Choral Music, Concert review, early music, File Under?

Two Early Music Groups Visit New York (Concert Review)

PHOTO CREDIT – Richard Termine

Two Early Music Ensembles Visit New York

Iestyn Davies, countertenor, Fretwork, viols, and Silas Wollston, organ and virginal, Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall, December 3rd, 2024

The Tallis Scholars, presented by Miller Theatre’s Early Music Series at Church of St. Mary the Virgin, December 5th, 2024

NEW YORK – This past week’s concert schedule featured two early music ensembles, one specializing in early baroque music, and the other known for renaissance repertoire but presenting a more wide-ranging program. 

The countertenor Iestyn Davies is a highly regarded interpreter of Handel’s operas. He also appeared in Claire van Kempen’s play Farinelli and the King, which bowed at London’s Globe Theatre and on Broadway. At Carnegie’s Zankel Hall, he joined the viol quintet Fretwork – Emilia Benjamin, Jonathan Rees, Joanna Levine, Sam Stadlen, and Richard Boothby – and Silas Wollston, who played organ and virginals, for a program of seventeenth century cantatas. Much of the program was from the CD Lamento (Signum Classics, 2021), and was organized as a geographical tour of repertoire. 

Franz Tunder (1614-1667) was from Northern Germany, and a talented, underappreciated composer. His Salve mi Jesu and An Wasserflüssen Babylon began the concert. The sense of connection among the musicians was immediately apparent. Davies has a remarkably even and sleek-toned voice. Throughout his entire range in an extensive program of challenging repertoire, the countertenor never showed a hint of difficulty. 

The viols, arranged from small to large in size, are fascinating instruments to watch being played, and Fretwork’s long acquaintance – they have performed together for four decades – was immediately apparent. They elicited tone colors that were alternatingly sweet, boisterous, and tinged with melancholy. After the Tunder, they performed a Canzon á 5 by Samuel Scheidt (1587-1654), which alternated between contrapuntal passages and vibrant tutti. A still more elaborate Canzona by the composer was included in the second half. Also on the first half was a suite of dances by Johann Hermann Schein (1586-1630), who was cantor at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, where J.S. Bach later worked. These elegant works embodied the various demeanors listed above with rhythmic suavity. An additional suite by Shein, with a more doleful cast, was performed on the second half. 

Another northerner, Christian Geist (ca. 1650-1711) was represented by Es war aber an der Stätte, which featured tasteful organ playing by Wollston on an extended recitative. The first half ended with a composer in the prolific Bach line, Johann Christoph (1642-1703), the first Southerner represented, who spent his career in Eisenach. Ach, dass ich Wassers gnug hätte, subtitled Lamento, is a moving work, with harmonic swerves and chromatic embellishments that emphasize its grief-stricken text. Davies embodied the work’s sense of pathos with an emotive but elegantly rendered performance. 

The second half first returned to a Northern German composer, Dietrich Buxtehude (ca. 1637-1707), whose Jubilate Domino, omnis terra changed the mood to one of ebullience. Davies fluidly sang the piece’s melismatic lines, while the syncopated rhythms of the viols and the organ’s ornaments emphasized the text’s joyous mood. The composer was also represented by Klage Lied, which returned to the mood of lamentation. 

A program of seventeenth century music wouldn’t seem complete without Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672), and he was represented with Erbarm dich mein, O Herre Gott. In its tragic mood, one could hear the pain and suffering inflicted during the Thirty Years War, which virtually cleared Dresden’s choir loft and left the composer to write many solo cantatas and duos. 

The program concluded with O dulce nomen Jesu, by the Italian composer Giovanni Felice Sances (ca. 1600-1679), who worked in Vienna at the Imperial Palace.  The piece was quite akin to early opera, with the mellifluous repeated trills used by Monteverdi, triple dance rhythms, and dashes of modal writing. Davies’ operatic background made him right at home. 

There were two encores, the first a surprise, Dave Brubeck’s “Weep No More” (arranged by Jonathan Rhys), which was performed with a bluesy,noirish feel. Fretwork proved that viols can play West Coast Jazz, and Davies adopted a cornet-like tone. The second, Wer sich dem Himmel immergëben by Philipp Heinrich Erlebach (1657-1714) left the audience basking in the ambience of the German baroque.

