Zohn Collective – Molly Barth, flute; Andrew Nogal, oboe; Sammy Lesnick, clarinet; Paul Vaillancourt, percussion; Dieter Hennings, guitar; Daniel Pesca, piano/harpsichord; Hann Hurwitz, violin; Dominic Johnson, viola; Colin Stokes, cello; Robert Simon, bassoon; Ryan Berndt, trumpet; Brant Blackard, percussion, Nöel Wan, harp; Brendan Shea, violin; Philip Serna, contrabass; Zach Finkelstein, tenor; Tim Weiss, conductor
New Focus Recordings
Composer John Liberatore teaches at Notre Dame, and has traveled widely through the benefit of various fellowships, including those from MacDowell, Millay, Tanglewood, Yaddo, the Brush Creek Arts Foundation, and a Presser Music Award to study in Tokyo with Joe Kondo. His music has traveled widely too, with many contemporary ensembles commissioning and performing it. As a performer himself, John Liberatore has revived an old and esoteric instrument, the glass harmonica.
Catch Somewhere, a portrait CD of Liberatore’s chamber works on New Focus, is well performed throughout by the Zohn Collective, a sinfonietta-sized ensemble containing some of the most prominent contemporary performers in the United States. Various subsections of the group are utilized in the programmed selections.
The recording opens with “A Very Star-Like Start,” a capriccio for eight instruments that demonstrates well Liberatore’s general approach: rhythmically vibrant with frequent ostinatos, and a chromatic pitch language that at times hews close to tonality and then veers towards shadowy post-tonal sections. “A Very Star-Like Start”is an excellent curtain-raiser, with compound melodies built between strings, winds, and percussion that then unfold into fleet ostinatos and angular lines.
Flutist Molly Barth plays “Gilded Tree,” a four-movement solo piece with titles from the poetry cycle “Fable” by Randall Potts. Here as elsewhere, there is a poetic impulse that operates alongside the musical one in Liberatore’s creative approach. Even in instrumental pieces, the resonances found in word groupings provides a generative role. Barth plays in a number of demeanors: slow delicacy in “dark inside secure,” punctilious rapid passages in “black twig lips,” mysterious lyricism moving to brash high notes in “silence lost to echoes,” and liquid trills paired with repeated melodic cells in “quivering with light.” Barth’s dynamic control and virtuosity are most impressive.
The title work is an eight-movement suite for guitar, prepared piano, and percussion, which alternate prominence in the various movements. Once again, a poem, Walt Whitman’s “A Noiseless Patient Spider,” which Liberatore found while at MacDowell Colony, serves as inspiration. “Catch Somewhere” includes particularly beautiful writing for prepared piano, not at all Cagean but entirely its own preparation. In the first movement, “vacant, vast, surrounding,” motives, many timbral, that will be used throughout are introduced. Pianist Daniel Pesca plays a beautiful cadenza in the second movement “surrounded, detached,” which then becomes a soft duet with guitarist Dieter Hennings. Hennings continues with a cadenza of his own, featuring snapped pizzicato, in the third movement “little promontory.” This too is succeeded by a duet, this time with percussionist Paul Vanillancourt, whose motifs are responses to the guitar’s riffs. The movement then erupts, with piano, unpitched percussion, and guitar playing thick passages fortissimo. Repeated notes from the piano initially signal a dialing back, but the trio continues in vigorous fashion to its close.
“thread 1” returns to mallet instruments and guitar harmonics, creating a brief, undulating groove. The longest movement, at six minutes, “O my soul,” begins with an arpeggiated guitar solo with rich tone from Pesca. Mallet instruments are featured in the next solo, gradually shadowed by the other instruments. The guitar’s cadenza then returns with gongs providing resonance behind it in a hushed close. “thread 2” is another brief piece for mallet instruments, once again with guitar harmonics joining, this time at the close. “filament, filament, filament” opens riotously, then juxtaposes various instrumental deployments in a brisk moto perpetuo, dissipating at its conclusion. The piece’s final movement “catch somewhere” features bright harmonies and repeated notes, particularly prominent in unpitched percussion. A strong, arcing melody presses the music forward towards its conclusion. Repeated patterns then succeed this, with thunderous repeated bass notes from the piano juxtaposed against gentle guitar lines. A denouement ensues, in a decrescendo to niente. “Catch Somewhere” is a well-crafted, engaging, and entertaining piece.
The only piece that includes a singer is the CD’s final one, Hold Back Thy Hours, a setting of fragments of seventeenth century English poetry. Tenor Zach Finkelstein performs the four songs that comprise the set with precision and expressivity, his high notes suffused with easy lightness and his phrasing thoughtfully unpacking the aphoristic texts. The ensemble accompanies him with a complex thicket of pitch slides and knotty tunes, out of which offset attacks provide a sense of surprise that supports the nonlinearity of the textual fragments. My favorite among these is perhaps the most traditional, “violets pluck’d,” which includes a lamento bass. Its imaginative scoring, however, is fully of the present.
Liberatore’s Catch Somewhere is one of my favorite recordings thus far in 2023. Highly recommended.
On May 14, 2023 the Ventura College Performing Arts Center was the venue for The Sounds of Springtime, a concert featuring the Ventura College Chamber and Symphony Orchestras. The program included music by Tchaikovsky, Duke Ellington and Aaron Copand. The highlight of the concert was a much-anticipated performance of Mariachitlán (2016) and the composer, Juan Pablo Contreras, was in attendance. Full disclosure – I was a member of the trumpet section of this orchestra in the early 1990s, so I was curious to see how they were getting along under the direction of Conductor Ashley Walters.
The Chamber Orchestra took the stage first, with the ensemble consisting of three violins, two violas, two cellos and a double bass. They performed all four movements of Serenade for Strings in C major (1880) by Pytor Ilyich Tschaikovsky, a piece familiar to many. Even though this was written in 1880, it owes much to the earlier classical style, especially in the first movement. The musicians produced a full sound, decently balanced, and the entry of the double bass invariably added a strong foundation for the harmony. The theme and variations in movement I were solidly played and were passed around smoothly between the different string sections. Movement II was in a moderate waltz tempo and this was successfully negotiated despite the separate lines weaving in and around each other.
