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Before the Best Of lists begin, here's one more “regular” post, a quick run through just a few spectacularly colorful recent releases in the contemporary classical arena. Push "play" on this playlist to listen along in real time.
Zosha Di Castri - Tachitipo Color. Texture. Emotion. Craft. All those virtues are fully on display on this stunning portrait debut from Di Castri, a Canadian composer with whom I was completely unfamiliar. If you’re in the same boat, paddle over and climb aboard a luxury liner packed with talent. In the engine room are Di Castri’s compositions, which demonstrate an astonishing facility with a variety of forces, from vocal group to string quartet, and from solo piano to chamber ensemble. Then, you have the staterooms, appointed with such luminaries as Ekmeles, Talea Ensemble, JACK Quartet, Julia Den Boer, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), and Yarn/Wire, each one performing at the top of their game. That’s no mean feat when you consider something like the opening track, The Animal After Whom All Other Animals Are Named (2013), which has Ekmeles dishing out all manner of vocal effects while engaging in a fractured duet with glitched-out electronics. It’s a gauntlet thrown and one ably picked up by Cortège, which has Lorraine Vaillancourt through a dark funhouse of tension, release, and smart orchestration.
String Quartet No. 1 (2016) is like raw steak tossed into the JACK’s cage: they attack the score with gusto and make quite a meal for all of us. While deeply connected to the tradition, Di Castri also approaches it with a disarming freshness. May it be played often by string quartets everywhere. Dux (2017) also gives Den Boer a lot to chew on, whether it’s the keyboard spanning runs or techniques seemingly derived from Cage and Nancarrow. Unlike those two masters, however, Di Castri seems to be leading with her heart more than her head. La Forma Dello Spazio (2010), performed by ICE, is next, all flashing swords and lances, like knights on skittish horses. The percussion part adds atmosphere and the inventiveness continues to the very last note.
Yarn/Wire, a quartet of two pianos and two percussionists, now have, in the title track (2016) a new piece that should long find a place in their repertoire. Named after a brand of typewriter, it’s a showpiece for both players and composer, full of wit, charm, and moments of limpid beauty. And if all of this variety has you wondering if there's is anything she can't do, witness Diego Espinosa Cruz Gonzalez performing How Many Bodies Have We To Pass through, a deep exploration of percussive possibilities. The name Zosha Di Castri is memorable all on its own, but this knockout album guarantees it will be on the lips of anyone who loves new music. Shell out for the CD - it comes in a letterpress package by Kiva Stimac that is the ideal visual and tactile companion to the sounds within. Dare I say it's the perfect stocking stuffer?
Mario Diaz de Leon - Cycle And Reveal Both Talea Ensemble and ICE appear on this latest collection of works by Diaz de Leon, each the result of long collaborations between artist and performer going back at least a decade. The four works here find Diaz de Leon using space and silence in new ways without losing the sense of wonder and ceremony that I have come to expect from him. Sacrament (2017) opens the album with the beautifully rounded sounds of the marimba (played by Alex Lipowski) combined with flute and eventually clarinet and electronics, moments of dense sound synthesis alternating with fragmented sections, the instruments seeming to chase each other around the room.
Labrys (2017), composed for and performed by ICE bassoonist Rebekah Heller, also has a fragmented feel, with plenty of air around the expectorations of the reed instrument and the bright synth tones. Part of the fun is putting it all together in your head an effort which comes to a crashing halt when the commanding tones of Mariel Roberts's cello digs into the opening notes of Irradiance (2016), a cavernously involving piece. Diaz de Leon as master of darkness and electronics (and deeply informed by pop and metal) comes to the fore here, releasing startling images in my mind such as a black rose crushed into diamonds, glinting with all the colors of the universe against a velvety night sky. It must be heard to be believed! The ICE trio of Heller, Claire Chase (flute), and Joshua Rubin (clarinet) finish the album with Mysterium (2016), which lives up to its name with the narrative tension of a great Lalo Schifrin score. If you haven't been tracking Diaz de Leon's career thus far, Cycle And Reveal is a ideal point of entry.
Tak Ensemble - Oor This no-holds-barred group debuted in 2016 with Ecstatic Music, devoted to the compositions of Taylor Brook and one of the best classical releases of that year. They dedicated their second recording to Diaz de Leon for another remarkable excursion into his sound world. If those weren't proof enough that they were ready for anything, Oor will convince you that nothing is too wild or wooly for Tak. Naturally, Tyshawn Sorey is an ideal co-conspirator and Laura Cocks (flute) and Carlos Cordiero (clarinet) easily meet the demands of his aggressive and witty Ornations (commissioned by Tak in 2014), which I had the privilege to see Claire Chase and Josh Rubin perform at the Miller Theatre earlier this year. That's not even as much fun as album closer, The Colors Don't Match by Natacha Diels, who puts vocalist Charlotte Mundy (who also sings with Ekmeles) through her paces as she she recites the names of notes ("D flat...E...E flat") in a variety of attitudes while the rest of the band tries to keep pace. Def puts Diels on my radar.