Tallis Scholars
Photo: Hugo Glendinning

On December 5th at Church of St. Mary the Virgin in midtown, Miller Theatre’s Early Music Series presented The Tallis Scholars, directed by Peter Phillips. A nearly annual occurrence, the group often performs Renaissance music with a Marian subject.Last year the visit of angels to the shepherds provided different repertoire that included stirring music by Clemens non Papa. This year, the group focused on chant and chant-inspired pieces from the Christmas season that ranged in date from the 11th to the 21st centuries. 

The theme for the concert was In dulci jubilo, and it began with two verses from the eponymous work by Hieronymous Praetorious (1560-1629). The plainchant In principio omnes by the cloistered nun and polymath Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) followed, with sopranos from the choir performing the chant and the rest holding a drone in octaves. Shifting to the later Renaissance, Salve Regina by Giovanni Pierluigi Palestrina (c. 1525-1594) alternated between canonic and tutti passages. It was followed by another chant by Hildegard, O virtus sapientiae, performed by the group’s women. Hildegard’s chants can be rangy, and the solid tone from top to bottom was impressively blended. Two more were featured later on the program, O ignis spiritus, in a poised solo by alto Elisabeh Paul, and a group performance of O ecclesia oculi tui. 

Peter Phillips has written about the difficulties posed by the music of Orlando de Lassus (c. 1532-1594). Its ranges benefit from the incorporation of instruments on some of the parts, but the composer’s Nunc dimittis ‘Il Magnanimo Pietro’ sounded incredibly assured. Its performance was one of the best of the polyphonic music on the program.

The works of a living composer were also included. The Estonian Arvo Pärt (b. 1935) has been championed by the Tallis Scholars, who have recorded a disc of his music. Pärt writes in a bespoke style he calls tintinnabuli, where the titular bell sounds are created by two voices, one singing a linear, chant-like part, and the other arpeggiating triads. The result is lustrous with tangy dissonances. Magnificat is one of his best known pieces, and the Tallis Scholars performed it with superb tuning and imposing fervor. Da Pacem Domine was written in 2004, and dedicated to victims of the Madrid train bombings. Chords cascade between voices, including a downward lamento motive. 

The program’s subordinate theme was Salve Regina, one of four antiphons dedicated to the Virgin Mary. In addition to the Palestrina motet, the group sang the antiphon and two other motets incorporating the chant. Salve Regina by Hernando Marco (c. 1532-1611) is among the first music written in Guatemala, and formidable in its demands. Tomás Luís de Victoria’s Salve Regina is a double choir piece in which the chant’s incipit begins the piece and the chant is threaded throughout the polyphony, ricocheting between the singing groups. 

The program finished with a nineteenth century version of In dulci jubilo by Robert Lucas Pearsall (1795-1856), a colorful anthem featuring a tune that has remained part of the hymnody of various denominations. The encore returned to Praetorious for his setting of Joseph lieber, Joseph mein, concluding in a gently lyrical fashion. The Tallis Scholars at St. Mary’s always brings a welcome start to the season with a bevy of glorious singing.

-Christian Carey 



by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?, jazz

Jason Anick and Jason Yeager – Sanctuary (Recording Review)

Jason Anick and Jason Yeager – Sanctuary (Sunnyside)

 

Violinist Jason Anick and pianist Jason Yeager last recorded together in 2017, and their album Unite revealed a simpatico pairing. Just as it was thematically constructed around its title, Sanctuary, their 2024 Sunnyside release, seeks to emphasize the need for recovery and renewal in these challenging times. 

 

They are joined by estimable collaborators, who are ceded space for their own contributions; this never feels like the Jasons dominate the proceedings. Trumpeters Jason Palmer and Billy Buss, tenor saxophonist Edmar Colón, cellist Naseem Alatrash, bassist Greg Loughman, and drummer Mike Connors form a biggish band provided with deftly arranged charts. 

 

“Futures Past” begins the recording with Anick and Yeager playing the tune’s first section, syncopated and in modal jazz style, and they are soon joined by the rest of the group for an energetic second part of the head. Yeager’s solo recalls the stacked fourths-fifths chord melodies of McCoy Tyner. Palmer’s turn builds a gradual ascent before softly overlapping counterpoint from the brass is contrasted by Connors providing emphatic fills. The second section with the whole band is followed by a thinned out conclusion, led by Anick. The violinist, trilling in the introduction of “The Nearness of Now,” has a fleet duet with the trumpet, and Yeager contributes a bluesy solo with Loughman’s bass ebulliently walking alongside. 

