Conductors

Classical Music, Concert review, Conductors, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Lincoln Center, New York, Orchestras, Twentieth Century Composer, Vocals

Remaking a Rug Concert: Boulez at 100

David Robertson conducts NY Phil
Photo: Brandon Patoc

Sound On: A Tribute to Boulez

The New York Philharmonic, Conducted by David Robertson

Jane McIntyre, Soprano

David Geffen Hall, January 25, 2025

By Christian Carey – Sequenza 21

NEW YORK – If you think that audience development is a relatively new practice, then you may not have heard of Rug Concerts. In the 1970s, during Pierre Boulez’s tenure as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, these were an experiment to attempt to attract young people and downtown artsy types to try a concert at Avery Fisher Hall. Instead of rows of seating, rugs were strewn about the hall, inviting audience members to lounge in informal fashion while hearing a concert. Revisiting the first of these concerts, its program was presented in its entirety, albeit to audience members in the conventional seating setup of David Geffen Hall: no rugs rolled out.

The first half of the concert featured repertory works. J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G major was given a period-informed performance by a small ensemble. Sheryl Staples, the concertmaster for the evening, providing the aphoristic solo part with suave elegance, and bassist Timothy Cobb and harpsichordist Paolo Bordignon were an incisive continuo pairing.

Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 2 in B-flat is an impressively beautiful piece, especially considering that it was completed when the composer was just eighteen. I have heard three different conductors lead this symphony with the NY Phil, a proto-romantic and broadly lyrical rendition from Kurt Masur, a breakneck-pace version informed by early music practice given by Alan Gilbert, and Robertson’s, which deployed a chamber-sized orchestra and emphasized the classical elements in Schubert’s early instrumental music. One hesitates to make a Goldilocks comparison, but Robertson’s interpretation felt just right.

The second half of the program consisted of music from the twentieth century. Anton Webern’s Symphony, completed in 1928, was a totemic work for the postwar avant-garde, notably Boulez. It is a set of variations that uses the 12-tone method in a way that points toward the systematic organization of serialism, and is also filled with canons, reflective of Webern’s dissertation on the Renaissance composer Heinrich Isaac. The piece is aphoristic with a thin texture, but deceptively challenging to perform, to connect the web of its lines in convincing fashion. The NY Phil navigated these demands under Robertson’s detailed direction with an ease of delivery that one seldom hears in the performance of Webern. Principal clarinetist Anthony McGill, who was given particularly disjunct lines to play, demonstrated a keen awareness of the importance of legato in the piece, even when leaping through dissonances.

Boulez’s Pli selon pli: Portrait de Mallarmé, composed in 1957, was one of the pieces that put him on the map as an important creator. Its vocalist is tasked with significant interpretative challenges and a detailed and rangy score. Jana McIntyre performed commandingly, rendering the surrealist poetry with a wondrous exuberance for its strangeness, singing clarion top notes and plummy ones below the staff. A singer to watch for. The percussion section, which channels more than a bit of gamelan influence, played superlatively. Robertson was a close colleague of Boulez, and is a former director of Ensemble Intercontemporain. His conducting of Pli selon pli is the most authoritative that we have left since the composer’s passing.

The concert concluded with Igor Stravinsky’s concert suite version of L’Histoire du Soldat. Composed in 1918, it is for a septet of musicians and includes eight sections from the larger piece. One of the last pieces in Stravinsky’s Russian period of composition, it mixes folk tunes with prescient shadings of the neoclassicism that was to follow in his music. Three dances, a tango, waltz, and ragtime, were particularly well-played, with Staples animating the characteristic rhythms of each. Trumpeter Christopher Martin and trombonist Colin Williams played with crackling energy, McGill and bassoonist Judith LeClair navigated dissonant intervals with laser beam tuning, and Cobb and percussionist Chris Lamb imbued the march movements with propulsive kineticism.

It is fortunate for the New York Phil that Robertson works in the neighborhood, just across the street as Director of Orchestral Studies at the Juilliard School. One hopes that they continue to avail themselves of his considerable talent and warm presence on the podium.

February 20, 2025February 20, 2025 by Christian Carey

Canada, Cello, Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Composers Now, Concert review, Conductors, Contemporary Classical, New York, Orchestral, Premieres, viola, Violin, Women composers

Momenta Festival IX: Ives at 150 and a Quartet at 20

On Thursday evening in New York, Momenta Quartet’s October festival – now nine years running – closed with an assorted program, enthusiastically curated by violist/composer Stephanie Griffin. Griffin is the last founding member still actively performing with the group. Noting that this festival has ever featured the opportunity for each member to have curatorial carte blanche on one night only, Griffin nodded to the overall 2024 theme – Charles Ives at 150 – while admitting that “this is not a thematic program, but rather a joyous collection of pieces that I saw fit to celebrate the genius of Charles Ives and my own twenty years as the violist of Momenta.” As such, her own instalment was themed Momenta at 20. Griffin’s rather fine and comprehensive program notes are recommended ancillary reading, and can be found HERE.