David Bird's works shone on AndPlay's wonderful Playlist so it's great to hear his talents applied to the wider palette of Tak, who take his ball and run with it a long distance. Ashkan Behzadi, who also had a piece on Playlist, takes full advantage of Mundy's adventurous spirit in Az Hoosh Mi..., almost casting Marina Kifferstein's violin as another vocalist in an investigation of a modern piece of poetic Persian erotica. The album also includes Erin Gee's Mouthpiece, which gives Mundy even more space to play, and Anne Cleare's Unable To Create An Offscreen World, a colorfully harsh fantasia with some splashy moments for percussionist Ellery Trafford and guest cellist Meaghan Burke. Equally as exciting as Oor itself is the fact that it was released on their own Tak Editions label - perhaps a hint that their is much more to come from this extraordinary bunch of players.
Jessica Meyer - Ring Out In which supremely talented violist Meyer reveals herself as a delightfully varied, and emotionally connected, composer. Not surprisingly for someone who only began composing five years ago, many of the most assured works are for strings, whether the headlong rush of cello (played by Andrew Yee of Attaca Quartet) in Released (2014), or the skillful intertwining of violin and cello, played by Miranda Cuckson and Caleb van der Swaagh respectively, in the Rumi-inspired three-part suite, I Only Speak Of The Sun (2018). But Meyer also branches out beautifully in a song cycle, Seasons of Basho, written for viola, countertenor (Nicholas Tamagna), and piano (Adam Marks), and Ring Out, Wild Bells (2017), composed for the vocal octet Roomful of Teeth, and taking full advantage of the unique resonance of the TANK in Colorado. Bringing together the words of Alfred, Lord Tennyson,and field recordings of Parisian church bells, it spins off many possibilities for Meyer's future as a composer. If you listen to Ring Out you'll likely be waiting with bated breath for more.
Ted Hearne - Hazy Heart Pump Composer/performers don't come much more polyglot than Hearne, who is equally at home deconstructing Madonna songs or composing a choral dissection of the Citizens United ruling. But I think his personality (personalities?) as an artist have never been as searingly committed to a single album as they are here. You can almost visualize the funnel going into his brain, with Charles Mingus pushing past poetry (Saul Williams and Dorothy Lasky) and jockeying for space with David Lang and, say, Bela Bartok, where it's transmuted into his own particular art. The wonder of this album is in the full package, too, thanks to the liner notes from Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti, which not only describe their friendship but also superbly explicate the background to each piece. Lanzilotti is present as a performer as well, adding her viola to Hearne's piano and the violin of Miki-Sophia Cloud for Vessels (2008), which employs alternate tunings and muted strings to arrive at a chopped and screwed vision of Neue Weiner Schule serialism. At least that's what happens in my head - your results may vary.
The album kicks off with For The Love Of Charles Mingus (2016), which finds Cloud layering six violin parts for an oblique response to the universe of the great jazz bassist. Williams joins forces with the Mivos Quartet for The Answer To The Question That Wings Ask (2016), a series of questions ("What time is it? Who set the clock? Who coded/decoded time? Are there different ways of keeping it?) with the Mivos either following or competing with the poet's intense recitation. The four jagged and funky parts of Furtive Movements (2015) will have you questioning why more works aren't written for cello and percussion - then again, not everyone has Ashley Bathgate and Ron Wiltrout at their disposal to make those dreams a reality. Nobody's (2009) is wisely at the center of the album, a short bit of shattered Appalachia for solo viola (Diana Wade - and her stomping feet) that leads perfectly into Vessels. The album closes with the Argus Quartet's reading of Exposure (String Quartet No. 1) (2017) and you would be correct in thinking that the subtitle indicates a confrontation with the storied tradition of string quartets. Hearne's pen is more than up to it, too, resulting in a piece that should be played far and wide in halls big and small. Trust me, Hearne's latest will have your heart pumping in ways that are not at all hazy.
Daniel Lippel - Mirrored Spaces Even if Lippel never released another album under his own name, we would all owe him a debt for his wise and generous steering of the ship that is New Focus Recordings, which issues a seemingly endless stream of great albums each year. And that's not to mention his superb work within many ensembles, ICE and counter)induction among them. But here he has followed up last year's remarkable ...through which the past shines with yet another gift, a vast collection across the possibilities of guitar music as sprawling and adventurous as the White Album, featuring pieces by Orianna Webb, John Link, Kyle Bartlett, Douglas Boyce, Ryan Streber, Ethan Wickman, Christopher Bailey, Dalia R. With, Sergio Kafejian, Karin Wetzel, Sidney Corbett, and Lippel himself. From solo acoustic gems like Wickman's Joie Divisions to electro-acoustic works like the alternately sparkling and serrated Like Minds by Link, Lippel wants us to hear it all, feel it all, and marvel at it all.
The project has its roots in a 2008 performance, represented here by a live recording of Lippel's own Scaffold for electric guitar, full of moody string-bending, feedback and distortion, which will echo in your head long after the album ends. I'll leave it to the sociologists to look into why, after a peripatetic series of collaborations, premieres and recording sessions, Mirrored Spaces comes to us in the same season as All Mirrors by Angel Olsen or mirrored heart by FKA Twigs, but I will say it is as vital a reflection of our times as either of those fertile and exploratory journeys into the heart of pop expressionism. I will be listening to, and taking nourishment from, Mirrored Spaces for quite some time. I suggest you start now.