 

Of course, what does the concept of sanctuary require as a foil: the circumstances that require refuge. “Persecution” is an uptempo example with a high dissonance quotient and great intensity. “AI Apocalypse” is quick too and has a sinuous bass line that undergirds ominous interplay from brass and strings. A funk-inflected piano solo, back and forth from trumpet and violin, and rollicking playing from the rhythm section gives a stern rebuttal to the oppressors found in the music of the beginning. But they are not to be denied, and an even more cacophonous tutti ensues before the outro provides a long decrescendo. Wayne Shorter’s “Lost” is a natural for the theme of sanctuary sought, if not yet found. Unison melodic playing from violin, saxophone, and trumpets creates a fascinating, colorful rendition. Given their shared instrument, Colón is a natural for the performance’s spotlight soloist, and his solo ranges widely but is phrased exquisitely. Anick takes a turn, winding filigrees around the tune’s contours. Yeager counters with a pot-boiler, and the group engages in some free play in the conclusion. 

‘Ephemary” has a mysterious opening, a contrasting, emphatic trumpet duet, and a swinging solo from Anick. “Colorado” provides a chance to hear the Jasons play in brilliant fashion, suggesting that a future duo album would be welcome. 

 

“Farewell” is actually the penultimate piece, juxtaposing doubled treble lines and bass/piano with a line down low. Stacked harmonies and a trumpet glissando conclude the first section, after which the rhythm section engages in a group passage, with Yeager supplying one of his best solos. The return alternates treble and bass components and is finished with held notes and staccato piano. The concluding title tune, “Sanctuary” is quite beautiful and could be a new standard in its own right, its performance contrasting an offbeat ostinato from the rhythm section with a sustained melody played by the rest of the group. Anick’s solo features glissandos and swift scalar passages. It is followed by an equally swift trumpet solo with an altissimo climax. The head returns, with triplets and violin ornaments decorating it before a denouement leaves the piano playing alone, dissolving the ostinato and ending the album with a sense of repose.  

 

In addition to the Shorter and a number of originals, Sanctuary includes an affecting version of Chopin’s famous “Raindrop” Prelude in D-flat major. It opens with a delicate solo from Alatrash, and the middle section in minor builds to a roar of brass chords. After presenting a relatively faithful transcription of the score, piano and trumpet solos move romantic music into the ambit of postmodern jazz. A return to the middle section is followed by Yeager playing the last section faithfully. How about more? A mazurka next? 

 

While I mentioned a desire for more duets, the assembled musicians are an abundantly talented band, and a follow-up from them would be equally welcome. Sanctuary is one of my favorite albums of 2024.

 

-Christian Carey

by Christian Carey
Contemporary Classical

VIVA 21ST CENTURY and VIVA 20 YEARS!

For more than 25 years, WPRB’s Marvin Rosen has been one of radio’s greatest champions of living composers, playing works by many, many hundreds of composers both greater and lesser known, with an especially strong emphasis on gender and racial equity. Marvin’s curiosity and openness towards the music of our time is just about unparalleled, and there are composers all over the USA and world who thank him for bringing their music to the airwaves.

Every December, Marvin offers up a particularly epic show to benefit the station, the Viva 21st Century marathon. For 24 straight hours Marvin will stay live on-air, serving up over 100 new works (including some works never released yet on commercial recordings), with an approximately equal representation of both men and women composers. This outing marks the 20th (!) year of the marathon, a tremendous achievement.

This year’s marathon will begin on Saturday, December 28th, 2024 at 12:00 PM (EST time; check your own time zone) and will go non-stop, live, until 12:00 PM EST Sunday, December 29th, 2024.

You can listen to the whole program on the radio in New Jersey, parts of Pennsylvania, Delaware and New York at WPRB 103.3FM, Princeton NJ, or worldwide on the internet at http://www.wprb.com/

Please check the Classical Discoveries website a few days before the event for more details, at http://www.classicaldiscoveries.org/

by Steve Layton
BAM, CD Review, Contemporary Classical, Criticism, File Under?, Fundraising, jazz, Piano, Video

Two Favorite of 2024 Recordings from Ethan Iverson (CD Review)

 

Ethan Iverson – Technically Acceptable (Blue Note CD, 2024)

Ethan Iverson – Playfair Sonatas (Urlicht Audiovisual 2xCD, 2024)

 

Ethan Iverson is one of the foremost jazz pianists of his generation. An alumnus of the Bad Plus, he has since appeared with a number of artists, both live and on record. He currently teaches at New England Conservatory of Music. Iverson revels in researching all the eras of jazz, from its inception to the most recent innovations, and is also an advocate for American concert music composers of the twentieth century. His Substack, offers a bevy of information about both subjects.

