Author: Christian Carey

CD Review, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, File Under?

Leo Chadburn Primordial Pieces (CD Review

Leo Chadburn – Primordial Pieces (self-released)

 

Composer and synthesizer performer Leo Chadburn uses very little in the way of material, but it is employed to craft expansive compositions. On “Reflecting Pool,” pianist Ben Smith plays repeated arpeggios with a sustained low note, shadowed by Chadburn’s bass synth. The unpredictable change of harmonies against the constant bottom note brings together a compositional conceit important to Chadburn, movement concurrent with stasis. Gradually, the synth bends the low note down, creating new chordal implications. A brief fade ends the work. 

 

“Map of the World” is a piece for violin ensemble, played here by Angharad Davies, Mira Benjamin, Chihiro Ono, and Amalia Young. A shimmering sustained vertical is offset by tremolando entrances at several different pitch levels and off-kilter metric accents. The combination of stasis and movement affords the ten minutes of music a continued sense of vibrancy and surprise. “De La Salle (Violins)” builds verticals out of tremolando passages, and Chadburn uses a breathy synth to support the top line, followed by a bell-like angular melody.  Even though they only go down to G3 (the G below middle C), Violins have an impressively wide range, which allows Chadburn to create wide spacings and successive blocks of harmony. Even a small pitch change seems consequential, the move from a third to a fourth in the top voice announces a new section where things go sideways and the bell synth once again tolls. Near the very end, a bell line and single pizzicato line close the door on all the preceding music. 

Smith returns for “Camouflage,” where the left hand breaks up chords and the right hand plays a syncopated melodic line. The left hand adds syncopations on different beat divisions than the right, creating a fascinating whorl of counterpoint. This process is continued, sounding like a fast-paced phase. The constant flow of variation eventually grows into a fortissimo climax, only to recede gradually, slowing, then suddenly silent. The final piece on the recording, “A Secret,” also for piano, begins with whole-tone scalar ascents followed by mixed interval scales that run all the way to the top of the keyboard. The piece has a bit of a “Hanon in Hell” vibe at first, but as the scales complicate, one realizes that again a procedure is afoot. Chadburn once again uses synthesizers to create a pedal, but this one is in the middle high register, filled with overtones, and moves gradually through a sequence of pitches. Unlike Feldman, who would draw one of these processes out over long stretches of time, Chadburn limits “A Secret’ to nine minutes. Plenty of ground is covered during this time, yet the synths provide the concomitant sense of stasis that Chadburn prefers in his work. Primordial Pieces is compelling throughout, and one of my favorite releases of 2024.

 

  • Christian Carey
by Christian Carey
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, File Under?, Flute

Laura Lentz releases new EP (CD review)

Laura Lentz

Prismatic/Plasmonic EP
Music for flute and electronics
Laura Lentz, flutes; Sean William Calhoun, electronics
Blue on Blue Records

 

Laura Lentz’s Prismatic/Plasmonic EP consists of three works, each addressing contemporary approaches in a different fashion. Lentz plays beautifully, with enviable control and supple phrasing. Although the pieces include amplification and electronics, they do not dilute her sound in the slightest. 

 

Prismatic Wind by Chloe Upshaw is a work meant to abet sound healing. Upshaw is a flutist who lives in Arizona and the idea of supporting the health of others, particularly other musicians, through a composed  version of music therapy is an important part of her work. Prismatic Wind features gestures of rising tension and gentle release, affording an experience not dissimilar to meditative breathing. Electronics are used to add resonance to the flute and to underscore the aforementioned phrasing. 

 

Plasmonic Mirror is written by Rochester-based composer/electronic musician William Calhoun. Cast in four short movements, the piece begins with a lyrical flute passage, followed by beat heavy electronica, altissimo passages, a synth interlude, an IDM pattern with a new theme in the flute, altissimo flute lines, and dovetailing with a bass synth. It closes with the synths and beats moving double time with the flute playing trills and a triumphal ascent. 