Dither - Potential Differences If it's more guitar goodness you seek, don't, er, dither about grabbing on to this third album from a most versatile electric guitar quartet made up of Taylor Levine, Joshua Lopes, James Moore, and Gyan Riley. Whether exploring various techniques and tones in Jascha Narveson's marvelous four-movement suite, Ones (2011) or going full atmo-prog in Mi-Go (2012) by Lopes, these guys can do it all. Each of them contributes a piece, in fact, with Riley's hypnotic The Tar of Gyu (2013) and Levine's post-punk freakout, Renegade (2013), being especially memorable. We also get more Ted Hearne in Candy (2010), which is filled with patterns and textures you can imagine David Torn contributing to a Bowie album. Maybe we can get someone to commission a guitar quintet and have Lippel sit in with Dither...a person can dream. Until then, I'll just continue enjoying the ride.
There's something for all tastes and occasions above - let me know which ones move you the most.
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Glints In The Darkness: Mario Diaz de Leon
In Part 1 I wrote about Laura Metcalf's excellent First Day, one of two debut albums by cellists being released by Sono Luminus this spring. First Day is a truly lovely album, which introduced me to several unfamiliar pieces that quickly became old friends. The other album is Transitions by Michael Nicolas, and it is a horse (more like a bucking bronco, actually) of a very different, but no less compelling color. Plain truth: it's a wild ride and one that may not be for everyone - but I can't get enough.
Nicolas landed in my inbox a while ago as the new cellist for Brooklyn Rider, their first new member since they began a decade ago. That alone speaks to his technical skill and spirit of adventure, as does his membership in the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE). However, Transitions, which explores the "intersection between technology and humanity," firmly establishes Nicolas as a commanding musician in his own right.
The album opens with a bang: Mario Davidovsky's Synchronism No. 3 for Cello and Electronic Sounds. Written in 1963, this is the oldest piece on the album and a fantastic introduction to what is to come. First off, the sound is extraordinary. I feel like I'm inside the cello, surrounded by the lapidary synthesized sound of the electronics. The playing feels completely natural, musical and involving, with the electronic sounds fully integrated in a way that I haven't heard before. This may be the definitive recording of this piece and I'm glad Davidovsky, who was born in 1934, is still around to hear it.
Nicolas next stakes his claim on Minimalism with Steve Reich's Cello Counterpoint, which required him to record eight different cello parts. It's a fairly late Reich piece, from 2003, and Nicolas plays it with more of a dynamic sweep than the other recordings I've heard. I won't go so far as to say he romanticizes it, but it does feel somehow more emotionally resonant.
That's it for the classic pieces, though. Next up is a world premiere of David Fulmer's Speak of the Spring, which takes its title from Shakespeare's Sonnet 53 ("What is your substance, whereof are you made...") Aside from some possible double-tracking, I can't otherwise hear the addition of any technology in this work. There is both delicacy and strength to the way the piece unfurls, like fine vines intertwining, and aside from a rhythmic explosion around two thirds into the eight minute piece, the mood is mainly contemplative.
You won't stay in that mood for long after Annie Gosfield's Four Roses starts up. This slamming "duo" for cello and synthesizer was written in 1997 and has some of the dark heaviness of Mario Diaz de Leon's music. It flows seamlessly into a world premiere of ...And A Five Spot, also by Gosfield and composed recently for Nicolas. In both pieces, the cello and electronics are sometimes together and sometimes at odds, creating a fascinating energy that is very distinctive. These two works combined have me very curious about Gosfield - it looks like I have a bit of catching up to do!
The penultimate track is Anna Thorvaldsdottir's Transitions, a solo cello piece Nicolas also recorded for the ICE album In The Light Of Air, which was on my Top 20 for 2015. There's nothing radically different about this new recording except for the context, which makes you realize that the cello itself is "technology," like any instrument aside from the human voice. Nicolas' virtuosity makes the cello an extension of himself, making him the ideal guide by which to experience this fundamentally mysterious music.
The electronics are back, in a big way, on flexura, another world premiere, written for Nicolas by Jaime E. Oliver La Rosa. This is properly a duet between the composer and the performer. While Nicolas is playing the cello, La Rosa plays an instrument he invented called a MANO, which is like a touch panel he uses to manipulate sound, including sampled cello notes. Confused? Check out this video of them performing flexura at NYU in 2015. Whatever is going on, the music is very exciting - simultaneously spooky and light, with a sense of play throughout. La Rosa is definitely one to watch. This is very bold stuff and a stunning way to end Transitions. Michael Nicolas has truly arrived. Bravo!
Transitions will be released on May 27th but you can get a sneak preview when Nicolas performs four of the pieces, including the Gosfield and La Rosa works with the composers on hand, in a free concert at Columbia's Miller Theater on May 16th. I don't know about you, but I'm going to try to get there.
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The Inspired Viola Of Melia Watras
The preceding 12 months brought the all the usual thinkpieces about the death of classical music, the decline of CD sales, the struggle to fill concert halls, etc. But for us listeners, there was plenty of sounds to surprise and delight. I'm probably only scratching the surface but here goes...
New (Mostly) Music, New Recordings
After the triumph of Become Ocean in 2014, no one would have looked askance if John Luther Adams had decided to take a year off. But the man has a work ethic so there were actually not one but two fascinating new releases in 2015. The Wind In High Places is an exquisite collection featuring three works for strings. The title work, played to perfection by the JACK Quartet, is an ethereal work that asks the players to keep their hands off the fretboards and play only open strings and harmonics. But knowing those technical details is not necessary to enjoy the airy tangles of harmonies woven together by Adams. The second piece, Canticles Of The Sky, was composed for 48 cellos and sounds like a ribbon of pure sound. You might find yourself breathing differently as you listen. The album closes with Dream of the Canyon Wren, also played by the JACK, a series of descending glissandos with some of the puckish wit of Harry Partch. The album is Adams in his prime, which means essential listening.