 

Technically Acceptable is primarily a piano trio album. The two rhythm sections that join Iverson are bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Kush Abadey, who play on a group of new originals. Bassist Simón Willson and drummer Vinnie Sperazza are on hand for two standards, “Killing Me Softly,” first a hit for Roberta Flack in the seventies and later recorded by the Fugees, and “‘Round Midnight,” a Thelonious Monk signature. The former is given a lush reading with elegant pop harmonies, while the latter features Rob Schwimmer playing theremin in a simulacrum of Annie Ross’s soprano delivery. 

 

“Conundrum” opens the recording with a 90 second brisk introduction, a foreshadowing of the “Overture” and “Recessional” found on Playfair Sonatas. “Victory is Assured (Alla breve)” is undergirded with a cut time groove emphasized by Iverson’s left hand and the rhythm section. The pianist’s right hand is occupied with a circle of fifths sequence and emphatic glissandos. The title tune is a bluesy swing with an upward yearning culmination. Then there is a solo from Iverson that features abundant ornamentation and planing chords. 

 

“Who are You Really” begins with a chordal treatment of its sinuous, scalar tune. Iverson’s solo provides puckish elaborations while Morgan supplies repeated notes in a countermelody and Abadey punctuates the proceeding with cymbal splashes and tom rolls. A double time coda concludes it. “Chicago Style” is a wayward ballad adorned with a wispy piano solo. 

 

Technically Acceptable concludes with Iverson’s Piano Sonata. The program note relates Iverson’s fully notated approach to music from the 1930s: swing, blues, and the classical music of Copland and Gershwin. It also has an Ivesian cast, the first movement cutting among several propulsive motives, including a hard bop section, another that recalls the stride piano of James P. Johnson, and “the first four notes” theme of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. After the second theme’s appearance, there is a brief misterioso interlude, and an elated version of the hard bop theme reappears, with a brusque glissando finishing off the movement. This is followed by an Andante movement with a wandering tune that alternates with dissonant arpeggios. As it progresses, the proceedings are enriched with polychords and decorative chromaticism. The finale is a rondo movement with thick dissonant verticals inserted between short phrases, each time followed by a puckish renewal of the form’s succession of motifs. 

 

Playfair Sonatas shares chamber pieces that are the continuation of Iverson’s interest in notated composition, each in its a way an homage to predecessors in the jazz idiom. It contains both a short Fanfare and Postlude for all of the players, the former with a jaunty tune, the latter with solemn brass followed by a hymn-like piano postlude. 

 

Trombone Sonata features Mike Lormand, whose sound can be clarion like a trumpet or sonorous in its depths. At its outset, against a sustained melody for the trombone, Iverson adds still rhythmic wrinkles by playing hemiola patterns. Partway through, in a slow, rubato passage the trombonist is exhorted to “tell your story.” This is succeeded by a return to the opening material, abetted by a rangy, syncopated melody in the trombone. A long glissando is countered with a sustained bass note to close. The second movement is dedicated to the avant-jazz trombonist Roswell Rudd, with a hat tip to the dedicatee given by the copious microtones for the soloist. The finale is another rondo, this one with a main theme in mixed meter of an anthemic quality, and a corresponding quick motive filled with blues thirds and glissandos.  Lormand demonstrates facility in fast tempos, doubling Iverson’s right hand in places, concluding with the main melody embellished with thunderous pedal tones and then a deathless sustained final pitch.

 

Makoto Nakamura is the soloist in the Marimba Sonata. Some of the piece explores a bucolic environment that accentuates gently humorous material. The second movement evokes the legacy of Dolphy’s “wild modernism,” and the frequency of mallet percussion player Bobby Hutcherson in the reed player’s lineups. Unique to this sonata is a solo cadenza movement, with a slow tempo undergirding a multi-mallet excursion with fetching accumulated harmonies. 

