Best Of 15: Classical & Composed

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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Conversing Across The Centuries Part 2: Italia

As NPR's Anastasia Tsioulcas recently detailed, finding classical music in the streaming era can be difficult, and the same goes for keeping up with new releases. I subscribe to The New York Times's classical playlist on Spotify, which provides the occasional lead but seems unfocused overall. I get some scoops from various label newsletters, as well as by signing up on the websites of new music ensembles. There are also a few excellent PR firms that update me in this arena, which definitely helps.

It was one of those firms that tipped me to Orli Shaham's excellent Brahms-themed collection, which I reviewed in part one of this micro-miniseries. Even with all those tributaries feeding my classical needs, I can't for the life of me remember how I found out about the album I discuss below, or even what drew me to it. Read on and remember that you heard about it from me!

SWR Vokalensemble Stuttgart - Italia Part of a series focusing on the choral traditions of various countries, Italia is a brilliantly sequenced survey of Italian compositions from the 19th and 20th centuries. While Italy doesn't have the same depth of choral music that Germany and England boast, it does have Verdi, who slathered his operas with choral music at every opportunity, with profound dramatic and musical impact. Also, his Requiem is one of three essential entries in the genre, alongside Mozart and Brahms.

So Verdi is a natural place for conductor Marcus Creed to begin, opening Italia with two of Verdi's 4 Pezzi sacri. A quick survey of other takes on this oft-recorded masterpiece immediately reveals the SWR's strengths as they deliver a performance of elevated clarity, seamless vocal blend, and transporting engagement with the subject matter. Before the first of the pieces is over, you know you're in good hands and ready to buckle in for a trip to wherever they want to take you. 

The next stop is in fact Yliam, a 1960's work by Giacinto Scelsi reminiscent of some of Ligeti's interstellar excursions, a sound that will be familiar to fans of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. In this concise and intense piece for female singers, the sopranos and altos pursue separate lines that occasionally criss-cross like strands of DNA in the air. Scelsi was an autodidact in both composition and mysticism and he ties both interests together nicely in Yliam. Scelsi's work blends smoothly into another Verdi piece, O Padre Noster, which is not without its own brand of incense-laden Catholic mysticism. The baritones and basses really distinguish themselves here, singing with a veiled power that is all the more impressive for its restraint. 

Then we come back to 1960 with Luigi Nono's Sara Dolce Tacere (Such Sweet Silence, perhaps?), a setting of Cesar Pavese's La terra e la morte (Earth and Death) for eight soloists. Creed wisely chose something by Nono that fits with the preceding Verdi and Scelsi pieces rather than going with one of Nono's explicitly political works. Sara Dolce Tacere has the feel of a group dialogue or a study in dynamics, with voices rising and falling, seeming to appear and recede like waves on a stony shore.

Ildebrando Pizzetti was born in 1880, when Verdi was entering his last and possibly greatest decade, premiering operas such as Aida, Don Carlo, Simon Boccanegra (a personal favorite), and Otello. This extraordinary run may have had an effect on other composers born then  - the "Generation of 1880" - as they largely avoided creating operas. Pizzetti himself was unintimidated, however, composing more than a dozen operas, all largely forgotten, and even a Requiem. His Tre Composizione Corali, however is nothing so grand. While fairly conventional, it creates a peaceful atmosphere with song-like melodies and a chant-like blend of voices. The third piece, Recordare, domine, may be a little overlong at 10 minutes but that's a minor complaint. Nono the Marxist would probably object the loudest to Pizzetti's inclusion here, as the latter was occasionally cozy with Mussolini's fascist government. 

Pizzetti's conservatism is quickly blown away by Scelsi's TKRDG, also a three-part work, for six male voices, percussion and electric guitar. This is just a fantastic and fascinating piece, incorporating Japanese and Indian influences with both irreverence and respect, creating a ritualistic soundscape that the SWR inhabits completely. The interaction between the vocalists and the instrumentalists is more natural and assured than other recordings I've heard, aided in part by the excellent production, and may make this the definitive rendering of this important piece. In my mind, TKRDG connects the avant garde elements on Italia to that other Italian genius, Ennio Morricone, who is a big fan of Scelsi - your ears will likely agree. 

The album closes with Goffredo Petrassi's five-part Nonsense, based on limericks by Edward Lear and composed in 1952. Petrassi's long life nearly covers the entire period represented here, as he was born in 1904 and died in 2003. He was known for being open to new ideas and his writing in these short, lighthearted pieces seems tied to no particular era. It's a delightful way to end the collection and leaves you marveling at the SWR's versatility and verve. I look forward to exploring the other releases in the series and seeing what Creed and the ensemble do next. 

P.S. Creed is on a roll this year, having just released L'amour et la foi, a wonderful album of vocal music by Messiaen performed by the Danish National Vocal Ensemble. Even if you're familiar with 3 Petit Liturgies and the other pieces this is worth a listen.

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