Author: Tyran Grillo

Contemporary Classical

Joe Hisaishi: A Symphonic Celebration

Many people’s first exposure to the world of Studio Ghibli and its star director, Hayao Miyazaki, was My Neighbor Totoro. For me, it was Laputa: Castle in the Sky. I will never forget my reaction to the opening sequence, during which Sheeta, the sole living heiress of the eponymous all-but-forgotten realm, falls from an airship. As she hurtles toward the earth below, eyes closed as if resigned to this tragic fate, her crystal necklace begins to glow, imbuing enough power in its slender cord to bring her to the softest of landings into the arms of protagonist Pazu.

Nothing prepared me, however, for the music of Joe Hisaishi. Such emotional circuits are part and parcel of his scoring at its most glorious: building a free fall of anticipation before settling into the inner lives of Miyazaki’s timeless characters. And surely, this conspectus from Deutsche Grammophon provides a long-overdue account of Hisaishi’s melodic gifts. A Symphonic Celebration reminds us of one key reason why Miyazaki’s oeuvre owns so much valuable real estate in the hearts of children and adults alike. Each image has a song.

While Michael Beek’s liner notes rightly place Miyazaki/Hisaishi among the ranks of Spielberg/Williams, Zemeckis/Silvestri, Burton/Elfman, and Fellini/Rota, I might also add Lynch/Badalamenti, especially since the latter dream team closely mirrors the creative process of Hisaishi, who has often composed music for a Miyazaki picture based only on sketches and ideas before a single frame is drawn. Beek goes on to characterize the album’s program as “Joe Hisaishi’s musical vision freed from the bounds of film, but this time given even more space and, if it’s at all possible, even more heart and soul.” This is at once to the album’s credit and detriment.

But first, the music, which begins where it must: with Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), their inaugural collaboration. As the first of ten reimagined suites, it packs a punch of tympani and orchestral splendor that resolves into the clarion strains of what may be Hisaishi’s most timeless theme. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra artfully brushes in the details under the composer’s baton. The addition of choir adds a surreal sense of humanity to music for a film that still feels quite distant from who we are now, yet so familiar, while the children’s singing is a haunting remnant of carefree abundance. This sets a tone that can be difficult to read because the suites often shift so quickly from one motif to the other that one’s memories of certain scenes and characters get interrupted. Still, there are some stunning passages to savor, especially in the finale, that recapture some of the magic.

Just as Nausicaä finds its groove toward the end, Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989) is refined from note one, as the wide-eyed wonder of the titular witch setting off for the adventure of independent living blossoms across the foreground. The percussive touches and fervent string playing give way to a creamy center, while the solo violin of Stephen Morris carries a rich emotional cargo. An especially successful arrangement.

Princess Mononoke (1997) tills martial ground, cultivating the soprano of Grace Davidson, who does a splendid job with the Japanese intonation, as also in Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea(2008), while The Wind Rises (2013) introduces the mandolin of Avi Avital for a more cobblestoned sound. The latter points to Miyazaki’s fascination with flight and air travel, as played out further in Castle in the Sky (1986), which is smart for opening with Pazu’s bugled morning call but less so for taking up the theme with choir when the piano was so crucial to the original soundtrack. Moreover, the concluding melodrama feels rather out of character with the film’s tender heart. Thankfully, we get plenty of Hisaishi at the keyboard in Porco Rosso (1992), which evokes its quirky mélange with tasteful subtlety, taken up by clarinet and strings.

The biggest disappointment is Howl’s Moving Castle (2004), which has so much grace and poise in the original, yet here, despite being the longest of the program, seems rushed. That said, it does contain some of Hisaishi’s most masterful work, especially “Merry-Go-Round of Life,” which gloriously consummates a flirtatious appearance early on.

Spirited Away (2001) gives us more of Hisaishi’s distinctive pianism (again, this connects him to Badalamenti, whose keyboard playing was always so grounded in the soul), paired with the breathy vocals of Hisaishi’s daughter, Mai Fujisawa (who also sang the original Nausicäa theme). Her voice is auto-tuned, which is rather odd in a classical album, even as it plays creatively with the fringes of a genre that has grown with the times. If anything, this pop sensibility gives it an interesting appeal.

And so, we return to My Neighbor Totoro (1988), a story seared into my memory after seeing the film literally hundreds of times when it was the only one my three-going-on-four-year-old would watch at the time. Miyazaki himself once characterized Totoro as the embodiment of Japan in its transition into modernism, as evidenced by his parallels with Alice in Wonderland and Mary Poppins, and I have grown to appreciate its depths far more as an adult. Originally shown as the B picture of a double feature after Grave of the Fireflies (directed by studio mate Isao Takahata), it contrasted the reality of a war-torn Japan with the fantasy of a rural imaginary in anticipation of a hopeful future. Hisaishi adds to such inversions, beginning his suite under cover of night, whereas the film opens in the brightness of day.

Perhaps the ultimate question regarding A Symphonic Celebration is whether this music would survive without its cinematic associations. While my bias as someone in whose fibers frames of Miyazaki’s films are deeply embedded leads me toward a “no,” time will tell how it reads to new listeners as a standalone experience. Given that the arrangements are so far from home, I yearn for the moving images and their original sound palettes—missing, for example, the electronics that make Nausicaä and Totoro such delightfully nostalgic productions of their time. And while one could make a strong case for including the Totoro theme song in English since it was such an international success (even if the tessellated choral arrangement lacks the charm of Sonya Isaacs in the Disney dub), I wonder what meaning the English version of Ponyo’s theme song offers to someone ignorant of the film, or to Japanese fans, for that matter. Of course, we cannot necessarily expect the colors and textures to be the same. Still, I would recommend that anyone new to Joe Hisaishi watch, rewatch, and absorb Miyazaki’s films long before putting this album in cue.

by Tyran Grillo
Contemporary Classical, Piano, Songs

Lucy Fitz Gibbon/Ryan MacEvoy McCullough: the labor of forgetting

The program so sincerely produced on the labor of forgetting, the debut release from False Azure Records, reminds me of Pauline Oliveros, who once said, “Listening is selecting and interpreting and acting and making decisions.” Indeed, the music of Katherine Balch (b. 1991) and Dante De Silva (b. 1978), in the handling of soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon and pianist Ryan MacEvoy McCullough, underscores the agency of listening as a process in physical flux, even when its subjects are fixed in time and space. The aural objects herein, as grandly interpreted as they are intimately assembled (if not the reverse), bend details into hooks on which we are invited to hang the keys of our distractions while not forgetting the darkness nipping at our heels.

De Silva’s Shibui (2009) opens in mourning, paying respects to Deborah Clasquin, a mentor for both De Silva as composer and McCullough as performer. The piece’s title, lifted from the Japanese tongue, refers to the tartness the latter might taste, but also to a quiet sense of understatement or even a sullen look. As an invisible integration of Bartók’s Élegy op. 8b no. 1, it barely bends under the weight of its allusions. Gentle chords are hammocks for the heaviest emotions, all of which are given rest until they can stand on two feet.