 

Clarinetist Carol McGonnell has an exquisite sound in every register of her instrument, which makes her an ideal interpreter of Iverson’s Clarinet Sonata, which recalls both jazz idioms and modern classical music. The first movement features memorable themes, mixed meters, and cascading arpeggios in both instruments. The second movement, “Music Hall,”  is dedicated to the great jazz composer Carla Bley, its oom-pah rhythm imitating the accompaniment of many of her pieces. In a spooky twist, Bley passed away on the very day that Iverson finished the movement .A third movement is neoclassical in design, with a backwards ordering of scherzo, minuet, and an allegro return that includes a soaring valediction for the clarinet. The finale moves the sonata out of the minor mode into a triumphant major, including one of Iverson’s most memorable melodies on Playfair Sonatas. 

Who could be a better dedicatee for an Alto Saxophone Sonata than Paul Desmond? The second movement, titled “Melody (For Paul Desmond) is a suavely lyrical ballad in which Iverson effectively channels West Coast Jazz of the 1950s. The other two movements put saxophonist Taimur Sullivan through his paces, the first including fast scalar passages and altissimo held notes in the part, all set against a syncopated shuffle and a middle section in fugato counterpoint. The movement’s melody by itself is appealing, and could easily be given treatment as a new standard. The third movement is an Allegro in which the duo swings with abandon, Sullivan playing a breathless stream of swinging eighths and triplets against a rollicking groove, forceful ostinatos, and quick melodic doublings in the piano. A cadenza provides a dazzling interlude, followed by a radiant coda.. 

 

The Trumpet Sonata is imbued with the qualities of early jazz juxtaposed with early modernism á la Hindemith. The middle movement, “Theme (For Joe Wilder),” celebrates a trumpeter who was an exponent of early modernism and one of the first black musicians to play on Broadway and in symphony orchestras. Wilder premiered a number of compositions, notably by Alec Wilder, a classically trained composer who was probably best known for his popular songs, film scores, and musicals. There is a charming suavity to the theme that recalls some of Alec Wilder’s music for movies. 

 

Miranda Cuckson is a go-to violinist for contemporary concert music. The Violin Sonata employs Cuckson’s well-established facility with modern music. The first movement features an Andante theme that is chromatic, nearly post-tonal in conception. This is succeeded by an Allegro section with angular, dovetailing flurries. The sonata also tempts her into the world of modern jazz with a second movement titled “Blues (For Ornette Coleman).” Coleman was known for using microtones and a rough hewn playing style, and Cuckson obliges with abundant amounts of sliding tone and notes between the cracks of the keys. The finale, again in rondo form, begins with pizzicato open strings against a treble register moto perpetuo in the piano. The violin duets with the piano in an effervescent contrasting theme, with sequential material offset by double-stops. The melodic focus alternates between solo and duet, with the mischievous opening section with its combination of pizzicato and the treble staccato undulations in the piano, serving as refrain. After a third tune with ascending scalar passages in the violin accompanied by arpeggiated sixteenths in the piano, the pizzicatos return a final time, topped off with a fingered glissando ascent. This piece could easily appear in either a classical recital or in a jazz concert, being both versatile and engaging throughout.

 

Technically Acceptable and Playfair Sonatas are significant recordings in Iverson’s catalog, the former demonstrating his finesse as a writer of jazz originals and the latter combining a cornucopia of traditions into eminently successful notated works. One hopes that both approaches remain part of his prolific creativity. Two favorite recordings from 2024.

 

Christian Carey

 

 

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

Francesco Tristano – Bach: The 6 Partitas (CD review)

Bach: The 6 Partitas

Francesco Tristano, piano

Naïve 2XCD

 

In his 2024 recording for Naïve, pianist Francesco Tristano interprets some of Johann Sebastian Bach’s most challenging pieces, the six Partitas for clavier. Tristano’s 2022 On Early Music was an admirable outing, with pieces by Giralomo Frescobaldi, Peter Philips, John Bull, and Orlando Gibbons, serving as a taster course for Italian and English approaches to harpsichord playing in the early seventeenth century. 

 

Tristano’s keyboard isn’t the harpsichord, but a beautiful sounding grand piano in a recording studio in Kakegawa, Japan. Abetted by sound engineer Christoph Frommen, Tristano reveled in using all of the studio’s devices at his disposal to make what his liner notes essays calls, “BachtotheFuture.” This never sounds like mere trickery, instead it imparts organic sounding, pleasing results. 

