Tag: CD review

CD Review, File Under?, jazz

Marc Ducret Plays Time Berne (CD Review)

Palm Sweat: Marc Ducret Plays the Music of Tim Berne
Marc Ducret, guitar/arranger
Out of Your Head CD/DL

This is no ordinary jazz guitar album. Saxophonist/composer Tim Berne and guitarist Marc Ducret are longtime collaborators. After receiving a stack of compositions from Berne, Ducret set out to arrange them for overdubbed guitars, brass choir, voices, percussion, and cello (played by his son). Ducret knows Berne’s own style well, and while celebratingnd 2 it places his own stamp on this collection of work.

“Curls/Palm Sweat/Mirth of the Cool” begins the recording. An eleven-minute long suite, in it Ducret comes on heavy, with overdubbed, distorted guitars, panning between speakers. I didn’t previously associate Berne’s music with power chords, but Ducret rocking out is in some ways analogous to Berne’s Snake Oil band at full fury. “Stutter Step” begins with a long drone, over which an extended solo of angular lines, complete with whammy bar vibrato, create a fractious demeanor. There are then a series of harmonic arpeggiations alongside brass choir. The layering of instruments is adroit and the result, once again, faithful to Berne’s musical language. “Shiteless 1 and 2” are a study in contrasts, the first exploring noise and then adding horns to the mix, and the second overlapping harp-like arpeggios and a clean guitar sound.

Not all the compositions feature amplification. “Rolled Oats 1” and “Rolled Oats 2” feature a more traditional jazz sound, without effects or extreme amplitude. They are lithe standouts among the recording’s walls of sound, and a welcome respite that features Ducret’s playing in a gentler vein.

Palm Sweat is a fascinating translation by Ducret of Berne’s works. Recommended.

-Christian Carey

by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?, Twentieth Century Composer

Bernd Alois Zimmermann – Recomposed (CD Review)

Recomposed, Volumes 1-3

Bernd Alois Zimmermann

WDR Sinfonieorchester, Heinz Holliger: conductor

Sarah Wegener: soprano; Marcus Weiss: saxophone;  Ueli Wiget: piano

Wergo 3xCD boxed set

 

Bernd Alois Zimmermann (1918-1970) lived in Cologne and was an important member of the postwar avant-garde. However, he retained an independent voice, and did not operate in the circles of the Cologne School. His 1960 opera Soldaten, an ambitious work in terms of theatrical devices, vocal requirements, and musical demands, is both a zenith in terms of post-tonal writing and, with its use of collage, a precursor to postmodernism. 

 

Everyone needs to make a living. Zimmermann did so by crafting arrangements of preexisting pieces. His orchestrations did not strictly hew to the styles of the originals, instead creating vibrant translations that not only reconsidered them but proved influential on his own compositions. Many of the arrangements were composed for radio, a medium with which Zimmermann would retain a lifelong connection. He wrote about a hundred arrangements for radio and an additional hundred scores for radio plays. Heinz Holliger leads the WDR Sinfonieorchester in performances that emphasize Zimmermann’s penchant for rapid shifts of texture and dynamics – the aforementioned collage technique is built up in several of the pieces. The recording also features original compositions, some previously unrecorded.

 

Soprano Sarah Wegener admirably negotiates arrangements with their Zimmermann spin. Her performance of Franz Liszt’s “Oh! Quand je dors” is particularly lovely, the soprano spinning long lyrical lines and declaiming the text with detail and vivid dynamics. The orchestration is Mahlerian in cast, an interesting take on a Liszt lieder. The composer’s “Die Drei Zigeuner ” features nimble Magyar violin solos, with Wegerner’s voice blooming in arioso passages. Saxophonist Marcus Weiss provides a dynamic rendition of Sergei Rachmaninov’s “Romanze,” originally composed for solo piano. The orchestral interludes are thunderous, alternating with Weiss’s ardent phrasing. Uli Wiget is the nimble soloist in the aphoristic, blazing Concertino for Piano and Orchestra. 

