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"New" Music Log

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After decades of collecting, this recording marks my first purchase of a recording containing only works of Mario Catelnuovo-Tedesco. I have a few of his works sprinkled across compilations, but not these. I bought this disc for the composer only secondarily. The main reason I bought it was to hear something new from Tianwa Yang, and to hear Pieter-Jelle de Boer’s conducting. The single disc of de Boer playing Rachmaninoff in Etcetera’s complete set of the composer’s piano music was one of the highlights, along with that from Nino Gvetadze, which was the reason I bought that set.

As a showcase for Ms Yang’s fiddling, this disc works very well. Yang belongs to that elite group of modern young-ish artists who can play anything without ever seeming to have any difficulties. Her tone is unfailingly lovely, she plays perfect highs, perfect lows, and everything in between, with perfectly executed vibrato of just the right amount. She presents the same sense of ease that Hilary Hahn does. Seriously, these neo-romantic works seem to offer no challenge to her, and in return she delivers just about as good playing as can be imagined. Given her Brahms Concerto and Rihm chamber music, this does not surprise. The conducting of de Boer sounds entirely satisfactory, with the conductor acting as second fiddle and letting the soloist shine. I’d like to hear him conduct some core rep.

As to the music itself, well, the Concerto Italiano sounds lush and movie soundtrack-y, with lovely tunes and nifty orchestration. One might almost swear that the Violin Concerto No 2 is a movie soundtrack from the height of the 50s, with the violin the musical stand-in for Charleton Heston from some movie that was never released due to contractual issues. The music often achieves a downright Korngoldian level of lushness, and in addition to the supreme opulence, the solo writing sounds technically accomplished and satisfying to listen to. Still, this does not stand with the great violin concertos of the last century.

These are not great works, and I will not listen to them frequently, but I will listen to them again to hear top notch violin playing for its own sake.

The only downside to the recording is sound quality, which is a bit opaque, but otherwise fine.
 
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The word dreadful does not begin to describe this disc of non-music. Forty-five minutes of electronic noise, starting off with over six minutes of tweeter-only exercises, it slowly and excruciatingly unfolds, grating and annoying for the duration. Apparently, it was meant to be Xenakis’ equivalent of a Gesamtkunstwerk, merging in performance with architecture, mirrors, texts – and laser beams. And laser beams! This is as good an example of (quasi-) intellectualism as art run amok (or maybe ‘a muck’) as exists. This is so bad it couldn’t even be included in a Rob Zombie movie. Rather than stream this, I paid $1.49 for the download. I feel like requesting a $17.99 refund.
 
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Last year, I finally stumbled upon some chamber music written by Krzysztof Meyer. It was revelatory, in that it revealed to me a composer who writes chamber music every bit as good qualitatively as some core rep greats. The music sounds dense, knotty, gnarly, uncompromising, and brilliant. Perusing offerings at various recording vendors, I found other available recordings, but I waited until now to go for something else. That something else is the composer’s set of thirteen string quartets since very often composers write some of their best music for that ensemble. With a Naxos sale, I scooped up the set for the princely sum of $14 and change. Even if the quartets ended up sounding lousy, something I thought essentially impossible, I’d be out of pocket next to nothing. If they met expectations, well, now we’re talkin’.

Listening proceeded in volume order, so quartets 5, 6, and 8 came first. The Fifth starts off with an opening movement where the cello plays almost every note, and the music sounds dark and brooding and unforgiving, like Shostakovich minus the laughs. Things get more intense from there. The second movement is a nervous, grueling piece of music, like an Allan Pettersson symphony but in string quartet, but good. Meyer never lets up on the tension in the faster second and slower third movements, though maybe he does just a bit in the fourth movement, which ends with heaping helpings of solo cello, but the dark but not overwhelmingly heavy fifth movement returns to unremitting seriousness. This is one heckuva of a way for an ensemble to launch a quartet series. The Sixth sounds lighter in mood to start, but its dissonance and reliance on pizzicato and Sul ponticello lend it a modern sound, which remains whether music is fast or slow, and Meyer returns to unremittingly serious music in the concluding Lento. The Eighth can hardly be considered light, and the somewhat tart, slow, and serious opening gives way to intense and unwaveringly serious sounding music. It just never lets up for its duration, but it never sounds anything less than absolutely compelling, forcing the listener to await every note with something approaching aural avarice. A monumentally great opening to the cycle.