 

Tristano is eminently capable of taking fast tempos, such as his fleet renditions of the Allemande from the B-flat major Partita and the Gigue from the G major work, where the counterpoint is clearly delineated in a virtuosic environment. However, he prefers not to rush, and the midtempo and slow dance movements are the better for it, with clear dance rhythms and cleanly delivered ornaments. Extended movements, such as the Sinfonia in the C minor Partita and Toccata in the E minor work, are well-shaped and paced. Indeed, each movement seems to have been carefully considered in its conception and receives a level of attention that makes all that work in the studio in Kakegawa seem well worth it, even necessary. 

 

It is hard to pick favorites among Tristano’s performances of the partitas, and perhaps one’s mood may play a role, as they each seem tailored to a different demeanor. If a doleful mood besets the listener, the pianist’s traversal of the C minor Partita is truly masterful, and will likely meet you where you are and provide considerable uplift by its conclusion. Bach: the 6 Partitas is one of my favorite recordings of 2024.

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
BAM, Contemporary Classical, Criticism, File Under?, Guitar, New Age, Performers, Video

James Romig – Matt Sargent – The Fragility of Time (Recording review)

James Romig

The Fragility of Time

A Wave Press

Matt Sargent, Guitar

 

Composer James Romig’s previous piece for electric guitar, The Complexity of Distance, written for Mike Scheidt, was an overwhelming paean to distorted revelry. It was a swerve from Romig’s previous compositions, which were primarily for acoustic instruments, such as the Pulitzer-nominated piano work still and a number of pieces for percussion. His latest composition for electric guitar, The Fragility of Time, is played clean, sans distortion, and serves as a sort of companion to The Complexity of Distance. 

 

The hour-long work returns to the gradual unfolding of still. Romig began his mature career writing serial music with rhythmic vivacity. In recent years, he has retained a constructivist mindset, but slowed down the tempo of his works. One is tempted to attribute some of this to his many residencies at national parks, where the scenery and time to create seem to have metabolized in a tendency for his phrases to breathe differently. 

 

One could scarcely hope for a better advocate than Sargent who, in addition to recording The Fragility of Time, has performed it at several venues. The level of concentration required to render the piece’s asymmetrical gestures, moving frequently between regularly fretted single notes, verticals, and harmonics, is considerable. The dynamics are subdued for much of the piece, though as it progresses the texture is peppered with single forte gestures, and it closes with forte harmonics.The pitch language itself is post-tonal in design, but doesn’t eschew the use of tertian sonorities.

 

The Fragility of Time has a mesmeric quality. Listeners may attend to subtle shifts occurring throughout the piece or merely bask in its attractive sound world. Either way, The Fragility of Time is a rewarding experience: take time to savor it.

 

Christian Carey



by Christian Carey
BMOP, CD Review, Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Piano, Songs, Vocals

Winterreise on DG (CD Review)

Franz Schubert – Winterreise

André Schuen, baritone and Daniel Heide, piano

Deutsche Grammophon

 

Winterreise is the third recording of Schubert’s cycles/song sets (Schwanengesang isn’t a cycle – it has multiple poets) by baritone André Schuen and pianist Daniel Heide. These were some of the last pieces written by Franz Schubert (1797 – 1828), and he sang them at the piano to console himself about worsening health (syphilis likely contributed to his early demise). Of the three, Winterreise is the best suited to Schuen’s voice, a full lyric baritone. The recordings of Die Schöne Müllerin and Schwanengesang are excellent, but his mature sound and the dramatic interpretations Schuen adopts are ideal for the pathos of Winterreise. He captures the narrator’s vacillating inner monologue with declamation ranging from delicate pianissimo singing to roaring rage. Heide has collaborated with a number of singers and instrumentalists, but his work with Schuen is among his best partnerships. He plays with nuance and a fluid sense of the rhythmic component of the piece.  The latter affords Schuen room for small fluctuations in tempo to emphasize particular words. 

 

From the tramping outside his former girlfriend’s door in “Gute Nacht” onward, the tempos are well-considered, never languid even in the most tragic songs. Instead, the duo treats the winter’s journey taken by the narrator as inexorable, a quest without a prize. Along that line, the mystery of the cycle is how it ends, with the song Die Leiermann (the organ-grinder): Who is the organ-grinder? Is he real? A symbol of death? Or the final delusion of the protagonist as he succumbs to the elements? The duo perform the song  understatedly, in such a way as to leave the enigma of these questions intact. Winterreise appears on a number of excellent recordings – here is one more.

