CD Review

CD Review, Contemporary Classical, Just Intonation, Los Angeles

Brightwork Ensemble – My Dancing Sweetheart

Microfest Records has released My Dancing Sweetheart, a new album that features music by composers Ben Johnston, Bill Alves and Helmut Oehring. The performers are all first-rate Los Angeles musicians and include Stacey Fraser, vocals, Aron Kallay, keyboards, Shalini Vijavan, violin and Nick Terry, percussion. Subtitled “Just Songs”, My Dancing Sweetheart is an accessible and engaging introduction to the world of Just Intonation and contemporary tonal palettes.

Just Intonation is a tuning system that is based on optimizing the frequency ratios between the notes in the scale. Our conventional 12 Tone Equal Temperament tuning, by contrast, assigns specific frequencies to each note, allowing fixed pitch instruments to play in any key and transpose music easily. This simplifies harmony and chord progressions and has been the standard tuning system for western music since the mid-19th century. By fixing the frequency of notes, however, the Equal Temperament system compromises somewhat the intervals between the notes in the scale. Just Intonation tuning addresses this but requires the re-tuning of the instruments to a specific fundamental frequency. The advantage lies in that the resulting scale tones are more closely related harmonically and bring out the purity and consonance of the intervals.

American composer Harry Partch (1901-1974) was an early champion of Just Intonation and he built a number of experimental instruments to perform his works. Other composers followed during the 20th century, including Lou Harrison, Ben Johnston, Pauline Oliveros and James Tenney. Experimentation has been a consistent feature of the Los Angeles new music scene in our 21st Century, and the performers on this album have many years of concert experience playing in alternate tuning systems.

My Dancing Sweetheart is subtitled “Just Songs” and so it is appropriate that the first two works on the album, Calamity Jane and Ma Mie Qui Danse were composed by tuning pioneer Ben Johnston. Kyle Gann, composer and student of Johnston, has stated that: “Not all musicians realize it, but Ben Johnston, was a major figure in the Midwestern new music world in the 1970s and ‘80s, comparable to John Cage on the East Coast or Lou Harrison on the West. He looms even larger in the world of microtonal music, for his string quartets, sonatas for retuned keyboard, and other works are among the most compelling works ever written in alternate tunings.”

Composed in 1989, Calamity Jane is based on a series of fictional letters by the notorious wild west character to her daughter. These are a series of short pieces – all less than three minutes – sung by soprano Stacey Fraser, accompanied by Aron Kallay, Shalini Vijavan and Nick Terry. What does alternate tuning bring to Johnston’s music? As John Schneider explains in his eloquent liner notes: “The addition of these new notes provides the composers with an extraordinary new palette of melody and harmony, supported by a retuned piano, and in Calamity Jane, an equally facile violin.”


Johnston, however, does not overwhelm the listener with the unorthodox. Like Harry Partch before him, whose music was inspired by a lighthearted look at depression-era life on the road, Johnston begins Calamity Jane with something familiar: a 39 second soprano solo in a quiet, confessional style. “No. 1 Freely, Like Speech” is a short letter to Janey, Calamity Jane’s young daughter, that lovingly describes her family resemblance: “I like this picture of you: your eyes and forehead are like your father, lower jaw, mouth and hair like me.”. Ms. Fraser’s poignantly expressive vocals here are approachable and compelling, establishing an intimate human connection that carries through the entire work.

More letters follow describing various episodes, and these can be energetic, playful or solemn. “No.2 In Motion with a beat”, is an action filled letter to Janey explaining how Calamity met her father, Wild Bill Hickok, during a shootout near Abilene, Kansas. The stirring vocals are augmented by piano, percussion and violin, establishing an undercurrent of tension and movement. The dynamic balance of the ensemble is ideal; the sound engineering by Scott Fraser is up to his usual high standards. The vocals throughout are critical and are allowed to dominate.

“No. 4 Rather Slowly, but moving forward”, is just that, with the accompaniment in alternate tuning, There is a lovely violin line along with a programmable keyboard that nicely matches the mood for this piece. Ms. Fraser’s vocals have strength in every register and make for a solid exposition of the complicated narrative. “No. 5 Lively but not too fast” has a country music flavor, and describes a dust up in the Deadwood saloon between Calamity Jane and some judgmental local women. A nice beat and a wandering violin line by Ms. Vijavan frame the exuberant vocals.

“No. 6 Waltz-like” is a bit more matter-of-fact and describes the tricks and stunts Calamity performs as part of Bill Cody’s Wild West Show. This piece features a solid beat in the accompaniment in a lively tempo along with agile singing by Fraser.

“No. 7 Slowly” is Calamity Jane slowly singing her recipe for a cake, with most of the lyrics consisting of a simple list of ingredients. The vocal pitch rises with each item listed until Ms. Fraser is singing in a very high register, but she never loses power or control on the ascent. The movement concludes with “This cake is unexcelled and will keep good to the last crumb 20 years.” The final movement is “No. 8 Freely, like Speech” and closes out the diary of letters by Calamity Jane to her daughter. This bookends the first movement with a vocal solo lamenting Calamity’s coming blindness in old age. Sweetly and expressively sung, this is introspective and especially poignant.

