"New" Music Log

[Todd A]

If you’re gonna do modern Requiems, you might as well make sure BAZ gets in the mix nice and early. Requiem für einen jungen Dichter is Zimmermann at his most Zimmermannian. The work is gigantic, for two speakers, two soloists, three choirs (because yes), jazz band, organ, accordion, tape, orchestra, and kitchen sink. It combines the Latin mass and multiple texts. This recording was released in surround sound, to approximate what a proper avant-garde staging should sound like. I listen through stereos and stereo headphones only, so I did not get the whole aural experience.

Now, I have listened to my share of hodge-podge avant-garde nonsense, where music sometimes is comprised of noise, some new music, and a pastiche of others’ compositions, and often it sucks. BAZ, though, more than even Berio or Schnittke, has got my number. Why that is, I just don’t know. The work unfolds as pure chaos, moving beyond aleatoric music to something seemingly nihilistic and pointless, yet very serious and pointed. As tracked here, the first movement is nearly forty minutes. What happens in it? Well, nothing and everything. It’s an experience, not music. It’s like some little snippets from Sgt Pepper’s blown up to something massively scaled. And as it happens, The Beatles make their appearance in the piece. Imagine a swirl of sound and chaos where bits of Tristan emerge and fade and so does Hitler. The musical borrowings are extensive, the literary ones highest of highbrow. It’s all terribly pretentious and overbearing and ridiculous and daffy – and all-consumingly bewitching. Seriously, I have no idea how BAZ does it.

Now, this is most definitely not a piece to listen to frequently. This is a once every five-to-ten-year kind of work. But Michael Gielen believed in it enough to record it twice, and Gary Bertini recorded it once. I will listen again, and I doubt I wait five years. António Pinho Vargas’ Requiem is far more musically satisfying, and is a piece that deserves more attention, but this makes a great and very, very different follow-up. As mentioned before, this work is an experience, one I am most glad to have had, and one I will have again.

 

[Todd A]

I recently revisited Winston Choi’s mixed rep disc on Honens, which includes works by Debussy, Schmitt, Griffes (which is strikingly good), Szymanowski, and Scriabin. That’s quite the mix. Choi displays a sensitive touch married to extremely fine technique and delivers a knock-out set. I decided I must follow up with something else pronto, so I settled on a disc of piano music by Thomas Adès entitled Illuminating from Within. I’ve long owned Adès' opera Powder Her Face and the assortment of works contained on the Living Toys release. More recently, I have focused on Adès as performer. His Beethoven symphony cycle is one of the greats of the 21st Century, and surely the best small band version I’ve heard. The accompanying John Barry pieces are fine, too. His disc of Janacek piano music on Signum is a very clean, austere take on the music, indicating he knows his way around the piano. So clearly his piano works deserve a listen.

The three Mazurkas from 2009, written for Emmanuel Ax, sound nothing like Chopin or Szymanowski, but in them Adès adds a striking, often jarring rhythmic component that very clearly hints at dance, even if there is no notable melodic component in the first two brief Mazurkas. The longer, slower, darker third Mazurka does introduce some easier to discern melody and a rich, somber feel. It’s really quite wonderful and would make a great out of nowhere encore. Thrift, from 2012, billed as a mazurka-cortege follows, and it sounds like a mazurka sketched by Gustave Samazaeuilh and completed by someone with more modernist sensibility. It’s extremely fine. Darknesse Visible, from 1992, a transcription of Dowland’s In Darkness Let Me Dwell, immediately brings to mind Marie-Luise Hinrichs’ transcription of Hildegard von Bingen’s music in that parts of the transcription very clearly evoke the earlier composer’s works, but Adès makes the music agitated, almost angry and despondent. (That of course means the intent and the music is worlds apart from Hinrich’s.) Still Sorrowing, also from 1992 and also informed by Dowland, follows. It retains an agitated feel, and it adds a somewhat jazzy feel, and it has flurries of notes propelling the music forward. The disc closes with the almost twenty minute Concert Paraphrase of Powder Her Face. Comprised of four movements, it is both dense and light, contains tons of rhythmic drive and complexity, extended flurries of notes that seem to go nowhere until they end up at a logical end point, some dark and rich music, some bright and agitated music, some downright beautiful music that manages to flow and sound blocky at once. It’s a tour de force. I’ve not listened to the opera in years, but this makes me think I should. I know I must listen to more Adès.