 

Zimmermann was interested in Brazilian music, and the first volume of Recomposed includes several compositions and arrangements with South American influences. His own “Algoana. Caprichos Brasilieros” combines folk dances with stentorian percussion and, in places, more than a hint of Rite of Spring. ”A Lenda do Caboclo,” a piano piece by Villa-Lobos, is given a soaring rendition, with ebullient string passages and timpani supporting the clave rhythm. Darius Milhaud and Zimmermann were on amicable terms. Two arrangements  of movements from Milhaud’s “Saudades do Brasil. Suite de Danses” are included here, “Leme “ and”Sorocaba,” the former combining Ravelian impressionism and neo-classicism a lá middle period Stravinsky. “Sorocaba” has a lilting rhythm and overlapping winds. Equally fetching are two arrangements from Alfredo Casella’s “Undici pezzi infantili.”

 

Vernacular music comes from other sources as well, and Zimmermann demonstrates a keen ear for various styles. A polka by Bedrich Smetana is given a wry scoring. Antonin Dvořák’s “Causerie,” originally for solo piano, sounds as if the composer himself could have orchestrated it. A septet provides Cyril Scott’s “Lotus Land” with an exotic flavor. There’s even a “Blues,” composed by Edmund Nick. Zimmermann creates a rendition more akin to Hollywood than St. Louis, but it is attractive nevertheless.

 

A standout among the original pieces is Kontraste, a six-movement suite for “an imaginary ballet.” Composed in 1953, its waltzes and march must have thoroughly perplexed the composers at Darmstadt. Although the dance rhythms are faithful, much of the scoring is actually reminiscent of early Schoenberg. Also from 1953, “Symphonie in einem Satz” is at the other end of the  spectrum of Zimmermann’s work, a fiery serial piece that is most compelling. A valuable addition to the programmed works is “Konzert für Orchester,” a piece from 1949 set in a Bergian idiom.

 

WERGO Records knows how to do it right. The three-CD boxed set is accompanied by a 92-page booklet. Original compositions by Zimmermann are set alongside his orchestrations, providing interesting comparisons and contrasts. Holliger engages in a conversation with Michael Kunkel about the arrangements and original works. 

 

-Christian Carey



by Christian Carey
Contemporary Classical

Julia Holter and Spektral Quartet record Alex Temple (CD Review)

Behind the Wallpaper

Alex Temple

Spektral Quartet: Clara Lyon (violin), Theo Espy (violin), Doyle Armbrust (viola), Russell Rolen (cello); Julia Holter: voice

New Amsterdam Records

Out this Friday, March 3rd, via New Amsterdam Records  is composer Alex Temple’s cycle Behind the Wallpaper. Vocalist Julia Holter joins the Spektral Quartet in this song cycle inspired by Temple’s gender transition. 

Holter, as always, is a marvel, with expressive, liquescent singing throughout her soprano voice’s range. The Spektral Quartet is given a variety of styles to play, from doleful lyricism reminiscent of Shostakovich’s string quartets to post-minimalism. The musical smorgasbord reminds me in places of Elvis Costello’s collaboration with the Brodsky Quartet, The Juliet Letters. Temple is fluent in marshaling these materials. Behind the Wallpaper deals with a significant event in Temple’s life, yet her touch is light and lyrics affirming. Recommended.

 

 

by Christian Carey
Contemporary Classical

Oracle – Joanna Mattrey and Gabby Fluke-Mogul (CD Review)

Oracle

Joanna Mattrey, Gabby Fluke-Mogul

Relative Pitch Records RPR1143

 

In their first collaboration, improvisers violist Joanna Mattrey and violinist Gabby Fluke-Mogul create music that combines drones, microtones, and extended techniques. Mattrey also plays stroh violin, which includes an attached horn that serves as a resonating chamber. Performing the aforementioned sounds on the stroh creates far out results.

 

Each piece on the album is titled, “The,” followed by a single evocative word. Wayward lines and multi-stop pizzicatos begin “The Vision,” which are then followed by pizzicato glissandos accompanying a bluesy riff. Improvisations vacillate between these two demeanors, with greater sustain accumulating. The piece settles, only to be followed by the eruptive “The Trinity,’ with a howl of over-bowing and various methods to elicit scratching and non-pitched noise. “The Potion” returns to pitched sounds, with a duet between repeating patterns and glissandos. 

