Contemporary Classical

Contemporary Classical

Thursday Night at Ojai: Two Pianos

The 61st Ojai Music Festival opened last night.  Helena Bugallo and Amy Williams, returning after their success two years ago in their performances of Nancarrow, gave us a great survey of modern works for two pianos with works by Stravinsky, Ligeti, Sciarrino, and this season’s featured composer, Peter Eötvös.  (Us amateurs have trouble coming to a decision as to the best mispronounciation of his name.)  But let me start with the featured composer, glad I can write the name and not try to speak it.

The second half of the program opened with his Cricketmusic (1970) a tape of cricket sounds, the perfect opening for an evening performance at Ojai.  This moved directly to the two pianists playing his Kosmos (1961, 1999 rev.), for which the Soviet space flights inspired the teenaged composer.  Yes, it’s a young work, but it’s good stuff and it was given a vibrant performance in which two pianos had been positioned in the front corners of the Ojai stage so that we could hear the space as well as the notes.  The pianists moved back to center stage for a performance of Ligeti‘s masterful Three Pieces for Two Pianos (1976), making the extremely difficult seem effortless.  The second of the pieces is his Self-Portrait with Reich and Riley (and Chopin in the Background), his homage to the Americans whose work he had discovered.  (His eventual discovery of Nancarrow’s work seems obvious in the first piece, Monument, with its layers of different time intervals.)

In the first half of the program Bugallo and Williams performed two of Stravinsky’s versions for two pianos of his own works for ensemble.  The first work was Septet (1953), written when he was beginning to form his own interpretations of twelve-tone concepts heard in so much of the music he heard at Ojai and at the fore-runner of LA’s Monday Evening Concerts.  Bach and Schoenberg don’t co-exists that easily in the work, but it’s interesting to hear his exploration.  Salvatore Sciarrino’s Sonata for Two Pianos (1966) came next:  a work that’s a study of as many variations as possible of ornaments, a work providing a sweet between the two works of Stravinsky.  And then the Stravinsky “Dumbarton Oaks” Concerto (1938) in its two-piano version, a masterpiece in that version as well as in the instrumental one.  Bugallo and Williams have recorded six of Stravinsky’s two-piano works, and I recommend the CD to any fan of Stravinsky or of duo pianos, Stravinsky in Black and White.  It’s not merely that the works are given good performances by two pianists who seem to inhabit each other’s piano shapings; the works give you a different view of Stravinsky and his creativity.  The architecture of the work seems much clearer in the piano versions, and it’s fun to think of how Stravinsky, the expert instrumentalist, would use the colors of other instruments.  (And of course their recording of Nancarrow is worth having.)

The concert closed with a performance of Ligeti’s Poeme Symphonique, the famously infamous work for 100 metronomes.  For the Ojai performance the metronomes were positioned in nine groups (I think because the ones I could see had 11 each) around the audience, with an amplifier for each cluster.  At first there was a lot of conversation, but the talkers gradually got more of the spirit of things.  By the time the work was down to about a dozen metronomes, the audience was paying attention, listening to the patterns.  The trail-off from five down to one, then to zero was fun.  It was much more enjoyable than watching the video on YouTube.

by JerryZ
Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical

A Report From Prague

Greetings S21ers:

The OgreOgress gang has been having a swell time in Old Bohemia for the past month.  Last night I had the honor of recording John Cage’s Three with the multi-talented and very humorous German-born (and Amsterdam-based) recordist Susanna Borsch at the facilities of the Prague State Opera.

If you’re interested in the recorder I would encourage you to check out Borsch’s activities and be in contact. Of particular note to those in the US of A (apologies to Borat), Susanna’s eclectic new music “girl band” Electra will be in the Massachusetts area to perform Louis Andriessen in July and I am certain further bookings in the USA would be much appreciated.

But, wait, there’s more.  A few days prior I had the distinct honor of protesting George W. Bush and even got on the CBS Evening News (that is me next to Axelrod at the end of the report)…

… and a few weeks before that, I recorded Cage’s Twenty-
Eight with the Prague Winds.

