CD Reviews

In Memoriam
Soloists, Valley Festival Orchestra and Amherst College Concert Choir
Lewis Spratlin conducting

Streaming: Quartet for Piano and Strings
Yvonne Lam. Violin; David Kim, viola; Christian-Pierre La Marca, cello; Xiang Zou, piano

Navona Records

“Sun, Sun, you bring us light. Never can we pay for the blessings that you give to us.” Thus begins a Mayan prayer to the Sun that calls forth an appropriately rhythmical choral setting by American composer Lewis Spratlan, concluding Part IV of In Memoriam. Earlier, in the course of the Mexican Serenade portion of Spratlan’s ambitious choral work, the composer waxes lyrical in a soprano/tenor duet: “And when I close my eyes at night / I hear the threadbare music / of your streets / and I fall asleep as if adrift / in the air of Sinaloa.” Here, the unmistakable echoes of Mexican popular song add to the enchantment of the nocturnal images in the poetry by Pablo Neruda.

Unfortunately, there are precious few instances of such perfect melding of poetic inspiration and musical setting in the 50-minutes length of In Memoriam, based on translations of Spanish language poetry by Neruda and César Vallejo. Spratlan’s professed aim is to celebrate the resilient spirit of the people of Mexico and Central America in their journey from pre-Columbian times to the present, in spite of an often tragic and bloody history, just as the land itself seems to be endlessly renewed by luxuriant foliage. That’s all well and good, although just how much a Miami, Florida native like Spratlan can be expected to understand an alien culture – to which he is not, unlike Neruda and Vallejo, an inheritor – could be debated. True, the Mayans made impressive achievements in art, architecture, mathematics, and astronomy, but they also practiced very bloody human sacrifice. That’s not so easy for a modern person to relate to! And future generations will require historical footnotes for references to “Trujillo” and “Somoza” in the revolutionary theme of Neruda’s “The Hero.”

The greater problem is that Spratlan basically employs a style of heightened declamation, a sort of tortured sprechstimme in American English, for the great majority of his settings. One hears this all too often in contemporary choral and vocal settings, and the effect is tedious in the extreme when carried over a long work such as In Memoriam. Free, unrhymed verse explodes in a spectacular profusion of imagery such as “The peace, the wasp, the shoe heels, the slopes / the dead, the deciliters, the owl, / the places, the ringworm, the sarcophagi, the glass, the brunettes, / the ignorance, the kettle, / the altar boy, the drops, the oblivion / the potentate, the cousins, the archangels, / the needle, the priests, the ebony, the rebuff, / the part, the type, the stupor, the soul…” (Vallejo). These things, to Vallejo, are part of the stored common memories that a poet must not forget, but how do you set them to music?

The sad truism that second-rate poets – the Wilhelm Müllers rather than the Pablo Nerudas – are more likely to inspire great music than the truly great ones would seem to apply here. Also, the live recording of In Memoriam, made in April 1993 in Buckley Recital Hall at Amherst College, is less than optimal in the clarity with which it registers the large forces employed here, 5 solo vocalists plus a chorus of 110 singers and 70 instrumentalists. There’s too much bleed-through in the moments of heightened intensity. The recording sounds as if it were intended for archival purposes, rather than commercial release.

“Streaming” for Piano and Strings (2004) benefits from a better recording, which is essential since so much of the effectiveness of the music is in its details. Spratlan claims to have aspired to something analogous to a stream of consciousness in literature, in which “ideas and images appear, merge, retreat, reappear changed, [and] jostle for place” (Spratlan), much as in the state in we emerge from sleep but are not yet fully conscious. With repeated auditions, the 16-minute piece appears less aleatoric (i.e., by random chance) than we might have at first imagined. A principle of form begins to emerge from the “buzz of consciousness” (Spratlan) that employs vivid contrasts between a beautiful, languid theme in the strings, like a slowly drifting cloud tinted by the colors of sunset, and bumptious, scrambling frenetic figures that threaten to overwhelm it.