 

Lentz and Calhoun collaborate on what is effectively a remix of Claude Debussy’s 1913 solo flute piece Syrinx. Lentz plays alto flute and Calhoun incorporates a warm bed of synths and a high countermelody, all accentuating the modal and whole-tone writing in Syrinx. It is an intriguing experiment. One eagerly awaits Lentz’s next full length recording, but for now, there is plenty to savor in Primatic/Plasmonic.

 

Christian Carey

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=pAhJk7mOZ90

 

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

Žibuoklė Martinaitytė Aletheia – Choral Works (CD Review)

Žibuoklė Martinaitytė

Aletheia – Choral Works

Latvian Radio Choir, Sigvards Kļava, artistic director and conductor

Ondine

 

Žibuoklė Martinaitytė (b. 1973) divides her time between her home country, Lithuania, and the United States. Her works have earned her accolades and laurels such as the Guggenheim Fellowship and a residency and commission from Aaron Copland House. She is well known for exquisitely constructed and powerfully scored orchestral music. On Aletheia, a different side of Martinaitytė’s music is shown; her music for a cappella mixed chorus. None of the pieces programmed on the recording use conventional texts, instead exploring a number of wordless approaches to singing. 

 

Martinaitytė may not be using textual narrative, but the sounds she uses are equally communicative. The title work was written shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Built entirely out of vowels, its stacked harmonies and arcing glissandos suggest a mournful demeanor entirely in keeping with the subject matter. The composer’s harmonies move between cluster chords and deftly tuned overtones, with a gradual development of greater individuation of the parts and faster rhythmic cycling. The piece’s climax is an enormous yawp, followed by a precipitous descent in all of the voices.

 

Chant des Voyelles (2018) has an interesting genesis. Initially, Martinaitytė selected disparate texts to set, then decided to use just vowels from the text. At this point, she realized that she needn’t be so proscriptive, and decided to construct the piece based on vowels of her own choosing. An intricate web of harmonies and sustained lines, sung with pristine tuning by the Latvian Radio Choir, conducted by Sigvards Kļava, Chant des Voyelles is a luscious work that doesn’t require a program in order to make a strong emotional impression. Ululations (2023) uses the title technique to create a piece filled with varying speeds and types of keening. Rather than a specific topic, Ululations expresses grief for the violence, suffering, and separation occurring throughout the world in current times.  

The recording concludes with The Blue of Distance (2010). The title is taken from a quote in Rebecca Solnit’s book A Field Guide to Getting Lost. Martinaitytė’s first textless piece, it is composed entirely of phonemes, whose variety engenders a number of vowel spaces that score the voices with a host of colors. So too the gestures found here, which range from held overtones to strongly punctuated utterances. Partway through, minor second oscillations in the soprano pile up into a blur, a reminiscence of Solnit’s “blue of distance,” but in the audible rather than visual domain.

 

Martinaitytė is moving into mid-career with a number of durable pieces in her oeuvre. Given the theatricality she can bring to textless vocal music, one wonders what she might do with a fresh libretto; her only stage work, to date, Steppenwolf, is over twenty years old. Regardless, her next compositions are eagerly awaited. Aletheia is one of my favorite recordings of 2024.

 

Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
Choral Music, Concert review, Contemporary Classical, early music, File Under?

The Sixteen at St. Mary’s (Concert Review)

The Sixteen, conducted by Harry Christophers

The Deer’s Cry

Miller Theatre Early Music Series at Church of St. Mary the Virgin

Saturday, October 26, 2024

 

NEW YORK – This past Saturday, renowned British vocal ensemble The Sixteen, conducted by Harry Christophers, made their Miller Theatre Early Music Series debut. Presented at Church of St. Mary the Virgin in midtown, the group performed music from their latest recording on Coro, The Deer’s Cry. Consisting of works by English Renaissance composer William Byrd (1540-1623) and Estonian composer Arvo Pärt (1935-), this seemingly eclectic pairing worked well together. Christophers may often be economical in his gestures, but he elicits a beautiful sound and detailed approach from The Sixteen. St. Mary’s is a wonderfully resonant space in which to sing, allowing the ensemble to be shown to its best advantage.