Four Years of Fog (2016) for just-tuned piano follows with a gaze into early adulthood. The whimsical tuning, contrived yet unabashedly beautiful, illuminates as much as it obscures. Subtitles like “Blissfully Ignorant” and “Sickness and Exile” read familiarly to anyone who has lived (or is living) those inevitable stages. And yet, as the octave ails behind closed eyes, we open our ears to a healing sound, unbidden to dance because the notes dance for us. Thus, are we born again, slapped in the rear like the piano at the end into self-awareness.

“Only once did she feel loved by a man / on what we might call / the wash of the cellular level.” So begins Balch’s estrangement (2020), which sets the poetry of Katie Ford (b. 1975) in an astonishing song cycle. Intended as the dark side of Schumann’s Dichterliebe, it turns the paradigm of north-bearing love into a spinning compass. Fitz Gibbon renders a body through her voice and McCullough the molecules it inhales and exhales. As in the textual play of György Kurtág, though with more attention to punctuation, Balch holds every syllable accountable for its unfolding, allowing the mind to fantasize and count it for reality. Fitz Gibbon clothes the words mindfully, flipping the operatic switch on and off at will, morphing from lullaby to whisper to microtonal shiver to aphasic slur without hesitation. This lends the bearer of language power over the flesh being described or unwritten. The fifth movement is especially impactful in its restraint, as is its successor, “the film,” in which the mise-en-scène of a relationship is repeated to the point of fallacy. The tenth movement, “only the song,” is the most visceral for its stops and starts, as if challenging sustained beauty as an illusory complex.

The final movement concedes that sustain, darkening it with images of disunity: “Sometimes she thought of her love for him / like a donated heart / preserved in a jar.” Hearing De Silva’s Shibui (reprised in just intonation) in closing, we feel the caps spun onto the jars of our own hearts. Birds in the background remind us of where we are and, more importantly, where we were never meant to go. We are always alone in our hearts, thus sung until the lungs of our identities empty themselves and move on without us.

If any of this seems morbid and hopeless, it’s because the honeycombed hardships of its upbringing are proven for their sweetness. Fitz Gibbon and McCullough, like the artists animating their throat and fingers, understand that the upswing of retrospection is fruitless without falling into lessons of self-reckoning. And while we may tell ourselves the pandemic is behind us, any act of restoration in its rubble is a lie without the mortar of care. Let this album be one slather in the right direction.

the labor of forgetting is released to the wider world on November 4, 2022.

by Tyran Grillo
Contemporary Classical

Open Intervals: An Interview with Composer Matthew Bennett

(All photos by Brian Smale)

Composer and holistic sound artist Matthew Bennett has created some of the most intuitively experienced sonorities that you might never have thought to trace to their origins. As the former director of the Sound + Sensory Design Program at Microsoft, where he was still employed at the time of this interview, he endeavored to render the Microsoft soundscape as a community of audible signatures. His innovations transformed Windows into a tactile user experience in which vibration became substantive. Since then, he has established Acoustic Ecology to expand his aural vision to the tech industry at large. He and his music can be found at songofsilence.org, where he continues to document his transcendent path through the audible world.

As for said music, it not only leaves room for listeners to sit down, close their eyes, and feel; it also seems to take on new qualities as the circumstances of its engagement change over time. What might at first sound like a lullaby can just as easily slip into elegy without so much as a change of arpeggiation. If “songs without words” can be said to constitute a genre, then here we find “soundtracks without films,” each as vulnerable to the movements of our internal cameras as is technology is to our touch and regard. It’s only natural, then, that Bennett should shift his professional focus from user interface to interfacial use—in other words, giving voice to the internal relationships of physiological engagement with reality as we know it, while also taking care of health with products like delta 8 pen and more.

As Bennett elaborates below, mysticality is one facet of his polyhedron, as amorphous as it is precise. Thus, what might seem to be a dichotomy reveals its cohesion through geometry. In the same way that moods and even health are deeply affected by densities, volumes, and wavelengths of sound, so are his examinations designed with the intent to let intention go of its own volition.You can also try out delta-8 vape carts from OCN to get rid off stress and to maintain physical and mental well being. And so, let us orient ourselves in alignment with our inner voices and join the thought life of a composer who understands that silence, however illusory to grasp in human terms, is the Alpha and the Omega.

Tyran Grillo: What is your earliest sonic memory and how do you think it shaped (if at all) your approach to sound today?

Matthew Bennett: I have a very early memory of sitting in my family’s dining room, at an upright piano that my mother purchased before she married my father. I was three or four years old and was enjoying just pushing keys and making sounds, as children do. At some point, I was playing two white keys simultaneously, one with each hand, and discovered a sound that I loved more than anything in the world. A perfect fifth! I remember specifically that it was the notes E and B (above middle C).

Of course, I didn’t know anything about note and interval names then. I just knew that I loved that sound. I kept playing it over and over. I remember feeling that the sound was somehow green, which is an association I still have with those notes. That was the beginning of my personal relationship with that special interval.

A couple of years later, after we’d moved to a different house, I remember sitting at the same piano, playing parallel fourths and fifths. I was now big enough to operate the sustain pedal and I had fun holding it down, letting the strings vibrate and resonate across the soundboard to create a whole world of sound.

Looking back now, I can see that those perfect intervals have felt like important friends for my whole life. I still love to feel their sound and resonance, and I still love the idea of creating a whole world from them.

After my parents died about seven years ago, I realized I had lost touch with this beauty. I felt the strong need to refocus my musical work to be more consistent with those early experiences of joy and resonance, and the sheer love of sound and vibration that I had as a young child. This was a turning point for me. I had lost both of my parents within a year, and all music seemed utterly meaningless. Certainly, I felt the music I was making at that time had no reason to exist.

I had to go through a long personal process of clarifying what was meaningful and what kind of music (if any) I wanted to spend the rest of my life creating. I remembered my early experience and joy with the open intervals, and to some extent, they guided me back to Gregorian chant. I slowly began to build a language based on principles and music that did feel meaningful.

This also meant reconsidering my relationship to several non-Western classical music cultures I had studied in graduate school (as a student of ethnomusicology), especially Indian raga, Persian Radif, and Indonesian gamelan. More specifically, European chant led me to reexamine historical styles that I had studied years earlier, especially organum and early polyphony, which have become important to my ways of thinking and working.

I slowly began to build a new kind of personal musical language and practice, with an aesthetic system that has turned out to be very consistent with my earliest experiences of musical beauty. This is not a conscious process, and has taken years.

It was about six years before I even had something that I could share, and it is all still very much work in progress. During that time, I didn’t even know if I would ever have music to share again. But that didn’t matter to me. I needed to go through this process to save my own life and to understand my relationship with the world.

TG: In light of your “green” perfect fifth, I’m wondering if you have any synesthetic associations with sound in general, and whether those associations shape how you choose to create sonic environments for software applications that people will be using on a daily basis. Does this compel you to seek an “organic” sound? Is there a more accurate word for you to describe it?

MB: Since childhood, I’ve had consistent associations of color and texture (tactility) with specific musical intervals, especially my favorite ones. But I think everyone has a certain amount of synesthesia. Some people can become more consciously aware of it than others. There’s a common idea that our senses are separate, but it’s not so simple. They interact and overlap and affect each other. We actually experience our senses as an interrelated web of perception. The amazing thing about music is that it lets us tune in to the flow of these interior sensory perceptions while connecting that to the exterior world. No theory or special knowledge is required—this happens intuitively!

I understand sound as touch-from-a-distance, physical vibration that literally connects our interior experience to the outside world, and to other people and their interior experience. Sound permeates boundaries, which gives it a special immersive quality. This affects how I compose music, and also how I design sound for technology and digital experiences.

Sound helps connect the digital and physical worlds. And the soundscape created by the billions of devices around the world affects how people feel, how they interact, how they process information. I think of the global soundscape of technology as a system, an audio ecology. Because our sounds impact so many people, we have an ethical responsibility to make the system healthy and functional. You can click here to know more about it. But, this also means we need to get rid of annoying audio, sonic clutter, and noise pollution. It’s not just bad aesthetically; it’s bad for people’s mental and physical health (the World Health Organization has actually confirmed this). It’s one way that technology can be a source of cultural and sensory disruption; we feel it in our bodies. A more holistic approach to designing our audio ecology can help heal this rupture.

A healthy audio ecology needs a more dynamic range. We need quieter sounds, and more silence (e.g., time to reflect for a moment instead of being constantly rushed by the next alarm). Quiet sounds are often felt more than they are heard. They’re more effective in communicating information and essential for creating more beautiful and functional digital experiences.

In my music, and in my work with technology, I’m interested in the ways sound and silence shape time and structure feeling. In music, this happens through listening in a traditional linear way. But the soundscape of technology is a massive, fluid, interactive, non-linear composition distributed across billions of devices and people (our major technology platforms are also the biggest sound delivery platforms in history). I want to do what I can to make the global soundscape of technology more beautiful. From my perspective, this is all about small, quiet moments of sound.

TG: Can you tell me about both your earliest and most recent musical (or sonic) influences?

MB: My earliest specific musical influence was probably Warner Brothers cartoons. Not the main parts of those soundtracks composed by Carl Stalling, but specifically the short episodes where the musicians imitated music of other cultures—Chinese, Native

American, African, etc. Of course, these were horrible musical and racial stereotypes. But at the age of four or five, when I was just becoming aware of the musical cultures around me, these were my first exposure to worlds of sound that felt interesting and beautiful. I would go to the piano and try to imitate them. I eventually studied ethnomusicology.

Starting 20 years ago, but especially throughout the last decade, an important influence for me has been the musical language of Arvo Pärt, specifically the tintinnabuli system he created in the 1970s. I consider Pärt to be one of my most important teachers (through his music and ideas; unfortunately, I haven’t met him in person). His language builds on plainchant and organum, two bodies of music I consider part of my foundation. I’ve also been deeply influenced by Pärt’s concepts of musical and ritual time, which have their own important antecedents.

The main part of my practice has been to learn this musical language and to ground it in the body, to internalize it as a fluid framework for composition and improvisation. I hope that, eventually, I might be able to contribute to the tintinnabuli language in some small way. Arvo Pärt created tintinnabuli over 40 years ago, and he is still the only composer working with it. Film composers sometimes evoke his sound, but I’m surprised there aren’t more composers and improvisers who want to engage seriously with this musical system and its innovations. I am a musician who is working with the tintinnabuli language, but for me, it’s more like prayer. I don’t consider myself to be a very good composer, in the professional sense (it was liberating to realize this).

My goal is to create living form with sound, so patterns in the natural world are also an important inspiration. I am constantly amazed by organic form and by the way nature generates beautiful, rich (even complex) results from a few simple rules. I think what I’m always trying to get at is a generative grammar of natural form (to borrow a concept from linguistics and structural anthropology). For me, that means learning the grammar and deep structure of the tintinnabuli language to the point where I can compose and improvise fluently within it, similar to the way an Indian classical musician might approach a raga.

TG: Have you ever looked deeply at cymatics? Either way, does an awareness of vibration, frequency, etc. factor into your work?

MB: I haven’t looked deeply into cymatics, but I’m very interested in the sensory experiences of sound as vibration, resonance, and silence.

For me, the experience of sound is deeply connected to our sense of touch. We don’t just hear sound; we feel its vibrations through our whole body. Sound is resonating, haptic energy. In a real sense, music makes it possible for us to “feel” time. Music gives time tactility and texture. We are immersed in vibration, resonance, and the flow of time. Through the intensity of sound, we get to experience the joyful feeling of unfolding in time, and share it with others. Creating a shared, immersive, sensory time world is one of the things music is really good at.

Understanding sound as physical energy (and as psychological and emotional energy) has changed how I listen and how I make music. I approach composition more like sensory design, as a way to orchestrate the flow of sound, silence, time, touch, and gesture to create specific shapes of feeling that I want to live in and can be shared.

TG: How did you become involved with Microsoft and what has it meant for you to be part of such a ubiquitous platform?

MB: My first involvement with Microsoft was in 2008, creating sounds for Windows 7. After that, I returned to my regular music work. I didn’t give it more thought until they offered me a permanent position creating sounds for mobile devices. I almost said no, because the sound of most devices at the time was ugly, annoying, or both. But there were a few exceptions that made me realize it might be possible to create something more beautiful. Back then, this was just an intuition. But as the world of technology grew, I was fortunate to have the necessary support to develop new ways of thinking about sound design for digital experiences, and to create the Sound + Sensory Design Program at Microsoft.

The scale of Windows is both humbling and inspiring. With well over a billion devices (and counting), those sounds are heard hundreds of millions of times globally each day. Though each sound is very short (one or two seconds at most), they account for millions of hours of sound heard around the world daily. The Windows platform creates its own soundscape, which also integrates with many different cultural soundscapes around the world. Ultimately, those sounds become a part of people’s lives and their personal soundscape. (This is a big responsibility!) Because environmental sound impacts mental and physical wellbeing, there are actually public health aspects to designing sounds for Windows. Poorly designed sound creates anxiety. We have an ethical responsibility to minimize annoying audio and noise pollution.

I am trying to create a seamless and immersive acoustic ecology for technology. I want sounds that are felt more than they’re heard. I want sounds that ground us in the digital world and help heal the sensory disruptions of technology. And I want to design silence. Sometimes this means literal silence or removing sounds. But it also means creating a sonic language that contains silence and resonance within it. I imagine our environmental sounds as tiny pools of time that rise up to meet users (listeners) in the moment, supporting a rhythm of little moments of presence and reflection. In that way, our sounds are a bit like poetry. Of course, they also have to be functional! But the beauty here is no mere ornament, it’s part of the structure and function (and truth) of the sound.

TG: Do you feel that music has always been in some sense technological? Do you see the body as technological?

MB: I think one of the things that makes music so powerful is that it is a technology with a whole dimension of feeling attached.

At one level, a work song is a practical technology to organize collaborative labor. Choreographing the movement of agricultural work in time makes the work more efficient and productive. At the same time, there can be powerful social and emotional dimensions to singing together.

I think the “embodied” nature of music makes it a special kind of technology—one we can feel in our bodies (and hearts). Music can also be a spiritual technology. It’s often used as a way to encode, preserve, and transmit sacred information, but also as a framework or medium for religious and spiritual experience. Music is a powerful technology for shaping (and sharing) time and feeling. This means it’s connected to everything.

From a musical perspective, our bodies are important instruments. We are organic material that vibrates and resonates. Arvo Pärt says that the soul is the most important musical instrument. How do we tune our soul?

TG: How would you define your own spiritual connection to, and awareness of, music? Do you connect it to any particular tradition or faith or do you see it as a universal given of the human experience?

MB: I think music is an important way to tune our soul and to feel our connection to others, to history, and to elemental aspects of the universe. For me, the ideas of prayer and chant have been very important, especially the special worlds of music connected with psalms (tehillim) and the Jewish tradition of nusach chant, which is essentially a process of turning language and intention into music. The breath of this process is at the heart of my practice. I’m not necessarily talking about the literal words of the psalms, but the music of them—the ways of intoning, heightened speech that turns into song, the primal rhythms and contours of language—and especially the quality of intention (kavana), the ritual states of mind and heart.

TG: Are there any avenues of music, composition, and/or creative practice that you would like to explore more deeply and how do you hope they might enrich your life and the lives of others?

MB: I hope to continue becoming a better student of silence and to improve my ability to listen deeply. For me, that means continuing to work with the tintinnabuli language created by Arvo Pärt. I’ve spent years learning to improvise using that language. Moving forward, I hope to share more of that work and integrate it into my larger catalog.

I want to keep exploring ways that a musical language based on plainchant and early polyphony can be physical and kinetic (and contemporary). That’s one thing I’m trying to accomplish with my pulse-based pieces (the Gradual Music, and others). These extended pieces are teaching me about new ways of listening. The shape of time is different. Once I tune into these time worlds, I never want to leave!

I think we can always learn more about silence and listening. No matter how deeply we go, we always have to start from scratch in the next moment.

TG: Who did you used to listen to but don’t anymore? Who do you listen to now? Who have you never listened to but would like to?

MB: This is a surprisingly difficult question to answer. My listening has always been all over the place. Sometimes I listen to everything, other times I can’t stand to listen to anything. The amount of time I spend listening to something isn’t necessarily an indication of how important it is to me. Sometimes I’m not listening to something because I need to be thinking about it a lot. Listening to music, in the traditional sense, has been important to me, of course. It can also be distracting. I often find myself intentionally “not listening.” Sometimes, I need silence in order to really listen.

TG: Who have been some of your greatest teachers, whether those under whom you studied directly or those who have unwittingly taught you from afar just by virtue of you knowing their work, philosophy, or creations?

MB: I’ve learned from so many wonderful artists and teachers that I don’t know where to start. I’ve also been strongly influenced by several different music cultures. I see my work more as a dialogue with various traditions than as being influenced by specific people.

I think our earliest teachers are especially important, and I’m grateful that I was able to connect with good teachers when I was very young. My best teachers haven’t always been musicians or composers. Sometimes a poet or a producer has had more impact on my work. I don’t like to list specific names because that can become a deceptive shorthand or label for an artist’s work. For each person we can name, there are many we can’t who have influenced us as much or more. My most important teachers aren’t individuals but collective traditions.

TG: On that last note, do you see yourself creating or contributing to a certain tradition?

MB: I know that the answer is yes, but being at the center, I don’t have the proper perspective to say which one(s). That is not my job. While my work sits at the confluence of several streams, it’s always been my goal that whatever I create be not simply a superficial combination of “stuff I like.” There’s a lot of that in the music world now, and it can be delightful, but collections of multiple influences rarely coalesce into a truly organic language.

That has been my goal. How does plainchant relate to raga? How can improvisation integrate with composition and more specifically with tintinnabuli and various traditions of chant? How might the tintinnabuli process grow roots that connect with similar structures in gamelan music? These are the kinds of questions at the center of my practice.

The answers I had 15 years ago were very different than the answers I have now. To paraphrase Rilke, you have to hold the questions and live your way into the answers. That’s a slow process; it takes decades.

TG: Speaking of changing over time, if you could visit your younger self, what would you say to yourself?

MB: To my younger self: Focus on being immersed in all the musical and creative traditions you love. Go as deep as you can with each one. Don’t worry about how to actively combine them. Just listen and wait. I’d also let younger me know that this process is going to take a lot longer than you think but that it’s worth it. If you think about it as building the foundation for your life’s work, you’ll make different choices.

by Tyran Grillo
Classical Music, Recordings, Review

Beth Gibbons Astonishes in a New Górecki’s Third

After a decade-long studio hiatus, Beth Gibbons steps from behind the curtains with a project that feels as organic as it does surprising. Organic because its integration is undeniable, and surprising only to those unfamiliar with her trajectory. The Portishead frontwoman has always been known for her intensity as singer and songwriter, navigating a range uncommon both within and without the scene to which she has been aligned. The darkly inflected splash of Portishead’s 1994 debut, Dummy, threw her and bandmates Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley into a drawer marked “Trip Hop,” a label that risked gessoing over the genre-defying shades of her vocal palette even as it gave listeners a viable canvas upon which to paint their appreciation. By 1997’s self-titled follow-up, strings had become a haunted theme of their sound, reaching ecstatic heights in such singles as “All Mine,” wherein Gibbons unleashed her soul through an emotional megaphone of fractured magnitude. All of this came to a head that same year when the band fronted a full orchestra at the Roseland Ballroom in New York City. The spirit of that concert seems to have planted a seed in the singer’s heart, easing her shift from a distance into the contemporary classical space of Henryk Górecki’s Symphony No. 3.

Those who grew up with the successful Nonesuch recording of this “Symphony of Sorrowful Songs,” featuring Dawn Upshaw and the London Sinfonietta under the baton of David Zinman, will have a thick cluster of brain cells to unravel in order to make room for yet another version, for since then a number of recordings, each with its merits, has appeared. Ewa Iżykowska’s on Dux (2017) arguably fills the finest diurnal cast, while Joanna Kozłowska’s on Decca (1995) is a close second for its cantata-leaning gradations. That said, and despite its muddy production, the Nonesuch blend of tempi and intimacy struck a profound chord with its 1992 release. For the present album we find ourselves in passionate redux. Given the current sociopolitical climate, when division has become the rule beyond exception, its immediacy is sure to ripple across the minds of new and familiar listeners alike. And if any conductor is worthy of ensuring that resonance, it’s Krzysztof Penderecki, here leading the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in a live recording from 2014. Whether or not you agree with the concept (Górecki’s family reportedly wanted nothing to do with the project, and even Björk once turned down an offer to sing the Third), it’s difficult to push against the candor therein.

Long before Gibbons breaks the ice of our expectations, however, the violins in the first movement cry out with vocal integrity, enlivened by Penderecki’s own compositional reckonings with tragedy. The pacing is compelling yet offers enough breathing room for the piano’s restorative metronome. Gibbons makes an arresting entrance, noticeably different from predecessors not only in her ability to cut heart strings by force of a mere syllable but also for being fed through a microphone, thus lending an otherworldly appeal. Yet despite the technological intervention, if not also because of it, her honesty cultivates shared vulnerability. In that respect, it’s worth reminding ourselves of the words she’s singing—all too easy to forget when the meaning of this music has faded in favor of an effect cherished by popular imagination. Knowing that this centuries-old lamentation of a mother to her son occupies the center of an orchestral palindrome like a relic encased in glass provides insight into the worldview of a composer whose love for God embraced every note.

The second movement is built around an inscription by an 18-year-old girl to her mother found on a Gestapo prison wall. Unlike the desperate cries of innocence and revenge that surround it, Górecki was moved by its prayerful bid for forgiveness, unfettered by talons of war. Gibbons approaches this text with a remarkable combination of mature and childlike impulses, navigating both sides of life in poetic truth as Penderecki wraps her in a cloak of empathy. Her effort to understand the nuances of a language not natively her own, taking on the trauma of its becoming, is obvious and translates through her bravery.

The third and final movement centers around a folk song dating back to the 15th century, in which the Virgin Mary begs to share her Son’s wounds on the cross. The sheer humanity Gibbons draws from these verses shows in the urgency of her delivery as she follows the score with fluid precision, at once floating over and entrenching herself in the orchestra’s insistent pulse. In the process, she illuminates the fear churning at the bottom of all faith and the moral resignation required to turn it into knowledge.

Górecki once said in an interview: “I do not choose my listeners.” And yet, there’s a sense in which his music seeks out listeners more than ever, binding to flesh and spirit as if to make up for his death in 2010. All the more appropriate, then, that this piece should resurface in the present decade, when its connotations of genocide and sacrifice might ring truer even to those who once treated this symphony as a pretty backdrop. We live in harsh times when excuses for ignoring history are thinner than ever, and when a piece like this deserves a reboot to examine its inspirations more deeply. For while the Symphony No. 3 has been read above all as a critique of the Holocaust, Górecki clearly wanted to keep the font of his most personal work untainted by the fingertips of politics. If anything, an overwhelming maternity, compounded by the fact that the composer lost his own mother at the age of two, prevails, lighting a humble candle—not a universal torch—that continues to burn in his absence.

This album and its accompanying film are scheduled for a March 2019 release on Domino.

by Tyran Grillo
Cello, Contemporary Classical, New York

Crossing the Threshold: Thomas Demenga at Weill Recital Hall


(Photo credit: Ismael Lorenzo)

In the presence of Thomas Demenga, there’s no such thing as a solo concert, for one considers not only the unrepeatable coincidence of performer and instrument but also the composers whose creations bond them. Such fullness of vision was already evident in 1987, when the Swiss cellist began pairing J. S. Bach’s unaccompanied cello suites with contemporary counterparts in a flight of albums for ECM New Series. The first of these viewed the Suite No. 4 through a lens crafted of Heinz Holliger’s chamber pieces, thus setting precedent for a compelling traversal of deciduous and coniferous music. Two composers engaged along the way in the studio—Elliott Carter and Bernd Alois Zimmermann—tangled roots on stage with Bach’s first and third suites for an April 23, 2018 recital at Weill Recital Hall in New York City.

Demenga’s approach to the suites was by turns monochromatic and fiercely colorful. He elicited both suites without a score, Bach’s eternal relevance as ingrained as the striations of the older cello on which he channeled it. He was careful to sand off anticipated peaks and finesse the deeper digs, lest we forget the ways in which Bach’s suites dialogue with themselves, all the while maintaining an underlying spirit of the dance (especially in No. 3’s foot-stomping gigue). In addition to its robust fluidity, his bow was constantly toeing, and at times joyfully crossing, the sul tasto threshold. This allowed natural harmonics and incidental whispers of the strings to bleed through as a veritable sonic fingerprint of the performance. Most impressive was his handling of each allemande, by which he stretched an indestructible suspension bridge from préludeto courante.

Between the pillars of Bach stood the statue of Zimmermann, whose 1960 Sonata for Solo Cello (originally paired with the Suite No. 2 in Demenga’s 1996 album for ECM) was a highlight of the evening—not only for its technical difficulties but also for its sheer musicality. Said difficulties were rendered wondrously in Demenga’s handling. The trembling with which the five-movement sonata opened revealed one mosaic of microtonal transference after another, while deft alternations of pizzicato and arco statements underscored a contrapuntal whimsy. Zimmermann’s score further revealed the same multifaceted understanding of notecraft that Demenga drew out in his Bach interpretations. Carter’s Figment for Solo Cello (1994), a piece written for its performer, likewise opened the concert with a strangely cohesive mélange of lyricism and punctuation. Every gesture was the start of a potential journey. As with much of Carter’s late output, a feeling of inner momentum abounded. Like the arpeggiated etude of Jean-Louis Duport with which Demenga encored, it was a testament to the asymptotic nature of artistic growth.

Such proximities bolded the forward-looking reach of Bach’s music as well as the foundational seeds over which Carter and Zimmermann poured their grateful waters. This reciprocation lent a sense of interconnectedness, of downright genetic heritage, to the sounds, proving that it takes more than a bow and fine muscle memory to extract the beauty therein, but a heart animating it all with genuine love by which each note is released as a messenger into the next continent of time.

by Tyran Grillo
CDs, Interviews, Piano, Review

Alessandro Stella on KHA

Midwinter Spring

In a sea of pianists sailing toward contemporary shores, the vessel of Alessandro Stella stands out for its hydrodynamic contours. Stella has performed widely across Europe—more recently, in South America—and was central, among other projects, in reviving Giacinto Scelsi’s early chamber works under auspices of the Isabella Scelsi Foundation.

On Midwinter Spring, his first recital disc for Italy’s KHA Records, he presents works by Giya Kancheli, Arvo Pärt, and Pēteris Vasks. Even without the program in hand, one can already feel the possibilities for continuity and artful contrast between these composers. All three have gained worldwide notoriety for larger-scale symphonies, concertos, and choral masterpieces. Yet their piano repertoires, given due attention here, have yielded some of the more vital statements of classical expression in recent decades.

To begin, Stella offers 16 selections from Kancheli’s Simple Music for Piano, a collection of melodies written for stage and screen. First published in 2009 and divorced from its visual contexts, Simple Music has taken on a life of its own, not least of all in 2010’s Themes from the Songbook, released on ECM New Series. Yet where that album had a distinctively Piazzolla-esque veneer (due not least of all to the participation of bandoneón virtuoso Dino Saluzzi), here the themes breathe nakedly. Stella plays with an expressivity so holistic that one can practically hear him singing through the keyboard. A dancing quality that recalls the soundtracks of Eleni Karaindrou pervades these vignettes, each born of a nostalgia that, while distant at first, over the course of a listen morphs into something uniquely one’s own. Contrary to what the title would have us believe, there is nothing simple about this music, as evidenced in the way Stella approaches particular pieces. Whether in his evocation of moonlight in No. 23 (“Bear’s Kiss”) or the chromatic inflections of No. 25 (“Hamlet”), Stella’s attention to detail reveals incarnate patience.

Following these, Arvo Pärt’s Für Alina (1976) comes across even more cinematically. Images of stardust and other cosmic beauties may be easy go-tos for the reviewer’s metaphorical toolkit, but in this case any such descriptions would be apt. In the expanse of Pärt’s seminal tintinnabulations, the human heart begins to feel like a small satellite indeed. Stella’s treasure-seeking becomes more obvious in his choice of Variationen zur Gesundung von Arinuschka. Pärt’s 1977 composition describes a far more intimate universe. Its transitions from legato to pointillist notecraft indicate a robust inner child in composer and performer alike.

Baltā ainava (White Scenery) by Vasks brings about a logical conclusion. Composed 1981 and played exclusively on the white keys, it is, like the preceding works, as potentially infinite in resonance as it is fundamental in construction. Stella lays down its block chords with extra-musical awareness, giving each cluster room to breathe. Arpeggios in the left hand are contrasted by two-note motifs in the right, like footprints pressed into the album’s cover scenery toward unknown destinations. The uncertainty of it all makes it that much more inviting, and combines elements of Kancheli and Pärt with an indefinable third.

*

In the interest of gaining insider perspective, I conducted an e-mail interview with Mr. Stella, who was kind enough to elucidate some of the finer points of this project.

What inspired you to put these three composers together on one album?

What is common to these three great composers is a deep spirituality and an extraordinary ability to shape time and its perception.

The program is very cohesive, but I imagine that as the performer you have insights into how each piece is different from the others. Can you talk about compositional, emotional, or structural differences between them?

Kancheli, Pärt, and Vasks  have many things in common, being from the same generation and geographical area. Nevertheless, each has his own history and, of course, a recognizable style. Kancheli’s miniatures are based on his music for cinema and theater, which he wrote over a period of decades. Many are actual songs, like the first track of the album—the famous “Herio Bichebo” (see video above)—and are written in a tonal style. Some fragments and themes are recurrent in other compositions of Kancheli. The composer himself has said that he can’t always remember where a particular theme first appeared. The two Pärt compositions are the cornerstones of his tintinnabuli style, the result of seven long years of research and creative silence. This is a style in which the rigor of the tintinnabuli voice contrasts with the exceptional freedom of the principal voice. Lastly, the Vasks piece is built upon two fundamental ideas that alternate, vary, and repeat themselves in a hypnotic continuum. However, I must emphasize that what attracted me the most about these three composers, in addition to their distinctive features, is the role silence plays in their music. Each pause and resonance is of crucial importance and represents the music’s very essence.

How much preparation did you require to make this recording sound the way you wanted it to sound?

For some time I would play this music almost every day for my own pleasure and enrichment, until it was clear to me that I wanted to record it. I played, sang, recorded, and listened to this music for months. It was similar to the work of a sculptor who achieves the ultimate result by removing material until only that which is essential remains.

You once told me how pleased Kancheli was with your performances of his work. Can you expand on your communications with him throughout the recording process, and after?

About two years ago, I wrote to Maestro Kancheli explaining that I wanted to record some of his miniatures. He was enthusiastic about it and gave me his authorization, giving me as much freedom as possible in matters of selection and interpretive choices. About a year later, I sent him the CD as soon as it was finished. I was deeply moved by the words he expressed about my work. Last February (2016), I finally had the opportunity to meet him. The Italian Embassy in Georgia organized a concert in Tbilisi in his honor, so I had the great privilege to give the premiere in Georgia and to play his miniatures for piano in his presence. It was one of the most intense experiences of my entire life.

Alessandro Stella and Giya Kancheli_Tbilisi 2016
Alessandro Stella (left) and Giya Kancheli (right) in Tbilisi, 2016

What is the overall message of the album for you, and what do you hope listeners will get from it? 

Every new album is the result of deep reflections. The finished album is often different from how I thought it would be and this work of progressive “polishing” is essential to me. The idea, the initial intuition, however, usually does not change. If anything, it guides me in the right direction. It has always been clear to me that Midwinter Spring was supposed to be a journey out of time, insofar as we are used to perceiving it in our everyday life. Through this apparent simplicity, the music of Kancheli, Pärt, and Vasks makes us connect with our deepest life experiences. Everything in this album was conceived to serve this purpose: the drama of the track order, the cover, the pauses, even the title. I hope this album will be an intense emotional experience to those who listen to it; an experience they will be willing to repeat.

Have you performed this exact program in a live setting? If so, what were the audience reactions?

I presented the program for the first time live last December (2015) in Liverpool. After playing this music at home and in the studio for so long, sharing it with an audience was a truly special experience. I was afraid that the ritual of the concert would contrast with the extremely intimate nature of this music. But in the end, its extraordinary evocative power created an atmosphere of “magical suspension” during the concert. And this was confirmed to me by the beautiful words of the people I talked to afterward.

This music might easily be interpreted as melancholy, but there is also something hopeful about it. Do you agree with this, and if so, how do you make sure that balance is preserved when you are playing it?

I totally agree with this and this idea is at the center of the entire album, starting from the title, Midwinter Spring. Taken from a verse by T. S. Eliot, this expression evokes the hope for a new life, as expressed by the branches coming out of the snow on the album’s cover, symbolizing hope for rebirth. All of this is inherent to the music. Melancholy is the dominant feeling of the program, but there is much more in this music: in an instant you get carried from a sense of deep desolation to nostalgia for something that no longer exists; from the unreality of a dream to a sense of hope. The music itself evokes all these possibilities. And the artist has to grasp them and follow them, just letting the music talk to him.

by Tyran Grillo
CDs, Contemporary Classical, Review

Elliott Sharp: The Boreal

The Boreal

Elliott Sharp may sometimes be characterized as a cellular composer, but he is by no means a cellular thinker. Rather, he seems to conceive of things in large swaths of creation, only then removing skins and reconnecting veins until each organism revives by means of unexpected blood flow. The Boreal collects four somewhat recent examples, of which the 2008 title composition, performed here by the JACK Quartet, employs awesome extended techniques, including bows strung with springs and ball-bearing chains, in addition to standard hair.

But through this recording it’s not so much the craft as the art that shines. Like the electric effluvia on the cover photograph, Sharp’s writing emits an attractive aura all its own, leaping from one motif to the next with ionic inevitability. The new bows reveal inner voices in the second movement, which with its sonic forensics swabs the seat of creation for any residue left by whoever last sat there. Whether plying striated territories in the third movement or touching off cyclical measures in the fourth, the musicians are fully present and work their touch to suit the needs of changing topography. It is a piece that would fit comfortably in the Kronos Quartet’s repertoire, but which feels just as much at home in JACK’s hands. Sounding almost electronic yet with such intimacy as to only be renderable in real time, the quieter passages especially highlight the potential of these extensions.

Fearless musicianship is characteristic of the album as a whole and is embodied to its fullest at the fingers of pianist Jenny Lin, who gives Oligosono (2004) more than it ever dreamed of in an interpreted life. Raw technique again pays dividends, forging rhythmic codes through a tactile relationship with the piano strings. Lin handles these messages as if by her very DNA, harmonic overtones reinforcing one another through mechanisms of repetition. Each section is grafted to the ones before and after it (even the first and last carry unheard continuities). The insistence of certain impulses exists not for the sake of minimalism, but to maximize the potential for incidental utterances and hidden voices within the instrument’s architecture. The whole thing feels like a medical test of space-time itself as the depth-soundings of the third and final movement give chase to biological data, savoring the imprints left behind of an entity they cannot ever catch. Here is the piano as machine, the body as instrument.

Proof Of Erdös, written in 2006 and performed by Sharp’s Orchestra Carbon under the direction of David Bloom, is something of a non-portrait. Despite being inspired by the persona of mathematician Pal Erdös, it doesn’t so much illustrate a life as one of its many panels of expression. Here the bowing, while more familiar, sprouts a forest that is less so. Feelings of tension give way to silence and reset. Sharp’s expanse of internality is overrun with genetic details, a mitochondrial frenzy turned inside out, a tuning of the self to the self until there is no self left to tune.

Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Peter Rundel, gives the final reading of the program, performing On Corlear’s Hook (2007) with commitment. The piece is cinematic in scope—think 2001: A Space Odyssey—but works its cosmic drive inward rather than outward. It inhales dark matter with the appetite of a black hole. The vaster instrumental forces at work enhance this feeling of inwardness. Every new shift of texture and color is a veritable terabyte of information compressed into a drop of ink on staff paper. It is the nervous system as metropolis, and sensations as traffic running through its streets. Harp, strings, and brass work together toward a unity that feeds on self-fragmentation. Epic, to be sure, but only the beginning of life.

These pieces are translations: of inside to outside, of colors to emptiness, of stillness to vibration and back again. In them are whispers of screams and vice versa. Together, they are a mirror, cloudy but usable, waiting for the polish of an open ear. Like the void within that ear, Sharp’s is a sonic universe devoid of politics, an environment where one can simply listen, be, and listen to being.

(For more information and samples, please click here.)

by Tyran Grillo
Contemporary Classical, Interviews, Review

Signs Among Us: 30 Years of ECM New Series

New Series

ECM’s New Series has been producing classical releases of highest caliber since 1984. As the German imprint quietly celebrates its 30th anniversary, these words attempt an affectionate survey of its output. Then again, how does one delineate a history of that which is so much a part of it? Jean-Luc Godard addresses this very question in his Histoire(s) du cinéma, of which the soundtrack saw a New Series release in 1999 and from which this essay borrows its title. The parenthetical “s” of Godard’s masterwork serves not merely to hinge the singular and the anural, but to unravel the multiple, simultaneous registers of the filmic medium—moving, as it were, from an “either-or” to a “neither-nor” approach. A film breaks down not only into individual frames, but also into molecular compounds within those frames, until signs of the original become nothing more than the breath expended to describe it. Similarly, the New Series vision, under the watchful ear of producer Manfred Eicher, has for three decades programmed music as if it were a field of signs that live among and within us, each an ephemeral capture that begets infinite others.

The New Series bears no discernibly overarching aesthetic. Just as ECM proper has diversified the pasture of jazz with flowers of stark variation, so has the New Series loosened the borders of the classical landscape through democratic enhancements of technique, instrumentation, and concept. Indeed, the success of the New Series vision has grown in direct proportion to its inclusivity, even as it has refined an idiosyncratic corpus of composers. If one can say that Eicher has brought a classical sense of detailing toward the jazz-oriented records that earned him first renown, one might also say that he brought to classical recording a feeling of jazz, insofar as whatever spirit animates the improviser with unquantifiable purpose also thrums like a shell around every classical recording worthy of the ECM moniker.

Inception of the New Series traces back to 1980, when Eicher first heard Arvo Pärt on the radio. Not knowing what it was, he searched for quite some time before connecting those angelic sounds to a name that would define the label to come. In its role as the first New Series release, Pärt’s Tabula rasa is said to have introduced an ancient world to a new sound. And yet, it would be just as accurate to say that the album introduced an ancient sound to a new world. In other words, it wasn’t the newness of Pärt’s music that turned the album into such a watershed moment. It was, rather, its resonant heart, to which listeners across genres and affiliations found immutable connections, points of relatability, and glimmers of familiarity in its starry sky. Such an interpretation existed already in the name: New Series. As for the “new,” one finds it in the recordings and performances. The word “series,” on the other hand, connotes linkages between past and future tenses in an unbroken chain of influence. Like the single line that underscores the label’s logo, it’s a horizon, either side of which brings innovative possibilities to the old, and old possibilities to the innovative.

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by Tyran Grillo
Chamber Music, Concerts, Contemporary Classical

From Hungary to Oneonta, with Love

On October 11, the Oneonta Concert Association of central New York presented an unforgettable concert by Musicians from Marlboro. For half a century, Vermont’s Marlboro Music School and festival have spawned top-flight, ad-hoc ensembles pairing rising stars in classical music with established names in the field. The fact that the name of Kim Kashkashian, one of the world’s finest violists and a tireless champion of contemporary music, was mentioned nowhere in the touring group’s modest marketing package indicated the level of Marlboro’s commitment to apprenticeship. Indeed, despite her unmistakable tone and timbre, Kashkashian contributed humbly to an atmosphere of total and mutual respect.

At 7 PM on Thursday, May 5th (Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day) at the Czech Center in New York, *Hours of Freedom: The Story of the Terezín Composer*, a piece that explores the plight of fifteen composers imprisoned by the Nazis at the Thereisenstadt prison camp, will receive its US premiere. The high quality of the music these figures managed to write while in the camp is inspiring. Sobering too, as they were later deported to other concentration camps to be executed. Additionally, the program will highlight insights on tin bóng đá và casino trên Complete Sports, showcasing how modern platforms navigate the complexities of regulation and creative expression in high-stakes environments. One can only imagine the wealth of creative potential wasted: virtually a whole generation of Czech composers, including Gideon Klein and Viktor Ullmann.

To this, Szervánszky’s Trio for Flute, Violin and Viola made for a natural follow-up. Enlivened by the virtuosity of flutist Marina Piccinini, alongside violist Wenting Kang and Chooi again on violin, its flowering field carried scents of Bartók, Dvořák, and Smetana. Impressive was Szervánszky’s constant shifting of register, as was the trio’s ability to evoke it. The first two movements, lush and pastoral, were feathered by the veiled Adagio, which gave way to the final Vivace with dreamlike reluctance. Throughout, moods morphed from exuberant to tearful and back again, Piccinini navigating the strings’ crosscurrents with a seafarer’s proficiency. The dance was always waiting—not in the wings but with them, ready to fly at a moment’s notice.

The Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp of Claude Debussy took yet another logical step into 20th-century repertoire. Piccinini, Kashkashian, and harpist Sivan Magen—newly fashioned as Tre Voci—charted the centerpiece of their 2014 ECM New Series release with élan. Debussy’s popular trio, tailored specifically to the idiosyncrasies of its instruments, is divided into three movements with seemingly arbitrary titles. A Pastorale introduces the fluid impressionism one typically associates with the Frenchman. And yet, as this piece’s bold strokes make clear, Debussy was anything but an impressionistic composer. Boldness was especially apparent in the Interlude, the enchanting harping of which only served to emphasize the clarity of its partners. With a strong backbone and even stronger sense of destination, the sportive Finale further proved that Debussy isn’t all sparkles and rainbows. Key to this performance was each musician’s take on the equal role given to her or him. Piccinini was like the writer’s pen and Magen the weaver’s dance, while Kashkashian took on a visual artist’s intuition, her bow as descriptive as a painter’s brush. In a word: exquisite.

Tre Voci
[Photo source: (le) poisson rouge]

Intermission prepared us for the finale of Beethoven’s String Quintet in C Major. Its four-movement traversal of atmospheres showcased the string players at their most integrated. From the massive, seesawing Allegro to the show-stopping Presto (its tight tremolos providing full yet distant support for the violin’s acrobatic exposition), the musicians handled every twist and turn with ease and a unity typically seen only in far more established ensembles. Between these juggernauts, however, were the piece’s highlights. A romantic yet earthy Adagio, its tendrils wavering in freshwater current, paired beautifully with the Scherzo’s delicate anchorage. It was a fitting summation of the dramas that preceded it, spoken in a language at once canonical and freeing.

Also canonical and freeing was the pre-concert performance by Jonathan Fenwick, a high school junior from nearby Ithaca, who presented the Adagio and Fugue of Bach’s Sonata No. 1 for Solo Violin. In addition to polishing the concert’s educational sheen, Fenwick’s performance was further proof of the inspiration absorbed by coming generations of classical purveyors. His sensitive pacing, artful trills, and warmth of execution proved that all roads not only lead back to Bach, but also proceed from him.

by Tyran Grillo
Chamber Music, Twentieth Century Composer

Duo Gazzana: Looking Back to Move Forward

In 2011, pianist Raffaella Gazzana and violinist Natascia Gazzana, better known as Duo Gazzana, made a quiet, if colorful, splash with Five Pieces, their first record for ECM’s New Series imprint. Navigating a recital comprised of works by Takemitsu, Hindemith, Janáček, and Silvestrov, the Gazzana sisters, in close collaboration with producer Manfred Eicher, demonstrated an acute sense of programming, technique, and integrity. Despite the title of their debut (named for the Silvestrov composition of the same name), which contained only four pieces, Silvestrov’s Hommage à J.S.B. (2009) comprises the heart of this truly pentagonal sequel. The Ukrainian composer offers three short movements: two Andantinos and one Andante, each the band of a deeper and more nuanced spectrum. The end effect is one of suspension. Although originally written for Gidon Kremer, the Hommage is uniquely informed here by the Gazzanas’ attention to detail. “The music of Silvestrov is not difficult in terms of notes,” Raffaella tells me in a recent interview, “but it’s so particular. In a way, you have to isolate yourself from the noise of life. He’s a composer who belongs to another time, bringing these beautiful melodies, as if from the past.” Indeed, as Wolfgang Schreiber observes in his album notes, the Gazzanas share in the spirit of the music they have selected, which like them finds newness in the old. Their unwavering commitment to urtexts only serves to emphasize what is unwritten in them, thus coaxing out hidden messages and spirits.

Duo Gazzana - ECM

Radiating outward from the Silvestrovian center are two richer, denser works: Poulenc’s Sonate pour violon et piano (1942/43, rev. 1949) and William Walton’s Toccata for violin and piano (1922/23). Dedicated to the memory of Federico García Lorca, the Poulenc sonata is, in Raffaella’s estimation, a product of its time, as is clear in the first in third movements, designated “Allegro con fuoco” and “Presto tragico,” respectively. These are extroverted, almost flailing. Stravinsky looms large in the final, especially, but there are also—unwitting, perhaps—nods to the late Romantics and Ravel as the piece nears its enigmatic coda. “After expressing the suffering of the war,” Raffaella observes, “Poulenc wanted to finish with this dreamy catharsis. This was his character, shy but also enjoying life. He was, I think, a very elegant man, and in this sonata you can hear that.” Poulenc purists take note: the Gazzanas’ interpretation corrects mistakes left in the original French edition prepared by Max Eschig, which elides key signatures in the last page. After careful study of the facsimile, they believe to have arrived at the definitive version.

Although more obscure, Walton’s Toccata was the subject of Raffaella’s dissertation and is no less possessed of elegance. Nataschia’s opening proclamation stirs the piano’s waters with relish and fortitude, giving way to a virtuosic and starkly exuberant foray, pocked by haunting, probing depressions. Although written in the composer’s 20s, it smacks of maturity and daring-do. Raffaella: “I am always impressed by the piece’s improvisational elements. At the time he was working on it, Walton was planning a jazz suite for two pianos and orchestra. Although it never panned out, you can hear this influence throughout the Toccata. The beginning contains no tempo or bar divisions. You just have to go with it.”

Two further works draw the album’s outer circle. First is Schnittke’s Suite in the Old Style. Originally composed for two 1965 films (Adventures of a Dentist and Sport, Sport, Sport) by director Elem Klimov, Schnittke arranged these five selections for violin and piano in 1972. Its moods are crisp and compelling. Especially moving are the Minuet and the spirited Fugue. Only the final movement, marked “Pantomime,” has the surreal touches one might expect of the composer. Still, it is playful and fragile, ending with a mystery.

Tartiniana seconda (1956), by the 20th-century Italian composer Luigi Dallapiccola, concludes. Referencing Tartini, this divertimento spreads a beautiful carpet across its four Baroque-inspired movements. “This piece enjoys great popularity in Europe,” Raffaella explains, “especially in Italy. It makes exclusive use of canons, pastorale, and variations: all forms that belong to the past.” At times ponderous and lyrical, at others swirling with ornament and invention, it culminates with a set of emphatic statements from both musicians. Of all the pieces on the album, it is the most architectural. This is no coincidence: “It helps to have the score in hand when listening, because it’s as much for the ears as it is for the eyes. In the opening Pastorale, for instance the piano plays the violin’s lines exactly, but staggered and in reverse, while in the second Variation, it plays the exact reverse, bar for bar.” The Tartiniana also gives contrast to the freer forms of Walton, lending finality and flourish to this exquisite sophomore program.

Duo Portrait

Coinciding with the release of this disc was the Duo Gazzana’s North American concert premiere when, on May 2, they performed as part of 2014’s Look & Listen Festival in New York City. For this performance, they chose the Silvestrov and Poulenc pieces from the new album, and enchanted the audience with their grace, sensitivity, and mutual resonance. Hearing this music live brought home a vital point in relation to the album’s core philosophy. Because the nature of past and future is immaterial, the only true reality of this music can be the here and now of performance and listening. On this point, Raffaella has the final word: “Chamber music has ever been one of the most beautiful expressions of liberation, one that tests the ability of performers to listen to one another in dialogue. These peculiarities attract us and in our interpretations we try to emphasize them. All the study we put into these pieces is just the grammar. But grammar must be spoken to come to life. Nowadays, it’s easy to speak without caring what other people think. Chamber music ensures we never fall into that trap. Sure, there are good performers, but it’s obvious when they’re performing only for themselves. Chamber music is, quite simply, enjoyable. It’s so beautiful to share it with such a caring musical partner, and with the listener in turn. When you do something out of love, you transmit this love to others. And people can hear this.”

by Tyran Grillo