String Quartets (Complete)
Ensö Quartet, with Lucy Shelton, soprano (Quartet 3)

Naxos

Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983) listed three periods in his development as “Objective Nationalism” (1934–1948), “Subjective Nationalism” (1948–1958), and “Neo-Expressionism” (1958–1983). His best known works, the ballets Panambí and Estancia, are from the first period, in which he consciously used the folk music of his own country as inspiration. Considering that fact, and since the musical world is still coming to grips with the original and exciting ways in which he combined what he’d learned in Period 1 with modernist trends such as serialism, microtones, and polytonality, it is good that each of the three string quartets we hear on this disc represents the height of each of Ginastera’s periods. That these performances by the U.S.-based Ensö Quartet are nothing less than sensational, pushing the envelop in terms of all a performing quartet can do in terms of ingenious phrasing and rhythmic vitality, is a definite plus.

I was really taken by the athleticism of this performing quartet, consisting of Maureen Nelson and John Marcus, violins; Melissa Reardon, viola; and Richard Belcher, cello. These young artists, who came together in 1999 while students at Yale, do exciting things with Ginastera’s technically intricate writing in Quartet No. 1 (1948), which includes accumulated trills and fascinating interactions between the players. In this rhythmically intense work whoseopening movement is marked Allegro violento ed agitato, the composer was obviously striving to go considerably beyond the simple folkloric level. The outer movements can be violent and frenetic sounding indeed, reminding us of the rough gauchos of Ginastera’s homeland.

Quartet 2 (1958) contrasts the pulsating rhythms of the outer movements with the quiet, anguished moments we find in the second movement, marked Adagio angoscioso, in which the music rises from a barely audible humming to a pronounced climax of great intensity. The middle movement (of five) is marked Presto magico, and brother, is it magic, with contrasted fragments tossed back and forth and with glissandi and pizzicati taken at speed. The fourth movement, marked Libero e rapsodico (free and rhapsodic) involves all four players in virtuosic roles: Violin I states the main theme, followed by a cello cadenza, a solo for Violin II, and then the viola plays the final variation. Agitated rhythms, perpetual motion, syncopations, and explosive outbursts of energy characterize the final movement, marked Furioso, a word that can imply madness as well as propulsion.

Soprano Lucy Shelton joins the Ensö in Quartet 3 (1973), and gives an incredible performance in a work making as severe demands on the vocalist’s art as it does the instrumental. Ginastera set poems by Juan Ramón Jiménez, Federico Garcia Lorca, and Rafael Alberti in four of the five movements. They are a rare synthesis of great poetry and great musical settings. La Música (Jiménez) in movement 1 equates the awakening of love in a woman with the image of lilies in a starry firmament, shattering the darkness with a passionate cry of ecstasy. The final section alternates between lines sung normally and lines spoken as if in hushed amazement. The second movement, Fantastico, is a nocturne for the strings only, rising in intensity from a quiet beginning to a passionate chorus. In Movement 3, Amoroso, the music brings out the satire, bitter irony and sexual desire in Belisa’s song from Lorca’s play The Love of Don Perlimplin: “Love, love, / Between my secret thighs, / The sun swims like a fish. / Calid water through the rushes, / Love, / Cock crow and the night is fleeting! / Do not let it go. Oh, no!” In the fourth movement, the setting of Alberti’s Morir al sol (Death in the sun) calls for the singer to veritably shout with grief at the death of the soldier in an open field by the woods, then recreate the howling of a dog in lamentation for his death. Its demands pale, however, in comparison with the ending of the setting of Jiménez poem Ocaso (Twilight) in movement 5 which evokes a mood of sadness on the duality of music and silence, ending with Shelton’s sustained high note on the word eternidad (eternity) in the final line, followed by an even more sensational prolonged note breaking through the stillness of the night. That Ginastera originally wrote the vocal part in this quartet for the great American soprano Benita Valente speaks volumes for the skill required to realize it. That makes the present performance by Shelton all the more impressive.