 

Byrd was a recusant Catholic, refusing to join the Church of England at a time when his own faith was frequently persecuted. He was fortunate to have the most influential patron one could hope for: Queen Elizabeth. She gave Byrd and his older colleague Thomas Tallis exclusive rights to publish music in England, and for the most part was able to shield Byrd from the authorities. Some of the biblical texts he set, such as Ab Dominum cum tribular, heard on The Sixteen’s program, were repurposed to comment on the tenuous position of Catholicism in England. 

 

The Sixteen presented a number of Byrd’s Latin motets. The composer delighted in learned devices such as canon. The evening’s opener, the eight-voice motet Diliges Dominum, features a “crab canon,” one in which the tune is designed to be performed forwards and backwards. This complex concoction likely delighted the composer, and was notated in customary fashion, with a poem indicating how to realize the canon; a code to crack for the performers. Miserere nostri is a collaboration between Tallis and Byrd, in which four lines were written by Byrd and another three by Tallis. Once again, canonic procedures are utilized, this time dealing with proportional lengths of melodic  lines and intervallic inversion. Ab Dominum cum tribularer uses imitative motives that move throughout its eight parts to create a contrapuntal web. Christe qui lux es et dies takes a different approach, alternating chant and chordal passages, demonstrating Byrd’s capacity to create a simple, yet poignant, motet as well. 

 

The program’s title work, by Pärt, is a setting of a modern English translation of the Irish prayer also known as St. Patrick’s Breastplate. There is a sustained soprano line with harmony in blocks in the men’s voices. Partway through, all the voices join in a rousing tutti, followed by a long decrescendo to conclude. The Sixteen sings with an extraordinary capacity for dynamic control and nuance, which was amply demonstrated here. Pärt’s Nunc Dimittis, the text a part of the evening prayer service, uses his signature tintinnabuli (bells) style, where some singers perform mostly linear chant-like melodies and others arpeggiate triads, creating both moments of consonance and dissonance in turn. Nunc Dimittis overlaps a number of parts, creating what feels like an entire set of cathedral bells pealing. The Woman With the Alabaster Box recounts the story from the Gospel of Luke, where a woman anoints Jesus’s head with expensive ointment. The disciples object to this opulent gesture, but Jesus tells them that it is appropriate.Here, the musical language is sparer, even severe in the dialogue between Jesus and the disciples. Perhaps Pärt agrees with the commentators who suggest that the anointing is, metaphorically, a preparation for Jesus’s death. The three selections by the Estonian composer showed the multiplicity of elements in his music, a vivid palette that too often has been mislabeled “holy minimalism.”

 

The concert program concluded with Byrd’s Tribue domine, an elaborate six-voice setting of a prayer of supplication, in which there is much alternation between different portions of the ensemble and tutti singing. The encore was Vigilate. which The Sixteen recorded for A Watchful Gaze (2023), another album focused on Byrd’s music. Taken at a brisk tempo with a thrilling conclusion, The Sixteen and Christopher’s rendition of Vigilate was the most dramatically intense performance of Byrd I have ever heard. An untoppable conclusion to their first visit to St. Mary’s under the auspices of Miller Theatre. One hopes they return regularly. 

 

Christian Carey

Sequenza21

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?, Guitar

Yasmin Williams on Nonesuch (CD Review)

Yasmin Williams – Acadia (Nonesuch)

 

Guitarist Yasmin Williams displayed a number of unconventional methods for playing acoustic guitar during her first two recorded outings, Unwind (2019) and Urban Driftwood (2022). These were no mere tricks of the trade, instead serving as organic components in her creation of supple folk instrumentals. Acadia is her first recording released on Nonesuch, and features a number of collaborators. In another first, Williams also writes lyrics for her music.

 

Although it is her primary instrument, on Acadia Williams doesn’t confine herself to the acoustic guitar. She also plays tap shoes, harp guitar, banjo, bass guitar, calabash drum, electric guitar, and kora. On the track “Cliffwalk,” alongside her guitar and tap shoe percussion, folk musician Don Flemons plays rhythm bones. One of the best tracks is “Harvest,” on which Williams and Kaki King trade rhythm guitar patterns while violinist Darian Donovan Thomas outlines a melismatic tune. Abetted by banjo-player Allison de Groot and fiddle player Tatiana Hargreaves, “Hummingbird” starts with an effortless hoe-down and then has a slow interlude in the piece’s middle, the fast music returning in ebullient fashion to conclude it. On “Dawning,” Aoife O’Donovan sings multiple layers of vocalise while percussionists Kafar and Nick Gareiss accompany Williams’s folk style finger-picking. Darlingside and Rich Ruth join Williams, who plays harp guitar, on “Virga,” another nuanced vocal piece.

