Also, it can be performed in any clarinet.

“One of the members of the Clariperu jury is the godfather of the bass clarinet, Harry Sparnaay (my hero). Bass clarinetist don’t have many competitions (if any!).”

Marco also asked that we mention his group’s sponsors, Vandoren, Periferia Music and Radio Fabrik.   But, of course, we don’t do such things.

Enjoy the film.

[youtube]XzSKx6ksCGU[/youtube]

by Jerry Bowles
CDs, Classical Music

Jerry’s Top 10 for 2006

Finally, my top 10 for the year.  Okay, so I’m a conservative old fart…but these are the recordings I enjoyed most during the year. I gave most of the more adventuresome stuff to our crackerjack reviewers whom I hope will weigh in with their own choices.

Number One

Rilke Songs; The Six Realms; Horn Concerto
Peter Lieberson
Lorraine Hunt Lieberson mezzo soprano, Peter Serkin, piano
William Purvis, horn, Michaela Fukacova, violoncello
Odense Symphony
Bridge

Lorraine Hunt Lieberson’s untimely death this year adds a bittersweet note to this extraordinary  Grammy-nominated recording of husband Peter Lieberson’s settings of five Rilke poems, recorded live at the Ravinia Festival with Peter Serkin at the piano.  The two orchestral pieces reveal Peter to be plenty talented in his own right. The Horn Concerto for horn and a chamber orchestra, played by its dedicatee, William Purvis, is a lively 18-minute composition in two movements that showcases Purvis’ virtuosity, not to mention lung capacity. The Six Realms is a 27-minute concerto for amplified cello in six movements, originally composed for Yo Yo Ma. Lieberson is a practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism and The Six Realms travels much the same dark, foggy highway of human consciousness as John Adams’ Dharma in Big Sur although Lieberson’s writing is denser, more complex and less serial. Lieberson’s path is more direct and well-traveled, less risky, perhaps, but more likely to endure.

Number 2

String Quartets Nos. 2, 3, 4 & 9
Ben Johnston
New World Records

Any other year, this would have been my first pick.  Johnston is a pioneer in the use of microtones and just intonation, surpassing even Harry Partch as a musical maverick.  His ten string quartets are among the most fascinating collections of work by any American composer and this album is most have for anyone who cares about modern music.

Number 3

Gloryland
Anonymous 4 with Darol Anger and Mike Marshall
Harmonia Mundi

Appalachian songs of faith and hope sung with passion and amazing grace by the gifted ladies of Anonymous 4.  Unlike the New England Presbyterian and Methodist “high church” affirmations of American Angels, these are the songs of tent revivals and roadside tabernacles.  The virtuoso fiddle, mandolin and guitar accompaniment of Mike Marshall and Darol Anger add exactly the right note of “high lonesome” authenticity and give Gloryland the joyous sense of music lived, not just performed.

Number 4

Jacob Druckman, Stephen Hartke, Augusta Read Thomas
New York Philharmonic conducted by Lorin Maazel
New World Records

I heard this performance of Stephen Hartke’s Symphony No. 3 (for countertenor, two tenor, and baritone soli with orchestra) on the original radio broadcast in September 2003 and was so haunted by it that I regularly checked over the next couple of years to see if it had been released on CD.  The recording holds up so well on second and third hearing that I’m almost reluctant to mention that it is a September 11 remembrance piece commissioned by Maazel because its transcends any particular moment in time.  The symphony features the voices of the Hilliard Ensemble with a setting of a poem by an 8th century Anglo-Saxon writer musing on the past splendor of an ancient Roman city now in ruins and is cast in one movement consisting of four smaller sections.  It is a haunting and shattering work.

Number 5

Sibelius, Stravinsky, Ravel: String Quartets
Daedalus Quartet
Bridge

Masterworks by three of the early twentieth century’s greatest composers- Sibelius, Stravinsky and Ravel — played by a remarkable young chamber ensemble who make these durable chestnuts sound as vital and fresh as they were when they were first written. A debut to remember.