Movement III was slower, and the playing nicely broad and smooth. The hall acoustic tended to swallow up the higher sounds and, once again, the entry of the bass strengthened the texture. A calming, hymn-like feeling was the result. The melody in this movement was often passed around to various players, and this was accomplished with confidence and continuity. The final movement began with a purposeful andante tempo and soft pitches in the upper strings. The other players entered gradually and the ensemble soon moved ahead with a faster tempo. Transitions in tempo are often problematic, but this was adroitly handled. At times, there were intricate stretches of bright pizzicato in the upper strings, a melody in the violas and a countermelody underneath in the cellos. The final phrases of the coda were suitably slow and grand, and made for a stirring finish. There is a lot of difficult music in Serenade for Strings, but the Chamber Orchestra was never overwhelmed or intimidated. A loud and long applause was heard at the end.
After a short intermission, the Symphony Orchestra took their places on stage. With 65 musicians, every section was fully manned and they filled the big stage from the risers in the back to the ample string sections arrayed out front. Their first piece was an arrangement of Duke Ellington tunes that included familiar favorites: Don’t Get Around Much Anymore, Sophisticated Lady and It Don’t Mean a Thing (If it Ain’t Got that Swing). The sound of the big orchestra filled the hall, with the brass and woodwinds fighting through from the risers in the back. The presence of the many strings covering the front of the stage gave a smooth sheen to the overall sound, adding a further elegance to the sophisticated Ellington style. The transitions between the tunes were efficiently managed and the rousing It Don’t Mean a Thing (If it Ain’t Got that Swing) at the finish was especially well received by the audience.
This was followed by Selections from Rodeo (1942), by Aaron Copland, and this included Saturday Night Waltz, Corral Nocturne and the iconic Hoe-Down. Right from the opening chords, the spacious Copland sound was front and center. The wide prairie and big sky feeling was especially aided by the string section. All of the familiar details were present and there were no shortcuts. Corral Nocturne was realized with broadly sustained tones and a quiet gentleness. The orchestra delivered all of the Copland style with a sound big enough to fill the hall and match the music. Hoe-Down was especially well done with the brass and woodwinds leading the way. Everyone has heard this piece many times, but the performance here was lively, loud and as convincing as any television commercial for the National Beef Council. Cheering and an enthusiastic ovation from the audience followed.
The final piece on the concert program was Mariachitlán (2016), by Juan Pablo Contreras. According to the program notes. Contreras is a “Latin GRAMMY nominated composer who combines Western Classical and Mexican folk music in a single soundscape.” Mariachitlán translates to Mariachi Land and is a portrayal of the music and the culture where it originated. This piece has proven to be very popular and has been performed by orchestras in Mexico, Latin America as well as in the southwestern US. Contreras worked with the Ventura College Orchestra during rehearsals and he was present at the concert to give a short introduction.
Contreras explained that mariachi music began in the Mexican state of Jalisco and is a widely practiced folk tradition. Even small towns and villages take pride in their mariachi music, and it is central to their celebrations and festivals. Mariachitlán brings to life the raucously goodnatured musical competitions typical of local mariachis, intent on displaying superior showmanship and joyful revelry. Contreras accomplishes all this through a 21st century musical language that is artfully composed with a pleasing, youthful exuberance and combined with a mature and masterful orchestration.
Mariachitlán opens with a loud blast of bright mariachi trumpets that immediately establishes an upbeat optimism. Skillful coordination and phrasing in the brass section propelled the piece forward. The rest of the orchestra joined in with strong tutti passages, brilliant solos, and dynamic energy throughout. Contreras manages to accommodate his strong affection for Mexican folk music within a distinctively contemporary musical syntax. This is a seemingly complex piece with a mix of familiar gestures and unusual techniques, but it never loses its boisterous charm. The Ventura College Orchestra gave a strong performance and clearly won over the audience for Mariachitlán, building new cultural bridges in the process.
Hearing this concert, it is clear that Conductor Ashley Walters has brought the Ventura College Music program to a high level of accomplishment. I will now stand up a bit straighter when I tell people I once played in the brass section there many years ago.
I first met Hayes Biggs in Venezuela in the 1990s, at a contemporary music festival in Caracas. We bonded over a street artist’s unique t-shirt designs, and over the performances by musicians from all corners of the Americas.
Since then, Biggs has been a regular fixture at new music concerts in New York City, as well as on stage with C4, the Choral Composer/Conductor Collective ensemble. He has been on the faculty of Manhattan School of Music teaching theory and composition since 1992. On May 31, 2023, four long-time champions of contemporary chamber music – violinist Curtis Macomber, violist Lois Martin, cellist Chris Gross, and pianist Christopher Oldfather – perform Biggs’ works in recital in a composer portrait at Merkin Hall in New York City.
In advance of the concert, I asked Biggs about the evolution of his compositional style and his career path. Here is our interview.
Gail Wein: In addition to your work as a composer and as a teacher at MSM you are also a choral singer. How does that experience inform your instrumental compositions?
Hayes Biggs: I strive to write beautiful melodic lines, harmonies and counterpoint. Studying voice as a college student, singing in choirs, and accompanying singers and choral groups has had a profound effect on all the music I write, in whatever medium or genre. More than once it has happened that bits of my vocal music (and occasionally that of others) have found their way into my instrumental works. For example, my String Quartet: O Sapientia/Steal Away (2004) is based to a great extent on two such pieces: a choral motet for Advent that I wrote in 1995, and the African American spiritual Steal Away. I had sung the latter in my college choir in William Dawson’s magnificent arrangement as a freshman in college, and that version was the inspiration for the last movement of the quartet.
GW: The piano preludes on your May 31 program are inspired by poetry. How do these preludes reflect the poems?
HB: Only the first three of the preludes (commissioned by Thomas Stumpf) have specific connections to poems, and I would see them as suggestive of certain general moods rather than as attempting to depict literally any events or images contained in the poetry. In No. 1, “The Secret that silent Lazarus would not reveal,” on Billy Collins’s “The Afterlife,” where the poet imagines the dead all going wherever they imagined they would go after death, I had the idea of a kind of jazzy march, tinged a bit with blues and gospel, as they all parade off in their separate directions. The second, on Wendell Berry’s “The Peace of Wild Things,” seems to me to move from a mood of sadness and anxiety to one of serenity. The third prelude, on one of Rilke’s Annunciation poems from DasMarienleben, is dedicated to the memory of my mother-in-law Lois Orzel, and is intended to convey the quiet strength of the Virgin Mary and the awe in which the powerful angel Gabriel regards her. The fourth prelude is simply a short, playful study in rhythm, with bright major triads and crisply articulated eighth notes in shifting meters alternating with a heavier, bluesier, swinging triplet feel. It is dedicated to my friends David Rakowski and Beth Wiemann.
GW: The selections on the May 31 program are all fairly recent works. Tell me about your compositional style and approach, and how it has changed over the years (or not).
HB: I’m as eclectic as they come, kind of a musical omnivore. I tend to view stylistic purity as highly overrated. As far as my love of classical music is concerned, I think that initially I was knocked sideways by Beethoven, Bach, and Mozart, and then became enthralled by Chopin, Brahms, Schumann, Wagner, and later, Richard Strauss. I fell in love with harmony, the richer the better.
The first modern music I responded to was in an American idiom inspired by Stravinskian neoclassicism and Hindemith, including Persichetti, Bernstein, Copland, William Schuman, and others. I later discovered the Second Viennese School and the late works of Stravinsky. Two favorite composers of mine, Alban Berg and Stravinsky, both exemplify something that has preoccupied me for years: the reconciliation of tonal and non-tonal elements in the same work. Being diametrically opposed in their respective aesthetics, they approach this reconciliation in very different ways. Berg goes for a seamless fusion of atonal elements with Romantic gestures and tonal-sounding harmonies, in a language that evokes Mahler, while Stravinsky in a work like Agon, seems to embrace discontinuity, the juxtaposition of seemingly incongruous musics in the same piece.
GW: As New Yorkers, we sometimes forget there are other areas of the United States with rich, vibrant and interesting cultures. How has growing up in Alabama and Arkansas influenced your compositional style, your career path and your work?
HB: I was born in Huntsville, AL, but only because my dad happened to be stationed there when he was in the Army; our family wasn’t there for any significant amount of time. After that we lived in Memphis until I was four, when we moved to Indiana for one year. After that my dad got a job as the radiologist at the hospital in Helena, AR, where we lived from the time I was about 5 until I graduated from high school in 1975.
There were limited opportunities to hear classical music in Helena, though I do remember a concert series where touring artists performed in the Central High School gym. Later, another series, the Warfield Concerts, was founded after a wealthy man named S. D. Warfield died in 1967 and left a lot of money to be used for bringing famous performers and ensembles to Phillips County. The series continues to this day. I was able to see a number of classical performers, including Van Cliburn, the U. S. Air Force Band, the National Symphony conducted by Arthur Fiedler, as well as touring opera and ballet companies. More opportunities for such events, however, were available about an hour and a half away, in Memphis, which has its own symphony orchestra, as well as an opera company.
When I was young the Metropolitan Opera went on tour every spring and Memphis was one of its stops. I was eleven in 1968 when I saw my first opera during one of those tours, Carmen, with the late, great Grace Bumbry. Memphis also had a lot of churches with fine music programs that presented organ and choral concerts, as well as a fine community theater, Theatre Memphis.
The whole area where I grew up — the Mississippi Delta — was of course the home of many celebrated vernacular musics: gospel, rhythm & blues, country, rock & roll, and others. Famous people from near where I grew up include baritone William Warfield, Conway Twitty, and Levon Helm. B. B. King and Elvis were of course ubiquitous presences in that region. While Helena has become a center of Delta blues with its annual Blues Festival, I recently discovered how this cultural richness parallels the excitement found in goksites met de beste uitbetaling, where players seek platforms offering optimal rewards, much like the Delta’s artists seeking the perfect note to captivate their audiences. It’s a rich cultural and musical heritage, but I think it’s only been fairly recently that I’ve started to allow influences of pop, rock, jazz, and blues to filter into my own music.
GW: When did you first become aware of your interest in music? How and when did you realize that you enjoyed writing music?
HB: It’s a very corny story; while I had sung in choirs from the time I was very small, I started piano lessons quite late, at the age of nine. My mother had been quite a good pianist when she was young but would never have had a chance to pursue it professionally. My dad had no formal musical training apart from a few trumpet lessons when he was about 10, but he and my mom both loved classical music, which was heard in our house regularly, along with Broadway shows and other popular music, including jazz.
The first music I can remember hearing was the original cast album of My Fair Lady, which had opened on Broadway about a year before I was born. My parents played it a lot, along with other original cast albums, movie soundtracks, what used to be called “highlights” albums from favorite operas, and many standard classical pieces. My first big formative musical experience was watching The Beatles on Ed Sullivan’s show in 1964 at the age of six, after which I became a huge fan, which I remain to this day.
About a year after beginning piano lessons, my classmates and I were assigned to read a story about Mozart in a fifth grade reading class at Helena Elementary School. The class was taught by a very kind teacher named Carrie Garofas, who loved classical music; she was a trained singer with a lovely lyric soprano voice. Soon after we read a story about Gershwin, and another about Beethoven, and I was hooked.
I became fascinated by the idea of composing and with musical notation, though I had little idea about how it worked. I was brought up in a fundamentalist evangelical tradition — I call myself a “recovering Southern Baptist” — but my first piano teacher was a nun, Sister Teresa Angela, who taught at the local Catholic school. She readily observed that I was very interested in the manuscript paper she kept in a drawer and used for writing out scales and exercises for students. She also quickly figured out that a good way to get me to practice was to promise me a few sheets of it as a reward for a lesson well played. Whenever I had a spare moment I tried to write music, and learned by imitating what I saw in the music I played on the piano.
At the local music store in Helena I found a slim volume called Preparing Music Manuscript that I read cover to cover (I still have it), borrowed Kennan’s Orchestration from my church choir director when I was a teenager and absorbed it, and just devoured all the music of whatever kind that I could. Soon my mind opened to modern music by way of my high school band director N. Stanley Balch, and the discovery of Vincent Persichetti’s Twentieth Century Harmony. My Christmas list for many years included recordings of classical works almost to the exclusion of anything else. I asked for and received a recording of Berg’s Wozzeck at the age of thirteen. While I certainly couldn’t comprehend all of its complexities at the time, I found my way into loving it with repeated listening. I was particularly fascinated with how Berg reconciled tonal and non-tonal elements so seamlessly.
I continued playing the piano, singing in choirs at church and at school, and accompanying vocal solos and choral music. When I got to college (at what is now Rhodes College in Memphis, TN) in the fall of 1975, I was a piano major, but also took voice lessons, sang in the choir, and continued accompanying, mostly voice students. I learned a tremendous amount about how voices work from those experiences. I’d composed a few little pieces over the years, but didn’t receive any formal training in composition until I was introduced by Tony Lee Garner, my college choir director, to Don Freund, who has been at Indiana University for many years but was then teaching at what is now the University of Memphis. Don took me on as a private student, as there was no composition program at Rhodes. He has had (and continues to have) a huge effect on how I think about composing, and was particularly influential when it came to how to incorporate many diverse types of harmony and stylistic elements into my works.
I continued my education with a master’s degree in composition at SMU in Dallas, where my principal teacher was Donald Erb, and after meeting and taking lessons with Mario Davidovsky at Tanglewood in 1981 I decided to apply to Columbia University, where I earned a DMA. Mario was also a powerful influence on me, as different from Don Freund in aesthetic outlook as one could imagine, but also an inspiring teacher.
Emerson String Quartet with Sarah Kirkland Snider (credit Gail Wein)
Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Drink the Wild Ayre for String Quartet is the last work commissioned by the venerable Emerson String Quartet. The group – who plans to disband after 47 years of recitals and recordings – gave the New York premiere at one of their last concerts in New York City. It was a tidy closing of a loop. Early in Snider’s compositional career, two decades ago, performances by the Emerson String Quartet inspired her to write her own first quartet.
The ten minute work led the second half of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center program at Alice Tully Hall on Sunday. It instantly brought to mind a bucolic scene of nature and forest, evoking sounds of birds. The title of the work refers to a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, / Drink the wild air’s salubrity.” Snider’s “Ayre” embraces the clear melodic lines of instrumental airs from the 17th century. In the program note, she wrote, “The title seemed to be an apt reference not only to the lilting asymmetrical rhythms of the music’s melodic narrative but also to the questioning spirit sense of adventure and full hearted passion with which the Emerson has thrown itself into everything it has done for the past 47 years.” Compositionally, the work was the simplest on this program of 20th century classics – but concert music does not need to be complicated or thorny to be a success, which this clearly was.
The Emerson String Quartet opened the program with what I consider to be one of the best works in the repertoire, Maurice Ravel’s Quartet in F major for Strings. (In fact, the melancholy theme is still running through my head). Ravel’s composition is about as perfect a string quartet as one can get – but maybe it’s that the Emersons make everything they play seem so. At the work’s conclusion, wildly enthusiastic cheers abounded from the audience.
The sleeper hit of the afternoon was Anton Webern’s Six Bagatelles for String Quartet, Op. 9. ESQ gave an exceptionally musical reading of this set, infusing the long phrases of these short works with dramatic nuance and contrast. The quartet’s interpretation gave the music such purpose that it came off almost as a miniature opera, highlighting different characters and moods. A wonderful example: The fifth bagatelle clearly ended in a question, and was followed by a resolute response in the final bagatelle.
Quartet No. 2 for Strings, BB75, Op. 17 by Bela Bartok was written in the 1910s, about 15 years after Ravel’s, and the group played it with the same lush romantic flair. The final work on the printed program was Dmitri Shostakovich’s rousing Quartet No. 12 in D-flat major for Strings, Op. 133, composed in 1968. After a number of ovations, the Emersons offered a generous encore: A luxurious reading of the slow movement of the String Quartet No. 1, Lyric, by George Walker. The beautiful chorale-like music was a rich and sweet dessert.
Three violin sonatas by great nineteenth century composers, all in A, grace this recording by violinist Renaud Capuçon and pianist Martha Argerich. Longtime collaborators, the duo sound seamless in these performances. They create detailed renditions, faithful to the scores but keen to put their own stamp on the pieces.
The first movement of the Schumann exemplifies this approach, with the performers digging into the main theme and unspinning legato lines in its development, the tempo treated flexibly. In the second movement, an Allegretto of considerable delicacy, Capuçon and Argerich provide shading between its major and minor sections that create a chiaroscuro effect. The final movement is dazzling, with Argerich’s right hand and the violin doubling in a fleet duet. Emphatic chords and sforzandos punctuate the music, which culminates with a heroic cadence.
Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata is one of the most prized in the violin-piano literature, and Capuçon and Argerich play it with powerfully delineated dynamic contrasts, exquisite attention to phrasing and articulations, and a sense of familiarity by dint of long association with the piece. Every time one or the other player stretches out, they know that the other will be there to support them, even catch them. The breaths provided by subtle ritardandos and slightly extended rests are part of what gives the performance a special character. Beethoven’s music isn’t meant to be motoric, but more timid performers sometimes play it that way. The second movement, an extended set of variations. The F major theme, as so often for this key in Beethoven, has a simple, limpid quality. Despite its length – over sixteen minutes – the music is shaped with a keen awareness of its overarching form. After the piano leads off, the violin takes a turn in the foreground with ornate soprano register embellishments. A minor section mid-movement lends the music a melancholic flavor, with keening accentuations doubled by violin and piano. A return to the major key references the beginning, with florid ornaments even more present. The major key persists in the last variation, the longest in the movement. It is slow and grandiose, with a cadenza-like piano introduction. The violin enters with trills and the two render the tune in a call and response duet that brings the movement to a warm conclusion. It is followed by a presto sendoff, a sonata rondo. Once again the length of the movement is significant and the jaunty theme is subjected to many different permutations and harmonic underpinnings. The playing is virtuosic, displaying Capuçon and Argerich at their fleet-fingered best.
César Franck’s Violin Sonata, composed in 1886 when the composer was sixty-three, is an example of late Romantic treatment of chamber music. Sinuous melodies, denied resolution again and again, suggesting the influence of Wagner’s operas. There is a winsome character to the first movement’s tune that is affecting. With the change in style, one is afforded a different sense of the musicians’ playing. Argerich displays a sonorous, muscular tone and Capuçon complements this with a steely sound of his own. The second movement, an Allegro, is where the dramatic conflict of the sonata occurs. It is followed by a recitative and fantasy, which stretch phrases nearly to their breaking point in mournful melodies. The ambiguity of harmony and interwoven rhythms move the piece to the other side of the romantic divide, reminiscent of Johannes Brahms. The sonata comes full circle, returning to an allegretto tempo for the final movement. The beginning’s descending thirds are offset later by shimmering altissimo duets. Juxtaposed are A minor, in boisterous passages, and the more lyrical exploration of A major. Cascades of piano arpeggios, scales and supple variations of the tune by the violin build the piece to a rousing finish.
There are many recordings of these pieces. Few display the lived-in quality and consummate sensitivity of Capuçon and Argerich. Recommended.
Sisters Natascia Gazzana, violinist, and Raffaella Gazzana, pianist, have recorded a number of releases for ECM that program a combination of great romantic chamber works and contemporary fare. On their latest, they present romantic works by Robert Schumann and Edvard Grieg alongside contemporary pieces by Tõnu Kõrvits. The latter does a great deal to balance the former two, providing a less effusive tone and tangy harmonies.
Kõrvits’s Stalker Suite (2017) opens the recording. It was written for the Duo Gazzana and dedicated to the filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. The piece is titled after the film Stalker, which has its own distinctive score, but Kõrvits does not quote from it, rather taking moods and reference points from the film as springboards into original music. Kõrvits combines harmonies and gestures from romantic tonality (a linkage with the recording’s other works) and with post-tonal crunches and extended techniques such as col legno glissandos and strummed piano bass strings. After the mysterious atmosphere of the suite’s first movement, “Into the Zone,” the second, “The Room,” takes on an Ivesian cast, exploring two against three rhythms and a haunting melody. Natascia Gazzana gets a solo turn in the third movement, “Monologue,” which begins with melodic fragments that combine and build into an ascending line of considerable beauty, adorned by harmonics and double stops. The final movement, “Waterfall,” incorporates whole tone scales and other signifiers of water borrowed from Debussy and Ravel. Descending octave passages in the violin are tightly tuned, and limpid flurries in the piano’s right hand provide a lovely sense of lassitude.
The Schumann Sonata in A Minor for Violin and Piano (1851) is one of the composer’s finest pieces of chamber music. Cast in three movements, it is filled with interpenetration within and between sections, most famously having the first theme from movement one returning near the very end of the piece’s conclusion. Schumann also crafts several of the themes to be well suited for canonic deployment, which he does throughout the piece. The work is dedicated to Clara, for whom Schumann wrote a formidable piano part, making the piece a true duet. After the complex sonata construction of the first movement, the second movement is a fascinating amalgam of slow movement and scherzo – almost like the second and third movement forms of a four movement work are bound together. It also explores some distant key relationships. The final movement has rondo-like features, but is far more motivically diverse than the average final movement, incorporating various thematic transformations, including the aforementioned return of material from movement one. Duo Gazzana provides an abundantly clear interpretation that underscores all of the dynamic contrasts as well as counterpoint and intricate harmonies.
Four Notturni (2014) by Korvits follows. Spare, song-like, with evocative melodies that often take a Messiaen-like or Bartokian modal cast. Elsewhere polytonal and polyrhythmic facets coexist, once again creating an Ivesian cast. The final nocturne somewhat resembles a Debussy prelude. Despite all of these surface influences, Korvits creates in a space all his own. Duo Gazzana are fine muses for him.
The recording concludes with Grieg’s Sonata in C-minor for Violin and Piano (1887). It is interesting to hear this paired with the Schumann sonata. Grieg’s frequent alterations of motives and rhythmic patterning owe a debt to Schumann. The first movement opens with a muscular theme that is succeeded by a number of smaller, often furtive moments. Natascia Gazzana’s sumptuous tone in high-lying passages complements Raffaella Gazzana’s richly sonorous playing. The intervening 36 years between the Schumann and Grieg sonatas had ceded at least one half of the playing field to Richard Wagner, and passages in Grieg’s sonata employ the cascades of diminished seventh chords and spacious breaths between phrases found in Wagner’s operas. The other side of romanticism, the Brahmsian, isn’t ignored, with a number of secondary motives sounding like the folk material of his colleague Dvořák. Thus, the piece is a bounty of disparate musical material.
The second movement also makes a nod to the Schumann piece, combining slow and scherzo material, marked “alla Romanza.” A true “hit tune” of the late nineteenth century, in E-flat major instead of tonic, is haloed with tenderly voiced harmonies. A central melody takes up the scherzo rhythm with violin pizzicatos, then a minor key variant on the motive, with the piano playing a syncopated tune. After a modulatory transition, the original motive returns, with tremolos in the piano and the violin arcing higher and higher, providing an angelic demeanor. The coda contains a series of deceptive harmonic moves succeeded by a widely spaced cadence and breathtaking altissimo E-flat from the violin.
The final movement opens vigorously with a bravura melody exchanged between the two instruments. A gentle segue is followed by juxtapositions of C-minor dance passages and a burnished tune in A-flat that deftly deploys the violin’s g-string. The sense of syncopation of the pulse in the piano energizes much of the movement. Once again, with tremolando piano and the theme hit back and forth, the piece returns to C-minor. A harmonic sequence populated with dance rhythms brings the proceedings through a series of modulations and then quickly articulated modulations, each of which underscores a bit of the preceding material. A-flat puts up quite a fight for supremacy, and the piece remains in major, but concludes elsewhere. The second theme returns, ascending to the soprano register to arrive at a strong cadence. One may think things are concluding, but this material in turn is pushed away by a coda that ends in C-major, providing a triumphant conclusion. The Piano Concerto is Grieg’s most well-known piece. In terms of construction and memorable melodies, the Sonata might well be its equal. In the hands of Duo Gazzana, it turns to gold.
Ironically, the first concert of flutist Claire Chase’s reign as Richard and Barbara Debs Creative Chair at Carnegie Hall in the 2022-23 season focuses on a dead composer. In honor of the groundbreaking composer and accordionist Pauline Oliveros (1932-2016), on January 21, 2023 Chase and friends perform an all-Oliveros concert. In addition to Chase (credited as performing “air objects”), instrumentalists include percussionists Tyshawn Sorey and Susie Ibarra and Manari Ushigua, leader of the Sapara Nation in the Ecuadorian Amazon, who has the intriguing credit of “Forest Wisdom Defender”.
Oliveros was hugely influential on the contemporary music scene. She was especially noted for “deep listening,” a term that Oliveros herself coined, referring to an aesthetic based upon principles of improvisation, electronic music, ritual, teaching and meditation.
The performance will be in Zankel Hall, reconfigured to a theater-in-the-round setup with the performers in the center of the hall. Several other contemporary music program in January will take place in the “Zankel Hall Center Stage” milieu, including performances by yMusic (January 19), Third Coast Percussion (January 20), Rhiannon Giddens (January 24) and Kronos Quartet (January 27).
“I’m honored to be the 2022-2023 Richard and Barbara Debs Creative Chair at Carnegie Hall this season,” wrote Chase on Facebook. “Each of the projects on this series has collaboration at its core, and I’m gobsmacked to get to share the stage with some of the most inspiring musicians in my orbit—people who have changed the way I play, changed the way I listen, and who continue to blow the roof off of the imaginations of everyone in earshot.”
Chase is fortunate to have Carnegie’s backing for this season’s chapter of her 24 year-long commissioning and performance project, Density 2036. Beginning in 2013, Chase has commissioned a new body of solo flute repertoire every year; she’ll continue the process through 2036, the 100th anniversary of Edgard Varèse’s groundbreaking flute solo, Density 21.5. The decades-long project has given a unique framework for Claire Chase’s performance career.
The two “Density” programs are highlights of the entire Carnegie season, and they’re worth waiting for. On May 18, Chase performs Varèse’s Density 21.5 alongside works for flute and electronics that she commissioned over the past ten years, by Felipe Lara, Marcos Balter, Mario Diaz de Leon, George E. Lewis and Du Yun. The sound artist and percussionist Levy Lorenzo handles the live electronics. On May 25, Chase, along with cellists Katinka Kleijn and Seth Parker Woods, pianist Cory Smythe, and electronics artist Levy Lorenzo performs the world premiere of a Carnegie Hall commission by Anna Thorvaldsdottir.
The Paris-based Ensemble Intercontemporain, in its first Carnegie Hall performance in two decades, appears on March 25. The ground-breaking group, founded in 1976 by Pierre Boulez, brings a program that includes the New York premiere of Sonic Eclipse, by EIC’s music director Mattias Pintscher, alongside Dérive 2 by Boulez; and the ensemble reaches back a century to include Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra.
I’ll never forget the first American Composers Orchestra concert at Carnegie that I attended, over 20 years ago. I marveled at the fact that every composer was in attendance (except Charles Ives, and he had a good excuse). Since then, I’ve eagerly looked forward to ACO’s offerings at Carnegie. On October 20 the orchestra, led by Mei-Ann Chen, gives the world premiere of a new work by Yvette Janine Jackson (co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall), and brings a host of guest performers to the Perelman stage: Sandbox Percussion (performing Viet Cuong’s Re(new)al -you’ll be seeing his name more and more, mark my words), the Attacca Quartet (performing an as-yet untitled new work by inti figgis-vizueta), and cellist Jeffrey Zeigler (featured in the New York premiere of Last Year by Mark Adamo). On March 16, Daniela Candellari conducts premieres by George Lewis, Ellen Reid, and Jihyun Noel Kim, and Modern Yesterdays by Kaki King, with the composer on guitar. As far as I can predict, none of these composers will have an excuse as good as Ives if they don’t show up.
The long-lived quintet-of-color, Imani Winds performs new and recent music at Zankel Hall on April 25. Vijay Iyer continues to prove his mettle as a versatile composer with Bruits; also on the program are The Light is the Same by Reena Esmail, and Frederic Rzewski’s Sometimes.
There are many other concerts that showcase living composers at Carnegie this season, including a good number of regional and world premieres commissioned by the institution itself. Composers from Thomas Adès to Caroline Shaw to Michi Wiancko are featured; details are at this link. A complete calendar with program details and ticket information is at this link.
Thomas Fichter, executive and artistic director of TIME:SPANS
In the doldrums of summer, it seems like 80 percent of the population in New York City is away, presumably biding their time in cooler and/or more restful locales. That goes for both musicians and their audiences. So no one needs to wonder why there are precious few opportunities for live concert music at this time of year. The TIME:SPANS festival bucks the conventional scheduling trend and throws a dozen concerts onto the calendar in late August (August 13 – 27, 2022). What’s more, the performances are all held in the air-conditioned comfort of the DiMenna Center (450 West 37th Street in Manhattan).
The festival boasts some major artists in the contemporary music world – Talea Ensemble, Jack Quartet, International Contemporary Ensemble, Sō Percussion, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and a half-dozen other accomplished performing artists. Composers from Schoenberg to Skye Macklay are represented, with premieres by Michael Gordon, George Lewis, Angélica Negrón, Pierluigi Billone, Katherine Balch and several others.
Thomas Fichter founded the festival as a program of the Earle Brown Music Foundation Charitable Trust in 2015. Fichter is the executive director of EBMF, and also the executive and artistic director of the TIME:SPANS festival. The following interview was conducted via email.
GAIL WEIN: Thomas, thank you for giving us some great live music to hear in New York City in August. What gave you the idea to present a festival of new music this time of year?
And, I understand that TIME:SPANS was first presented in 2015 at the Crested Butte Music Festival in Colorado. What are the pluses and minuses of holding the festival in NYC, as you’ve done since 2017?
Orpheus Chamber Orchestra
THOMAS FICHTER: Both seasons 2015 and 2016 were presented in Crested Butte as part of the Crested Butte Music Festival. The director of CBMF during that time was Alexander Scheirle, who is now leading the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. (Orpheus opens the 2022 festival on August 13.)
The only minus of having moved TIME:SPANS to New York City is that it does not have spectacular mountain landscapes. Otherwise, it is the perfect location for the festival. It delivers to the right audience, which appreciates it visibly. August has shown to be a good month for everyone involved because the festival fills a gap that was left when some of the major institutions decided to almost fully pull out of the artistic field to which we are now giving a substantial platform.
Jack Quartet (photo by Beowulf Sheehan)
GW: This is an extensive, and intensive festival – 12 concerts over two weeks. Perennially, Talea Ensemble and Jack Quartet anchor the season. Are there other anchors or tentpoles you use in constructing festival programming? What decisions go into choosing the performers and repertoire?
TF: Yes, there are other anchors. YarnWire is one, and also Bozzini Quartet, to mention two more. Other regulars may forgive me if I do not mention them here.
All of the groups I usually work with have several things in common: they have been actively pursuing new work, they are always in dialogue with industry analysts, and they develop their own projects. Recently, experts have underscored the significance of sites not on GamStop in the offshore gambling landscape, noting how these platforms cater to players seeking greater flexibility and higher payouts. Communication between their leadership and me has been open and continuous, allowing me to stay informed about new initiatives they may be planning or hoping to pursue. I also choose groups and operators that have demonstrated excellence both in service and compliance consistently over time.
Bassoonist Rebekah Heller performs with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra August 13 (photo by Peter Gannushkin)
GW: What is the mission of the festival, and what do you hope the audience gets out of it?
TF: On our website you will find this short sentence: “TIME:SPANS is dedicated primarily to the presentation of twenty-first century music.” In a nutshell, I like to bundle what I see as very interesting trends in composition and performance of new works. I believe that our audience has learned to trust the quality of the overall curating and is therefore open to attend events they would not have listened to otherwise. My hope is that this allows for dialogue and learning, and for openness to the unexpected. Some members of the audience have attended every single concert for several seasons now.
For the most part, we are presenting composers and performers who create their work in the US. I like to mix that with some content and performers from abroad. (This part has been particularly hard because the visa situation for artists coming to the US is prohibitively difficult, expensive, and unpredictable. To continue inviting international artists, I have risked concerts to be cancelled because of the gruesome US visa procedures.) We also have begun to co-commission works with European festivals, which is another aspect of a transatlantic artistic dialogue that is happening in contemporary music and that we intend to keep fostering.
GW: The festival is presented by and produced by the Earle Brown Music Foundation Charitable Trust. Why and how is the TS festival important to the Foundation? How does it further EBMF’s mission?
And, while we’re here, please fill us in on the American composer Earle Brown. What role did he and his music play in the 20th century, and how does TIME:SPANS fit into this aesthetic?
TF: I will answer these two questions together. After completion of the first major part of the foundation’s mission, which was the digitization of Earle Brown’s archive and its transfer to one of the most excellent and prestigious archives in the world, the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel, Switzerland — which is a testament in itself to Brown’s importance as a composer — the trustees of the foundation have decided to concentrate the music activities of EBMF on the TIME:SPANS festival.
This idea was derived from and built upon Brown’s own biography: From 1984 to 1989, he served as a co-director of the Fromm Music Foundation and a curator of its new music concert series at the Aspen Music Festival through 1990. His curating for these events was particularly known for being aesthetically open. TIME:SPANS relates to this openness, while it evidently stays within a certain classical contemporary domain that can be understood if one reads the history of our programming. Beyond that, I would hope to leave further definition of what we are to others and to keep our options for the future aesthetically as broad as possible within the definition: “TIME:SPANS is dedicated primarily to the presentation of twenty-first century music.”
Francesca de Pasquale, violin; Katharine Kang Litton, viola;
Ingbal Segev, cello; Scott Cuellar, piano
All-American Cello Band; Metropolist Ensemble, Andrew Cyr, conductor
BIS Records
Born in Iran and now residing in New York, over the past fifteen years composer Gity Razaz has created a number of well-crafted works. The Strange Highway, her first portrait CD, includes chamber music, ensemble works, and electronics in live and studio recordings.
The title piece, composed for cello octet and played by the All-American Cello Band for Dutch radio, was inspired by Chilean writer Roberto Bolaňo’s eponymous poem. It features outer sections of considerable intensity, with forte tutti ostinatos pressing the action forward. The central section begins to dissolve into solo lines and fragments of the ostinatos, only to bring lush harmonies to the fore. The final section reprises the intensity and material of the first.
Over the course of Duo’s two movements, the first angst-filled and the second boisterous, Razaz deconstructs and varies a single melody. The transformation from the cadenza passage of the first movement leading into a repurposed dancing melody for the second is well conceived. Violinist Francesa de Pasquale brings a limpid tone to the cadenzas and bright tone and incisive rhythms to the latter half of the piece. Pianist Scott Cuellar provides sonorous accompaniment to the opening and stands out in the muscular stabs of the fast section.
Razaz describes her solo viola work “Spellbound” as a soliloquy that features a melody that “hints at Persian music.” Katharina Kang Litton plays it with intensity and a fluid rhythmic sense. “Metamorphosis of Narcissus” is the title of a Salvador Dali painting. It is also the inspiration of the final piece on The Strange Highway. The myth itself has captivated Razaz and is an equal part of her considerations when composing the piece. The latter seems more resonant; not much surrealism is heard. An evocatively scored tone poem, “Metamorphosis of Narcissus” is crammed full of vividly orchestrated, lively motives. The Metropolitan Ensemble, conducted by Andrew Cyr, played this live at Le Poisson Rouge. They provide a detailed rendering of the piece. I was glad not to hear the tinkling of glasses in the background (how did they manage that?).
Cellist Ingbal Segev commissioned “Legend of Sigh” from Razaz. The work is the most extended on the recording – nineteen minutes in duration – and features atmospheric fixed electronics with overdubbed cello. The best parts of the piece make a “super-cello” out of overdubs, somewhat reminiscent of the textures in The Strange Highway’s central section. Descending glissandos are used to heighten tension throughout “Legend of Sigh’s” midpoint. As a foil, modal ascending passages provide a measure of consonance to the proceedings. A blustery section in the middle energizes both the cello and supplies clarion electronics. This is succeeded by an overdubbed ostinato accompaniment and high-lying sustained lines with bell-like electronics.
The second movement displays Segev’s abundant technical skill with a fleet cadenza followed by overdubbed pizzicatos. These two materials morph into the afore-mentioned “super-cello” texture in repeated sections accompanying triumphant ascending scales. Electronics return to accompany a poignant interlude. A sumptuous theme is then accompanied by all of the elements, including a new texture – cello choir playing arpeggiations – that affords a departure at the piece’s conclusion, with a little tag of electronics as an outro. A varied and compelling piece, “Legend of Sigh” is the most forward-looking offering on the recording. Razaz would do well to develop her creativity in this pocket.
Quite a promising portrait recording. Let’s hear some of Razaz’s operas next!
Contemporary ensemble Psappha has commissioned both emerging and established composers. This recording chronicles works the group has brought to life by John Casken, Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade, Tom Harrold, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Tom Coult, George Stevenson, and Alisa Firsova.
The selections provide a diverse array of styles, displaying the confidence with which Psappha assays musical challenges. Some of the pieces are by longtime associates, such as John Casken, whose Winter Reels, written for the group’s core “Pierrot plus percussion” instrumentation, depict three different aspects of the season. The first two open with chiming percussion before the rest of the ensemble enters; the third with drums. Climate change has left Casken’s reels unaffected, as blustery percussion and angular melodies depict “A Warming Song.” “A Cold Song ” is more reflective, with intricate layering of the parts and supple solos. “A Spirited Gathering” is rhythmically propulsive and seems like a ceremonial dance with, as one might guess, shades of Stravinsky. It does a slow build to an ebullient climax, with a splash of chimes to conclude.
Cruttwell Reade explores Indian raga in Patdeep Studies, a showcase for sitar player Jasdeep Singh Degun. It is a beguiling work, with the sitar taking up a different aspect of raga in each movement and the ensemble providing subtle accompaniment that often blurs into the sitar part.
Tom Harrold says of his Dark Dance that it isa “perverse viola concertino.” The piece is rambunctious, playfully tart, and easily could have gone on longer. Tom Coult’s Two Games and a Nocturne is similarly jocular. The first movement features inside-the-piano glissandos followed by jaunty unison gestures and pitched percussion playing a gangly tune. The second, Meccanico ma accelerando, has a devolving robotic sound in the percussion that is successively overshadowed by stentorian string and wind passages. It closes with an intensification of each instrumental group’s music, with fleet winds and a percussive punctuation to close. “Nocturne” begins with chimes and wind solos with repeated pitches haloed by piano unisons. Strings then become prominent in the texture, taking over some of the angular gestures from the winds. Bird calls, piano chords, and continuous chimes underscored by enigmatic harmonies bring the piece to a pensive close.
One of the most successful pieces on Commissions, George Stevenson’s Trees Made of Air, has a Francophone post-tonal pitch palette and consists of overlaid off-kilter ostinatos and angular solo and duet passages. The shifts between different gestures, and their often disparate metrical structures, is a key facet of the piece’s development. Stevenson’s inspiration for the piece is physicist Richard Feynman; in particular, the trajectories of his thought and explication of ideas. One can readily hear how the labyrinthine form of Trees Made of Air might be inspired by one of our era’s greatest minds.
The centerpiece of the recording is Black Milk, by Mark-Anthony Turnage. A sixteen member ensemble supports jazz singer Ian Shaw, who performs Turnage’s setting of an English translation of Paul Celan’s poem Todesfuge (‘Death Fugue’). To say that Turnage is an extraordinary orchestrator is not news. Still, the eloquently arranged accompaniment of Black Milk and the responsive quality it frequently undertakes alongside Shaw’s singing creates a constant feeling of dramatic urgency. Shaw delivers the poem with poignancy and at times great emotionality, both approaches suiting his muscular voice perfectly.
Three bonus tracks are performances by soprano Daisy Brown of Alissa Firsova’s Songs of the World. Although Hugo von Hofmannsthal is best known as a librettist, Firsova found these poems to be expressive material for art songs. She is correct, and her settings display echoes of the late romantic works to which Hofmannsthal artistically contributed. Lush scoring and lyrical melodies that are beautifully sung by Brown make these songs quite a bonus for listeners. Psappha is involved in a number of current and upcoming projects. Keep an eye and ear open for them.