The first musical offering was from Mexican composer Julián Carrillo: his String Quartet No. 3 “Dos Bosquejos.” Opening with muted strings and an effective microtonal chorale, this music veiled itself in mystery, dark and lush, a perfect selection with which to begin the evening. The piece continued to unfold like a set of exercises – or experiments – in string writing, with novel techniques (ca. 1927!) and textural effects. The first movement, “Meditación,” eventually burst a romantic vein, with solos and extended techniques eliciting vaguely integrated call-and-answers.

The second movement, “En Secreto,” felt eerily expressionist. (Griffin likens Carrillos’ music “to the work of surrealist artists such as Salvador Dalí and René Magritte.”) While related in mood and material to the first, the “secrets” revealed in this second and final movement were whispered between instruments in a matter-of-fact, straightforward mode, a little too efficiently.

Momenta seemed to relish these coloristic experiments in extended space. Carrillo’s numerous homophonic passages prove especially demanding in their intonation and yet most octave unisons were handled judiciously by this group. Suddenly, just as this essaying music began to fatigue under its own weight, it was over: a mere eleven minutes in duration.

After this, Stephanie Griffin spoke to the audience about the quartet’s close relationship with the music of Carrillo. They “fell in love” with the string writing of this composer and have established an important connection with his unduly neglected catalogue. Griffin has proclaimed* the forthcoming recording of Carrillo’s complete string quartets on the Naxos label to be Momenta’s “most significant legacy.”

The remainder of the first half highlighted early music from Charles Ives. Brief and inconsequential, The Innate (1908) for string quintet and piano, is based on hymnal material. It stood out as a somewhat unquantifiable preamble to the composer’s early quartet – the Quartet No. 1 (1896-1902) – which has been a favorite of Momenta’s, as Griffin explained in her spoken introduction. It was a part of their first season in 2004-2005, twenty years ago.

This first quartet from the turn of the century is a high-energy, Ivesian romp in three movements, containing a great deal of musical irony: an irony sometimes missed by Momenta on Thursday night. Striking the right side of Ives’ mercurial nature can challenging, particularly in his earlier works. There exists a quirky dimensionality here, even in seemingly upfront and “folksy” material. During Thursday’s performance, a command of tempi and rhythm in the first movement could have been better established.

The rhetorical components of the first and second movements urge a singular vision of interpretation. This brave new music, (as it was in its own time), remains theatrical today. For Momenta, the blending and balance amongst the four instruments went astray at times, requiring more central grounding in the hopes of evoking a sense of play. Where was the element of surprise?

Conversely, the third movement read as well integrated and convincing. The individualistic approach from each player here yielded dynamic displays of line and texture. One was reminded of Dvorak’s string quartets: folk-inspired and generous. Through contrapuntal awareness and a dash of extra courage, Momenta brought the recital’s first half to a delightful close, gleeful and quicksilver; Ives himself, not to mention Dvorak, would have approved.

After an intermission during which the audience was advised to stay in their seats, this lengthy program continued with a world premiere by Stephanie Griffin, herself in the solo role. The Overgrown Cathedral (2019-24) for viola and lower string ensemble was inspired by a disused, ruined cathedral in Brazil, the Igreja do Senhor da Vera Cruz.

Griffin’s idiomatic writing for solo viola flattered the piece’s narrative musical structure. Her new work unfolded as a dirge-like processional, improvisatory in its droning, rolling lyricism and unusually self-contained. The pulse altered little throughout the single-movement and skillful writing for all players alike brought to mind successful spectralist composers as well as the more contemporary Scotsman (and friend to string players), James MacMillan.

Solos in other instruments – especially the cello – peppered Griffin’s soundscape. About midway through the proceedings, “mosquito” effects emerged antiphonally, forming an integral role in the narrative and echoed by accompanying violas. As the scoring was devoid of violins (!) this resulted in an attractive sonority. The constant lulling never ceased and, relievedly, never got in the way of prominent soloistic activity. Dipping in and out of familiar string effects like sul ponticello and glissandi, The Overgrown Cathedral meandered its way to a final utterance, at the brink of being circuitous.

As finale, and in diptych with Griffin’s Cathedral, Claude Vivier’s Zipangu was an impressive stroke. Interspersed between these two larger works for string orchestra was another short, innocuous piece from Charlies Ives: his Hymn of 1904. One craved more context for this curatorial placement, especially for its juxtaposition with Zipangu.

But Vivier’s vivid, brazen work for strings from 1980 remained an apt and powerful choice. Brimming with a depth of sound we had not yet heard on the program, Zipangu boasted its novel textures as a means of expression, easily engrossing even the most casual listener. Vivier himself claimed, “within the frame of a single melody I explore in this work different aspects of color. I tried to ‘blur’ my harmonic structure through different bowing techniques.”

Glimmers of microtonal Ligeti shone through the spectral haze of this work (*think* 2001: A Space Odyssey). After Griffin’s favoring of low registers, the arrival of Vivier’s upper strings scoring proved a dramatic and welcomed shift.

