Year: 2018

Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Los Angeles

John Adams Conducts Green Umbrella Concert at Disney Hall

The latest installment of the LA Philharmonic Green Umbrella concert series rolled into Disney Hall on Tuesday, February 20, 2018. Music by Julius Eastman, Anna Thorvaldsdottir and a premiere by Andrew McIntosh were performed. A screening of the iconic anti-war piece L’s G.A. by Salvatore Martirano, with live performance art by Ron Athey as Politico, rounded out the program. Only a few empty seats could be seen as an eager audience settled into place.

The first piece was AURA, by Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir, performed by the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet. This was played completely in the dark – no stage lights or house lights in the entire space. The LAPQ was just barely visible in dim outline on stage, hunched over their percussion instruments. They wore lighted green wristbands on each arm so that their movements could be seen throughout the hall. AURA began with chiming sounds and a soft rattle followed by what sounded like a bowed vibraphone tone plate. More intriguing sounds followed. The darkness, the moving green lights and the mysterious tones instantly created an atmosphere that gave full rein to the listener’s imagination. It was as if we were observing some secret ritual in the dead of winter in pagan Iceland. Ms. Thorvaldsdottir is well known for building convincing sound worlds out of unusual musical materials, and it would be hard to overstate how effectively this was accomplished here. The playing by the LAPQ – who had performed this piece before – was nonetheless remarkable given the extended techniques involved, the many notes and instructions in the score and the total darkness of the stage. AURA is a captivating experience that, despite the modest musical forces and subdued dynamics, works on the imagination in  surprising and powerful ways.

Shasta, by Andrew McIntosh followed, an LA Phil commission and world premiere conducted by John Adams. The stage was filled with a brass ensemble, timpani, percussion, a piano and harp. The composer is an avid hiker and recently climbed Mount Shasta. He writes of this experience: “Mt. Shasta is a unique mountain among California peaks, since it is a massive isolated cone located at the southern end of the Cascade range. Most of California’s major peaks are in the Sierra, which are completely different in nature, since the high peaks in that range are all surrounded by other peaks of similar height. This gives Mt. Shasta panoramic views from the top unparalleled in any other place in California, as well as a peculiarly lonely and melancholy feel.”

McIntosh is a string player by training, but has written for various other ensembles; Shasta is his first major work for brass and the piece proceeds in several short movements. The opening is filled with upward moving scales, arcing glissandos and a strong melody in the trombones so that the feeling is one of climbing a perilous mountain trail. At one point, some bowed xylophone notes sting like a blast of icy air. A trumpet sounds above some sustained tutti chords as if to announce that the summit has been reached, and here the music takes on a more mystical feel with quiet notes in the horns and piano. Towards the finish, the dynamics further soften and muted trumpets provide a strong sense of standing atop the remote heights. Shasta is an evocative and convincing portrait of both the exertion and the exhilaration of mountain climbing, and was received with sustained applause.

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by Paul Muller
Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, New York

Tuesday: So and JACK at Zankel

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Tuesday: JACK/SO Tonight at Zankel

Performances at Zankel Hall on March 6 at 7 PM (note the early start time) will feature two of contemporary classical music’s estimable chamber ensembles. JACK Quartet and SO Percussion team up in a program that includes a string quartet premiere by Philip Glass, a pitched percussion work by Donnacha Dennehy, and a piece for the combined forces and prepared disklaviers by Dan Trueman. (Tickets here).

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Open Source Music Festival 2017

Recently Open Source Music Festival was kind enough to send us some videos of JACK and pianist Joel Fan performing as part of the 2017 Festival. We’re still decoding the JACK offerings and will post them another day. But below, Fan plays two pieces by Augusta Thomas and Bernard Rands. Collectively titled ‘Two Thoughts about the Piano,’ they demonstrate the pianist’s virtuosity, with trills, repeated notes and angular gestures abounding to explore the entire compass of the instrument. Follow the YouTube link to hear the rest of the performances.

by Christian Carey
Chamber Music, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Strings, viola, Violin

Ljova in Princeton

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Lev “Ljova” Zhurbin. Photo: Mark Gurevich.