Number 6

Britten & Bliss
Vermeer Quartet
Alex Klein, oboe
Cedille

The Vermeer Quartet kicks off its farewell tour by joining forces with phenomenal oboist Alex Klein in three pillars of 20th-century British chamber music. 

Benjamin Britten’s spellbinding Phantasy Quartet (1932) for oboe, violin, viola, and cello was his first work to gain international recognition.   Arthur Bliss’s lovely Quintet for Oboe and String Quartet (1927) deftly blends diverse styles and influences, concluding with  an Irish jig.

The final piece is Britten’s last major work, the String Quartet No. 3 (1975), a somber and moving valediction.

Number 7

Flute Concerto; Violin Concerto; Pilgrims
Ned Rorem
José Serebrier, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
Performer: Jeffrey Khaner, Philippe Quint
Naxos

Since his 80th birthday, a steady string of new recordings, mostly from Naxos has caused me to reconsider my impression that Rorem was the Reynoldo Hahn of 1920s Paris. Jose Serebrier, who revealed Rorem’s strengths as a symphonist a couple of years ago with his splendid Naxos recording of the three symphonies, showcases Rorem at three different stages of his career. Pilgrims, a short, somber piece for string orchestra, was written in 1958, not long after Rorem returned from Paris. The Violin Concerto, played eloquently and persuasively here by Philippe Quint, dates from 1984

The real treasure of the disc–the Flute Concerto–was premiered by Jeffrey Khaner, principal flutist of the Philadelphia Orchestra in 2002, who plays it here. 

Number 8

Five Sonatas
Andrew Rangell, piano
Bridge
Andrew Rangell has built a reputaton as one of the great living pianists mainly through a series of extraordinary recordings like this one–his fifth for Bridge–and one of his absolute finest.  Here are five 20th century sonatas by four of the century’s leading composers–George Enescu, Igor Stravinsky, Leoš Janáček, and Ernesto Halffter, who accounts for two of the sonatas, dated nearly 60 years apart.  Rangell’s playing is so highly personal and unconventional, his interpretations so brilliant but quirky, that he is inevitably compared to Glenn Gould, although Rangell is stylistically more adventuresome.

Number 9

Quartetset; Quiet Time
Sebastian Currier
Cassatt Quartet
New World Records

Currier’s 1995 Quartetset, written for the Cassett Quartet, is a long (45 minute) seven movement piece that pits tonality versus atonality, dissonance versus consonance, with results that are not only wildy imaginative but surprising listenable. The composer describes it as “a post-modern interpretation of the string quartet.” The same might be said of Quiet Time, another seven movement suite, in which the dialectic is natural versus artifical sound.  Quotes from everybody but sounds like nobody else.

Number 10

Piano Music by Emmanuel Chabrier
Angela Hewitt
Hyperion

The formidable Angela Hewitt takes a vacation from Bach and the results are bright, sunny, atmospheric and downright fun. At the premiere of Dix pièces pittoresques, César Franck said, “We have just heard something extraordinary. This music links our time with that of Couperin and Rameau.” He might also have added, had he known, that the music anticipates Debussy and Ravel. I have probably played this album more than any other this year and I never seem to tire of it.

by Jerry Bowles
Click Picks, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Minimalism

Steve’s click picks #11

Our regular listen to and look at living, breathing composers and performers that you may not know yet, but I know you should… And can, right here and now, since they’re nice enough to offer so much good listening online:

Hanne Darboven (b. 1941 — DE)

Hanne Darboven, 2005

What better way to mark a new year than with something that is only and utterly about time, history and the march of events (or their stubborn recurrence)!

Only one piece to listen to, but it’s a full hour-plus. Darboven’s Opus17a for solo double bass was composed in 1996 for her massive artwork “Kulturgeschichte 1880–1983”, shown at the Dia Center for the Arts in New York. Played here with almost superhuman concentration and doggedness by Robert Black, it’s a piece guaranteed to either absolutely fascinate, repel or bore you to tears, depending on who you are.