 

“Sisters” may have the most collaborators joining Willams, a string trio, marimba player Steph Davis, and another acoustic string-slinger, William Tyler. The arrangement is artfully made, suggesting that Williams could easily do a convincing album with larger groups of musicians. “Dream Lake” is the first track on the album on which Williams plays electric guitar and bass, accompanied by drummer Malick Koly in a piece that opens and closes with New Age music only to rock out in the middle. Multi-instrumentalist Magro contributes drums, synths, and bass guitar to “Nectar,” on which electric guitar is also featured in a fluid solo. On the last piece, “Malamu,”  Williams plays both acoustic and electric guitars, with introductions and interludes featuring the former and the verse and chorus abetted by overlapping with the latter. Joined by drummer Marcus Gilmore and saxophonist Emmanual Wilkins, “Malamu” demonstrates a more jazz influenced side of Williams’ playing.

 

Acadia is one of my favorite albums of 2024, and it reveals exciting potential  pathways for Williams to take. I am eager to hear what’s next. 

 

  • Christian Carey

 

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, File Under?

Splinter Reeds – Dark Currents (Recording Review)

Splinter Reeds – Dark Currents (Cantaloupe)

 

Splinter Reeds, the West Coast’s first wind quintet, has distinguished themselves as advocates for living composers. Dark Currents, their latest recording for Cantaloupe, features two twenty-ish minute long pieces, Tall Grass (2022) by the totalist composer and Bang on a Can member Michael Gordon, and Antenna Studies (2018) by Paula Matthusen, a professor at Wesleyan who is one of the finest experimental electronic composers of her generation; both works were written for Splinter Reeds.

 

Gordon  has steadily developed an eclectic musical language that exhibits fluency and variety in large scale forms. The entire first section of Tall Grass is about ascent, with overlaid ostinatos in polyrhythms reaching for the skies. Alongside the melodic material are held notes that accompany and intersperse them, as well as periodic rests. The lines drop out for a long held altissimo note, then resume, the bass clarinet joining with a microtonal scale. The brakes are put on the section by a held low note, followed by an effects-filled solo from the bass clarinet. In the next section, the material slows, creating triadic arpeggiations that both ascend and descend, with octave leaps in the bass. It is like the aural equivalent of a close-up. A chorale-like passage ensues, and the section cadences in mid-register octaves and trills. The fast tempo returns with the melody ghosted in pairs and passages of hemiola that gradually unravel into their constituent elements and then knit back together, punctuated by multiphonics. The slow tempo returns in a soft, mysterious section. A galloping fortissimo passage announces the piece’s climax, rife with repeated notes. A denouement provides a slender version of the piece’s original ascent, and Tall Grass ends with an inconclusive single note. 

 

Matthusen’s Antenna Studies starts pianissimo with half tuned-in radio blasts and held sine tones, and sampled percussion, followed by non-pitched wind sounds, such as breath and pops. Sustained single tones in the winds enter on the same pitch as the electronics and accompanied by flashes of radio static. Brief canonic passages are introduced, with secundal intervals and deliberate detuning used to create beats. Sustained bass clarinet arrives two octaves lower, working its way up harmonic partials, soon followed up an octave and then haloed by electronics. The entire group soon engages in holding notes and hocketing in various registers. An interlude contains repeating patterns, warm synth chords, a held altissimo note and, once again, a plethora of non-pitched wind sounds. Overlapping mixed interval scales, the winds re-enter as the electronics recede to an upper register drone. A general crescendo is sculpted from repeated notes in the winds and another secundal tune, this time in the electronics.  Uptempo ostinatos, interspersed by a tart chord, continue alongside a wide registral swath of electronics. There is a long decrescendo in which a sampled voice joins sustained winds, closing with the electronics and acoustic instruments finally on equal footing

 

The two pieces that are on Dark Currents contrast well. Both are strong additions to their respective composers’ catalogs  that benefit from skillful playing and artful musicality by Splinter Reeds. Recommended.

