Chamber Music

CD Review, Chamber Music, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Duo Gazzana on ECM (CD Review)

Duo Gazzana

Kõrvits/Schumann/Grieg

ECM Records

 

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.

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
ACO, Ambient, Chamber Music, Classical Music, Commissions, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Flute, New York

Carnegie Hall: Highlights of contemporary music in the 2022-2023 season

Claire Chase

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.

by Gail Wein
Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, New York, Premieres

TIME:SPANS 2022 – Interview with Thomas Fichter

Thomas Fichter
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
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
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.

Rebekah_Heller_by_Peter_Gannushkin
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.”

by Gail Wein
CD Review, Cello, Chamber Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Gity Razaz – The Strange Highway (CD Review)

 

Gity Razaz

The Strange Highway

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!

 

-Christian Carey

 

 

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

Psappha Commissions (CD Review)

Psappha

Commissions

Psappha, 2022

 

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 is a “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.

 

-Christian Carey 



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

Bozzini Quartet plays Bryn Harrison (CD Review)

Bryn Harrison

Three Descriptions of Place and Movement

Quatuor Bozzini

Huddersfield Contemporary Records, 2022

 

Composer Bryn Harrison writes about temporal organization and experience in music. Coauthored with Richard Glover and Jennie Gottschalk in a collaborative spirit, Being Time (Bloomsbury, 2018) examines the experiences of the three authors listening to music built in different time spans, from the longest works of Morton Feldman to micro music. Harrison explores these concerns in his own music, particularly subtle variations over significant durations. Three Descriptions of Place and Movement, his first string quartet, written for Quatuor Bozzini and recorded for Huddersfield, is both intricately organized and imposing in structure. At over an hour long, it is an opportunity to see Harrison’s vision writ large.

 

Feldman is an obvious touchstone for pervasively slow music over a long duration, and Harrison’s work certainly has echoes of Feldman, but Three Descriptions of Place and Movement also departs from Feldman’s aesthetic in both its surface and structuring.  The music is populated by changes in bowing techniques, mini-crescendos and just as quick returns to piano, and a plethora of articulations. It challenges the listener’s attention to detail by constantly shifting between these various techniques. What starts as a principal texture may shift to accompaniment, counterpoint, or a mixture of roles. Harrison says that he uses shapes like a wrapped double helix in “Opening,” to organize material so that one constantly hears it from different vantage points.

 

Each successive movement is longer, which plays with perception as well. The movement titles – “Opening,” “Clearing,” and “Burrow” are each meant in two senses: the place and movement of the title. Thus, a musical opening may introduce material that brings one into the piece’s orbit; an opening also can be of a door, or a mind. Harrison suggests similar dualities for “Clearing” and “Burrow.” When each movement’s central process has been worked out, it ends with surprising suddenness.

 

The Bozzini Quartet are a perfect ensemble for the challenges of Harrison’s score, its demanding specificity of expression, dynamics, and rhythm. Cascading entrances and myriad bowing techniques and articulations are delivered crisply, with abundant clarity. The work’s sinuous chromaticism is rendered with admirably spot-on tuning.

 

Three Descriptions of Place and Movement is Harrison’s most successful and distinctive work to date. Once again, Huddersfield Contemporary Records presents a risk taking  artist in the best possible sound and performance conditions. Recommended.

 

  • Christian Carey

 

 

by Christian Carey
Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Concert review, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, New York, Orchestral, Review, Twentieth Century Composer

The Parker Quartet premieres Jeremy Gill’s “Motherwhere”

April the First proved a propitious date for the New York Classical Players’ much anticipated program featuring a new collaboration – and premiere – with the Parker Quartet. In the mere twelve years since their inception, NYCP has consistently brought spirit and devotion to so much of what they do, and this early Spring concert at W83 Auditorium was no exception. In many respects, the highlight of the evening was Jeremy Gill’s joyous new work, “Motherwhere,” a concerto grosso for the Parker Quartet and NYCP. But well-worn, oft’-loved music by Tchaikovsky was also on offer, delivered with great heart. And that is how the evening began:

Opening the program as soloist in the Andante Cantabile for cello and strings, Madeline Fayette, (NYCP’s own), commanded centerstage. Forthright, with an immediate brand of lyricism, Fayette radiated warmth from her cello, upheld by a muscularity of execution. Her global tone seemed born of a seductively dark palette. While lush and nourishing was Fayette’s romantic sense, the coloring became all too similar at times. One hankered for more variety in sonority, extracted from the piano end of the dynamic spectrum. Brighter hues too, would have enhanced an admittedly emotionally satisfying reading. Conductor Dongmin Kim guided the chamber orchestra deftly, ever sensitive to Fayette’s richly etched lines. Notably, Tchaikovsky’s moments of silence were realized expertly by Fayette, aided again by the orchestra’s soft touch. At times it seemed as though conductor Kim was a little too aloof and might well have taken opportunity to invigorate the proceedings with contrasting textures and inner accompaniment parts, especially from the upper strings.

 

Photo credit: New York Classical Players

From the start, it was apparent that NYCP has an affinity for Tchaikovsky and such canonic works remain a hallmark of their repertoire. The second Tchaikovsky item on the program was the irresistible Serenade for Strings of 1880. It can easily be observed that the New York Classical Players straddle two worlds: that of a high-level ensemble who don’t really need a conductor, and that of the effortless sinfonietta who follow their leader with attentive skill and palpable delight. NYCP’s performance of the Serenade threw both spheres into sharp relief.

From the outset of Movement 1, this “Pezzo in forma di sonatina” bristled forth with an excess of springtide energy and conviction. Every single player was committed to the sum of the parts and proved adept at sweeping, upsprung passages. The full-blooded fortes were ever impressive, generous in their tonal production. The orchestra seemed less able to dig into the finer work of textural detail and soft timbres; refined aspects of blending were, at times, problematic. Nevertheless, moments of delicacy and whispered tunefulness were gloriously realized in the third movement, the Élégie.

In what has come to be earmarked as a personal work from Tchaikovsky, the Serenade’s folksy tendencies were cleverly enlightened by NYCP. At times, the spirit of Dvorak came to mind, as dance elements and rhythmic physicality were exemplified by the orchestra, flattering much of the performance. Kim’s conducting was precise and encouraging yet missed the larger picture. A “bird’s eye view” of this music would have been more satisfying.

A particularly memorable solo from the concert master nearly stole the show but it seemed to encourage the entire ensemble to really shoot for the top in the final movement, rhapsodically reaching every phrase with a breadth of expression. (This approach does prove effective – and often necessary! – in Tchaikovsky’s music.)

The evening’s premiere, Jeremy Gill’s Motherwhere, leapt to an earnest start, giving ample platform to the Parker Quartet’s myriad attributes. Vitality and playfulness abounded as this concerto grosso was set A-reveling, an ideal showcase for what the Parkers have become celebrated for. Characteristics of each of the four solo instruments (the concertino) bubbled happily to the fore, where divergent gestures narrated a candid mode of expression, integral and benevolent, perfectly suited to the musicians Gill so reveres. During a recent interview, the composer declared his affection for the Parker Quartet: “Writing for them is a joy, and I hope that joy is manifest in the notes I write for them.” He also emphasized his desire for “creating ideal environments in which ensembles can play and sound their best.” Motherwhere boasts eclectic source material, various in its own inspirations. Night School: A Reader for Grownups (2007) is a book of stories by author, Zsófia Bán. This was the starting point for Gill in an endeavor to “evoke, musically, the experience of reading her book.” The structure of Gill’s musical “metamorphosis” indicated itself, as he converted Bán’s “bag-of-tales” into a tightly wrought, nearly continuous set of twenty-one bagatelles. Self-proclaimed, this represents his objective to “match up the emotional evocations of the music and the tale.”

 

Composer Jeremy Gill; photo by Arielle Doneson

The Parker Quartet divine much from Gill’s 슬롯사이트 economy of means, transforming terse, even simple motives into a lingua franca for the listener to relish. Elements of familiarity are welcomed, as Gill’s sunny, near-hummable lines ring of truth and of beauty, distilled with a congenial dose of Americana. His carefully considered formal structures urge a dramatic, even theatrical, listening experience. Also finding folk aspects implicit to the string orchestra profile itself (cf. Tchaikovsky), Gill’s penchant for highlighting the concertino serves his purposes well; lower strings were especially punctuated. Some extended techniques proved effective throughout Motherwhere, often serving as percussive devices (ie. pizzicato, strumming and glissandi). The unison passages, while arresting, posed intonation challenges and became cumbersome, if not gritty.

 

 

Jeremy Gill’s vision of form, interaction and brightness of spirit must be thoroughly commended here. Through strength of artistic vision, technical expertise and familiarity with the commissioning ensemble, the composer has achieved a kind of cinematic, fictive musical world, jolly and inviting.

Equal enthusiasm for Zsófia Bán’s literary talent cannot be overstated. Indeed, her “bag-of-tales” might be requisite reading after this musical premiere. Bán herself mused on the “accidental encounter” that composer Gill had with her work. She likened it to “the clicking of two billiard balls on a global pool table.” And the entire performance at West 83rd Street, on this first April night in 2022, had that very air about it: a spirited, celebratory meeting of like-minded colleagues and friends. The specter of Antonio Vivaldi, with his ubiquitous provenance of “Spring,” saluted us too from on high.

 

NOTE: This concert review dates from a performance on Friday, April 1, 2022 at W83 Auditorium, New York

 

 

 

by Adam Sherkin
Bang on a Can, Brooklyn, Chamber Music, Choral Music, Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Festivals, jazz, Music Events, Performers, Premieres

Bang on a Can Long Play Festival 2022: An Interview with David Lang

Some of the artists at the 2022 Long Play festival

Two years ago, I was editing a 2020 interview with the composer David Lang about the new multi-day festival that Bang on a Can planned for that spring, Long Play, when I realized the significance of the festival title. The year 2020 would be Bang on a Can’s 33rd anniversary. Long Play = LP = 33 rpm. Very clever! Although the festival was delayed for two years, it retains its name.

The inaugural Long Play festival takes place on April 29, April 30 and May 1, 2022 at a half-dozen venues in Brooklyn, including BAM, Roulette, Littlefield, the Center for Fiction, Mark Morris Dance Center, Public Records and the outdoor plaza at 300 Ashland. Over 60 performances are scheduled. Some are free, but most are accessed via a day pass ($95) or a three-day festival pass ($195). Over a hundred performers range from the Sun Ra Arkestra to jazz pianist Vijay Iyer to bagpiper Matthew Welsh (complete list is here).

Lang, along with the composers Julia Wolfe and Michael Gordon launched Bang on a Can in New York City in 1987 with a 12-hour concert in a downtown art gallery. The organization became known for its annual marathon concerts in New York, and later expanded to include a performance group (the Bang on a Can All-Stars), a commissioning program, education programs and festivals at MASS MoCA in the Berkshires, a record label (Cantaloupe), and an on-going extensive online series created when live concerts were cancelled during the pandemic.

Looking back on our conversation on February 25, 2020, most of what Lang and I discussed is still relevant to the rescheduled Long Play Festival. Here is the interview, edited for length and clarity.

Gail Wein Successful marathons have been your signature event for Bang on a Can for 33 years. So what prompted the creation of this differently-formatted festival, Long Play?

David Lang

David Lang Over the last couple of marathons we have tried to expand our reach to different kinds of music and to other kinds of communities. After a while of doing that, we felt like we were inviting people on to the marathon for slots of 15 or 20 minutes that we wished were an hour or two hours. And so we got interested in a lot of other kinds of music and it just seemed like we weren’t spending enough time with them.

I remember thinking – this is at the last marathon – people would come in and they would go, “That was incredible. Why am I only wanting that for fifteen minutes?” What we’re hoping to do with this is to say, we’ve uncovered all these incredible connections between all these different kinds of music. And now we really want to let people go deeper into what those connections do and where they go.

Gail Wein Of course, it’s a much bigger scope. Three days, and a bunch of venues. And instead of the marathon’s free admission, this one is ticketed.

David Lang There’s still going to be a bunch of free things, including some outdoor events, because we really like the idea that we have a wide doorway, that lots of different kinds of people can come through with no barriers. But it’s also true that when you start working with so many hundreds of musicians and so many different kinds of venues, that it’s just not possible for us to fundraise to make the entire thing free anymore. So we came up with this plan that, for essentially the price of one ticket, you get a pass which allows you to see everything and then you’ll just be able to go in and out of performances and check out music from all these different communities.

Gail Wein How does the aesthetic of the performers and the programs and the repertoire differ from that of the marathons?

David Lang I don’t think it differs at all.

We’re still looking for people whose definition of what they do is: they wake up in the morning and tell themselves that they’re innovators. They wake up and they say, there’s a kind of traditional music that’s involved in my world and I’m not doing that. That’s always been the way we’ve judged people to come on to the marathon. We wanted to find people who were pushing their fields. The difference here is that we’re able to go deeper into other kinds of communities like jazz and rock music and indie pop and ambient and electronica and be able to invite more people who are pushing their boundaries.

Gail Wein I was thinking about the longevity of Bang on a Can as an institution. Institutions come and go, organizations come and go, various folks have mounted series, marathons, festivals. But not that many have lasted a third of a century. To what do you attribute Bang on a Can’s longevity?

David Lang, Michael Gordon and Julia Wolfe, the founders of Bang on A Can (photo by Peter Serling)

David Lang I’m sure some of it is just dumb luck. But also we have a kind of hippie mentality about what it is we do, where we want everyone involved in the organization to be as excited and passionate about it as possible. If something comes up that we are not passionate about, we don’t do it. Some organizations, they just begin to think, well, we have a payroll to meet. We’ve got to do this, and this is what we did last year.

One of the things that we’re really proudest of about this festival and also about our sister festival that we started in summer, which is the Loud Weekend Festival at Mass Moca, is that we’re able to change and get excited about other kinds of things and then turn the organization so that it can take advantage of what we’re all really excited about. Everyone who works at Bang on a Can is a musician; we only hire people who are musicians. And so when we talk about these things in the office, we really are sharing ideas of the things that we are all getting excited about. And so when you do something like this, when you say this is a new direction that we’re going in, or this is the kind of music we want to include, or this is a new initiative for something we’d like to do, it’s something that energizes everybody. That’s one of the reasons why we can stay fresh, because everybody understands how committed we all are to the mission of the organization.

Gail Wein I’ve been thinking about this: New York City is already one big music festival every single day.

David Lang It is.

Gail Wein So why do you think New York and New Yorkers need this festival?

David Lang One of the beautiful things about this is the pass, quite honestly. In New York, there are always 500 concerts to see every single night. And you pay your money and you go see it and you stick it out, right? And then you say, I know I’m going to see this one, I don’t know that other kind of music, so I’m going to go see the one I know because I have to pay the money and I have to sit there for the concert.

At Long Play, we have all of this music within a few blocks of each other, all in walking distance, in Brooklyn, all the concerts are scheduled to go on simultaneously. What I’m really hoping will happen is that people with the pass will be encouraged to check out things that they wouldn’t necessarily check out because they have the right to go to that concert. So that’s our thought of how to replace the thing that we loved so much about the marathon, which is to put this kind of music next to each other, so that someone would come out of watching twelve hours of the music at the marathon and having a kind of cross section of a huge swath of interesting innovative things. What we’re hoping now will happen is that because I’ve already bought a pass, I’m going to check it out. And if I don’t like it, I can get up in 10 minutes and go check something else out. I’m not obligated to spend $50 for a concert of stuff I don’t know.

Gail Wein How did you choose and curate the artists and the programs and the venues as well?

David Lang We wanted to find places that were all in walking distance. And of course, that means that we started talking to everybody a year ago in order to get on their schedules. And then we just went to every single person who works in Bang on a Can and asked, what do you want to see? People just thought, what’s the widest, most varied, most exciting bunch of things from a bunch of different musical directions that we can come up with?

Gail Wein What do you hope audiences will come away with after experiencing the Long Play Festival?

David Lang What I’m really hoping will happen is that people will think that the world is full of all sorts of exciting things going on right now. And and that it’s full of creativity and wildness and inspiration and and that the world is very large. You know, I think sometimes when you go to a concert that’s neatly packaged and everything fits and everything makes sense. You go, this is a complete experience andI don’t need anything else. What I’m really hoping will happen is that people will come to this thing and they’ll go. That was unbelievable. And the world is full of all sorts of things that I have to continue to check out.

I asked David Lang which of the artists and programs were his favorite. A message he sent in an email newsletter earlier this month sums up his thoughts about the 2022 festival.

April 5, 2022

LONG PLAY really reminds me of those choose-your-own-adventure books – you get to make your own musical path through each day.

That is why I am going to plot my course through the weekend, very very carefully – I want to make sure I build my schedule around the concerts that I really have to see. Such as:

Stimmung – Karlheinz Stockhausen – It is hard to imagine that a European modernist classic from the 1960’s is in reality a meditation on everyone in the world having sex with each other, but that is what it is. Ekmeles sings at the Mark Morris Dance Center at 5pm on Friday, April 29.

Iva Casian-Lakos plays Joan La Barbara – Bang on a Can introduced these two to each other on one of our Pandemic Marathons last year, commissioning a new work from Joan for Iva’s fiery cello playing. The result was so electrifying that they have made it into a show, and I need to hear how it has grown. At the Center for Fiction at 2pm on Sunday.

Vijay Iyer, Linda May Han Oh, Tyshawn Sorey – Their album UNEASY came out last year on ECM and it has been on heavy rotation in my studio ever since.  It’s tuneful and moody and thoughtful, and I really want to hear them play together, live. At Roulette on Saturday at 8pm.

Eddy Kwon – composer, singer, violinist – their music is so beautiful and flows so smoothly across so many boundaries that is hard for me to even describe it.  The songs feel like the hit arias from the foundational music of a culture I have never experienced before.  Magic.  Sunday at 4pm at the Center for Fiction.

Ornette Coleman – The Shape of Jazz to Come – Coleman was a motivator for so much forward motion in music. This legendary album from 1959 was a big part of that, and it is still pushing musicians to move forward.  I want to be there when six composers show us how with their world premieres. At BAM’s Opera House 7:30pm on Sunday, May 1.

And then I have to figure out how to run between all the other shows, trying to see as much as I can.

Nona Hendryx!  Arvo Pärt!  Sun Ra!  Éliane Radigue!  Zoë Keating!  Galina Ustvolskaya!  Pamela Z!  JG Thirlwell!  Soo-Yeon Lyuh!  Craig Harris!  The Brooklyn Youth Chorus! More!  Much more!

Plus I will try to see my own show (Death Speaks) with Shara Nova on Sunday at Mark Morris, if I can figure out how to fit it in.

Whatever the schedule ends up looking like, I have a feeling you are going to see me there with circles under my eyes, as I run from show to show to show to show to show.

But I know I am going to be super happy.

– David Lang

 

 

by Gail Wein
CD Review, Chamber Music, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Abrahamsen’s Schnee (CD Review)

Hans Abrahamsen

Schnee

Lapland Chamber Orchestra, John Storgårds, conductor

DaCapo

 

This is the second recording of Hans Abrahamsen’s Schnee (‘Snow,’ 2008), an hourlong imaginative ensemble work populated by idiosyncratic canons interspersed with intermezzos. The first, by Ensemble Recherche in 2015, was an excellent document of the piece. That said, this second interpretation is welcome, as it brings out different aspects of Schnee. Recherche’s recording is atmospheric and colorful, while Lapland Chamber Orchestra provides a rhythmically charged and dramatically intense rendition, in vivid sound with a wide dynamic range, and incisive delineation of canonic voices. 

 

One needn’t adopt a programme for listening to Schnee, but the gestures in Canon 1A  are suggestive: pitched percussion and keyboard as gentle snow falling, squalls of wind in the searing violin and clarinet lines. Another way in, one accentuated in Lapland’s recording, is the pervasive counterpoint in imaginative technical and instrumental combinations. Followed by a hushed sustain in Intermezzo 1, Canon 2B is a signature example of Abrahamsen’s writing at its most rigorous, with overlaps between strings and winds and emphatic keyboard glissandos creating a vigorous, linearly saturated ambience. Where the clarinet and piano led Canon 1, here the flute provides altissimo lines and flourishes that take center stage. The denouement of the movement resembles an ostinato by Stravinsky. 

 

Schnee is abundantly varied. Each movement shifts both the canonic devices used and the way in which they are scored.Canon 3A presents slower moving lines, with glissandos punctuating brass iterations of the canon. As Schnee moves towards its conclusion, compression takes place and the last two sets of canons and intermezzos are miniatures in comparison to the previous sections. They may be compact, but the concluding portions are powerfully wrought, containing permutations of many of the previous lines and textures, but now overlaid and juxtaposed to create a potent summary. 

 

Abrahamsen is one of our great living composers – he turns seventy this year. Schnee was a turning point piece for him, and it is good to hear it encompassing multiple performances that serve to develop its interpretative possibilities. Keeping with the wintry theme, Abrahamsen is now at work on his first opera, an adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen.” 

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Cello, Chamber Music, Contemporary Classical

Chris Votek – Memories of a Shadow

Microfest Records has recently released Memories of a Shadow, a new CD by Chris Votek. The liner notes state that Votek is “…an innovative composer refracting Indian Classical music through the lens of modern chamber music.” The string ensemble performing on this recording consists of two violins, two cellos and a viola. The lower registers predominate, creating an unusual sonic balance and perspective. The resulting album is an appealing blend of raga forms incorporating Western medieval harmonies clothed in deep tones and a rich timbre.

Serpents, the first piece of the album, opens with sustained tones dominated by the cellos with more active phrasings in the higher parts. The tempo is measured, but not slow, creating a sense of quiet drama. There is a solid, woody foundation to this that alters the harmonic center, challenging the listener’s preconceptions of string ensemble music. The deepest tones are often gnarly, but this only adds to the refreshing context. As the piece proceeds, a series of intertwining passages coil in and around each other – serpent-like – but there is no menace in the lovely harmonies that develop. Serpents is beautifully wrought, the musical equivalent of a finely carved wooden sculpture.

Fossil Dance follows, with a fast opening that features active rhythms and nicely blended harmony. Repeating parts follow each other and a pleasing groove develops. There is less of the exotic and a more traditional feeling to this piece with a plaintive feel and a marked sense of introspection. The independence of the parts and the formality of the structure combine in Votek’s elegant and mature style. The ensemble playing is solidly skillful and always expressive. The tempo picks up about midway through and a bit of tension creeps in, especially in the violins and then the cellos. The pace gradually increases towards the finish, bordering on the anxious, until a sudden slowing returns to a solemn and almost sorrowful courtliness at the end. Fossil Dance is a refined and artful exposition of the emotional potential inherent in string music, masterfully performed.

The third track, Migration of the Fires, begins with a series of long, languid phrases and graceful harmonies. The rich timbre and dignified ambiance soon morphs into independent parts, each spinning actively in and out as the tempo gradually increases. The phrases have movement in the cellos while the violins hold lightly sustained tones above. This is all very deliberate and under control, even as the pace increases. About midway through, the piece goes from a trot to a canter and this adds a touch of anxiety. The playing is always disciplined and very precise with fast running phrases and strong bowing. By 9:00 everything slows again, as if out of breath. There is a much slower tempo now, with long sustained tones as the piece quietly fades to a finish. Migration of the Fires exhibits the same mature style and wide range of expression heard in Fossil Dance and is equally enchanting.

The final piece on the album is Bhimpalasi – Chota Khyal . Chris Votek, on cello, is joined by Neelamjit Dhillon on tabla performing this “traditional Hindustani raga in the singing style – gayaki-ang.” A low drone sound sets the foundation as the cello enters with a strong intonation in its very lowest register, almost as a growl. Even at this depth and slow tempo the phrasing is noticeably lyrical, if somewhat somber. At 4:40 the tabla enters with a welcome beat that lightens the mood and soon generates a pleasant, ambling groove. The style of this piece is consistent throughout but the details constantly change and evolve. The deep tones magnify the sense of singing that is heard in the cello melody and this seeming contrast holds the listener’s attention. At 11:40 the tempo picks up a bit and the cello is ‘singing’ more in a middle register with faster and plaintive phrases. A repeating theme soon appears in the cello and serves as a departure point for improvised variations. Towards the finish, the tempo increases again as the notes pour smoothly out of the cello and the tabla provides a solid rhythmic framework. Votek’s command of the cello is impressive and the coordination with the percussion is seamless. Bhimpalasi is clearly a traditional Indian form, but the expressive playing in the cello makes it more accessible to the Western ear – the kind of music you wish would last longer.

The artistic vision of Chris Votek for Memories of a Shadow succeeds with its unusual combination of classic Indian ragas mixed with contemporary forms, an unconventional string ensemble and a high technical level of performance.


Performance Personnel:

Andrew Tholl, violin
Adrianne Pope, violin
Ben Bartelt, viola
Derek Stein, cello
Chris Votek, cello

Neelamjit Dhillon, tabla (Bhimpalasi)


Memories of a Shadow is available from Microfest Records and as a digital download at Amazon Music.




by Paul Muller