Vivian Houle, vocalist

Treize

Drip Audio

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1. Mandrake (with Peggy Lee, cello)
2. Molehills mumps (with Lisa miller, piano)
3. Paperthin (with Coat Cooke, saxophone)
4. Gratte-moi le dos (with Kenton Loewen, drums)
5. Quiet eyes (with Ron Samworth, guitar)
6. It’s not the moon (with Chris Gestrin, analog keyboards and live sampling)
7. Betters and bads (with Jesse Zubot, violin)
8. Finely tuned is my heart (with Jeremy Berkman, trombone)
9. Au revas (with Paul Plimley, piano)
10. A little storm (with Jeff Younger, guitar)
11. Bells hung in a tree (with Clyde Reed, bass)
12. Song not for you (with Brent Belke, guitar)
13. Curve (with Stefan Smulovitz, kenaxis)

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The very essence of chamber music is perfectly captured in these thirteen tracks. Viviane Houle’s duets with each of these artists is raw music making – free improvisations that transcend the ordinary and provide sonic experiences unlike anything else.  Houle’s sonic repertoire is no short of astonishing.  Half of the time I can’t tell which sounds she is making and which are being made by her instrumental counterpart.  On the same token, both performers on each track are so adept at listening to each other that the flow of events sounds totally organic and alive.  While the bulk of the tracks are showcases for Houle’s vocal fireworks she is always blending with the ensemble and creating a sonic “hyperinstrument” that is neither one nor the other.

A few of the tracks feature a more traditional melodic and sung role for the voice.  Houle, who also wrote all the texts, trends towards the smokey and hazy sounds of somber jazz or beat poetry.  Her rich sound and warm emotional expressions are further featured on one of my favorite tracks, It’s not the moon. Houle’s voice is the DNA of Chris Gestrin’s synth work creating a haunting, graceful, and eternal sounding track.

The last three tracks on the disc transition smoothly from one to the next, making an excellent journey.  Bells hung in a tree has a subdued ending that sounds like it continues as the next track fades in. Song not for you hits me right in my Heavy Metal spot.  Houle and Belke sound like a great thrashing metal duo from somewhere in the Oort Cloud who have recently learned to sing using random Japanese phonemes (and I mean that in the best possible way).  The thrash continues while the ambient sizzle of Curve takes over.  Like It’s not the moon, Curve puts Houle’s voice in the background and she inexorably emerges from the synthetic world into an oozing and pulsating mass of delicious aural goo.

Hovhaness: solos, duos, and trios

music of Alan Hovhaness

OgreOgress

Paul Hersey, piano; Christina Fong, violin|viola; Libor Soukal, bassoon; Jirí Šesták, oboe; Karen Krummel, cello; Michael Kornacki & John Varineau, clarinets; Christopher Martin, viola

Trio I for piano, violin & cello Op. 3 (1935)

Sonata Ricercare for piano Op. 12 (1935)

Artinis ‘Urardüan Sun God’ for piano Op. 39 (1945)

Suite for oboe & bassoon Op. 23 (1949)

Poseidon Sonata for piano Op. 191 (1957)

Bardo Sonata for piano Op. 192 (1959)

Sonatina for piano Op. 120 (1962)

Trio for strings Op. 201 (1962)

Three Haikus for piano Op. 113 (1965)

Night of a White Cat for clarinet & piano Op. 263 (1973)

Sonata for 2 bassoons Op. 266 (1973)

Sonata for 2 clarinets Op. 297 (1977)

Sonata for oboe & bassoon Op. 302 (1977)

Sonata for viola Op. 423 (1992)

The vastly prolific composer Alan Hovhaness gets captured in a time capsule of chamber music in this OgreOgress release.  This 126 minute DVD-A disc (96kHz|24bit for you audiophiles out there) contains a full fourteen chamber pieces, thirteen of which are getting premiere recordings.  The chronological ordering of works provides a journey from Hovhaness’ early populist tonal/modal style through his initial experiments with his better known Eastern influenced mystical language.  There are pieces from each decade of Hovhaness’ productivity so if you are wanting a sampler of Hovhaness’ chamber output, there really isn’t a better place to start than this recording.