 

Christian Carey

by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?, Strings

Danish String Quartet – Keel Road on ECM (CD Review)

Danish String Quartet

Keel Road

ECM Records ECM 2785

 

Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen, Violin, Clog Fiddle, Harmonium, Spinet, Voice, Whistle;
Frederik Øland, Violin, Voice, Whistle; Asbjørn Nørgaard, Viola, Voice, Whistle;
Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin, Violoncello, Bass, Voice, Whistle;
Nikolaj Busk, Piano; Ale Carr, Cittern

 

The Danish String Quartet have explored music from many eras and styles. Keel Road  (ECM, 2024), is the third recording in which they delve into Northern European folk music, ranging through Scandinavia, Britain, and Ireland; they call it “a musical journey through the North Sea.” The arrangements were made by the quartet, and in addition to playing strings, they also sing, whistle, and perform on a variety of traditional instruments. 

 

Those used to the quartet’s Prism series for ECM, which featured Bach, Beethoven, and contemporary pieces, will likely be in for a pleasant surprise. Keel Road displays a correspondingly skillful approach to folk music, as well as a remarkable affinity for the music they have chosen for the album. This is evident from the recording’s opening track, Turlough O’Carolan’s “Mable Kelly,” where the musicians play a winsome tune with ornaments from Celtic fiddling, accompanied by lyrical harmonies. “Pericondine/Fair Isle Jig” begins in a similarly adorned fashion in a jaunty dance. Ale Carr’s “Stompolskan” gradually builds in intensity, developing two-note repetitions alongside another quick dance. “Carolan’s Quarrel With the Landlady” has more of a playful than adversarial demeanor, and its refrain focuses on open strings. O’Carolan likes to focus on character sketches, and the third piece played by the quartet is his “Captain O’Kane,” a study in contrast with a soaring reprise. 

 

“En Skomager Har Jeg Været” is a brief field recording of a solo singer, a nod to the curators of this genre.The traditional song “As I Walked Out” may be familiar to listeners in its Vaughan Williams arrangement, but this brisk version with pizzicato strumming and whistling is enjoyable. Partway through, the whistling subsides and loud downward attacks accompany the tune, eventually subsiding in favor of an undulating accompaniment with the melody moving among the players. The downward attacks return softly, and there is a long fade with the whistling and pizzicatos of earlier. “Marie/The Chat/Gale Warning” is a vibrant medley in which the melody of each section is buoyed by different rhythmic patterns, tempo, and countermelodies.  Glissandos, tremolandos, pizzicatos, and harmonics demonstrate a variety of techniques borrowed from the quartet’s contemporary classical repertoire. The harmony employs stacked quartal chords, including the last vertical in the piece, which is another twentieth century calling card reminiscent of Bartôk and Stravinsky (both arrangers of folk music). 

 

The last track is particularly evocative. “Når Mitt Øye, Trett Av Møje,” is a traditional Norwegian tune, in a resolute arrangement that the quartet plays with sumptuous tone. Once again, the Danish String Quartet has shared the songs of multiple cultures in compelling renditions. Keel Road is one of my favorite recordings of 2024.

 

Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?, Improv, jazz

Ban and Maneri – Transylvanian Dance on ECM (CD Review)

Transylvanian Dance

Lucian Ban, piano

Mat Maneri, viola

ECM Records

 

“These folk songs teach us many things.”

 

Transylvanian Dance is the second recording on ECM by pianist Lucian Ban and violist Mat Maneri; the first was Transylvanian Concert (2013). As the album title suggests,  the duo explores Eastern European material, specifically that collected by Béla Bartók. Ban was born in Romania and delights in the fascinating polyrhythms of this region. Maneri is well versed in the microtonal and multi-scalar aspects of folk song. These are not mere transcriptions. Maneri has described them in interviews as, “a springboard,” a reservoir of melodic and rhythmic ideas that the duo use for improvisation. Recorded live in the Romanian city Timișoara în 2022 as part of ECM’s Retracing Bartók project, Transylvanian Dance demonstrates varied and versatile reinventions of its source material.

 

Bartók collected folk songs in Transylvania from 1909-1917. He made a number of trips to Eastern European countries, sometimes with his friend and fellow folk song collector the composer and pedagogue Zoltán Kodály. With cumbersome recording gear and staff paper at the ready, they sought out amateur singers, particularly those of previous generations. As older people in these regions died off, so too would generations of music-making. Before it would be too late, Bartók was eager to capture and transcribe their knowledge.