Choi ends up an ideal interpreter. He brings his sensitive touch to music that could end up sounding purely gnarly and edgy. It retains gnarl and edge, but it also falls easy on the ear. Quite the feat. He maintains clarity throughout and delivers both the minutest details and the structure of the works. I will be listening to more Choi.

 

[pianoman]

Gerald Barry might be miffed to be called John (or maybe not...))

 

[Todd A]

Gerald Barry might be miffed to be called John (or maybe not...))

My bad. Maybe he will take the approach that anything that gets his name out there is good.

 

[Todd A]

Pierre Bartholomée is another new to me composer, and he will definitely not be the last in this survey. He’s Belgian, he’s a conductor and composer and teacher, he’s won various accolades, and he’s still alive and kicking. This Requiem, from 2006, was inspired by the composer learning the story of a girl who survived the Rwandan Genocide.

The piece is announced with big bass drum thuds, which appear throughout, and then it adopts a very Stravinskyesque sound, colored up with ample accordion playing. The scoring is much sparser than the prior two works, with some nifty percussion and lithe, clean choral writing. The music displays tension throughout, but never becomes intense. It is smaller, lighter, cleaner, and unyielding. The singing overall is on a very high level, better than the prior recordings. The use of a Renaissance specialist ensemble ends up playing a big part of the success of the recording. This lacks the impact of the prior two recordings, but it works on its own terms.

 

[Todd A]

I’ve of course known the name Danny Elfman for decades, and heard big blobs of his music, mostly in the form of film scores and the theme to The Simpsons, but also as part of Oingo Boingo and in his more recent solo work. When I learned that his Violin Concerto Eleven Eleven has received its second recording by dedicatee Sandy Cameron, I figured I might as well listen to the first recording with John Mauceri leading the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. A Piano Quartet is also included.

The big concerto, clocking in at over forty-four minutes, starts with a fourteen-minute movement with both Grave and Animato designations. The slow, dramatic open certainly meets the Grave designation, and Cameron delivers a rich tone in long passages where instrumentation is otherwise sparse. The cadenza is likewise more slow than fast. But there are some big tuttis, with virtuosic writing and playing, dark low strings, percussion hovering high above, and even some snare drum. Not surprisingly, one can hear hints of some of Elfman’s film scores (how does one hear snare drums and not think of Batman?), but it sounds more like a neo-romantic concerto with nods to film scores. It’s a slightly gnarlier, brighter, updated Korngold in some respects. The Spietato, acting just like a Scherzo, is much more energetic overall, with virtuosic part writing everywhere, and lots of percussion. Again, Elfman does not rely on full orchestra for extended periods. And Ms Cameron, well, she has got chops. She can and does play as lovely as all get out, but she also delivers some harsh and shrieking high notes, right when she should. The third movement Fantasma starts slow, rich, beautiful, very string-heavy, and almost like a threnody. More instruments enter the mix, and the sound picks up energy, and Cameron gets to shine, playing delicately in the upper registers. The Giacoso-Lacrimae closing movement starts off with lots of pep, lots for Cameron to do, with varying degrees of accompaniment as she romps forward through the movement. Some very film-scorey passages and gestures pop up, but they all blend in well. The movement builds to a gallery pleasing climax before switching to a slow coda, ending with the soloist fading out. I did not come to this work with particularly high expectations, so I am pleasantly surprised by how good is. I will listen to Ms Cameron’s second recording, and perhaps other soloists might take it up.

The Piano Quartet was very much an afterthought for me, but again Elfman surprises. He manages to evoke a soundworld similar to his orchestral compositions, making it sound bigger than the instrumentation suggests. (I guess the engineering helps with that.) The music is all over the place in terms of tempo, dynamics, style and influences. At times it sounds like turbo-charged minimalism, at others, syrupy neo-romanticism (especially in the cello part), at others a dreamy neo-impressionism. And that’s just the first movement. The piano leads in the second, titled Kinderspott, filled with childhood tunes all grown up. As the work moves along, the sheer capriciousness and inventiveness of it, and the multiple influences (I swear I heard some Prokofiev influence in there) makes it a feast for the ears. This work, too, exceeded expectations.

