"New" Music Log

[Todd A]

Jumping forward to the classical era, Dmitry Bortniansky makes a first appearance in my collection. This recording starts off with a setting of an anonymous Cherubic Hymn, which sounds aged and serene and lovely, and then things jump into a more identifiably classical era soundworld. Though not entirely. Rather like Tchaikovsky’s later setting of the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, big slugs of the music sound something closer to timeless. Bug slugs do not, however. Not being a musicologist, I don’t know how familiar Bortniansky may have been with Haydn, or vice versa, but in some of the writing, there’s a vaguely similar style and approach. It does sounds less austere than Tchaikovsky or Rachmaninoff, but the buoyancy, the verve, the energy, and the clear seriousness of purpose works well. The short concerto style writing also keeps things moving along. The singing is all modern US conservatory good, so it is very good, and the recorded sound from the San Franciso venue is quite excellent. A very nice addition to my collection.

 

[Todd A]

Back to the Renaissance, and off to jolly old England, with works by Christopher Tye and William Mundy. The 16th Century music is very serious, lovely, and somewhat austere, at least when compared to, say, Spanish composers. While one can enjoy lovely polyphonic writing, much of the music is much influenced by chant, Mundy even more than Tye. The comparative simplicity of much of the writing combined with the small scale sound is most rewarding, though. Overall, another hit from Jeremy Summerly and crew.

 

[Todd A]

Time for some Tomáš Norbert Koutník! Who? Yeah, I know. I found this for a few bucks and figured it couldn’t hurt to listen to it. The 1970 vintage recording contains two works, the oratorio Kriminalista Nevinný and the Requiem in E Flat Major. Basically, the music sounds like a merging of Pachelbel and early Haydn, with dollops of Handel. The tunes sound nice enough, the orchestral writing sounds nice enough, and the singing is good enough. It’s hard to drum up a great amount of enthusiasm for the recording, but it is impossible to dislike. This would make for perfect background music to listen to while performing some mundane task, so one’s mind can wander and focus on the music from time to time. The transfer is OK. It’s hard to tell if it came from degraded tape or LP.

 

[Todd A]

Tallis time. I’m of course familiar with Thomas Tallis, and rather dig his Spem in Alium, but I’ve listened to comparatively little of his music. This recording of a Mass for Four Voices and some Motets is basically the anti-Spem. Simple, sparse, clear, this music occupies a different world. One commonality is the striking beauty. The simplicity, if anything, makes it more apparent. Perhaps a deeper dive into Tallis’ output is warranted.

 

[Todd A]

I’ve yet to amass a even a medium sized Palestrina collection, but I am familiar enough with his work that I thought I ought to go for something big and juicy in the form of the Cantica Salomonis, or the Song of Songs, expressed in twenty-nine motets. Oh yeah! Well, not really. So, the music is most excellent. The singing, however, is not. One can probably find fault in many places, but for me, the high voices are the problem. There’s an unappealing nature to the high parts. It makes listening a chore. (I think the high parts are taken by women only, though perhaps some boy sopranos are used.) The lower voices sound more tonally alluring, but also less than tidy. The Palestrina Ensemble Munich is not the most accomplished ensemble I have listened to. As a slight saving grace, the few extra encores sounds slightly more appealing. But overall, despite the involvement of living Schuberts, the recording cannot be counted a great success.

 

[Todd A]

Now here’s a composer I didn’t know that I really needed to hear. This is the second Mayr to pop up in my collection – Rupert Ignaz Mayr is the other one – and this Mayr has a claim to fame, such as it is, in the fact that he was a noted instructor of Italian bel canto opera composers, including Donizetti. He was Bavarian by birth, but he ended up spending a lot of time working farther to the South. This recording of not one, but two Messa di Gloria, one in E minor and one in F Minor, reveals Mr Mayr to be a composer of no little accomplishment. The best shorthand here is to describe the music as a perfect blend of Carl Maria von Weber and Gioachino Rossini. And that is why I really needed to hear this music. Both works are in minor keys, but they energy levels bubble and the pace stays taut. Severe religiosity is out; theatrical gestures are in. Vibrance, showy set pieces for the soloists, and multiple very Weberian horn blats permeate the whole undertaking. Mix in superb singing and really quite fine recorded sound, and this here is a winner. It turns out that Mayr wrote gobs and gobs and gobs of music, including literally hundreds of liturgical movements that could be dropped in any old place. It also turns out that conductor Franz Hauk is most devoted to Mayr’s music and has recorded a decent chunk of it for Naxos. I think I should probably investigate a bit more.