 

“The Switch” explores the lower register and quasi chitara strumming. As an antidote to all the upper register violin prior, Mattrey explores scordatura low tuning on her viola and supplies cello-like sounds. The texture gradually thins out, with glissandos and pizzicati dueling for primacy. “The Switch” ends on a sustained, bass register note. “The Child” begins most quietly, with upper register over-bowing, harmonics, then continues with pizzicato multi-stops versus a delicate altissimo melody. The delicate contrast with previous selections is welcome. While there is no steady pitch center, the duo play thirds and sixths and a modal melody. This isn’t to last, as hails of pizzicatos supplement it. Things remain soft, but string noise, circular glissandos,  and wood thwacks, with the occasional harmonic, create an entirely new atmosphere. This crescendos, and the noise quotient is upped, only to suddenly shift to quiet harmonics. Like so many of the pieces on Oracle, the music may be improvised, but the players are experienced enough to shape the musical narrative seamlessly.

 

“The Womb” is Mattrey and Fluke-Mogul at their most scary. The use of glissandos, sotto voce noise, and a  voice-like, panting line that predominates its opener could be licensed for a horror movie: why shouldn’t free improvers get some of the dough? Parlando whimpering is accompanied by an upper register fiddle followed by squealing string noise. This moves into a drone section of repeated plucked notes and microtonal sustained double stops. The monster’s voice returns, slighter higher, making it even more frightening. Just when you think the piece has hit its zenith, Mattrey and Fluke-Mogul quickly pull back to soft harmonics, only to build to a conclusion that howls with fury.

Oracle closes with “The Blade,” in which clock-like wood blows and a viola drone that gradually moves between three pitches and then is replaced with a high register squall. A number of ostinatos are juxtaposed, some pitched, some extended techniques, with the one constant being the rapping on wood. Like a broken clock coming apart, the material dissolves, with a pizzicato heartbeat ticking and altissimo harmonics and scratches gathering toward the close, an acerbic descending flourish. 

 

Mattrey and Fluke-Mogul have hit things off from the beginning. One hopes their musical association will continue.

 

-Christian Carey

 

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

Anthony Cheung on Kairos (CD Review)

Anthony Cheung

Music for Film, Sculpture, and Captions

Ueli Wiget, piano, Ensemble Modern, Franck Ollu, conductor;

Ensemble dal Niente, Michael Lewanski, conductor;

Ensemble Musikfabrik, Elena Schwarz, conductor

Kairos Music

 

Anthony Cheung is a prolific composer whose music is situated astride spectralism and second modernity. This is his fifth portrait CD, his first for Kairos, and first of music that accompanies extra musical media. While these sources of inspiration are pivotal components for the music’s genesis, it stands on its own as an audio recording. The works are performed by three top flight groups, Ensemble Modern, conducted by Franck Ollu with piano soloist Ueli Wiget, Ensemble dal Niente, conducted by Michael Lewanski, and Ensemble Musikfabrik, conducted by Elena Schwarz. 

 

Visual artist Ruth Asawa (1926-2013) made sculptures out of wire mesh. A line can go anywhere (2019) is a three-movement piano concerto inspired by Asawa’s work. The first movement’s title, “Wound Wire,” points out the connection between piano strings and Asaway’s wires. Harp-like piano arpeggiations and descending color chords are met by tumult, often riding just below the surface, that periodically erupts into repeated brass verticals. The piano enters a swirl of percussion and brass glissandos and shakes. Wind solos imitate the piano’s gestures with a dovetailing effect, and the movement ends with softer, angular attacks from soloist and ensemble. Wiget does a stalwart job matching the dynamic of the ensemble without ever overplaying. His imitation of the attacks of other instruments is noteworthy. 