All artists involved do excellent work and sound quality is tip-top. I may just have to investigate more art music from Mr Elfman.

 

[Todd A]

Time for more Winston Choi. This time he plays a big slug of music by Jacques Lenot. Mr Lenot is an out loud and proud practitioner of serialism, and a self-taught one at that, though the music on this disc hints at some other influences. Jumping right in:

The recording starts with four of the Six premières études. The opening Allegro frenetico, all 1’18” of it, certainly lives up to the frenetico designation. It’s a nervous blur of notes that sounds like a human imitating a player piano. The Mesto (delirando) intersperses fast bursts of music with slow, pause-heavy passages, mostly in a boom-clang style. The third piece, Vivo, stretto sounds like a missing Ligeti piece. The last, Fantasque, is about seven minutes of continuous playing with no melody of any kind. It leaves little impression.

The eleven minute We Approach the Sea, while very similar, does hold more interest. First, there’s a lot of dynamic variability. Like, a lot. As in Lenot and Choi will vary dynamic between individual notes, and left and right-hand playing will be played at differing levels. The pregnant pause is used, and the beefy tremolos actually does evoke waves on the sea. Not shabby. Yes, there are lengthy passages of notes hurling at the listener, but the evocation of the sea, and the sense of desolation evident in the latter sections works well indeed. Following this is truly one of the best musical representations of wind, matching Debussy, in the under two-minute Burrascoso. Blurs of notes and glissandi and tremolos and runs work wonders. Here’s another out of nowhere encore.

Next come eleven Préludes, ranging from about two minutes to about nine minutes in length. Lenot pulls off a pretty neat trick in that here is serial impressionism that works. Par temps gris truly evokes the title, and I don’t write that because I listened to it on a standard January day in the Tualitan Valley. If There Were the Sound of Water Only immediately evokes images of a rapidly running brook. Un giugno mesto, sparse and quiet and dissonant, and having a constant sustain as played, the nearly nine-minute piece simultaneously seems to pass in a flash and render time irrelevant. And somehow, in the last selection, Un chant retrouvé, despite little melodic content and simple, dissonant notes plunking out, the sketches of a non-existent song can be heard. Quite impressive.

Choi once again displays his affinity for contemporary piano music, and his touch keeps some of the music from just sounding like big, ugly blobs of sound, and his deftness allows some of the music to flow very nicely. At its best, basically the Preludes, the music offers evidence of modern piano music of no little accomplishment. Hopefully more artists take up Lenot’s cause.

 

[Todd A]

I pretty much never listen to classical guitar recordings, and the only recordings of “classical” electric guitar I have heard have come from Frank Zappa (eg, In-A-Gadda-Stravinsky), so this recording by hot shot Scottish guitarist Sean Shibe is something new. The only pieces on this mixed rep concept album I’ve heard, in decidedly different form, are the Bingen, the Messiaen, and the Evans. To say that they sound different here is an understatement.

First things first, Mr Shibe can play. Yep, there’s not a moment of doubt about that. He doesn’t shred, though one senses he could; rather, he often plays slow, occasionally sounding a bit like Bill Frisell in the process. Also, he pushes the boundaries of what guitar music can sound like. In the opening piece, he takes the guitar-as-keyboard approach of Edward, Viscount of Halen and pushes it so far that the music sounds more like something Lord Wright of Hatch End might have written and performed. It’s so freakin’ good that I kinda wish Shibe would just go ahead and pull a guitar/electric guitar version of what Marie-Luise Hinrichs did with piano in her monumentally great collection of Bingen transcriptions. Other delights abound. The Corea pieces charm in their tuneful simplicity, the Moondog pieces scarcely less so. The Monk sounds of Parsifal in its opening and closing pages, flanking extended musical hypnotism. The Evans may stretch out too far, sounding (sadly but appropriately) like it emerges from an opium haze. The Messiaen works shockingly well, sounding sort of like Messiaen, but shorn of excess, bombast, and jarring sound. Seriously, Shibe should transcribe more Messiaen as well. The second Bingen piece reveals the secret effect mass can have on a saucer. (Let’s see if anyone gets that oblique mix of arcane references.) The few more recent pieces from lesser-known composers all come off very well, seeming to have been penned for the guitarist.