Ilimaq: Under the Ice, an electro-acoustic collaboration with Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche, is a little bit more of a specialty item. Five movements of spacy sounds, pounding tom-toms, and subtle clatters and clangs, without much structure that I can find, make for a piece I don't listen to often. But if the mood is right, there's nothing else like it. As with The Wind In High Places, the recording is a masterpiece in its own right, finely detailed, sonically rich, and involving.
Like Adams' music, the pieces on Clockworking by the Icelandic chamber ensemble Nordic Affect also seem in touch with the natural and physical world. From Beacon To Beacon, by Hafdís Bjarnadóttir, even features the sound of pounding surf or blowing winds among its spiky explorations. Special notice should be taken, here and elsewhere, of the sparkling harpsichord of Guðrún Óskarsdóttir. The six works were commissioned from five local composers (all women, I might add), including superstar Anna Thorvaldsdottir. But while Thorvaldsdottir is the most well-known, I will now be keeping an ear out for the others, especially Maria Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir, who wrote the instantly likable opening and closing tracks. If there was ever a new music song of the summer, 2015 would belong to Sigfúsdóttir's Clockworking. Another beautiful recording from Sono Luminus, too.
On the darker end of the spectrum, we have The Soul is the Arena, three stunning works by Mario Diaz de Leon, including Luciform for flute and electronics performed by the great Claire Chase and the title track for bass clarinet and electronics, brilliantly played by Joshua Rubin. Both those works were previously released, however, the former on Chase's Density and the latter on Rubin's There Never Is No Light. So the only new work is the brooding and suspenseful Portals Before Dawn, played here by the International Contemporary Ensemble. It is a gorgeous and sophisticated work, signifying new levels of dynamic flexibility on the part of Diaz de Leon, so get to it whether or not you've already heard those other pieces.
Speaking of dark, it gets none more black than Jóhann Jóhannsson's soundtrack to the fatalistic thriller Sicario. This is literally the sound of dread and it has to be heard to be believed. For such a small country, Iceland sure knows how to crank out great composers. Hint: it probably starts in the schools.
If you're feeling tense after Sicario, get some rest with Max Richter's Sleep, eight hours of music precision-tooled to lull you to sleep and keep you there. However, I've listened to the shorter version, From Sleep, and you might want to stay awake. It's quite beautiful, Eno ambiance crossed with hushed minimalism.
When violinist Sarah Plum couldn't find a piece to pair with Sidney Corbett's beautiful, exploratory Yael from 2011 she simply commissioned another violin concerto by Christopher Adler and released them under the name Music For A New Century. There's a lot of variety of moods between Corbett's Yael and Adler's spiky and mysterious Violin Concerto, and Plum's committed and engaging playing makes a more than convincing case for both pieces.
Time Travelers
Three excellent collections compiled music across centuries, some of it newly composed for the occasion. Viola virtuoso Melia Watras assembled Ispirare around the music of George Rochberg and Luciano Berio, putting them in dialog with more recent work by Atar Arad and Shulamit Ran. The Rochberg was a bit stodgy but her performances of the Berio and Ran works were revelatory - get to them so they can get to you.
Orli Shaham explored the songlike piano music of Brahms through some of the music (Schubert, Schumann, Chopin) that he was listening to and newly commissioned works influenced by him. Shaham's stylish and assured playing wove a very satisfying tapestry on Brahms Inspired and it's a great entrée into his keyboard music.
If there is a choir around that's better than the SWR Vokalensemble Stuttgart conducted by Marcus Creed, I will personally sing hallelujah in front of a packed house at Carnegie Hall. Their album Italia was an ear-opening traversal through about 100 years of Italian choral music, including works by Verdi, Pizzetti, Scelsi, Nono, and Petrassi. Their recording of Scelsi's TKRDG is likely definitive, hopefully bringing this extraordinary music to a wider audience.
Old Music, New Recordings
Marcus Creed also shone leading Denmark's DR VokalEnsemblet on L'amour et la foi, a stunning collection of Messiaen's choral music. The perfect introduction to this corner of the master's music.
Also on the choral tip is Salvatore Mundi: The Purcell Legacy, a dreamy compilation of English church music composed by Purcell and in his wake (by Blow, Boyce, Jackson, Handel, etc.) and performed with utmost naturalism by St. Salvator's Chapel Choir with the expert assistance of the Fitzwilliam Quartet.
I have found, more often than not, that a composer's recording is not the definitive one. This is proved once again by Sir Simon Rattle's new live recording of Witold Lutoslawski's Concerto For Piano And Orchestra with the Berliner Philharmoniker. While the soloist, Krystian Zimerman, is the same as Lutoslawski's own performance from the eighties, this is an altogether more crisp and coherent version of a landmark work of 20th-century modernism. Essential.
Returning from the improvisatory adventures of Silfra, and the ambition of commissioning 27 new pieces, Hilary Hahn came home to Mozart in a new recording of his Violin Concerto No. 5. Paavo Järvi and The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen are the perfect partners in this lyrical and unsentimental performance. It wasn't a warhorse when Mozart wrote it, after all, so there's no reason to play it like one. Belgian composer Henri Vieuxtemps was born about 30 years after Mozart died and is in no way his equal. Hahn takes his stormy Violin Concerto No. 4 at face value, playing it as well as it can be played, but it is filler nonetheless.