While probably better known for his symphonies, Hovhannes is equally skilled at writing his musical ideas in chamber form.  The disc is crammed full of top notch performances and the audio quality of the disc is stunning.  The solo piano works are rich with harmonics.  The string trio sounds as if they are right in front of you.  I was especially struck by the overtones in Libor Soukal’s bassoon sound in the Op. 23 Suite for oboe and bassoon.

There is no one large, dominating work on this disc which again makes it enjoyable for hearing the evolution of Hovhannes’ style and also encouraging performers to take up more of his chamber music.  As I first listened to the disc, I was surprised at the style of the earlier pieces but the through line of Hovhaness’ development seemed as natural as breathing air.  Then, when I started over with the early piano trio, I was amazed at how much of the later music is hidden in the earlier.  Flirtations with modality in the early pieces evolve into raga-esque melodies a few decades down the road.

Each performance on this disc is well crafted from the performer to the ensemble through to the recording.  The musical language overall is accessible and just plain pretty.  I was especially fond of the piano trio, the piano sonatina, the string trio, Night of a White Cat, and the solo viola sonata.  That is quite possibly more music than I would get on a standard CD.  The fact that I get all the other works, which I also enjoyed, is a major bonus.  OgreOgress is doing it right with good music, great performers and performances, and excellent recordings.

“HOW SHE DANCED”
String Quartets of Elena Ruehr
Performed by the Cypress String Quartet

Cypress Performing Arts Association

I was enchanted with this, my first acquaintance with the music of American composer Elena Ruehr, and I think you will be, too. A strong, engaging personality suffuses her music. She was born and spent her early years in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, an area of much natural beauty that is said to have the most beautiful fall colors in America. Her music reflects a variety of traditional and world influences in addition to her formal education under mentors William Bolcom, Milton Babbitt and Vincent Persichetti. The daughter of a mathematician, she admits to a fondness for solving intellectual puzzles such as 12-tone rows, but she decided at an early stage in her career to leave the complicated stuff beneath the surface of what people hear, incorporating it into the musical form (For the record, Mozart did much the same thing).

As a result, her music, of which we get a good sampling here from String Quartets 1, 3 and 4, written between 1991 and 2005, is both accessible and challenging. We sometimes forget, in analyzing the art of the string quartet, how sensually beautiful the sound of these four strings can be. Ruehr reminds us. Her art consists in large part of long melodies, long intonations and exhalations, gorgeously swelling tones and smartly struck pizzicati. The members of the Cypress Quartet – Cecily Ward and Tom Stone, violins; Ethan Filner, viola; and Jennifer Kloetzel, cello – attest to the challenges they encountered in performing these works in an interview with radio host Bill McGlaughlin, excerpted in the program notes. They speak from experience of the 17-bar melody with a canon in 3 parts, with all four players playing fragments of it here and there, in the slow movement of Quartet No. 3. In this movement, entitled “The Abbey” and taking its inspiration from the style of 12th Century Abbess Hildegard von Bingen, the chant-like melody is supported by a catchy rhythm derived from it. The trick, which the Cypresses bring out with deceptive ease, is to make the music sound as simple and natural as possible.

Quartet No. 4 was written in 2005 on commission from the Cypress Quartet as part of its “Call & Response” series. In this instance, the task was to look at relationships between Mozart’s “Dissonant” Quartet in C, K465 and Beethoven’s Op. 59/ 3 in the same key. The intriguing opening movement draws in the listener. The second movement (Aria: Andante) plays like a long, hauntingly beautiful improvisation. The third is marked Minuet: Grazioso, though I wouldn’t advise trying to dance to its intricate patterns. The final movement has a pronounced motor rhythm and striking pizzicati.

