Author: Christian Carey

Concert review, Conductors, File Under?, Orchestras, Twentieth Century Composer

Concert Review: NY Philharmonic performs Ligeti

Susanna Mälkki conducts the New York Philharmonic with Pierre-Laurent Aimard performing Ligeti Piano Concerto at David Geffen Hall, 11/2/2023. Photo by Chris Lee.

New York Philharmonic, Susanna Mälkki, conductor

Jenõ Lisztes, Cimbalom

David Geffen Hall

November 4, 2023

NEW YORK – Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 (1851) is such a challenging barnstormer of a piece that one often wonders how ten fingers suffice. On Saturday evening, Jenõ Lisztes, making his New York Philharmonic debut, used two mallets on a cimbalom to realize the rhapsody. His arrangement replicated the work in its entirety, and he played it with extraordinary virtuosity. Liszt was known to improvise a cadenza at the end of the piece, and Lisztes improvised one of his own, improbably one-upping the work proper. The standing ovation that followed was well-earned.

Jenõ Lisztes. Photo by Chris Lee

The rest of the concert’s first half was also devoted to music by Hungarian composers. In 1915, Béla Bartôk was fascinated with Romanian folk music, making song gathering trips to the country and incorporating these materials into his own work. Six Romanian Dances was originally written for piano, but in 1917 was scored by Bartôk for string orchestra. Under Susanna Mälkki’s direction, contrasts were played up, with luminescent timbres in the piece’s slow movements and vivacious mixed-meter music in its fast sections. The final dance built towards its close with an urgent-sounding accelerando.

Susanna Mälkki conducts the New York Philharmonic with Pierre-Laurent Aimard performing Ligeti Piano Concerto. Photo by Chris Lee

The Philharmonic is celebrating György Ligeti’s centenary with “Ligeti Retrospective.” Rather than a single week devoted to his music, the orchestra has presented single works on programs during the Fall, as well as chamber music concerts and “Nightcap” events. Ligeti’s Piano Concerto (1988)  is one of the composer’s most highly regarded later pieces. Soloist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, a contemporary music specialist, has recorded the concerto for DG with Boulez and is its go-to performer. He amply proved this on Saturday, deftly performing the sometimes thorny but always diverting music.

During the 1980s, Ligeti’s musical palette expanded. He explored the polyrhythms of African music and, by extension, minimalist composers such as Steve Reich, who had an interest in Ghanaian drumming. Latin American music was introduced to Ligeti by his student the composer Roberto Sierra. Ligeti’s use of ostinatos is complex, involving overlap of different frameworks and tempos. From Asian music comes pitch material, with scales recalling Gamelan. Alongside these are various other symmetrical divisions of the octave and modal writing. The composer repudiated the idea that his work could easily be categorized as modernist or postmodernist, insisting that the synthesis of elements in a piece like the Piano Concerto evaded being pigeonholed.

Cast in five movements, the concerto’s scoring makes for some tricky entrances, with frequent unison attacks by dissimilar instruments – piano, slapper, and low brass for instance – that could easily go awry. Particularly in the first movement, marked Vivace ritmico e preciso, Mälkki negotiated these interrelations with laser beam accuracy. The second movement has often struck me as overly diffuse, even on Aimard’s DG recording. Here, Mälkki’s navigation of its trajectory and beautiful balancing of its timbres, as well as Aimard’s crystalline gestures, rehabilitated it to be a beguiling standout. The third movement, marked Vivace Cantabile, explores Ligeti’s fascination with polyrhythms, with several layers corruscating around a single line piano melody with its own rhythmic grid. Despite the interplay of ostinatos, it felt more maximalized than minimalist. The fourth movement, in which the texture thins out, vigorous attacks, complete with referee’s whistles and piercing piccolos, still impart the feeling of multiple simultaneous pulsations. One of Aimard’s favorite composers is Messiaen, and, in an example of synergy, the harmony here reflected that composers’ Modes of Limited Transposition. The final presto movement is a great unfurling of the interplay built up in previous sections, with brass solos and shimmering pitched percussion accompanying a gradual ascent of cluster chords in the piano. The cadenza is slow at first, displaying interlocked lines. Upon the orchestra’s return, tension and activity build until a final unison crack closes the piece in midair.

The second half of the concert was devoted to Modest Musorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (1874), in Maurice Ravel’s 1922 orchestration. Much of Ravel’s own orchestral music involved transcribing piano pieces, and his inimitable scoring is exquisite in Pictures. Musorgsky based the piece on paintings by Viktor Hartmann (1834-1873), from an 1874 memorial showing of his work in St. Petersburg.