The artist Hanne Darboven was born in Munich. Following a brief episode as a pianist, she studied painting in Hamburg. Between 1966 and 1969 she lived intermittently in New York City, then returned to her family home in Hamburg, where she continues to live and work.

Why and how does a visual artist turn to musical composition? The progression makes perfect sense as described in the essay by Lynne Cooke:

…[Darboven’s] work has been informed by Conceptual art practices. Based by the late 1960s on various forms of numerical writing, her systematic work securely occupied the realm of abstraction and universality.

“I only use numbers because it is a way of writing without describing. . . . It has nothing to do with mathematics. Nothing! I choose numbers because they are so constant, confined, and artistic. Numbers are probably the only real discovery of mankind. A number of something (two chairs, or whatever) is something else. It’s not pure number and has other meanings.”

Time has become the focus of Darboven’s art. For her, Annelie Pohlen argues, time constitutes the primary and essential structure of human life — it is “a basically intangible measure for the totality of the indices determining being; it is the content of consciousness; it exists beyond human comprehension.” The calendar, which subsequently formed the foundation of Darboven’s art practice, again offered a universal orientation, embodying a given, prefabricated, ready-made temporal system. Calibrated in her work in many ways over almost three decades, it has provided the basis of an arbitrary artistic system that has the appearance of objectivity. Conjoining a rigorous numerical process with free-associative roots, and tight rational thought with intellectual freedom, Darboven’s capricious sense of time has resulted in diverse monumental works that may span a month, a year, even a century, all recorded day by day.

In the early 1970s Darboven introduced a kind of writing into her work that took the form of an even cursive script. Although executed by hand, this script was standardized and regulated, systematic and abstract. […] In 1973 she began to incorporate texts—transcribed directly because, she has claimed, they could not be bettered— from various writers, initially Heinrich Heine and Jean-Paul Sartre. These texts spoke both to her recognition of the failure of the grand narratives of Enlightenment thought to provide convincing, encompassing interpretations and, equally, to her fundamentally romantic existentialist position. Then, in 1978, she introduced visual documentation alongside her numbers and looping texts, primarily in the form of found and rephotographed images, which allowed her to address specific historical issues for the first time. Shortly thereafter, she invented a system of musical notation, based on her system of numbering dates, which she has used since 1979 to compose scores for organ, double bass, string quartet, and chamber orchestra. Darboven sees her music as she does her “mathematical writing,” a highly abstract language functioning in an entirely self-referential manner; it thus serves as an abstract correlative to the concrete, visual nature of her artwork.

by Steve Layton
Uncategorized

Kennedy Center Honors Free-Association

Hmm . . . The Kennedy Center Honors. Always forget about these things until December. Always find them exasperating and inspiring at the same time. Be nice to get one someday . . . Ah – there’s Zubin Mehta. Bet most viewers haven’t even heard of him; geez, I hope the awards continue to pay tribute to classical musicians in the future . . . Ug, couldn’t they have come up with something other than Fritz Kreisler for the tribute? Sigh. Suppose beggars can’t be choosers . . . Wouldn’t it be nice if the Kennedy Center honored Steve Reich or Elliott Carter or John Adams someday? Instead we get . . . Andrew Lloyd Webber. How many crescendos and cymbal crashes can one man pack into two minutes? Eee gads! Question: How does one explain to his fans that his music SUCKS???? “Well, but look how much money he makes!” Be nice to have that much money someday. But writing trash is no guarantee of financial success; gotta satisfy first the artist within. Ah – there’s Dolly Parton. Now these songs are nice. Unpretentious, heartfelt, lovely. (Wonder if Lloyd Webber’s listening . . . ) And the country folks are doing a nice job: Allison Krauss, Vince Gill, Kenny Rogers and so forth. And finally Steven Spielberg. Wonder if he remembers the nice little note he wrote for me years ago: “To David: Hope to hear your music on one of our films.” Be nice if he did.

by David Salvage