This is a not a recording to listen to frequently. Had it been around when I was in college, I would no doubt have spun this in tandem with Frank Zappa, Led Zeppelin, and Pink Floyd, though it would never have displaced Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar as my most listened to recording. This does make me think I should listen to Shibe’s more traditional recordings, just to see what he does unplugged.

 

[Todd A]

Rebecca Dale, apparently the first female composer signed by Decca, is a young-ish British composer (under 40) who wrote this Materna Requiem in memory of her mother, who passed away in 2010. This Requiem rates as the gentlest, most melodically beautiful one I’ve ever heard. Even Faure sounds rough by comparison. Indeed, the plush, string heavy writing, some prominent harp, and a saccharine movie soundtrack style ends up working against the composition. It’s not awful, but think of Delius or Rutter (apparently) writing a serious piece for a Ron Howard feel-good flick, and that’s the vibe. Seriously, the Ave Maria could be dropped into any number of schlock flicks, and no one would be the wiser. A bit of drama comes in the Carmina Burana/action flick sounding Dies Irae. Since Ms Dale has written extensively for the screen, her style comes as no surprise. The accompanying When Music Sounds sets various poems to unabashed soundtrack style music. Overall, this is not my kind of music, but others very clearly like it, and I’m happy enough to have listened once.

 

[Todd A]

Here’s something new, or rather quite old. It’s definitely entirely un-western. Lebanese-Canadian singer Lamia Yared, joined by seven instrumentalists playing eastern instruments (oud, tombak, etc), sings songs from different Ottoman courts spread across what are now Turkey, Syria, Egypt, and Iran. Now, I’ve heard songs and music from the orient before, but not so many all at once. The music has a transfixing effect, especially as Yared’s somewhat dark voice often seductively pushes the words at the listener. (Since I had to stream and had no booklet to refer to, I don’t know precisely what she sings, though the gist is clear in some songs.) Married to her voice is a rhythmic fluidity from the instrumentalists that really sounds fantastic, as in fantasy-like. The instrumental support undulates and swings and curves around the singer. It never sounds heavy, thick, sluggish, nor does it sound antsy or too energetic. It blends perfectly together.

This recording was produced independently and is distributed by CD Baby, and the sound quality is nice enough, though it is balanced to focus on Yared’s voice. Understandably. More recently, she made a recording for Analekta. I think I shall give that a shot.

 

[Todd A]

My X surname classical collection is woefully lacking. Sure, Xenakis has emotionally scarred me like so many other classical music fans, but other than that, nary a composer with a last name starting with this mysterious letter populates my physical collection or resides on my hard drive. So here’s a chance to sort of rectify that in the form of streaming Guan Xia’s Earth Requiem. Xia and/or the A&R folks at Erato caught Michel Plasson’s attention, so an actual, world-renowned conductor waves the stick here. Now, a cynical sort might consider the market forces at play here, with a prominent Chinese composer having written the work in response to the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, and with the work played by the China National Symphony Orchestra. That seems to guarantee pretty good sales in a pretty big market. Maybe the whole project was an exercise in artistic purity, who knows?

Ultimately, it’s the music that matters. This work is not a setting of the Requiem Mass, but rather commemorates the dead and celebrates the living. Set in four long movements, it sounds rather like a big old choral symphony. Xia, like Dale, has spent some time writing movie soundtracks and it shows. Rather than Ron Howard, the name that leaps to mind in the milquetoast Mahler opening called Gazing at the stars is Kevin Costner circa 1990. The second movement, Heavenly Wind and Earth Fire, has more fire in its belly in the first half and in the coda, and may very well serve as musical background to a Chris Hemsworth vehicle. Some lovely winds, with flutes prominent, introduce the third movement, Boundless Love, an achingly saccharine movement that could probably serve as love theme to a Rachel McAdams tearjerker/awards bait romance – the female lead contracts some terrible disease, confronts mortality, recognizes the good in her life, and fully embraces the love all around her, that sorta thing. The work closes with Wings of Angels. It opens with the Qiang flute, rendering this a Requiem with Chinese Characteristics, before adding organ and then moving to the chorus. It sounds more ebullient and celebratory and less soundtracky than the preceding movements and may be marginally better.