In short, having a wonderful time.  Wish you all were here.

by Glenn Freeman
Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Festivals

You Don’t Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows

First Jeff Harrington, then David Salvage, and now our very own Lawrence Dillon is feeling some end-of-the-season love on the concert circuit.  This very evening (Thursday), at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina,  violinist Piotr Szewczyk will perform Lawrence’s Mister Blister and a movement from Fifteen Minutes as part of his Music in Time – Violin Futura program.  Szewczyk will also perform works by Mason Bates, Moritz Eggert, Daniel Kellogg, Jennifer Wang, and others as part of this program of new, short, innovative solo violin pieces.

And, on June 15 at the International Double Reed Society Conference in Ithaca, New York, bassoonist Jeffrey Keesecker will perform Dillon’s Furies and Muses, joined by violinist Susan Waterbury and Jennifer Reuning Meyers, violist Melissa Stucky and cellist Heidi Hoffman. This is part of a special series of bassoon performances featuring Contraband, Lorelei Dowling, Terry Ewell and Arlen Fast. The concert is free and open to the public. For more information, contact the IDRS or call (607) 274-3717.  

Anybody doing anything interesting this summer.  Festivals? 

Want to try your hand at being the front page blogger of S21 for a week? 

by Jerry Bowles
Contemporary Classical, Los Angeles

Last Night in L.A.: Eve Beglarian Premiere

The Los Angeles Master Chorale gave the premiere of a new work by Eve Beglarian for full chorus and two Persian instruments.  The work is “Sang”, Persian for “stone”, taken from a Persian parable that appealed to Beglarian; she added texts in Hebrew and Septuagint Greek from the Hebrew scriptures.  Her program notes are here.  An English translation of the texts was given in the program, but no attempt was made to provide surtitles; the thing to do was to relax and be absorbed into the sounds.

The work was the first in a planned series of commissions for the Master Chorale, LA is the World, in which a particular cultural background will be honored in works for chorus.  With her selection of a Persian parable at the center of the work, Beglarian decided to link Persian musicians with western singers to create a work compatible with both traditions.  Supporting the vocalists, sometimes as accompanists, sometimes in the lead, were Manoochehr Sadeghi playing the santur, a 72-string hammered dulcimer, and Pejman Hadadi on percussion, notably several sizes of daf, a frame drum, and the tombak, a goblet-shaped drum.  The instrumental duets seemed to successfully blend improvisational heritage with western structures so that the flow between chorus and instruments was smooth.

A commission of this sort should have incorporated recording and distribution.  It deserves hearing.  I’d certainly like to hear it again, but it may take the Chorale three years or so before the work gets on another program.  But are there that many brave boards out there, boards that will program a choral work with words in Persian, Hebrew and Greek that requires Persian instrumentalists?

The Master Chorale audience is really fairly open to newer music, especially for an audience that makes me seem young when I mingle with them.  The program last night began with James MacMillan’s Magnificat (1999) and Nunc Dimittis (2000) with David Goode on the WDCH organ.  The second half of the program was Arvo Part’s Te deum (1984-1985; 1992 revision).  This masterwork requires a string orchestra, piano, recorded tape of a wind harp giving the sustaining pitches throughout the work, and three choruses.  Grant Gershon placed the men’s chorus in the left-center rafters and the women’s chorus in the right center, placing the mixed chorus on stage behind the strings.  The sound was lovely.

The Part work was also a nice link to the Philharmonic’s “Shadow of Stalin” series of programs, which ended that afternoon with the orchestra playing Prokofiev’s complete Alexander Nevsky to accompany the Eisenstein film.  The music is glorious, but the film isn’t.  Imagine putting together the three worst WW II films out of Republic studios, and you approach the jingoism of the film.  (The music was a re-thinking of the film score, starting from Prokofiev’s cantata and applying it backwards to fit the movie, ignoring some dialogue to increase the musical values.)  The preceding Thursday was a concert of composers searching for musical freedom and using folk music to reflect nationalism and implied anti-Soviet resistance.  Ligeti’s Concert Romanesc (1951) was an Enesco-like work that was still controversial enough to get banned for twenty years after a single rehearsal.  Lutoslawski’s brilliantly-colored Concerto for Orchestra (1954) was able to pass.  Karel Husa’s powerful Music for Prague 1968 was the statement of an emigre against the re-conquering of Czechoslovakia after the brief “Prague Spring”.

Last week’s concert was by three young composers, writing wild music until the 1936 crackdown came.  Gavriil Popov wrote a suite from his Komsomol Patron of Electrification, which opened the concert; the score was ready for release when the Government objected to contemporary music and it went unheard for 46 years.  Alexander Mosolov wrote The Iron Foundry in 1926-1927 as part of a ballet (which was actually performed in Hollywood Bowl in 1931 as part of a different ballet) — great clanging music by a composer not able to adapt to new rules.  And there was a young composer named Shostakovich who wrote astounding operas:  The Nose and Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District.  We heard the composer’s suite from the former and the Act I, Scene 3 from the latter (the scene with the xxx-rated trombone part).  Shostakovich survived, of course, but never again with the freedom, and never another opera.

by JerryZ
Chamber Music, Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, New York, North/South

Viva Max!

For the past 27 years, the Mexican-born pianist and composer Max Lifchitz has been a tireless and resourceful promoter of new music (including his own) through live performances and recordings with the North/South Consonance Ensemble, the chamber group of the non-profit North/South Consonance organization. Many young composers, particularly those of the Neoclassic or New Romantic temperment (Larry Bell comes immediately to mind), have gotten a career boost from Lifchitz’s annual programs and recordings, which now number nearly 50. 

I mention all this because North/South Consonance’s  final concert of the current season is coming up on Sunday afternoon June 17 at 3 PM and will take place at Christ & St. Stephen’s Church (120 West 69th St, NYC) on Manhattan’s West Side. Admission is free (no tickets necessary).

The program will feature two compositions involving narration: Igor Stravinsky’s L’histoire du soldat and Lifchitz’s The Blood Orange.  I personally detest works that involve people talking while I’m trying to listen to music, but apparently some people like it and many famous composers have written works for ensemble and spoken word. 

Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale was written at the end of World War I and is one of those Faustian/Devil Goes Down to Georgia things about trading in your soul for a fiddle.  Lifchitz says the work is being performed to mark the 125th anniversary of the birth of the composer and, in fact, it is being performed on June 17, the exact day Stravinsky was born in 1882 in a town near St Petersburg.

Lifchitz’s The Blood Orange is a setting of a text by New York City writer Kathleen Masterson, written especially for the actress Norma Fire, who will perform it.  The narrative with music relates the story of Fire’s parents who emigrated to this country before the Holocaust, and of their relatives who did not. Fire will be supported by violinist Claudia Schaer and Lifchitz on piano. 

Today’s musical question is:  Name the best pieces ever written for music and narration (and let’s get Copland and Honegger out of the way quickly).

by Jerry Bowles
Cello, Contemporary Classical, Lost and Found

Lost and Found

Music by Nicolas Flagello
National Radio Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine
John McLaughlin Williams, conductor
Elmar Oliviera, violin 
Susan Gonzalez, soprano
Artek 0036-2

Nicolas Flagello (1928-1994) was born in New York City, earned a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree from the Manhattan School of Music and, upon graduation, taught there until 1977.

Flagello’s music is romantic and firmly built on 19th century models with lush orchestrations and long melodic phrases. The Symphonic Aria from 1951 is moving, but sometimes too rich. Mirra (1955) concludes with an exciting “Dance” that allows the orchestra to show a lot of meat.

Many of the works were orchestrated post facto by Anthony Sbordoni, including a Violin Concerto, and several songs for soprano, featuring Susan Gonzalez. Flagello is a good writer for the voice, and sensitive to the text in his prosody and harmonic textures. The CD concludes with two songs, Polo and Polo II, and the liner notes indicate that the “polo is a genre of flamenco song of Arabian origin.” Both draw heavily on folk elements.

 

 

The Return

Andrey Dergatchev

ECM 1923

There are few film scores that stand alone as “concert” works. I’ve often felt that the best film music should either go unnoticed to the average viewer or play a prominent role in the film (The Red Violin). Music in film should enhance the overall experience, which combines with visual artistry and dialogue/monologue.

That said, the music by Andrey Dergatchev needs the film to be fully appreciated. I suppose if any composer were to peddle their notes before a film, we all might have a different opinion of the music. In this case, I’ve never seen the film, so I was absorbing this ECM release as an electro-acoustic composition (sans movie).

Several tracks use spoken word from the picture, and it’s in Russian, so I didn’t understand anything. If you’ve seen The Return, this CD will make a nice souvenir.

Nostalghia – Song for Tarkovsky

François Couturier, with

Anja Lechner

Jean-Marc Marché

Jean-Louis Matinier

ECM 1979

Moving from music for film, to music inspired by film, we have François Couturier’s tribute album to Russian film-maverick Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986).

According to the composer, Tarkovsky felt that film does not require music (I usually agree), and so Nostalghia has very little music. This CD is inspired by all of Tarkovsky’s films, with each movement representing “a specific emotion linked to the universe of this director.” (As a side note, Tarkovsky produced a successful Boris Godunov in 1984 for Covent Garden.)

The performing ensemble consists of the composer, François Couturier at the piano, Anja Lechner, cello; Jean-Marc Larché, soprano saxophone; and Jean-Louis Matinier, accordion. The scores are bare and thin, slow and melancholic, and the instrumental textures can be exciting, on occasion. Couturier makes reference to two of Tarkovsky’s favorite composers: Bach and Pergolesi, and also throws in Schnittke for good measure.

 

by Daniel Gilliam
Contemporary Classical

Last Night in L.A.: “Partch” plays Partch

John Schneider and his group “Partch” gave their annual REDCAT concert of Partch’s music last night.  The program included Partch’s film of U.S. Highball:  A Musical Account of a Transcontinental Hobo Trip (1958, film completed in 1968).  The program began with the eight hitchhiker inscriptions of Barstow (1941/1943/1968); this interesting site provide clips of different performances of the first inscription.  The second half of the program included rousing performances of Ring Around the Moon (1950) and Castor & Pollux (1952), both involving the seven instrumentalists in the group.  The audience jumped up and called their approval at the end.

There were ten Partch instruments (in addition to the voice):  the Adapted Viola (1930), the two Adapted Guitars (1935 and 1945), the Kithara (1938), the Chromelodeon (1941), Harmonic Canon (1945), Diamond Marimba (1946), HypoBass (1950), Cloud Chamber Bowls (1950) and Bass Marimba (1950).

Two of the instrumentalists, Vicki Ray and David Johnson, were key in Tuesday night’s concert by Xtet at the County Museum.  For me a high point was The Four Seasons of Futurist Cuisine for orator, piano, violin and cello by Aaron Jay Kernis.  (Amazon’s sound clip doesn’t include the oration, so it lacks the flavor of the piece.)  The program began with three songs to Shakespeare by Stravinsky, and included three songs by John Cage and Morton Feldman’s lovely The Viola in My Life 2.  Phil O’Connor, Xtet’s frequent clarinetist/saxophone, presented the premiere of his new work War Again(st) ? (T)error!, a work of several episodes which didn’t seem linked to the title but which kept active.

by JerryZ
Click Picks, Composers, Contemporary Classical

Steve’s click picks #29

Our regular (well, semi-regular, at least until our dust has settled in Houston) listen to and look at living, breathing composers and performers that you may not know yet, but I know you should… And can, right here and now, since they’re nice enough to offer so much good listening online:

Amos Elkana (b. 1967 — US / Israel)

Amos Elkana Born in Boston and a product of Berklee, the New England Conservatory and Bard, Amos now makes his home in Tel Aviv. He was one of the brave few “serious” composers that took the online plunge early; I first bumped into him and his music way back in 1999 or 2000 on the old MP3.com. His work has a touch of the modern Romantic, chromatic and sharp, though the lyrical is never too far away.

The website linked above gives a great introduction to Amos and his music. You can read about some of his composing techniques, snag a CD or two, and the works page contains numerous full-length MP3s of all kinds of pieces (some with PDFs of the scores), including his award-winning Arabic Lessons for three sopranos and chamber ensemble (though you shouldn’t forget to catch the piano piece Eight Flowers as well).

by Steve Layton