 

Ban and Maneri revel in the music Bartók found in his trips to Transylvania. The title track is a case in point, where Ban explores a mixed meter groove while Maneri plays modal scales with glissandos and bent notes that recall the gestural vocabulary one might hear from a traditional fiddler. As the piece progresses, Maneri plays long lines that blur the polymeter, inviting Ban to add splashes of cluster harmonies and a thrumming bass countermelody. Gradually, there is a coming apart and then rejoining by the duo, a recapitulation of the opening material, and then a sideways swerve with new harmonies, inside the piano work, and a rousing viola cadenza. “The Enchanted Stag” has a very different demeanor, slow and mysterious, almost pointillist in conception. 

 

Ban and Maneri don’t neglect the jazz tradition in which they have been steeped. “Harvest Moon” is filled with scales from folk music, but is played like a blues ballad. “Romanian Dance” is an extended workout where Ban builds upon an asymmetrical beat pattern until it becomes a rich ground from which the duo’s forceful soloing emanates. “Boyar’s Dance” uses a soft, undulating piano passage as a refrain, between which is some of the most free improvisation on the recording, building to incendiary climaxes before lapsing into softly repeated dance steps. 

 

The recording concludes with “Make Me, Lord, Slim and Tall,” in which both players explore a sumptuous melody over a mixed meter ostinato. The piece morphs between dovetailing melodies, post-bop, and extended harmonies featuring Maneri’s microtones and elaborate changes by Ban. It ends in a denouement, angular viola riffs and dance rhythms in the piano fading away. 

 

Fluent in folk sources and imaginative in improvising upon them, Ban and Maneri have created a compelling document. I think Bartók would be proud of them. Transylvanian Dance is one of my favorite recordings of 2024.

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
Contemporary Classical

Elena Dubinets to Concertgebouw

The career trajectory of Elena Dubinets continues to soar upwards. The current Artistic Director of London Philharmonic Orchestra is now headed to the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra next season to assume its Artistic Directorship. She will help to steady the tiller of one of the world’s most storied orchestras that has nevertheless seen some recent upheaval, lacking an Artistic Director since Ulrike Niehoff’s sudden departure last year, and a Chief Conductor since the sacking of the scandal-ridden Daniele Gatti in 2018. Her term will presumably overlap with the formal start of Klaus Mäkalä’s Chief Conductorship in 2027 (at a mere 28 years old, Mäkalä is the Concertgebouw’s chief conductor designate, and in a particularly eyebrow-raising move he recently announced that he would also assume the Music Directorship of Chicago Symphony Orchestra starting that same year).

Elena Dubinets by Sorina Reiber

Born in Moscow in 1969, Dubinets (pronounced “doo-bin-YETS”), grew up in the Soviet Union, earned her PhD from Moscow Conservatory, then emigrated to the US in 1996 when her husband accepted a software engineering position at Microsoft. She quickly rose in the Northwest music community, joining Seattle Chamber Players as a programmer in 2001, then joining Seattle Symphony in 2003 where she became Vice President for Artistic Planning during the final years of Gerard Schwarz’s long tenure as Music Director. She retained the position through the legendary Ludovic Morlot/Simon Woods era from 2011 to 2018 during which the Symphony reached a zenith in its international standing, driven largely by its new music initiatives, including the [untitled] series of concerts in the Grand Lobby of Benaroya Hall that often featured Symphony musicians performing contemporary chamber and electroacoustic works, plus numerous high-profile commissions and premieres of full orchestra works by Elliott Carter, Valentin Silvestrov and John Luther Adams among others.

After the departure of Morlot and Woods, Dubinets found herself unwanted by the Symphony’s new and more parsimonious leadership team, whereupon she decamped to the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, thence to the London Philharmonic Orchestra, where she serves as the co-equal of the orchestra’s Chief Executive David Burke. Since the LPO retains a Principal Conductor (currently Edward Gardner) instead of a Music Director, Dubinets enjoys complete autonomy over the orchestra’s programming, a role that she has clearly relished after many years spent managing the intricate politics of US orchestras. Her projects in London have included a much-acclaimed production of Heiner Goebbels’ A House of Call and a high-profile US tour with violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja.

Dubinets is also the author of Russian Composers Abroad: How they left, stayed, returned, published by Indiana University Press in 2021. Those of us with fond memories of her time in the Pacific Northwest wish her well with this exciting appointment.

by Michael Schell