So, like the Dale Requiem, this is a one and done recording, and one that, at best, I’m indifferent to. Nah, I dislike it. YMMV.

Sonics, playing, and singing is all perfectly fine.

 

[Todd A]

The second recording from Lamia Yared is more or less a bigger budget sequel to the first. Entitled Ottoman Splendours, it moves slightly west, mixing Turkish, Greek, and Spehardic songs and instrumental music. The recorded sound is better, and while it still emphasizes Yared, it is less pronounced. The instrumentation is more varied and complex, and the music definitely sounds more diverse. Tres Harmanicas eran, a 17th Century tune from Sarajevo, sounds familiar, though I cannot place where I’ve heard it before. Kouklaki Mou, which dates from 1920 Istanbul, sounds like a seamless blend of klezmer music, Turkish music, and points the way to Kurt Weill. It’s basically a show tune. The recording works well, but it has less of a wow factor than the first disc from this team, mainly because it sounds more familiar. To an extent, Yared reminds me of Isabel Bayrakdarian, though neither of these discs achieve the same mind-numbing greatness the Armenian has delivered time and again. Still, I do rather want to hear what else Ms Yared will sing.

 

[Todd A]

Holy smokes! This is the first time I've listened to Mendelssohn's Elijah, and it knocked my socks off. I've long known his Lobgesang, which has its moments, but this is something else. The first couple movements are dramatic and gripping, and then all heaven breaks loose. The great Paul McCreesh, one of my favorite living conductors, sought to reconstruct the 1846 premiere and assembled massive forces and a massive organ and everything hits with maximal force in Help, Lord! It nearly out Mahlers Mahler. Things then settle into a fairly direct oratorio, with solo bits, nice accompaniment, superb transparency, and so forth. But one always wants the next echt-melodramatic musical wallop to arrive, which it does in Yet doth the Lord see it not and over and over. The biblical texts all work well in the composition, indicating no little thoughtfulness in the selection process. As performed, this is a suitable stand-in for an historical-ish opera. I kind of wish I would have listened to it years ago.

Everyone performs their parts well, the chorus does superb work, and the organ shakes the foundation. I know there are other recordings out there, so I may very well try another. And now that I tried McCreesh in 19th Century fare, that Berlioz Requiem he did seems mighty inviting.

A purchase of the year.

 

[Todd A]

Next up, Bruno Maderna, a modernist composer and conductor of no little renown. I needed something with a bit of edge and heft after two saccharine works. At first, I was taken aback as the Requiem Aeternam is performed a capella and sounds perfectly tonal. It sounds very beautiful, very sparse, very tense. I briefly wondered to myself what if Maderna went for a modernist Rore style? Well, come the Kyrie, instruments enter the fray, including piano and trumpet, often singly, disparate in time and space, to nice effect. It’s not until the massive Dies Irae that one hears the more unabashedly, imposing modernist style fully appear. The large orchestra pumps out musical ferocity and the chorus adds vocal heft to that. Here’s the antidote to Dale and Xia. The soloists also get to start in, some singing with full band, sometimes in tandem with each other, and, most effectively when it occurs, singing while one or a small number of instruments lend haunting support. As the work proceeds, one hears distilled and modernized influences such as, perhaps, Verdi in the Sanctus. And Maderna adds a nice touch in the Agnus Dei, where the two female soloists are matched with two pianos plunking out gently dissonant support, along with other forces as needed. It’s strikingly beautiful and effective. The work closes out with a Libera Me boasting more than a little tension and forward, insistent playing of the band under the chorus. It blends tradition and modernism quite nicely.


Overall, this is an excellent work, and definitely a qualitative step up from the last two works I sampled, though it does not have the impact of the first two. All forces perform very nicely, indeed.

 

[Todd A]

Michael Hersch is a name I have only seen up to this point, and that is because his compositions attract the talent of, and result in recordings by, Miranda Cuckson and Patricia Kopatchinskaja. For my first foray into his music, I opted to hear what the former did way back in 2010, as reissued in 2022. The recording is comprised of three works: the half-hour and change Fourteen Pieces for Violin; the twenty-one movement, half-hour and change The Wreckage of Flowers, where Cuckson is joined by her frequent collaborator Blair McMillen; and finally, Five Fragments for Violin, which is over in mere minutes.

Both big works are set to and with poems and prose by two different authors. There’s no singing or speaking, but rather the texts are artistic partners. These are not programmatic works in the style of Liszt, but rather inspirations. The big solo violin work is a tough row to hoe for the listener, but it is a rewarding one. There’s not one tune to be heard, but there’s much expression. The loud passages often shriek, exuding anger or suffering, with double stops and dissonances tearing at the listener’s ear. They leave an immediate impression. But not as much as the quieter music. Often as astringent as the loud music, but sometimes far more accessible, as played by Cuckson, the quietude forces one to pay close attention, to glean the import of the note, sometimes while contemplating the text, sometimes while hearing only the sound. At times, pizzicato will punctuate longer, unattractive lines, which will then build up to something intense and focused (the wonderful VIII). The third Intermezzo (XI) sounds intensely austere but also hints at romantic gestures, while the following movement harks back to Berg and Bartok – how I would love to hear FPZ tackle this. If that were not enough, the second Nocturne (XIII) starts off with hushed, nearly silent pizzacati, with extended pauses, before switching to tense slashing, and then ending in silence. This should be transcribed for piano. The slow, somber, almost tuneful final movement brings this solo violin drama to a most satisfying conclusion.

The Wreckage of Flowers mixes things up with a piano. McMillen plays with clarity, sharp staccato, and some bright upper registers. There are some more vibrant pieces that take full advantage of the percussive instrument and the contrast between the instruments (No 10, for instance), but for me, as with the solo violin work, it is the quieter music that again shines. Nos 3 and 9 sound more haunting and subdued, inviting to the listener to contemplate things no less weighty than eternity itself. OK, that description is histrionic, but these pieces are more contemplative. There’s something immediately attractive about how Hersch sees no need to overload the music with gobs of notes when far fewer will get the message across. That’s not to say that the music is minimalist – it’s not – but nor is it maximalist. It is, however, almost Webernian in its economy at times. That written, No 18, meant to tie to a huge flock of crows, is condensed musical maximalism, and it works, too.

The tiny Five Fragments for Violin generally sound more shrill, intense, and cutting than the first work. This is even more Webernian in type, and really, I kind of wanted more, to see where it could go.

The recorded sound allows for some resonance to be heard, and it strikes me as absolutely necessary to conveying the musical message. I have a sneaking suspicion all the works would be blockbusters in person in a small performing venue. The Fourteen Pieces for Violin fairly screams out for at least some idiosyncratic playing, to emphasize the moment. Indeed, it’s the kind of work where one wants to hear to it multiple times, which changes every time.

 

[Todd A]

Moving back to a composer with some soundtrack experience, it’s Tigran Mansurian time. This marks my first exposure to his music. Now, the movie soundtrack background gave me pause, but the absolutely fantastic Armenian liturgical music legacy gave me hope. Of course, my exposure to the latter is limited solely to music performed by Isabel Bayrakdarian, but her recordings rate among my purchases of the century, so I retained high hopes. Such hopes were well-founded. While lacking the in-your-face impact of Pinho Vargas or the chaotic genius of BAZ, this setting blends the standard text with music at once melodic, ethereal, intense, haunting, flowing, modern, ancient, and beautiful, with moments of repose and introspection peppered in. Mansurian also shows how to crank out a fiery Dies Irae with limited forces, and one that evokes ancient airs while sounding modern. But it is the Domine Jesu Christe that really drives home the quality of this work. The music inhabits the same soundworld as the best of Bayrakdarian discs, and the soprano Anja Petersen does excellent work, but the style of music immediately made me wish the Canadian had been given singing duties. Of course, it’s not just the soprano in the movement: everything comes together splendidly. That holds true for the whole thing. Being an ECM production, everything is tip top.

As with Pinho Vargas , Mansurian is now a composer I feel impelled to explore more.

 

[Todd A]

My interest piqued by claims of Antoine Forqueray's devilry, I decided to listen to some of his music. Sure, I could have gone with Jordi Savall to start, and I will listen to him in due course, but I wanted something newer, fresher. Lucile Boulanger’s surname caught my eye, so this mixed rep recording earned a listen on the basis of that alone. I streamed, so I didn't read the notes, but the back cover indicates that Tony’s two compositions aside, and one from one of his sons, most of the works are transcriptions for his instrument.

And fine transcriptions they are, seeming to demand rather significant playing ability. There's much energy and vibrancy and no little groove to the music. As to Antoine, the Le Leclair has some hyper-virtuosic elements that seem no less than precursors to Paganini and Liszt. The substantive entire Fourth Suite is most overtly virtuosic of the works, with ample boogie and rhythmic variegation, with the soloist required to move all over the place, thrusting out vibrant playing, and sometimes lovely and languid playing, seemingly without a merciful rest. While not diabolical, it does sound fiendishly difficult. Ms Boulanger’s musical collaborators seem to have a slightly easier time, though I would not say easy. I should also note that the second movement, La Clément, has a recognizable tune, though where I recognize it from I cannot say. It could be from some other arrangement, or a recording I forgot I listened to, but the tune caught my ear specifically because I do not remember hearing it in a baroque context.

Perhaps the most fun aspect of this recording is that the main soloist is multi-talented. Not only can she play the viola da gamba at a world class level, she's an accomplished voice actress. She provided the French voiceover for Dora the Explorer and the French dubbing for Maeby Fünke, among other characters.

This recording gives me two new paths to explore: the Forqueray family and Ms Boulanger.

 

[Todd A]

Having listened to BAZ’s Requiem, which includes soundbites o’ Hitler, how provocative or daring could Evgeni Kostitsyn’s American Requiem I be? It is a Requiem written in the wake of 9/11 and includes all manner of texts from various sources, great and less great, including Lincoln, Dubya, Osama bin Laden, the Good Book, the Koran, and in a stylistic mishmash reminiscent of BAZ, it includes Gregorian Chant, Dixieland jazz, rock/pop, and so forth. Such a style can work fantastically well. Or not. This recording starts off with the basses droning on in chant, way too closely recorded – something that gets even worse in some places – and then moves on to full choir and soloists in turn. The orchestral music, solo instrumental and small ensemble sections, and jazz, pop, and electronic bits all come and go, as do some reciters. In artistic spirit, it is quite similar to BAZ, but in composition and construction and execution, it is no match. There’s a very amateurish, almost grad student project vibe to the whole thing. Clearly, this was not produced by a record label with bucks to spend, so that is to be expected. It’s not a completely terrible work, but it is not great, and not even particularly good. Maybe it needs a rerecording – or a rewrite.

 

[Todd A]

A few years back, I discovered Isabel Bayrakdarian while listening to a group of works by Armenian composers. Rediscovery is a better description since I’d long owned MTT’s Mahler 2, in which she performs, and she sang in The Lord of the Rings soundtrack. But it was with Joyous Light, one of my purchases on the century, where I became permanently and irrevocably enamored with her voice. I snapped up various other recordings, but nothing in a while. Revisiting John Axelrod’s recording of Górecki’s Third, I determined I should try something else, so I picked up two new to me recordings. I decided to listen to this disc, La Zingarella – Through Romany Songland, first, just ‘cuz. The recording includes setting of gypsy or gypsy-inspired songs from all over the world by eleven different composers, seven I’ve heard before, and four newbies (kinda). The old hands are Liszt, Brahms, Dvořák, Bizet, Lehár, Kálmán, and Herbert. The newbies for me are Sebastián Iradier (kinda), Joaquín Valverde, Henry FB Gilbert, and Maurice Yvain. While I have heard Liszt, Brahms, and Dvořák songs before, it wouldn’t have mattered much since all but Bizet’s Habanera are presented here in new chamber music arrangements, with a special focus on violin. Violinist Mark Fewer handles the crucial violin part throughout, and Juan-Miguel Hernandez handles the viola. The Gryphon Trio joins in, as well.

With twenty-seven tracks, it doesn’t make sense to go into great detail. Suffice it to report that Liszt’s opener sets a high standard which is met right through to the end of the disc. Brahms’ Zigeunerlieder all come off splendidly well, with both the gypsy elements and the Brahmsian sound intact. Dvořák’s Cigánské Melodie offer a qualitative step up from the Liszt and Brahms, with the original tunes, the new arrangements, and the singer’s singing all combining to pack a wallop. Then comes the surprise in the form of Sebastián Iradier. Three beefy songs all sound as tuneful, as seductive, as compelling as anything, with the ending and very famous El arreglito the right way to cap off his music. (Bayrakdarian knew how to select the tunes.) The super-famous Bizet comes next, and Bayrakdarian nails it. The brief Valverde piece sounds lovely. Then come two from Gilbert, reverted back to the original Spanish from his English setting, and the songs of South American Chinganeros have real verve and swing. The title for the album comes from an 1889 book by Laura Alexandrine Smith, and the two song texts derive from that book. The four closing tracks are all extracted from various operattas, and all sound just nifty, and fully like what one expects stylistically. The Kálmán manages to mix gypsy music and a Puccinian soundworld quite expertly. Super nice. The lucky listeners gets to hear Bayrakdarian sing in English in the famous Herbert closer, and she nails it.

Sonics are superb. Bayrakdarian gets much love and attention and sounds larger than life, and that’s fine, but she does not suffer from vocal gigantism. The church the music was recorded in sounds fantastic, with perfect decay and resonance for the music, and the engineers went for a truthful, wide-dynamic range sound. Oh yeah. Playing is all top notch, and the accompanying notes are nice enough. It’s also pretty much an all Bayrakdarian affair, as she produced and owns the recording. I also learned that she has a degree in biomedical engineering and currently is a prof and admin at UCSB. She’s a Renaissance Woman.

A purchase of the year? Oh yeah, a purchase of the year.

 

[Todd A]

While revisiting the recordings of Moriz Rosenthal, my ears perked up a bit when he played a miniature by Anatoly Liadov. I don’t know for sure how many pieces by Lyadov I have heard, though I am certain they are all small and buried in big boxes. But there was enough there, as played by Rosenthal, that I thought I should sample an all-Lyadov recording. As it happens, they are rare, especially so when it comes to piano. I did manage to find this recording by Yoko Kikuchi (I don’t know if she’s related to Yusuke). The sixteen tracks cover fourteen miniatures (Preludes, Waltzes, and the like) and two beefier sets of variations.

It is not inaccurate to state that the Preludes sound like proto-Scriabin works, creating a bridge between Chopin and the Mysterium dude. They sound lovely and languid, and Kikuchi plays with a very sensitive touch, and a closely recorded one at that. The sometimes encored Une tabatière à musique comes off nicely, and the two waltzes sound pleasant enough, though the “petite” waltz is substantially longer than the regular one. Variations sur un thème populaire polonaise, Op. 51 follows, and this offers something a bit more. The foursquare theme allows the composer to liberally expand on the material in several directions, sort of like LvB’s Diabellis, though the result here is not a towering masterpiece. It does generally sound quite beautiful, and occasionally a bit dynamic, but it remains compact and safe, which works well. The stilted rhythm and brightness of Marionnettes, Op. 29 renders it one of the most delightful pieces included here. Surely, it should appear on more programs. A couple more miniatures follow, and then comes the big work, Variations sur un thème de Glinka, Op. 35. By turns lovely, jaunty, introspective, and gleeful, it sounds basically like Slavic Mendelssohn, with some Schumann tossed in for good measure. I can’t say it’s a titanic masterpiece, but it exceeded (admittedly) low expectations. A couple more miniatures end the recording in fine, lovely style.

Ms Kikuchi plays excellently throughout, making me think I should listen to more of her recordings. I shall make it a point to try more Lyadov, as well.