“Sorry About the Mess – Portraits in Music:”

Lev “Ljova” Zhurbin and Friends

Lewis Center for the Arts, Princeton University

February 27, 2018

Sequenza21.com

By Christian Carey

PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY – Violist and composer Lev “Ljova” Zhurbin has been a guest artist this semester at Princeton University’s Atelier. The special courses in this program feature guest artists in interdisciplinary collaboration: student participants can “mirror” or “shadow” their work. Zhurbin’s course, “Grandma’s Russian Painting: Puppetry and Music,” also involves puppeteer Basil Twist.

As part of his residency, on Tuesday, February 27th Zhurbin gave a composer/performer portrait concert. Held in The Forum, downstairs in the Lewis Center for the Arts, the event’s vibe was casual; the intensity of the actual performances was anything but.

The core ensemble for the concert was The Secret String Quartet: Zhurbin with violinists Cornelius Dufallo and Jennifer Choi, and cellist Yves Dharamraj. They presented the violist’s first string quartet, “Culai,” an homage to one of the violinists in the Gypsy band Taraf de Haïdouks. Boldly polystylistic and exquisitely well scored, it is a formidably challenging piece that hybridizes classical and folk music. All the members of the Secret Quartet amply demonstrated an affinity for the various playing styles contained in the piece. It is rare to hear such a seamless performance of demanding and versatile music.

Secret Quartet was joined by Vasko Dukovski for “Clarinet Quintet: The Refugee,” a poignant work that references the current refugee crisis in the United States and elsewhere. Zhurbin showed a depth of feeling in this piece with corresponding sensitivity to scoring and pacing. It equaled the quartet’s polished performance standard.

Much more music was on offer. A solo with loops provided an impressive sequence of post-minimal layering. Arrangements of repertoire from Zhurbin’s other ensemble, Ljova and the Kontraband, as well as a set of Yiddish and Russian folk songs, added vocalist Inna Barmash and accordionist Patrick Farrell to the assembled musicians. Both are tremendously talented exponents of Eastern European folk music who supplied performances that encompassed lilting inflections and, where required, burning intensity. An excellent concert; one looks forward to what Zhurbin’s collaboration with Twist will yield.

by Christian Carey
Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Los Angeles, Premieres

Panic Duo Concert in Pasadena

On Sunday, February 18, 2018, the Pasadena Conservatory of Music hosted a faculty recital featuring the Panic Duo of Nick Gerpe and Pasha Tseitlin. A full concert program of contemporary music was performed, including a world premiere by Gilda Lyons, a Los Angeles premiere from Laura Kramer and music by Anne LeBaron, Jennifer Higdon, Juhi Bansal and Reena Esmail. Barrett Hall was completely filled for the occasion, and an extra row of chairs crowded the stage to accommodate the overflow crowd.

Fissure, for violin, piano and electronics (2016), by Anne LeBaron opened the concert. This piece was premiered by the Panic Duo in December, 2016 and is inspired by the Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe. The electronic recordings for this piece resulted from a visit by the composer to an upstate New York mansion that is said to be haunted. The title of the piece refers to the large structural crack in the Usher house that ultimately collapses at the end of the Poe story. Fissure opens with Gerpe entering from offstage, staggering into his seat at the piano. A short arpeggio is heard followed by a dramatic crash. Tseitlin arrives, walking slowly to center stage with soft mewing sounds emanating from his violin. A clattering is heard in the speakers accompanied by some uptempo runs in the instruments, all casting a mysterious and unsettling spell. The tension continues to build as the piece moves forward, with quiet stretches and piano trills alternating with agitated violin passages brimming with psychological anguish. The sounds of rushing wind and a deep rumbling from the recording added to the atmosphere. A sense of the theatrical persisted to the finish, with the violinist pacing restlessly about while playing softly, and then exiting offstage. Fissure is a remarkable portrayal of the Poe story, with all of the emotion and drama skillfully drawn out by the Panic Duo.

Whip the Devil Round the Stump (2017), by Juhi Bansal, followed. This began with complex and rapid runs in the piano accompanied by a series of slurred scales on the violin. The two instruments then traded phrases back and forth, often in counterpoint, and this made for a nicely interweaving texture. A slower section intervened, led by a solemn violin line and some low notes in the piano. The uptempo pacing returned at the finish with more shared passages and a moving, active feel. Whip the Devil Round the Stump is a robustly dynamic piece that extracts the maximum amount of energy from just two players.

Jhula Jhule (2013) by Reena Esmail was next and this piece was described as a “fantasia on two Indian folk songs.” Opening with a quiet, ethereal trill in the piano, the violin soon joined with slower phrases that invoked a warm and wistful feeling. An Indian lullaby was clearly one of the inspirations for this piece; the violin supplied the singing voice and the piano line gave a sense of nostalgic distance. The contrast between the piano and the sweetly light melody in the violin was especially effective – Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending came briefly to mind. The playing, especially in the violin, was strongly expressive resulting in a beautifully peaceful sensibility. Jhula Jhule is restful and tranquil – music that sits comfortably in the listener’s ear.

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by Paul Muller
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, jazz

Thomas Strønen’s Time is a Blind Guide – Lucus (CD Review)

Thomas Strønen – Time is a Blind Guide

Lucus

ECM Records 2576

 

Ayumi Tanaka, piano; Håkon Aase: violin; Lucy Railton, violoncello; Ole Morten Vågan, double bass; Thomas Strønen: drums, percussion

 

Composer/percussionist Thomas Strønen’s Time is a Blind Guide has shifted membership since its debut recording. Distilled to a quintet line-up on Lucus, its latest outing for the ECM label, it retains a cohesive way of interacting that highlights a fluent interplay of textures. The Mediterranean-inflected album opener “La Bella,” the sole composition on which Strønen shares credit with Aase and Vågan, is a case in point. Fills from Strønen’s kit activate repeated notes in the strings and piano in a subtle build that gradually includes ever widening whorls of melodic snippets.

 

Often Strønen wisely deploys the quintet as an interlocking set of two trios – string trio and jazz piano trio. This is done quite effectively on “Wednesday;” the jazz side of the ensemble plays in a smoky swinging groove while Aase and Railton perform a gentle rainstorm of pizzicatos. Vågan is an interloper, moving from walking lines to sultry arco playing. On the title track, also undergirded by a propulsive string ostinato, Tanaka supplies limpid impressionist cascades. The strings build up successive layers, creating countermelodies that arc around the piano and accentuate the undergirding material of the rhythm section. The double trio idea also prevails in the standout composition “Truth Grows Gradually,” in which the players revel in a complex yet catchy groove.

 

Elsewhere, the ensemble activities vary. On “Baka,” the percussionist crosses over into the world of orchestral instruments, bringing out regular bass drum punctuations. “Friday” juxtaposes pizzicato solos with high string harmonics in a polyrhythmic duet enlivened by its textural contrasts. After an extended double bass introduction, “Tension” presents folk-tinged violin melodies and attenuated post-bop piano lines against a variety of jazz kit punctuations by Strønen. Gradually, Tanaka fills out the texture with rapid fire repeated notes against an expansive collection of string glissandos and harmonic minor pirouettes. The Eastern-tinged “Release” leads with a sweeping piano melody that alternates with oscillating strings and thrumming low register pedals. Oddly enough, “Release” is placed earlier on the disc than “Tension,” which would seem to be a corresponding antecedent. That said, the sequencing of these compositions flows organically with ample variety along the way. Whether performing again as a larger group or in the quintet that appears on Lucus, one hopes that Time is a Blind Guide are just getting started.

 

-Christian Carey

by Christian Carey
Chamber Music, Composers, Concert review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, New York

Sheila Silver Composer Portrait at Merkin Hall

Sheila Silver

 

The Music of Sheila Silver: A Celebration

Merkin Concert Hall

February 8, 2018

By Christian Carey

Published on Sequenza 21

 

NEW YORK – Composer Sheila Silver has taught at Stony Brook University since 1979. On February 8th at Merkin Concert Hall, an all-Silver program celebrated her tenure at the university. In addition to colleagues and students past and present, the hall was filled with area musicians – including multiple generations of composers – who were most enthusiastic in their reception of Silver and the estimable renditions of her work.

 

Even when composing instrumental music, Silver often bases her work on literature and describes it in terms of its narrative quality. The earliest piece on the program, To the Spirit Unconquered (1992), played by Trio de Novo – Brian Bak, violin, Phuc Phan Do,  cello, and Hsin-Chiao Liao, piano –  is inspired by the writings of Primo Levi, a survivor of the Holocaust who was imprisoned in Auschwitz. One of Silver’s most dramatic compositions, in places it is rife with dissonance and juxtaposes violent angularity with uneasy passages of calm. In the video below, Silver mentions trying to imbue it both with the searing quality of Levi’s struggle and, at its conclusion, some sense of hope based on his indomitability in the midst of horrendous experiences. Trio de Novo are a talented group who performed with detailed intensity and imparted the final movement, marked “stately,” with exceptional poise.

 

Soprano Risa Renae Harman and pianist Timothy Long performed an aria from the opera The Wooden Sword (2010),  in which Harman displayed impressive high notes to spare. Her acting skills were on display – comedically sassy – in “Thursday,” one of the songs from Beauty Intolerable (2013), Silver’s cycle of Edna St. Vincent Millay settings. Soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon, joined by pianist Ryan McCullough, presented another, more serious, Millay song, “What My Lips Have Kissed.” With Bak providing additional atmosphere, they also performed an aria from Silver’s current work-in-progress, the opera A Thousand Splendid Suns. Gibbon sang with considerable flexibility and purity of tone, at one point exuberantly spinning around while effortlessly holding a high note. Currently part of the group workshopping the opera, she seems perfectly cast. The songs and arias displayed a sumptuousness that served as a fine contrast to the denser language of the piano trio.

 

Dawn Upshaw was slated to perform with pianist (and longtime Stony Brook faculty member) Gilbert Kalish. Sadly, Upshaw had bronchitis and couldn’t sing on the concert. Gibbon valiantly stepped in, learning Silver’s On Loving, Three Songs in Memory of Diane Kalish (2015) in just two days. Her performance on the concert was supremely confident, betraying none of the last minute nature of the switch. Indeed, the three songs – settings of Shakespeare, St. Vincent Millay, and Khalil Gibran, were among the most stirring of Silver’s works on the program, displaying an autumnal lyricism and wistful poignancy. Kalish, a renowned accompanist, played with characteristic grace.

 

The second half of the concert showed still two more aspects of Silver’s work: a short film score and a more overtly political chamber piece. The first, Subway Sunset (1999), is a collaboration with her husband, the filmmaker John Feldman. It intersperses scenes of busy commuters with a gradually encroaching sunset adorning the sky near the World Trade Center. Although filmed before 2001, the duo dedicated it to the victims of 9/11. Seeing the towers on film will always be haunting. The musical accompaniment, a duet played by bassoonist Gili Sharret and pianist Arielle Levioff, created a solemn stillness that left space to contemplate the various implications of what used to be a normal scene for twentieth century commuters.

 

The program concluded with Twilight’s Last Gleaming (2008), a work for two pianists and two percussionists that is a commentary on the post 9/11 state of affairs. Its three movements’ titles – War Approaching, Souls Ascending, Peace Pretending – give a broad outline for the work’s impetus. Twilight’s Last Gleaming requires stalwart performers and Kalish, joined by pianist Christina Dahl (also on Stony Brook’s faculty) and percussionists Lusha Anthony and Brian Smith, provided a committed and energetic account of this challenging and penetrating piece. The large percussion setup included a considerable assortment of gongs as well as various pitched instruments and drums. The percussionists engaged in a complex choreography between parts, at times catwalking around the gongs’ stands to arrive perfectly in time for their next entrance. In the piece’s final section, an extended musical deconstruction of “The Star-Spangled Banner” takes place with all of the musicians engaging in an increasingly fragmented presentation of the tune. The piece closes leaving the penultimate line  “The Land of the Free…” cut off by a musical question mark: a powerful ending to an evening of eloquent music.

 

 

 

 

by Christian Carey
Ambient, CD Review, CDs, File Under?, Pop

Mark Renner: Few Traces

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On Febuary 16, 2018, RVNG Intl. digitally released Few Traces, a recording of rarities by Mark Renner. The physical release is this Friday (February 23rd).


Renner is an under-heralded icon of the Baltimore arts scene. A talented painter, printmaker, and musician, Renner’s work proved pivotal in the local community during the first early glimmers of post New Wave alternative rock.


Few Traces contains music from 1982-90. Built with a minimum of gear – a four-track recorder, guitar, and a Casio synthesizer – its songs and instrumentals are simply constructed but eloquent, tuneful, and charming in their immediacy. One can imagine college radio in an alternate universe spinning Renner’s “Saints and Sages,” “Half a Heart,” and “The Wild House” in heavy rotation. Given the resurgence of eighties synth pop, perhaps their time has come.


To garner some context for Renner’s work, Maia Stern has released a short documentary (embedded below). You can also check out streams of some of my favorites on the recording and there is a link below to purchase it via Bandcamp, as well as some information about charitable contributions that are being made from the release’s proceeds. Recommended highly.









“On behalf of Mark Renner, a portion of the proceeds from Few Traces sales will be donated to Ethiopia ACT, an organization committed to public health strategies to serve Addis Ababa’s community, under Come! Mend!, an initiative bridging RVNG’s work and interest supporting non-profit organizations and charities.”

by Christian Carey
Bang on a Can, Composers, Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Orchestral, Orchestras, Review, Seattle

Seattle Symphony unveils David Lang’s symphony without a hero

David Lang’s symphony without a hero received its premiere on February 8/10 by its commissioner, Seattle Symphony and Music Director Ludovic Morlot. As usual, Lang spells his title in all lowercase letters, a gesture of acquiescence that particularly befits the resigned tone of this work’s namesake, Poem Without a Hero by the Soviet writer Anna Akhmatova. Lang, who is quite the Russophile, took his inspiration from Akhmatova’s wartime lament for her hometown Leningrad (St. Petersburg), besieged and abused at the hands of both Nazis and Stalinists. Lang’s reflections present as a single-movement essay that, regardless of one’s feelings toward postminimalism or orchestral composition in general at this stage of the 21st century, surely deserves to be ranked among his most compelling works.

Lang conceived symphony without a hero as the unfolding of “a melody that goes from the beginning of the piece to the very end—a 28 minute tune”. This melody, closer to 23 minutes at Morlot’s tempo, lies in the bass instruments: a gruff pseudo-ostinato that constantly tries to climb a C♯ minor triad (C♯ G♯ C♯ E) without ever literally repeating itself. It’s somewhere between a “real” tune and a clumsily-executed arpeggio exercise (imagine the fragmentary musical gestures of The Little Match Girl Passion, but louder and harsher). Above it the high strings, coupled with other treble instruments, spin a tonally ambiguous web of overlapping sustained tones derived from the bass tune, creating an effect akin to the angelic choir atop Ives’ texture in the Prelude to his Fourth Symphony. There’s little going on in the middle registers—it’s as though each instrument is compelled to choose between bass and treble. As Lang puts it, the two sides “don’t talk to each other”.

As from a tower that commands the view
From nineteen-forth I look down.
As if I bid farewell anew
To what I long since bade farewell,
As if I paused to cross myself
And enter dark vaults underground.

(1941, Leningrad under siege)
– Anna Akhmatova, translated by Nancy K. Anderson

David Lang (photo: Dacia Clay/Second Inversion)

Lang has spoken about being led into composition through his early encounters with Shostakovich. And the tone of his symphony is akin to Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony shorn of its triumphalism and cumulative effect. I kept thinking of that piece’s notorious first movement, but with its melodic and harmonic details blasted away, leaving just the repetitive martial rhythms as symbolic foundations to the bombed-out buildings of wartime Leningrad whose smoldering shells remain but whose trappings of life have been pulverized and left to circulate as a disorganized cloud in the smoky air. As if to reinforce the siege metaphor, Morlot positioned the drums at the left of the orchestra with the lower strings and brass on the right, effectively enveloping the jumbled and pleading voices of the treble choir. There’s definitely an edge to this music that you don’t always get with Lang.

Halfway through the symphony the quasi-ostinato stops, leaving the web of treble instruments standing alone. Most prominent here are the violins, supported by some high woodwinds, harps and a celeste. The bass reenters, but now with an alternation of sustained chords a half-step apart, reminiscent of Philip Glass (for whom Lang once worked as a copyist, meticulously typing the lyrics of Akhnaten into the score). As before, bass and treble proceed independently until the bass finally drops out entirely, leaving the violins (just as in Ives’ Symphony) with the last word.

To complete the evening Morlot paired Lang’s symphony with its putative opposite, Strauss’ Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life) from 1898. The antebellum naiveté of that old warhorse has long screamed out for revisionism, and programming it after the brutal honesty of the Lang only seemed to emphasize its insouciance. If there was a moral to the evening, it was that true heroes are the ones bearing hard witness to bitter truths. In that light we can be grateful for Seattle Symphony’s long record of supporting contemporary music, a record that one hopes will continue despite the imminent departure of both its Music Director Morlot and its President/CEO Simon Woods.

by Michael Schell
Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Los Angeles, Opera

Descent Into Madness in Pasadena

As part of their continuing new music series, the Boston Court Performing Arts Center in Pasadena presented Descent Into Madness, A Concert of Cautionary Music on February 9, 2018. The centerpiece of the evening was a performance of Miss Donnithorne’s Maggot by Peter Maxwell Davies, featuring Canadian soprano Stacey Fraser and Brightwork newmusic. Anthony Parnther, conductor, Jack Van Zandt, who studied with Peter Maxwell Davies, and Terry Smith, stage director for this production, were also on hand for a pre-concert discussion of this spellbinding work of mid-20th century British experimental opera.

The first half of the concert was given over to three contemporary works, including two by Southern California composers. Un-intermezzi, by Veronika Krausas, opened the proceedings with Aron Kallay as piano soloist. The titles of the individual movements are taken from the novel Un Lun Dun, by China Miéville.

The first intermezzo, “each dreams the other” began with a quiet repeating phrase, and conveyed a lightly mysterious feel. Darker chords followed, adding tension, and these alternated with the softer passages. The program notes state that this movement : “… is the composer’s version of the floating quality of Brahms’ Intermezzo in B minor, OP. 119, no.1.” This provided a gently evocative prelude to the next section, “a bowl for shadows.” Written in the “whimsical style of Erik Satie”, there is more mystery here, with a solitary line of notes that are nicely offset by counterpoint and stronger passages that occasionally build to a mild anxiety. Good contrast in the dynamics and a sensitive touch by Kallay sustained this delicate balance. The last movement, “a chorus of night-things”, opens with a wonderfully active splatter of notes – a summer shower of optimism. This movement bubbles cheerfully along like a running brook in a spring pasture. A solemnly dark passage intrudes from the lower registers and as the movement proceeds, alternating with the sunny confidence heard in the opening. These contrasting passages continue throughout, increasingly varied and building to the finish. Un-intermezzi is a pleasing homage by the composer to literary and musical influences, brought forward to a contemporary sensibility.

Organism, by Jason Barabba was next, scored for clarinet and flute. The music stands at center stage were arranged so that the two players faced each other. A high pitch from the flute floated upward to begin, and this was nearly matched by clarinet so that their dissonance resembled the whistling of a strong wind. Skittering passages followed, and these soon morphed into a series of intertwined and independent phrases woven together into a dazzling matrix of brightly organic sounds. The composer writes in the program notes: “One of the great features of both the clarinet and the flute are their ability for great subtlety, control and intricate dynamic shading. In this case the undulating opening section was designed to highlight the instruments’ dynamic control in their higher ranges.”

There were no common harmonies or pulse – each line was independently played with the rapid runs and trills nearly colliding but for the precise playing of flutist Sara Andon and clarinetist Brian Walsh. Even with all of the notes flying out into the audience, there was enough of an arc to the phrases so that the listener could naturally follow the flow. While every bit as complex, active and animated as a Jackson Pollock painting, Organism engages and dazzles, but never overwhelms.

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by Paul Muller
CD Review, Chamber Music, File Under?, Recordings, Strings

Danish String Quartet – Last Leaf

Last Leaf

Danish String Quartet

ECM Records CD

 

The Danish String Quartet is best known for their insightful interpretations of classical and contemporary repertoire. For instance, a 2016 CD for ECM Records presented early works by Ades, Norgard, and Abrahamsen to widespread acclaim. However, back in 2014, the quartet had a best seller on Da Capo, Wood Works, that consisted of arrangements by its members of Scandinavian folk tunes. In 2017 they released Last Leaf, another album of these arrangements and original compositions for ECM.

 

Last Leaf is in many ways even more successful than Wood Works. The arrangements by the Danish String Quartet’s various members are more sure-footed and varied in ensemble deployments. ECM’s sonics are, as usual, top notch, and the space chosen for the recording, a Danish museum, provides exemplary chamber acoustics. In addition, the group has combined classical and folk dances in adroit ways in several places. One of the most fetching and memorable of these is “Nadja’s Waltz” by cellist  Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin. Another is “Shine No More,” a reel-like tune by violinist Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen. “Polska from Dorotea,” an arrangement by the full quartet is a wonderful blend of contrapuntal writing and boisterous dance music. Sumptuous sonorities populate the ballad-like “Now Found is the Forest of Roses,” a poignant album closer.

 

Often, string quartets rely on their creativity to provide impetus for interpretation. It is gratifying hear a group that is as interested in the acts of creating arrangements and compositions as it is in providing stalwart renditions of preexisting music. Recommended.

 

-Christian Carey

by Christian Carey