Quartet No. 3 looks to ancient and traditional music for inspiration. Besides the afore-mentioned “Abbey” movement, Ruehr evokes the music of South American pan flutes and West African drums in the movements entitled “Clay Flute” and “Bell Call,” respectively, while “How she Danced” was inspired by the sight of her young daughter dancing in the kitchen. Ruehr disclaims writing that tune, citing a traditional source, and for sure it has the distinct echo of folk fiddling.

So, surprisingly, does the second movement of Quartet No. 1, which Ruehr says was intended as a tribute to Bach and the Well-Tempered Clavier. It starts off reverently enough, but by the end the rhythm has taken on an existence of its own. The opening movement, a tribute, to the 13th Century composer Perotin entitled “Patterns,” evokes both the medieval composer’s sequences and his gently rocking lilt. The Third movement, “Let’s Sit Beneath the Stars,” is achingly beautiful and sad, like a lullaby. The last, Estampie, is inspired by the old French “stamping dance” of that name. It builds in excitement, helped by the vigorous phrasing and sensational pizzicati of the Cypress Quartet members. The ending is typically abrupt for Elena Ruehr. Having said what she had to say (which is a lot), she stops.

Interview

Amy Horvey, trumpet

Music by Scelsi, Arditto, Höstman, Purchase, and Horvey/Morton

Malasartes Musique

• Quattro pezzi per tromba sola – Giancinto Scelsi
• Música Invisible – Cecilia Arditto
• Interview – Anna Höstman
• Apparatus Inconcinnus – Ryan Purchase
• Overture to “The Queen of the Music Boxes” featuring Jeff Morton

This is not your typical solo trumpet disc.  Some folks might dismiss a CD made up almost entirely of solo trumpet music, but when the most straightforward thing on a disc was written by Scelsi, I get kind of excited.  Amy Horvey tackles exciting and provocative repertoire on this offering and nails all of it.

The Quattro pezzi by Scelsi kick off the disc and highlight Ms. Horvey’s chops and musicality.  Her tone is dark and somber, her ability to connect the lengthy lyrical lines in each piece is uncanny, and the only thing that would make the performance better would be hearing her live.  These are demanding pieces and she squeezes every nuance of music from them.

Cecilia Arditto’s Música Invisible is in three movements (Sfumato, Chiaroscuro, and Anamorphosis) and uses both flugelhorn and trumpet.  Each work involves the use of extended techniques such as singing while playing, extreme pedal tone melodies, and putting the bell of the trumpet into a bowl of water.  Regardless of the techniques, which are intrinsic to the sound worlds of the pieces and not mere gimmicks, the music is haunting and meaningful.  Each gesture is given time and space to develop and mature and, at about 12 minutes, I could stand to listen to a whole lot more.

The next two works both feature spoken passages as well as played passages.  Anna Höstman’s Interview relates to a larger work about trumpet soloist Edna White called “Queen of the Music Boxes.” The fragments of text coax listeners into an emotional world with very little said.  The music that follows is sometimes playful, sometimes sorrowful, and Ms. Horvey communicates the text well without being too hammy or too stoic in affect.  In contrast to the fragmentary Interview, Apparatus Inconcinnus by Ryan Purchase contains more of a linear narrative about remembering how to count by Russian author Daniil Charms.  This humorous anecdote takes some serious musical terms and would be, of course, most effective in a live performance.  The story holds the music together very well.  My only quibble of this disc, if I have to have one, is that these two very similar works were programmed back to back.

The final work, Overture to “The Queen of the Music Boxes”, includes the electro-acoustic/circuit-bending/composer Jeff Morton working with prepared music boxes, toy instruments, and electronics.  The composition is largely about Morton’s sound world of dreamy, lo-fi mechanical music making than it is Amy Horvey’s trumpet playing.  When the trumpet melody does emerge, the dreaminess of Morton’s contraptions becomes more accompaniment  than ambient.  The whole piece projects an introspective mood and is the perfect sound world to close off the CD.

Thelema Trio

Ward De Vleeschhower, piano; Peter Verdonck, saxophones, and Marco Antonio Mazzini, clarinets

Music by Junchaya, Lee, Carpenter, Honor, Mazzini, Walczyk, and Benadon

innova records

• Rafael Leonardo Junchaya – Tres Danzas Episkénicas
• HyeKyung Lee – Shadowing
• Keith Carpenter – The Devil His Due
• Eric Honour – neither from nor towards
• Marco Antonio Mazzini – Imprevisto
• Kevin Walczyk – Refractions
• Fernando Benadon – Five Miniatures

The Thelema Trio’s modular nature, even within the context of being a trio, is one of its primary strengths and they strut their stylistic, coloristic, versatile stuff with this collection of pieces.  No two works share the same instrumentation nor do any of the compositions share the same sound world.  The only performer not showcased with a solo feature of some sort is the pianist but Ward De Vleeschhouwer is a superb collaborative artist who can highlight his abilities within a chamber music setting.  Peter Verdonck has excellent tone and energy on alto, tenor, and baritone saxophones and Marc Antonio Mazzini has a lithe and supple sound on standard or bass clarinet.  Together, the two reed players have a perfectly communal sound quality.

Each piece on the disc showcases the Thelema Trio’s mercuriality.  Rafael Leonardo Junchaya’s Tres Danzas Episkénicas is equal parts sultry, ethereal and playful.  This work uses the most instruments overall with the reeds changing from bass clarinet to clarinet and use of baritone and tenor saxophones.  Overall, these dances are attractive, slightly thorny pitch language and extremely well orchestrated.

HyeKyung Lee’s Shadowing is a canonic/imitative work for clarinet and alto saxophone.  Long melodic lines weave in and out with sinewy and twisty motions.  The blend between the performers is spot on and the whole piece has great long-term trajectory.  The high climax reached early on in the work is the exact right music at the exact right time.  Keith Carpenter’s raucous The Devil His Due for baritone sax and piano is a punchy, aggressive, and energetic toccata for the two instruments.  Instead of the baritone sax being the “front man” of the piece, both instruments engage in funky rhythmic interplay.

The title track on the CD, neither from nor towards, is an extended rhapsody for baritone sax, clarinet, and piano written by Eric Honour.  This obsessive piece spends a lot of time spinning its wheels (in a good way) where the music is, indeed, neither from anywhere nor moving towards anywhere.  Long overlapping tones in the reeds and mid-range piano are broken by the occasional spiky piano accents in extreme registers.  Gradually a melody emerges and by the halfway point we are in a soaring, melodic section.  The soaring becomes frenetic, dies down, but then trashes around with one last outburst.  If you were to drop in on any single section of the piece, you might wonder how it all fits together.  But listening to the complete work, Eric Honour draws an excellent through-line.  The programming for this piece is perfect since it showcases not only the coloristic blend between the reeds but also the rhythmic punctuation possibilities found in earlier works.

The only solo composition on the disc, Marco Antonio Mazzini’s Imprevisto sounds like music we aren’t really supposed to be hearing.  The slow unfolding work for clarinet gives the impression that we are eavesdropping on the performer while they worked out musical/emotional stuff.  This piece is haunting and captivating.  Refractions, by Kevin Walczyk, brings back some playful and bouncy music back to the disc.  The motoric repeated notes in the piano provide a platform for melodies and shapes in the alto sax and clarinet.  The energy is constantly pushing forward, even when the music slows and becomes more tender.  The light and springy material returns to close out the composition.

Finally, the Five Miniatures for baritone sax, bass clarinet, and piano by Fernando Benadon are delightfully quirky pieces that present a focal idea, perseverate upon said idea, and then vanish.  Niether of the five movements feels underwritten and, while one might hear how each idea could become longer, I think it would destroy the chiseled nature of these pieces.  There is a lot of fun and whimsy in their brevity, making this piece the perfect waft of light flavor after a satisfying meal.