Speaking of a return, soprano Renee Fleming has been in the "crossover classical" trenches for a while now so it's nice to see her tackle something meatier: Alban Berg's Lyric Suite, performed here with the Emerson Quartet. The Emerson is really the star in the Berg, as Fleming only appears in an alternate version of the last of six movements. But what a glorious sound they make together! Fleming's lush voice blends perfectly with the strings, fitting Berg's conception of a mini-opera to a T. Fortunately, we get more of this divine combination in a set of five songs by Egon Wellesz, a Berg contemporary who is much less well known. His settings of Sonnets From The Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning are intimate and romantic while still feeling modern. I will be investigating his work further based on this. From the well-designed cover featuring a Klimt painting to the starry participants, this is a release that acknowledges no twilight of the record industry - and why should it?
New Music, Old Recording
Kudos to Wergo for reissuing the out-of-print Nonesuch recording of Morton Subotnick's The Wild Beasts (1978). This work is wild indeed, with Subotnick exploring the more comical side of the trombone alongside his signature electronics. Also included is After The Butterfly (1979), with Mario Guarneri as the adventurous trumpet soloist playing Subotnick's witty score with aplomb. If a butterfly is being described it is a rather bumptious and quirky creature. As the cover says, these are "Landmark Recordings" and it is good to have them readily available again.
Sample the works mentioned with this handy playlist - then follow through with the complete recordings of anything that catches your ear.
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I found time to write about only a few of the things I listened to in this realm throughout the course of the year. This wrap up includes those recordings and some of the many others of note.
Brooklyn Rider introduced me to the music of shakuhachi virtuoso Kojiro Umezaki a few years ago and I was grateful when (Cycles) came out earlier this year, collecting his emotionally charged and formally adventurous compositions.
Talea Ensemble is one of the finest new music groups in the country, if not the world. A new album by them should be a cause for celebration, and it is, for me at least. I just wish a few more people would come to the party - you don't know what you're missing. Their latest release, A Menacing Plume, focuses on the spellbinding music of Rand Steiger, an American composer and teacher who is probably more forward-thinking than some of the younger writers on the Tech & Techno Album. His use of electronics is seamless and completely assured. Like Varese, he's done his experimenting before composing his music. Talea Ensemble has chosen five of his chamber works and they're often sleek and purposeful constructions, with some of the sense of wonder Boulez inspires in his later pieces.
Thanks to a terrific and dimensional recording and the utter conviction of Talea's players along with conductor James Baker, these are likely to be definitive recordings of these colorful works. I'll not soon forget the nimble woodwind playing or the physicality of Elizabeth Weisser's viola - you can feel the gut of the strings and the air in the resonating chamber when she plays. Marvelous. Special mention has to made of Ben Reimer's dazzling percussion on Elusive Peace which finds him playing the highly structured parts with ease and lightness of touch. Like the album as a whole, everything feels very naturalistic. Talea has no doubts about the worth of Steiger's music and neither will you after hearing this album.
I've had an ear out for Anna Thorvaldsdottir's music since Rhizoma came out a few years ago. The music on that collection was so intriguing yet also so reserved as to almost vanish as you listened. This year Deutsche Grammophon released Aerial, featuring six recent (2011-2013) works which hang together more like a concept album than a recital. This is bold music, equal parts beauty and terror, and it has a strong theatrical bent. Unusually, Thorvaldsdottir is credited with mixing, editing and production on several tracks - she obviously knows how to make things sound the way she wants. And it pays off - you'll be pulled through the album almost in a state of suspense.
Speaking of bold music, any composition by Mario Diaz de Leon is bound to make a strong first impression. His work in the drone-metal arena has left him unafraid of volume and power, but it's the finesse with which he deploys them in his concert music that makes it resonate beyond the first hearing. His piece, The Soul Is The Arena, is a highlight of There Never Is No Light, the extraordinary debut album by Joshua Rubin, a clarinetist and a founding member of the International Contemporary Ensemble. I doubt very highly that there is a better clarinet player in the new music world today and the ease with which he navigates Diaz de Leon's demanding work, and that of Mario Davidovsky and the other composers featured, is astounding. This is a signature release and one that will serve as an excellent introduction, should you need one, to both Rubin and some important composers.
The quantity of both stages and performance time for large-scale contemporary stage works is shrinking in the U.S. However, that doesn't stop composers from thinking big. A new release from Nonesuch featuring Louis Andriessen's La Commedia addresses this issue head on by allowing you to bring the performance, in the form of a film, into your home. That the film is directed by Hal Hartley in sumptuous black and white only sweetens the deal. While the music is often beautiful and creatively sets the words of the Bible, Dante, and others to make up a new narrative, there is a certain lack of dynamics overall, which I don't recall from Andriessen's other music. This makes La Commedia somewhat less than involving when just listened to. It really is ideally enjoyed as a visual experience - but how many people will take the time to get the most out it? All I can say is that it's worth it and kudos to all who made this realization possible.
