Record Roundup: Composed, Commemorated, And Beyond

Oceans of music are flowing in under, over, and around me. This is no last-gasp geyser, but rather the result of passionate musicians, composers, and labels pursuing musical bliss - and delivering it to us lucky listeners. In another attempt to stem the tide, here is a roundup of recent or upcoming releases in the realm of classical, contemporary and avant garde music.

Fantasias for Theremin and String Quartet - Carolina Eyck with American Contemporary Music Ensemble There are so many ideas and even theories behind this music - from how it was composed to fit an LP record, to the way the names of the pieces were chosen ("...by scanning multiple Scandinavian languages for pleasing lingual combinations...) - that I am reluctant to add more words about it to the world. Beyond "You must hear this!" that is, as it is an extraordinary album. I was aware of Eyck as a theremin virtuoso, but not as a composer. In this case, she wrote the string quartet music, sometimes sparkling, sometimes melancholy, always melodic, played here by Caroline Shaw, Ben Russell (violins), Caleb Burhans (viola), and Clarice Jensen (cello), and then improvised her theremin parts while listening to the recordings. You would never know that, however, so well does it all fit together, taking you on a seamless journey as only a well-sequenced album can. While some of the sounds she causes the theremin to emit did have my wife saying "Getting spooky!" there are almost no clichés to her use of this early electronic instrument. It often sounds like the human voice and, in fact, and I've never experienced the bass tones of the theremin as she plays them here. I strongly recommend you find a real stereo with which to listen to Fantasias. Kudos to producer Allen Farmelo for the technical wizardry and for the literate and fascinating liner notes, including thoughts on dragons and Derrida. This is one of the records of the year - and you can hear it live for the first time on November 4th.

Ice & Longboats - Ensemble Mare Balticum For more journeys in a Scandinavian vein, set sail with these meticulously researched (yet still speculative) performances of ancient music (1200-1582) from that region, on recreated instruments. It's highly atmospheric, sometimes hypnotic, and only the merest bit kitschy. Anyone making a movie or TV show about Vikings - here's your soundtrack.

Taylor Brook: Ecstatic Music - Tak Ensemble Based on Ice & Longboats, Vikings liked strange and dissonant sounds on occasion, which makes me think they would have liked some of this album. Brook likes to push the envelope, employing extended and techniques to produce music which never becomes quite familiar even upon repeated listens. The title track has a ritualistic, theatrical sound that is highly evocative, violin and percussion combining to sound like much more. The use of "microtonally tuned guitars" as drums probably helps in that regard. The sense of theater continues with Five Weather Reports, a song cycle with words from David Ohle's cult novel Motorman. Charlotte Mundy does a remarkable job with the vocals, switching from spoken word to soprano flights on a dime, all perfectly pitched, with command and humor. Mundy is also great with the vocalise of Amalgam, the last piece, but then all of the Tak Ensemble members show complete commitment to Brook's conception, turning in sympathetic performances (including using his guitar machine) that are further proof that it's a wonderful time to be writing challenging, original music. Let your ears be sympathetic as well, especially the first time you listen - the rewards of Ecstatic Music are many.

Garden of Diverging Paths - Mivos Quartet Taylor Brook's music also features on this album by Mivos, an adventurous group whom I discovered because of their gorgeous collaboration with vocalist Zola Jesus. Here they play three works based on the written word, starting with Brook's title piece, which is based on a short story by Borges and uses imaginary theories and histories to create music that sounds alien and ancient at once. Andrew Greenwald, who co-directs Ensemble Pamplemousse, contributes A Thing Is A Hole In A Thing It Is Not, a single movement of scratchy, scrapey and high-pitched sounds that somehow holds together. The title is from a remark by conceptual artist Carl Andre and keeps you guessing as much as the music does. Greenwald has also produced arrangements of this work for two cellos and even solo euphonium - check it out. The final work, Nadja, finds the Mivos joining forces with the composer, Kate Soper, who sings vocal parts drawn from Tennyson, Ovid, and Breton. Even in the quiet moments, this is fiercely engaging listening, and Soper is in fine form. This whole collection more than lives up to the "adventurous" tag I hung on the Mivos above. Now it's your turn to be adventurous and listen.

Ginastera: One Hundred - Yolanda Kondonassis, Oberlin Orchestra, et al If you're crying for more Argentina in your life after listening to the Borges-inspired piece on the Mivos album, have I got a record for you. As the title makes plain, Alberto Ginastera was born 100 years ago, which means he began composing at a critical time in the development of a distinctive Argentinian culture. The central tension between the rural (old) and urban (new) was an animating force in much of the music and art of the time and Ginastera rode the line in fine style. His Harp Concerto, performed here with extraordinary skill and feeling by Yolanda Kondonassis, is the definitive large-scale work for her instrument. Ginastera surrounds the harp's sparkle with colorful, wonderfully evocative melodies, harmonies and orchestration. One thing that makes the Concerto special is the way he both pushes the harp into new territory and exploits its familiar qualities perfectly. Kondonassis couldn't have asked for a better partner than the Oberlin Orchestra under the direction of Raphae Jiménez. Actually she did ask for it as she executive-produced the album. She must have a hell of a Rolodex, too, as the other works are performed by the likes of Gil Shaham, Orli Shaham, and Jason Vieaux, who are all the best at what they do. The Sonata for Guitar is a late work for Ginastera, composed in1976, seven years before he died. It seems to synthesize many of his ideas about the past informing the present and Vieaux's playing is preternaturally assured, dashing off the intricate work with the flair of a gaucho troubadour on horseback. The Shaham siblings acquit themselves nicely in the romantic and slightly jazzy Pampanea No. 1 and Orli digs into the cutting-edge virtuoso charms (two keys at once? We got that!) of Three Danzas Argentinas to close the album. Kondonassis has done a service to Ginastera's legacy with One Hundred and we are the  beneficiaries of her advocacy. I would say if you own one record of Ginastera it should be this one - however, I think you'll want more after hearing this. 

Simple Gifts - The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center As it happens, Ginastera studied with Aaron Copland on a Guggenheim fellowship in the 40's, learning much about how to push harmonies further while still keeping your music accessible. Appalachian Spring, Copland's score for a Martha Graham ballet, is Exhibit A for this approach, feeling as American as corn on the cob without being corny, thanks to its spare, modern design. This is much like the Shaker attitude towards design and architecture, which makes their furniture and buildings look so timeless and inviting. Of course, Copland's masterpiece has been recorded dozens of times, including a fairly definitive account conducted by the composer and recorded in glorious Living Stereo in the early 60's. But here we have what may be the best version yet. Marketers at Lincoln Center would like you to know that it was recorded live "in the heart of an authentic Shaker village," and filmed for broadcast on PBS. This is a first, apparently, and maybe it did inspire the musicians to new heights. The tempos are perfectly judged, the dew-limned opening notes flowing into one of the great slow builds in music, kept so taut that you're on the edge of your seat even if you've heard the work many times, and the full gallop is as thrilling as it should be. The sonics are delightful as well, with clear textures, a wide dynamic range, all the detail you could want - and no audience noise, not a cough or a creaking chair, intrudes. Until the end, that is, when the crowd explodes, seemingly fully aware that they had just heard something special. Due to my own particularities, the rest of the album, which includes short pieces by Louis Gottschalk, Samuel Barber, Dvorak, Mark O'Connor and Stephen Foster, is basically superfluous. Everything is performed brilliantly - the CMS is a band of virtuosos - and if you like the music you'll love this recording. I also loved reading the excellent liner notes and learning that Barber was a fan of Edie & Rack, the 1940's piano duo - I've never seen their names anywhere except on singles that I found in my grandmother's collection after she died. Perhaps she and the composer of Adagio for Strings crossed paths at the Blue Angel Club...but I digress. This is the Appalachian Spring to hear, so make a plan and get it done. That's the American way.

Restless - Ken Thomson If Copland is bit on the modern side for you - but you like it - here's a quick catapult into the 21st century, and I promise a painless flight. Throughout this album, composer Thomson displays a muscular approach to romanticism that is shorn of sentimentality - this is emotional music, but free of bathos or ornamentation. Restless, a four-movement work for cello and piano, sounded perfect the first time I heard it, as if it had always been there, but also very fresh. Think of your favorite room, and imagine it as it was when it was new - that's Restless, with the fourth movement being the dark corner you don't visit often. Part of its indomitability must be due to the spectacular playing of Ashley Bathgate (cello) and Karl Larson (piano), who sound like much more than a duo. Bathgate is a Bang On A Can luminary, so I would expect no less, but Larson is new to me, and it is he who is in the spotlight on side two (like Eyck's Fantasias, this was conceived as a vinyl album). Me Vs., a three movement work for solo piano, can be spikier and more fragmented than Restless but still feels inevitable and deeply involving. Thomson has done something very special here, and while these recordings and performances are already ideal, I hope to see both of these pieces enter the repertoire on record and in the concert hall. Think I'm blowing smoke? Come to Le Poisson Rouge on November 9th for the album release concert and hear for yourself.

Westside Industrial - M.O.T.H. Like most of the records discussed here, there is more than meets the ear to Westside Industrial. If you're interested, you can look into the conceptual framework in which the project is "a narrative response to the commodification of culture and the fallout that occurs when lifestyles are turned into brands in order to sell real estate." There is a performative aspect as well, using "handwritten journal entries, voicemail recordings, poetic dialogue and photographic imagery," framing a narrative. But here we just have the music, three long tracks of "nervous ambient" (my term), created using guitars, analog pedals, radio signals and other sound generators, making for seamless audio paintings. It's quite beautiful, and the details, especially when listening through headphones, are wonderfully textural. This is the second album by M.O.T.H., the nom de guerre of Matt Finch, with 3 Vignettes from 2015 being equally worthy of investigation. Between the two albums, M.O.T.H. should now be considered to a reliable brand name of it's own. Buy in.

As always, let me know what I'm missing, and keep up with the totality of 2016 here.

You may also enjoy:
BOAC At MMOCA: The Eno Has Landed
Record Roundup: Classical Composure
Cello For All, Part 1: Laura Metcalf
Cello For All, Part 2: Michael Nicolas

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.

You might also enjoy:
Best Of 15: The Top 20
Best Of 15: Out Of The Past
Best Of 15: Reggae

Best Of 15: Hip Hop

Conversing Across Centuries, Part 1: Orli Shaham & Brahms

Assembling a collection of pieces from wildly disparate times and/or places can be a delicate operation. David Greilsammer triumphed in this area with last year's Scarlatti/Cage album, now firmly installed in my mind as one of the great piano records. So far this year we have two other recordings that successfully converse across the centuries - one is reviewed below and I'll get to the other next week.

Orli Shaham - Brahms Inspired I'll admit to being an inconstant Brahmsian. While I am devoted to his Clarinet Quintet and find Ein deutsches Requiem fascinating, not a lot of his other music has compelled me. I may even be guilty of selling back a CD of his songs, but digital music was expensive back then and I needed to husband my resources. Even now, if you don't move me you are gone. 

When I heard about Orli Shaham project, I was intrigued, however. She had obviously been on a very personal journey with old Johannes, even going so far as to commission works to aid her pan-optical view of his music. Also, the three Brahms pieces included were all late works and I thought I might find some of that spare and utter mastery found in the Clarinet Quintet with which to connect. 

The first piece on the album, a collection of six pieces simply called Klavierstücke, Op. 118, instantly pulls you into the world of romanticism, melodies and lush chords swelling and crashing like breakers on the beach. Listening to Shaham's assured and stylish performance I realized that, despite the efforts of the Second Viennese School and Stravinsky, the 20th Century was essentially romantic, at least until the Minimalists struck a chord (or an arpeggio, ad infinitum). This is the equivalent of realizing that all your favorite television character actors had already had full careers in vaudeville. In other words, the past is ever present and Brahms more than holds his own even now, in yet another century. 

After Op. 118, we get Bruce Adolphe's My Inner Brahms (an intermezzo), a short homage commissioned for the album. Adolphe is a New York based composer and educator known by millions of public radio listeners for his Piano Puzzler segments on Performance Today. A distillation of his improvisations on themes by Brahms, it's a lovely little bit of time travel. The three pieces that follow are all works that inspired Brahms - Schubert's Impromptu, Op. 90, No. 3, Schumann's Romanze, Op 28, No. 2, and Chopin's Berceuse, Op. 57. They all go down easily and give you an idea of what might have been swirling in Brahms's head as he composed. They also prove that I will always be a Schumann person - the clarity of his textures and conception is immediately evident and very attractive. 

Brahms's Drei Intermezzi, Op 117, follows and, if anything, it's Schumann's influence I feel the most. This leads me to start wondering how much Shaham's performances themselves might be influence by all the crosstalk between composers. Whatever the reason, the three intermezzos are simply, but never simplistically gorgeous. Shaham seems to find little stories between the notes, and to delight in their telling. 

Disc 2 starts with another commissioned piece, After Brahms - 3 Intermezzos for Piano, by Avner Dorman. Dorman is Israeli-a born and one of the most successful young composers in that country. He and Shaham have crossed paths before, with Nigunim, a violin sonata based on Jewish themes commissioned and performed by her and her brother, the great Gil Shaham. The first of his intermezzos really puts the "passion" in the Allegro con motto apassionato, with furious downpours of notes coming to a crashing halt on the left side of the keyboard. It's short enough that it's actually great fun and Shaham blows past the difficulties with aplomb. the other two pieces in the set profitably explore other variations on the "whisper to a scream" template.

After Dorman's romantic apotheosis, Bach's Partita No. 1 comes as somewhat of a relief, especially in Shaham's lighter than air performance. It feels like her fingers are just barely touching the keys. Even so, I admit to feeling a slight bit of ear fatigue at this point - but there is nothing saying you need to listen to all 120 minutes of piano music at once. However you get there, don't miss the Schoenberg miniatures that come on Bach's coattails. Schoenberg, one of my favorite composers, was a crucial bridge from the perfumed drawing rooms of the Romantic era to the spiky bustle of Modernism. He had cred in the new world partially because his early works were so accomplished. If he had composed nothing after Verklarte Nacht, Gurrelieder and Ewartung, he would be known as a major late-Romantic composer. 

Obviously, Sechs Kleine Klavierstücke, Op. 19, is not one of Schoenberg's big deals. But mashing up six tiny pieces into a work less than six minutes long without it ever feeling frugal is no mean feat. Shaham seems to use a magnifying glass to find the individual character of each little section, like painting a Kandinsky on the head of a pin. Put down your phone, slow down, and observe the process with your full attention - trust me, you will be rewarded. 

The final piece is a true mash up, with Brahms's Klavierstücke, Op 119 interleaved with Brett Dean's Hommage à Brahms für Klavier. While Dean's work was originally commissioned by Emmanuel Ax, like the other new music here, this is a World Premiere recording. Dean's work is probably the most radical of the new pieces, finding the connection between modern cacophony and the 19th Centuries cascades of notes. There's also a touch of knotty jazz to his writing, bringing us right up to date. But Brahms, and ultimately Orli Shaham, have the last word. The third Klavierstücke, Rhapsodie in e-flat major, is so tuneful and open-hearted that you may be inspired (sorry) to go back to beginning of this wonderful collection. Thanks to Shaham, I think I'll be a better friend to Brahms from now on.  Brahms Inspired is out on June 9th.