 

The second movement, “Weightless/Sustained,” begins with the soft dynamic that ended the first movement. A second keyboard, tuned down a quarter tone, as well as microtones from the ensemble, serve to blur the piano’s music, creating a haze of overtones. Not to be outdone, the piano thrums low bass notes followed by birdsong-like flurries. Gongs and chimes further complicate the atmosphere, and descending wind lines are juxtaposed with the piano’s now ubiquitous birdsong and taut, quickly, repeated verticals. Once again, a denouement closes the movement.

 

The piece’s finale, “Woven Wire – Homage to Ruth Asawa” is a clever rendering in sound of the sculptor’s working method. The piano contorts a single line solo, let’s call it wiry, while metallophones also provide a taste of Asawa’s metallic medium. A plethora of glissandos in the various sections of the ensemble, as well as periodic stabs from winds, enhance this impression. A final section finds the piano playing repeated notes while boisterous brass and punctilious percussion attacks create a vibrant accompaniment. The piece closes with string glissandos surrounding final punctuations from, successively, piano and percussion. 

 

The Natural Word (2019) is based on the work of author Sean Zdenek, who has researched the use of closed captions in television and film. Zdemek observes that sound captions are selective. Since not every sound can be included, the editor must decide what to foreground and what background noises to select. The Natural Word doesn’t include captions spoken aloud, but rather uses a collection of them, taken from Zdenek and expanded by Cheung. The composer then found analogous film clips to score. The result is a series of short contrasting sections, many of which use coloristic orchestration: seagulls are depicted via altissimo glissandos, pattering rain by percussion, upper register plucked piano, and harp, and so on. Cheung does not just seek to imitate sounds, but in juxtaposing them, mine their cultural reference points. Thus, he shuttles between disparate scorings like jump cuts, but the piece is a cohesive whole.

 

Null and void (2021) was composed for the soundtrack of a short silent film Stump the Guesser, created by the Canadian filmmakers Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galin Johnson. In his liner notes, Tim Rutherford-Johnson describes the film as having a “surrealistic, absurdist tone,” and being inspired by the Russian poet and dramatist Daniil Karms (1905-1942). Cheung responds to the material, and to Karms’ aesthetic, with nearly everything but the kitchen sink: Harry Partch’s instruments, thunderous, motoric percussion that references Russian futurism, swing-era jazz brass, with wah-wah mutes, glissandos, and altissimo stabs, and a pistol firing (there is a game of Russian roulette on screen). I would greatly like to see how it syncs up with the film, but null and void as an aural document has a beguiling sound world. 

 

Cheung’s partnership with Kairos continues to expand, encompassing a variety of techniques and inspirational material. Accompanying videos of these pieces would be welcome – dare we hope for a DVD release?

 

-Christian Carey

 

 

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?, jazz, Piano, Pop

Brad Mehldau Plays the Beatles (CD Review)

 

Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays the Beatles

Brad Mehldau

Nonesuch Records

 

Pianist Brad Mehldau is a chameleon-like figure, able to play music in many styles and a creative composer. He excels at finding new standards, recent pop songs that benefit from jazz treatment. The Beatles’s songbook is among the most durable in the pop canon, having endured numerous revisionings, some inspired and, sadly, some insipid. Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays the Beatles is strongly inspired. 

 

A live recording that consists of ten Beatles songs and a David Bowie encore (“Life on Mars”), the audience is warmly enthusiastic. Other pianists who mine pop for new standards, Herbie Hancock, Ethan Iverson, and Christopher O’Riley to name just a few, each bring their own approach to the task. Often, the original’s arrangement is discarded for flights of fancy. Mehldau sometimes stays true to the Beatles’ recordings. I Am the Walrus’ adheres to as much of the psychedelic bounty as two hands can manage. “For No One” is riff-filled during its instrumental breaks, but keeps true to the verse and chorus and its beginning and conclusion.

 

Elsewhere, Mehldau uses the songs as springboards for improvisation. “I Saw Her Standing There” is given a rousing rock ‘n roll treatment with a bluesy solo. “Golden Slumbers” is adorned with post-bop riffs. “Your Mother Should Know” gets a swing shuffle treatment, while “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” sounds in places like Thelonious Monk has visited the stage. “Here, There, and Everywhere” is moving in its restraint, played by Mehldau with a rubato approach that begins true to the original, then adds modal jazz’s parallel planing of chords and dissonant extensions that add surprise to the  tune. 