Pictures’s famous Promenade suggests the peregrination between paintings by a viewer of the exhibition. The four iterations of the Promenade are presented in different scorings. The latter half of the piece dispenses with the Promenade in favor of movements depicting one painting after another. These programmatic pieces are, for the most part, miniatures, but they are chock full of material. The formal freedom with which Musorgsky deploys elements of the music creates unexpected, sometimes startling, juxtapositions. This is abundantly in evidence in the second movement, “Gnomus,” a portentous mixture of multiple themes, first sequentially, then overlapped, and finally given a bellicose valediction. “The Old Castle,” with its suave woodwind solos, has a folk-like melody with off-kilter phrasing and a varied accompaniment. “Bydlo” is a showcase for French horn with snippets of the Promenade melody interspersed with new material. A countermelody soars in the strings. Its climax is filled with thunderous timpani and strings in octaves, after which the music recedes to the accompanied horn solo. “Samuel Goldberg und Schmuỹle” is built with a yearning melody imitative of synagogue music, awe-inspiring in its low-strings presentation. The middle section quickens to a relentless woodwind counter-melody, ultimately joined with the string tune in counterpoint, followed by an emphatic close.

Musorgsky had a playful side as well, which is displayed by the movements “Tuileries Gardens” and “Ballad of the Unhatched Chicks.” Graceful moments populate the opening of “The Market at Limoges.”

Susanna Mälkki conducts the New York Philharmonic. Photo by Chris Lee

The last movements provide a buildup to the much-anticipated finale. “Catacombae (Sepulchrum Romanum)” features stentorian brass chorales, “Cum Mortuis in Lingua Mortua” is an ominous reworking of the Promenade material, which transforms into a particularly Ravellian denouement of pianissimo strings and a gentle, angelic flute solo. It is interrupted in brash fashion by “The Hut on Chicken’s Legs.” In its outer sections there is a chromatic tune, folk dance ostinatos, and emphatic tutti brass passages in full cry, with mysterious pianissimo passages in between. The movement is followed attacca by “The Great Gate at Kiev,” a tour-de-force for symphony orchestra that is a glorious conclusion.

The NY Philharmonic truly sounded glorious itself, enjoying the improved sonics of David Geffen Hall and Mälkki’s assured leadership. The conductor’s gestures were clear and often more characterful than in other pieces on the program. For example, she animated “Gnomus” with incantatory motions, elicited an emotive cast from the theme in “Samuel Goldberg und Schmuỹle,” and lead the finale with broad gestures, ending with her arms closing in a near embrace. The Philharmonic responded with committed, enthusiastic playing that crafted a superlative rendition of Pictures at an Exhibition. I would wager that Mälkki would be welcomed by the orchestra anytime she visits. The audience too.

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, early music, File Under?

Fabio Biondi plays Vivaldi Concertos “Per Anna Maria”

Concerto per Violino XI, “Per Anna Maria”

Fabio Biondi, violin; Europa Galante

Naive Records

 

Anna Maria (1696-1782) was one of Antonio Vivaldi’s principal muses. She was a pupil of his at Ospedale delle Pietà, where he taught for forty years. A child prodigy, Anna Maria was a violinist of enormous talent. Vivaldi recognized this and composed at least twenty-four concertos dedicated to her. 

 

Judging by the concertos performed by soloist Fabio Biondi, the composer entrusted Anna Maria with works requiring enormous facility and musicality. The D Major concerto that opens the recording begins with a brief snatch of a simple theme that is a red herring for the vigorous soloing to come. The ensemble plays with rhythmic verve and dynamics that, while terraced, bring an expressive character, powerful in the forte sections and dulcet in the soft. The middle movement is a harmonically twisty theme accompanied by the continuo, which includes a portative organ and lute. The finale is a gigue with quick-paced sequential passages for the soloist. A brief minor interlude is followed by a fleet-footed cadenza, played with nimble virtuosity by Biondi, then a bold conclusion. 

 

The concerto in B-flat is subtitled “il corneto da posta” (the post-horn). The first movement is filled with zesty double-dotted rhythms. The second has a flexible  solo part with an emotive minor middle section. The concerto does indeed make use of post-horn calls, albeit in strings, in its buoyant finale movement.

 

The Concerto in E-flat, RV261, is a particular standout, featuring a bustling Allegro in which the tutti are a muscular foil for Biondi, who plays ricocheting lines with a glimmering tone. The Adagio is a plaintive minor key movement, with the ensemble again emphatic while the solos are played with supple grace. The final movement is taken at a breathtaking tempo and is a showcase for both soloist and ensemble.