Christopher Tignor's Core Memory Unwound is one of my favorite albums of our short century. While none of his subsequent releases have connected at that level, he can still surprise and intrigue with his singular style. Thunder Lay Down In The Heart has the feel of a theatrical piece, starting as it does with a scene-setting spoken word piece and moving through themes and variations featuring chamber instruments, electronics, and rock drums. I'm not to sure what it adds up to, but I can hear the sound of one of our more interesting musical minds at work.
Hauschka is the wizard of the prepared piano and also possesses a usually witty and warm compositional voice. Abandoned City features him at his chilliest, however, with tense rhythms and dense chord stabs. The album is as atmospheric as its title, and almost as urban. Thames Town suggests that a hip hop collaboration may be in Hauschka's future - I couldn't help but imagine how Pusha T would sound rapping over its spare instrumentation and dance beats.
Along with Joey Baron, Bobby Previte has been the go-to drummer at the intersection of the avant garde and jazz for at least a couple of decades. Terminals finds him stepping out as composer, interacting with other leading lights like Zeena Parkins (harp) and Nels Cline (busy man!) on a series of long, involving "concertos" for percussion and soloist. Y Percussion is the common denominator on this recording and, even if there is some meandering, each track is filled with drama and color.
Leif Ove Andsnes completed his Beethoven Journey this year and it would be hard to beat his recordings of these cornerstones of Romantic music. Not all Beethoven is equal to my ears, however, so if you buy aonly one disc in the series make sure it's the one containing Piano Concertos 2 and 4. This is old Ludwig at his most sparkling, especially in the 2nd Concerto, and the performances and recording are basically perfect. You can say that about the the final disc, which contained the 5th Concerto and the Choral Fantasy, except for the sparkling part. This is a side of Beethoven that doesn't move me, where his work sounds almost pro forma. But if you want to make up your own mind about this music, the Andsnes cycle is a great place to start.
Igor Stravinsky is of course known for his game-changing ballet scores and kaleidoscopic orchestrations. He also composed piano music throughout his career and now Jenny Lin has applied her masterful technique to a complete collection of those pieces - and I'm glad she did.
Stravinsky knew his way around the piano, but Bach was the master of the keyboard and Igor Levit's new recording of the Partitas got a lot of people excited about this music again, including me. As part of my process of reviewing the album, I discovered Christiane
Jaccottet's brilliant performance (on harpsichord instead of the modern piano employed by Levit) and that excited me even more.
Lou Harrison was an American composer who embraced exoticism and joy in equal measure. La Koro Sutro is one of his signature works and I was happy to see a new recording of it, although it maybe slightly more reserved than I'd like. If you can't find this one then by all means give it a listen.
I'm not sure why Richard Reed Parry's Music For Heart & Breath excited me more in concert than in the fine recording on Deutsche Grammophon. Perhaps it was the stethoscopes or the fact that being on stage made the performers' hearts beat faster. In any case, approach it with fresh ears - you may like what you hear. There's definitely more here than just catnip for fans of Parry's band, Arcade Fire.
Bryce Dessner, guitarist for The National appears on Parry's album (indie rock mafia, anyone?) and also had his own work released under the imprimatur of DG. Unfortunately, St. Carolyn By The Sea, the piece in question, is a great argument against handing prestige recording contracts to any old rocker with some composing skills. Despite the expert husbandry of Andre de Ridder conducting the Copenhagen Philharmonic, nothing could make this music interesting. The recording is not a total waste as it includes a beautifully done concert arrangement of Jonny Greenwood's score from There Will Be Blood.
Dessner's dabblings stand in stark contrast to the rigorous work of Morton Feldman, whose String Quartet 1 was the subject of a definitive recording by the Flux Quartet, along with some of his other string music. I'm not sure this music as been played with more assurance, making this one of the most important string quartet albums in some time. If you like what you hear, check out their recording of Feldman's String Quartet 2, which goes on for over six hours.
On the lighter side, but perhaps no less important, the Nightingale String Quartet continued their traversal of the string quartets of Danish composer Rued Langgaard, who died in 1952 and whose music has been struggling for recognition ever since. Danes themselves, the members of Nightingale have a real sympathy for this music, but don't oversell it. Langgaard's writing has a lovely transparency, like looking through layers of water, and an easy melodicism that may come from some of Denmark's folk traditions. Kudos to the Nightingale for their three volume cycle, now complete, of these sweet sounds.
Soprano Anna Prohaska had a good idea, to create a recital of soldier's songs from composers as varied as Beethoven, Poulanc, Eisler and Ives, among others, and pulls it off beautifully. Eric Schneider's piano underpins her performance, which is emotionally open but never overwrought. Behind The Lines is an exemplar of the kind of intelligent programming we need more of in an age when so many works have been recorded over and over. '
When it comes to Richard Strauss, I tend to dislike the more popular works (all those big 19th century tone poems) but become extremely attached to his other music - the 20th century operas and his smaller works. Christiane Karg, a German soprano, did not have to work very hard to make me fall for Heimliche Aufforderung, her well-selected album of Strauss lieder. Her ease and warmth in these songs is matched by Malcolm Martineau's piano and, even without the rarer numbers, their performance more than justifies yet another Strauss release.
While 75% of baritone Gerald Finley's Shostakovich album is taken up with the Suite On Verses by Michelangelo Buonarroti, already beautifully sung by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (among others), the real news is in his presentation of Six Romances on Verses by English Poets. I was not familiar with this song cycle, but it is prime Shostakovich and Finley inhabits these songs, more than ably accompanied by Thomas Sanderling and the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra.