 

The Bowie encore is performed with poignancy alternating with virtuosic octave passages. Interestingly, instead of embellishing the chord structure, Mehldau strips out a few passing chords to keep the changes in a more Romantic vein. 

 

Above all, Mehldau displays curiosity and affection for the songs themselves. The Beatles will continue to inspire different approaches to their music. Future interpreters would do well to keep Your Mother Should Know in mind as a touchstone for how it should be done. 

 

-Christian Carey



by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?, jazz

The Clarinet Trio on Leo (CD Review)

The Clarinet Trio

Transformations and Further Passages

Jürgen Kupke, clarinet; Michael Thieke, alto clarinet, clarinet; Gebhard Ullmann, bass clarinet

Leo Records LR 921

 

Gebhard Ullmann is celebrating his sixty-fifth birthday with the release of three albums, Transformations and Further Passages on Leo among them. The Clarinet Trio are a superb group of improvisers, Jürgen Kupke and Michael Thieke are eloquent foils for Ullmann. Unlike some other Ullmann outings, where he clearly leads the proceedings, this is a context in which everyone collaborates and gets to take solo turns. In fact, three of the tracks are solos, one for each member of the trio. While some pieces are improvised, much of the music-making here is based on compositions by European jazz composers.

 

“Collective #13” is one of the former, and finds the musicians exploring tone colors overlapping in a compound melody, vibrato and overblowing creating a shimmering texture. Upward glissandos and a howl from the bass clarinet punctuate the close of the piece, which concludes with a distressed unison detuned with subtle pitch bends. 

 

In Joki Freund’s “Cleopatra,” a bebop moto perpetuo with the tune overlapping dominates. Likewise, “Virtue,” by Manfred Schoof, explores a swing ballad with tasty changes and a bit more tension in the solos. “Set ‘em Up,” by Albert Mangelsdorff, is a quicksilver bebop tune, harmonized by the trio with great suavity. Once again, when two players drop out, the remaining soloist performs in a more experimental vein. Eventually, “Set ‘em Up” moves into a skronking trio before a more traditional outro. 

 

“Tension/Varié,” also by Mangelsdorff,  initially combines free passages with a jaunty heterophonic refrain, then there are long stretches of sustained notes and mercurial flurries. The tune slowly emerges again from the texture, leading to a new section of chorale-like gestures. A loping accompaniment gives the tune, now floridly embellished with howling altissimo gestures, a Middle Eastern feel. The denouement combines the rhythmic groove with the previous chorales. “Tension/Varié” is a wide-ranging and satisfying musical journey.

 

There is a liveliness and puckish sense of humor, even in pieces that allow all three clarinetists to caterwaul with abandon. “Get Up, From Now On,” by Karl Berger, has a bluesy riff that is explored for much of the piece. But there are free jazz breaks where the trio trade licks and howls. The juxtaposition is surprising, but left turns such as these seem to be the trio’s calling card. 

 

“Solo 1,” performed by Thieke, traverses the compass of the alto clarinet in jangling lines that are punctuated by stentorian low notes. Ullmann’s “Solo 2” begins delicately with whiffs of birdsong, only to be ruptured to wakefulness with fortissimo bass notes. Microtonal interpolations close the solo, a brief essay with a bounty of material. It segues into Rolf Kühn’s “Don’t Run,” which fleshes out the experimental gestures of Ullmann’s solo. Mangelsdorff’s “Theme from Vietnam” crests and subsides in waves of interactive melody and bent notes. It is followed by Kupke’s “Solo 3,” in which disjunct lines are delicately deployed with repeats of the head motive. It is an enigmatic close to an exploratory album. It makes one eager to hear more of Ullmann’s sixty-fifth birthday celebrations.