 

The concerto in C-major supplies some of the most regal-sounding music I have heard from Vivaldi in an instrumental context: it is as if he has borrowed Handel’s wig. Biondi demonstrates his talent for period-informed bespoke ornaments in the Largo movement. A separate track at the end of the recording demonstrates the score’s original ornaments. Touches like this make “Per Anna Maria ” an estimable contribution to Naive’s Vivaldi collection. It is one of my favorite recordings of 2023.

 

-Christian Carey



by Christian Carey
Awards, CD Review, CDs, Composers, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, LPs

Eno Voiced and Voiceless

Brian Eno – solo tour, FOREVERANDNEVERMORE and FOREVERVOICELESS

This past Saturday, Brian Eno played the first show of his 2023 tour at the Venice Biennale Musica. The Guardian posted a review of the concert, indicating that it spotlighted Baltic Sea Philharmonia Orchestra, an opportunity presented to Eno as part of his winning Venice’s Golden Lion Award. The centerpiece of the concert was The Ship, a compelling piece that was recorded for Warp in 2016. Eno’s song catalog was also explored, mostly recent material, but reaching back to 1977’s “By This River,” from his fantastic album Before and After Science. 

Eno’s concern with the environment has played an important role in two recent recordings, FOREVERANDNEVERMORE (Universal, 2022),  which consists of songs about environmental collapse, and its 2023 companion, FOREVERVOICELESS, instrumental versions of the material. Eno’s voice has darkened since the days of “By This River,” but it remains an expressive instrument. “We Let it In” is a persistently repeating melody that morphs over time with the addition of vocal harmonies. “Garden of Stars” uses overdubbed vocals throughout, with text rhythms shifting, quick glissandos, and the instruments playing a long crescendo of sliding tones and repeated notes on strings. “There Were Bells” is perhaps the most emotively I have heard Eno sing in some time. With distant thunder as a background, Eno croons, modulates his vibrato, and leans into a fluid sense of rhythm.

 

FOREVERVOICELESS is quite moving in its own right. Where pop artists often lay down an instrumental bed, adding vocals last, here Eno removes the vocals and reworks and remixes the songs as instrumentals, frequently as commentary on the former by the latter. “Inclusion” is a highlight, mixing Eno’s classic ambient approach with sustained upper-register string melodies, bubbling prog textures, and a lyrical cello solo. “Sherry” and its complement “Chéri” takes a smoky, chromatic vocal melody and, in its remix, allows chords and bassline to create a gentle, undulating piece, almost like a 4/4 version of a Gymnopedie by Satie. Over time, the melody is revisited, with chromatic scales mimicking Eno’s vocal inflections. The song “Icarus or Biérot,” with a harrowing vocal referencing the former’s fall,  is reconfigured as “Who Are We?,” with the synth chordal ostinatos given an edge that provides a more syncopated construction. Occasional bell-like timbres provide boundaries for the sections. Gradually, sinuous strings and high sine tones embellish the soundscape. A disjunct tune wends its way through, completing a thoroughly new impression of the music.

 

Both recordings sound fantastic on vinyl. As a pair, they demonstrate Eno’s talents as a songwriter, and also remind us of the intricacies that lurk beneath their surface. FOREVERVOICELESS is one of my favorite releases of 2023.

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Composers, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Justin Dello Joio – Oceans Apart (CD Review)

Justin Dello Joio – Oceans Apart (Bridge Records)

 

Composer Justin Dello Joio enjoys a top flight slate of performers on Oceans Apart, his latest recording for Bridge. The title work is a piano concerto, performed live here by the Boston Symphony, conducted by Alan Gilbert, with Garrick Ohlsson as soloist. A short bit of applause is left on the tail end of the recording, otherwise one would never be the wiser. The quality of the rendition and recording are excellent.

 

Dello Joio conceived of Oceans Apart when watching surfers being challenged by massive waves. The concerto translates this image into a piece with a muscular orchestration trying to overwhelm the soloist. The scoring is vivid and varied, with imaginative use of harp, percussion, muted brass, and string effects to create the undulating feel of the surf. As the piece builds, it swells and indeed threatens to subsume the pianist. It is appreciated that Dello Joio has his own take on “water music:” no ersatz Debussy here. 

 

Ohlsson is a marvelous interpreter, undertaking the role of vying against the orchestra instead of, as is traditional, being supported by it. That said, in places where the soloist is intended to blend in with certain cohorts of the ensemble, such as pitched percussion flurries, shimmering and well-coordinated passages result. His solo turns reveal formidable virtuosity. The final cadenza finds the pianist challenged over and over again by violent interruptions, which is succeeded by a supple denouement. Not to overstress the program, but I have to wonder if the surfer went underwater. Oceans Apart is one of Dello Joio’s best orchestral pieces to date, with a versatile language and well-planned trajectory. 

 

The other two works on the CD are for chamber forces. Due per Due is played by NY Philharmonic principal cellist Carter Brey and pianist Christopher O’Riley. The first movement, “Elegie (To an old musician),” is dedicated to Dello Joio’s father, Norman Dello Joio. One can hear a clever co-opting of the elder composer’s use of pantonality and dissonant counterpoint. At the same time, Justin Dello Joio’s voice is an unmistakable part of the piece; it is far more intricately shaped and complexly hued than any piece by his father. The second movement is a moto perpetuo, but one that is far more developed and intricate than many pieces written in this style. Brey and O’Riley are an excellent pairing of performers. One could easily imagine them recording and touring a program of contemporary works.

 

Blue and Gold Music concludes the recording (the title takes the colors from Trinity School, a K-12 preparatory school that Dello Joio attended). The American Brass Quintet and organist Colin Fowler are ideal interpreters for the ebullient, fanfare-filled piece. It demonstrates how far Dello Joio can stylistically stretch while retaining his own distinctive approach. Copland-esque Americana with a twist is an ideal vehicle for the American Brass Quintet, and Fowler is a good addition to the proceedings.

 

The concerto is one of my favorite works of 2023, and the entire recording is highly recommended.

 

-Christian Carey



by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?, jazz

Russ Lossing and King Vulture (CD Review)

Russ Lossing and King Vulture

Alternate Side Parking Music

Aqua Piazza Records

Russ Lossing, piano, keyboards; Adam Kolker, soprano and tenor saxophone, bass clarinet; Matt Pavolka, bass; Dayeon Seok, drums

Photo: Marie Bissétt

 

Pianist Russ Lossing has been a fixture on the New York jazz scene for over thirty-five years. His latest recording, Alternate Side Parking Music on Aqua Piazza, employs a new quartet, called King Vulture, in a set of vibrant compositions. Lossing has worked with saxophonist Adam Kolker and bassist Matt Pavolka for years. It is the addition of the abundantly talented drummer Dayeon Seok that brings a fresh perspective. King Vulture understands Lossing’s musical vocabulary well. Moreover, they inhabit these compositions in a way that stretches their seams, each player bringing their own distinctive approach to the proceedings. 

 

“Honk” begins with the rhythm section in a fiery opening, Lossing playing a free solo and Seok drumming assertively, with fills piling on top of one another over the underlying pulse. Kolker enters, with stentorian lines. On “Cloned” distorted electric piano and octave melodies between saxophone and bass clarinet suggest an affinity with early fusion. “Next 3 km ” opens with a beautiful bass clarinet solo, followed by a melody played by Pavolka and mysterious scales from Lossing on Rhodes and piano. An angular solo and distorted fragments ensue while Pavolka double times: His facility with fast passages and twisty melodies is extraordinary. The opening tune reappears, doubled by piano, with cymbal shimmers and walking bass adorning the proceedings. It closes with repeated octaves from sax and piano, a sideways move that serves as punctuation.

“Parallel Park,” a daunting challenge in NYC. Over a nervous groove, Kolker plays an energetic soprano saxophone solo. Lossing’s solo turn has extended triadic changes and a funky suaveness: this driver does not fear a fender bender. Pavolka plays glissandos in a brief spotlight moment right before the piece’s close. “Double Park” is a move far more likely on Manhattan streets. And the “Meter Maid” is likely watching. While one doesn’t want to overly programmatize the pieces based on their titles, there are often clever connections afoot. “Double Park” begins with a chromatic bass clarinet solo, once again doubled with piano in octaves, the rhythm section subdued. The music trends bluesy, continuing an assured pose as the rhythm section begins to build. Things get angsty, with an energetic Rhodes solo and Seok building to a thunderous climax. A bass ostinato looks into a rock groove with the drummer, with the bass clarinet returning, this time trading phrases with the piano. As the piece concludes, we are back to octaves and a long decrescendo. 

 

“Meter Maid,” on the other hand, is filled with overlapping grooves that don’t quite interlock. Fistfuls of piano clusters land on a complex melody at the same time as the saxophone and drum thwacks. The rhythm section lays out, and prestissimo exchanges between piano and saxophone are dizzying. This is succeeded by a strutting funk section that supports Kolker squalling with abandon and a fierce Fender solo from Lossing. The music presses forward, the octaves between saxophone and keys returning, with a mad dash at the conclusion. One senses that the driver didn’t feed the meter in time. 

 

The final track, “Turn,” overlaps fourth leaps, a bass ostinato, and heavy drumming. Once again, fleet exchanges between keyboard and saxophone flurry the atmosphere, with each vying for the foreground. Lossing provides a spacey, distorted solo. Over a pressing ostinato, the saxophone breaks off to share the tune one last time, and the music evaporates. 

 

Lossing has great chemistry with King Vulture. One hopes they will make music together for a long time.

 

-Christian Carey



by Christian Carey
CD Review, Chamber Music, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Songs

David Biedenbender Portrait CD on Blue Griffin (Review)

“I remember first reading Robert Fanning’s poetry in 2014; it was as if he was able to give voice to feelings and experiences in a way that made them feel like my own. His words reveal a world of profound beauty that transcends the page.” 

– David Biedenbender

 

Shell and Wing – YouTube

 

 

David Biedenbender

All We Are Given We Cannot Hold

Blue Griffin CD

Lindsay Kesselman, soprano; 

Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Kevin Noe, Artistic Director;

Garth Newel Piano Quartet with Mingzhe Wang, clarinet; Haven Trio. 

 

If a composer is able to find a poet who is a muse, they are fortunate indeed; a living poet, doubly so. David Biedenbender engaged in close collaboration with Robert Fanning in creating two vocal pieces that are programmed on his Blue Griffin CD All We Are Given We Cannot Hold. Soprano Lindsay Kesselman has bonded with these works in a special way as well, imparting both words and music assuredly, her beautiful voice, dynamic control, and impressive upper register making her an ideal advocate for Biedenbender’s work. 

 

Shell and Wing is for soprano and chamber group, here the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble. Kesselman treats Fanning’s poetry sensitively, delivering a rousing performance in “Shell” and imparting “Wing” with touching delicacy. The use of pitched percussion and piano is noteworthy here and elsewhere in Biedenbender’s music, with Ian Rosenbaum’s vibraphone and pianist Oscar Mikaelsson performing overlapping rhythms. Strings and winds create corresponding passages, with multiple strands of activity yet a strong sense of support for the vocal line. The piece ends in a hushed fashion, Kesselman’s singing down to a whisper.

 

Biedenbender composes in a language that encompasses extended tonality and chromaticism, with a particular interest in varieties of rhythmic expression. “Red Vesper,” performed by Garth Newel Piano Quartet and clarinetist Mingzhe Wang, doubles a sustained string harmonic and repeated piano notes, to which a clarinet melody and pizzicato are added. Quickly, the sense of repeated notes is supplanted by a modal chord arpeggiated in various ways with pitches slowly accumulating. String harmonics once again take notes from the harmony, extending them into a sustained melody. Sliding tone in the strings and the clarinet tune surround a wide-ranged version of the piano’s harmonies. The intensity builds, with the repeated patterns corruscating into a multifaceted surface. Thick piano chords and an emphatic cello solo begin the last section, which then concludes with each separate strand successively evaporating.  

 

Solstice was composed for the Garth Newel Piano Quartet. The four-movement piece depicts the seasons’ solstices. Each has a different demeanor: “Summer” lazily and gradually unfolding into exuberance, filled with harmonics, repeated note patterns, and added note harmonies; Autumn elusive, replete with colorful chords, string glissandos and more repetition of single notes, with a romantic melody arriving partway through; Winter mournful, rife with dissonant intervals in pointillist textures and sul ponticello strings; Spring glistening with post-minimal figuration and slabs of bright harmony. One of the most interesting facets of this piece is the composer’s use of varieties of rhythmic overlap: Hocketing figures, doublings, contrapuntal interactivity, and ostinatos that land together and apart. Biedenbender’s love affair with the voice notwithstanding, his instrumental music is equally compelling.

 

Kesselman is part of the group Haven Trio. Joined by clarinetist Kimberly Cole Luevano and pianist Midori Koga, the soprano performs all we are given we cannot hold, a song cycle with settings of Fanning. “The Darkness, Literal and Figurative” features an oscillating two chord pattern in the piano, descending lines in the clarinet, and a delicately delivered yet rangy vocal line. “One and a half miles away” is declamatory, with repeated piano bass notes. “Watching my Daughter through the One Way Mirror of a Preschool Observation Window” is one of the most touching of Fanning’s poems, analogizing the view of his young child with the view he hopes to get of his grown children from the beyond. A duet between Kesselman and Luevano alternates segments of the main melody, while Koga plays swaths of harmony. The distant thunder of bass octaves and a clarinet cadenza accompany a recitative from Kesselman in “Model Nation,” ultimately replaced by piano ostinatos and scalar mirroring from the clarinet to reframe the high-lying singing into flowing melody. The cycle’s final song begins with dissonances from piano and clarinet; upon Kesselman’s entry these are filled in with pantonal harmonies. There is a winsome character present, with the narrator observing the clippings from his children’s haircuts; rather than sweeping them up, allowing the wind to take them. “The wind will take what we forget to sweep. And cannot keep.” An allied sentiment to watching his daughter in preschool, the sense of impermanence delivered with seamless line from Kesselman and lyrical rejoinders from Luevano and Koga. all we are given we cannot hold is one of the finest song cycles I have heard this year. Biedendbender’s music should gain wider currency. Recommended.

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Classical Music, File Under?, Piano

Su Yeon Kim – Mozart Recital (CD Review)

Mozart Recital

Su Yeon Kim

Steinway & Sons CD

 

During her studies, pianist Su Yeon Kim has kept Mozart close. She studied for a decade at Mozarteum University, won first prize at the Concours international de Montréal in 2021 and second place in the International Mozart Competition in Salzburg. Kim has lived for some time in Salzburg. In 2023, she will also reconnect with her hometown Seoul as Artist-in-Residence of Kumho Art Hall. 

 

For her Steinway & Sons Mozart Recital, Kim plays two sonatas and a number of smaller pieces, some obscure and seldom performed. Even in these latter works, her artistry makes a strong case for their relevance to Mozart’s legacy. Eine Kleine Gigue, which opens the recording, is filled with thorny counterpoint and syncopations, which the pianist imparts with fleet zest. The Allegro in G minor is also delivered at a quick pace, but with clarity in every motive and passage.

 

 Four of the Twelve Contredanses for Count Czernin are presented in a variety of tempos with elegant ornamentation. Variations on “Unser dummer Pöbel meint” is a substantial set. Kim outlines the original theme with forceful clarity, accompanying it in assured fashion with countermelodies and passagework, in later variations never obscuring the tune’s mutable game of hide and seek. Her rendition of Adagio in B minor is poignant, employing rubato to good effect, as does her performance of Franz Liszt’s transcription of Ave Verum Corpus.

 

Kim plays two sonatas, Sonata No. 9 in D and Sonata No. 12 in F Major. Her tempos are well-selected and use of embellishment judicious and executed with finesse. The D major sonata is enthusiastically imbued with the con spirito marked in the first movement. The Andante con espressione is played tenderly, with lovely dynamic shadings. Kim’s playful interpretation of rubato lends to the Rondo finale’s appeal, as do the whirling dance rhythms and quick scalar passages. The Sonata in F is played with as much drama as its relatively compact framework will hold, each of the motives unfurling like a miniature aria. The second movement Adagio is not taken too slowly, and is played with suavity. The Rondo finale shows off Kim’s considerable chops, as well as the joyous demeanor with which this whole program is played. Recommended. 

 

  • Christian Carey
by Christian Carey
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Laura Strickling’s 40@40 Project (CD Review)

 

Laura Strickling

40@40

Laura Strickling, soprano, Daniel Schlosberg, piano

Bright Shiny Things

 

Soprano Laura Strickling was nominated for a Grammy in 2022 for her last CD, Confessions, and has followed this up with forty art song commissions to celebrate her fortieth birthday: the 40@40 project. The eponymous recording features the first twenty of the commissions, with a second volume to follow. 

 

40@40 is already gaining considerable, well-deserved notice. Upon its release, it landed on the top of the Traditional Classical category on the Billboard Charts. Art song doesn’t often garner such a distinction, and Strickling’s advocacy for the genre is laudable. She is a talented vocalist with a wide range, warm in her low register and powerful in an impressive upper register. Moreover, her interpretive gifts are considerable. This is certainly true of collaborative pianist Daniel Schlosberg, who also has chops to spare for the most challenging passages of the songs. He pairs beautifully with Stickling. The twenty composers featured on the recording include some of the leading lights of American song, as well as fine composers who may have thus far flown under the radar of critical acclaim, but more than hold their own with the heavyweights. 

 

“Wind Carry Me,” by James Primosch is a setting of Susan Stewart’s poetry. Primosch was an expert crafter of art songs and the poem clearly resonated with him. The song is given a poignant and assured reading by Strickling, with clarion climaxes and operatic declamation. Tom Cipullo’s setting of “At Spring’s End,” by Ezra Pound, has a wistful piano prelude and long, sinuous legato vocal lines with quick, sometimes surprising, harmonic changes. “Let Us Remember Spring ” by Andrea Clearfield, presents Charlotte Mew’s poem with a slow build that eventually arrives at the top of Strickling’s range with an exultant demeanor. 

 

Myron Silberstein set’s Karen Poppy’s poem “Prometheus’ Monster” with a pleasing, light touch, providing Schlosberg with a fleet-fingered piano part and Strickling with long lines juxtaposed against it. The piano slows, moving into the same lyrical demeanor as the singer, in a coda that is given one spicy dissonance at its conclusion to remind us of the opening. Lori Laitman sets Caitlin Vincent’s “Thanks a Latte” in an arioso that adroitly moves through various sections and tempos that respond to the poem with skilful text-painting. Laitman gives Strickling ample opportunity to explore drama and humor. The soprano has fun with the song, providing a welcome diversion from the moodier pieces. Likewise, Julian Hall supplies “Two Old Crows,” a poem by Vachel Lindsay, with a puckish accompaniment and playful melismatic vocal lines. It culminates with energetic, humorous singing, the piano playing a quote from “Flight of the Bumblebee.”

 

Daron Hagen’s setting of Christina Ramirez’s “Benediction” is flat out gorgeous. Hagen is not only sensitive to word-setting and poetic form, he also shapes art songs to have a design that is elegant, crafting melodies that both paint local words and are part of a larger framework. The recording closes with “Song of Solitude (Alone),” a poem by Nikos Valance, is given a sumptuous setting by H. Leslie Adams, unspooling memorable melody after memorable melody. 

 

Laura Strickling is one of the best advocates for art song performing today. One eagerly awaits the next installment of 40@40 and, with fingers crossed, a songbook containing all forty. Recommended.

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Choral Music, File Under?, Twentieth Century Composer

Every Living Creature (CD Review)

Every Living Creature

Choral music by Kenneth Leighton

Rebecca Lea, Nina Bennet, soprano; Ciara Hendrick, mezzo-soprano; 

Nick Pritchard, tenor

Finchley Children’s Music Group, Grace Rossiter, music director

Londinium, Andrew Griffiths, director

SOMM Records

 

Kenneth Leighton (1929-88) was a distinguished composer and academic. He taught at various places, including Oxford where he had studied as an undergraduate, spending the bulk of his academic career at the University of Edinburgh. He wrote in many genres, but it is his music for choirs that is most prized. His choral music is rigorous in construction with vibrant rhythms and skilful formal designs; tonal, but never overly sentimental. Every Living Creature, performed by Londinium, the Finchley Children’s Music Group, and a quartet of vocal soloists, conducted by Andrew Griffiths, is one of the finest recordings I have yet heard on the SOMM imprint, with a lively reverberant acoustic and wide dynamic range. It also contains a number of first recordings. Prior to the recording, some of the scores were not even published, languishing in library collections. 

 

The centerpiece of the recording, Laudes Animantium, Op. 61 (1971), is a celebration of animals, with a variety of poets’ observations of creatures real and fanciful. Leighton himself was an animal lover, with a cat, rabbit, and dog who he often watched playing with his children in the yard. His faithful labrador retriever would sit at his feet while he composed, only stirring when Leighton played a chord or two that displeased him.

 

The piece’s Prelude is from Song for Myself by Walt Whitman, the author describing animals as peaceful, ideal companions. Tenor Nick Pritchard, who gives several standout performances on the recording, sings the Whitman poem with a sweet-toned lyrical voice and excellent diction. Rebecca Lea sings with purity and beauty, animating the subjects of many of the movements. Soloists from the choir, Arielle Lowinger and Madeleine Napier, deserve plaudits as well for their singing, performing with fetching delicacy in “The Lamb.”

 

The mood of the cycle shifts between movements, with a lively scherzo, “Calico Pie,” a dramatically imposing “The Tyger,”  and a truly terrifying depiction of “The Kraken.” Throughout, the choir is expressive and finely honed in its accuracy. Griffiths’s direction keeps the counterpoint clean and the tempos fluid. The end of the cycle, “Every Living Creature,” is impressive, with soloists and choristers joining in a piece that could well be an excerpted anthem to conclude a celebration of animals in any Episcopal church with the performing forces to attempt it. Griffiths and company have set a high bar. 

“An Evening Hymn” and “Lord, When the Sense of Thy Sweet Grace” also feature Lea as soloist, her tone and dynamic control impeccable. Hushed singing begins the Evensong anthem, gradually growing, with free counterpoint juxtaposed against  lush verticals. 

