Composers

Composers, Contemporary Classical, Deaths

RIP Marga Richter (1926-2020).

Marga Richter

by Sharon Mirchandani

American composer and pianist Marga Richter died peacefully of natural causes at her new home in Barnegat, NJ on June 25, 2020. She had lived on Long Island for many years prior, regularly spending summers in Vermont. Born in Reedsburg, Wisconsin and raised in Robbinsdale, Minnesota, she was the first woman to graduate with a master’s degree in composition from Juilliard in 1951 where she studied piano with Rosalyn Tureck and composition with William Bergsma and Vincent Persichetti. She was one of few women composers to have her orchestral works performed by major orchestras, and over her lifetime she composed nearly 200 works for orchestra, piano, chamber ensembles, chorus, and voice that were performed by major artists and organizations including pianist Menahem Pressler, violinist Daniel Heifetz, the Drucker Trio, cellist David Wells, the Western Wind, the Minnesota Orchestra, Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Natalie Hinderas and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Civic Orchestra of Chicago. In 1981 an all-Richter concert was held at Merkin Concert Hall in New York City.

Marga Richter’s musical style was very chromatic from her early years and primarily uses layered textures and ostinatos to generate structure. Her music ranges from highly dissonant works to more modal works that always have a twist of chromatic flavor. She viewed chromaticism as an important tool for intuitive emotional expression and disliked strict precompositional systems, rejecting twelve-tone techniques wholeheartedly for her own music. Many of her works drew inspiration from distinctly American, Irish/English, or Asian images or texts. For instance, her Landscapes of the Mind series was inspired by paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe, Blackberry Vines and Winter Fruit was inspired by writings of Thoreau, her orchestral tone poem Spectral Chimes/Enshrouded Hills was inspired by Britisher Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles, and her Dew Drops on a Lotus Leaf is a setting of poems by Ryokwan. She composed works for ballet early in her career, including The Abyss, a ballet composed for The Harkness Ballet. Many of her works are dedicated to individuals in her life; Lament for string orchestra was composed in memory of her mother, the opera singer Inez Chandler. She composed the chamber opera Riders to the Sea, and a grand Triple Concerto for violin, piano, and cello soloists. Being a fine pianist herself, she composed many piano works, large and small, including her Piano Sonata.

I met Marga in 2003 and view her as a true friend and wonderful composer, with a great sense of humor. She loved connecting and sharing music with all the many people in her life, playing piano, collecting blue mason jars, taking long walks daily, word play, and working as cofounder and member of the Long Island Composers Organization. She was predeceased by her husband Alan Skelly and is survived by her son pianist Michael Skelly; daughter Maureen Raj, a nurse; four grandchildren; and four great grandchildren.

Share a memory with her family at her Tribute Obituary here.

Read and Listen Further: Marga Richter

Archival video footage from a series of “Hear & Now” interviews hosted by Judith St. Croix for American Cable Systems features “An Exploration of the Creative Mind” with composer Marga Richter discussing her creative process and her piece “Landscapes of the Mind 1.” Posted on the NYWC YouTube channel

Interview with Marga by filmmaker Leslie Streit for the documentary “An American Ballet Story”

Marga Richter website

Remembrance by tenor Will George which includes many links to her music.

Marga Richter Profile with timeline of life events

Marga Richter CDs on Amazon

Biography of Marga Richter

Her sheet music is available from Theodore Presser

Profile page on New York Women Composers, Inc.

“Marga Richter.” Chapter in Women of Influence in Contemporary Music: Nine American Composers, ed. Michael Slayton. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2011.

“The Choral Music of Marga Richter,” Choral Journal (May 2003), 9-17.

NYT Obituary (forthcoming)

July 9, 2020July 10, 2020 by Christian Carey

CDs, Chamber Music, Choral Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

10/25 – Composers at Westminster Recording sees Release

On October 25th, the recording Composers at Westminster (WCC19109) will be released via digital platforms. The program notes are below.

“Composers at Westminster”

The five composers featured on this recording are full-time members of the composition faculty at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey. The programmed selections display a range of musical styles and works for different forces: three of the college’s choirs as well as voice faculty, pianists, and visiting string artists.

Stefan Young is not only a composer but an estimable pianist. He performs some of his own piano pieces from a musical diary called Thoughts for the Day: here we get a peek at his ponderings for January. Young also plays in Ronald Hemmel’s string quintet Night Moves, a work written to accompany dance. The Other World is Young’s choral setting of an ancient Egyptian text (in translation), performed by Schola Cantorum, conducted by James Jordan. Clarum Sonum, a group of recent graduates, contribute Jay Kawarsky’s setting of Rami Shapiro’s poem Unending Love.

Joel Phillips is represented by two Christina Rosetti songs, performed by voice faculty member Victoria Browers and pianist J.J. Penna, as well as a setting of William Blake’s beloved poem “Little Lamb,” performed by Westminster Choir, conducted by Joe Miller. Two of Christian Carey’s Seven Magnificat Antiphons are performed by Kantorei, conducted by Amanda Quist. They are settings of ancient Latin texts that traditionally are sung during Advent. Carey’s first of two groups of Jane Kenyon songs are also performed by Browers and Penna.

Composers at Westminster celebrates the creativity of its faculty. It serves as a document of just some of the many collaborations they regularly undertake with Westminster faculty and students and in the wider musical community.

-Christian Carey

Program

Stefan Young

The Other World – 5:27

Westminster Schola Cantorum, James Jordan, conductor

Joel Phillips

2- Press Onward – 3:24

3- Sleep, Little Baby – 3:38

Victoria Browers, soprano; J.J. Penna, piano

Christian Carey

Magnificat Antiphons

4-O Sapientia – 2:20

5-O Oriens – 2:45

Westminster Kantorei, Amanda Quist, conductor

Ronald A. Hemmel –

6- Night Moves (Piano Quintet) – 10:55

Leah Asher, Maya Bennardo, Meagan Burke, and Erin Wright, strings; Stefan Young, piano

J. A. Kawarsky

7- Unending Love – 3:41

Clarum Sonum, conducted by Rider Foster.

Stefan Young – Thoughts for the Day – January

8- Jan. 4. Vigorous – 1:52

9- Jan. 11. Driving – 1:43

10- Jan. 28. Slowly – 1:00

11- Jan. 31. Remembering Peter – 2:20

Stefan Young, piano

Christian B. Carey – Three Kenyon Songs

12- Song – 2:17

13 – Otherwise – 4:32

14- Let Evening Come – 4:13

(poems by Jane Kenyon used by kind permission of Graywolf Press,

Victoria Browers, soprano; J.J. Penna, piano

Joel Phillips

15- Little Lamb – 4:09

Westminster Choir, Joe Miller, conductor

Total timing: 54 minutes

Dr. Stefan Hayden Young is Professor at Westminster Choir College. He received a B.M. from Rollins College, certificates in harmony, piano, and solfège from the American School of the Arts, Fontainebleau, France, an M.M. in piano from the Juilliard School, and a Ph.D. in composition from Rutgers University. Commissions have included the Haverford Singers and NJMTA. He has written for various media including orchestra, band, choir, chamber ensembles, voice and piano, and a variety of solo instruments. He has also served as director of music and organist at a number of churches in New Jersey and on Martha’s Vineyard. At Westminster, Dr. Young is director of the Composition Week summer session, coordinator of the student composition concerts, and coordinator of the composers’ project with the Westminster Community Orchestra. In 2003, his Anthology of Art Songs was released on CD.

Joel Phillips is Professor at Westminster Choir College where he has taught since 1985. Phillips has received a number of commissions well as awards, the latter including annual recognition from ASCAP, the G. Schirmer Young Composer’s Award, and a BMI Award. His choral works are published by G. Schirmer, Inc., Transcontinental Music Publications, GIA, and Mark Foster Music (Shawnee Press).

Dr. J.A. Kawarsky is Professor at Westminster Choir College. He received a B.M. from Iowa State University, and an M.M. and D.M.A. from Northwestern University. He has written for all genres including solo instrument, orchestra, band, choral, vocal and theater. Prayers for Bobby. for choir, orchestra, narrator and soloists, has received numerous performances throughout the United States and Canada and was recorded by the New Jersey Gay Men’s Chorus and members of the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, DC. Iowa State University premiered the alto saxophone and orchestral winds piece, Fastidious Notes. 17 universities throughout the United States commissioned the symphonic band work Red Training Reels. The cantata Sacred Rights, Sacred Song has been performed throughout the USA and Israel. Navona Recordings released Kawarsky’s 2018 portrait CD, Spoon Hanging from My Nose. Yelton Rhodes Music, Transcontinental Music, and Southern Music publish his compositions.

Ronald A. Hemmel is Professor at Westminster Choir College. Dr. Hemmel received his B.M. in Music Education from Westminster Choir College, his M.M. in Music Theory/Composition and Organ Performance from James Madison University, and his M.Phil. and Ph.D. from Rutgers University. He is a Fellow of the American Guild of Organists. Before coming to Westminster, in 1994 he directed the music program at Woodberry Forest School. His compositions include works for solo instruments, voice and piano, choir, and both small and large ensembles. Several of his choral works are published by Yelton Rhodes Music, G.I.A. Publications, and Transcontinental Music Publications.

Christian Carey is Associate Professor at Westminster Choir College. He has created over eighty musical works in a variety of genres and styles, performed throughout the United States and in England, Italy, and Japan. Performances of his compositions have been given by ACME, Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, Atlantic Chamber Orchestra, C4, Cassatt String Quartet, Chamber Players of the League of Composers, loadbang, Locrian Chamber Players, Manhattan Choral Ensemble, New York New Music Ensemble, Righteous Girls, Urban Playground Chamber Orchestra, and Westminster Kantorei. His score for the play Gilgamesh Variations was staged at Bushwick Starr Theatre in Brooklyn, NY. For Milton, a flute/piano duo, has been recorded twice, for Perspectives of New Music/Open Space and New Focus Recordings.

October 16, 2019October 16, 2019 by Christian Carey

Composers, Contemporary Classical

Hayes Biggs on Mario Davidovsky (1934-2019)

Mario Davidovsky (March 4, 1934 – August 23, 2019)

Mario Davidovsky, composer, teacher, and winner of a Pulitzer Prize in 1971 for his Synchronisms No. 6 for piano and electronic sounds, passed away peacefully last Friday at his home on Manhattan’s Upper West Side at the age of 85. The cause of death was heart failure.

Davidovsky was a pioneering figure in the burgeoning electronic music scene of the 1960s and 70s, and his pathbreaking work in combining live instrumentalists with prerecorded electronic sounds revealed exciting new possibilities in the realms of articulation, timbre, velocity, and expression. It could truly be said of Davidovsky’s series of Synchronisms that the electronic and acoustic media seemed to “learn” from each other: composers committing electronic sounds to tape and splicing musical events together could produce extraordinarily rapid, quicksilver patterns of articulation that at the time seemed beyond the limits of human performers. Sudden dynamic changes could be achieved in electronic music that also seemed to exceed the abilities of most executants. Even so, some of the finest young musicians of the time, like their forebears in previous eras, figured out how to incorporate a significant amount of these abilities into their own instrumental technique — to learn to play what formerly had seemed unplayable—, adding a new level of virtuosity that could be called upon by the composer. And Davidovsky had the magic touch when it came to introducing an element of human warmth and flexibility to the tape parts. It has often been said that in his hands this fixed electronic component, far from sounding rigid and unyielding, somehow gives the impression of “following” the live performer, similarly to the way a fine collaborative pianist follows and breathes with a singer or instrumentalist. Mario believed that the human executant was not to be supplanted, but that the things the instrument was capable of doing could be extended and enhanced.

Mario Davidovsky was born in Médanos, Argentina. His parents were Natalio Davidovsky, a general manager of an agricultural company, and Perla Bulanska Davidovsky, who taught Hebrew school and was something of a champion of social justice. She was an educated woman who engaged in scholarly biblical study, and she had a strong interest in caring for Jewish children who had been orphaned, even to the point of taking them into her home. Mario’s parents had been brought by their parents to Argentina from Lithuania in the early years of the twentieth century. Mario’s grandfathers both were rabbis, and one of them was also a Hebrew scribe. Living in a small town with many immigrants, in an observant Jewish household within a very Roman Catholic Latin American culture was critical to Mario’s development as a human being and as an artist. He developed a very strong belief in the ethical and moral component of being a composer, a belief that he worked to instill in his students for the rest of his life.

Music was an integral part of the family’s life, and Mario began taking violin lessons at the age of 7. By the time he was thirteen was already composing his own music. When he was fifteen his family moved to Buenos Aires, but he didn’t start formal composition studies until he was eighteen. He took instruction at a school modeled on the German Hochschule für Musik concept, studying with German and Austrian emigrés. Later, he attended the University of Buenos Aires, with the idea of pursuing a career in law, but in 1954 committed to composition. At about the same time he had his first compositional success, winning first prize in a competition with a string quartet. He graduated from the university, having received a solid grounding in musical theory and composition with Guillermo Graetzer and Teodoro Fuchs. He often spoke of his gratitude for the rigorous training in counterpoint that he received there. The sense of lyricism and of a through line in Mario’s music is pervasive, whether in the sparse textures of the early electronic pieces or the more opulent sonorities of Shulamit’s Dream.

Aaron Copland, who had for a long time had an interest in cultivating ties with Latin American composers, invited Davidovsky to Tanglewood in 1958 and introduced him to Milton Babbitt, who in turn introduced him to the world of electronic music, and who also was about to embark on a new venture, the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, along with Otto Luening and Vladimir Ussachevsky. In 1960, Mario moved permanently to the United States, settling in New York City. In the electronic music studio at Columbia, he familiarized himself with the equipment and began creating his first electronic compositions, and later assisted Edgard Varèse in preparing a new version of the tape part for Déserts. He often said that his early musical experiences had not prepared him for the daunting challenges of the new medium, that — as he put it — “nothing I know counts.” In a very real way it certainly was true: he was working with oscillators that were notoriously difficult to keep in tune, splicing many bits of tape together to create a few seconds of music, and having to build each individual sonority from the ground up, so to speak. The attack, steady state, and decay of the sound, natural and unique to every traditional instrument, had to be created anew for each piece; in effect he was creating the instrument itself. All of this taught him valuable lessons that would radically alter the way he thought about writing for conventional media and ensembles. His concept of orchestration was forever radically transformed by his experiences in the tape studio.

After mastering the medium of instrument(s)-plus-electronic sounds, he took a break from it for a while and applied what he had learned from the new technology to works for acoustic instruments and voices, which gave rise to a significant flowering of vocal music, much of it based on Biblical or Jewish-themed texts. In 1975 he created the first work of his to utilize a biblical text with which he had been obsessed since he was a youth: The Song of Songs (in Hebrew, Shir ha-Shirim). The resulting cantata, Scenes from Shir ha-Shirim, for four vocal soloists and chamber orchestra, brilliantly connects the tangy sonorities of Medieval and Middle Eastern musical traditions, and the weird composite instruments he fashions using regular Western classical instruments (oboe, clarinet, strings, piano, percussion) easily remind one of similar dazzlingly bizarre sonorities that he was able to create in the studio. Years later, in memory of his mother, he composed another very different setting of texts from the Song of Songs, Shulamit’s Dream, for soprano and large orchestra. Hearing the two settings in succession is rather like hearing the same text set by two different composers: one from the late Middle Ages, the other from the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. And yet it’s still Mario’s voice we’re hearing.

After an extensive hiatus, Davidovsky returned to the electronic studio and the Synchronisms series, completing four more works for electronics with, respectively, violin, guitar, clarinet, and double bass.

Davidovsky was the director of the Electronic Music Center from 1981 until 1994, taught at various times at the University of Michigan, Yale University, and Manhattan School of Music, and served on the faculties of City College of New York, Columbia University, and Harvard University. In 1982 he was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Davidovsky is survived by his son, Matias; his daughter, Adriana; his sister, Luisa Paz, and three grandchildren. His wife, Elaine Joyce Davidovsky, died in 2017.

When Mario spoke of the purpose of art and the ethical responsibility of the artist, he summarized it very beautifully as reflecting “the transcendental, profound wish that someone is served.” Thank you, Mario, for serving us all so generously.

Hayes Biggs

September 2, 2019 by Christian Carey

Classical Music, Composers, Concert review, Concerts, Contemporary Classical

Orchestra of St. Luke’s Robert DeGaetano Composition Institute

In these days of swiping right and hooking up, having a long-term commitment is something special. So when the Orchestra of St. Luke’s founded the Robert DeGaetano Composition Institute with plans to carry on for 15 years, that is cause for celebration. RDCI is funded by the estate of the Juilliard-trained pianist and composer Robert DeGaetano, who passed away in 2015. Each year until 2033, four composers at the beginning of their career will be selected for the Institute. They’re given one-on-one guidance and instruction from a mentor composer (Anna Clyne in 2019) for several months, a week-long residency in New York during which they take part in professional development sessions, and a chance to work with the musicians of the OSL, workshopping their compositions and ultimately getting a public performance.

The Robert DeGaetano Composition Institute launched this year with four composers selected from a field of over 100 applicants: Liza Sobel, Jose Martinez, James Diaz, and Viet Cuong. On July 19, 2019, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Ben Gernon conducting, brought four new pieces to the public, performing a world premiere by each composer at The DiMenna Center. The program was a diverse collection of background and styles. If these works had any one thing in common, it was how well they all painted a visual picture, and created a sense of place with their music.

Liza Sobel’s Sandia Reflections was inspired by a halting tramway journey into the mountains. Her work echoed the experience of the tram periodically lurching to a stop to allow oncoming traffic to pass. Sobel’s piece was cinematic in nature; melodic and cheerful, with robust use of brass, winds and percussion. Sporadic cascading motifs led to a conclusion with the kind of calm serenity that the composer, in her remarks before the performance, said that she experienced when she finally arrived to her mountain destination.

In his comments to the audience, Jose Martinez confided to the audience that it was the first time any of his music was performed in New York. His En El Otro Lado / On the Other Side was a dramatic aural painting that opened with dark, mysterious chords, giving way to pizzicato strings and percussion which drove home a sense of urgency. After an intense and turbulent section that was punctuated by the insistent thud of the timpani, a rapid decrescendo brought the work to its conclusion; ending, effectively, with a measure of silence.

James Diaz’s Detras de un muro de ilusiones / Behind a wall of illusions was inspired by the work of a visual artist and a Beatles song. In his composition, dissonant sonorities in the strings created an aural canvas over which large waves of chords floated.

Viet Cuong’s idea for Bullish was sparked by a Picasso drawing in which the artist captured the essence of an animal with a simple line or two. OSL embraced the whimsey of opening tango of Cuong’s piece, with a varied texture characterized by muted trumpets. Over the course of the lively work, the rhythms morphed into increasingly irregular patterns. As the piece progressed, many of the orchestral elements were pared away, exposing several instruments in solo lines.

With his posthumous gift, DeGaetano created a legacy – one that will help 60 emerging composers over the next 15 years advance their careers.

July 25, 2019 by Gail Wein

CD Review, Composers, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Erika Fox – Paths (CD Review)

Erika Fox

Paths

Goldsfield Ensemble, Richard Baker, conductor

NMC Recordings

Once one hears Paths, the octogenarian Erika Fox’s first CD, their first reaction may mirror mine: one of incredulity. How is it possible that a composer this talented with such a distinctive and assured musical voice had to wait so long for a monograph recording? To their credit, NMC has been a strong advocate of female composers for a number of years; I’ve recently been enjoying their recordings of Elizabeth Lutyens’s music. Thank goodness they have partnered with the Goldfield Ensemble to present Fox’s work while she is still alive to hear the results.

Born in Vienna in 1936, Fox was a war refugee who moved as a child to England. Her music is strongly infused with cultural heritage; Chasidic chant plays a large role in its conceptual framework. A strong sense of linearity is offset by a piquant harmonic palette and lively rhythms. In addition to a deft hand with pitched instruments, the works on Paths display Fox’s imaginative sense of timbre in her use of percussion. Goldfield had to retain a large battery of instruments to realize the CD’s program. Ensemble member Kate Romano points out in personable and informative liner notes that traditional development isn’t deployed. Instead a single line will weave discontinuous musical arguments that don’t return for a recapitulatory visit.

The CD begins withPaths Where the Mourners Tread,a substantial work in which the aforementioned linear narrative is passed from instrument to instrument. One gets the sense of wending through a labyrinth of contrasting textures, holding on to the aforementioned linear thread like breadcrumbs through the forest. Fox’s provides a delightful, mysterious sound world in which to get lost. This is equally true of Quasi una Cadenza, which contains beguiling writing for winds. A downloadable bonus track, Kaleidoscope, is equally varied and compelling.

Pianist Richard Uttley supplies an incisive and persuasive performance of the solo work On Visiting Stravinsky’s Grave at San Michele, where Fox embraces the influence of other composers. Blocks of material and incisive rhythms evoke Stravinsky, particularly his late dodecaphonic pieces. There is also a hint of Messiaen in the bird call-like cries of the upper line. Another piece indebted to a twentieth century composer is Malinconia Militaire, which is based on a poem that references Anton Webern’s Opus 4 songs.

Café Warsaw 1944 closes the CD. It is a piece inspired by the Czeslaw Milosz poem “Café. All four, relatively brief, movements, are led by the percussion section. The poem’s discussion of “the quick and the dead” and the small distance between them once again inspires Fox to inhabit the work of the Second Viennese School, but pointillism and chromaticism are contrasted with repeated chords and arpeggiations from the piano and taut percussion lines.

Fox’s music often seeks rapprochement with the past, addressing the experiences of her refugee childhood and Jewish background as well as the ghosts of midcentury concert music. Still, the manner in which the composer synthesizes these elements supplies vividness and urgency very much in keeping with present day concerns. The Goldfield Ensemble plays assuredly throughout, giving these underserved works excellent documentation. Now it is up to the rest of the musical world to take up Fox’s compelling music and make it much more widely known. One hopes this will happen forthwith.

-Christian Carey

July 15, 2019 by Christian Carey

Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, New York, Orchestras

Saturday: League of Composers Season Finale

On Saturday June 1st at Miller Theatre at 7:30 PM, Louis Karchin and David Fulmer will lead the Orchestra of the League of Composers in a program of contemporary works, including two premieres.

Karchin’s premiered work is Four Songs on Poems by Seamus Heaney, performed by soprano Heather Buck. Since I heard her in the title role of Charles Wuorinen’s opera Haroun and the Sea of Stories, I have been a great admirer of Buck’s singing . Heaney’s poetry is another touchstone, making this work one I am particularly keen to hear.

Friedrich Heinrich Kern will perform his commissioned piece for glass harmonica and orchestra with the ensemble. Kern is a virtuoso glass harmonica player, and the choreographic component of pieces for this instrument, in addition to the attractive language in which Kern composes, promises something very different from the usual fare at League concerts.

Curtis Macomber, a mainstay on the New York new music scene, will be the soloist in Martin Boykan’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra. To celebrate Thea Musgrave’s ninetieth birthday, the strings of the orchestra will perform the composer’s Aurora.

Event Details

Orchestra of the League of Composers

Saturday, June 1, 2019, 7:30 PM

Miller Theatre at Columbia University

Louis Karchin, Music Director and Conductor

David Fulmer, Conductor

Heather Buck, Soprano

Curtis Macomber, Violin soloist

Martin Boykan: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra

Louis Karchin: Four Songs on Poems on Seamus Heaney

Friedrich Heinrich Kern: Von Taufedern und Sternen (Of Dew Feathers and Stars)

Thea Musgrave: Aurora, for string orchestra

General Admission $30, Students/Seniors $15

Tickets can be purchased at the door or online at http://bit.ly/league2019

May 27, 2019 by Christian Carey

Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Music Events, New York, Twentieth Century Composer

Urban Playground Gives New York Premiere of Florence Price Violin Concerto No. 2 (Concert Preview)

On Wednesday May 8th, Urban Playground Chamber Orchestra presents the New York premiere of Florence Price’s Violin Concerto No. 2, music by Harry T. Burleigh, and a rarely heard oratorio, And They Lynched Him on a Tree, by William Grant Still. The program, titled From Song Came Symphony. fits the ensemble’s mandate to prioritize the performance of composers who are women and people of color. It focuses on the legacy of Burleigh. I recently caught up with UPCO’s conductor Thomas Cunningham, who told me more about the concert.

Cunningham says, ”I found programmatic inspiration in Jay-Z lyrics: Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther could walk / Martin Luther walked so Barack Obama could run / Barack Obama ran so all the children could fly.”

“Burleigh wrote art songs so that the following generation – William Grant Still, William Dawson, and Florence Price – could write symphonies and concert works. Burleigh’s incorporation of African American music into Western art music, and his advocacy for this new American music genre through his work at Ricordi, had a vast influence on remarkable composers of color in America.”

Florence Price’s work has recently been receiving significant attention. Cunningham feels that Violin Concerto No. 2 will be a highlight of the concert. “Price’s second violin concerto is wonderfully idiosyncratic. The concerto is in so many places defined by its subtle and yet robust brass writing, atypical especially for a concerto for string instrument. All the while, this work demonstrates a novel voice, both aware and in touch with various traditions, but carving out singular nuance and identity.”

UNC-Chapel Hill Ph.D. candidate Kori Hill will deliver a pre-concert lecture at the event. Of Price’s work, she says, “This concerto, completed just one year before Price’s untimely death in 1953, is a fascinating example of her applications of African American vernacular and Western classical principles. It is an important component to understanding and fully appreciating her contributions to American classical music. We hope Price’s Violin Concerto No. 2 becomes a staple of the violin repertory in the years to come.”

In addition to the aforementioned works, the program also includes a movement from Dvorak’s Ninth Symphony. Cunningham says that the included excerpt is connected to multiple pieces on the program. “Incorporating the Largo from Dvorak 9 serves a dual purpose: first, to demonstrate the tangible connection between the spirituals sung by Burleigh to Dvorak, and second, to mirror the premiere of Still’s And They Lynched Him on a Tree, which also included the movement.”

This is the fifth year that UPCO has been active. Their advocacy is laudable, and the group has musicianship to match its ambition. Cunningham and company are persuasive performers of both standard-era repertoire and more recent music. May 8th’s concert should be a memorable one.

Event Info

Urban Playground Chamber Orchestra and Harry T. Burleigh Society present

From Song Came Symphony

Wednesday May 8th at 7:30 PM

Langston Hughes Auditorium

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

515 Malcolm X Blvd.

New York, New York 10037

Tickets

May 6, 2019 by Christian Carey

Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Concert review, Concerts, Conductors, Contemporary Classical, Seattle

Boulez and Berio highlight Morlot’s farewell [untitled] concert at Seattle Symphony

Seattle Symphony’s [untitled] series was inaugurated in 2012 by its then-new Music Director, Ludovic Morlot. Three Fridays a year, small groupings of Symphony and visiting musicians set up in the Grand Lobby outside the orchestra’s main Benaroya Hall venue for a late night of contemporary music. This year’s series has been devoted to the European avant-garde, starting with Hans Abrahamsen’s Schnee in October and continuing this past March 22 with two landmarks of Darmstadt serialism: Berio’s Circles and Boulez’s sur Incises. The latter performance, which featured Morlot conducting the work’s regional premiere, offered an opportunity to contemplate the legacies of both the late composer and Morlot himself, who departs at the end of the season after an enormously impactful eight-year run.

Morlot conducting sur Incises (photos by James Holt/Seattle Symphony except as noted)

That the program would center on plucked and struck instruments was obvious from the seating arrangement, which snaked around the extensive percussion setups required for both pieces, not to mention a total of three pianos and four harps. Indeed, the only true sustaining voice among the deployed forces was the soprano in Circles. Dating from 1960, this work’s title is generally held to refer to its unusual structure: five settings of E. E. Cummings, of which the first and last use the same poem, as do the second and fourth. The evening’s performance emphasized the work’s continuity as a single 20-minute span, beginning and ending with ametric but strictly notated music, while reaching peak spontaneity in the middle section where Berio employs the proportional notation developed by Cage in Music of Changes, along with “improvisation frames” where the percussionists are given latitude within a set of specified pitches and instruments:

Seeing the work live, with the instruments positioned in accordance with Berio’s meticulous instructions, reveals an additional meaning to the title: the two percussionists (in this case Symphony members Matt Decker and Michael Werner) are frequently obliged to pirouette to execute their parts.

Rounding out the quartet was Seattle Symphony harpist Valerie Muzzolini and Maria Männistö, the Symphony’s “go to” soprano both for Finnish language works and for modern compositions with extraordinary demands, including Circles’ array of whispered, intoned and conventionally sung sounds originally designed for Cathy Berberian. Berio also frequently directs the singer to cue the three instrumentalists behind her (the score explicitly states that there should be no conductor). Not surprisingly it was Männistö (the English pronunciation rhymes with banister), who gave the last performance of Circles in the Northwest (with Seattle Modern Orchestra in 2011).

Critics usually position Circles within the heyday of post-WW2 musical pointillism. But I also see it as a primary source for George Crumb’s mature style. Its instrumentation—with piano/celesta substituting for harp—is duplicated in Night Music I (1963), the earliest Crumb piece that sounds like Crumb. And the ambiance of Circle’s middle movement, as well as Berio’s concept of extended staging, can be seen as starting points for Crumb’s own textural sparseness and emphasis on ritualized instrumental performance.

Michael Werner and Maria Männistö in Circles

With sur Incises (1996–98) Seattle at last received an entrée-sized portion of Morlot-conducted Boulez. Other than the brief and relatively mellow Notations I–IV (whose recording was one of my 2018 picks), Boulez’s music has been strangely absent from Symphony programming, even under the Directorship of his compatriot and mentee, so the showcasing of this formidable 40-minute piece felt particularly momentous.

Like most of Boulez’s music from the 1970s onward, sur Incises includes several passages that feature a steady beat and rapidly repeated notes. A good example is the Messiaenesque gamelan heard halfway through the first of its two “moments”, which coupled with the work’s unique instrumentation (three trios of piano, harp and mallet-centric percussion) gives the impression of a post-serial Reich (though Robin Maconie claims Stockhausen’s Mantra as a precedent). Another remarkable passage is the Nancarrow-like tutti about five minutes before the end. At other times, dazzling flurries are juxtaposed with calmer passages (the above links are to Boulez’s own performance with Ensemble intercontemporain, available in the 13-CD Deutsche Grammophon set of his complete works, which I review here).

The dominant motive in the piece, though, is a short-long rhythmic gesture akin to what drummers call a flam. It’s audible in the first piano right at the beginning, and recurs throughout the work, often with the short note in a different instrument than the subsequent clang. To pull off such highly coordinated music, the performers must not only know their parts cold, but must also coalesce into an incredibly tight ensemble. Only then does the ultimate interpretive goal become attainable: articulating the composite lines that traverse the three trios, and emphasizing the multilevel climaxes, anticipations and resolutions that drive this unceasingly complex music forward. As guest pianist Jacob Greenberg put it, “every phrase in the piece has a goal”. Not only was the band up to the task, but, in contrast with the introverted, austere sound world of Schnee, whose October performance benefitted from a measure of Dausgaardian reticence, tonight’s sur Incises profited from Morlot’s ever-present exuberance. Wouldn’t a future guest engagement with him conducting Rituel (in memoriam Bruno Maderna) be a treat?

The stereotype of Boulez as the ultimate cerebral composer is belied by his extraordinary command of instrumental color, something that always gave his music an edge over the legions of academic composers with a similar bent. Morlot and company’s rendering of this score reinforced Boulez’s proper place within the long line of French composers—from Berlioz, Debussy, Ravel and Messiaen onward to the spectralists—who have been infatuated with color and organic, self-generating form.

Ligeti: Poème Symphonique at the first [untitled], October 2012 with Ludovic Morlot in the background (photo: Michael Schell)

Boulez’s death in 2016 marked, if not the end of an era, the passing of its last undisputed superstar. And as Morlot took the microphone after the performance to acknowledge the [untitled] audience for the last time (the season’s final [untitled] event will have a guest conductor), a similar sense of poignant conclusion fell over the house. Though Seattle and its Symphony shared a longstanding, if erratic, history of support for contemporary music prior to Morlot’s arrival, there’s little doubt about the reinvigorating effect of a tenure that has brought forth not only the [untitled] concept, but also the Symphony’s new Octave 9 space (dedicated primarily to small-scale new music events) and an impressive series of regional and world premieres on the mainstage. One local musician prominent in new music circles told me “I was about ready to give up on Seattle before Morlot came”. And the feat of turning out a large and enthusiastic crowd for two thorny exemplars of Darmstadt dissonance in this most outlying of Lower 48 metropolises speaks for itself.

As a concluding round of hoots and applause died down, one could observe more than a few lumpy throats and damp eyes among the assembled Seattleites who left Benaroya Hall contemplating the departure of an exceptionally charismatic and personable conductor who has succeeded beyond all expectations at winning the hearts and minds of the city.

April 22, 2019March 11, 2023 by Michael Schell

Best of, CD Review, Composers, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Orchestral, Orchestras

Best of 2018: Orchestral CDs

Best of 2018 – Orchestral CDs

In ictu oculi

Kenneth Hesketh

BBC Orchestra of Wales, conducted by Christoph Mathias Mueller

Paladino

Three large orchestra works by British composer Kenneth Hesketh are attractively scored in multifaceted, often muscular, fashion. Hesketh’s unabashed exploration of emotionality, imbued with strongly etched motives and intricate formal designs, provides a cathartic journey for listeners.

Sur Incises

Pierre Boulez

The Boulez Ensemble, conducted by Daniel Barenboim

Deutsche-Grammophon

There is a previous, much vaunted, studio recording of Pierre Boulez’s composition Sur Incises (1998), one of the composer’s most highly regarded late works (in the year of its premiere, Sur Incises won the Grawemeyer Prize). This 2018 rendition of the work was performed live at a new space dedicated to Boulez, the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin. Acoustically marvelous, it is perhaps the ideal location in which to hear the composer’s music. Barenboim is one of Boulez’s great champions, and the ensemble gathered here play it with supple rhythms (slightly less ‘incisive’ than the studio version, but warmer in affect). They also deftly shape Sur Incises’ labyrinthine form to provide musical “bread crumbs” along its myriad pathways.

Berio: Sinfonia – Boulez: Notations I-IV – Ravel: La Valse

Roomful of Teeth, Seattle Symphony, Ludovic Morlot, conductor

Seattle Symphony Media

Composed in 1968-’69 for the New York Philharmonic and the Swingle Singers, Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia helped to herald postmodernism in music. Roomful of Teeth has now done the piece with the Philharmonic, providing a new generation of performance history for Berio. It is excellent to have Roomful of Teeth’s performance of Sinfonia documented in a superlative outing with the Seattle Symphony and Ludovic Morlot. The orchestra is equally scintillating in Pierre Boulez’s long gestated modernist masterpieces Notations I-IV. The disc is capped off with a rollicking rendition of Ravel’s La Valse.

Shostakovich: Symphonies 4 and 11 (“The Year 1905”) Live

Boston Symphony Orchestra, Andris Nelsons, conductor

Deutsche-Grammophon

Even with an ensemble as fine as the Boston Symphony, it is hard to believe that this is a live recording. Seamless transitions, admirable dynamic shading, gorgeous sounding strings, and exceptional playing by the brass section. Nelsons has a great feel for Shostakovich’s music.

Harbison, Ruggles, Stucky: Orchestral Works

National Orchestra Institute Philharmonic, David Alan Miller, conductor

Naxos

David Alan Miller has long been a staunch advocate of contemporary music, recording a number of discs of new works with the Albany Symphony. The National Orchestra Institute Philharmonic’s young players, aged 15-21, are a fantastic ensemble in their own right. Their rendition of Carl Ruggles’ Sun Treader is up there with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and Michael Tilson Thomas on the complete works recording; and that’s saying something.

Recently departed composer Steven Stucky created a fluently retrospective piece when composing Concerto for Orchestra No. 2 (2003); the piece won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005. It includes quotations from a host of great composers as well as ample amounts of music in Stucky’s masterful contemporary voice.

Composed for the Seattle Symphony and Gerard Schwarz in 2003, John Harbison’s Symphony No. 4 is one of his most compelling pieces in the genre. In the debut recording, the Boston Symphony’s rendition of the symphony took a fairly edgy approach. Miller elicits something more lissome from the NOI players. Both versions make an eloquent case for Harbison’s piece.

Topophony

Christopher Fox

John Butcher, Thomas Lehn, Alex Dörner, Paul Lovens, soloists

WDR Sinfonie-Orchester, Ivan Volkov, conductor

HatHut

Christopher Fox’s orchestral work Tophophony accommodates both renditions for orchestra alone and with improvising soloists. The WDR Sinfonie-Orchester, led by Ivan Volkov, record three different versions of the piece. By itself, Topophony has a Feldman-like, slow-moving, and dynamically restrained surface. It provides fertile terrain for both the duos of trumpeter Alex Dörner and drummer Paul Lovens and saxophonist John Butcher with synthesizer performer Thomas Lehn. All three versions are absorbing: it’s fortunate one doesn’t have to choose between them.

Symphony No. 6, Rounds for String Orchestra, and Music for Romeo and Juliet

David Diamond

Indiana University Chamber Orchestra, Indiana University Philharmonic Orchestra, Arthur Fagen, conductor

Naxos

This is the best recording of David Diamond’s music since the iconic CDs by the Seattle Symphony under the baton of Gerard Schwarz. Indiana University has long had one of the best music departments in the country, but they outdo themselves here, with a brilliant version of Diamond’s Rounds for String Orchestra and nimble phrasing in his Music for Romeo and Juliet. But it is Symphony No. 6 (1951) that is the star of this CD.

Those who relegate all of Diamond’s music to American romanticism (which, admittedly, is a fair assessment of some of his work) are in for a surprise from this bold, Copland-esque work. Indeed, when I was a student at Juilliard, Diamond proudly told me that his ballet Tom predated Copland’s adoption of an Americana style. With Symphony No. 6, Diamond made a strong case to have his work set alongside the “usual suspects” in the genre.

December 27, 2018 by Christian Carey

Best of, CD Review, Chamber Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Best of 2018: Composer Portrait CDs

2018 saw the release of a bevy of excellent recordings of music by contemporary composers. These were the portrait CDs that most frequently captivated my ear and captured my CD player.

Ipsa Dixit

Kate Soper

Wet Ink Ensemble (Erin Lesser, flute; Ian Antonio, percussion; Josh Modney, violin)

New World Records

Composer and vocalist Kate Soper spent from 2010-’16 creating the multi-movement theatre piece Ipsa Dixit. Working in close collaboration with Wet Ink Ensemble, she has crafted a composition in which theatricality encompasses multiple texts – ranging from Aristotle to Lydia Davis – and the ensemble plays “roles” as well as formidable musical parts.

Recently presented in an acclaimed staging at Miller Theatre, Ipsa Dixit is perhaps best experienced live. However, the audio recording captures Soper and Wet Ink in a dynamic, versatile performance. Whether speaking, singing, or, even in places, screaming, Soper is an expressive, indeed captivating, vocalist.

Emblema

Osvaldo Coluccino

Ex Novo Ensemble

Kairos

Italian composer Osvaldo Coluccino created a series of Emblema pieces for a commission by the Gran Teatro Fenice in Venice. Slowly unfurling, sustained pitches, deft employment of overtones and harmonics, and varied textures populate the works. On Coluccino’s Kairos portrait CD, the Ex Novo Ensemble performs them with attentive delicacy. One can hear echos of great composers such as Feldman, Scelsi, and Nono in these elliptical emblems, but it is the ghost of Webern that looms largest.

Quartets

Laura Schwendinger

JACK Quartet

Albany Records

JACK Quartet released a number of fine recordings in 2018, but the one to which I keep returning is their Albany CD of Laura Schwendinger’s string quartets. These feature richly hued harmonies, seasoned with dissonance, and are superbly paced throughout. Schwendinger’s music is some of the most eloquent work in a post-Schoenbergian aesthetic currently being composed. JACK’s performances of them are a detailed and engaging listen. Jamie van Eyck joins them for Sudden Light, a stirring vocal work.

distant song

Reiko Füting

AuditiVokal Dresden, Art D’Echo, loadbang, Byrne:Kozar Duo, Oerknal, and Damask

New Focus

A faculty member at Manhattan School of Music, Reiko Füting’s distance song features performers who are MSM alumni as well as European ensembles. An amalgam of various styles and materials notwithstanding, Füting displays a strong hand and clear-eyed perspective throughout.

After an introduction of thunderous drum thwacks, AuditiVokal Dresden and Art D’Echo perform “als ein licht”/extensio and “in allem Fremden” – wie der Tag – wie das Licht with marvelous close-tuned harmonies and suspense-filled pacing. Gradually the percussion is reintroduced at varying intervals to provide a foil for the singers.

loadbang and the Byrne:Kozar Duo, the aforementioned MSM contingent, perform Mo(nu)ment and Eternal Return (Passacaglia), two pieces featuring microtones and extended techniques alongside Füting’s penchant for off-kilter repetition. The Dutch ensemble Oerknal performs Weg, Lied der Schwänd, in which both spectralism and quotation (of a madrigal by Arcadelt) are explored: yet two more facets of the composer’s palette. Versinkend, versingnend, verklingend adds the vocal group Damask to Oerknal for a piece that combines still more quotations, ranging from Debussy’s piano music to a Fifteenth century German folksong.

Stadium

Eli Keszler

Shelter Press

Composer/percussionist Eli Keszler’s Stadium is 2018’s best CD on the sound art, rather than notated, spectrum of composed music. It deftly weaves percussion and electronics together in an atmospheric collection of pieces that lilt and swing in equal measure. While there is plenty of electronica out there using percussion in innovative ways, Stadium incorporates its various sound sources with a composerly sense of organization, where timbre, beat, and, in some places, pitch, are mapped with a rigorous formal sensibility.

Aequa

Anna Thorvaldsdottir

International Contemporary Ensemble, Steven Schick, conductor

Sono Luminus

This CD is ICE’s second portrait recording of Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s music, and her third portrait CD overall. Yet Aequa truly stands apart from the others. Each piece has a sense of flow, sometimes akin to churning water or rippling wind, and in others to oozing lava. Amid these fluid forms are also found visceral pools of unrest. In his performance of Thorvaldsdottir’s Scape, pianist Cory Smythe affords the listener a generous taste of reverberation and overtones, marked by trebly plucking inside the piano. The interplay of high and low creates ear-catching wide intervals in Illumine. This texture is later followed by corruscating strings. Another standout is the ensemble work Aequilibria, where undulating lines are pitted against static, sustained harmonic series and harp arpeggiations. It has extraordinarily beautiful low woodwind solos. Both of these pieces are conducted, with characteristic verve and accuracy, by Steven Schick.

Alisei

Stefano Scodanibbio

Daniele Roccato, Giacomo Piermatti, double bass; Ludus Gravis bass ensemble, Tonino Battista, conductor

ECM Records

The too-soon-departed Stefano Scodanibbio (1956-2012) was an extraordinary bass player and improviser. He was also a formidable composer, as the works for solo bass, duet, and bass ensemble documented here abundantly attest. Two virtuosic solo pieces, featuring an abundant number of harmonics and other special techniques, are impressively and energetically performed by Daniele Roccato. Roccato is joined by Giacomo Piermatti on Da una certa nebbia, a duo that is both an homage to and invocation of Morton Feldman.

The centerpiece of the CD is Ottetto (2012) for bass ensemble, one of the last works Scodanibbio completed before succumbing to motor neuron disease. It is sobering that, due to this debilitating illness, he could no longer play the bass at the time of the work’s gestation. Fortunately, Roccato enlisted a veritable who’s who of European bassists to populate the ensemble Ludus Gravis and, after Scodanibbio’s death, carry the work forward. Ottetto’s recording is a stunning display of the many ways in which this low-end ensemble can be a versatile one, from sepulchral passages to high-lying harmonics, with seemingly every mode of playing in between. The piece showcases the intimate familiarity with his instrument that Scodanibbio developed over a lifetime of practice and playing: an incredible musical valediction.

Rube Goldberg Variations

Dmitri Tymoczko

Flexible Music, Atlantic Brass Quintet, and Amernet String Quartet

Bridge

Fools and Angels

Dmitri Tymoczko

New Focus

In 2018, Princeton professor Dmitri Tymoczko released not one, but two portrait CDs. The first, Rube Goldberg Variations, features three postmodern chamber pieces performed by estimable ensembles: Flexible Music, Atlantic Brass Quintet with pianist John Blacklow, and the Amernet String Quartet with pianist Matthew Bengston. On I Cannot Follow, broken consort Flexible Music performs the plethora of provided off-kilter postminimal ostinatos with elan. The group lives up to their name when inhabiting the piece’s supple dynamic swells. The title composition is also informed by postminimalism, but is more jazzy in terms of its chord voicings. Tymoczko cleverly tropes Igor in “Stravinsky’s Fountain,” and supplies Nancarrow-esque piano canons in “Homage,” over which sustained detuned brass asserts a grounded rebuttal. S Sensation Something ends the album in a triadic landscape distressed with pitch bends and persistent, biting seconds.

Fools and Angels is a different musical statement altogether, featuring vocals, electronics, and, often, an art rock aesthetic. Indeed, there is a Zappa-esque zaniness afoot, in which the composer juxtaposes repurposed madrigals, faux bebop slinkiness, and even risque monologues, amid persistent changes of meter, bellicose soloing, and sci-fi synthetic soundscapes. A who’s who of youthful contemporary classical performers — Mellissa Hughes, Caroline Shaw, Martha Cluver, Gabriel Crouch, Jason Treuting, and Pascal LeBoeuf, to name some — supply earnest and accurate performances of Tymoczko’s kaleidoscopic construction.

Waterlines

Christopher Trapani

Lucy Dhegrae, soprano; Marilyn Nonken, piano; Christopher Trapani, hexaphonic guitar; Didem Başar, qanûn, Longleash; JACK Quartet; Talea Ensemble, conducted by James Baker

New Focus

Rising flood waters in New Orleans as the theme. Alternate tunings, guitar vs. zither. The incomparable Longleash and JACK being given plenty of extended techniques to dig their teeth (and fingers) into. Lucy Dhegrae singing spectralism-inflected blues songs as only she can. Trapani has a thousand and one good ideas and has enlisted a fantastic slate of performers to realize them. This CD may be one of the few positives to come out of meditating on the catastrophe that was Hurricane Katrina.

December 24, 2018 by Christian Carey

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