Calamity Jane has all the elements of an appealing story: drama, excitement and intrigue populated by likable and colorful characters. The use of alternate tuning never seems to intrude on the narrative, and compliments what is a fine ensemble piece, artfully performed. The dominance of the vocals forge a special human connection with the listener, masterfully sung by Stacey Fraser. Calamity Jane nicely threads the needle between what a listening audience will enjoy and what they might learn about contemporary alternate tuning.

The second Ben Johnston work on the album is Ma Mie Qui Danse, written in 1991. For inspiration, Johnston travels to the opposite end of the personality spectrum, away from the irrepressible Calamity Jane, reaching out instead to adorable innocence. The text of Ma Mie Qui Danse is taken from audio recordings of Johnston’s three year-old granddaughter who, as children often do, sang her own improvised poetry. Building on this, Johnston also included some appropriate selections from the works of Emily Dickenson. This piece is performed as a duo with soprano Stacey Fraser and Aron Kallay on the keyboard.

“No 1. Sprightly” is the first movement, and introduces the granddaughter. A bouncy piano accompaniment provides the launching pad for a number of short, jumpy phrases in the vocals. The singing is agile and angular, full of the starts and stops of toddler enthusiasm, as can be seen from this fragment of the text:

“cause we go a seek and we go very boy
oh, did you remember him’
he was tamer me
and he had and he greet me
for six hundred money
and dream
Mister dream
how he gave me Santa”

Other movements based on the Emily Dickenson texts are more reserved, as with movement “IV. Slow and Tranquil”, The singing here is both forthright and mature, and in a more conventional style.

“A bird is of all beings
The likes to the dawn.
An easy breeze does put afloat
The general heavens upon.”

As the movements proceed, the contrast between the broadly expressive Dickenson and the enthusiastic outbursts of youth constantly refresh the ear, enhancing the feelings expressed by each. The accompaniment and the alternate tuning compliment the emotional force of the singing. The last movement, powerfully sung with a spare accompaniment, sums up the perspective of Ma Mie Qui Danse:

“The child’s faith is new
Whole – like his principle
Wide
Like the sunrise
On fresh eyes
Never had a doubt
Laughs at scruple,
Believes all sham but Paradise!”

Ma Mie Qui Danse is a delightful musical pairing of youthful exuberance and mature reflection.

Bill Alves has contributed two works to the album, Time Resonances (2012) and A Sonatina (2016). These are both single-movement pieces of about 7 minutes each. Alves is a composer and educator, as well as the co-author of a scholarly biography of Lou Harrison. He is co-director of Microfest, the annual festival in Los Angeles dedicated to microtonal music.

As Alves explains in the liner notes, Time Resonances is “…a technological elaboration of a medieval musical genre known as a ‘mensuration canon,’ a piece in which the melody is combined with itself but at a different speed.” Stacey Fraser performs all the parts separately, and these are then combined electronically at different lengths but with no change in pitch. Time Resonances opens with gentle bell tones in various registers. Sustained vocals enter, creating lovely chords that mix well with the bell tones. There are no lyrics in this, just abstract ahhhs and ohhhs. The tempo is moderate with independent vocal lines soaring and gliding in and around each other. The feeling is gently mystical with a sense of standing outside of time. The dynamics rise and fall but only moderately, producing graceful tides of sound. Interesting harmonies develop and subside, slightly dissonant at times. The singing is disciplined and the electronic processing precise. Time Resonances masterfully combines the abstract with the human voice to evoke in the listener a glimpse of the infinite.

The second Alves piece, A Sonatina, draws its inspiration from the poetry of Gertrude Stein. Alves writes in the liner notes about Ms. Stein: “At times, she went even further, making language into a fascinating abstraction, which has long appealed to me as a composer, as has her musical perspective of language, her use of repetition, and the seeming simplicity of her supposed ‘difficult’ works.” All these elements can be found in A Sonatina, performed by Stacey Fraser, Aron Kallay and vocalist Donna Walker.

The piece begins with a string of high piano notes in a fast repeating phrase, simple at first but slowly gaining more structure and complexity. The vocals enter, first spoken by Donna Walker and then sung by Fraser as a sustained melody. The active piano accompaniment by Aron Kallay is controlled and decisive, contrasting nicely with the expressive singing. About midway through the piece, solitary deep notes from the piano add a welcome foundational counterpoint to the continuing melody. A Sonatina is beautifully reflective, and artfully marries the text of Getrude Stein to some really lovely music.

The final work of the album is Die Stille Stürtzt (2015) by German composer Helumt Oehring. This work is sung solo by Ms. Fraser. Die Stille Stürtzt translates in English as The Silence Falls, and is inspired by the poetry of Hungarian exile writer Ágota Kristof. The liner notes explain that the text is “…the search for identity in an unfeeling world.”

The singing is slow and expressive, residing mostly in the lower soprano registers. The sound is lush and lovely, with the soloist easily carrying the entire piece. Sung in German, the language perfectly compliments the sensitivity of the text. The feeling is intimate and slightly wistful:

“The silence tumbles down in the trees, the pale forest
Crooked to the earth and your white face
tired, somewhere you are thinking of me, the one,
who loved your eyes closing from the inside.”

Die Stille Stürtzt manages to bond German and Hungarian sensibilities into a solemn musical formulation that is immediately understood in any language.