Whew. How is a discerning listener to keep up with all this stuff? I Care If You Listen magazine was one way I found out about some of these releases, along with the NYT Classical Playlist. Let me know if you have any suggestions along those lines.
Still upcoming: Great EP's of 2014 and Out Of The Past.
Here's an annotated series of tweets as a review of Elizabeth Weisser's concert at Mannes College on Tuesday, February 4th. Weisser is the violist and Director of Development for Talea Ensemble, one of the most remarkable new music ensembles in a city that now boasts more than a few such groups.
Tweet 1: "@AnEarful: From world premieres to Schumann - violist Beth Weisser of @TaleaEnsemble w/piano & electronics TONIGHT @MannesCollege. #free #music"
I believe in promoting the artists I like on Twitter, Facebook and in conversation. I did get one thing wrong in my zeal, however: There were no world premieres, but there was a U.S. Premiere of a piece by Austrian composer Bernhard Gander.
Tweet 2: "@AnEarful: Beth Weisser of @taleaensemble about to kick it off with Xenakis, then Bach, Diaz de Leon, Gander, Dillon and Schumann. #newmusic"
Six composers, three of them living. Even someone barely familiar with composed music would probably note that something interesting was going on here. It was a program designed with intelligence and a keen musicality.
Tweet 3: "@AnEarful: Embellie by Xenakis is an agitated incantation, expertly played by Beth Weisser at Mannes - and Bach's BWV 1005 followed perfectly."
Iannis Xenakis was a Greek-born France-based composer (he died in 2001) known for spiky, virtuosic music such as his demanding string quartets. While he made use of electronics at times, Embellie, composed in 1981, is strictly a solo piece for viola. It's full of dark-hued tones and haunting sounds produced by well-deployed extended techniques. Weisser truly is an expert at this sort of thing, having played music that asks almost anything of her, short of smashing her instrument over her knee.
Bach's Sonata for Solo Violin No. 3 in C Major has been transcribed for many instruments so playing it on viola is not much of a leap. Composed in 1720, it may be the longest and most difficult of the works Bach wrote in this vein. According to All Music, the great Jascha Heifetz "...used to break out in a cold sweat and suffer nervous bow-shakes when playing it..." but here was Beth Weisser in her chic silver and black outfit playing it, as she did the Xenakis, without sheet music. There was a moment or two where she seemed on the verge of losing the thread but she never did. Her approach, along with the deep sound of the viola, brought out the extraordinary harmonic sophistication in Bach's writing and the lyrical dance-like sections sang out beautifully. "21st century Bach," as my friend accurately observed when the applause had died down.
Tweet 4: "@AnEarful: ii. 23 by @m_diazdeleon is a ballet for viola & electronics - in a fractured mirror, executed flawlessly by Beth Weisser @MannesCollege"
I was excited about Mario Diaz de León's entry on the program, having been introduced to his tough-minded music last year. As it happens, Weisser has been performing the cryptically titled ii. 23 since at least 2009 when she played it with "an impressive old-fashioned virtuosity." It still sounds as fresh as a newly crushed daisy as the viola jabs at and soars over a prickly yet rich electronic soundscape. The "fractured mirror" refers to the way Diaz de León's programming sometimes seemed to be an amplified echo of what the viola played. After the Bach, it was a thrilling romp on the cutting edge. You can hear an excellent recording, though not by Weisser, on Diaz de León's Enter Houses Of from 2009.
Tweet 5: "@AnEarful: There's a violent play in Bernhard Gander's The Orpheus File II, like tiger cubs grown too old for sparring. 1st US perf by Beth Weisser."
Bernhard Gander's piece, more accurately titled Die Orpheus Akte II, is a remarkable piece for viola, piano and shards of aggressive, noisy recorded sound that threaten to overwhelm the acoustic instruments. It did feel a little dangerous, but with a sense of fun, hence my imagery above. Weisser's fluent, commanding playing was matched by Stephen Gosling on piano while David Adamcyk dealt out the electronics without a hitch.
While this was indeed the first time Die Orpheus was performed on our shores, it certainly won't be the last: Talea is including it in their Inside Out concert at the Austrian Cultural Forum on March 4th, along with music by Pierluigi Billone and Olga Neuwirth. U.S. premieres of works by all three composers will be featured a few days later at Bohemian National Hall. You're running out of excuses now, aren't you?
Tweet 6: "@AnEarful: James Dillon's lyrical yet astringent Siorram should lead perfectly into Schumann's Marchenbilder to close Beth Weisser's concert."
James Dillon is a prolific Scottish composer whose work Talea has championed for some time. Weisser has played the knotty Siorram before but after the detonation of the Gander it seemed almost introspective. Siorram is the Gaelic word for "sheriff" although it's hard to guess at any programmatic content for the short piece. Perhaps some of the lyricism is derived from the Scottish traditional Siorram Sios Siorram Suas, but the limb I'm on is about to crack.
Tweet 7: "@AnEarful: Indeed, Schumann's sparkling, song-filled Marchenbilder sends us into the night on warm billows of melody. A triumph for Beth Weisser!"