 

-Christian Carey


by Christian Carey
CD Review, Classical Music, File Under?, Piano

Pollini plays late Beethoven Piano Sonatas (CD Review)

Beethoven Piano Sonatas, Opp. 101 & 106

Maurizio Pollini

Deutsche Grammophon

 

Maurizio Pollini turned eighty during the recording sessions for this CD in 2021 and 2022. The great pianist spent forty years doing his first recording of all thirty-two piano sonatas by Beethoven. He returned to the last three during the anniversary year of 2020. Now, Pollini has decided to document two of the late sonatas again for Deutsche Grammophon. Redundant? Hardly. These renditions are distinctive, demonstrating Pollini’s assured technique and interpretive powers in recrafting these sonatas, which he has played for so many years.  

 

Generally here, Pollini selects tempos on the fast side. He even plays the Hammerklavier, Op. 106, up to its metronome markings, often thought impractical by previous interpreters and musicologists. In the A Major Sonata, Op. 101, this choice is rewarding as well. The second movement, Vivace alla marcia, displays a jubilant swagger, and the final movement, an Allegro marked Geschwind (quick like the wind) is lightly articulated and quickly rendered, displaying both virtuosity and delicacy. The first and third movements, an Allegretto ma non troppo and Adagio ma non troppo, pay attention to the non troppo (“not too much”) designations, providing both with a lyrical, legato approach to flowing melodies. 

 

The supposed malfunctioning of Beethoven’s metronome could be an understandable assumption at the speeds suggested in the score for the Hammerklavier Sonata. Under Pollini’s hands, the tempos seem altogether natural, if quite impressive. The pianist occasionally allows the principal theme of the first movement to settle for emphasis. Apart from that, blazing virtuosity persists throughout. After a bravura opening, Pollini plays the Scherzo with mercurial grace. He delicately pulls back the dynamics for a chromatic interlude, only to attack the forte close to the section with powerful staccatos. From this miniature dance movement, the sonata then supplies a fifteen-minute long adagio movement, quite typical of the melancholy, ruminative slow movements of Beethoven’s late style. Pollini adopts poignancy without undue sentimentality, shading the various sections with a variety of dynamics and articulations. The last movement begins Largo, a modulatory introduction with several recitative-like passages. It then is succeeded by an ebullient Allegro finale with fugal passages that Pollini takes clearly but at dizzying speed. There is a triumphal quality in the pianist’s rendition that is glorious to hear. Not bad for an eighty year old!

 

Some chaff at the practice of recording and re-recording the standard repertoire. When it is done as Pollini has here, I say bring it on. 

 

-Christian Carey


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

András Schiff – Clavichord on ECM (CD Review)

J.S. Bach

András Schiff

Clavichord

 

He was the best organist in Europe and a mean harpsichordist too, but Johann Sebastian Bach loved playing the clavichord. The intimacy of its soft dynamic range, supple tone, and the ability to have an aftertouch with a slight vibrato made the instrument a distinctive one, ideal for small rooms: for practice or to be played for a few listeners. András Schiff has distinguished himself as one of the premiere Bach pianists of our time, making a convincing case for the music to be realized on a concert grand. He has recorded extensively for ECM’s New Series, the Goldberg Variations (2001)  the Six Partitas (2007), and both books of the Well-Tempered Clavier (2012). On Clavichord, he turns to the smaller instrument, playing a double CD recording of works eminently suited for it. In the program notes, Schiff says that he always begins his day with Bach. While he used to do so on the piano, it is now the clavichord that occupies his early hours. The period instrument used for the recording was built by Joris Potvlieghe in 2003 and is a replica of the unfretted Specken clavichord of 1743.

 

The clavichord thrives in contrapuntal textures of two or three voices. Thus Schiff has assembled a number of pieces without the thickened textures of the largest fugues. The standouts of the recording are the 2-part Inventions and 3-part Symphonias. Schiff adopts tempos that often are more deliberate than his renditions on the piano, reflecting the action of the clavichord. One can still play quickly, however, as he demonstrates with a fleet-fingered rendition of the F-major Invention. The architectural shaping of pieces like the E-flat major Sinfonia elucidates its form with consummate elegance. The Sinfonias in D and E both adopt dance rhythms, which are performed with verve.

 

Four Duets (BWV 802-805) demonstrate that even in a two-voice texture, Bach could create considerable contrapuntal interest and spicy chromatic inflections. Schiff plays these with a period-informed sense of fluidity of tempo. The Capriccio BWV 992 has a characteristic flair, with subtitles that detail a person being entreated by his friends not to undertake a journey. This is something we would more likely see from Beethoven or Schumann. The variations, on the tune Lontanza del fratello dilettissimo, include multiple arias and finish with a jaunty “Fuga al posta ” – a postcard from abroad!

 

Clavichord includes two particularly imposing pieces. The Ricercar á 3 is from the Musical Offering, the composer’s late career gift to Frederick the Great. The Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue (BWV 903) is a virtuosic masterpiece. Schiff digs in, relishing every moment and showing us the full capacity of the clavichord as an instrument that should be better known. 

 

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

Mother, Sister, Daughter: Musica Secreta Sings the Stories of Women (CD Review)

Mother, Sister, Daughter

Musica Secreta, directed by Laurie Stras

Lucky Music

 

Over a career that spans thirty years, Musica Secreta has established themselves as one of the premiere all-female vocal ensembles. They have recorded a number of pieces by women, expanding the repertoire of Renaissance music and our understanding of the social, liturgical,  and artistic circles in which it was disseminated. The theme of this recording is “storytelling:” how stories, poems, and music were crafted to connect generations of women, hence Mother, Sister, Daughter as its title. While many of the pieces are anonymous, the circumstances in which they were copied and performed give clues as to their provenance. The recording isn’t strictly of works attributed to women – there are pieces by Antoine Brumel and Jean Mouton – but these also extol the relationships between women, particularly those who have entered a convent.

 

Missa de Beata Virgine is a partial setting of the Ordinary, containing a Kyrie and troped Gloria with extra texts that extol the Virgin Mary. Here as elsewhere, instruments are used to accompany and to flesh out the texture; organ in particular, but also harp (including bray harp and double harp), and treble and bass viols. This is consistent with the practice of music-making in convents. Musica Secreta has a well-blended sound with  just enough brightness in the sopranos and a warm timbre in the mezzo/alto cohort. The solo chants are prepared with the character of the individual voices in mind. One of the main selections, The Vespers of St. Lucy was likely composed in a convent devoted to St. Lucia in Verona. The notes, by ensemble director Laurie Stras, are fastidiously annotated: I would recommend reading them before diving in to listening. The Vespers include five brief movements that tell the story of St. Lucy. The full group’s singing is fetchingly contrasted with smaller subsections.  

 

Ave mater matris Dei, attributed to Jean Mouton, consists of vocal canons accompanied by the organ, the refrains opening up to sumptuous tutti. Virgo Maria speciosissima, attributed to Leonora d’Este, of that most famous of families, consists of overlapping waves in the voices performed with artful coordination by Musica Secreta. It is one of the standouts on the recording. 

 

The other prominent collections on the recording are two sets of Vespers from San Matteo in Florence, dedicated to Saint Clare. After a plainchant opening is the beautiful Mundi totius gloriam, with high-lying dovetailing lines alternating once again with chant. The group chants are paced with a welcome sense of forward momentum. The hymn En praeclara virgo Clara and a Salve sponsa Dei setting conclude the second set of Vespers with radiant polyphonic singing. 

 

A contemporary piece, commissioned by the ensemble from Joanna Marsh, completes the CD program (two additional pieces are available on the digital recording). The Veiled Sisters explores the entire compass of the group, beginning with a low-lying melody in the altos that is succeeded by upper register divisi. The two then meld into a formidable tutti. Marsh deftly incorporates contemporary harmonies and expanded ranges while using the resources of Musica Secreta is a way consistent with their approach on the rest of the recording; organ accompanies them and the alternation of textures creates a connection between old and new. 

 

In recent years, research and performance of women’s music from the Renaissance has come a long way, in no small part to Musica Secreta and Laurie Stras. It is heartening to learn that, even five hundred years ago, the stories women told to one another provided strength, agency, and, in the case of song, great beauty. 

 

-Christian Carey



by Christian Carey