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Toshio Hosokawa
Landscapes
Mayumi Miyata, shô;
Munich Chamber Orchestra; Alexander Liebreich, conductor

Composer Toshio Hosokawa (b. 1955) has been featured once before on an ECM recording, as one of three composers programmed on a recital disc by Thomas Demenga. Landscapes is his first portrait disc for the imprint. It features a number of fine performers who are ideal advocates for Hosokawa’s fluid and multifaceted musical language. The Munich Chamber Orchestra, led by Alexander Liebreich, has become a featured ensemble on ECM’s New Series. The quality of their interpretations here readily support the notion of them remaining a ‘house band’ for the Manfred Eicher curated imprint.

Hosokawa’s work combines the influences of Darmstadt school second modernity with elements from traditional Japanese (and Chinese) culture, ranging from gagaku (courtly ceremonial music) and the employment of traditional instruments to examples from fine art: calligraphy and landscape paintings. In works like Ceremonial Dance and Cloud and Light, one is impressed with how seamlessly these various, at times disparate, elements are synthesized. This is particularly evident on Ceremonial Dance, where acerbic harmonies combine with sliding tones to fashion a hybrid of East/West techniques that sounds truly organic and self-contained. Cloud and Light works from a similar palette. But here there is also an interesting juxtaposition of delicate sustained shô and string chords and thunderous low register outbursts.

In addition to participating in Cloud and Light, shô (mouth organ) player Mayumi Miyata is also featured on two other pieces on the disc. Back in 1993, Landscape V was originally scored for shô and string quartet. This updated version for larger ensemble works equally well; both renditions are hauntingly eloquent tone poems. Miyata takes a solo turn on Sakura für Otto Tomek, a work filled with slowly evolving complex clusters of harmony. Sakura’s meditative ambience is shadowed with portentous overtones, creating a rich showcase for the singular and fetching timbres of the shô.

Hosokawa has long been respected in both Japan and Europe. Of late, given the strong reception given Matsukaze, his second opera, in Berlin, his stock has risen considerably in the Euro Zone. One hopes that more American conductors and ensembles will take notice of Hosokawa, a composer with a compelling individual voice developing an impressive body of work. This recording should help!

Last year, saxophonist Trygve Seim and pianist Andreas Utnem collaborated on Purcor, a recording for the ECM imprint (Seim’s sixth as leader). Drawing on material from a wide range of sources, including settings of the Mass, folk music, and Seim’s own compositions, it was among the recordings in frequent rotation when I got home from the hospital this past November. Needing a calm environment in which to regenerate and reflect, I found Purcor to be the perfect listening to accompany a healing respite.

Meditative yet soulful, earnest yet elegant, gently articulated yet substantively thoughtful, Seim and Utnem craft a series of duets that are spellbinding. Consistently succor supplying and diverse in mood and musical approach, the compositions on Purcor inhabit both jazz and an ecumenical kind of musical liturgy.

Given what they’ve crafted on the recording, I have no doubt that Seim and Utnem will provide an affecting evening of music this Sunday. Those seeking solace in artistic expression during this weekend’s commemoration of the September 11, 2001 attacks have many options from which to choose, but this is one that will doubtless provide calm  in the midst of storms of media frenzy, terror alerts, and turbulent memories. Recommended.

In Concert
Trygve Seim / Andreas Utnem
September 11th, 7pm
Norwegian Seamen’s Church
317 East 52nd Street
New York, NY 10022-6302
(212) 319-0370

Free of charge

Trygve Seim: tenor and soprano saxophones
Andreas Utnem: piano, harmonium

Bach: Inventionen und Sinfonien; Franzosische Suite V

Till Felner

ECM Records

Bach’s Inventions and Sinfonias, relatively brief 2-part and 3-part contrapuntal works, were written as teaching pieces, designed for study of cantabile playing and the composing & improvising of counterpoint. They served as a ‘way station’ between the simple pieces of the notebooks and his more elaborate suites, partitas, and fugues. Thus, recordings of them have often been greeted with less fanfare than releases which featured these latter, challenging pieces.

But as any pianist, amateur or professional, will tell you, there’s a lot to the Inventions. They may be diminutive in scope; but to be played well, they require far more musicality and imagination than the technical drills of Hanon and Czerny. Till Fellner’s recording of the Inventions on ECM is a reminder of how wondrous these works are, both as studies but, more principally, as compositional miniatures in their own right. Not only is his technical execution of them brilliant – his whirlwind traversals of the d-minor and F-major Inventions are stunners – but Fellner also approaches  the works with an eye towards structure, shaping phrases and shading motives & countermotives through terraced dynamics and fastidious articulations.

French Suite V in G-major is a sentimental favorite; it’s the first one I studied as a youngster, and shortly thereafter, also the first I heard on record; Glenn Gould’s lightning-fast reading made me despair at my own, comparatively slothful, tempi. In addition to Gould, there are several wonderful renditions recorded – Schiff and Perahia immediately come to mind. Fellner’s version is worthy of comparison with these noteable antecedents.

Á la Gould , there are brisk, technically impressive, movements; the final gigue is particularly wonderful, balancing contrapuntal clarity with tour de force showmanship. However, unlike my cherished Gould LP, Fellner remembers that these pieces are meant to emulate and evoke dance music. He thus takes most of the movements at tempi which could be realistically executed by actual dancing humans. Thereby, his reading is elegant, often poignant; both the Sarabande and Loure are simply breathtaking.

For Bach-lovers, choosing among recordings can be like choosing between children – how can you, really, say that you like one best? But Fellner’s Bach has quickly joined my extended family of recordings in heavy rotation.

(I last wrote about Fellner for File Under ? in 2004. You can see that article here.)

Arvo Pärt
In Principio
Estonian National Symphony; Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir; Tallinn Chamber Orchestra; Tõnu Kaljuste, conductor
(www.ecmrecords.com)
 

ECM celebrates the Silver Anniversary of their New Series this year. Given that the recording which launched the imprint was Arvo Pärt’s Tabula Rasa, it seems especially fitting that the composer’s In Principio features prominently among its 2009 releases. Pärt’s compositional language has often focused on the barest, essentials, crafting an Eastern European version of minimalism based on bell-like sounds and sweeping ostinati. But he has extended his compositional reach during the past quarter century, as is amply attested by the recent works presented on this disc.

The title composition, scored for chorus and orchestra, is particularly intriguing. It is among the most dramatically gestural pieces from the composer since his Berlin Mass and Te Deum. Shades of Adams and Glass surface here and there in its vivid orchestration, but In Principio also calls to mind the sumptuous verticals in Bruckner’s motets and the boldness of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

Mein Weg re-imagines an organ work from the 1980s as a fresh-faced minimalist tone-poem for chamber orchestra. More gradual in its evolution processes, but no less lovely, is La Sindone, a haunting, string swept meditation on the shroud of Turin. Für Lennart in Memoriam also places its emphasis on string textures, with a plaintive violin melody that serves as a supple valediction.
 

Perhaps the disc’s most memorable performance is the choral work Da Pacem Domine; it recalls the soberness of Bach’s Lenten chorales and the austerity of chant from the Orthodox liturgy, all over a glacially shifting ground bass; a memorably poignant plea for peace. Here, as throughout, Tõnu Kaljuste leads with skill and tremendous sympathy for Pärt’s work.          

Enrico Rava

New York Days

ECM CD (www.ecmrecords.com)

Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava appears in a quintet setting on New York Days, his latest CD for the ECM imprint (slated for release 29 Jan. ’09). Joined by pianist Stefano Bollani, tenor saxophonist Mark Turner, bassist Larry Grenadier, and drummer Paul Motian, Rava presents nine originals, as well as a couple of improvisations credited to the group. On “Lulù,” one hears how well-matched Turner and Rava are; both begin their solos with an ambling, unhurried character. Rava eventually moves up to the stratosphere in nimble runs, while Turner counters with his own syncopated and undulating traversal to the altissimo register. The two craft an interlocking misterioso duet on the evocatively titled “Count Dracula.”

Bollani is a wonderfully talented pianist, and his gifts for ballad playing are amply demonstrated on the lovely tune “Lady Orlando;” his comping is elegant and his soloing spacious. Also impressive here are the supple overlaps between trumpet and saxophone. The rhythm sections shines on the undulating, dancing “Luna Urbana.” Although there is a strong tendency towards the lyrical on New York Days, this does nothing to blunt its sense of adventure or omnipresent swing. Rava and company give us something to look forward to in 2009.