This branch of string writing is not always easy to interpret nor to refine, especially for a quasi pick-up orchestra. Nevertheless, the sheer impact and boldness of the material seemed to inspire the string players on Thursday, many of whom Griffin described as “Momenta alumni,” having played with the group over the past 20 years.

For some time, conductor and artistic director, Sebastian Zubieta, had urged Momenta to program this music by Vivier. On Thursday night, it seemed to augment the quartet’s profile and manifest a compelling wrap-up to the 2024 Festival.

What’s more, the works of Claude Vivier are worthy of wider recognition, 41 years on from his death. Thanks to Momenta and their colleagues this relevant, near-cosmic, Canadian voice reached our sympathetic ears on Thursday night, straight on through the hurly-burly “blur” of a 21^st century that Charles Ives would have almost certainly recognized.

October 25, 2024October 26, 2024 by Adam Sherkin

Concert review, Conductors, File Under?, Orchestras, Twentieth Century Composer

Concert Review: NY Philharmonic performs Ligeti

Susanna Mälkki conducts the New York Philharmonic with Pierre-Laurent Aimard performing Ligeti Piano Concerto at David Geffen Hall, 11/2/2023. Photo by Chris Lee.

New York Philharmonic, Susanna Mälkki, conductor

Jenõ Lisztes, Cimbalom

David Geffen Hall

November 4, 2023

NEW YORK – Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 (1851) is such a challenging barnstormer of a piece that one often wonders how ten fingers suffice. On Saturday evening, Jenõ Lisztes, making his New York Philharmonic debut, used two mallets on a cimbalom to realize the rhapsody. His arrangement replicated the work in its entirety, and he played it with extraordinary virtuosity. Liszt was known to improvise a cadenza at the end of the piece, and Lisztes improvised one of his own, improbably one-upping the work proper. The standing ovation that followed was well-earned.

The rest of the concert’s first half was also devoted to music by Hungarian composers. In 1915, Béla Bartôk was fascinated with Romanian folk music, making song gathering trips to the country and incorporating these materials into his own work. Six Romanian Dances was originally written for piano, but in 1917 was scored by Bartôk for string orchestra. Under Susanna Mälkki’s direction, contrasts were played up, with luminescent timbres in the piece’s slow movements and vivacious mixed-meter music in its fast sections. The final dance built towards its close with an urgent-sounding accelerando.

Susanna Mälkki conducts the New York Philharmonic with Pierre-Laurent Aimard performing Ligeti Piano Concerto. Photo by Chris Lee

The Philharmonic is celebrating György Ligeti’s centenary with “Ligeti Retrospective.” Rather than a single week devoted to his music, the orchestra has presented single works on programs during the Fall, as well as chamber music concerts and “Nightcap” events. Ligeti’s Piano Concerto (1988) is one of the composer’s most highly regarded later pieces. Soloist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, a contemporary music specialist, has recorded the concerto for DG with Boulez and is its go-to performer. He amply proved this on Saturday, deftly performing the sometimes thorny but always diverting music.

During the 1980s, Ligeti’s musical palette expanded. He explored the polyrhythms of African music and, by extension, minimalist composers such as Steve Reich, who had an interest in Ghanaian drumming. Latin American music was introduced to Ligeti by his student the composer Roberto Sierra. Ligeti’s use of ostinatos is complex, involving overlap of different frameworks and tempos. From Asian music comes pitch material, with scales recalling Gamelan. Alongside these are various other symmetrical divisions of the octave and modal writing. The composer repudiated the idea that his work could easily be categorized as modernist or postmodernist, insisting that the synthesis of elements in a piece like the Piano Concerto evaded being pigeonholed.

Cast in five movements, the concerto’s scoring makes for some tricky entrances, with frequent unison attacks by dissimilar instruments – piano, slapper, and low brass for instance – that could easily go awry. Particularly in the first movement, marked Vivace ritmico e preciso, Mälkki negotiated these interrelations with laser beam accuracy. The second movement has often struck me as overly diffuse, even on Aimard’s DG recording. Here, Mälkki’s navigation of its trajectory and beautiful balancing of its timbres, as well as Aimard’s crystalline gestures, rehabilitated it to be a beguiling standout. The third movement, marked Vivace Cantabile, explores Ligeti’s fascination with polyrhythms, with several layers corruscating around a single line piano melody with its own rhythmic grid. Despite the interplay of ostinatos, it felt more maximalized than minimalist. The fourth movement, in which the texture thins out, vigorous attacks, complete with referee’s whistles and piercing piccolos, still impart the feeling of multiple simultaneous pulsations. One of Aimard’s favorite composers is Messiaen, and, in an example of synergy, the harmony here reflected that composers’ Modes of Limited Transposition. The final presto movement is a great unfurling of the interplay built up in previous sections, with brass solos and shimmering pitched percussion accompanying a gradual ascent of cluster chords in the piano. The cadenza is slow at first, displaying interlocked lines. Upon the orchestra’s return, tension and activity build until a final unison crack closes the piece in midair.