It may be unfashionable to say so, but I'll take Schumann over Mendelssohn or Brahms any day. I even like his symphonies and the big pieces like Genoveva, one of the most sheerly beautiful operas of the Romantic era. That said, there is no doubt that his strongest body of work is chamber music and songs. Marchenbilder, or Fairy Tale Pictures, stands with his best work and Weisser and Gosling gave a stylish, assured and colorful performance. You could clearly see the knight defending the lady in the brisk second movement, along with all the other characters Schumann brought to life. Marchenbilder was in a way the most old-fashioned music played at Mannes, even including the Bach, but there is a reason we still tell fairy tales to our children and those "warm billows of melody" were just what the ecstatic audience needed as we headed out to negotiate the ice, slush and snow that awaited us on the streets of New York City.
Like a well-made mix tape, Elizabeth Weisser's concert was a captivating look into one of the most fascinating minds on the current musical scene. I felt lucky to be there.
Embedded among the halal joints, Islamic libraries, thrift shops, and even a few hip restaurants on Atlantic Avenue in Boerum Hill, is Roulette, the latest iteration of a venerable space for avant garde music and performance. They've been in this spot since 2011 and the location was chosen wisely, as they are within sight of the Barclay's center and just a few blocks from BAM and other exemplars of cultural ferment in downtown Brooklyn.
This past Tuesday saw the former YMCA (circa 1928) devoted to a showcase of works by Mario Diaz de Leon, yet another exciting young composer launched from Columbia University's orbit. Diaz de Leon's instrument is the guitar and he has wielded his axe in the realms of progressive metal for the last few years, while also releasing albums of chamber music on John Zorn's Tzadik label. On the basis of this impressive concert, he is growing into an assured manipulator and assembler of a panoply of sounds and instruments.
Claire Chase, the flautist who made waves with her performance of Edgard Varese's seminal Density 21.5 on a platinum flute, opened the show with Luciform (2013) for solo flute and electronics. Dressed in a to-the-minute ensemble in shades of black, she launched into the complex opening sequences with a fury, dispatching the extended techniques with aplomb. Gradually, a cloud of synthetic sound began to engulf the amplified flute and just when that seemed to be the composer's modis operandi for the piece, Chase launched into a devastatingly knotty run that was matched note for note by the recorded sound in a texture like shattered glass rods.
It was a thrilling moment, two wary collaborators finding common ground in a smoking crater of their own design. Between woman and machine, I'm not sure whose job it was to keep up with who, but it was executed flawlessly - and repeatedly throughout the 13 minute work, interspersed with more spacious periods of exploratory music. This is sure to become a signature work for Chase and it is included on Density, her just-released third album, along with the Varese and compositions for flute(s) by Glass, Reich, Alvin Lucier, and Marcos Balter. Needless to say, I bought it on the way out. Chase, also the founder of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), is seeming a more crucial element in NYC's musical firmament all the time. The spirit of Roulette was exemplified by the way she took her bows, packed up her flute and took a seat among the audience.
Next up was Tilt Brass performing Bellum, composed for their 10th anniversary festival held earlier this year. The seven players formed a semi-circle around the conductor and began sonorous blasts, assembling dense chords anchored by the tuba's rumble. In this piece, rather than working together, the electronics and instruments alternate sections, with three movements for the brass and two for the synthetics. At the end of the first brass section, the lights went down - all the way down - and we listened to the sounds in darkness, with the brass barely glinting on the stage. There was a touch of theater to it, but it also made perfect sense as there really is nothing to see during those moments.
The lights came up and the brass returned. The second movement held more chords, but also melodic strings of notes from either the pair of trumpets, the pair of horns or the trombone and bass trombone. There was some difficult writing here, whether in the duration of notes or the sequences, but like Luciform, it never dissolved into a virtuoso exercise. The lights went off again and we were treated splintered soundtrack that was quite loud, but very beautiful. Bellum was finished by the brass, limned by the echoes (in my mind, at least) of the explosive blocks of electronic sounds.
After a brief intermission, the three string players of Talea Ensemble took the stage for Trembling Time II, completed in 2009 and Diaz de Leon's earliest composition on the program. In this case, all the distorted and highly dramatic sounds are produced by the string instruments themselves. Deep, long notes from the viola or cello were accompanied by skirling runs from the violin, often ending in an abrupt pluck. From a melodic standpoint it was reminiscent of Eastern European liturgical music, with an atmosphere of mystery and ritual. It is arresting music and, of the works we heard at least, the most direct translation of Diaz de Leon's more rock-based work to the realm of the concert hall. One could easily hear three distorted guitars navigating its craggy, dark terrain but having traditional instruments play it was in no way a stunt.
The capstone of the program was the world premiere of The Chapel Abyss, performed by the full cohort of Talea, with Diaz de Leon himself on guitar. At around 23 minutes, this was the longest piece and featured some complex ensemble writing interspersed with glassy solo keyboard segments. There was a searching atmosphere, as if the group were seeking new territory, sometimes working together and sometimes at cross-purposes.
While this, too, was a dark-hued piece, the chimes - withheld until the end - shot it through with hopeful light, just like those glints on the brass during the blackness of Bellum. All of the instrumental work was outstanding, without any sense of tentativeness. One quality that makes Talea so impressive is the sense of alertness all the musicians demonstrate - to the score, to each other and to the production of their individual sounds. As a listener, this has the effect of keeping me on the edge of my seat and listening to every nuance. The Chapel Abyss rewarded my attention and I look forward to hearing it again, along with the other pieces performed at Roulette and more music from Diaz de Leon.