 

[Todd A]

A couple years ago, I picked up the excellent Josquin & the Franco-Flemish School box on Warner, and it contained several new to me composers, including Adrian Willaert. I thought to myself I should really try something else by the composer, and now is the time. This now almost thirty year old recording of the Missa Christus Resurgens and some smaller works fit the bill. Things kick off with the Christus resurgens by Jean Richafort, which serves as the basis of the main work, and it sets the tone of all that follows. And that is an intimate, beautiful, not too dense, easy to follow and generally just soothing and musical-warm-blanket recording. The high voices dominate the recording, which is all to the good, and the singing sounds lovely and otherwise blended nicely. This is one of those hour-long recordings where one just presses play and lets the good times roll.

 

[Todd A]

For no good reason, I’ve never listened to either Dvořák’s Mass in D or his Te Deum. I’ve heard his Stabat Mater (under Kubelik) and Requiem (under Ancerl), but not these. Well, now was the time, I thought. That no less than Antoni Wit conducts all but guaranteed success. And a success it is. The Mass, evidently scaled up from the original, smacks of 19th Century grandeur, but having flowed from the pen of Dvořák, the tunes are simply gorgeous, and even with the scale, it sounds like a slightly beefier, definitely sunnier approach to liturgical music that Fauré later mimicked-ish, at least in the quieter sections. Sure, one can hear whiffs of Wagner in the brass in some places, but it’s tasteful, restrained Richie. It really sounds just splendid, celebratory, and lovely. The Te Deum sounds more identifiably Dvořákian, and it is entirely extroverted and often most showy, though never garish, even in the most over the top moments.

 

[Todd A]

Thirteen bass drum and bell thwacks open Thierry Lancino’s Requiem. After that sparse, hard entry, uncompromising blats of sound emerge, as does a singer singing lines of the Sibyl. It’s all terribly modernist, hard-hitting, uncompromising, ugly. As it happens, I can and do enjoy such music, even when dealing with religious themes. Last time I had a similar hankering for religious themed new music, I ended with the far less compromising and far more radical Mars: Requiem by Helga Pogatschar. This is not that. This is more traditional modernist music, rather conservative in comparison. Think Ligeti (definitely) mixed with Berlioz (definitely) mixed with Bruneau (probably), infused with a little bit of art house movie aspirational serious film music, and of course some French avant-garde, and one gets the idea. I don’t mean to make light of the work, because it is indeed very serious, but it gives off something of a Barenaked Ladies vibe, because it’s all been done. The blended text, mixing the Requiem text with other pieces in other languages, works well enough, and the orchestral colors and sounds, and the bracing modernism, and the at times really quite excellent soloists (Skelton and Murphy earn their paychecks), and the really rather fine choral work make for a fine overall listen. Indeed, this more or less typifies what I think of when I think of large-scale modern choral works. That’s a good enough thing. Turns out there’s a decent enough batch of recordings of Lancino’s works, with the one by Paula Robison and Pavaali Jumppanen the most immediately appealing. I suspect I shall be hearing more from Mr Lancino. In the meantime, this recording works well, is in good enough modern sound, and shows that sometimes big(gish) names can and do deliver.

 

[Todd A]

About twentyish years ago, I purchased my first and only disc of Antheil’s music, the Ballet Mécanique on Naxos. Every once in a while, I give it a spin and enjoy the relentless, giddy drive and absurdity of the whole thing – and that’s the version for orchestra. So, after much ado, a follow-up purchase in the form of the Violin Sonatas. Hot shots Tianwa Yang and Nicholas Rimmer, both so well known to my ears, including for their knockout recording of Wolfgang Rihm’s works for violin and piano, made the decision to go for this an easy one. The listener can expect and gets tip-top quality playing. I mean, Yang’s glissando and Rimmer’s repeated notes alone are worth asking price – and those are merely the first things that make the listener think “Neat!”.

The first three sonatas date from the hot house Roaring 20s, and the influences are obvious. Think Stravinsky (including near/actual quotations), Bartok’s folk music (including near/actual quotations), Schulhoff’s filtered jazz, ragtime, Spanish piano music, and, well, Antheil, and that’s what one gets, a pastiche-meets-unyielding-invention glob o’ music in three works ranging from the taut, eight-minute and change single-movement sonata (with bass drum added), to the more than twenty-four minute, four movement behemoth that is the first. The Fourth sounds less intense and frantic, with some lovelier melodies emerging, but it retains something akin to a stream of consciousness feel informed by a plethora of influences.

Recorded sound is fully up to snuff, and playing is hot shot quality. A treat of a recording.