Tag: File Under ? blog

CD Review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Caroline Shaw & Sō Percussion – Sing On (Video)

Photo: Adam Sliwinski

Composer, vocalist, and instrumentalist Caroline Shaw rejoins Sō Percussion for Rectangles and Circumstance, a new full length recording out today on Nonesuch. To celebrate the release, a video for the lead-off single, “Sing On,” has been released on YouTube today.

Rectangles and Circumstance combines imaginative percussion writing with abundant electronics and Shaw’s pop-adjacent singing. Shaw takes on an assured and distinctive role. Her voice is sometimes treated to make it nearly unrecognizable. Elsewhere, her singing is presented in its natural, fetchingly lyrical guise. Sō has developed a sound world that befits Shaw’s heterogeneous compositions, using a plethora of pitched percussion, drums, and electronics. Whether the music leans towards pop, classicism, or totalism, it is uniformly engaging. Recommended

-Christian Carey

 

 

 

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

The Manhattan Choral Ensemble Sings Victoria (Concert review)

The Manhattan Choral Ensemble, Thomas Cunningham, Director

The Victoria Requiem

Church of the Blessed Sacrament

May 18, 2024

By Christian Carey for Sequenza 21

 

NEW YORK – The Manhattan Choral Ensemble is an auditioned forty-voice group. Among them are enthusiastic amateurs, professional singers who want to work with Director Thomas Cunningham, who is a dynamic musician and imaginative programmer, and singers from music-adjacent pursuits, notably musical theater. A diverse group to be sure, but they sing beautifully together. 

 

The main offering on their May concert program was by Tomas Luis de Victoria (1548-1611), his Requiem Mass, published in 1605. Victoria was chaplain in Madrid to Empress Maria, and the piece was written for her funeral in 1603. It is one of the most highly regarded works of the late Renaissance. 

 

MCE performed both the chant and polyphonic portions of the mass, impressively tuned in unison passages and counterpoint alike. Cunningham took tempos realistic for a forty-voice group. At the same time, he urged them to sing in animated fashion, crafting a rendition of the Requiem that retained a sense of period practice. 

 

Recognizing that his audience came to the concert with varying levels of background, Cunningham introduced the Requiem with a brief overview. Between sections, he discussed the piece, pointing out aspects of the music to listen for and features of its text. It was an excellent way to help attendees listen to a piece in liturgical Latin, and in a style that may have been foreign to some of them.

 

The program included a few other pieces interspersed with movements of the Requiem. While including texts that were appropriate additions, this afforded listeners a pause from Victoria’s musical language. Beati quorum via, by Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924), is broken into sections of women and men in canon that then come together in sumptuous harmonies. The piece affords the sopranos an opportunity to sing in soaring upper lines, and the other parts each to access their best respective registers, the conclusion saving and savoring the low basses.

 

Abendlied by Josef Gabriel Rheinberger (1839-1901) is a gently lyrical piece using short imitative exchanges that alternate with homophonic passages and cadences redolent of late Romanticism. The concert concluded with In Paradisum, by Z. Randall Stroope (b. 1953), which is dedicated, “In honor of the victims of the coronavirus pandemic, and the thousands of families left behind.” A touching composition in a colorful pantonal language with rich dynamic contrasts, including swelling crescendos and gently reflective pianissimo passages. This was followed by a brief Responsorium in plainchant. The additions to the program demonstrated the versatility of MCE, capable of performing early music, emotive Romantic fare, and a challenging twenty-first century piece. 

 

Visual art is often featured as part of the group’s presentations. Allison Walker created beautiful, abstract prints that were placed around the performance space, illuminating each of the movements of the Requiem. Art, music, and an interspersed lecture all served to support a memorable performance by the Manhattan Choral Ensemble. 

 

by Christian Carey
BMOP, CDs, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Orchestras

BMOP Records Galbraith (CD Review)

Nancy Galbraith

Everything Flows

BMOP Sound

Published by Sequenza 21 

 

Nancy Galbraith has taught for a number of years at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. During that time, she has created a body of compelling orchestral works. Colorfully scored and post-minimal in approach, Galbraith’s music has received prominent performances but been relatively underserved on recording. As a corrective, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, conducted by Gil Rose, has recorded for BMOPsound three of her concertos, all written in the past eight years. 