The second half of the concert was devoted to Modest Musorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (1874), in Maurice Ravel’s 1922 orchestration. Much of Ravel’s own orchestral music involved transcribing piano pieces, and his inimitable scoring is exquisite in Pictures. Musorgsky based the piece on paintings by Viktor Hartmann (1834-1873), from an 1874 memorial showing of his work in St. Petersburg.

Pictures’s famous Promenade suggests the peregrination between paintings by a viewer of the exhibition. The four iterations of the Promenade are presented in different scorings. The latter half of the piece dispenses with the Promenade in favor of movements depicting one painting after another. These programmatic pieces are, for the most part, miniatures, but they are chock full of material. The formal freedom with which Musorgsky deploys elements of the music creates unexpected, sometimes startling, juxtapositions. This is abundantly in evidence in the second movement, “Gnomus,” a portentous mixture of multiple themes, first sequentially, then overlapped, and finally given a bellicose valediction. “The Old Castle,” with its suave woodwind solos, has a folk-like melody with off-kilter phrasing and a varied accompaniment. “Bydlo” is a showcase for French horn with snippets of the Promenade melody interspersed with new material. A countermelody soars in the strings. Its climax is filled with thunderous timpani and strings in octaves, after which the music recedes to the accompanied horn solo. “Samuel Goldberg und Schmuỹle” is built with a yearning melody imitative of synagogue music, awe-inspiring in its low-strings presentation. The middle section quickens to a relentless woodwind counter-melody, ultimately joined with the string tune in counterpoint, followed by an emphatic close.

Musorgsky had a playful side as well, which is displayed by the movements “Tuileries Gardens” and “Ballad of the Unhatched Chicks.” Graceful moments populate the opening of “The Market at Limoges.”

Susanna Mälkki conducts the New York Philharmonic. Photo by Chris Lee

The last movements provide a buildup to the much-anticipated finale. “Catacombae (Sepulchrum Romanum)” features stentorian brass chorales, “Cum Mortuis in Lingua Mortua” is an ominous reworking of the Promenade material, which transforms into a particularly Ravellian denouement of pianissimo strings and a gentle, angelic flute solo. It is interrupted in brash fashion by “The Hut on Chicken’s Legs.” In its outer sections there is a chromatic tune, folk dance ostinatos, and emphatic tutti brass passages in full cry, with mysterious pianissimo passages in between. The movement is followed attacca by “The Great Gate at Kiev,” a tour-de-force for symphony orchestra that is a glorious conclusion.

The NY Philharmonic truly sounded glorious itself, enjoying the improved sonics of David Geffen Hall and Mälkki’s assured leadership. The conductor’s gestures were clear and often more characterful than in other pieces on the program. For example, she animated “Gnomus” with incantatory motions, elicited an emotive cast from the theme in “Samuel Goldberg und Schmuỹle,” and lead the finale with broad gestures, ending with her arms closing in a near embrace. The Philharmonic responded with committed, enthusiastic playing that crafted a superlative rendition of Pictures at an Exhibition. I would wager that Mälkki would be welcomed by the orchestra anytime she visits. The audience too.

-Christian Carey

November 12, 2023November 12, 2023 by Christian Carey

Concert review, Conductors, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, File Under?

Boston Symphony at Tanglewood, 7/30/2023 (Concert Review)

Boston Symphony Orchestra, Anna Rakitina, conductor

Joshua Bell, violin

Eliza Bagg, Martha Cluver, and Sonja Dutoit Tengblad, vocalists

July 30, 2023

LENOX – The Boston Symphony’s offerings on the weekend of the annual Festival of Contemporary Music dovetailed with its curation, lifting up female composers and, on Sunday, a conductor. Leading the orchestra on Saturday, July 30th was Anna Rakitina, who has served as the ensemble’s Assistant Conductor until this Summer. She is a rising star and led the orchestra with assuredness, providing detailed interpretations of all of the scores on the program. The orchestra, for their part, were responsive to her gestures, clearly enjoying working with Rakitina and the music on offer. There was a poignancy to the event, as it was the conductor’s last performance with the BSO as Assistant Conductor.

Ellen Reid’s When The World as You’ve Known it Doesn’t Exist (2019) opened the concert. Commissioned by the New York Philharmonic as part of their Project 19 initiative, a series commissioning female composers to celebrate the centenary of the Nineteenth Constitutional Amendment, affording women the right to vote. The piece is diverse in terms of its musical language, and Reid does an admirable job bringing together the disparate strands of its formal design. Vocalists Eliza Bagg, Martha Cluver, and Sonja Dutoit Tengblad are go-to performers for new music with superb voices and vivid musicality. When the World … required them to sing untexted sounds, some playful, others earnestly dramatic. The orchestra frequently responded to the motives in the voices, creating a back and forth dialogue that contextualized the singers’ presence as part of the proceedings. Given the weight of some of the textures over which the singers were required to perform, a bit of amplification would be understandable: the amount used was excessive, adding periodic harshness that the vocalists neither needed nor deserved.

The outer sections of the piece explored fluid textures, with frequent glissandos and vocal ululations, juxtaposed with orchestral tutti. The middle section, a jazzy surprise, introduced a dyadic motive that was then put through a setof variations, including an extraordinary series of long trills near its end. The motive then joined the beginning material to cohere into a beguiling conclusion. Reid is an imaginative composer and excellent orchestrator. One hopes the BSO will commission and program more of her work.

The last time that the BSO played Nicoló Paganini’s Violin Concerto No. 1 at the Shed was in 1987, with Midori as soloist. To have to wait a generation to hear them play it again seems a crime, as it is one of most ebullient and virtuosic of nineteenth century concertos. There was significant recompense, however, in the pairing of violinist Joshua Bell with the orchestra. Bell is one of the most acclaimed soloists active today, erudite and thoughtful as well as bestowed with superlative technical gifts. Bell composed his own cadenzas for the concerto, which were idiomatic, exploratory, and incredibly challenging.

The piece is front-loaded, with the first movement lasting twenty and some minutes. Such was the inspired nature of its performance alone, that there was a vigorous standing ovation before the second movement even began. When it did, Bell played the ardent Adagio’s central melody with poise and gravitas. The final movement is a rondo, with a sprightly theme treated to a technical tour de force of variations. Once again, Bell performed his own cadenzas, which were formidable yet delivered with elan. Once again at its conclusion, the audience greeted Bell and the BSO with a standing ovation. There was no encore: how can you top Paganini?

The second half of the concert was devoted to ten selections from Sergei Prokofiev’s Music from the Ballet Romeo and Juliet, Op. 64. The piece contains some of Prokofiev’s most memorable melodies, its rich orchestration tailor-made for the BSO. Rakitina never allowed the music to be overdone, yet brought out the emotive side of Romeo and Juliet. In its Introduction, she urged the strings to swoon, yet made ample room for woodwind and horn solos. “Montagues and Capulets,” perhaps the hit tune of the work, was given a brisk reading that embodied the crackling intensity of the families’ rivalry. Contrastingly, “The Child Juliet” was rendered with an innocent delicacy that was quite touching. Likewise, a yearning quality imbued the “Balcony Scene” with luminous ardor. “The Death of Tybalt,” in a flurry of activity, was jaunty in its opening and bellicose at its conclusion, percussion and brass providing a roaring climax. The orchestra sounded tremendous here.

“The Death of Juliet” concluded the performance with one of the ballet’s most arresting themes, played caressingly by the violins and buoyed by lower strings, with eloquent utterances from the lower brass and a rejoinder by a chorus of woodwinds. Its stark close, all octaves with sepulchral bass, had more pathos than a minor chord could ever supply. From beginning to end, this was an engaging program.

-Christian Carey

August 7, 2023August 7, 2023 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, Boston, CD Review, Conductors, Contemporary Classical, Criticism, Critics, File Under?, Orchestral, Recordings, Review, San Francisco, Saxophone

Best Orchestra Portrait CD: BMOP Plays Peterson

Wayne Peterson

Transformations

Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Gil Rose, conductor; PRISM Quartet

BMOP/sound 1053

Composer Wayne Peterson (b. 1927) served as one of his generation’s fixtures on the West Coast music scene where, in addition to several other academic appointments, he elevated the composition program at San Francisco State to prominence. Despite fine recordings of his chamber music, this is his first portrait disc of orchestral music. 2017 has been a year where Boston Modern Orchestra Project, under the inspired direction of Gil Rose, has released a number of fine recordings, including CDs of works by Paul Moravec, David Del Tredici, Stephen Hartke, and Jeremy Gill (more about these in a forthcoming article). All are worthy of recommendation, but it is the Peterson disc that sticks out for me, both in terms of filling in a gap in late Twentieth century repertoire, and in the considerable durability of the works it contains.

Transformations (1985), which resembles a concerto for orchestra, is a marvelous display of timbre, with recurring fanfare-like gestures of repeated notes and chords, punctuated by interjections from percussion, juxtaposed against solo passages and richly overlaid ensembles for each of the orchestra’s sections. Frequent changes in demeanor create an almost kaleidoscopic effect. While the playing is excellent all around, pianist Linda Osborn deserves kudos for tackling a formidable part.

Jazz played an important role in Peterson’s development as a composer. There are jazz influences in all three of the pieces presented here, none more so than And the Winds Shall Blow (1994), a saxophone quartet concerto. PRISM Quartet are the estimable soloists here, often playing ensemble passages with such precision and fluidity that they sound like a single mega-instrument. The saxophone solo passages are where the flavor of jazz most keenly persists, and all of the PRISM members play them displaying a strong sense of jazz history, appropriately inflecting each successive homage to swing, bebop, and modern styles. In other places, quartet and orchestra alike are filled with contrapuntal intensity. Rose balances the many competing elements, artfully complex, and assures that each line receives due clarity.

Peterson won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for the last of the selections on the BMOP disc, The Face of the Night, The Heart of the Dark, but this honor was not bestowed without controversy. Ralph Shapey had been tipped off early that his piece was the music jury’s recommendation, and raised hell when Peterson was selected over him by the board. After many years with only Shapey’s score to consult, I was grateful to finally acquaint myself with the Peterson piece and judge for myself (The Face of the Night… was played only once and a commercial recording wasn’t released at the time – nor has Shapey’s been recorded commercially. In fact, it would be wonderful if BMOP turned its attentions to Shapey on a future portrait CD – they would play his work just as eloquently as they present Peterson’s). As a Shapey scholar, and based on some of the press I had read about the debacle, I’ll cop to a bit of bias: I had presumed that his Concerto Fantastique would win handily: I’m happy to admit that I was wrong. Both are excellent compositions. The Face of the Night, The Heart of the Dark is expressive and labyrinthine in form where Concerto Fantastique is taut and sectional, but both display a compelling, complex harmonic language and masterful use of the orchestra.

Face of the Night… is cast in two movements. The nocturne form is given a modern treatment not unlike the insomniac reveries of Elliott Carter’s Night Fantasies. Rapid shifts in demeanor betray the stray thoughts that sometimes keep us from sleep or inhabit our dreams. Peterson’s Face of the Night, The Heart of the Dark has passages that underscore the portentous quality suggested by its title. However, all is not nightmarish: there are beautiful moments of repose and reflection that suggest the coming darkness is not entirely enveloping: dawn awaits. The work’s climax is stirring and resolute – one imagines bolting upright from bed.

Transformations is Sequenza 21’s Best Orchestra Portrait CD of 2017.

December 30, 2017January 2, 2018 by Christian Carey

Classical Music, Composers, Conductors, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, File Under?, Interviews, Orchestras

Interview: Julia Adolphe

This week, The New York Philharmonic premieres their second commission by composer Julia Adolphe. The first, 2016’s Unearth, Release, was a warmly received viola concerto for Philharmonic Principal Violist Cynthia Phelps. The latest, White Stone, will be premiered July 26th as part of the orchestra’s Bravo! Vail series in Colorado. I recently had a chance to catch up with Adolphe about both of these collaborations, as well as her opera Sylvia.

Who were/are your composition mentors at Cornell and USC? What is something that you’ve learned from each?

I’ve had two incredible mentors who’ve inspired me to become a composer. The first was Steven Stucky, who gave me private composition lessons for four years while I was an undergraduate at Cornell. I arrived at Cornell without any formal training in classical music and was very intimidated by the large group of (all male) doctoral students pursuing composition. Professor Stucky made me feel included and welcome, allowing me to take graduate level courses alongside his other students. Steven Stucky essentially taught me how to compose, to go from nothing on the page to crafting a vocabulary, playing with colors, and communicating ideas through music. At USC, I spent four years studying with Stephen Hartke, who taught me an enormous amount about writing for the orchestra and writing opera. With Professor Hartke, I learned how to write larger forms and develop a musical narrative. Hartke encouraged me to embrace my love of storytelling through my music. Most importantly, both Stucky and Hartke taught me specific compositional techniques and tools while encouraging me to trust and believe in my own voice.

You fashioned both text and music for your opera Sylvia. Tell me a bit about your work as a poet/librettist?

My first musical pieces that I wrote as a child were folk songs comprised of my own original lyrics. I always loved writing lyrics and stories as well as acting in plays and musicals. Opera seems like a natural extension of these early passions. I wrote Sylvia in 2012 and it is based on the real life experiences of my best childhood friend. The opera’s content was deeply personal and I wrote the libretto out of a need to tell Sylvia’s story. I love working with living poets and am currently setting a poem entitled Equinox by Elizabeth Alexander. For my next opera, A Barrel of Laughs, A Vale of Tears, based on the novel by Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Jules Feiffer, I will be working with librettist Stephanie Fleischmann. I am very excited to have such wonderful collaborators!

I have sung at Bargemusic and it can be a wobbly place to get your bearings. What was it like producing Sylvia there?

It was a lot of fun and an incredibly dramatic, yet intimate venue. I think the surreal setting and off-kilter feeling you experience on the boat fit perfectly with the dreamlike nature of the opera.

There are some great viola concertos in the literature, but the challenges facing composers of them is legendary: balance, orchestration, etc. Was writing for viola and ensemble an upfront part of the commission for Unearth, Release or did you choose to write for these forces?

The New York Philharmonic asked that I compose a viola concerto for their principal violist Cynthia Phelps. I was extremely excited about the challenge: the viola does not possess the same carrying power in terms of volume and brightness as the violin or the cello. It is a subtle instrument with dark tones and fragile qualities. Yet is has a singular expressive beauty. I worked closely with Cynthia, ensuring that every gesture was idiomatic and communicative for her instrument. During the rehearsals of the work’s world premiere with the Eastern Festival Orchestra, I was able to make revisions so that the viola could speak more clearly over the orchestra. Both Alan Gilbert and Jaap Van Zweden gave me feedback throughout the writing and rehearsal process and I learned an incredible amount about the orchestra along the way.

Did you know which pieces were going to be programmed alongside yours in Vail? If so, did that impact your composition of White Stone?

I knew from the beginning that my piece would be premiered alongside Gershwin and Dvořák, but I chose not to think about that. My goal when I write is to express my own voice and be as true to my own emotions, dreams, atmospheres and sounds as possible. Of course I am influenced by a host of composers, but to purposely seek out composers on the same program would make it harder for me to clarify my own thoughts during the writing process.

What else would you like for audience members in Vail to know in advance about the piece?

A white stone is an object that is both unique yet familiar, a jewel and a pebble, emerging from the dirt to become something treasured. The music rises from dark, murky textures, striving towards brightness and clarity. The cello and timpani are the first to surface from the discord, stirring action in other sections of the orchestra. The percussion serves to rally and activate the music, leading the orchestra upwards towards brighter harmonies and unified rhythms. White Stone captures the struggle to be resilient and powerful in the face of overwhelming obstacles and fear of defeat.

July 24, 2017 by Christian Carey

Composers, Conductors, Deaths, Obits

RIP Sir Peter Maxwell Davies

Photo: David Rose — Peter Maxwell Davies

English composer and conductor Peter Maxwell Davies died on Monday, March 14th 2016. At the age of 81, Davies passed away in his Orkney home. The cause of death was leukemia. In 2004, Davies was appointed Master of the Queen’s Music.

Farewell to Stromness is one of Davies most popular works for solo piano. The piece is a piano interlude from his work The Yellow Cake Revue, a work he created for the campaign against the proposed uranium mine on the Oakley Isles.

In this recording of his Symphony No. 7, Davies displays his skills as both composer and conductor with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra.

March 18, 2016 by Cortlandt Matthews

Brooklyn, CDs, Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Conductors, Contemporary Classical, Interviews, jazz, Minimalism, New Amsterdam, New York, Orchestral

The Changing Same: Numinous New Music from Joseph C. Phillips, Jr.

Composer and conductor Joseph C. Phillips, Jr.

If you’re a fan of new music, be it “indie-classical” or whatever it’s being labeled this week, then you must check out the music of composer and conductor Joseph C. Phillips, Jr. Phillips’ music, composed and arranged for his ensemble Numinous, a large chamber group (or small orchestra?) of woodwinds, brass, strings, tuned percussion, electric instruments and vocalists, is a complex, finely detailed amalgam of classical, minimalist, South American, Asian, and African American influences, with a distinctive “sound” that is instantly identifiable, yet full of surprises. (You know those descriptive terms “Brahmsian” or “the Mingus effect”? It’s like that.) Phillips’ latest album, Changing Same, due out August 28 on New Amsterdam Records, is perhaps his most autobiographical musical statement to date.

While his previous recordings, Numinous: The Music of Joseph C. Phillips, Jr. and Vipassana include notes that detail the inspiration for his compositions, Changing Same has no notes; just a quote from 1966 by writer, poet and playwright Amiri Baraka (then Le Roi Jones) that describes a “post-black aesthetic,” one that unapologetically digs both the down-home and the downtown, the highfalutin and the funky, the Anglo-centric and the Afro-futuristic, the “what it is” and the “what the hell is goin’ on?” The titles for each of the six movements of Changing Same offer some additional clues . . . “Behold, the Only Thing Greater Than Yourself,” “Miserere,” “Unlimited,” “Alpha Man,” “The Most Beautiful Magic.” The first track, “19,” which can be streamed and purchased here, refers to November 19, 1970, the date of the publication of James Baldwin’s essay, “An Open Letter to My Sister, Miss Angela Davis,” Arnold Schoenberg’s Sechs Kleine Klavierstücke, opus 19, from 1911, and the age Phillips began studying music as an undergrad, after two semesters as a bio-chemistry major.

Changing Same is another intriguing chapter in Phillips’ journey, from growing up listening to both Holst and Prince, to conducting Numinous onstage at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in a performance of his score for the 1922 silent film The Loves of Pharoah, to producing this latest release. In the following interview, Phillips provides some details about that journey, and explains how his life experience, be it past, future or present-day-craziness, is reflected in the music of Changing Same.

On the back of your new album, there’s a quote by Amiri Baraka (then LeRoi Jones) from his 1966 essay, The Changing Same:

“R&B is about emotion, issues purely out of emotion. New Black Music is also about emotion, but from a different place, and finally toward a different end. What these musicians feel is a more complete existence. That is, the digging of everything.”

So, my first question with regard to this quote is, do you dig everything?

Well, of course, I have my standards. [laughs] There are things I like and don’t like.