Volume two includes the Ninth, Eleventh, and Twelfth quartets. The Ninth, closely and airlessly recorded, which aids the work, starts off with high voltage stridency which doesn’t let up for the duration of the movement, and then the second wallops the listener’s ear with some superb harmonic invention that is at once hard to hear and impossible not to devour as greedily as possible, and the third dances around with all those pizzacati. The work continues along on a similar trajectory, returning to high voltage playing in the final, fifth movement, revisiting styles from earlier and revealing influences, but sounding distinct from them. The single movement Eleventh follows, and the dark, intense work fills a void, a void of music for those who think some of DSCH’s quartets sound too lightweight. The tension never really yields in this work, yet it does not wear the listener down. The massive Twelfth goes on and on, taking the listener on a ride, with much debt to DSCH, on whom the Meyer is a published expert. The movement names end up properly descriptive as well. The Vivo perks up, with nifty tremolos, and the Dolente expresses sorrow as well as any quartet has, and the Prestissimo is truly prestissimo. The whole thing works and hides its duration as the listener gets absorbed in every musical moment.

The third volume opens with the Seventh Quartet, and it continues on with the supremely high quality from the first note. The single movement work sounds like a discombobulated, almost unsteady musical representation of a troubled dream, though not quite a nightmare. The individual instruments at times sound uncannily distinct, and though they are playing the same piece, it sounds purposely disoriented, and the tension never lets up – fast, slow, those are just variations in how quickly the tension assaults the ears. Yet it never sounds too harsh or oppressive. Neat. The slow Lento that opens the first movement of the Tenth Quartet sounds like late DSCH in its desolation, but it transitions to an Allegro assai that switches to biting playing, and then it alternates styles seamlessly. The long, slow second movement likewise alternates between slow and slower music, yet it maintains tension such that its over fourteen-minute length doesn’t matter, and it does so while not feeling quick or feeling long – it feels like fourteen minutes well spent. The brief Scherzo starts off plucky and sort of playful, but Meyer ratchets up the intensity significantly in the middle section, and then in the long final movement, the music veers between melancholy and tense and fast and intense playing, again with transitions so seamless and old Lou would have approved. A big, beefy, weighty work. The disc closes with the composer’s Thirteenth. The five-movement quartet played attacca has four descriptive titles for the first four movements (Calmo, Impetuoso, Appassionato, Feroce) and then a perpetuum mobile Prestissimo closer. The second and fourth movements are brief, while the other three are more standard. It’s almost like a valedictory work, with every compositional device crammed in, in perfect proportion, in each movement, and at times it takes on an almost neo-romantic feel, in an uncompromisingly modern way. It’s a peach.

The cycle ends with the first four quartets, and here one can hear a younger composer at once expressing music in his own, unabashedly modernist voice, and some influences, including a bit of Bartok, to name one, which includes some near quotations. (Might as well borrow from the best.) The first two almost sound like apprentice works, but an apprentice destined to greatness, as it takes only until the single movement Second for the composer to hit his stride, where the intensity factor gets ratcheted up with some fierce unison writing and searing tension. The Third and Fourth sound like qualitative steps closer to the quartets that follow, with transitions nearly as seamless, scale just about as large, harmonies just about as dense, and every compositional technique included in just about as satisfying a manner. I do not want to make these seem like lesser works, because they are humdingers and hold the listener’s attention more than almost any quartets, it’s just they the quartets that follow offer even more.

For these recordings, I had high expectations going in. They got smashed. For the first time in a long time, probably since I discovered the music of Cristóbal de Morales, listening to these works provided experiences where I listened as excitedly and intensely as I did when I first started discovering core rep classics. I cannot think of a body of post-war quartets that sound better, more significant, more immediately impactful than these, and Meyer’s achievements immediately rival the works of the Holy Tetrarchy. This is great music; these are masterpieces. For real. Clearly, I need to explore more of the composer’s music. He needs to have some Big Name conductors, artists, and ensembles take up his cause. In the meantime, in the cycle, the Wieniawski String Quartet delivers the goods at a world class level and Naxos delivers up to snuff if not always SOTA sound. I need to see about getting the Wilanów Quartet’s recordings.

One of my purchases of the century.

Thanks for the review, sounds very interesting. Alas not available quite so cheaply in the UK at the moment, but nonetheless...
 
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New to me Stephan Krehl was a music teacher of no little renown in his day, ultimately ending up as Rector of the Leipzig Conservatory, a position first held by Mendelssohn. He also wrote several influential textbooks. Born in the same decade as Mahler and Strauss and Debussy, his music, or at least the music here, has none of their forward-looking or revolutionary qualities. The two works included are the very definition of backward-looking musical conservatism, proudly and competently bringing forward the music of the German romantics. The opening Op 17 String Quartet sounds like a well-crafted melding of Brahms, one of Krehl’s teachers, and Mendelssohn, with the latter most evident in the third movement Vivace. It does not rise to the level of the works of the greats, and it sounds sort of academic in that some writing seems to be illustrating exactly what an aspiring composer might do to write a successful string quartet. It sounds relaxed and tuneful and beautiful and unchallenging. The Op 19 Clarinet Quintet, not too surprisingly, sounds very similar.