 

Violin Concerto No. 1 (2017) was premiered by its soloist here, Alyssa Wang, with the Carnegie Mellon Contemporary Ensemble. In the liner notes, Galbraith says that the piece was waiting for a talent like Wang with whom to collaborate. While it is surprising that it took the composer this long to create a violin concerto – she has written well for strings in the past – the piece is an important one in her catalog, in which she explores an abiding interest – Asian music. 

 

The first movement employs the sliding tone and rotating pentatonic scales found in Chinese music. Alongside it is a riff using the same scalar elements but with a blues scale cast. The soloist remains in the world of Asia, while the ensemble traverses the musical distance between Beijing and the Bayou, particularly in the piano part and the movement’s final cadence. There is even a snatch in the middle of a Gershwin-like sauntering dance. The second movement, subtitled “Eggshell White Night,” inhabits an impressionist sound world, the solo intermingling with flute, harp, and an exotic theme in the strings and brass. It underscores the connection between French music at the turn of the twentieth century and the incorporation of non-Western materials. 

 

The last movement intersperses short arcing cadenzas and perpetual motion passages with another theme using five-note scales in the strings. As the piece progresses, harp, chimes, and wind chords are added to the mix. The violin soloist plays modal arpeggiations against polyrhythms in the orchestra, then a final cadenza, beginning slowly with double-stops and building to an emphatic flourish. The orchestra rejoins, presenting the theme against a final scalar passage that closes the piece in the stratosphere. Here as elsewhere, Wang does a superb job balancing virtuosity and expressivity, creating a thoughtful and ebullient reading of the concerto that befits its heterogeneous identity.

 

Lindsey Goodman is the soloist in Galbraith’s Concerto for Flute and Orchestra (2019). The opening sets up metric transformations and mixed meters in bongos and other drums, and Goodman soon enters with a syncopated solo that serves as the theme for the movement. Her tone, even in the highest portions of the melody, is rich and dynamically nuanced. Chords in the strings and mallet instruments accompany a second melody, bifurcated into oscillations and arpeggiations. Repeated notes move the piece into a brisk section completed by a cadenza with a series of special effects. The main theme returns to complete the movement. 

 

The second movement features chimes and imitation between the strings and the flute solo. It is an elegant combination of exoticism and pastoral effect. Eventually, the flute is joined in a contrapuntal version of its solo and then a ground bass in the strings that lead into another cadenza passage, this one using standard techniques with off-kilter  phrasing. The chimes, other pitched percussion, and a registrally dispersed version of the string chords accompany a denouement in the soloist and winds. The final movement is a moto perpetuo redolent of South Asian rhythms and melodic elements. Once again, the bongos provide a strong groove that is soon replicated rhythmically by the flute in flurries of arpeggios. The soloist remains in the foreground, with harp and pizzicato strings joining. The tempo downshifts a bit and a muscular passage of string melodies and overblown flute is accompanied by clangorous percussion. A final cadenza brings the music to a boil, with a racing tutti passage accompanying the flute playing fleet arpeggios and an altissimo octave leap to conclude. 

 

Everything Flows: Concerto for Solo Percussion and Orchestra, is an ideal showcase for the talented percussionist Abby Langhorst. Syncopated, jazz-inflected riffs include an Aeolian theme that serves as a refrain between solo breaks and appears fragmented elsewhere. An electric guitar adds to the vernacular quality of the orchestration. The percussionist plays a number of non-pitched instruments, including a plethora of different-sized drums, woodblock, brake drums, and cymbals. They embellish the refrain rhythms by successively troping it and adding contrasting polyrhythms. The percussionist also gets their own chance to play the refrain in glockenspiel passages. There is an oasis in the midst of the work, with the soloist undertaking a lyrical melody on vibraphone. The departure from it slowly rebuilds from small solo passages in several of the winds and then a subdued major key ground that adds vibraphone, guitar, and double bass. As this floats away, the final theme is announced by quick lines on the marimba. This is a feint, as we return to the earlier ambience. A chiming solo passage, accompanied by alto flute and sustained strings, is belatedly succeeded by a return to the uptempo riff on woodblock and a fortissimo cadenza of toms, bass drum, and, finally, the entire fleet of drums at the soloist’s disposal. The main theme returns in an artful division into the various sections in swinging counterpoint. The soloist buoys the ensemble with the groove from his final cadenza, the piece ending in a fortissimo tutti.