The ‘Just Songs’ of My Dancing Sweetheart offer an accessible connection to the experimental past, and brings a new appreciation for Just Intonation and other alternate tuning systems that stand at the cutting edge of contemporary music.

My Dancing Sweetheart is available on Spotify. The album was produced by Aron Kallay and includes a 55 page file that includes the track listing of the album, liner notes, the complete texts for all the pieces and a wealth of background information on the composers and the performers.

by Paul Muller
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, Los Angeles, Organ

Peter Garland – Plain Songs

Cold Blue Music has announced the release of Plain Songs: “Love Comes Quietly”:(after Robert Creeley), a new CD album by composer Peter Garland. As the title explains, Plain Songs consists of seven movements of pipe organ music inspired by the poetry of Robert Creeley. The album artfully blends the simple plainsong traditions of the early church with the later development of the pipe organ. Peter Garland is quoted in the liner notes: “I wanted to write an organ piece that would be intimate and mostly quiet, emphasizing the nature of the organ as a wind instrument capable of long, sustaining tones. I wanted the musical textures to be open and transparent.” Organist Carson Cooman commissioned this work and here performs Plain Songs, including the selection of stops that create the textural and timbral context for each movement.

The historical form of plainsong is the chanted liturgy of the early Western Church and by the ninth century was the prevailing form of music sung in the Latin Mass. It is monophonic, unmetered and typically unaccompanied, yet the emotional force of plainsong chant remains undiminished over the centuries. The later development of the pipe organ adds the possibilities of harmony, color and nuance to church music. From venerable musical materials, Garland has brilliantly created a powerful work that quiets the restless soul.

“Movement 1”, the first track of the album, immediately demonstrates how Garland has artfully mixed the historical traditions of plainsong and pipe organ. The piece opens with a range of soft, flute tones, starting deep in the bass register and rising upwards into the treble. The tempo is deliberate and the notes are generally sustained, creating an engaging series of slowly changing harmonies. The feeling is introspective and reserved; there is none of the fancy keyboard technique from, say, the Baroque. “Movement 1” could be a comforting prelude to a memorial service. In much of Plain Songs the pipe organ is acting as a synthesizer with the graceful unfolding of beautiful chords that vary in timbre and color.

“Movement 2” has a sunny feel with the notes heard primarily in the higher registers. The chords are thinner and the sounds are sharper, suggesting a sense of purpose. There is more boldness in the stop selection. Again, there are no fast tempos or complex technique; this music moves within a more restrained perspective. “Movement 3 – Variations on ‘Lament on the Death of Charlemagne” has an early medieval feeling. There is more movement in the notes and the suggestion of a warm melody in the middle registers. A soaring, repeating phrase breaks out above – like an arcing ray of light blazing across the moving melody below. A suitable tribute to the first Holy Roman Emperor.

The other tracks follow a similar pattern – moderate tempo, solid chords and engaging timbral variations. “Movement 4” brings a light, refreshing feel with sharp, bright chords in the middle registers. Darker notes below make for a good contrast but overall there is a sense of confidence and hope. Towards the middle of this movement the entry of flute stop tones thins the texture while adding new forward energy. A return to the opening timbral mix completes the piece with a satisfying structural closure. “Movement 5 – The Maze of Longing” features a procession of high, bell-like tones with an independent string of lower notes in gentle counterpoint below. The result is both comforting and hopeful. “Movement 6” begins with a series of broadly rising arpeggios that evoke the image of summer flowers reaching to the sun. The arpeggios then reverse direction, falling in pitch to create a more reserved and introspective feeling. The moderate tempo and rhythms propel the piece resolutely forward, but without haste or stridency.

“Movement 7 “Stone./ like stillness” completes the album with solid chords forming a declarative melody. There is a noble feeling to this and a sense of royal presence. At times the sounds even suggest a bright fanfare. Strong notes in the lower registers add a foundation of gravitas while flute tones in the upper registers add to the regal feeling. The last half of this movement has a very big sound, filling the ear with powerful, full chords. There is a palpable sense of the majestic, even as the piece winds down to softer sustained tones at the finish.

In Plain Songs, Peter Garland has brilliantly combined the simplicity of plainsong with the harmonic and timbral possibilities inherent in the pipe organ. Often the most compelling music is the result of simple musical materials carefully crafted to evoke deep emotion. The works of Pauline Oliveros come to mind, as do many others. We tend to think of plainsong as being limited by the early medieval imagination and that subsequent historical developments have ‘improved’ the art. Plain Songs offers a compelling counter to this view. Too often the clutter created by the ever increasing complexity of performance obscures the profound message in the underlying music. In Plain Songs, Peter Garland has given us a more direct musical connection to the emotional support we are longing for in this uncertain age.

Plain Songs: “Love Comes Quietly”:(after Robert Creeley), is available directly from Cold Blue Music and Bandcamp, as well as numerous CD retailers.



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

Dalit Warshaw on BMOP (CD Review)

Dalit Warshaw

Sirens

Carolina Eyck, theremin

Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Gil Rose, conductor

 

Dalit Warshaw (b. 1974) is a multi-threat artist. As a composer and pianist, she has created a distinguished career. Her first orchestra piece was commissioned when she was eight years old, and this prodigious distinction has been followed by a body of work that encompasses music for orchestra, chamber ensembles, vocalists, choruses, and Letters of Mademoiselle (2018), a staged song cycle for the talented soprano Nancy Allen Lundy. 

 

The theremin has become an important part of her work. Warshaw has performed the instrument in high profile settings, including appearances with the New York Philharmonic. Sirens is a recording of her theremin concerto and two other orchestral pieces, performed by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, conducted by Gil Rose. 

 

Responses (2016) is a triptych that reflects upon three of Brahms’s Intermezzos, piano repertoire that Warshaw has studied. Originally composed for solo piano and performed by Warshaw, it has been transformed into a work for large forces that sounds idiomatic in its instrumental writing. Indeed, Warshaw’s orchestration deftly captures both the sehnsucht of romanticism and her own aesthetic, which encompasses both neo-classical and mainstream contemporary classical elements. While the pieces themselves are earnestly serious (as was Brahms in his later years), one can have a bit of fun with the following listening game: without hunting down program notes, see if you can figure out from which intermezzo each movement takes its inspiration. 

 

Camille’s Dance (2000) is named after visual artist Camille Claudel, whose sculptures La Valse and La Fortune grace the cover and interior of the BMOP recording’s booklet. It is a stirring piece, rife with dissonant harmonies and muscular gestures that epitomize the striking characters depicted in Claudel’s sculptures, as well as her fraught relationship with Auguste Rodin. 

 

The soloist for Sirens is the thereminist Carolina Eyck. It is a three movement work that is inspired by Clara Rockmore and, of course, by the singing duo of temptresses found in Homer’s Odyssey, seen through the vantage point of Franz Kafka’s parable “The Silence of the Sirens.” The theremin was taken seriously as an instrument in part because of Rockmore’s advocacy. Eyck has explored an expansion of its capabilities with the Etherwave Pro instrument, which has an extended bass range. She also uses octave pedals to further extend the theremin’s compass. 

 

Rockmore’s first instrument was the violin, and her theremin performances reflected this; several of the pieces in her repertoire were transcriptions of violin repertoire. Thus, the opening movement of Sirens is titled “Clara’s Violin,” which includes thematic material based on her life story and also themes that are ciphers of names: Clara, Leon Theremin, her partner and the inventor of the eponymous instrument, and the KGB, whose agents hounded and even kidnapped Theremin. One needn’t know any of this to appreciate the abundant vitality and craft of the movement. Warshaw’s own experience as a thereminist and her close collaboration with Eyck have yielded a versatile and challenging solo part that belies the notion of the instrument as being limited to special effects and transcriptions. 

 

The second movement uses the Kafka story as a touchstone, with a stirring duo between theremin and piano that reminds us of the two-against-one scenario that Odysseus endured.  The third movement is a wild ride with glissandos galore, a theremin specialty, set alongside a fugue that once again employs ciphers of names as its thematic material: “Theremin” as its subject, with “Clara” and “Dalit” used as two countersubjects. The combination of these two elements shows Eyck and her bespoke electronics to best advantage. It also highlights the extraordinary facility of BMOP’s musicians. Careful preparation and the dynamic leadership of Rose are clear in the performances of all three of the programmed pieces, but the jubilation with which the concerto is rendered makes it a strong finale to a thoroughly engaging recording. Recommended. 

 

-Christian Carey

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Chamber Music, Contemporary Classical

Mara Gibson – Unseen World

Unseen World is a new release by composer Mara Gibson on the Mark Masters record label. The album consists of five works composed between 2020 and 2024 that are inspired by vivid visual art that is both expressive and complex. Various instrumental ensembles are employed including a piano and cello duet, a brass quintet, trumpet duet, woodwind duet and a large chamber orchestra. The meticulous writing present in the scores, the outstanding technique of the musicians and remarkable efforts by the soloists make Unseen World an impressive realization of contemporary musical expression.

The first piece on the album is Swansongs (2022). This is a three movement work that features Albina Khaliapova at the piano and Eduard Teregulov on cello. The piece is inspired by Swedish artist Hilma af Klint (1862-1944), and was commissioned by the performers.

“Hilma’s Symmetry (and Chaos)”, the first movement, opens with a deliberate series of strong and dissonant piano chords that rise successively in pitch. This soon changes to a rapid, running line in the piano accompanied by long sustained tones in the cello underneath. A sense of anxiety builds as the lines weave in and around each other. The cello adds to the tension with sharp pizzicato phrases and bright arco passages. About two thirds through, there is a sudden slowdown, with a mournful cello solo accompanied by single notes from deep in the piano. The movement ends with a solitary low note in the lowest piano register. The piece is just three and a half minutes long and the liner notes suggest that this movement is reminiscent of the “…expressionistic paintings of the beginning of the 20th century.” A very apt description.

“Hildegard”, the second movement, opens with a low growl in the cello followed by a quickly running stream of piano notes in the upper registers. Right from the beginning there is a sense of heightened tension. The cello soon joins in with faster gestures and the lines again weave in and around each other, alternating between conflict and cohesion. The low tones from the cello contrast nicely with the higher moving notes in the piano. About midway, the piano and cello are heard in the same middle/low register and this replaces the tension with a feeling of chaos and confusion. The tempo slows from its frenetic pace, and quietly subdued notes are heard from the piano at the finish. The fast tempo, changing dynamics and complex texture of this movement highlight the seasoned technique that the two musicians have brought to this piece.

The final movement, “Lock and Key”, begins in a completely different direction with soft piano notes. A mournful, sustained tone is heard high in the cello, bringing a painful feel to this. The cello continues in its slow, expressive line with the piano grimly accompanying underneath. The two performers of this piece write in the liner notes: “Hypnotizing harmonies of the movement force the listeners and performers to detach from the fast-paced reality and focus on their inner world.” “Lock and Key” is a satisfying contrast to the first two movements and provides a fittingly solemn ending to Swansongs.


Next is Fight|Flight, (2020), written in close collaboration with the Atlantic Brass Quintet, who premiered the piece in 2022. The piece was inspired by both the human responses to danger and the making of honey by bees. A strong buzzing sound is heard at the opening, produced by the brass players using only their mouthpieces. This establishes the unmistakable context of frenetic flight. Warm brassy tones are soon heard, as if we are in the presence of a large swarm of bees. A sharp and loud trumpet call enters, announcing the more militant ‘fight’ motif. Soon all the brass players are exchanging sharp phrases back and forth, as if sparring. The various horn lines soon dissemble into a general melee. The technique and dynamic interplay in this section is impressive and the result sounds like more than just five players. The congenial mouthpiece buzzing returns in the last minute of the piece, as it slowly fades to its finish. Flight Fight is an inventive combination of the diverse sounds that can be conjured from a single brass quintet.

Pranayama (2021), is a woodwind duet performed by Melody Wan, flute and Thomas Kim on clarinet. The inspiration for this piece comes from yoga breathing practice and the painting “Ringing Lung”, by Anne Austin Pearce. Low, slow clarinet tones open the piece suggesting intentional patterns of breathing. The flute joins in and the flowing tones weave their way through various registers and colors. There is a meditative feel to this with just the slightest tinge of sadness. A rapid trill in the flute, then followed by the clarinet, add some energy and optimism along with loud and quick runs up and down a series of scales. The dynamics rise and fall suggesting the movement of air in breathing. As the piece proceeds, the occasional dissonance and pitch bending add intensity to the textures, matching the fluidity of the visual art. The piece ends as quietly as it started. With its many moods and nuances, Pranayama rests squarely on the virtuosity of the performers, and they do not disappoint.

Snowball (2024), was inspired by a Susan B. Anthony quote: “The older I get, the greater power I seem to have to have the world. I am like a snowball – the further I am rolled, the more I gain.” This piece is for two trumpets, performed by Jena and Matthew Vangjel who recorded this piece just a week before the birth of their second child.

Snowball opens with a muted solo trumpet repeating a line of solid, declarative notes. The second trumpet enters, similarly muted and in the same register with a lovely harmonic interleaving of the two parts. The mute on one trumpet is then changed and this provides a striking contrast in timbre. As the piece proceeds, the mutes are alternately changed – or removed – producing an ever-changing series of surfaces and colors. The tempo and rhythms are steady and direct, but with a just enough complexity to engage the ear. Towards the finish, the dynamic levels increase, bringing out the familiar forward boldness inherent in two solo trumpets. Snowball artfully reveals many surprising sonic possibilities, all lurking in the conventional trumpet.

Escher Keys (2021) is the most ambitious work of the album, a full blown bassoon concerto in three movements with a duration of 26 minutes. The soloist is Darrel Hale and the 39 piece chamber orchestra is conducted by Scott Terrell. Lithographs and a woodcut by the artist MC Escher provided Gibson with the visual inspiration for this piece and the result is a rich mixture of intense abstraction and powerful expression. As the liner notes explain: “Each movement juxtaposes traditional and non-traditional instrumental relationships between Hale interjecting his statements and the orchestra responding with atmospheric tessellations…”

“Ascending and Descending”, the first movement, opens with solemn, sustained tones in the strings with a quiet drum beat underneath. The bassoon enters in the same fashion and immediately rises to the top of the texture. Woodwinds and the brass join in with bold notes of dissonance accompanied by tense rhythms in the strings and anxious tones from the bassoon. Rapid runs by the soloist and short repeating phrases in the orchestra add to the tension. About midway, the tempo slows and the sustained tones briefly return with the bassoon leading the way. An ascending run of pitches in the winds and brass add energy, followed by a lonely bassoon solo that brings an isolated and melancholy feel. The bassoon playing is very expressive here and the solo continues with slowly descending notes to quiet conclusion. A final deep tone is heard in the string bass at the finish.

Movement two is “Three Worlds” and this begins with solitary and tentative growls from the bassoon, slow and sustained at first, but escalating into bouncy and rapid rhythms. Now the bassoon is heard in a higher register, accompanied by the strings and an oboe trading short, snappy phrases. More woodwinds join in and the various lines alternately separate, then join in tutti chords. There is a wonderful mix of cascading and descending pitches always on the move, playfully chasing and swirling around each other. Towards the finish, a solemn bassoon solo produces a more introspective feeling and the piece ends quietly on a low tone. “Three Worlds” exhibits excellent musicianship and coordination between the soloist, especially given the many complex responses summoned from the orchestra.

The concluding movement for Escher Keys is “Day and Night” and “Waterfall”. There is a subtle, rural feel to this, as the liner notes explain: “Beginning in the sky of the first image, the listener moves back and forth, side to side.” The movement opens with high, sustained flute tones that establish an air of mystery. The solo bassoon enters with a moving line – at first with a curious feel, then with bolder declamatory passages. The rapid notes could suggest the activity of birds in a field. Long, flowing orchestral passages are soon heard underneath, suggesting a pastoral river scene. This becomes progressively more complex as the various orchestral sections follow with independent lines that weave in and around the soloist.

After a brief silence there are low, growling tones by the solo bassoon that suggest a bit of sadness and frustration. Warm string tones enter as the bassoon and a solo violin exchange phrases, building tension. A breathy sound is heard from the bassoon, followed by a more conventional, solitary notes. Concerto for Orchestra springs to mind; “Day and Night” delivers a level of atmospheric mystery similar to the Bartok classic.

Strings enter with ascending figures comprised of blurred pitches. Loud percussion and the bassoon are heard in the foreground – more anxious now. The concerto concludes with a long sustained tone in the bassoon and a high, questioning violin note. Escher Keys is abstract music inspired by abstract art. The vivid expression heard in the ear matches the intensity of the optical experience of the eye. The fidelity of the music to the visual is result of Mara Gibson’s masterful score, the precise playing in the orchestra and the virtuosity of soloist Darrel Hale.

Unseen World is available as a digital download or physical CD from Mark Custom.

by Paul Muller
CD Review, File Under?, Pop

Swimming Bell’s Early Summer Serenade

Swimming Bell

Somnia EP

Perpetual Doom

 

Summers have been getting progressively hotter in much of the world. Here in the Northeast United States, we have had a mild Spring, but anticipate that summer will be a scorcher. Happily, singer/songwriter Katie Schottland ‘s project Swimming Bell has returned to serenade the season.  

 

Swimming Bell’s latest EP, Somnia (Perpetual Doom, 2025) adopts a summery vibe. “95 at Night” both embraces the heat with fevered blur and seeks to assuage it with soothing vocals, pedal steel, and an undulating beat. The end of a summer romance could find little better to accompany burgeoning tears than the ballad “I’m Always Down,” with honeyed vocal harmonies and the twang of loping surf guitar. “Found it at the Bottom of the Ocean” has a seaside ambience of gentle singing, guitar glissandos, and supple rhythm courtesy of bongo drums. The closer, “Mushrooms in July,” seems self-explanatory. 

 

Somnia concludes after sixteen minutes, and many listeners will want more. Swimming Bell has recorded two full length albums, Charlie (Adventure Club/Permanent, 2024) and Wild Sight (Adventure Club, 2019), both well worth seeking out. 

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Concert review, File Under?, Minimalism

Simone Dinnerstein and Baroklyn Perform Glass at Merkin Hall

Simone Dinnerstein and Baroklyn Perform Glass at Merkin Hall

Photo by Lisa Marie-Mazzucco.

 

Kaufman Music Center

Piano Dialogues

Simone Dinnerstein with Baroklyn

May 12, 2025

Published on Sequenza 21

 

NEW YORK – Last Monday, the pianist Simone Dinnerstein brought her Baroklyn project to Kaufman Music Center’s Merkin Hall to perform an all Philip Glass program. Baroklyn is a string ensemble, augmented at the concert by harp and celesta, assembled by Dinnerstein from musician friends with an eye towards a mostly, but not exclusively, female group. 

 

The concert opener was The Hours Suite, excerpted from the film score and arranged by Michael Riesman, a longtime musical director for Philip Glass. Unlike many film score segments, which are brief vignettes, the three movements here are substantial, evocative of the film but transcending it to morph into a symphonic triptych. Conducting from the piano, Dinnerstein’s gestures were clear, and Baroklyn’s musicians were responsive and performed in a well-coordinated fashion, even when in the midst of myriad metric shifts at high speed. The group’s keen intonation afforded the harmonies a lustrous quality.

 

Mad Rush is one of the most abundantly virtuosic of Glass’s piano pieces, and it has become a showcase for Dinnerstein’s superlative chops. The piece contains furious fast runs, with a concomitant sense of blissful austerity in the slower passages. Dinnerstein inhabited both demeanors authoritatively.  

 

The concert concluded with Tirol Concerto, the composer’s first piano concerto. Prior to the performance, I had some misgivings about whether Baroklyn’s lithe approach had the requisite heft for the piece. However, I was won over by the powerful performance they mounted, right-sized for Merkin Hall but resolute and often jubilant. An interpretive challenge in the piece is the shaping of its dramatic arc. The first movement begins with a slow introduction and then picks up steam, and the finale is a brisk moto perpetuo, both straightforward in design. It is the central movement, a sprawling and content-filled quarter of an hour, that can all too easily imbalance the proceedings. Not so here, where the interpretation sliced it into a series of tableaux that would fit right in as passages for a Glass opera. 

 

On May 30th, Baroklyn will release Complicité, a recording of J.S. Bach for the Supertrain imprint. They are joined by guest artists Peggy Pearson, who plays oboe d’amore, and mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano. Dinnerstein’s graceful arrangements of Bach arias for piano and ensemble are adroit tropes on cantata movements. The Keyboard Concerto in E major is an excellent vehicle for Dinnerstein, who plays it in period-informed fashion while suiting her touch and tempos to the modern grand. Johnson Cano’s mezzo-soprano voice is the centerpiece of Cantata 170, which is presented in full. She sings with rich tone and judicious use of vibrato, sumptuously phrasing long legato lines and dexterously performing melismatic passages. In the Air, composer Philip Lasser’s reworking of Bach’s Air on a G-string, is replete with tender ornamentations, and a pleasant valediction. Complicité is a recital disc that, even in arrangements and on modern instruments, shows Dinnerstein and Baroklyn to be gifted advocates for Bach.

 

-Christian Carey



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

Quatuor Diotima Plays Boulez (CD Review)

Pierre Boulez – Livre pour quatuor

Quatuor Diotima

Pentatone Record CD/download

 

The centenary of Pierre Boulez’s birth has been celebrated with concerts, books and recordings. The Diotima Quartet’s Pentatone CD of Livre pour quatuor (1948-1949, 2017) is a distinctive offering in that it includes a previously unperformed version of the piece. With permission and supervision of Boulez, the composer Philippe Manoury assisted in completing the fourth movement for Diotima. Thus, this is the first complete recording of Livre pour quatuor. At nearly an hour long, it is one of the largest of Boulez’s early compositions.

 

Pizzicato and glissando are liberally applied in discrete sections, as are aggressive angular attacks in others. All of these can be traced back to the Second Viennese School. Often, there is a particularly Webernian pointillism at work, but elsewhere there are explosive gestures and effusive passages that recall Schoenberg and Berg. The use of complex rhythms likely was in part learned from Messiaen. Influences are distinctive, but so is the burgeoning individuality of Boulez’s compositional aesthetic. 

 

To Manoury’s credit, the fourth movement is consistent with the rest of the work. At twelve minutes in duration, it is the longest movement, with a number of passages that recall music from previous sections. It serves as a summary of the quartet’s materials and climax of its dramatic arc. 

 

Quatuor Diotima plays with extraordinary attention to the details of the score. At the same time, they also provide a rendition of the piece that is emotive and expressive, avoiding the mechanics one sometimes hears in performances of post-tonal works. 

 

It seems hard to countenance, but Livre pour quatuor was first drafted when Boulez was only twenty-four. A highly personal and evocative piece, built with an organicism that allows it to hold, even command, interest for an entire hour, it is a great work from the early postwar avant-garde. 

 

-Christian Carey



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

Michael Tippett – New Year (CD Review)

Michael Tippett 

New Year

Rhian Lois soprano

Ross Ramgobin baritone

Susan Bickley mezzo-soprano

Roland Wood baritone

Robert Murray tenor

Rachel Nicholls soprano

Alan Oke tenor

BBC Singers

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Martyn Brabbins, conductor

NMC Recordings

 

Michael Tippett’s final opera, New Year (1988) has finally been recorded. The work was produced in Houston in 1989 and Glyndebourne in 1990 and then fell out of the repertoire. The Birmingham Opera performed it last year, and the NMC double-CD recording is of a 2024 live semi-staged production by the BBC Scottish Symphony, conducted by Martyn Brabbins. 

 

New Year’s reemergence is propitious in timing. Combining elements of sci-fi, time travel, and fairy tales, it seems readily approachable for the streaming generation, with shows like Stranger Things, Time Bandits, and Severance providing a suitable backdrop. The opera also takes on social issues that remain important today, such as urban decline, poverty, racism, and Tippett’s ubiquitous concern for pacifism. However, the vernacular elements are the least successful of the piece, and the Jamaican accent adopted by one of the characters, Donny, played by baritone Ross Ramgobin, is cringeworthy today, and perhaps was back in the eighties too. 

 

Even by the composer’s standards, New Year is abundantly eclectic. Electric guitars, a large percussion section, and electronics combine with a traditional orchestra. Pop styles from the late eighties, notably rap and reggae, are enfolded in an otherwise modernist score with complexly chromatic parts for both soloists and chorus. The narrative itself is circuitous, with one part featuring a time traveling spaceship and the other a dystopian urban landscape. Thus, the challenges, never mind the costs, for any production are substantial.

 

Brabbins and company surmount most of them in a dedicated and well-prepared performance. The soloists are excellent, in particular soprano Rhian Lois, who plays the principal character Jo Ann, and Robert Murray, who plays the time traveller Pelegrin, both vibrant singers with considerable charisma to match their voices. Susan Bickley, the foster-mother to Jo Ann and Donny, is a warm presence, perplexed by their challenging behavior, agoraphobia for the former and misbehavior for the latter, and yet as nurturing as she can manage. The other time travellers, Merlin, played by baritone Roland Wood, and Regan, played by soprano Rachell Nicholls, provide excellent characterizations of their roles. Tenor Alan Oake as the Voice, the presenter of the action, is an authoritative presence. 

 

New Year is a multifarious and, in places, problematic piece. But one can scarcely imagine a better effort to present it to best advantage than this recording.

 

-Christian Carey



by Christian Carey
CD Review, Composers, File Under?

Satie (CD Review)

Satie

Alain Planès, Pleyel piano (1928)

François Pinel, piano duets, Marc Mauillon, baritone

Harmonia Mundi

 

In 2025, substantial attention is being paid to the 150th anniversary of Maurice Ravel’s birth. Pianist Alain Planès has instead decided to celebrate the centenary of Erik Satie’s passing with a recording of music from the various stylistic periods of the eclectic composer’s oeuvre. Most of the music are works originally for piano and transcriptions, but there is a set of four-hands pieces and another of songs. 

 

At age seventy-seven, Planès has maintained his technique and interpretive skill, accommodating the varying demeanors – lyrical, enigmatic, bumptious, and virtuosic – of Satie’s music. Historically informed performance has extended into the twentieth century, and the pianist observes this by using a 1928 Pleyel, a piano similar to those Satie would have played upon. 

 

There are pieces that recall Satie’s work in cafes and theaters, such as the Valse-ballet, which opens the recording. Even in idiomatic genre pieces, there is a quirkiness to the dynamics and phrasing. Two song transcriptions, La Diva de L’Empire, and Satie’s “hit tune” Je te Veux, close the recording in a similarly light-hearted vein. The Gymnopedies and Gnossiennes, some of the composer’s well known and best-loved works, figure prominently in the program. Planès plays them with delicacy and small touches of rubato and dynamic inflections, exactly where the score indicates these fluctuations in phrasing. 

 

Avant-dernières pensées (“Penultimate Thoughts”), Chapitres tournés en tous sens (“Chapters Turned Every Which Way”), and Embryons desséchés (“Dessicated embryos”) are three humorous piano suites from the 1910s. The earlier Pièces froides (“Cold pieces”) exhibit similar jocularity. Even when going for musical jokes – quotations, weird juxtapositions, and sudden dynamic shifts – Satie always creates music that is well wrought for the instrument and its player. Planès presents the humor wryly, never overdoing it to go for a cheap laugh.

 

Trois morceaux en forme de poire (“Three pieces in the shape of a pear”) is for piano four-hands. The first resembles a Gymnopedie with a jaunty flourish at the end, the second has digressive flurries of runs punctuated with staccato chords and an emphatic bass line, and the third juxtaposes a lilting duple time dance with stentorian cadences. François Pinel is an amicable duet partner. Baritone Marc Mauillon joins Planès for Trois Mélodies, his voice easily navigating the high tessitura of the music with expressive nuance. The first, “La Statue de Bronze” (“The Bronze Statue”) recalls the oom-pah ostinato of popular Parisian fare. “Daphénéo” is more impressionist in tone but still peculiar, with some of its text not easily translatable. “Le chapelier” (“The hatter”) is in a lilting compound time until its forte climax, which is followed by a delicate coda.

 

Satie is worth yet more anniversary commemorations, but if the only one were to be this excellent recording, it would still provide a significant homage for his influential music. 

 

-Christian Carey

 

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

Lisa Illean Debut on NMC (CD Review)

Lisa Illean
Arcing, stilling, bending, gathering
NMC Records, 2024

Composer Lisa Illean (b. 1983) is from Australia and has been based in recent years in the UK. Her work encompasses a variety of techniques, including alternate tunings and sampled electronics. These are means to consummately expressive ends, and Illean’s music maintains an organic sensibility irrespective of how the sounds are formed.

The title piece, performed by the Australian Academy of Music, is split into various constellations of sound: small groups of strings, solo piano, and pre-recorded sound. Illean uses detuned pitch collections to make a supple harmonic language. Like much of the composer’s music, the primarily soft dynamics are belied by an underlying intensity.
This intensity comes to the fore in Tiding 2 (Silentium), recorded by the GBSR Duo (percussionist George Barton and pianist Siwan Rhys) and soprano saxophonist David Zucchi. Although much of the music remains hushed, there is a sense of unease in the interwoven counterpoint of the music. Gongs, piano chords, string samples, and sustained saxophone are broken up by sudden emphatic attacks, only to subside into another ominous, overlapping sequence. It culminates with several swells into coloristic chords with shimmering percussion.

The soprano Juliet Fraser has been a champion of Illean’s music, and she appears here in a group of settings of the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. Fraser and the Explore Ensemble are accompanied by electronics – samples of detuned zithers – which provides a haunting ambience that surrounds the soprano’s emotive singing and ensemble’s own microtonal excursions. Few composers whom I have heard set Hopkins have tapped into the essential melancholia and isolation he often expressed. Illean creates a slowly moving atmosphere that channels the doleful aspects of Hopkins eloquently.

David Robertson conducts the Sydney Orchestra in Land’s End, the final piece on the recording. Illean’s penchant for piano dynamics is made all the more poignant by the held-back quality of the ensemble. Robertson takes care to balance the various textures, a web of sliding tones and piquant verticals alongside occasional brass interjections. The landscape drawings of Latvian artist Vija Celmins were a point of inspiration, and these spare, deserted pictures correspond well to the gradual movement of Land’s End. An ascending harp pattern and sustained solo violin send the piece into a slightly more animated section, as if the patterns of the wind have shifted, and a piano solo that adds arpeggiations doubling the melodic material follows. Wispy descending lines that offset one another gradually crescendo into a smearing of dissonance. A darkly hued cloud of low register harmonies provides a portentous moment, only to have strings and winds return playing pianissimo counterpoint, with single trumpet notes, drums, and soft gongs punctuating the passage. Instruments begin to slide towards the same pitch in octaves, only to have a mysterious and harmonically ambiguous close take over, with ascending piano scales and solo violin bringing the piece to a stratospheric close.

Illean’s music is distinctively compelling, and one expects that more orchestras and ensembles will be clamoring for new pieces from her.

Christian Carey

by Christian Carey