While the music contained in the recording will not receive too many airings around here, I would not be averse to hearing more from the artists involved. The all-female Larchmere String Quaret, out of Indiana – Evansville, not Bloomington – play splendidly, and two of the members co-wrote the liner notes. As recorded, they produce a most pleasing, warm sound that would work well with Szymanowski or Debussy or early Schoenberg, and Wonkak Kim, born in Korea but now hailing from Tennessee, can certainly play the clarinet well. The Larchmere have hustle as they used a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the recording, and in using the performance hall at the University of Evansville, they chose a fine sounding venue. Perhaps they can go that route again.
 
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It’s been a while since I last tried something new from Bright Sheng. That’s a shame and my bad. His masterful concerto Nanking! Nanking!, for pipa and orchestra, rates as one of my favorite concerti from the last quarter century, so I have no real excuse. So, I went for something else. As per usual, Naxos is the go-to label for this composer, so this disc of three works got the nod.

The disc opens with Let Fly, a violin concerto that was originally a triple commission by the Detroit Symphony, the Singapore Symphony, and the London BBC Symphony. The dedicatee was no less than Gil Shaham, who premiered it on three continents. (I mean, really, a Shaham/Slatkin recording would be the dream recording with this piece of info.) The nearly half-hour piece is big, brash, bold, loud, colorful, and sounds like an Americana infused work with passing elements from other cultures, not the least of which is Chinese, which provided the folk song that partially inspired the work. Oh, and Mexican, with the trumpet parts sounding like ‘roided out Mariachi music. The orchestration is over the top, but except in a few big tuttis, where that five-foot tam-tam and bass drums roar, it is expertly deployed. The violinist has lots to do, whether rushing through virtuosic passages or a beautiful slow movement where Chinese influences are obvious at times, and per Sheng’s instructions, the soloist is encouraged to come up with a cadenza before, well, letting fly in the playing-to-the-gallery finale. Dan Zhu plays nicely for the most part, but some of the top registers do not sound ideal. The work lacks the impact of Nanking! Nanking!, but it is fun enough.

Zodiac Tales, a commission by the Philadelphia Orchestra when under the direction of Christoph Eschenbach and premiered partially by Slatkin and then in total by Eschenbach, follows. Comprised of six movements, each referencing a different zodiac animal, the piece is another big piece, scored for tons of instruments, including four cowbells, surely enough to please Christopher Walken. It has that joyous, cacophonous, not at all bothered with Western traditions feel to the music, combined with rigor of western forms. The second movement, Of Mice and Cats sounds like it pays homage, however loosely, to Bartok, especially in the string writing. The fourth movement, The Elephant Eating Serpent, has the same intensity as Nanking! Nanking!, and sort of just steamrolls over the listener. Awesome! That is followed by The Tomb of the Soulful Dog, an elegy for the composer’s mother who was born in a year of the dog. It is quite lovely and solemn to open and includes grander scaled tuttis, very reminiscent of Mahler, but with a much less Western sound. And if one wants to hear a nice trombone solo, there’s one in the final movement, The Flying Horses. Overall, this is a most satisfying work and one that hopefully gains traction in concert halls.

The disc closes with the Suzhou Overture, commissioned by the Suzhou Symphony Orchestra, and played by the orchestra here, the piece pays homage to the three-thousand-year-old city. Gobs of beautiful string writing, with some of it sounding like luxuriant reworkings of discarded extracts of the Turangalîla-Symphonie, and more playful passages, some sounding like a Chinese equivalent of Copland, make the work a very fine concert opener.

Sheng himself conducts the works, with the Suzhou Symphony Orchestra also covering Let Fly and the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra doing the honors in Zodiac Tales. Hopefully, other conductors take up the works and record them. Sound and playing are both up to modern standards.
 
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Krzysztof Penderecki pops up only a few times in my collection, and always in compilations, so I thought it about time I purchased at least one album dedicated to his music. I opted for the string quartets played by the Tippett Quartet since I have had good luck with them before. All four quartets fit easily on one disc, so the Tippett throw in a nice sized String Trio and the super-brief Der unterbrochene Gedanke as filler, and the disc still lasts just over fifty minutes.

The First quartet, coming in at just a smidge over six minutes, is compact and jittery and eerie and night-musicy and avant-garde, all of which is just fine, especially when the work is so properly proportioned. The eight-ish minute Second offers a qualitative step up, and deploys some new techniques. He uses the high strings to create and eerie and impactful whistling effect, and the music stays largely quiet, with only intermittent outbursts. A big, beefy cello starts Der unterbrochene Gedanke, with everyone getting to do something, but it ends so quickly, and develops so little, that it’s like a sketch for an intro for a bigger work. Finally, with the thirteen minute and change String Trio from 1990/91, the listener gets something bigger, and the work has slashing and thrashing action, back and forths between the strings, and some delicate and quiet playing, and that’s just in the first couple minutes. The second movement Vivace sounds almost like DSCH and shows that a string trio can pack a wallop too. The Third Quartet also reminds one of DSCH, and perhaps Schnittke. More accessible, it nonetheless has extended passages of musical relentlessness, grinding away at the listener. After the sixteen-minute Third comes the six or so minute, two movement Fourth. Compact like the opener, and containing music much closer to the Fourth, it just gets going, especially when folk inspired music gets introduced, and then ends. At least it leaves the listener wanting more.

As far as post-war quartets go, this set is pretty good, if not up there with the very best. The Tippett Quartet play superbly, and Naxos delivers fine sound, if perhaps it sounds too close at times.
 
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Ever on the lookout for some new chamber music to hear what is out there, I stumbled upon this disc of Turkish Piano Trios right after hearing Fazil Say’s disc devoted to violin works, so I was predisposed to want to hear more Turkish music. The ensemble is Turkish, and the recording took place at Bursa Uludağ University, so it’s a homegrown affair.

The recording opens with Hasan Ferid Alnar’s Piano Trio from 1966, which while not the oldest work presented, sounds the most conservative. The most Turkish sounding sounding music is reserved for the strings, particularly the violin, which contains melodies not usually heard in western art music, though if one has listened to Saygun or even Bartok, they shall not startle. The structure of the work is entirely conventional, and the use of some Turkish compositional techniques involving intervals offers the main departure in what might otherwise be described as Anatolian Goldmark. And the abrupt ending to the whole work kind of leads to a huh? type response.

Ferit Tüzün’s short, under seven-minute Piano Trio from 1950 follows, and it sounds more modernist in a standard post-war type of way, though it too relies on some rhythmic patterns less common in western music. Its brevity increases its relative punch, a brief work that could serve as an energetic opener for a recital.

İlhan Baran’s single movement Dönüşümler, or Transformations, from 1975 follows. It represents an even more modernist work, though one more accessible than some of the drier academic works. The single unfolding movement work is fairly common, and here, after the slow and somber opening, the piece moves all over the place, from more vibrant, rhythmically complex music to tuneful, beautiful music where the violin more or less stands in for a singer. Baran’s use of pizzicato stands out in one transformation for its slow plucking, which is then echoed by the piano. One can also detect a bit of jazz influence in some of the writing. The constantly forward moving piece ends up sounding mighty satisfying.

But not as satisfying as Oğuzhan Balci’s Piano Trio No 1, from 2019. Written for the Bosphorus Trio, with one movement dedicated to each member. The opening Sunrise Red boasts vibrant, dissonant, rhythmically alert writing which the performers dash off with brio, making complex but listenable modern music fun. The long, slow second movement, Pure Water, starts with a sparse, lonely piano, setting the pulse which comes back as a simple ostinato laying the foundation for the strings as the music slowly develops and builds to weighty but not pulverizing climax before fading to silence. The Mare ends the work, and as its name suggests, a galloping rhythm and pulse dominates the movement right up to its effectively abrupt end.

This disc, which apparently represents the first in a new series, offers some new music of no little accomplishment, and most exciting of all, the Bosphorus Trio has got the goods and should record some core rep, and hopefully more installments in the Naxos series. Oğuzhan Balci emerges as name for me to look out for going forward as well.

Playing is tip-top, and sound is very fine.
 
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I'd seen the name Ye Xiaogang before when Naxos released various prior titles, and I recognized it from the DG release of Das Lied von der Erde, played by the Shanghai SO and conducted by Yu Long, where for filler Ye reset the poems in the original Mandarin. Turns out he also composed one of the works played to open the 2008 Olympics. I won’t hold that against him. When this brand-new recording became available for a few bucks, I figured I’d go with the latest release just because.

Twilight in Tibet opens the recording, and it’s something else. Just shy of nineteen minutes long, it has an extended, sparse, beautiful opening, with percussion gently pairing with winds and strings, before the tenor sings his part, and then the piece transforms into an at times dissonant as all get out musical behemoth, though the score often veers back to sparser, more beautiful support. The horn soloist blats out his part effectively, and Yijie Shi sings everything in at least adequate manner, but some of the gentler singing really sounds affective. Various influences can be heard, and the much-welcomed eastern influences are obvious but also transformed. Mahler and Strauss and Puccini (La Boheme) can be heard, but this is no mere pastiche or copycat work.

Seven Episodes for Lin’an follows. An over half-hour song cycle for soprano, tenor, and baritone and orchestra, it marries some light, clear music to some occasionally thunderous and wonderfully dissonant music. And who can resist marimbas, properly deployed? The wonderfully named Song Yuanming (to these western eyes) sings her songs splendidly and offers a bright, lovely contrast to the musical background, though all singers sound quite good. The whole mixed song cycle really works well, with an at times very operatic feel. Think of it as a Chinese Canteloube meets Chinese Mahler meets Chinese Strauss.

The Tianjin Suite concludes the recording, and it sounds like a mix of a film soundtrack and orchestral arrangement of various operas. The second movement also sounds like Debussy and Stravinsky blended together – at last. Ye deploys all orchestral forces deftly, at times providing heaping helpings of strings, at others sparser orchestration focused on winds, and at others massive, colorful, tuneful tuttis sure to satisfy many, most, but never all listeners. As each piece progresses, the feeling of operatic extracts grows. Indeed, I can’t recall another case where hearing a disc of music has made me so keen to hear what the composer can do with opera, but I surely want to hear an opera written by Ye.

For some reason, two conductors are used and split the Seven Episodes between them, and the recordings were made between 2014 and 2016. A belated release is a welcome release.

Sound is excellent if not quite SOTA, and the orchestra does excellent work.

A most excellent disc.
 
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The name Jon Deak did not enter my consciousness until I spotted this 2019 Naxos release on clearance. Turns out the recordings themselves were made in 1993 and 1998. I’m guessing this got released because Marin Alsop conducts the two orchestral works. The conceit with all the works here is that they are narrated by the performers.

The disc opens with Jon Deak the double bass soloist for a snarky tribute to wildlife by offering an apology for the big bad wolf in B.B. Wolf (An Apologia), with the text provided by the composer’s friend Richards Hartshorne. Deak can play his instrument very well indeed, and his narration works well enough. It’s not bad, overall. The next work, Bye-Bye!, for flute and piano and based on a Haitian folktale, offers a tribute to immigrants. It works marginally less well musically, but the instrumentalists both handle their parts well. The 1993 recordings sound almost like some audiophile recordings of the era, with what sounds like minimal microphones, very clear sound, and clear spatial presentation.

The big works come next. The Snow Queen Finale: The Ice Palace, based on a Hans Christian Andersen tale. The music is unabashedly modern, pastichey, and not bound by any stylistic constraints. Boisterous, clangy, romantic (I hear some Wagner in there), rough, chaotic, and offering homage to cartoons, the music sort of wanders all over the place in an ADHD sort of way. The last work is The Legend of Spuyten Duyvil, originally influenced by the body of water the bridge connecting Manhattan and the Bronx covers, but per the composer’s notes, that in turn is influenced by ancient New Amsterdam folklore. It, too, rapidly wanders all over the place, but it sounds more serious and occasionally darker. Ms Alsop ends up an excellent narrator, with clear diction and impeccable enunciation.

Deak’s compositional ability seems clear enough, so I perused his other compositions and available recordings, and everything is like the compositions here. I’d prefer more traditional, or at least more serious, music-only forms for further exploration, so this disc probably represents the only thing I’ll hear. I’ll probably spin it again once or twice.

All artists are up to snuff.
 
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Years ago, I picked up the first volume of Edmund Rubbra’s string quartets and thought to myself I should pick up the other volume. It took a while, but I finally got around to it. The disc opens with the second quartet, and it is an arch-conservative, neo-romantic piece. It flows quite nicely, often sounds quite beautiful, particularly in the gorgeous and at times haunting Adagio, and rhythmically vital. At times it has a dark and mysterious hue to it, but it sounds out of time. Forgetting that, this work sounds fine and would snuggle right in with a recital including Dvorak and Szymanowski. OK, it would be better to mix and match with more diverse styles, but it sounds old-fashioned.

The disc then moves to works for voice and string quartet, starting with Amoretti, which sets Edmund’s Spenser’s poems in the collection of the same name to music. Charles Daniels has a pleasing sounding voice, though his diction is not perhaps ideally clear. The string quartet writing underpins the music in retro arch-conservative style very well, thank you. The disc closes with a Piano Trio in a single movement, though Naxos provides individual tracks for the different sections. Beautiful for sure, but often almost morose sounding in the long opening, it does not invigorate except in the brief middle section, instead bathing the listener in nearly opulent musical introspection. I doubt it becomes core rep for performing Piano Trios, but it is nice to hear. It’s the highlight of the disc, which while not great, has more than a few good moments.

The Maggini play well, as does Martin Roscoe, with Charles Daniels not coming off as ideal to my ears.
 
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The first recordings of Alessandro Striggio’s Mass for 40 Voices eluded me back in 2011 when it first came out, and again in 2012 when Glossa released another recording, paired to the same composer’s Mass for 60 Voices. That recording can be streamed from my streaming vendor of choice, but this Decca recording cannot, so I opted to spend some dough for a download. The composer was apparently the son of a well-to-do nobleman, and he ended up writing works for the Medici family, so he had a pretty cushy gig. Seeing such a massive mass from the Renaissance of course conjures thoughts of Thomas Tallis, and indeed that composer’s more famous Spem in Alium closes out the disc.

The recording opens with Striggio’s Ecce beatum lucem, which includes period instrument support. It sounds lovely in a generic Renaissance music sort of way. The main attraction comes next, the Missa Ecco si beato giorno. Again, aided by orchestral forces, the work starts off in a leisurely and lovely fashion, but the Kyrie sounds rather smaller scaled than expected. The Gloria dispels any concerns of scale. True, it’s not full force all the time, which of course helps, because when the full forces sing and play the polyphonic goodness, it adds an almost physical component to the piece. The relatively brief work then proceeds along similar lines through to the end. It sounds lovely and luxuriant, but it does not pack the punch that Tallis’ masterpiece does. In some ways, it resembles the later, even grander Missa Salisburgensis by Biber, but it obviously lacks the punch of that work. Part of it stems from the recording, which renders the massed voices as an almost too blended, indistinct sonic blob.

The next work is a little instrumental piece by Vincenzo Galilei, which sounds quite pleasant, and then the disc moves on to an assortment of short pieces by Striggio, with varying numbers of singers and instruments, giving it a grab bag feel. Each piece sounds nicely realized, and the smaller works have a more pleasing recorded balance. The penultimate piece is a bass only Spem in Alium, and then the Tallis setting of the same text closes things out, with some instrumental support, in a shorter than normal performance. While influenced by Striggio, per the liner notes, there is no question, from the very first notes, that the Tallis work is the greatest work on offer. Denser yet easier to follow, more gripping and immediate, and more transcendentally beautiful, the well-known (in relative terms) piece almost hypnotizes. So good is it, so great, that immediately after finishing this, I listened to the Jeremy Summerly led version and then the Paul van Nevel led version. The Summerly, by adopting slower than normal tempi, has an even more transcendental feel, while the Nevel has a more immediate feel. All three kick ass, in a heavenly way.

So, this recording is most welcome in my collection, even if it is not perfect. The music is glorious and beautiful, and that’s enough.
 
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Always read the fine print. This disc reminded me of that. You see, I saw the name Franck attached to a pair of string sextets and thought that César Franck had composed them, so I happily plumped down the four bucks needed to procure the physical disc. Only when I received the disc and read the name on the cover did I see that the German composer Eduard Franck composed these two works. Oops. Fortunately, the purchase did not end up a waste of money. Ed, it turns out, led a life of privilege, which included studying under Felix Mendelssohn, and his music is very much of its time and place. There’s really not that much to write in describing the music. Take Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Brahms, mash the music together, stir a bit, and presto, Eduard Franck pops out. The music does sound derivative, but when it derives from composers like that, it’s really not bad at all. The music sounds beautiful and tuneful, properly structured, and proportional. The only potential complaint one could level is that it often sounds almost too relaxed and beautiful. Almost. A HIP ensemble could take care of that, but nobody wants that.

The augmented Edinger Quartett plays splendidly and Audite delivers superb sound in this now twenty-year-old recording. A most pleasant purchasing mistake.
 
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This marks the second appearance of the Lysell Quartet in this thread, and the first appearance of Dag Wirén in this thread and my collection. The Swedish composer lived a big slug of the 20th Century, but one wouldn’t necessarily guess that on evidence of the music alone. While I long ago abandoned the notion that all modern music must be unpleasant or dissonant or modernist, Wirén goes one step further. Always wanting to appeal to rather than challenge the listener (apparently), the first couple quartets here sound almost easy listening light, as though some British pastoral composers might sound too intense. The music does not fail to please. The Fourth and Fifth quartets maintain a surface approachability, but somewhat like some of Schubert’s music, though sounding nothing like the Austrian’s music, a generally sunny mien allows for tenser, darker elements to be heard at the same time. It’s quite a nice result, almost like a smiling Schnittke, shorn of the unyielding modernist style without sounding antiquated. Overall, it’s quite a nice disc with four excellent works.

The Lysell Quartet play splendidly, and the recorded sound is exemplary.
 
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Qigang Chen is one of the many composers I do not recall reading about until very recently, let alone hearing. Born and trained in China until the Cultural Revolution, he had to undergo a few years of Maoist reeducation, as was the style at the time. He resumed his training years later, and he ultimately ended up studying under Messiaen for a few years in the eighties. He ended up moving to France and became a French citizen. His adopted Frenchness ends up rather important and obvious in his music. Which is a wonderful thing. These three works are informed by an obvious French tradition.

The opening work Er Huang, a sort of piano concerto, informed by Peking operas is one of the most enchantingly beautiful pieces of music I’ve ever heard. The composer’s French education shines through, though not in merely imitative fashion, in this single movement, slow-fast-slow piece. The slow piano introduction, which gradually adds low strings then orchestra, sets the pace. One revels in instrumental contributions from the entire orchestra, and only gradually about halfway in, the music takes on a Ravelian character, with virtuosic turns from the soloist and band, before returning to slower music possessed of even greater beauty. The massive climax blends French music, Rach, and Chinese elements in one of the most irresistibly syrupy pieces of music this side of Korngold. It’s a heckuva way to open.

Enchantements oubliés follows, and the first six minutes or so sort of makes the opener seem aurally displeasing. It does indeed enchant. After the string heavy opening, with western violins taking on Chinese characteristics, faster music with lots of percussion arrives, and the mallet work fleetingly reminds one of Frank Zappa. The orchestra creates a vastly scaled work, and one that even in tuttis often seems to just sort of float, and while there’s a movie soundtrack quality to some of the writing, it’s like one of the very best movie soundtracks ever written, creating its own world. While the first work was based on Peking opera, this sounds at times like an orchestral reduction of an opera, with hints of Puccini at his most beautiful. It’s a heckuva second work.

Un temps disparu, basically an Erhu Concerto reworked from a Cello Concerto, ends the recording. The solo instrument creates the most Eastern sounding work, which is further reinforced by the use of the Three Variations on the Plum Blossom melody. The work also sounds more uncompromisingly modern, with some boom-clang elements, but even so it never completely abandons passages of string laden beauty. The very stark contrasts between solo instrument and band leads to immediate mental comparisons to Nanking! Nanking! by Bright Sheng, though the purpose of the music and the violence of the contrasts differ substantially. As with the other two works, the music moves seamlessly back and forth between slower and more robust music, and here the at times generous use of thundering timps packs a real punch. The Erhu also has lots to do, so listeners who dislike the sound of the instrument, though I don’t know how that could be, may dislike this work. There’s no denying that Jiemin Yan plays splendidly. It’s a heckuva a closer.

So here are three new to me orchestral works, each one quite remarkable and beautiful and captivating. Each also demonstrates the benefits of combining different cultural influences in forging a new musical language. To aid matters, all artists involved do excellent work, and sound quality overall is superb, though the lows sound a bit plummy at times. I’ll take plummy and thunderous and impactful over scrawny any day. This here’s a heckuva recording.
 
Completely new to me, after listening to a bit about Adolphus Hailstock on R3 Composer of the Week.
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Symphony 2 (1999) is quite impressive, unashamedly tonal and romantic. Nearest comparison that came into my head while listening were later Vaughan Williams symphonies. Enjoyed this a lot, better than some of the other non-repertoire things I've tried of late. Still to listen to his 1st and 3rd symphonies.
 
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Why sample one symphony by a composer when one can sample a nice, even dozen? Leopold Koželuch is not new to me. I've worked my way through one and one-third keyboard cycles and listened to a couple discs of string quartets. In each instance, Koželuch impressed me as a classical era composer a cut above most I have heard, though not rising to the level of the best by Haydn or Mozart. And so it goes here. Really, the most concise way to describe the symphonies is that all twelve are basically on par with Haydn's Sturm und Drang era works, or Mozart's that number in the high 20s or low 30s numerically. So very high quality indeed. He seems to have written about thirty symphonies. I should like to hear more.

Superb playing and sound.
 
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Rather like with the threefer of Koželuch symphonies, why sample only some of Josef Mysliveček’s violin concertos when you can sample a big ol’ slug of ‘em? Or more precisely, all of them. This twofer contains all eight of the Czech composer’s violin concertos, with soloist Shizuka Ishikawa fiddling away. Ms Ishikawa won various awards way back when, up to a half century ago, and then she proceeded to make multiple recordings for Supraphon, with very good to excellent results. I picked up a couple of her recordings of core rep early in the year, so this reissue of recordings made in the 80s seemed like a good idea. Also like with the Koželuch works, these concerti do not ascend to the top of the repertory heap qualitatively. The first concerto sounds rather ho-hum, for instance, but things pick up in the second, and more or less maintain a generally high level of quality, even if nothing stands out, and nothing emerges as a timeless masterpiece. Everything is tuneful, attractive, fairly energetic, well structured, and well proportioned. It all makes for a pleasant listen, and I mean that in a purely positive way.

Libor Pešek conducts the Dvořák Chamber Orchestra expertly, and the band plays expertly. Sonics are excellent for the era, and the engineers obviously favored heavy multi-miking, with ample spotlighting, and that works just fine.
 
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A little over a decade ago, I listened my way to Renaissance liturgical music via the great composers of the Spanish Golden Age. Cristóbal de Morales emerged as my clear favorite. He’s perhaps my favorite pre-LvB composer. He’s not the heavyweight from the era and group of composers in terms of recordings and accolades, though. That’s obviously Tomás Luis de Victoria. He’s pretty darned good, too. The big box of liturgical music led by Michael Noone came at just the right time, and I devoured the box whole and have dipped into it from time to time since. There are other notable Victoria recordings, not least being Jordi Savall’s recording of Cantica Beatae Virginis, which sounds gorgeous and affecting. Given all these factors, when I saw that Mr Savall had led performances of Victoria’s Passion, well, yeah, I knew I’d buy it.

The work is comprised of music meant to be consumed over an entire week, not in one afternoon, which is of course how I listened the first time around. It’s more than three and a half hours of music. When consumed in one sitting, Rossini’s quip about Wagner very much comes to mind. When one considers specific sections, or listens in smaller chunks, things improve. First, this is an everything recording, with Savall using a variety of ancient instruments throughout, so one hears some sumptuousness. Second, as evidenced by the use of instruments, this is not just gorgeous a cappella polyphony, but rather a grab bag of music, including instrumental sections, chant, and vocal polyphony. Third, this recording comes from live performances, so there are some imperfections but also some small felicities that seem to crop up more in the moment. It’s hard to pinpoint them, but they are there. And the female voices very often beguile. This is not at all austere music, dryly performed. There’s some, well, passion in the performance. The only negative thing I can report is that the sound is a bit too compressed for something so recent.

I will not listen to this collection frequently, but this is one of those recordings that I like owning, so I can listen anytime, anywhere, without having to worry about internet connectivity.
 
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For no particular reason, I decided I wanted to give a listen to a bunch of modern Requiems, meaning penned in the post-war period. To start this voyage of musical discovery, I opted for a pretty recent take in the form of António Pinho Vargas’ setting from 2012, paired with the 2002 work Judas. Mr Pinho Vargas is a Portuguese composer of no little renown, per the Naxos bio, and on the basis of this disc, I have no reason to doubt that.

The disc starts with the beefy, just over half-hour Requiem, and it’s a hard-hitting, unabashedly modernist take. One needn’t wait more than the opening notes for the drama to arrive. All throughout, the composer is not shy about using oodles of percussion, high-tension string writing, and vigorous, at times angry sounding choral writing. This is not a peaceful, calming work. This is a work that grabs the listener by the metaphorical lapels. The work thunders and grates, the singing soars, with the sopranos occasionally almost shrieking, in a controlled and appealing way, and in one passage this segues right into the dissonant string playing. The piece sounds unique, sort of blending dark, late DSCH symphonies, a bit of Kabeláč in the use of percussion, and the spirituality of Ešenvalds but in a more intense package, especially in the very wrathful Dies Irae. The whole piece is not quite so intense: the Lacrimosa sounds more poised, more beautiful, more Ešenvaldsian (in the best possible way), and brings in hints of ancient musical traditions and a soundworld rather reminiscent of some of the Iberian music Savall has recorded. Come the Agnus Dei, and the composer delivers musical beauty, though with no little astringency attached, that, in a couple fleeting passages, approaches no less than Cristóbal de Morales in terms of transportive beauty, before changing up to a Libera Me of drama and impact. This here piece is just a whole buncha wow. Just wow.

Turns out that Judas very much inhabits a similar soundworld and uses a similar approach, though now one can add the name Frank Martin to the names of composers one can associate this music with. The piece is very much a dramatic, almost theatrical work. It sounds slower, more somber, darker, and less impactful, and while not qualitatively equal to the Requiem, it very much works extremely well on its own terms. I had no expectations coming to this disc, but man, this is one heckuva a way to start a small survey of new works. If all the other recordings are like this, I will be exceedingly pleased.

Conducting duties are split between Joana Carneiro for the Requiem and Fernando Eldoro for Judas. I should like to hear more from both. Band and singers deliver in these live recordings.
 


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