Galbraith’s recent concertos are expert creations. Abetted by abundantly talented soloists and the skilful advocacy and playing of BMOP under Rose, this release is highly recommended.

 

-Christian Carey

 

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

Richard Baker – The Tyranny of Fun (CD Review)

Richard Baker 

The Tyranny of Fun

NMC Recordings

 

Composer and conductor Richard Baker (b. 1972) has been an important fixture on the British new music scene for over a decade. While The Tyranny of Fun refers to a work on the recording, it also could be seen as an analog for Baker’s mixture of fierceness and whimsy in many of his pieces. He had the right teacher – Louis Andriessen at the Hague – to develop this sort of emotional dichotomy in his work. He has also championed composers like Gerald Barry and Philip Venables, who both walk an eclectic tightrope in their respective oeuvres.

 

The recording opens with Baker playing Crank, a brief piece for a diatonic music box that emphasizes playful delicacy. Made out of material from Andriessen, it in no way sounds like a student work. Crank is immediately followed by the far more forceful Motet II, an instrumental work (note the paradox), played by the contemporary ensemble CHROMA, conducted by the composer. Cast in six movements, Motet II is Baker’s Covid piece: like so many others, he was confined to his home during the worst of the pandemic, responding with a work that stretched his language to a viscerality that is both challenging and moving.

The title piece was commissioned by the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, conducted on the recording by Finnegan Downie Dear and adorned with live electronics by Nye Parry. The concept of fun as tyranny resonates with the endless birthday parties and children’s activities that a friend of Baker’s, who coined the phrase, meant. One can also look at it as the exhausting approach to consumption and the relentless pursuit of faux connectivity through electronic devices that has plagued our era. 

 

The first movement’s refrain is a pulsating bass drum, reminiscent of a car driving past with a thunderous subwoofer engaged. Horn solos and low harp are juxtaposed with Stravinskyian terse melodies from flutes and piccolo. It is night music for an oversaturated urban landscape. In the second movement, low winds provide a minor third ostinato while strings deploy descending glissandos and pizzicatos, and brass undertake short blasts. The electronics are more prominent with cascades of chords and blurting melodies. The bass drum effect appears at particular points, this time accompanied by a syncopated, jazz-inspired arrangement. The low winds morph from interval to a swinging riff that is regularly interrupted by synthesizer in a modernist vein. The percussion is filled out to make a bespoke kit to accompany the arrangement. Partway through, fragments of the aforementioned are juxtaposed, often alternating rapidly. Learning to Fly finishes with a slow drag groove, followed by an accelerando, ending with the thrumming bass drum and two cymbal strikes. 

 

Angelus is a finely textured piece for the percussionist group Three Angels. Chimes reminiscent of the Angelus bells – a Sunday night tradition in Ireland – and pitched percussion are built over a staggered eighth note rhythm. In its latter half, shifts of instrumentation and accentuation provide surprising moments in this otherwise quite subdued work. It closes with chiming, leaving us to the contemplation of the Angelus experience. 

 

Learning to Fly is a three-movement piece for BCMG, once again conducted by Dear. It is Baker’s music appearing as totalist in style, with the first movement featuring basset clarinet, played by Oliver Janes and horn solos (the latter playing a blues scale), a Downtown groove from the percussion, repeated notes in the winds, and Hammond organ stabs. Marked “Boisterously,” it behaves as advertised. A raucous set of horn calls and high flutes in an ever-quickening accelerando closes the first movement, which leads attacca into the next, marked “Somnolent.” Janes plays a mysterious solo that is accompanied by pitched percussion and high flutes (mimicking their previous lines). Lurching winds and sustained harmony end the second movement pianissimo. A slap attack announces the last movement, subtitled “Suddenly Awake,” succeeded by a repeated-note filled solo from Janes accompanied by puckish percussion. Tutti chords and then horn solos are both added to the solo plus percussion cohort. Bass drum, cymbals and tutti brass overtake the proceedings in stentorian fashion. In the midst, the basset clarinet emerges, supported by the other members of the wind cohort. A slow horn solo and chimes announce a change in section in which the basset clarinet plays throat tones and then a high melody of oscillating seconds accompanied by whistle rods. This enigmatic conclusion is suddenly terminated with a forte triangle attack. Learning to Fly is a substantial work that demonstrates Baker’s formidable capabilities as an imaginative orchestrator with a keen sense of pacing.

 

The late Sir Stephen Cleobury conducts the Choir of King’s College in one of Baker’s relatively few choral works, To Keep a True Lent. This setting is of a fascinating poem by Robert Herrick, which discusses that a fast based on spiritual contemplation is more important than abstaining from meat during Lent; a forward-thinking theological text. Repeating dyads and trichords create a canvas for the melody, which ricochets from part to part rapidly, with textual utterances equally quicksilver in their presentation. Its brusque post-minimalism suits the demands of the texts and is performed by King’s with impressive diction and intonation. 

 

Homagesquisse and Hwyl fawr ffrindiau close the recording with two short works, again for BCMG conducted by Dearie. The first was written for a 2008 visit by Pierre Boulez to receive an honorary doctorate from the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. It is a trope of Boulez’s Messagesquisse, containing brief excerpts from the piece and a similar hexachordal construction. Beyond that, Baker remains steadfast to his own compositional predilections, with pervasive shifts of dynamics and musical material that accumulate into a prismatic whole. The second, its title in Welsh befitting Baker’s own background and where he currently lives, is a translation of the children’s song “Goodbye Friends” (which is “Goodnight Ladies” outside of Wales). Baker himself trained as an oboist and this valedictory piece features the instrument. The farewell was to Jackie and Stephen Newbould, who served as Executive Producer and Artistic Director of BCMG, and were stepping down from their roles. Descending lines, including glissandos, in the oboe are then ghosted by other winds. The piano plays a prominent role, both in supporting the others with ground bass and chordal harmonies, and in a brief interlude that recalls the childrens’ song. The ensemble halts, leaving only a pianissimo descending minor third in the marimba to finish this artfully touching work. 

 

The Tyranny of Fun is a generous sampling of Baker’s music, which is some of the most compelling written by his generation of British composers. BCMG performs with consummate skill and musicality. This is one of my favorite CDs thus far in 2024.

 

-Christian Carey



by Christian Carey
CD Review, Cello, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Guitar, Minimalism

David Crowell – Point Cloud (CD Review)

David Crowell
Point/Cloud
Better Company Records

Composer and multi-instrumentalist David Crowell has minimalist bona fides: he played in the Philip Glass Ensemble for nearly a decade. But Crowell draws from a number of traditions in his work: prog rock, jazz, folk, and other contemporary classical idioms. His latest, Point/Cloud, features works for percussion, guitars, and a moving finale for voice, cello, and Crowell’s instrumentation.

Sandbox Percussion performs Verses for a Liminal Space. At nearly a quarter of an hour, it shows Crowell’s keen sense of pacing. He conceives of the piece as being cast in three verses. There is a totalist ambience to its opening, with forceful drums combined with pitched percussion to rousing effect. The middle of work is a beautiful slow section. The drums gradually recede to only articulating emphasized beats, and then fall into silence. Pitched percussion arpeggiations and a repeated semitone form a ground that gradually adds melodic content and bowed crotales. Shimmering glockenspiel transitions the work back to the fast tempo, with cascading riffs in the xylophone and the drums gradually returning, first just to accentuate and then to provide hemiola as metric undergirding. The pitched percussion likewise engages in metric transformations. Just when it seems that things are about to heat up, Verses suddenly ends, denying expectations. This is a common feature of Crowell’s music, and it reminds me of Schumann’s Papillions, where each movement feels like entering and exiting a room. The door closes and the sound world changes.

The title work for overdubbed guitars is played by Dan Lippel. Cast in three movements, it begins with a classical guitar solo that is soon joined by electric guitars in cascading repetitions and arpeggiated harmonies. The influence of Electric Counterpoint is clear. Crowell, however, also incorporates prog rock elements reminiscent of Steve Howe and Steve Hackett, particularly in the supple middle movement. However, in the final movement polyrhythmic ostinatos return the music to the orbit of Steve Reich. Lippel plays all the various components of this considerable challenging work with precision, employing a variety of timbres and dynamic shadings.

Lippel is joined by another guitar virtuoso, Mak Grgic, on the classical guitar duo Pacific Coast Highway. Once again, polyrhythms are omnipresent, and there is a sense of jazz and flamenco à la the Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin, and Pace de Lucia Friday Night in San Francisco album. The playing is authoritative, nuanced, and propulsive.

Vocalist and cellist Iva Casian-Lakoš collaborates with Crowell on the final piece, 2 Hours in Zadar. The work contrasts with the rhythmic effervescence of the previous three, moving at a slow tempo and exploring gradually evolving textures. The text is by Casian-Lakoš’s mother, Nela Lakoš. The piece begins with a sample of Nela Lakoš speaking Croatian. Casian-Lakoš plays shards of tunes and glissandos, singing with an exquisite fragility. Crowell’s sustained electronics and frequent wide glissandos, some manipulated samples of the voice, ghost the singing and cello lines, creating a compound melodic framework that is both colorful and vulnerable in presentation. Crowell hews closer to Sigur Rós than the influences found in the previous pieces. It provides the program with a touching valediction. Point/Cloud is uniformly excellent, a recording that is among my favorites thus far in 2024.

Christian Carey

by Christian Carey
Chamber Music, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Experimental Music, File Under?

Kyle Bruckmann: of rivers (Recording review)

 

Kyle Bruckmann

of rivers

New Focus Recordings

 

Oboist, composer, and electronic musician Kyle Bruckmann is a dedicated advocate for contemporary concert music. One of the founding members of Splinter Reeds, he currently plays in a number of ensembles in the San Francisco Bay area, including sfSound, San Francisco Contemporary Players, and the Stockton Symphony. Bruckann teaches oboe and contemporary music at University of the Pacific. 

 

On his latest recording, Bruckmann programs a number of pieces that incorporate wildly challenging extended techniques and, in some, electronics. Bruckmann’s own Proximity, Affect features the latter, as well as deconstructed instruments. Thrumming bass and harmonics derived from it, succeeded by scraps of bleeps, bespoke instrumental interjections, and white noise open the work. Gradually, a bass passage an octave higher is introduced, along with a steady stream of repetitions. It is distressed by snippets of the middle’s material. The big bass returns only to have its ostinato hijacked by a percussive variant.

 

Jessie Cox’s AT(ou)M is a festival of multiphonics, microtones, and altissimo register playing. Its concept is the exploration of resonant spaces. The reverb imparted to the oboe attacks makes a point of this. Its concomitant idea is the exploration of the silences between attacks as they decay. This is an important component, as it invites the listener to hear the piece as more than its sounds, to experience slices of time with minimal transitions. Cox is a thoughtful composer, and AT(ou)M is a signature example of this. Here, as elsewhere, Bruckmann displays consummate technical skill, even in the most challenging elements of the score.

 

Hannah A. Barnes samples the oboe, put through a vocoder, and uses this material for the electronics part of Dis/inte/gration. The title is a good clue, as the piece begins with the foundational gesture of the tuning pitch, gradually moving away from it in sinuous scalar passages and angular leaps. The electronics arrive and begin to augment the proceedings with sounds that range from low octave grumbles to a choir of oboe glissandos. Its conclusion is described by Barnes as, “exacting change, and forcing the material to collapse in on itself, a ‘bacteria of voices.’”

 

Helen Grime used to be an oboist herself, and Arachne (spider) displays her familiarity with the instrument, particularly in her awareness of how note choices and the use of various fingerings abet artful lines. The piece has an incantatory quality, with beguiling ascending runs and cascades of trills – all seeming to weave a web of modernist counterpoint. An insistent upper note becomes an idée fixe, only to dissolve in the piece’s denouement. 

 

Drop by Linda Bouchard, for solo improviser and electronics, starts off with howling high notes, soon to be followed by water sounds: droplets, waves, and ice breaking, which are juxtaposed with terse rejoinders from the oboe. In one of the best moments, fleet runs directly respond to the flurries of rainwater in the electronics. Drop is an example of an organic use of sampling, and Bruckmann’s response to the recorded sounds is well-considered and abundantly chops-laden. 

 

Christopher Burns prefers to work closely with the interpreters’ of his music, creating a personal, collaborative experience as part of a composition’s gestation. The Mutiny of Rivers is written for EKG, Bruckmann’s duo with electronics musician Ernst Karel. Karel usually employs analog electronics, while Burns works in the digital domain. The composer combines both of these, and Bruckmann plays English horn, playing both composed and improvisatory passages. This agglomeration of elements proves to be the best of all worlds, with Karel’s analog instruments, typifying EKG’s “slowly unfolding textures and timbral nuances,” and Burns’s digital “spiky and multi-layered aesthetic,” combine in an intricate sound palette of microtones, timbral variety, and glissandos. Bruckmann, in turn, uses an instrument with additional low notes, yet plays in the altissimo register with aplomb. 

 

Burns also intends The Mutiny of Rivers to contain puzzles and even traps. One is that he gives Karel six tracks of sampled audio to use, some of which may be chopped or suppressed in performance. With versatile approaches and abundant aleatory, one can readily hear this as a playfully earnest way to provide a measure of trapeze walk to the piece. Burns cites Luigi Nono’s La Lontananza Nostalgica Utopica Futura as a totem work and although The Mutiny of Rivers contains its own panoply of sounds, the shared intent is manifest. 

 

Bruckmann’s of rivers is a formidable and satisfying recording, one of my favorites thus far in 2024. 

 

-Christian Carey


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

Philip Glass Solo – 88 keys at 87 (Review)

Philip Glass Solo
Philip Glass, piano
Orange Mountain Music

This is the second piano album made by Philip Glass. Solo Piano (1989) contains some overlap of tracks with the latest recording, Philip Glass Solo (2024), but there are distinct differences between the renditions on each. At 87 years of age, and in demand from opera houses, symphony orchestras, chamber ensembles, and filmmakers for a steady spate of new works, a solo performance recording might seem like an unnecessary addition to Glass’s catalog. But it is in those aforementioned differences found in the music that he shares a different vantage point on his work.

Timings suggest tempo and, in the case of Glass’s music, tempo fluctuations. “Mad Rush,” a work that many pianists have interpreted, here appears like it is being created before the listeners’ ear, lasting a few minutes longer than the previous recording, with a sense of suppleness that belies the motoric fashion many adopt when playing it. “Opening” has a pulsation to the ostinato patterns that shimmers, different voices accentuated in the texture to create a gesture akin to windmills instead of, again, motors.

Four of the “Metamorphosis” movements are programmed. Here, there is a positively Romantic ambience that in “Metamorphosis 1” recalls the shifting appearances of Schumann’s “Papillon.” “Metamorphosis 2” has soaring high melodies like those of Chopin, while thunderous bass, modal mixture, and hemiola give a Brahmsian cast to “Metamorphosis 3.” “Metamorphosis 5” is girded with chromaticism of a Lisztian variety.

“Truman Sleeps” is one of the most memorable sections of Glass’s score for The Truman Show. Here, he builds from a delicate, rubato opening to virile verticals and a gripping, arcing melody. The piece’s coda moves the material down to the bass register, its chord progression both eminently memorable and vintage Glass.

-Christian Carey

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Composers, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Minimalism, Saxophone

Kinds of ~Nois (CD Review)

Kinds of ~Nois

~Nois, Kinds of Kings

Bright Shiny Things

 

The Bright Shiny Things recording Kinds of ~Nois is the result of a six-year long collaboration between the saxophone quartet ~Nois (Julian Velasco, soprano; Hunter Bockes, alto; Jordan Lulloff, tenor; János Csontos, baritone) and the composer collective Kinds of Kings (Shelley Washington, Maria Kaoutzani, and Gemma Peacocke). The recorded works are generally in a complexly post-minimal style, but each composer has their own distinctive voice. ~Nois’s rich ensemble tone and dexterous rhythms serve the music quite well. One can readily hear that a lot of preparation was put into Kinds of ~Nois, as the performances are note-perfect and assuredly interpreted. 