 

  • Christian Carey

 

 

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

Tuesday, October 15th: Sacred and Profane, Sirota and Clement at Symphony Space

Tuesday, October 15th: Sacred and Profane, Sirota and Clement at Symphony Space

 

Tomorrow, Robert Sirota and Sheree Clement, two New York based composers,  combine forces to present Sacred and Profane, a shared portrait concert at Symphony Space (7:30 PM, tickets here). Sirota may be best known for his stints as President at Peabody and Manhattan School of Music, but he’s remained active as a composer all along. Clement has also been involved as an arts administrator, having served as President of League of Composers/ISCM, Executive Director for New York New Music Ensemble, and, currently, on the board of Association for the Promotion of New Music. Like Sirota, Clement’s primary activities are as a composer. Her works bring together political engagement, humor, and dramatic, often staged, presentations. 

 

The musicians performing are a bevy of NYC’s finest contemporary players: soprano Ariadne Greif, baritone Paul Pinto, the Momenta Quartet, cellist Benjamin Larsen, pianist Hyungjin Choi, flutist Roberta Michel, violists Jonah Sirota and Nadia Sirota, and percussionist Katherine Fortunato. And yes, the two violists are Robert Sirota’s progeny, prodigious players with a number of ensembles and in solo contexts. 

 

Each composer has contributed two pieces to the program. Sirota’s A Sinner’s Diary (2005) is for flute, two violas, cello, percussion, and piano, and Broken Places (2016) is for flute and cello. Receiving its premiere is Clement’s Mermaid Songs (2024) for soprano and string quartet. The live premiere of her vocal duet Table Manners (2020), directed by Mary Birnbaum, includes forty pounds of silverware in its staging. Who’s doing the dishes? You’ll only find out if you attend the concert!

 

 

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?, Improv, jazz

Miles Okazaki – Miniature America

photos dimicology.net

Miles Okazaki – Miniature America (Cygnus Records)

Miles Okazaki – guitar

Jon Ibragon, sopranino saxophone, slide saxophone, voice

Caroline Davis, alto saxophone; Anna Weber, flute, tenor saxophone

Jacob Garchik, trombone, bass trombone

Matt Mitchell, piano; Patricia Brennan, vibraphone

Ganavya, Jen Shyu, Fay Victor, voices

David Breskin, producer

 

Miles Okazaki’s latest recording, Miniature America, is one in which his compositional process has changed. He spent time sketching elements of sculpturist Ken Price’s work and was also inspired by the intricate line drawings of Sol Lewitt. The pieces created as a result of this research were coined “Slabs” by Okazaki, process pieces that include text, notation, and his own line drawings. These are then performed with a measure of aleatory.

 

The chance procedures don’t end there. In addition to sung passages, there are also spoken word snippets from various poets, ranging from Sylvia Plath to William Blake. Most of the texts were obtained using a findex, a compendium of final lines from poems. The speech rhythms of these are in turn used by Okazaki and his colleagues to create musical phrases. It is an ingenious amalgam that Okazaki credits to collaboration with producer David Bresken, who first suggested the findex. 

There is a masterful group of instrumentalists in Miniature America’s ensemble, as well a trio of female voices that embody both singing and speaking in an equally expressive approach. Sometimes, the musicians and singers hold the same pitches or intone using the same rhythms, at others, such as in the beautiful, soulful “And the Deep River,” a voice takes a melodic solo turn. The album’s opening, “The Cocktail Party,” features pianist Matt Mitchell playing an alt version of cocktail piano while the rest of the space is abuzz with chatter. “The Funambulist” uses a chromatic set of pitches spread out over multiple octaves, with Okazaki and trombonist Jacob Garchik accompanying the voices, which include stratospheric squeaks Swingle Singers style. The participants are willing to bring a lightness to the proceedings that moves alongside the ample virtuosity. Speaking of which, there is “The Funicular,” in which Okazaki, vibraphonist Patricia Brennan, alto saxophonist Caroline Davis, and Garchik trade mercurial riffs with expert timing. “Lookout Below” contains flurries of riffs and dissonant interjections at a hypersonic tempo. “Zodiacal Cloud” is more reserved, but its mysterious chords shimmer in a captivating way.  

 

Miniature America includes many miniature pieces, and the overall feel is of a suite of interconnected music. A longer serving of music is supplied in the penultimate piece, “In the Fullness of Time,” where the players work with drone bass octaves to create overtones, with a melismatic vocal added alongside instrumental arpeggiations. The closing track, “A Clean Slate,” is a spoken fugue with guitar accompaniment, ending with the line, “The Show is Over.” Okazaki’s compositional shift is abundantly rewarding, and Miniature America is highly recommended.

 

 

 

by Christian Carey
Concert review, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Louis Karchin A Retrospective at Merkin Hall (concert review)

Louis Karchin: A Retrospective

Merkin Concert Hall

September 22, 2024

NEW YORK – Composer Louis Karchin has been prolific, even during the pandemic years. In a program at Merkin Concert Hall of chamber works and songs composed between 2018 and 2024, he was abetted by some of New York’s go-to new music performers, who acquitted themselves admirably throughout. 

All photos: Julie Karchin.

Stephen Drury is an abundantly talented pianist. But even with a repertoire list as lengthy and challenging as Drury’s, Sonata-Fantasia (2020, New York Premiere) is an imposing addition. The piece is in four large sections combined into a single movement, with elements such as chromatic and bitonal harmonies, chains of angular gestures, trills, and thrumming bass notes appearing frequently. One of the distinctive techniques employed pits a middle register chord repeated against impressionist sounding arpeggios cascaded above and below it. Apart from the meditative third section, sprightly virtuosity ruled the day. 

Two Sacred Songs (2018, World Premiere) were workshopped via Zoom during the pandemic. Soprano Marisa Karchin and pianist Steven Beck performed these settings of George Herbert, a seventeenth century poet and Anglican priest. The soprano has radiant top notes, clear diction, and a sure sense of phrasing. “Denial” requires all of these characteristics, its wide vocal range matching the various emotions on display in the poem. Beck is a versatile pianist, who matched Marisa Karchin’s attention to the intricacies of the texts and provided vivid accompaniment. The two were a powerful pair when demonstrating the intensity of “The Storm.” 

Beck frequently plays with instrumentalists too, and he performed Sonata quasi un Capriccio (2023, world premiere) with violinist Miranda Cuckson, a longtime collaborator of Karchin’s. This association benefited both piece and performance, as the composer knows how reliable Cuckson is, even in stratospheric altissimo lines. Sonata quasi un Capriccio is a white-hot piece filled with dramatic flair. It closed the first half.

The second half was also a mix of vocal and chamber music. The poet Steven Withrow heard Karchin’s music and was impressed. He approached the composer and suggested providing two texts based on paintings – San Vigilio: A Boat with a Golden Sail by John Singer Sargent and I And the Village by Marc Chagall – for Karchin to set as art songs, the result being Compositions on Canvas (2021, World Premiere). Soprano Alice Teyssier, joined by Beck, clearly reveled in the detailed texts, the first describing Sargent’s relationship to Italian patrons, the second detailing a virtual menagerie of animals found in Chagall’s painting. Karchin’s songs supply many coloristic shifts, dynamic gradations, and widely spaced gestures to encompass the imagery found in Withrow’s words. Teyssier navigated these handily, and Beck’s accompaniment glistened persuasively, particularly in the impressionist-simulating arpeggiations.

 

The concert concluded with a substantial work that, while maintaining Karchin’s musical language, provides a few hat tips to the concert tradition. Trio for Violin, Cello, and Piano (2019) was performed by the Horszowski Trio: Jesse Mills, violin; Ole Akahoshi, cello; and Rieko Aizawa, piano. Cast in three movements that run over twenty-five minutes, its first movement is marked Allegro con spirito and in sonata form. It begins with a mercurial upward arpeggio in the piano that references the opening gesture of Robert Schumann’s Piano Quintet. This is quickly countered by descending sixteenths. Gradually, lines compact into whorls of stacked thirds and seconds with trills adding zest. The presence of ascent is underscored by upward leaps in a subordinate theme in the cello. The tempo of the development shifts three times, slower and then quicker, with a misterioso section deconstructing the constituent themes. A recapitulation embellishes the material with even more scalar sixteenths, building in intensity until it closes with a forceful, registrally duplicated major third. 

 

The second movement, marked Lento, begins with thirty-second note pile-ups and octave bass notes in the piano undergirding a sustained violin solo. A tremolando duet between the strings is succeeded by sul ponticello playing. The cello and piano imitate the violin’s sustained tune in canon against pulsating piano left hand octaves. A slow chain of rising, alternating intervals unveils a gradual reference to the first movement. Silvery piano arpeggiations and long chromatic ascent in the piano accompany the theme in several string variations. 

 

The final movement, marked Vivace, begins with sustained low F octaves in the piano and a low F tremolando in the cello. The latter instrument adds short trills to abet a triplet-filled motive in the violin. These are succeeded by angular imitation in all three instruments, with the conflict between ascending and descending permutations of similar lines being restored. Pizzicato and trills in the strings are next set against the triplet passages in the piano, the variations in instrumentation opening a potent development section. Eventually, arpeggiations of seconds and fourths succeed the added note triads, and eighth note triplets once again propel the violin. A series of descending sustained bass notes in the piano are set against quarter note triplets in the strings, effectively stretching out the prior thematic material. This is followed by a kaleidoscopic reframing of all the motives from the third movement. The coda has a compound feeling, with quarter note and eighth note triplets overlaid and a fortissimo Bb major chord to conclude. 

 

One of Karchin’s gifts as a composer is the ability to employ a relatively consistent musical language to a number of expressive ends. The variety of the program at Merkin Hall was impressive, as was the high quality of all of the music. One hopes that recordings of these pieces will soon be forthcoming.

-Christian Carey 

 

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

Brett Dean – Rooms of Elsinore (CD Review)

Brett Dean

Rooms of Elsinore

BIS CD

Jennifer France, soprano; Lotte Betts-Dean, mezzo-soprano

Volker Hemken, bass clarinet

James Crabb, accordion

Juho Pohjonen, piano

Andrey Lebedev, classical guitar

Swedish Chamber Orchestra

Brett Dean, violist and conductor

 

Composer and violist Brett Dean has spent a number of years engaging with Hamlet, creating a controversial, successful, and musically compelling eponymous opera premiered in the UK in 2017 and subsequently produced at the Metropolitan Opera. Rooms of Elsinore (BIS, 2024) collects pieces serving as character sketches written in advance of the opera, those recasting material from the opera that premiered concurrently or subsequent to its premiere, and new musical imaginings of Hamlet. It is fascinating to compare to the opera’s music, but one needn’t have heard it to find Rooms of Elsinore an engaging stand alone listen.

 

The vocal work And Once I Played Ophelia is sung by soprano Jennifer France, who is accompanied by the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Dean. Its text is adapted from Shakespeare by Matthew Jocelyn, and it is a visceral piece cast in five movements. Interestingly, Jocelyn uses words that Ophelia says in the play and also lines directed at her (Hamlet’s “get thee to a nunnery”) The first section, marked “Fast, breathless,” is rife with stridency (a deliberate expression, not because France’s voice is anything but pliant) and intense, angular lines. “Hushed, distant, mysterious” begins with pianissimo utterances that indeed sound far off. Eventually, the singing moves closer in the soundstage, now lyrical yet enigmatic in expression. The third movement, marked “Fast, agitated,” uses the text “This is the ecstasy of love” as a recurrent motif that is elaborately described. France demonstrates adroitly rendered, ringing high notes alongside intimidating vocal fry. Dean employs brisk ostinatos with tritone weighted harmonies to add to the hysteria. It closes with a breathless recitative passage, as if all the energy has dissipated like the air from a balloon. The music moves attacca into the fourth section, “extremely still.” From questioning pianissimo to altissimo sustained notes, an entire range of expressive vocality is brought to bear in the “willow tree” text by France. The section concludes with a high register cello solo recasting some of the soprano’s music. The final section, “Slow austere,” begins by harmonizing the cello’s music with the string section, with clarion sostenuto lines followed by ones in supple decrescendo, employing the “Good night ladies … sweet ladies” text. The piece ends with a mysterious, thwarted gesture in the instruments. And Once I Played Ophelia … brings the listener straight into the soundworld of Dean’s Hamlet, and is superlatively performed by France and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra. 