In that essay, Baraka is explaining the spontaneous compositional processes of the creative improvisational people at that time, and putting them in a continuum of what had come before in terms of black music. He’s saying look, these guys might seem like they’re acting wild and crazy, But really, this “New Black Music” harkens back to earlier music.

When I read the essay, the quote just jumped out at me. I thought it was a perfect encapsulation of what I’m doing or hoping to have happen with my piece. With Changing Same, I wanted to take the cultural and musical things that I grew up with and incorporate them into piece. When I read Baraka’s essay, I thought, yes, I grew up with the black music continuum, Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, and Prince. But I grew up with classical music as well, like Holst, Bach . . . like any other composer, I have a potpourri of influences. Sometimes you can hear these influences very specifically. For example, on the fourth track, “The Most Beautiful Magic,” the initial bass line is actually coming straight from Prince’s “Purple Rain.”

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June 10, 2015June 11, 2015 by Chris Becker

Commissions, Concert review, Concerts, Conductors, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Los Angeles, Minimalism

Maximum Minimalism at Disney Hall

On Tuesday April 9, 2014 downtown Los Angeles was the scene of the centerpiece concert for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Minimalism Jukebox series. Over four hours of music was presented from eight composers, including ten different works, two world premiers and dozens of top area musicians. Wild Up, International Contemporary Ensemble, the LA Philharmonic New Music Group and the Calder Quartet all made appearances. The Green Umbrella event was curated by John C. Adams and Disney Hall filled with a mostly young audience.

The evening began with a pre-concert panel discussion moderated by Chad Smith, VP of Artistic Planning. He was joined by John Adams and four of the composers whose works were on the program: Missy Mazzoli, David Lang, Mark Grey and Andrew McIntosh. The question that provoked the most discussion revolved around the changes in minimalism since its inception. John Adams suggested that it has now acquired a more lyrical bent and that contemporary composers are writing music for musicians who want to be technically challenged. The consensus was that the term ‘minimalism’ is now useful as a description for a certain palette of sounds and processes; but few composers today would identify themselves as minimalists. The programming of this concert was itself an attempt to chart the evolution of minimalism since the mid-20th century.

Even before the concert began the long elegant lines of William Duckworth’s Time Curve Preludes (1977-78) – a work that was something of a departure from the strict minimalist form of that time – could be heard from the piano on stage, carefully played by Richard Valitutto. The music this night was non-stop and there were presentations in various places outside the concert hall during the two intermissions. When the crowd had settled into their seats, a spotlight suddenly shone high up on the organ console revealing Clare Chase, flute soloist, who began the concert with Steve Reich’s Vermont Counterpoint (1982). This piece incorporates a tape track of rapid, staccato flute notes and the soloist plays a line that weaves in and around the looping patterns. The feeling was a sort of aural kaleidoscope of changing complexity that was reassuring in its repetition. Ms. Clare smoothly changed flutes several times and this gave a series of different colors to the piece as it progressed. About mid-way the accompaniment in the tape became more flowing and less frenetic, and this helped to bring out the solo flute. The sound tended to be a bit washed out by the time it reached high up in the balcony where I was sitting, and while this did not detract significantly from the performance, the piece was more effective when the solo line was distinct.

The second work, Stay On It (1973) by Julius Eastman was performed by wild Up with Christopher Rountree conducting. This begins with a series of short syncopated phrases in the piano, soon picked up by the strings, voices and a marimba. This has a lilting Afro/Caribbean feel that builds a nice groove as it proceeds. Horns sound long sustained notes arcing above the texture, but this slowly devolves into a kind of joyful chaos, like being in the middle of a slightly out of control street party This was carried off nicely by wild Up, even when the entire structure collapsed into and out of loud cacophony led by the marimba and horns. The piece seemed to spend itself in this outburst, like air flowing out of a balloon, but towards the end the rhythm regrouped sufficiently to finish with a soft introspective feel. Stay On It quietly concluded with a single maraca shaken by conductor Christopher Rountree.

The first section of the concert finished with Different Trains (1988) by Steve Reich. In this performance the train sounds and voices were provided by a tape with the Calder Quartet playing seamlessly along. This piece, and the story behind it, will be familiar to most who follow minimalist music, but seeing it live one gets a much better appreciation for its complexity and the effort involved in playing it by a string quartet. The sound system didn’t project the voices very clearly up into the balcony where I was sitting, but this actually afforded a new perspective. With a recording heard through headphones one can easily get caught up in how well the strings are mimicking the voices. High up in Disney Hall you could get just a sense of the words, and I found myself concentrating instead on the sound of strings – and this made for a more powerful experience. The different colors of the three movements came through more vividly, and the intensity that the Calder Quartet brought to this piece was impressive. Different Trains is a masterpiece of late 20th century minimalism and this was made even more obvious in this reading, burdened as it was by less than ideal conditions. The ethereal passages that conclude the piece were beautifully effective, and as the sound faded slowly away, a sustained and sincere applause followed.

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April 12, 2014April 12, 2014 by Paul Muller

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