 

Peacocke’s Hazel begins the recording. A slow introduction of polychords is succeeded by mercurial ostinatos that ricochet between parts. The harmonies are equally quixotic, with shifting tonalities and glissandos distressing their framework. Chordal passages, culminating in quickly repeating verticals, descending glissandos, and a boisterous bass-line. This is ultimately offset by a new theme in the alto and soprano saxophones. A smoky slow section creates a mysterious interlude, only to have the fast-paced ostinatos from earlier return and morph into a syncopated groove. 

 

Eternal Present, by Washington, is cast in two movements: I. Now; II. Always. The first movement has a mournful cast, with a plaintive melody and repeating sections of equally doleful verticals. The second movement is sprightly, with short phrases of minor key ostinatos and duets alternating between the upper and lower cohorts of the saxophone quartet. The ostinatos gradually build into a spiderweb of overlapping lines. This is cut into swaths of material interrupted by rests with soft oscillating thirds in the upper voices and a bellicose bass melody. A chorale of repeated chords, followed by the opening passagework, gradually builds into a mass of overlapping gestures played forte, with surprising harmonic shifts interrupted by several pregnant pauses.  

 

Kaoutzani’s Count Me In is a vigorous workout for the quartet that begins with stentorian repetitions that are then replaced by a softer section of the same. Angular duets appear, only to be supplanted by a martial headlong passage of staccato rhythms. Octaves and overtones arrive in a slower tempo, placed in the foreground, but are soon rejected by a speedy agitato rejoinder. The slow music returns with a wispy melody winding its way through various registers, creating a supple denouement.  

 

Watson is not only an accomplished composer, she is also a baritone saxophonist. Csontos is joined by Watson on her baritone saxophone duo piece BIG TALK, a work excoriating rape culture. It begins with a spoken word “Opening Poem,” followed by growling overtones, squalling high notes, and dissonant counterpoint in a fast groove. Octave oscillations, rough low notes, and brawny repetitions are added to the mix. There, there is an interlude with slowly dovetailing lines and a microtonal devolvement of a unison. Howling ascents create a visceral effect, as do altissimo shrieks. This is succeeded by a quick polyrhythmic duet in the low register, aggressive in demeanor. Repeated unisons are gradually replaced by complex overlaps of imitative lines. The duo adds noise to inexorable repetitions. Once again, there is a set of polyrhythms, this time a heterophonic unison melody. Two-voice counterpoint speeds towards repeated notes, unisons that are then distressed with dissonant seconds. A melody is overlaid in the top voice and a new ostinato, wide-ranging with sepulchral bass notes, articulates the phrase structure. An abrupt close slams the door on this violent piece that provides commentary that even eloquent texts about rape culture might not.

 

Shore to Shore by Kaoutzani is the most adventurous piece, with multiphonics and fluttering trills adorning the first section’s slow-moving, lyrical ambience. Stacked canons are then unfurled to create an animated, contrapuntal coda. Peacocke’s Dwalm ends the recording with a polytempo excursion in which slow drones and chords are juxtaposed against repeated notes and quickly moving ostinatos. As these elapse, the quartet drops into synced motoric passages. The coda brings in an attractive new melody that once again is deconstructed in overlapping fashion, followed by repeating octaves that pulse until a sudden final vertical. Dwalm’s digressive character is a fetching approach to retaining minimal elements while still featuring an element of surprise. An excellent closer to Kinds of ~Nois: a recording that is highly recommended. 

 

-Christian Carey


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

Euclid Quartet – Breve (Recording Review)

Breve

Euclid Quartet

Afinat

 

The Breve Quartet has been in residence at Indiana University South Bend for sixteen years. During that time they have recorded a wide range of repertoire. Like so many ensembles, their catalog was put on ice during the pandemic, and their latest since 2017 for Afinat, Breve, returns with eleven miniatures in disparate styles. Listeners are encouraged to shuffle them to hear in any order. 

 

Miniatures are often thought of as the fare of encores, but a full program of them suggests that small doesn’t mean insubstantial or merely flashy. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s C-minor Adagio and Fugue is a case in point, with rigorously constructed counterpoint that reminds us of his possession of a copy of J.S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. 

 

Another standout is Graceful Ghost Rag, a transcription of one of William Bolcom’s well-known piano rags that the quartet plays jauntily. In a similar pocket is their graceful rendition of George Gershwin’s Lullaby. Shostakovich’s Polka, From the Golden Age is a mischievous sendup of the popular dance, with deliberate “wrong notes” and pizzicatos and glissandos lampooning the saccharine lushness of bourgeois culture. One could imagine all of them appearing as part of an updated soundtrack for a film of the silent era. 

 

Quartettsatz by Franz Schubert features an uplifting theme offset by transitions rife with portentous diminished harmonies. Hugo Wolf’s Italian Serenade takes an archetypal form and adorns it with his characteristic chromaticism. Although he is best known as a member of the Second Viennese School of early 12-tone composers, Anton Webern’s Langsamer Satz is a reminder that he also wrote attractive tonal works. Christantemi is full of the plangent melodies one also hears in Giacomo Puccini’s operas.

 

Metro Chabacano by Javier Álvarez recreates a ride on the Mexico City train line with repeated chords for chugging and zooming melodies that depict the rush of commuter travel. Four, For Tango written by the composer and master bandoneonist Dino Saluzzi, mixes the dance’s characteristic rhythmic patterns with open-string chords and altissimo upward slides. If you are listening straight through, Hector Villa-Lobos’ La Oración del Torero closes the disc with another dose of traditional Latinx rhythms and modal tunes, interspersed with recitative-like melodic passages.

 

The Euclid Quartet performs in all of the afore-mentioned, stylisitically disparate pieces with both technical and interpretive assuredness. Sometimes less is more, as evidenced by Breve. 

 

-Christian Carey



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

Martin Arnold – Flax (CD Review)

Martin Arnold 

Flax

Kerry Yong, piano

Another Timbre

 

Martin Arnold’s solo piano work Flax has a sad backstory. It was originally commissioned by the abundantly talented new music pianist Philip Thomas, who shortly afterward became seriously ill and was unable to premiere the work. Kerry Yong performs the piece in his honor on an Another Timbre CD. The piece was already well underway when this transpired, but one cannot hear the considerable poignancy and elegant gracefulness of Flax without connecting it to Thomas’s loss of health. 

 

Arnold is a Canadian composer whose work is influenced by Morton Feldman and the Wandelweiser Collective. Feldman is a nexus between Arnold and Thomas, whose recordings of Feldman’s complete piano music are superlative. Flax, at over eighty minutes in duration and in a slow tempo throughout, is certainly reminiscent of the aforementioned influences. However, when creating Flax, Arnold also had other considerations to ponder. In the CD’s program note essay, we learn  that Thomas had mentioned to Arnold that the composer’s use of the upper register had made the pianist rethink it. Thus, Flax prioritizes the top two octaves of the piano. When writing the piece, Arnold was also considering bebop and early modern jazz, how there are dissonances added to the changes that create harmonic ambiguity. The first two thirds of Flax use extended verticals garnered from this practice. The ending section of the piece returns to modality and organum, both aspects of much of Arnold’s other music. 

Thelonious Monk’s voicings and Feldman-esque delicate slowness are an interesting mix. The placement of much of the music in the upper register also reframes the harmony. Until nearly halfway through, when a bass note appears, it feels like an event. At that point, there begins to be a duet between diminished chords and bass notes in the left hand and slow motion bop in the right. 

 

Kerry Yong is a persuasive interpreter of Flax, with a detailed approach to dynamics and phrasing that punctuates distinctive registral spaces in the music. Voicing of the harmony is a pivotal component of this piece, and it is where Yong truly excels, providing a sense of trajectory throughout.  

 

I don’t think that I have heard a Wandelweiser adjacent work that embodies anything close to this one. That said, Flax is a successful experiment from Arnold, stretching his language in surprising and appealing ways. Recommended.

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey