Earle Brown’s Calder Piece performed at the Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France, August 1967
I don’t know when else you’d have a chance to see expert musicians interact with a sculpture by one of the most iconic American artists of the 20th century. This rare event, on August 20 at the Dimenna Center in New York, is part of the annual TIME:SPANS festival.
In Earle Brown’s Calder Piece the artist’s mobile is an essential part of the piece. The artwork will “conduct” the Talujon Percussion Quartet as its sections sway from their pivot points. And, yes, you will also get to see the instrumentalists “play” the sculpture, though the artist himself initially expected a more forceful display. “I thought that you were going to hit it much harder—with hammers,” said Calder after the first performance in the early 1960s.
Calder Piece is “the focal point and central hinge of this year’s festival,” according to the introduction in the festival booklet by Thomas Fichter and Marybeth Sollins, executive director and trustee respectively of The Earle Brown Music Foundation Charitable Trust which produces and presents TIME:SPANS. But it is by no means the only highlight of the dozen concerts in the festival.
Talea Ensemble, JACK Quartet, International Contemporary Ensemble, Argento…..once again, since 2015, some of the most acclaimed contemporary music ensembles in the country descend on the Dimenna Center for this late summer aural spectacle. Performances are nearly every night August 12 – 26, chock full of 21st century concert music in a myriad of styles.
It seems almost impossible to pick out highlights from the dozen performances – there are so many intriguing programs. In addition to the Calder event, here are a few that I am particularly looking forward to:
JACK Quartet playing Helmut Lachenmann (August 13) – my mind was blown the first time I heard Lachenmann’s music performed live. He calls his compositions musique concrète instrumentale, creating other-worldly sounds through extended techniques.
JACK Quartet photo by Beowulf Sheehan
Ekmeles performing Taylor Brook, Hannah Kendall and Christopher Trapani (August 22) – though vocal music isn’t my first choice genre, I am drawn to a cappella ensembles, especially when they are as high quality as Ekmeles. Trapani’s music is always a treat to hear, and his End Words lives alongside music by the equally deserving Kendall and Brook.
Ensemble Signal’s program on August 15 is brought to you by the letter “A”: music by Anahita Abbasi, Augusta Read Thomas. Aida Shirazi, Agata Zubel. I’ve been following Abbasi ever since she won an ASCAP composer award about eight years ago. Her music, though not always easy to listen to, is intense and visceral. I predict it will be a great contrast to Read Thomas’s more tuneful style.
LENOX – There were a number of firsts on the July 30th chamber music concert. I have never seen the stage at Ozawa Hall require several minutes of vacuuming up bits of wood, but Malin Bång’s Arching, for amplified cello, amplified tools, and electronics, created considerable, if entertaining, mayhem. Another first: hearing “The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round,” paired in fugal counterpoint with the Brahms lullaby.
The find for me at FCM was Tebogo Monnakgotla, a Swedish composer who curated Sunday’s concert. The aforementioned nursery rhythm fugue was from her considerably charming piece, Toys, or the Wonderful World of Clara (2008). The backstory: when Monnakgotla’s child was a toddler, she received all manner of musical toys, and loved to run them all at once. The composer recounted that multiple Brahms-singing toys were terribly out of tune, with themselves and each other (this too was incorporated in the piece, in clusters that distressed the lullaby). The idea may have been whimsical, but its deployment was anything but, the piece creating fascinating swaths of texture and crafty quodlibets.
Toys is memorable, but by no means representative of the rest of Monnakgotla’s programmed pieces. Her early Five Pieces for String Trio juxtaposes open cello strings with glissandos, harmonics, and wisps of sul ponticello. The movements cohere into a well-crafted organic whole. Le dormeur du val, a setting of Rimbaud for soprano and mixed chamber ensemble, has a haunting presence. The poem depicts a soldier who appears to be resting near the field of battle. It is only at its very conclusion that we learn of his wounds and realize that he is not resting, but deceased. Monnakgotla employs trumpet calls and vigorous drums to create a bellicose background. The vocal part contrasts this with a feeling of doleful detachment. Soprano Juliet Schlefer did a fine job presenting the ending’s swerve without overselling, and she was equally sensitive when interpreting with the rest of the poem. Schlefer has a lyric voice of considerable beauty: I would love to hear her again.
Two other composers were programmed on the concert. Bent Sørensen’s compact string quartet, The Lady of Lalott, reveled in banshee-like distant howls and prevalent extended techniques. South African composer Andile Khumalo’s solo piano piece Schau-fe[r]n-ster II combines spectralist inflections, with shimmering overtones and chords spaced according to registral positioning in the harmonic series, with second modernist hyper-virtuosity. Joseph Vasconi played the work with adroit facility and a depth of understanding that belied his student status at Tanglewood. Khumalo’s language is distinctive. One presumes and welcomes that we will hear much more from him.
After every one of her pieces, Monnakgotla took to the stage to warmly greet and thank the performers. It was clear that this affection was returned, and that mutual artistic respect played a role in the concert’s success. Tanglewood students at FCM benefit much from the mentorship of senior composers, and it was clear that this collaboration was quite successful.
The concert ended with a reflective piece by Monnakgotla, Companions (seasons) (2021), for solo violin. It represents the various stages of a professional string player’s career as seasons: The ebullient spring of a young student, the prodigy’s successes during a long, hot summer, artistic maturity and the demands of performing and teaching in autumn, and, finally, the winter of retirement, in which the violinist’s instrument is like an old friend. The music is ambitious yet touching, and was played with assuredness and grace by Connor Chaikowsky. A stirring valediction to a memorable concert.
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On Friday, August 28th, FCM devoted a curated concert to Anna Thorvaldsdottir, an Icelandic composer who is regularly commissioned by some of the best orchestras in the world. The highlights of the concert were two ensemble works, Hrim and Aquilibria, coached and conducted by Stephen Drury, and the closer, the ensemble work Ró, conducted by Agata Zając. Thorvaldsdottir’s music blooms with effervescent overtones, and addresses elements of tonality in novel and frequently surprising ways.
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?
Photo: Hilary Scott.
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 itsIntroduction, 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.
Boston Symphony Orchestra, Dima Slobodeniouk, conductor
Avery Amereau, mezzo-soprano
July 29, 2023
LENOX – This year’s Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood spotlighted female composers. Four created self-curated concerts, and others were featured on BSO concerts. Agata Zubel’s In the Shade of an Unshed Tear, originally composed for the Seattle Symphony, was on the program Saturday night in the Shed. Before its performance, conductor Dima Slobodeniouk talked briefly with Zubel onstage. Prominent among their remarks were the stipulations of the original commission. Seattle was pairing Zubel’s piece with works by Beethoven and wanted her to compose for a classical-sized ensemble, with only timpani for percussion. Slobodeniouk pointed out that new pieces in Europe are generally for a much larger orchestra. Zubel acknowledged that the commission was a challenge.
With In the Shade of an Unshed Tear, the composer rose to the challenge. The timpani began the piece with thunderous attacks, the orchestra following in kind, creating a fortissimo sound that tested the boundaries of a classical-sized ensemble. Zubel employed glissandos grouped among the strings at a lower dynamic level. Still, the fortissimo material seemed inevitable to win out. In a swerve, a denouement followed by the timpani playing pianissimo proved an interesting and organic ending.
Olivier Messiaen’s Les Offrandes oubliêes is a relatively early piece. It is surprising how much of the composer’s musical language was in place by the time he was in his twenties. An ascending mixed-interval scale serves as the principal theme. At the time, the composer was studying Rite of Spring and this is reflected in more rigorous passages that contrast the beguiling melodic ascent.
Mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard was indisposed and Avery Amereau substituted for her as the soloist in Hector Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été. With a beautiful, round tone throughout all registers from chest voice to high notes, Amereau’s voice was well-suited to the considerable demands of Berlioz’s half-hour long song cycle. Slobodeniouk and she had a few mild coordination challenges, but these were well worth the flexibility of their interpretation.
Maurice Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, Suite No. 2 is one of the composer’s finest orchestra pieces. Orchestrated with a deft hand for colorful, abundant contrasts, it encompasses sequences of delicate impressionist harmonies and neoclassical dancing rhythms, with powerful swells at climatic moments that bring the whole orchestra to bear. Slobodeniouk conducted the BSO with verve, urging them to make the most of tutti crescendos while also making ample room for solo passages. The orchestra played with precision throughout and abandon whenever appropriate. It was a satisfying, frequently inspiring evening.
Hanns Eisler’s biography might be better known than his music, at least on this side of the Atlantic. Born in 1898, he was German/Austrian, half-Jewish, a committed student of Schoenberg, and a staunch communist. He maintained a lifelong collaboration with Brecht, and like the latter, fled the Nazis for America in the 1930s, where he took up shop in Hollywood, composing well-regarded scores for numerous minor films before being hounded out of the US by post-War anti-communist hysteria. He ended up resettling in the short-lived and little-missed Deutsche Demokratische Republik (East Germany) whose national anthem he penned while languishing under the yoke of Soviet-bloc artistic and political oppression. He died there in 1962.
Eisler’s 125th anniversary this month, coupled with a new recording of his magnum opus, the Deutsche Sinfonie, provides an opportunity to revisit the legacy of this controversial musician, a task facilitated by Brilliant Classics’ ten-CD Hanns Eisler Edition, released in 2014 and featuring several generations of eastern German recordings, many of them originally issued on the Berlin Classics label. Eisler’s life and career followed a similar path to Kurt Weill’s through the latter’s premature death in 1950, and indeed the conventional wisdom tends to regard Eisler as a poor man’s Weill. Traversing these recordings for the first time in several years leads me to conclude that in this particular case, the conventional wisdom is pretty accurate.
Aside from his film scores, Eisler is best remembered for his many Brecht settings, ranging from simple lieder for voice and piano, through cabaret-style theatrical works using a small orchestra, on up to full-fledged martial protest songs for chorus and instruments. The essence of Eisler is the genre of cynical but tuneful cabaret song that’s closely associated with Weill. CD 6 of Hanns Eisler Edition features Gisela May’s classic renditions of many of these songs, and hearing her is a genuine treat. Her clear diction, appropriate use of sprechgesang, and obvious enthusiasm for the material come bubbling through, and the reworked sound of these recordings, mostly from the 1960s, is better than one might expect from a budget label. Among May’s interpretations is the anti-war song O Fallada, da du hangest, which refers to the Goose Girl story recounted by the Brothers Grimm.
CD 7 conveys a generous dose of old Irmgard Arnold tracks as she works her way through the Hollywood Liederbuch. After this come a few tracks with Eisler himself singing songs like Die Ballade vom Wasserrad (a kind of Brechtian Gretchen am Spinnrade).
Some of the most poignant of Eisler’s songs are his late Brecht settings: post-Holocaust poems like In the flower garden. Many others, such as the selections from Die Rundköpfe und die Spitzköpfe (Round Heads and Pointy Heads) are pretty indistinguishable from Weill’s brand of modernist-tinged cabaret, right down to the working class “pit combo” ensemble. Complementing this instrumentation are the many settings for voice and piano. Eisler may have been one of the very last composers to contribute meaningfully to the Romantic art song for this combination, a genre that has since become ossified and moribund.
After landing in the DDR, Eisler’s music got a lot more didactic and tonal. Mitte des Jahrhunderts (Middle of the Century, dating, appropriately enough, from 1950) is heard on CD 9, and it’s a good example of the simplified style. It’s a choral cantata with an interposed orchestral Etude that sounds more like Prokofiev than Weill. CD 10 continues the trend, focusing on choral arrangements of moralizing songs, including a few of Eisler’s most famous agitprop specimens, which to be sure, often originated in the 1930s. One thing Eisler did get out of his stint as DDR’s most internationally prestigious composer (most of his eminent colleagues having long since fled to the West) was the material support of the Communist regime in making these recordings. Aside from the East German national anthem (Auferstanden aus Ruinen, inexplicably omitted from Brilliant’s collection) Eisler’s most famous tune is probably his setting of Brecht’s Und weil der Mensch ein Mensch ist (AKA United Front Song) with its characteristic refrain “Drum links, zwei, drei”. CD 10 (and the set) concludes with a suitably militaristic choral rendition of it. The irony of deploying march rhythms and unison singing in the service of ostensibly anti-authoritarian texts is self-evident. And whereas Eisler’s Weimar-era kampfmusik used instrumental combos and ragtime/jazz-influenced rhythms to connote underclass origins, the effect here is more evocative of a frenzied mob or struggle session.
CD 10 also includes a handful of English-language performances, such as From Narrow Streets and Hidden Places and The Flame of Reason.
So much for the stereotypical Eisler. What’s striking to me, though, is how much instrumental music he left us. Brilliant Classics includes much of it here, mainly suites arranged by the composer from his many film and stage scores. These are a delight to listen to, both because they’re unfamiliar and because they’re more harmonically advanced than his better-known vocal works. Eisler’s Hollywood scores are particularly obscure today because they mainly went into films that did not become classics. The lively Nonet No. 2, culled from his music for the 1941 film The Forgotten Village (itself a curious example of ethnofiction, with a voice over written by John Steinbeck) is characteristic of this style, which shares a common lineage with early Hindemith (e.g., his Kammermusik No. 2 from 1925).
It’s in these works that Eisler’s debt to Schoenberg comes through most vividly. Vierzehn Arten den Regen zu beschreiben (Fourteen Ways to Describe the Rain), composed for a Joris Ivens film, recalls Schoenberg’s Suite, Op. 29, but benefits from Eisler’s penchant for solo winds and open textures (by contrast with Schoenberg’s frequently turgid orchestration). It’s worth recalling that Weill’s earliest canonical music is also heavily indebted to Schoenberg, and many of Eisler pieces for mixed chamber ensemble bear a close resemblance to the sound world of Weill’s youthful Violin Concerto.
CD 8 features solo piano music from the 1920s, closely modeled after Schoenberg’s groundbreaking Op. 19/23/25 pieces. Many compositions in this style emerged from the interwar Germanosphere, but Eisler’s are among the best that weren’t written by Schoenberg, Berg or Webern. This music delights in its unabashed atonality, shorn of the constraints of functional harmony like a nudist shorn of uncomfortable clothes. It occasionally suffers from the same rhythmic rigidity that disfigures much of Schoenberg’s serial music: endless bars of 2/4, 3/4 and 4/4 time with steady eighth notes.
A mid-century German Symphony?
Most of Eisler’s works are miniatures or collections of miniatures. And they tend to be repetitive forms like strophic songs or variation sets (c.f., the aforementioned Vierzehn Arten). Eisler seemed most comfortable in short formats, relying on brief characteristic musical gestures, and an ever-vibrant range of instrumental color (hence the eagerness to employ mixed chamber ensembles). There’s one big exception to this though: the Deutsche Sinfonie, Eisler’s most musically ambitious and distended work. It occupies all of CD 3 in Brilliant Classics’ set in a 1974 recording that features multiple East Berlin musicians under Max Pommer, and is also available in a 1989 live performance featuring Günther Theuring and the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra that’s just been released by Capriccio (an Austrian label specializing in lesser-known European modernist works such as Henze’s Das verratene Meer, Schulhoff’s Flammen and Wellesz’s The Sacrifice of the Prisoner).
Basically, the Sinfonie is an 11 movement oratorio for soloists, speaker, chorus and orchestra. It lasts over an hour, setting several anti-fascist texts by Brecht and one by the Italian novelist Ignazio Silone. Its sound world is comparable to Schoenberg’s Jacob’s Ladder or A Survivor from Warsaw as they might have been adapted by Weill and Brecht. Originally composed in 1935 and 1936, with new movements added as late as 1957, the Sinfonie is “full of political warning to the German people and to those Communists in lock-step with Moscow” as Steve Schwartz puts it. Several of Brecht’s texts tell of German concentration camps, which it’s worth remembering were first opened in 1933, well before Kristallnacht.
Eisler’s works don’t rise above the agitprop as well as Weill’s, and Deutsche Sinfonie can seem as preachy as the most sycophantic cantatas of Shostakovich and Prokofiev. Nevertheless it’s one of his most musically compelling works, containing many fascinating and unnerving moments. It seems to be a precursor to works like Henze’s 9th Symphony, and probably deserves to be more widely heard, at least on disc.
The Sinfonie‘s Praeludium opens with a slow mournful theme entrusted to the violas, kind of a twelve-tone echo of Mahler’s 10th Symphony.
A bit of worldly buildup and subsidence sets the stage for the chorus’s entry: a homophonic setting of verses from Brecht’s Germany (Oh Deutschland, bleiche Mutter! Wie bist du besudelt, meaning “Oh Germany, pale mother, how you sit defiled”). The quotation of the Internationale in the trumpets at 4:50 is obvious to anyone who still recognizes that tune. Less familiar nowadays is its counterpoint in the trombones, which quotes a lament for the martyrs of the 1905 Russian Revolution that became known in German as Unsterbliche Opfer (Immortal Victims) and which is also quoted in Hartmann’s Concerto Funèbre and Shostakovich’s 11th Symphony.
All but the last of the Sinfonie‘s movements are twelve-tone, displaying Eisler’s characteristic implementation which emphasizes traditional tonal relationships and the facile extraction of short riffs. A good example of the latter is in the second movement, Brecht’s To the fighters in the concentration camps, a passacaglia over a ground constructed from two pairs of repeated half-steps (which in turn spell out a transposition of the famous B-A-C-H motif). Brecht’s poem features the notable line Verschwunden aber Nicht vergessen (“gone but not forgotten”).
Next up is the first orchestral interlude, called Etude 1. Eisler appropriated this lively movement from the finale to his Orchestral Suite No. 1 (track 4 on CD 1). It leads directly into Brecht’s Erinnerung (Remembrance), commemorating a suppressed anti-war demonstration in Potsdam. It’s set as a kind of post-Mahlerian funeral march. Next comes In Sonnenburg, named after one of the Nazi’s first internment camps. In the 1958 published edition from Breitkopf & Härtel this is cast as a baritone solo, but both Pommer and Theuring do it as an alternating duet between soprano and baritone soloists. On the word leer (“empty”) in ihre blutigen Hände aber immer noch leer sind (“their bloody hands are still empty”) the singer is instructed to perform a fascist salute.
The second orchestral interlude, Etude 2, follows. It appears to have been originally composed for this piece, and is in two broad sections: slow-fast. The main motivic idea is two descending major thirds separated by a minor second (e.g., D♯-B-D-B♭), an idea also foregrounded in the second movement. Movement 7 is Burial of the Troublemaker in a Zinc Coffin, the “troublemaker” being a worker demanding to be paid his wages and be treated as a human being. The chorus dramatically personifies the compliant mob with “He was a troublemaker. Bury him! Bury him!”. Male and female soloists are heard here too, lending the movement quite a bit of coloristic variety. Like several of the other movements, this one frequently has a martial feel to it. After the choral admonition that “whoever proclaims their solidarity with the oppressed will be put into a zinc box like this one”, the movement ends with another soft and resigned funeral march, this one emphasizing triplet rhythms on the first and second beat.
Next up is a four-part cantata-within-an-oratorio, appropriately called Peasant Cantata. It’s the only movement with a non-Brecht text, excerpted from Silone’s 1936 novel Bread and Wine (which the US surreptitiously disseminated among Italian partisans to gin up anti-Mussolini support during WW2). It too opens with march rhythms. Part three uses two male speakers accompanied by strings and soft humming in the women’s chorus. The fourth part is yet another march.
The movements have been getting longer and more complex as we go on, and at 15 minutes, the Worker Cantata (AKA Das Lied vom Klassenfeind or Song of the Class Enemy) is the longest individual movement in all of Hanns Eisler Edition. At last the composer puts forth an extended organic structure, melding stanza form with elements of traditional sonata form. After an orchestral introduction, the mezzo-soprano delivers what sounds like a strophic song, with a folk-like, though serial, melody in straightforward 2/4 time.
The continuation descends stepwise.
After two statements of this comes a new idea, one of those jaunty workers’ marches harkening back to Eisler’s Weimar days. The text here is passed to the baritone who sings a new tune, but then ends with the same continuation theme as the soprano.
An orchestral passage recalls the march and leads to a climax after which (at 5:29) comes one of the Sinfonie‘s most effective moments: a soft kettledrum roll on low A♭ providing the sole accompaniment for the choir as they dramatically enter with a chorale-like setting of “and as the war was about to end”. Some developmental passages follow, climaxing with the mezzo-soprano and baritone soloists singing in octaves (a doubling previously avoided in the Sinfonie). Fragmentation of earlier material in the choir takes us to a scherzo section in 3/4 time (8:26), which features new material and alternation between soloists (still singing in octaves) and chorus.
We arrive back at the march song which, as before, is entrusted to the baritone. An out-of-tempo quasi recitativo passage in the mezzo-soprano leads to the coda, which Eisler launches by having the chorus alternate lines with one of the speakers from the Peasant Cantata. The apogee comes with a repetition of the march idea with the chorus delivering the closing line “and the class enemy is the enemy”.
Movement 10 is the last of the orchestral interludes. Originally conceived as the finale, it’s of also extended length (nearly ten minutes, making it one of the longest instrumental tracks in the collection), using a structure that approximates sonata form. We start right out in allegro 3/4 time. After some introductory bars, a low string ostinato sets in, over which the main theme is stated by a solo horn (at 0:25). If it sounds vaguely familiar it’s because it uses the same row as the viola melody that opens the Praeludium. The first trumpet immediately inverts the tune, and later the violins restate it in its original shape. The tempo slackens for the second theme, heard in clarinets in thirds (at 1:50). Sudden timpani strokes (4:23) herald a change to duple time. At 5:09 Eisler returns to triple time, and starts to develop the first theme, in both original and inverted form as before. At 6:10, the trumpet develops the second theme in canon with the horns. The meter continues to switch between duple and triple, and the development become more fragmentary and the texture thinner until we’re left with an accompanied cadenza for solo violin. The coda reprises the main theme and its dotted rhythm amid multiple layers of crescendo’ing counterpoint, leading to a conclusion which, while not exactly triumphant, is rather more upbeat than most of what we’ve heard before. I personally find the mood of this movement a bit out of character with the rest of the sprawling Sinfonie, despite its motivic integration. An interesting detail reported by David Drew is that the three orchestral movements make up a sort of symphony within the oratorio, with Etude No. 2 taking the role of both scherzo and slow movement.
The work ends with a surprisingly brief choral Epilog, little more than a fragment built atop an A-E♭-F♯ ostinato in the low strings that underpins Brecht’s “this is what you get” lament for the German war dead (the complete text in German is Seht unsre Söhne, taub und blutbefleckt vom eingefrornen Tank hier losgeschnallt! Ach, selbst der Wolf braucht, der die Zähne bleckt, ein Schlupfloch! Wärmt sie, es ist ihnen kalt! Seht unsre Söhne, the key words meaning “See our sons”). This movement was tacked on in 1957, years “after the fact” on the occasion of the work’s publication and full premiere. It’s actually an arrangement of the introduction to Eisler’s cantata Bilder aus der Kriegsfibel, which is heard on CD 9. In its resigned ambiguity it seems to sum up the despair Eisler must have felt toward the end of his life, when so many of his personal and ideological dreams lay shattered. Indeed the compositional history of the Deutsche Sinfonie is itself a microcosm of Eisler’s plight: composed mainly in exile, unperformable in Germany during the Nazi era, and upon Eisler’s return promptly suppressed by communist censors for its Schoenbergian atonality in keeping with the Soviet-imposed dogma that Eisler himself had helped promulgate through his enthusiastic endorsement of the Zhdanov doctrine at the 1948 International Congress of Composers in Prague—a cautionary precedent to today’s bilateral attacks on artistic and academic freedom.
Thanks to a modest cultural liberalization in 1958 the work was finally unveiled, but by that time Brecht was dead and the basic anti-Nazi message was no longer as topical.
Hanns Eisler and Bertolt Brecht in 1950 (photo: German Federal Archive)
Risen from the ruins?
Eisler’s music may not be of the same caliber as Schoenberg’s or Weill’s, but it’s good enough to repay the time spent listening through these recordings. As with most Brilliant Classics releases, Hanns Eisler Edition comes with a few cut corners, notably the lack of song texts and translations. But you do get extensive program notes by Günter Mayer (which can be downloaded, along with track listings, from Brilliant’s Web site). And the budget price certainly makes it a compelling purchase for almost anyone interested in 20th century music—at least if you’re able to approach Eisler’s didacticism in the same spirit that freethinkers are obliged to employ when appreciating musical settings of religious texts. Spend a couple weeks with the Eisler oeuvre, then go on to Brilliant’ Paul Dessau Edition and the new recording of Dessau’s Lanzelot to complete your tour of the DDR’s musical mini-heyday.
Alex Jakeman, Flute; Oliver Pashley, Clarinet; Rakhi Singh, Violin;
Hannah Roberts, Cello; Beibei Wang, Vibraphone; Katherine Tinker, Piano
Manchester Collective’s fourth recording, Neon, includes totemic pieces by Steve Reich and Julius Eastman, as well as works by Hannah Peel and the first concert music composition by Lyra Pramuk. It is a well-considered and excellently performed program.
The centerpiece is Steve Reich’s Double Sextet, a work for two “Pierrot plus Percussion” ensembles that won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize. The piece can either be performed live by twelve musicians or by a single sextet against an overdubbed rendition of the second grouping. Manchester Collective opts for the latter. The performance is so tight that the lines between live and recorded are erased. This is due in no small part to the energetic and laser beam focused playing of violinist Rakhi Singh and cellist Hannah Roberts. Double Sextet is one of the best of Reich’s later compositions and this performance is a welcome addition to his recording catalog.
Julius Eastman’s “Joy Boy” begins with vocal improvisations that display a surprisingly Reich-like harmony. Pitched percussion and repeated ululations bring the performance to a cadence point, after which the instruments vie for dominance in the texture. The second section is based on just a few harmonies, but their elongation and the sudden eruptions that periodically occur keep things interesting.
In an affectionate homage, Hannah Peel tropes ideas and sounds from Steve Reich in the recording’s title piece. We are treated to some flavors reminiscent of Double Sextet, but also samples from Shinjuku train station, a nod, albeit a far less angsty one, to Reich’s Different Trains. Peel is expert at bringing together these disparate strands. The first movement, “Shinjuku,” is ostinato filled and brightly hued. The second movement, “Born of Breath,” has some lovely clarinet writing for Oliver Pashley, a fine player with excellent control of limpid runs and upper register forays. Flutist Alex Jakeman is compelling too. Here she contributes shorter lines, often dramatic in the timing of their appearances. Less minimal in design than the other movements, it has a beguiling ambience. The finale, “Vanishing,” features vibraphone and piano, played with keen attention to dynamic shadings by Beibei Wang and Katherine Tinker, with repeated patternings from the rest of the group coalescing into a lovely surface.
Lyra Pramuk produced Neon and, encouraged by the group, tried her hand at creating a composition for them. A producer, vocalist, performance artist, and composer of electronica, it is not surprising that she excels in adding another component to her polyartist career. Of her work Quanta, she says, “There is no universal time. Quanta explores the notion that each of us has an individual sense of how time traces through our lives.”
The ticking of a grandfather clock opens the piece, at first keeping strict time, then devolving into varying tempos, and finally stopping. Sustained tones emerge from the grandfather clock’s ticking, followed by a diatonic duet for clarinet and cello. Shimmering vibraphone announces the return of the rest of the ensemble, playing extended triadic harmonies to accompany successive solos from each of the wind and string players. The language is lush, with overlapping lines from the entire group creating a tapestry of interwoven melody. The next section adds flute trills, glissandos, and pizzicato to further enhance the texture. A long decrescendo compresses the material until it vanishes. Pramuk’s Opus 1 suggests she should add more concert music to her resume.
Neon features a thoroughly engaging program and talented ensemble. Recommended.
Los Angeles Master Chorale, Los Angeles Symphony, Gustavo Dudamel, conductor
Nonesuch CD
Thomas Adés
The Dante Project
London Symphony Chorus, Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Koen Kessels, conductor
Opus Arte Bluray DVD
It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to use Dante as the centerpiece of one’s own creative work. Thomas Adés has courage in spades, as he has created an ambitious ballet based on the Divine Comedy, for dancers, chorus, and orchestra, commemorating the 700th anniversary of the poet’s death. Two documents of the piece are currently available, a Nonesuch recording of the Los Angeles Symphony, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, and an Opus Arte Bluray DVD.
Dudamel is firmly in command of the concert version of Dante, balancing its powerful, often intricate, orchestration. The vivid imagery of the poem is ideal material for Adés to use the leitmotifs that so often appear in his theatrical work. In The Inferno section, the “Abandon All Hope” motif, which opens the ballet, is memorable in its angst-filled stridency, “The Ferryman” contains a recurring melody with exquisite writing in the winds, and the Dies Irae is given a set of suitably diabolical variations. “Paolo and Francesca – the endless whirlwind,” is dervish like in its peregrinations. “The Pope’s Adagio – Head First,” contains a soaring, neo-romantic melody. Immediately followed by “The Hypocrites – coated in lead,” which nicely juxtaposes the Pope’s music with slowly moving, low register chromaticism and an inexorable drumbeat. “The Thieves – devoured by reptiles” depicts the chase between condemned and tormentors in a quick dance that, more than anything else in the ballet, channels Tchaikovsky.
Some truly terrifying music ensues: the timpani and howling lower brass for “The suicides,” followed by cymbals and upward wind glissandos, has echoes of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. “Satan – in the lake of ice” closes the Inferno section with a harrowing slow movement with dissonant brass chorales juxtaposed with shimmering high winds and strings. It is among the most moving sections of the work.
Recorded voices of an ancient Syrian Jewish prayer are intoned at the beginning of Purgatorio, its accompanying music depicting “Dawn on the Sea of Purgatory,” with the sound of recorded waves and modal interludes that resemble the scales being chanted. Voices reappear in “Valley of Flowers” alongside a Middle Eastern dance with ebullient percussion in whirling patterns that gradually speed up, only to be replaced by a slow cadenza. Recorded voices continue their singing and the strings take a long-threaded melody on “The Healing Fire.” Purgatorio in its final three movements begins to depict the uplift of souls to heaven. “The Earthly Paradise” uses a melody from the recorded voices in a brass-forward quick section that ends with a flourish. “The Heavenly Procession” slows the tempo back to that of the initial chanting of the prayer, which is accompanied by chiming punctuations, haloing strings, and an eloquent horn solo. “The Ascent” is triumphant, filled with ringing changes and ascending scales imitated in all the sections of the orchestra.
What follows is a compositional tour-de-force. Paradisum is cast in a single, 27-minute long movement, with the following subsections, “Awakening – Moon – Mercury – Venus – Sun – Mars – Jupiter.” A slow build begins with “Awakening” that continues throughout, with a registral ascent and marshaling of forces culminating in the addition of chorus. Dudamel paces the piece with an exquisite sense of its long architecture, making sure that there is intensity left by the time the music reaches “Jupiter.” Adés’s incorporation of transformed versions of previous leitmotifs provides Paradisum with a sense of closure.
The Opus Arte Bluray DVD features the Royal Ballet’s Edward Watson in his last performance after twenty-seven years as a principal dancer. Directed by Kevin O’Hare and choreographed by Wayne McGregor, it is a beautifully danced and visually arresting production. Watson, as Dante, and Gary Avis as Virgil, wear tunics, Avis’s gold and Watson’s moving from aqua to half-red/half aqua in Purgatorio, and entirely red in Paradisum. Likewise, the dancers in Inferno wear charcoal body suits and those in Purgatorio and Paradisum are, respectively, light tan and then white. The symbolism of color is complemented by solo and group dancing that varies from undulating modernism to, by the score’s conclusion, more traditional ballet. Sarah Lamb dances the part of Beatrice with graceful versatility, and Dante’s love for her is depicted in affecting choreography. Throughout, McGregor, with a keen ear for its orchestration, captures the essence of Adés’s score.
Do I prefer the audio recording or the film? Glad to not have to choose, as they are both excellent documents. Dante is a major work by Adés, and one of his best to date. Highly recommended.
In recent years, Deutsche-Grammophon has been releasing crossover albums incorporating the work of pop/electronic artists, particularly those who sit in the post-rock and ambient pockets. Balmorhea, the band name for the trio Rob Lowe, Michael A. Muller, and Aisha Burns are an ideal grouping for this type of project. Their work has long been influenced by classical music and their arrangements are well wrought. In 2021, their first recording for DG, The Wind, made a strong impression. If anything, their latest for the imprint, Pendant World, is even stronger.
Guests artists from the A-list of contemporary classical music join them, including cellist Clarice Jensen, percussionist Jason Treuting, vocalist Lisa Morgenstern, and guitarist Sam Gendel. Lower and Muller handle keyboard duties, and Burns contributes violin. Many of the songs are aphoristic, but even the smallest slices of music yield atmospheric moments. “Nonplussed,” Pendant World’s opener, clocks in at a mere forty-one seconds, but Treuting’s chimes and gradually accelerating drums give it a striking resemblance to a locomotive gearing up to leave the station. “Range” is a showcase for Gendel’s arpeggiated guitar, with supple strings in the background and a brief piano bridge between the guitar solos. Less than two minutes, it would make an excellent cut for a film score. “Fire Song” too, is short yet memorable. It features Gendel, this time taking on a more melodic role with plaintive harmonies behind him.
Pendant World doesn’t just contain morsel-sized pieces. “Step, Step, Step” is a showcase for the band and all of their guests. Solos ricochet between them, with Burns a particular standout and Treuting providing an ardent motor. The arrangement is well-conceived: the concert music analog to a post-rock anthem. Similarly, “Oscuros” is for the ensemble, with a repeated note piano riff girding the verses and strings taking up a variation of the tune in a subdued middle section. At the end of the piece, the piano takes the foreground again with a harmonically tweaked, more fully realized version of the tune.
The final piece,”Depth Serenade” features Balmorhea with Burns and Jensen handling string duties. The violin and cello melodies are beautiful, set against ambient keyboards. The overall effect has echoes of Gavin Bryars’s Sinking of the Titanic and Harold Budd’s work, but the sound world of Balmorhea commingles with them, and doesn’t merely co opt past sounds. It ends with repeated shimmering piano chords and soaring strings..
Pendant World makes a strong case for the vitality of crossover in a contemporary classical context. One hopes Balmorhea will continue in this vein.
Many people’s first exposure to the world of Studio Ghibli and its star director, Hayao Miyazaki, was My Neighbor Totoro. For me, it was Laputa: Castle in the Sky. I will never forget my reaction to the opening sequence, during which Sheeta, the sole living heiress of the eponymous all-but-forgotten realm, falls from an airship. As she hurtles toward the earth below, eyes closed as if resigned to this tragic fate, her crystal necklace begins to glow, imbuing enough power in its slender cord to bring her to the softest of landings into the arms of protagonist Pazu.
Nothing prepared me, however, for the music of Joe Hisaishi. Such emotional circuits are part and parcel of his scoring at its most glorious: building a free fall of anticipation before settling into the inner lives of Miyazaki’s timeless characters. And surely, this conspectus from Deutsche Grammophon provides a long-overdue account of Hisaishi’s melodic gifts. A Symphonic Celebration reminds us of one key reason why Miyazaki’s oeuvre owns so much valuable real estate in the hearts of children and adults alike. Each image has a song.
While Michael Beek’s liner notes rightly place Miyazaki/Hisaishi among the ranks of Spielberg/Williams, Zemeckis/Silvestri, Burton/Elfman, and Fellini/Rota, I might also add Lynch/Badalamenti, especially since the latter dream team closely mirrors the creative process of Hisaishi, who has often composed music for a Miyazaki picture based only on sketches and ideas before a single frame is drawn. Beek goes on to characterize the album’s program as “Joe Hisaishi’s musical vision freed from the bounds of film, but this time given even more space and, if it’s at all possible, even more heart and soul.” This is at once to the album’s credit and detriment.
But first, the music, which begins where it must: with Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), their inaugural collaboration. As the first of ten reimagined suites, it packs a punch of tympani and orchestral splendor that resolves into the clarion strains of what may be Hisaishi’s most timeless theme. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra artfully brushes in the details under the composer’s baton. The addition of choir adds a surreal sense of humanity to music for a film that still feels quite distant from who we are now, yet so familiar, while the children’s singing is a haunting remnant of carefree abundance. This sets a tone that can be difficult to read because the suites often shift so quickly from one motif to the other that one’s memories of certain scenes and characters get interrupted. Still, there are some stunning passages to savor, especially in the finale, that recapture some of the magic.
Just as Nausicaä finds its groove toward the end, Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989) is refined from note one, as the wide-eyed wonder of the titular witch setting off for the adventure of independent living blossoms across the foreground. The percussive touches and fervent string playing give way to a creamy center, while the solo violin of Stephen Morris carries a rich emotional cargo. An especially successful arrangement.
Princess Mononoke (1997) tills martial ground, cultivating the soprano of Grace Davidson, who does a splendid job with the Japanese intonation, as also in Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea(2008), while The Wind Rises (2013) introduces the mandolin of Avi Avital for a more cobblestoned sound. The latter points to Miyazaki’s fascination with flight and air travel, as played out further in Castle in the Sky (1986), which is smart for opening with Pazu’s bugled morning call but less so for taking up the theme with choir when the piano was so crucial to the original soundtrack. Moreover, the concluding melodrama feels rather out of character with the film’s tender heart. Thankfully, we get plenty of Hisaishi at the keyboard in Porco Rosso (1992), which evokes its quirky mélange with tasteful subtlety, taken up by clarinet and strings.
The biggest disappointment is Howl’s Moving Castle (2004), which has so much grace and poise in the original, yet here, despite being the longest of the program, seems rushed. That said, it does contain some of Hisaishi’s most masterful work, especially “Merry-Go-Round of Life,” which gloriously consummates a flirtatious appearance early on.
Spirited Away (2001) gives us more of Hisaishi’s distinctive pianism (again, this connects him to Badalamenti, whose keyboard playing was always so grounded in the soul), paired with the breathy vocals of Hisaishi’s daughter, Mai Fujisawa (who also sang the original Nausicäa theme). Her voice is auto-tuned, which is rather odd in a classical album, even as it plays creatively with the fringes of a genre that has grown with the times. If anything, this pop sensibility gives it an interesting appeal.
And so, we return to My Neighbor Totoro (1988), a story seared into my memory after seeing the film literally hundreds of times when it was the only one my three-going-on-four-year-old would watch at the time. Miyazaki himself once characterized Totoro as the embodiment of Japan in its transition into modernism, as evidenced by his parallels with Alice in Wonderland and Mary Poppins, and I have grown to appreciate its depths far more as an adult. Originally shown as the B picture of a double feature after Grave of the Fireflies (directed by studio mate Isao Takahata), it contrasted the reality of a war-torn Japan with the fantasy of a rural imaginary in anticipation of a hopeful future. Hisaishi adds to such inversions, beginning his suite under cover of night, whereas the film opens in the brightness of day.
Perhaps the ultimate question regarding A Symphonic Celebration is whether this music would survive without its cinematic associations. While my bias as someone in whose fibers frames of Miyazaki’s films are deeply embedded leads me toward a “no,” time will tell how it reads to new listeners as a standalone experience. Given that the arrangements are so far from home, I yearn for the moving images and their original sound palettes—missing, for example, the electronics that make Nausicaä and Totoro such delightfully nostalgic productions of their time. And while one could make a strong case for including the Totoro theme song in English since it was such an international success (even if the tessellated choral arrangement lacks the charm of Sonya Isaacs in the Disney dub), I wonder what meaning the English version of Ponyo’s theme song offers to someone ignorant of the film, or to Japanese fans, for that matter. Of course, we cannot necessarily expect the colors and textures to be the same. Still, I would recommend that anyone new to Joe Hisaishi watch, rewatch, and absorb Miyazaki’s films long before putting this album in cue.
Violinist Timothy Schwarz has commissioned, performed, and recorded a number of pieces by contemporary composers. His latest release on Albany, The Living American, is a collection of recent pieces by American composers.
Schwarz takes a “melting pot” approach to his program. It opens with the solo Fantasy on Lama Badaa yatsana, written by Stephen Sametz, which explores alternate scales with frequent double-stops and harmonics alongside virtuosic melodic writing. Pianist Charles Abramovic joins Schwarz on a set of pieces by musical theater composer Joseph Goodrich. Indeed, C-minor Jam leans much closer to a theatrical version of jazz than one by legit jazzers, but it is an entertaining romp nonetheless. Goodrich’s Lacrimosa is a touching, lyrical work with, as one would suspect, a mournful cast. Schwarz plays emotively, phrasing the music expansively with a variety of textures. The Machine is a syncopated moto perpetuo, with the piano playing a punctilious ostinato in the bass that is countered by one in the violin with equal verve.
Jennifer Higdon’s String Poetic: Blue Hills of Mist, opens with inside-the-piano work alongside chords to create a swath of overtones. The violin joins with a soaring line that encompasses some of the notes from the piano, adding weight to the overtones. The piano then plays a brooding, mournful accompaniment and the violin counters with a tender, modal melody. Schwarz and Abramovic make an excellent performing pair on this sumptuous work. A warmly hued cadenza accompanied by percussive dampened piano strings follows. The piano plays color chords and the violin once again begins a cadenza, taking stops along the way for sustained notes. The coda ensues, with percussive piano mirroring notes in the violin. A pizzicato note provides a final pitch that is quite a surprise.
The beginning of Jessie Montgomery’s Rhapsody No. 2 is filled with challenging scalar runs that traverse the entire compass of the instrument. A slow section of harmonics adds a more dissonant harmonic palette. Gradually, a slowed down version of the opening scalar passages, with yearning high notes, takes over. Double stops appear in a speeding up crescendo. The opening gesture returns in a valedictory flourish.
Reena Esmail’s musical approach combines Eastern and Western elements. This synthesis is abundantly apparent in the solo piece Darshan: Raag charukeshi. Once again, Schwarz is adept at dealing with the requirements of multiple technical approaches. His playing carefully negotiates the microtones and sliding techniques of Esmail’s piece.
Avner Dorman’s Sonata No. 2 for Violin and Piano begins with a slow boil of angular violin gestures. This is joined by the piano, which plays clouds of harmonies against dissonant leaps in the violin. Multi-stopped passages and yearning melodies are accompanied by enigmatic arpeggiations in the piano. A second section begins with strident harmonics and bass-register piano punctuations. The piano quickens into a brusk ostinato, over which the violin performs aggressive turns through glissandos and slashed multi-stops. The duo build to a ferocious climax, dizzying in intensity. A gradual slowdown concludes with a brief violin solo. Soft, pointillist piano lines abets a low register violin melody that gradually slides up its compass, adding double-stops. A glissando buzzes down to scordatura bass notes, then makes wave shaped lines that continue in a slippery path to silence.
The final work on the recording is a five-movement piece called Australian Sketches. I am puzzled as to why this is included on The Living American. True, the composer Denis Deblasio, is a jazz composer from the US, but why have the longest programmed work be an homage to Australia? If one sets aside this programmatic puzzlement, the music is a real treat. Schwarz and Abramovic are joined by bassist Douglas Mapp, and drummer Doug Hirlinger in a cabaret combo. Like C-minor Jam, this is jazz in a pop context. I am reminded of Stefan Grappelli’s film work (such as his featured role on the Dirty Rotten Scoundrels soundtrack) in Schwarz’s approach to Deblasio’s effervescent creations. The performances are playfully rendered, but artful as well. Given the melting pot approach already in evidence, on second thought, why not invite our friends from Australia to join in the fun?
