Author: Steve Layton

Contemporary Classical

Svadebka!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiazdmmZF_8[/youtube]

Though usually known by its French title, “Les Noces” (The Wedding), this piece is ‘wedded’ so strongly to Stravinsky’s native tongue that I prefer to think of it by its original Russian title.

Stravinsky’s apotheosis of his Russian-folk style gave birth to almost as many developments as the iconoclastic Rite of Spring. The Rite was an amazing achievement, coming only thirty years after Brahm’s second Piano Concerto; but the novel rhythms, form, harmonies were still mostly clothed in the symphonic and balletic traditions of that earlier time. Just a few years later in Svadebka (1923, though the piece was musically complete by 1917) even this was chucked: the all-percussion and piano ensemble, counterpointed with soloists and chorus sharing the pit with the instruments; the whole piece one non-stop, carefully-geared motor; the cut/paste/overlay/interlock of the musical structure; the intensly emotional singing and playing presented without the slightest trace of sentimentality; the folk idiom morphed into simply raw material for the highest abstraction… All these have been picked up and run with, from the piece’s premiere all the way to the “downtown” folk of our own generation.

This YouTube video shows a Royal Ballet production, that recreates the original 1923 Bronislava Nijinska choreography. It’s in three parts and rather than start at the beginning I’ll just plop you down in the middle of the piece, when things are really bubbling away (parts 1 and 3 are easily found on the right sidebar at the YouTube page).

by Steve Layton
Broadcast, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical

Yummy!

One of our English connections (and good S21 pal), Edward Lawes sent along a note reminding us that György Ligeti is BBC3’s Composer of the Week, so be sure to check the schedule for lots of good listening on the menu. Not only that, but This Tuesday (10 March) evening brings us a great all–Xenakis broadcast on the Beeb’s Performance on 3 program.  That feast includes Tracees, Anastenaria, Sea-Nymphs, Mists, Nuits, Troorkh, and Antikhthon. This stuff is generally archived for a week or so, meaning you can be fashionably late yet still not miss a note.

Ed’s own blog, Complement.Inversion.Etc., is always a good read, which is why it’s now listed over on the right sidebar. Stop by and read up, say hi, have a spot of tea… (or whatever it is they’re drinking over there these days).

by Steve Layton
Contemporary Classical

Who Knew? (beside the droogs, of course)

If you tend to enjoy “litterchur” as well as classical music, you also tend to become aware that authors such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Ezra Pound, and Paul Bowles were intermittently serious about composing music.

One I did not know about, but was brought to our attention in an email received today, was Anthony Burgess. Always to be known best for his — by no means favorite — novel A Clockwork Orange, Burgess composed more than 175 works, as well as a few opera libretti.

Which brings us to the Harry Ransom Center, an artistic and cultural archive at the University of Texas in Austin, where this Friday evening (the 26th) there’s a concert featuring Burgess’ music, interspersed with readings from his own “litterchur”. Even if you’re not in the Austin area, never fear: it’s also being webcast live. Full information on both the concert and webcast can be had at this page.

Feel free to remind us in the comments, of any other musical authors that slipped our minds.

by Steve Layton
Awards, Classical Music, Click Picks, Contemporary Classical, Online

Briefly Noted

A couple quick bits passed along by S21 compadres:

Ed Lawes wants to remind every classical afficionado to take a gander at the Gramophone’s online archive. Literally every issue of the magazine is there, from 1923 (!) until today. If that doesn’t count as a fabulous resource, I don’t know what does.

And our favorite crusty uncle, Seth Gordon, has word on a new-music Oscar tie-in that you may not be aware of: Yeah, yeah, we all know that the best score is headed to one of the semi-usual suspects: Alexandre Desplat, James Newton Howard, Danny Elfman, A.R. Rahman, Thomas Newman…  But the producer of Werner Herzog’s Encounters at the End of the World is none other than one of the deans of modern experimental guitar, Henry Kaiser. Poke around his site and you’ll see that Henry has had a life that could qualify for an Oscar on its own. Here’s hoping…

by Steve Layton
Broadcast, Click Picks, Contemporary Classical, Online

You too can be the life of the party!

Just imagine the impression you will leave with your guests, as you drop sparkling bon mots on combinatoriality, pitch accumulators, harmelodics, and gradual phase shifting!… If they haven’t fled for the door yet…

I’m really just reminding you that the American Music Center, as part of its absolutely wonderful and essential web-service Counterstream Radio, has the first four podcasts in their “Crash Course” series available. Each gives you a quick, expert-led introduction to some facet of American contemporary music: Matthew Guerrieri on American serialism, Kyle Gann on minimalism, Tom Lopez on acousmatic music, and Lara Pellegrinelli on post-jazz jazz. If you’ve ever had a twinge of curiousity about any of these but just never knew where to start, what better way than to let one of these pros start you down the path?    (photo: Charlie White, “Cocktail Party”)

by Steve Layton
Click Picks, Composers, Contemporary Classical

The Fecund Composer… Can You Even Say That?

I’ve been trying for maybe a more “genteel” word, but keep coming back to it… What I’m talking about is the composer, pianist and conductor Ketty Nez and her music. Born (1965) in Macedonia but quickly whisked away to the States, the whisking has continued through studies at Bryn Mawr, Curtis, Tokyo, UC Berkeley, Amsterdam and a couple passes through Paris, as well as teaching first at the University of Iowa and now Boston University. Ketty is a ferociously talented pianist (though currently working mostly in tandem with violinist Katie Wolfe), and also conductor of BU’s Time’s Arrow new music ensemble.

Yet first and foremost in my mind Ketty is a composer — and a mightily inventive and prolific one at that. It’s all the more remarkable given her heavy schedule of other work, and only possible because she borrows Gustav Mahler’s old trick of sealing herself away in the summer months, spending 8 to 12 hours a day focusing only on the composition at hand. And it shows in the sound… Ketty doesn’t do many four-minute quick-commission trifles. The music is expansive, elaborate and intricate, constantly abuzz in a rich stew of ideas and notes. …Lots of notes! Not many ideas are just presented on the plate all neatly packaged; something else, tiny filigree or other big idea, is always intruding, at work in another instrument or register. I mentioned “fecund” as the word that kept coming to mind; you could add “florid” to that mix as well. If it all sounds a little hothouse, that’s exactly what I’m getting at. These are restless pieces, but not in some angst-filled way; rather in a wonderful kind of swirling stream. They incorporate many different ideas at once or in quick succession, but somehow never feel eclectic.

Can you tell I really, really like Ketty’s work? And so might you, if you head over to her website and browse that link that says “hear compositions”. There Ketty offers up a large number of excellent recordings and performances of her music.

by Steve Layton
Composers, Contemporary Classical, Deaths, Experimental Music, Performers

The Next Generation to Pass

The recent deaths of both George Perle and Lukas Foss are part of the sad but expected passing, of composers who came of age in the 1940s and 50s. But a slight shock went through me with Douglas Britt’s surprising news in the Houston Chronicle blogs that pioneering composer, percussionist, visual and sound artist Max Neuhaus (b. 1939) has just died as well. Neuhaus is from the generation that gives us Lucier, Ashley, Young, Reich, Glass and Riley.

He semi-retired some time ago from pure composition and performance, preferring to focus on sound art and installations (one of which quietly hums day and night just down the street from me here in Houston, a few steps from Rothko Chapel). Neuhaus’ own website gives a good overview of where his imagination took him these past years, and you can pay homage to his earlier self — percussion iconclast and champion of the likes of Stockhausen, Brown, Feldman, Cage — by revisiting his seminal 1960s recordings courtesy of UbuWeb.

by Steve Layton
Cello, Chamber Music, Click Picks, Contemporary Classical, Video

Dakujem!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqwsCoO1zxQ[/youtube]

After the split, there’s been plenty of attention paid to Prague and the Czech Republic; far fewer take notice of Slovakia and its capital, Bratislava. Strange, when you consider that the city is less than 40 miles from Vienna. That should tip you off that there just might be some serious music-making happening in Bratislava, and thanks to a young web-savvy musician we can confirm it with our eyes and ears.

Andrej Gál is a cellist in Bratislava, member of the Slovak Chamber Orchestra, Zwiebel String Quartet, Veni Ensemble, Melos-Ethos Ensemble, Ostravská banda and newly established Quasars ensemble (whew!). Luckily for us, he’s also a happy YouTube user. Gál has made available a number of performance videos that happen to include him as a member, and the collection features a unusually choice selection of contemporary composers and stellar performances: Bartók, Grisey, Murail, Lachenmann… and this great piece by a Slovak composer I’d never heard before, Vladimír Godár (b. 1956 / The embedded video is part one; you’ll find part two at the link above to the whole collection). Bravo Andrej — not only for your fine playing, but for taking the simple step of using the web to bring us the news half a world away.

by Steve Layton
Composers, Contemporary Classical, Deaths, Obits

A Composer’s Composer

George Perle died this weekend, at the ripe old age of 93. Little-known and little heard by the general audience, Perle was a name virtually every composer of the last half century knows. His book Serial Composition and Atonality passed through most of our hands at one point or other in our study; it and his later Twelve-Tone Tonality caused a lot of us to seek out performances and recordings of his poised, extremely lucid and limpid works.

Big-name appreciation is rare enough anymore for composers, as to almost seem a fluke. Given that, the place to pay attention to is who composers themselves appreciate. George Perle certainly had that kind of “cred”, and he’s still alive and vital for his comrades-in-music.

by Steve Layton
Broadcast, Click Picks, Composers, Contemporary Classical

Heading North

clockwise from top left: John Rea, Claude Vivier, Emily Hall, Aaron GervaisMaybe it’s all that cold, dark and ice; stuck inside with nothing else to do for a lot of days must be conducive to composition. At least it feels that way with regard to Canada, since this huge but relatively sparsely-populated space has what seems a disproportionate number of composers that I just love.

And now the Canadian Music Centre has made it awfully easy for YOU to love them as well; at their site you’ll now find a service called CentreStreams, which offers streaming access to the Ann Southam Audio Archive. This comprises a huge number of concert and radio recordings made by the CBC, of Canadian composers A to Zed. Not only that: where else could you find 41 (!) archival recordings of seminal Canadian composer Claude Vivier‘s music — with no less than 6 (!!) different versions of Pulau dewata — all at your computer’s beck and call? They also have a nifty feature that can give you a random paylist by genre (piano, orchestra, vocal, etc.), so your listening experience is never the same twice. Many composers even have the scores of works freely available as PDF files.

You do have to register (free) to get the streams, but it’s quick and painless. CentreStreams is accessible from the CMC homepage, but even easier is heading to the “find a composer” section and browsing the alphabet. Besides the established names there’s also a fair collection of the young guns as well, so you can be right expert on contemporary Canadian music in no time! Personal favorites old and new, that I can pretty well guarantee for excellence, are John Rea, Claude Vivier, Emily Hall, Aaron Gervais (all four pictured above), José Evangelista, R. Murray Schafer, Melissa Hui, John Mark Sherlock, Linda Catlin Smith, Allison Cameron, Rodney Sharman, Monique Jean, Gyula Csapo, Louis Dufort, Gilles Tremblay, John Kosrud, Chiyoko Szlavnics… the list goes on and on. What better way to pass a little of your own closed-in winter days, than discovering some new favorite piece or composer?

by Steve Layton