 

“London Town” is a powerful piece, with the choir opening up to clarion fortissimos in its climaxes. “Three Carols” are quite lovely and would enhance many a Christmas Eve service. “Nativitie” features homophonic polychords alternating with tight canons. As the piece progresses, the lines get longer and are buoyed by chords, ending with a well executed pianissimo cadence. The final piece on the recording is “The Hymn to the Trinity,” which explores Lydian melodies and staggered cadences, a repeating homophonic passage tying things together. The latter half features brisk overlapping melodies. The Lydian returns, followed by a bright amen cadence, It is a moving close to a disc of great discoveries. Someone please publish this music and distribute it widely. 

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
Boston, Chamber Music, Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, File Under?

Tanglewood: FCM Chamber Music Concert (review)

Photo: Hilary Scott.

Festival of Contemporary Music

Chamber Music

Sunday, July 30, 2023

 

LENOX – There were a number of firsts on the July 30th chamber music concert. I have never seen the stage at Ozawa Hall require several minutes of vacuuming up bits of wood, but Malin Bång’s Arching, for amplified cello, amplified tools, and electronics, created considerable, if entertaining, mayhem. Another first: hearing “The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round,” paired in fugal counterpoint with the Brahms lullaby. 

 

The find for me at FCM was Tebogo Monnakgotla, a Swedish composer who curated Sunday’s concert. The aforementioned nursery rhythm fugue was from her considerably charming piece, Toys, or the Wonderful World of Clara (2008). The backstory: when Monnakgotla’s child was a toddler, she received all manner of musical toys, and loved to run them all at once. The composer recounted that multiple Brahms-singing toys were terribly out of tune, with themselves and each other (this too was incorporated in the piece, in clusters that distressed the lullaby). The idea may have been whimsical, but its deployment was anything but, the piece creating fascinating swaths of texture and crafty quodlibets. 

 

Toys is memorable, but by no means representative of the rest of Monnakgotla’s programmed pieces. Her early Five Pieces for String Trio juxtaposes open cello strings with glissandos, harmonics, and wisps of sul ponticello. The movements cohere into a well-crafted organic whole. Le dormeur du val, a setting of Rimbaud for soprano and mixed chamber ensemble, has a haunting presence. The poem depicts a soldier who appears to be resting near the field of battle. It is only at its very conclusion that we learn of his wounds and realize that he is not resting, but deceased. Monnakgotla employs trumpet calls and vigorous drums to create a bellicose background. The vocal part contrasts this with a feeling of doleful detachment. Soprano Juliet Schlefer did a fine job presenting the ending’s swerve without overselling, and she was equally sensitive when interpreting with the rest of the poem. Schlefer has a lyric voice of considerable beauty: I would love to hear her again.

 

Two other composers were programmed on the concert. Bent Sørensen’s compact string quartet, The Lady of Lalott, reveled in banshee-like distant howls and prevalent extended techniques. South African composer Andile Khumalo’s solo piano piece Schau-fe[r]n-ster II combines spectralist inflections, with shimmering overtones and chords spaced according to registral positioning in the harmonic series, with second modernist hyper-virtuosity. Joseph Vasconi played the work with adroit facility and a depth of understanding that belied his student status at Tanglewood. Khumalo’s language is distinctive. One presumes and welcomes that we will hear much more from him. 

 

After every one of her pieces, Monnakgotla took to the stage to warmly greet and thank the performers. It was clear that this affection was returned, and that mutual artistic respect played a role in the concert’s success. Tanglewood students at FCM benefit much from the mentorship of senior composers, and it was clear that this collaboration was quite successful.

 

 The concert ended with a reflective piece by Monnakgotla, Companions (seasons) (2021), for solo violin. It represents the various stages of a professional string player’s career as seasons: The ebullient spring of a young student, the prodigy’s successes during a long, hot summer, artistic maturity and the demands of performing and teaching in autumn, and, finally, the winter of retirement, in which the violinist’s instrument is like an old friend. The music is ambitious yet touching, and was played with assuredness and grace by Connor Chaikowsky. A stirring valediction to a memorable concert. 

 

____

 

On Friday, August 28th, FCM devoted a curated concert to Anna Thorvaldsdottir, an Icelandic composer who is regularly commissioned by some of the best orchestras in the world. The highlights of the concert were two ensemble works, Hrim and Aquilibria, coached and conducted by Stephen Drury, and the closer, the ensemble work Ró, conducted by Agata Zając. Thorvaldsdottir’s music blooms with effervescent overtones, and addresses elements of tonality in novel and frequently surprising ways. 

 

-Christian Carey



by Christian Carey