 

Dean and pianist Juho Pohjonen play the duo The Rooms of Elsinore, each musically describing part of the castle. It begins with “I. The Dark Gate,” with descending scalar string lines set against sepulchral bass melodies in the piano. Gradually, the viola and piano crescendo and ascend together to their high registers. The viola then plays rhythmic lines against chordal sections in the piano, the stringed instrument bridging to the second movement with an altissimo ostinato. “II. The Four Gate Courtyard” continues the viola line alongside lush verticals from the piano amid tuplet flourishes. A gradual decrescendo closes the movement, only to be followed closely upon by “III. The Platform,” with a sliding tone abetted theme in the viola against repeated notes and arpeggiations, including a bass register flourish, in the piano. A pause is followed by the viola descending in sliding harmonics against low register punctuations in the piano. Open strings close the movement. “IV. The King’s Chamber” positively bustles with florid runs, pizzicato passages, ascending chromatic harmonies, and quick attacks. As the centerpiece of the piece’s seven-movement framework, it is the longest movement (4’02”), and also the most developmentally consistent, presenting as a rondo. Sustained viola with microtones and punctilious fragments from the piano are developed in “V. The Chapel,” while silences are interspersed by duo attacks in “VI. The Queen’s Chamber,” which part way through splits runs between them. The movement ends with repeated note passages and a chromatic viola melody contrasted with color chords in the piano. Rooms of Elsinore concludes with “VII. The Trumpeter’s Tower,” in which repeated bass notes in the piano are juxtaposed with high chords and a liquescent viola melody. A long decrescendo ensues, with high viola harmonics and a slowed-down set of piano harmonies.

 

Photo: Bettina Stoess

Gertrude Fragments is performed by mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean and classical guitarist Andrey Lebedev. “I cast thy knighted color off” begins the group with a wide-ranging, angular setting. Betts-Dean has a versatile instrument, with a strong lower register and blossoming high notes. The guitar part is well-crafted, with elements of lute songs alongside chromatic harmonies and modernist gestures, notably the acerbic attacks in the second song, “Wring from him my cause.” The texts are adaptations of statements by Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude. They are more aphoristic than the Ophelia texts, but still afford wide emotional range. The third song, “My too much changed son,” is melismatic, almost sobbing at its beginning before a sense of gravitas is regained. “How is’t with you?” is the shortest and sparest of the songs, almost a preparation for the concluding “If words be made of breath,” which includes plaintive sighs alongside glissandos. 

 

Bass clarinetist Volker Hemken performs Confessio, a ten minute long solo that references the entrance of Polonius. It is a technical tour-de-force, depicting the emotional tumult of the scene in lines throughout the compass of the instrument, special techniques, and a wide dynamic range. 

 

In the final piece, accordionist James Crabb is the soloist in the twenty-minute long concerto The Players. Material from the analogous scene in the opera included Crabb as part of the cast, playing alongside pantomiming actors. The concerto includes an introduction and closing material for Crabb added to musical material from the opera, deftly translated in its scoring for the ensemble. In the play/opera, Hamlet nearly loses control of his faculties, with manic explosions and a clear desire for revenge. The scene is depicted not only by the accordion, but taunting winds, bumptious percussion, and bitonal strings. 

 

The Players is an energetic closer for Rooms of Elsinore, an inspiring recording that suggests that Dean’s obsession with Hamlet may have room yet for more music about the dark prince of Denmark. If the works here are his last exploration of the play, Dean is still left with a tremendous legacy. One of my favorites recordings thus far in 2024.

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey