Contemporary Classical

Best of, CD Review, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, File Under?

Best of 2021: New/Experimental Recordings

Best New/Experimental Recordings

Trio IX and Exercises

Christian Wolff

Trio Accanto

Nicholas Hodges, piano; Marcus Weiss, saxophone; Christian Dierstein, percussion

Wergo CD

Three String Quartets

Christian Wolff

Quatuor Bozzini

New World CD

 

On Trio IX and Exercises, Trio Accanto performs recent music by Christian Wolff, a composer with whom they have often collaborated. Trio IX (2017) is dedicated to the group, and it is filled with tunes ranging from J.S. Bach to work songs to quotes and “reminiscences”  from Wolff’s own music. This is a palimpsest of a quodlibet, and all the better for it, as the strands from Wolff’s repertory of tunes are crafted into a fast shifting colloquy between trio members. Snippets of material are passed back and forth, with frequent interruptions and sudden confluences that make for many delightful surprises. Trio Accanto also performs some of Wolff’s most recent pieces in his Exercises series, from 2011 and 2018; open instrumentation, mobile form compositions. The similarity between these freer pieces and Trio IX, and the fact that the performers worked on the music in close consultation with the composer, suggest that this is a benchmark recording for understanding Wolff’s recent performance practice. 

 

Wolff’s String Quartet: Exercises Out of Songs (1974-1976) is another covert quodlibet, one in which Wolff’s music takes on an Ivesian cast, both in terms of some of the material and the collage aspects of the form. Once again, rapid stops and starts deliberately disrupt the flow. These juxtapositions are performed spotlessly by the estimable Quatuor Bozzini. Cast in a single movement, For Two Violinists, Violist, and Cellist (2008), as the title suggests, breaks the string quartet mold, allowing each player their own space and a degree of agency. This goes hand in hand with the egalitarian sensibility that Wolff has espoused both in his writings and music, always viewing new works with an eye toward collaboration. For Two Violinists, Violist, and Cellist ups the dissonance quotient but retains a highly gestural rhythmic language. Its one attacca movement, clocking in at over a half hour, is a compelling retort to large-scale late modernism. Out of Kilter (String Quartet 5) was written in 2019, and contrasts the previous piece in terms of design. Cast in a series of short movements, the demeanor now shifts within movements and between movements, capturing a plethora of moods, tempos, and solo, duo, and ensemble deployments. Wolff is nearing ninety years of age, yet he still has more tricks up his sleeve. 

 

Pauline Anna Strom

Angel Tears in Sunlight

RVNG

 

Pauline Anna Strom passed away in December 2020. She left behind her first new album in over thirty years, Angel Tears in Sunlight, which was released on RVNG in February 2021. The recent resurgence of interest in “sisters with transistors,” female synthesizer pioneers, has enabled a number of artists to be reconsidered and reissued. It has also inspired several to make new work. Strom was part of the dawning of New Age music, an unfairly maligned genre that is having a resurgence in interest. However, Angels Tears in Sunlight demonstrates that Strom’s work was never about easy stylistic markers. It includes pieces like “Marking Time” and “I Still Hope” in which one can readily hear how minimalism and ambient electronica were touchstones. Wide ranging glissandos in “Tropical Rainforest” unhinge elements of the music from simple harmonic trajectory into synth experimentation that resides further out. One only wishes Strom had gotten to see how deservedly this new music has been warmly received. 

 

Meadow

Linda Catlin Smith

Mia Cooper, violin; Joachim Roewer, viola and William Butt, cello

Louth Contemporary Music Society CD

 

Kermès

Julia Den Boer, piano

New Focus Recordings CD

 

Meadow was released December 11, 2020, too late for most music critics to catch it in time for year-end coverage (except Steve Smith and Tim Rutherford-Johnson, of course). Since the release of this half hour long string trio composed by Linda Catlin Smith, both the composer and the label of this release, Louth Contemporary Music Society, have grown in terms of influence and recorded output (see the Frey review below). Meadow contains a lush, primarily modal, harmonic palette tempered with piquant dissonances. Smith takes her time unfolding various patternings of the primarily chordal texture, creating a deliciously unhurried amble through fascinating, distinctive musical pathways. 

 

Catlin Smith features prominently on Kermès, a release on New Focus by pianist Julia Den Boer that features four pieces by female composers. The Underfolding once again features added-note harmonies, but these are interspersed with pure triads and, in a fleeting but fetching middle section, offset by a descending bass line. Crimson, by Rebecca Saunders, has some delightfully crunchy verticals, a constantly evolving set of clusters that move upward from the middle register to encompass widely spaced gestures in the soprano register. These two angular off-kilter ostinatos create complex rhythmic interrelationships. The lower register enters belatedly and is startling upon its appearance. Crimson’s denouement is something to behold. Déserts, by Giulia Lorusso, includes five movements responding to the flora and fauna of deserts in different locations. Lorusso often uses the sustain pedal to extend bass note jabs and dissonant intervals. These are juxtaposed against repeated open fifths and octaves, which reveal a plethora of overtones when sustained. Lorusso depicts powerful images of the desert as richly inhabited rather than the default brittle dryness that other composers have adopted. Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Reminiscence begins with open intervals and quickly moves to widely spaced diminished sonorities, from there incorporating polychords with the tritone remaining prominent. It is the first piece by Thorvaldsdottir that I can recall using chordal arpeggiations in the bass, which presses the piece forward during its conclusion. 

 

Alex Paxton

Music for Bosch People 

Birmingham Record Company/NMC

 

Taking the bizarre work of 16th century artist Hieronymus Bosch as an inspiration, on Bosch People improvising trombonist and composer Alex Paxton writes exuberantly polystylic music that switches abruptly from genre to genre: think Zappa, Zorn, and Vinko Globakar in a mixing bowl. Backed up by ten crackerjack musicians who inhabit jazz, rock, and contemporary classical, the music is breathless for the sopranos, saxophonists, and Paxton himself; likely for the listener as well.

 

I Listened to the Wind Again

Jürg Frey

Louth Contemporary Music Society

Hélène Fauchère, Soprano; Carol Robinson, Clarinet; Nathalie Chabot, Violin;  Agnès Vesterman, Cello; Garth Knox, Viola;  Sylvain Lemêtre, Percussion

 

Louth Contemporary Music Society has released a treasure trove of recordings via their Bandcamp site this year. This new recording of Jürg Frey’s I Listened to the Wind Again, for soprano, clarinet, strings, and percussion, is a standout among chamber releases of new music this year. Frey sets fragmentary quotations from French-Swiss poets Gustave Roud and Pierre Chappuis, Tang dynasty poet Bai Juyi, and  Lebanese-U.S. poet-painter Etel Adnan. The gentle declamation of the text is exquisitely rendered by Hélène Fauchère. The rest of the ensemble undertakes similarly aphoristic lines, slowly and softly, which gradually thread together into an achingly beautiful web of layered interplay. I Listened to the Wind is a captivating listen.

 

Enno Poppe/Wolfgang Heiniger

Tonband

Yarnwire and Sam Torres

Wergo DL

 

Annea Lockwood

Becoming Air/Vanishing Point

Nate Wooley, trumpet

Yarn/Wire

Black Truffle DL

 

Michael Pisaro-Liu

Stem-flower-root

Nate Wooley

Tisser/Tissu Editions DL and Chapbook

 

Composers Enno Poppe and Wolfgang Heiniger collaborate on the work Tonband, a piece for the piano/percussion quartet Yarnwire plus live electronics. Heiniger is skilful at finding and emulating all sorts of vintage keyboard sounds and also supplies synthesis that glides through glissandos and microtones. Each composer has a solo work as well. Enno Poppe’s Field unfurls off-kilter ostinatos, building sheets of chromatic scales on mallet instruments and piano. Tonband, featuring live electronics performed by Sam Torres, is an imaginative combination of percussive timbres elicited from Yarn/Wire along with a diverse palette of bleep electronica. Heiniger’s solo turn Neumond, based on horror movie soundtracks, is an appropriately spooky electronics piece but also features a number of melodic fragments, each of which could be a theme in its own right. 

 

Two recent instrumental pieces by Annea Lockwood are included on a recent Black Truffle release, Becoming Air/Vanishing Point. Trumpeter Nate Wooley is challenged to transcend the limitations of his quite considerable chops on Becoming Air (2018). Wooley is a masterful trumpeter, who specializes in overblowing and extended techniques, but the piece deliberately creates an environment in which some notes will inevitably waver. Starting out soft with lots of silences and abetted by electronics, it eventually crescendos into a gale force of fortissimo distortion. Yarn/Wire is featured on the second piece, Vanishing Point, a threnody for the mass extinction of insects. While there is no attempt at deliberate parody, the ensemble does an estimable job creating an insectine ambience that is movingly evocative.

 

The format for Michael Pisaro-Liu’s Stem-flower-root is an appealing one: a download with a chapbook discussing the piece’s inspirations in detail. It was premiered at Brooklyn’s For/With Festival, for which Wooley commissioned solo trumpet pieces from composers who hadn’t previously considered the medium. Allowed here to address music that celebrates rather than devolves his sound, Wooley plays sustained tones with abundant air supply. Octaves and overtones enter over a unison to create polyphony based on the harmonic series. Sine tones play a prominent role as well, allowing for a different color to complement the trumpet. I love the depiction of the score, how Pisaro-Liu, in reference to the titular subject, describes sections as “branchings.” Wooley is an extraordinarily gifted player, and in tandem with one of the most imaginative composers in the US, he creates a winning performance of an absorbing piece.

 

Louis Andriessen

The Only One

Nora Fischer, soprano

Los Angeles Philharmonic, Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor

Nonesuch Records

 

Louis Andriessen passed away this year at age 82 . The Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, has released one of Andriessen’s final works, The Only One (2018), on a Nonesuch recording. It is a set of five orchestral songs, with an introduction and two interludes, for soprano soloist Nora Fischer. The texts are by Flemish poet Delphine Lecompte, who translated the ones used into English. 

 

Fischer is a classically trained vocalist who is also adept in popular and cabaret styles. Her singing is abundantly expressive, ranging from Kurt Weill style recitation through honeyed lyricism to raspy screams. This is particularly well-suited both to the texts, which encompass a range of emotions, from rage to resignation, and to the abundantly varied resources Andriessen brings to bear. In The Only One, his inspiration remains undimmed; it is a finely wrought score. Much of it explores pathways through minimalism equally inspired by Stravinsky that have become his trademark. Andriessen is also well known for resisting composing for the classical orchestra for aesthetic reasons. Here he adds electric guitar and bass guitar and calls for a reduced string cohort, making the scoring like that used for a film orchestra. Harp and piano (doubling celesta) also play important roles. Esa-Pekka Salonen presents the correct approach to this hybrid instrumentation, foregrounding edgy attacks and adopting energetic tempos that banish any recourse to sentimentality. As valedictions go, “The Only One” is an eloquent summary of a composer’s life and work. 

 

A More Attractive Way

IST

Rhodri Davies, prepared harp; Simon H. Fell, prepared double bass; Mark Wastell, prepared cello

Confront Core Series 5XCD

 

Improvising String Trio’s scintillating interplay is captured on A More Attractive Way, a generous boxed set of live performances from 1996-2000 in the UK. All three members of IST use preparations, so that at times they challenge the listener to recognize the players among a “super instrument” of effects. Harpist Rhodri Davies, bassist Simon H. Fell, and cellist Mark Wastell are chronicled at the outset of their collaboration at a gig in London, which is followed by performances in Barclay, Norwich, and Cambridge. Already compelling at the outset, it is fascinating how the group’s dynamic and their collective sense of pacing and shaping extended materials evolves to an almost extrasensory level by the conclusion of the quintuple CD set. Free improvisation at the highest level. 

 

Canoni Circolari

Aldo Clementi

Kathryn Williams, flutes; Joe Richards, percussion; Mira Benjamin, violins; Mark Knoop, piano

All That Dust D/L

 

Italian composer Aldo Clementi (1925-2011) made the venerable procedure of canonic writing seem fresh again with the unconventional instrumentation of his work Canoni Circolari (2006). Alongside three other process-driven and relatively compact pieces, the listener is treated to Clementi’s passion for patterning ranging from clocks to chess, to canons from all periods of music. On Overture, Kathryn Williams overdubs a whorl of scalar passages in proportional rhythm for a dozen flutes in different shapes and sizes.

Percussionist Joe Richards and pianist Mark Knoop create a Westminster Abbey level of clangor on the mimicked bell-changing of l’Orologio di Arcevia. Mira Benjamin overdubs eight violins, once again in polytempo relationships to each other, on Melanconia. The whole quartet interprets the enigmatically notated titled work, a canon with interpretation left open about which parts are taken by whom and when to stop. When is the circle broken? In three minutes – one could imagine even more. How often does one say that about a round? 

 

Tulpa

Curtis K. Hughes 

New Focus Recordings

Curtis K. Hughes’s second portrait CD was released this year on New Focus;  the programmed works span from 1995 to 2017. There is craft-filled consistency from the earliest to most recent works, with the principle change being an ever more assured compositional voice and a major work in Tulpa, a 2017 piece for ensemble. Tulpa is engaging throughout, and seems to be a culmination of the other, smaller, compositions on the CD. Whether for soloists or writ large, Hughes writes compelling music that is artfully crafted and energetically appealing.

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
Best of, CD Review, Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, jazz

Best of 2021: ECM Recordings

Parker Quartet; Kim Kashkashian, viola

György Kurtág: Six moments musicaux; Officium breve

Antonin Dvořák: String Quintet op. 97

ECM Records

 

The Czech composer Antonin Dvořák (1844-1901) and Hungarian composer György Kurtág (1926-) are seldom mentioned in the same breath. One is more often likely to hear Dvořák being discussed in relation to his older colleague Johannes Brahms, and a similar pairing might be made between Kurtág and György Ligeti. However, they are paired by the Parker Quartet and violist Kim Kashkashian on a 2021 ECM CD. 

 

While their musical languages are worlds apart, connections between Dvořák and Kurtág, both as composers and teachers, might be found in their shared affinity for chamber music. The Parker Quartet and Kashkashian (who has recorded both Kurtág and Ligeti for ECM), provide a fitting approach to each piece on the recording.  In the Kurtág  selections, they make the most of the silences, extreme shifts of demeanor, and the aphoristic fragility of the often Webernian approach to line. This contrasts nicely with the warmly expressive interpretation they give to Dvořák’s String Quintet, op. 97. Written during his visit to America, it is one of Dvořák’s finest chamber pieces. Compelling playing and imaginative curation here.

 

Ayumi Tanaka Trio

Subaqueous Silence

Ayumi Tanaka, piano; Christian Meaas Svendsen, double bass; Per Oddvar Johansen, drums

ECM Records

 

Pianist Ayumi Tanaka makes her leader debut on ECM Records with Subaqueous Silence, a trio recording alongside bassist Christian Meaas Svendsen, who makes his label debut, and drummer Per Oddvar Johansen, who has recorded with a number of ECM’s other artists. Tanaka moved to Norway because she found the improvised music being made there compelling. She fits right with her colleagues in the trio, but also brings the sensibility of, as she describes it, “chamber music … Japanese classical music,” to create a distinctive sound and approach. Her use of space, with silences and pianissimo passages prominent in the texture, is counterbalanced by arpeggiations rife with dissonance and bass note stabs. Indeed, in places one wonders if Kurtág (see above), might be a touchstone. Elsewhere, her harmonies oscillate between jazz and extended chords that seem borrowed from early in the twentieth century; Tanaka certainly has Debussy and Schoenberg under her hands. Svendson is a study in opposites as well, grounding the harmony with slow-moving bass notes, and playing raucous high harmonics in a few places. His arco playing is quite attractive. Johansen is a perfect percussionist for this setting, subtle, responsive, and more textural than propulsive. One hopes this is the beginning of a long term collaboration for these three talented improvisers. 

 

Eberhard Weber

Once Upon a Time

ECM Records

 

On Once Upon a Time, Bassist Eberhard Weber is captured in a live performance from 1994 at Avignon’s Théâtre des Halles, part of a festival celebrating bassists organized by Barre Phillips. Weber explores a number of his then recently recorded works, including ensemble pieces such as his Trio for Bassoon and Bass, deconstructing and reanimating them in this solo setting. One of the ways that he accomplishes this is by using delay pedals to create five-second loops, over which he adds additional voices. Weber often opts for a clean sound, but allows for some timbral modifications around the edges, again via pedals. These are particularly surprising in the one standard on the CD, “My Favorite Things,” which is given the overdub treatment; particularly rousing riffs and squalling notes from the highest register appear over the chordal vamp. Another standout is the extended workout Weber gives to his piece “Pendulum,” with an attractive melody and variation after variation explored throughout the compass of the instrument. “Delirium” explores chords and harmonics in equal measure, while “Ready out There” is a feast of virtuosity. 

Marc Johnson

Overpass

ECM Records

 

For an entirely different kind of solo bass recording, Marc Johnson plays originals and others’ compositions significant to his work from throughout his career on double bass. Thus, “Love Theme from Spartacus” recalls his work in 1970 with Bill Evans’ last trio, as does a welcome return to his showcase “Nardis.” Both of these have grown in conception and are thoughtfully reinvestigated. The oft recorded “Freedom Jazz Dance,” by Eddie Harris, elicits a polyphonic performance with a low-register ostinato and florid soloing in the cello register. Among Johnson’s own compositions, particularly impressive is “Strike Each Tuneful String,” which references the African instrument with ox tendon strings called the Inanga. It features a melody in the low register complemented by chordal harmonics. The exoticism of “Samurai Fly,” a reworking of Johnson’s eighties tune “Samurai Hee-Haw,” features Asian exoticism in a more overt tip of the hat to nonwestern musical material. It also includes a small amount of overdubbing, more subtle than Weber’s looping but just as effective. “Yin and Yang” instead plays with using four-string strumming to create a thickened texture, while the closer “Whorled Whirled World,” appropriate to the title, features circular patterning that resembles double time walking with a splash of minimalism tossed in for good measure. A varied and compelling outing that will occupy a well-deserved spot among ECM’s collection of solo bass recordings. 

 

Andrew Cyrille Quartet

The News 

ECM Records

David Virelles, piano; Bill Frisell, guitar; Ben Street, bass; Andrew Cyrille, drums and percussion

 

Andrew Cyrille is now an octogenarian, an age at which many musicians have already retired or are slowing down. Cyrille retains a superlative technique and while his latest quartet outing for ECM, The News, emphasizes interplay and texture over power, it is clear that there is much of that yet remaining in the drummer’s arsenal as well. 

 

Cyrille is credited with three of the compositions on The News. The title track was originally a solo percussion piece. Recast for the quartet, it is the most experimental sounding piece on the album. David Virelles plays synth as well as his usual instrument, the piano, Ben Street plays the bass both arco and pizzicato, guitarist Bill Frisell daubs dissonance and darting linear flurries here and there, and Cyrille employs a number of drums and percussion instruments in a spell binding, unorthodox fashion. The drummer places newspaper over the snare and toms and plays with brushes: an intriguing timbral choice. “The Dance of the Nuances,” co-authored by Cyrille with the group’s pianist David Virelles, features bowed bass and single line solos punctuated by Cyrille’s syncopated drumming.

 

Three pieces are credited to Frisell. “Go Happy Lucky” is a mid tempo blues bounce that is jubilant in tone. Frisell plays the head and the first solo section in jaunty fashion, followed by succulent arpeggiations  from Virelles. Cyrille’s drumming is propulsive and responsive to the melodic gestures of the soloists. Street plays walking lines that lead to the return of the head, this time with the whole group digging in and matching Frisell. “The Mountain” begins with a simple melody and chord progression played by Frisell. Gradually, it becomes more chromatic and embellished as Virelles and Street push the guitarist’s material outside. Cyrille adds a counter rhythm that also complicates the piece’s surface. “Baby” is one of Frisell’s pastoral Americana style pieces. His honeyed melody is supplied counterpoint by Street, Fender Rhodes comping from Virelles, and subdued drumming by Cyrille. Virelles contributes the composition “Incienso,” which has an ambling melody and an intricate chord structure filled with Brazilian allusions and polytonal reference points. 

 

The one piece used by a musician outside the group is “Leaving East of Java” by Steve Colson. This is a felicitous inclusion. A performer, composer, and educator, it is unfortunate that Colson’s work isn’t better known today. “Leaving East of Java” includes guitar and piano in octaves and intricate chords rolled by Virelles. Synthetic scales evoke the exoticism, if not the specific content, of Javanese gamelan. Partway through, Street takes a suave solo succeeded by florid playing from Frisell and a repeated riff from Virelles. The pianist then plummets into the bass register, placing quick scalar passages underneath Street’s legato playing. The octaves return briefly to punctuate the piece’s close. 

 

The final composition, “With You in Mind” by Cyrille, features the drummer intoning a spoken word introduction of an original poem. The main section of the piece starts as a duo, with Virelles and Street creating a gently lilting ambience with traditional harmonies and rhythmic gestures that reflect the poetry (it would be great to see this poem set with the tune for singers). A piquant piano chord invites Frisell and Virelles to join the proceedings, with the guitarist creating an arrangement of the tune with chordal embellishments and Cyrille imparting the time with graceful poise. It ends in a whorl of chordal extensions and soft cymbal sizzle. 

 

Jazz players and audiences alike are often seeking “new standards” to canonize. There are several tunes here that qualify. The News is one of our Best of 2021 recordings. 

 

-Christian Carey

 

 

 

by Christian Carey
Best of, CD Review, CDs, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, File Under?

Best of 2021: Recording of the Year

Number Pieces

John Cage

Apartment House

Another Timbre 4XCD boxed set

 

John Cage’s Number Pieces, late compositions (from 1987-1992) are given two designations, a number indicating the size of the ensemble and a superscript indicating its order in multiple pieces for the same-sized grouping (Quintet #2 = 52). Fragments of pitches, sometimes single notes, are indicated; dynamics appear sporadically. Rhythm is codified through the use of “time brackets,” indicating how long before a performer can move to another fragment. Most of the pieces are for a particular instrumentation, although a few are unspecified. Thus, while a considerable amount of interpretation remains in the performers’ hands, Number Pieces are less aleatoric than many of Cage’s works from the 1950s to the early 1980s. Commentators have likened some of them to Morton Feldman’s compositions, as both regularly employ soft dynamics and slow tempi, with gradually evolving pitch collections accumulating into pointillist harmonies. While none of these pieces approach a pitch center, in addition to the numerous dissonances one might expect in a Cage piece, it is notable how many minor and major thirds appear in the texture.

 

Apartment House has recorded a quadruple CD set, released on Another Timbre, of all the number pieces for medium ensembles (from 5 up to 14). It includes some alternative versions and one of the “4” pieces. The group has previously released benchmark recordings on Another Timbre of other New York School repertoire and that of the Wandelweiser Collective, and are thus well-seasoned for this project. If anything, Apartment House surpasses expectations, making much of the subtle distinctions between pieces while presenting a comprehensive collection imbued with Cage’s late musical sensibilities. Excellent liner notes by label owner Simon Reynell help to put Number Pieces into perspective. Quotes from Cage’s late interviews, talks, and writings are edifying in and of themselves, and support the manner that Apartment House has inhabited the Number Pieces they interpret. John Cage: Number Pieces is Sequenza 21’s Recording of the Year.

-Christian Carey

 

 

 

by Christian Carey
Best of, CD Review, Chamber Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, File Under?

Best of 2021 – Burned into the Orange by Peter Gilbert (CD Review)

Burned into the Orange

Music of Peter Gilbert

Arditti String Quartet; Iridium Quartet, Emmanuele Arciuli, piano; et al. 

New Focus Records CD/DL

 

This is composer Peter Gilbert’s second recording for New Focus; the first was back in 2008, The Long Arch of Undreamt Things. He is Associate Professor of Music at University of New Mexico, and has a long artistic pedigree filled with prestigious residencies, performances, and awards. There is a visceral character in Gilbert’s music that distinguishes it, and in his recent music it appears that geography plays as much of a role as any of the aforementioned experiences. The searing heat of the summer sun in the Southwest, the beauty of its flora and fauna, and the changes of light against mountain streams are all analogous to the diverse array of instrumental colors that Gilbert brings to bear. 

 

A case in point is Intermezzo: Orange into Silver, which Gilbert synesthetically describes as depicting the oranges inspired by the New Mexico landscape moving to a metallic silver, “…a kind of astral wind that ultimately settles into another of the Rilke-inspired clouds of breath.” A plethora of timbres are contained within these broad strokes, belying the piece’s three-minute duration with a varied splendor of synthetic sounds. Elsewhere the approach is more distilled. Arditti String Quartet plays deconstructed double stops with furious intensity on The Voice Opens Wide to Forget That Which You Are Singing. A live recording by basset recorder player Jeremias Schwarzer with electronics by Gilbert, The Palm of Your Hand Touches My Body is the most extended piece on the album and also its most engaging, challenging the listener to locate whether particular sounds emanate from the recorder or the electronics throughout: a satisfying game of musical hide and seek. Wave Dash, Camilla Hoetenga, flute and Magdalena Meitzner, percussion, perform Channeling the Waters, which seems to encompass more whitecaps than burbling brooks. 

 

Standout Soon as the Sun Forsook the Eastern Main features the pianist Emmanuele Arculi in a close-miked series of corruscating arpeggios, which is succeeded by electronic interpolations of synthetic harmonic series and polytonal verticals. Thunderous bass notes are set against a shimmering upper register electronic drone, all added to the mix of verticals. Another layer, of sampled vocalize, moves the piece still further toward the ethereal. One gets a foreshadowing of the electronics, at least its approach, in Meditation upon the Awakening of the Spirit, placed earlier on the disc. Upon the Awakening, another piece for electronics and live performers, in this case the Iridium Quartet (who are saxophonists) also explores spectral series, including detuned upper partials, and disjunct yet lyrical melodic material. By the Lonely Traveller’s Call for tuba with amplified mute supplies a unique palette of sounds and engaging formal design. Gilbert is a consummate craftsman with an unerring ear for textures, both electronic and acoustic. Recommended. 

 

  • Christian Carey
by Christian Carey
Contemporary Classical

Best EP of 2021: Light Past Blue

Best EP of 2021

Light Past Blue

Alex Somers & Aska Matsumiya

Mini LP

 

Sometimes music sneaks up on you. This recording, Light Past Blue, just dropped Friday, indeed out of the blue, braving the hustle bustle and list making of the holiday season to provide 20 minutes of exquisite calm.

 

Alex Somers is a composer and producer who has worked with a heady roster of talents that includes Sigur Rós, Jónsi, Julianna Barwick, Sin Fang, and Gyða Valtýsdóttir. He performed in the duo Jónsi & Alex Somers, who released two albums Riceboy Sleeps (2009) and Lost and Found (2019). Somers has been prolific in creating solo work, with two LPs, Siblings 1 and Siblings 2, out in 2021 alone. Aska Matsumiya, based in LA, is a Japanese composer and producer with numerous television, film, and advertising credits, She is currently at work on a number of installation projects and her first solo album. The duo bring their diverse backgrounds to bear in a five-movement suite, Light Past Blue, that originally was an installation work for 26 surround speakers that appeared at the French artist Claire Taboret’s exhibition “If Only the Sea Could Sleep” (2019).

 

The music must have been something in that surround setting, as it is quite encompassing in stereo. The sounds of maritime field recordings – ship bells, groaning lines, and rhythmic splashing of water against hulls – provide an ostinato underpinning for all five movements. Triadic drones build up through the piece from long bass notes to angelic overtones. Snippets of melody intertwine in asymmetric repetitions. Contributions by guest artists are highlights of the arrangement. Mary Lattimore’s harp provides harmonic continuity and avian gestures that buoy the soundscape, while cellist Gyða Valtýsdóttir adds layers of tenor register melody and sonorous bass notes to warm the wash of synthesizers in the mix.

 

In a year in which the genre flourished, Light Past Blue is some of the most beautiful ambient music of 2021. 

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
Contemporary Classical, Orchestral, Premieres, Seattle

Hannah Lash’s The Peril of Dreams premieres in Seattle

Valerie Muzzolini, Hannah Lash and Lee Mills at the premiere of The Peril of Dreams (photo: James Holt/Seattle Symphony)

As the Pacific Northwest staggers toward COVID recovery, large-scale concert life has begun to emerge from enforced hibernation. Visa complications and other glitches continue to derail new music activity here, as evinced by the recent cancellation of planned Seattle Symphony appearances by Simon Steen-Andersen and Patricia Kopatchinskaja (performing Coll). It was left to composer-harpist Hannah Lash to present, on November 18 and 20, the first major premiere of the Symphony’s 2021–22 season: a double harp concerto entitled The Peril of Dreams that featured Lash and the Symphony’s principal harpist, Valerie Muzzolini, as soloists.

Those with a penchant for exploratory music might be forgiven for some apprehension here: American composers since Barber have struggled to contribute materially to the timeworn—and imported—concerto form. And harp writing carries its own hazards, whether it’s the instrument’s folkloristic reputation, or its literary association with saccharine, sleep-inducing music (a trope found everywhere from Eisenstein’s October to Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone). The existing repertory of double harp concertos—headed by such unimposing names as Gossec and Françaix—likewise offers little grounds for encouragement. More promising is the collection of contemporary orchestra-less harp works, such as Berio’s iconic Sequenza II (1963) and Stockhausen’s Freude (2005) for two harpists who also sing excerpts from the Veni Creator Spiritus hymn, that demonstrate the potentialities of allowing the instrument’s slow attack, long decay and soothing timbre to collide with the potency of thorny, modern harmonies.

Mindful of this, I was gratified to discover that Lash’s 45-minute work manages to avoid the clichés and sentimentality to which harp music often succumbs. In a recent documentary exploring the integration of music within digital platforms, it was highlighted that the best online casinos for UK players utilize such sophisticated compositions to create an engaging and immersive gaming environment. The concerto’s harmonic language is predominantly chromatic, ranging into atonality with an emphasis on “neutral” intervals such as fourths and fifths. This is broken up at strategic points by a kind of fractured diatonicism that suggests childlore (the composition’s one nod toward the instrument’s more naïve connotations), but filtered through a lens of distorting memory—an effect hinted at by the work’s title.

The harp writing itself is carefully constrained, avoiding both the extended techniques popularized by Carlos Salzedo, and that most stereotypical of harp strokes: the glissando. Lash also treats the two instruments, which at the premiere were positioned side-by-side in the usual soloist’s spot to the left of conductor Lee Mills (a last-minute substitution for the erstwhile Thomas Dausgaard), rather like a single, 94-string, fully-chromatic “superharp”. The soloists reinforce rather than complement each other, and they are only heard together, usually when the sizable orchestra (which includes triple woodwinds and four percussionists) is either silent or sustaining soft chords. Contrast is achieved primarily through dialog between the harps and the orchestra.

As the composer acknowledges, The Peril of Dreams follows an unabashedly symphonic structure, with four movements cast in a slow/fast/fast/slow pattern (a model whose precedents include Mahler’s Ninth Symphony). Movement 1, subtitled In Light, begins in an atmospheric way with harp arpeggios and sustained chords in the bowed strings, not far from the hazy world of Ives’ “St. Gaudens” in Boston Common, but with an emphasis on quartal harmonies:The orchestral writing here is based on sustained sonorities punctuated by Lutosławskian overlapping wind figures:Occasional timpani strokes and brass snarls also occur. About five minutes into this 14-minute movement, a terse, Takemitsu-esque melody emerges amidst a lengthy harp cadenza:Other brief melodies subsequently appear, in solo oboe, then flute. These never quite coalesce into a conventional tune, but the ending of the movement does bring together its central ideas: melodic lines transforming into overlapping patterns, sustained strings, and the initial harp arpeggios now “straightened” into open fifths.

The shorter second movement (Minuet-Sequence, and a Hymn from Upstairs) begins in a faster 6/8 tempo, often driven by steady sixteenth notes in the harps (who, in contrast with the rest of the piece, often sustain this rhythm while the orchestra is playing). After seven minutes, an orchestral cadence followed by a diminuendo on a bona fide B minor chord sets up the Hymn: one of the aforementioned folkish diatonic tunes, delivered by unaccompanied harps in a slower tempo—the only appearance of a standard theme-plus-accompaniment texture in the solo parts:It’s reminiscent of something you might have heard on a child’s music box, but imperfectly remembered. Occurring close to the concerto’s halfway point, it represents a point of maximum contrast between soloist and orchestral material. The movement ends with a repeat of the previous two minutes, including the Hymn.

The six-minute third movement (In Spite of Knowing) features short two-note figures (often suggestive of birdcalls) offset by broad chorale-like passages in the strings or brass. The harps often extend the orchestral iambs into more discursive, canonical filigrees whose chromaticism and irregular rhythms contrast with the triadic chorales, creating one of the more American-sounding passages in the work, suggestive of Hovhaness:

(click to enlarge)

The movement ends with birdcalls in flutes and high harps, setting up a contrast with the lugubrious, lengthy (15 minute), and bass-heavy final movement, To have lost…, in which the quartal harmonies prominent in the opening movement return in a melodic guise, as with this example, delivered by the strings in octaves:It’s here that the work is less successful at distinguishing itself from its models, as both the melodic contours, and their subsequent punctuation by iambic figures in solo brass, are familiar from the Elegia movement of Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra.

The orchestral elaboration of this material is thrice interrupted by the harps reprising their Hymn theme from Movement 2: in the first and third instances as variants, but in the second instance—roughly in the movement’s center—as a mostly literal restatement, during whose continuation the soloists are joined by the orchestra, an unusual moment of unanimity between the two groups. In the end, the harps get the last word as the piece concludes with soft major chords in the bass that reclaim the B♮ tonality from the second movement.

The Peril of Dreams was paired with Amy Beach’s Gaelic Symphony, one of the few morsels worth retrieving from the meagre pickings of pre-Ives American symphonic works. Believed to be the first symphony composed by an American woman, it was written during Dvořák’s residency in the US. Premiered in 1896, it owes its E minor tonality and many of its sensibilities to the visiting master’s 1893 New World Symphony, which also helped to establish the idea of integrating folkloric elements into the Germanic orchestral style whose Westward transplantation eventually spawned Ives’ first two symphonies. Although Beach’s lone symphony isn’t likely to displace Mendelssohn’s Third or Bruch’s Fantasy in the pantheon of Scottish-inflected orchestral warhorses, it still merits its recurrence on North American concert programs for its exciting final movement (ironically the least “Gaelic” and most Slavic-sounding of the four), and for such unusual details as the form of its (ironically-titled) alla siciliana second movement, where the vivace middle section is recalled in its own tempo and time signature as a coda. Beach’s model for this may have been the scherzo from Schumann’s First Symphony.

After a year and a half of cancelled concerts and curtailed premieres (The Peril of Dream’s own unveiling was deferred from April 2020), it’s cathartic to once again experience a substantial new music event at Benaroya Hall, the site of many such occasions in the recent past, and perhaps—as downtown Seattle grapples with its newfound medical, social and economic challenges—in the future as well. The hopeful but somber tone of Lash’s new work seems to underscore, in its own way, the prevailing mood of its debut city.

Score examples provided by the composer. The Peril of Dreams is published by Schott.

by Michael Schell
Classical Music, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, New York, Orchestral, Premieres, Violin

The Orchestra Now at Carnegie Hall: Scott Wheeler, Julia Perry and George Frederick Bristow

Violinist Gil Shaham with The Orchestra Now conducted by Leon Botstein at Carnegie on November 18, 2021 (David DeNee)

Big name soloists, a symphonic work plucked from obscurity and a premiere. It’s an oft-used – and winning – programming formula used by The Orchestra Now. The ensemble’s performance at Carnegie Hall on November 18, 2021 was the latest in this successful framework.

TŌN is a graduate program at Bard College founded in 2015 by Bard’s president, Leon Botstein, who is also the ensemble’s conductor. Its goal is to give conservatory graduates orchestral performance experience, training in communicating with the audience, and other essential skills for concert musicians. Throughout the concert at Carnegie, the quality of the performance was outstanding. It was easy to forget (as I did throughout the evening) that this is a pre-professional group, rather than a top-tier orchestra.

The violinist Gil Shaham struck a relaxed and confident pose in front of the orchestra for the New York premiere of Scott Wheeler’s Birds of America: Violin Concerto No. 2. Though it was brand-new music (commissioned by TŌN, who also gave the world premiere performance at Bard College the previous week), Shaham played it as naturally and familiarly as he might a Mozart or Mendelssohn concerto. There was nothing hackneyed about this new work, and yet it seemed like it had been in the repertoire for decades.

A springtime walk in Central Park provided both inspiration and specific ideas for Wheeler, including the sound of a downy woodpecker, emulated by the soloist knocking on the body of his instrument in the beginning of the final movement. Wheeler credits Shaham for the especially collaborative compositional process. The violinist suggested some particular references to bird sounds in the classical and jazz canon, as well as offering technical input.  Though not always specifically identifiable, bird calls rang throughout the work, as did musical quotes ranging from Antonio Vivaldi to the jazz fiddler Eddie South.

Wheeler’s work was the highlight of the program, which also included two American composers whose music is rarely heard on the concert stage: Julia Perry and George Frederick Bristow.

Julia Perry (1924 – 1979) studied with Nadia Boulanger and Luigi Dallapiccola in Europe after attending the Juilliard School, Tanglewood and Westminster Choir College. Perry’s Stabat Mater, was sung exquisitely by the mezzo-soprano Briana Hunter, who earlier this fall appeared on the Metropolitan Opera stage as Ruby/Woman Sinner in Fire Shut Up in My Bones by Terrance Blanchard. The string orchestra accompaniment was often simple and unfussy, with a narrow melodic range that allowed Hunter’s rich and dynamic voice to infuse it with compelling drama. Perry was African-American, which seems important to point out in this era of focusing on diversity on the concert stage.

The final, and longest work on the 95 minute program was Bristow’s Symphony No. 4, Arcadian. It was the Brooklyn Philharmonic who commissioned the Brooklyn-born composer to write the work in 1872, making it the first symphony commissioned by an American orchestra from an American composer, according to the detailed program note written by JJ Silvey, one of TŌN’s oboists. Bristow’s music echoed the high romanticism and lush textures of Johannes Brahms – though somehow sounding not quite so German. The programmatic material, however, was through and through American, depicting settlers heading westward in the American frontier, with movements titled “Emigrants’ Journey Across the Plains”, “Halt on the Prairie”, “Indian War Dance”, and “Finale: Arrival at the New Home, Rustic Festivities, and Dancing”.

An especially memorable moment was the beautiful viola solo which launched the work and which returned twice more in the first movement, convincingly played by the principal violist Celia Daggy. The piece wore on just a bit too long, but it was a good trade off to have the opportunity to hear the music by this nearly forgotten 19th century composer.

The Orchestra Now has generously and conveniently made available a video performance of this entire program, livestreamed at the Fisher Center at Bard College. Watch it here.

https://youtu.be/87yj2LL4Wqc?t=1912

by Gail Wein
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic

Jacob Cooper, Steven Bradshaw Sunrise

Sunrise is a new CD by Jacob Cooper and Steven Bradshaw, recently released by Cold Blue Music. Jacob Cooper has a long and distinguished composing career including commissions by the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group, Eighth Blackbird, the Calder Quartet and others. His music has been performed by the JACK Quartet, the Minnesota Orchestra, Kathleen Supov, Timo Andres and many other well-known new music soloists and ensembles. Steven Bradshaw is a founding member of the two-time Grammy Award-winning ensemble The Crossing and has appeared with the Philadelphia Chamber Orchestra, Bang on a Can and the Network for New Music. Bradshaw is also a visual artist whose work has appeared in galleries around the world. Additional musicians heard on this CD were Dynasty Battles, piano, Clara Kim, violin and Timothy Munro, flute/piccolo.

Consisting of a single 32 minute track, Sunrise is a contemporary electro-acoustic update of or allusion to the classic The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise. Some of us may remember the Les Paul and Mary Ford recording from the 1950s, but it was originally composed by Ernest Seitz and Gene Lockhart over 100 years ago, during the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 – 1920. The piece has subsequently had a long history of formal and popular performances by artists ranging from Fritz Kreisler to Willie Nelson. Cooper and Bradshaw collaborated back and forth on the piece over the course of the pandemic year 2020 while isolated separately in quarantine. The composers write that Sunrise emerged from a constant exchange of material: Steven would record melodies, improvisations, motifs, vocal scrapes, hisses, whispers and screams. Jacob would sonically manipulate them and generate new material, forging it all into a compositional framework.

The iterative nature of the composing process results in a layered texture that slowly changes its emotional surface as the piece unfolds. Soft buzzing and hissing open Sunrise and a series of quiet voices enter with an indistinct vocalise combined with sweet, sustained tones. What sound like male and female voices are heard separately with occasional sharp beats in the bass register. There is a prayerful, chant-like busyness of independent voices, that are active but do not share the beat. At this point there are no clear melodic clues to the popular origin of Sunrise, but there is a general sense of well-being in the vocal harmonies amid the mysterious and ritualistic feel.

At about five minutes, the bass beats are again heard, adding drama. Deep, processed male voices chanting in very low tones with unintelligible words enter, adding a faint sense of menace. By 11:00, a series of languid, interleaving vocal passages dominate that feature some really lovely harmonies and intelligible lyrics from the historical piece. The effect is soothing to the ear and full of reassurance.

By 16:00, however, strong distortion and harsh buzzing have replaced the calming vocals, and there is a clear change of emotional direction. The feeling is now more intense and mechanical while a single voice struggles to be briefly heard above the sea of harsh sounds. The darkness of pandemic and isolation seem to be descending on the world. There is little consolation here, but plenty of negative emotion. The sounds are dissonant, distorted and grating to the ear. A scattering of plaintive vocals are heard, but these are all but buried in the sonic chaos.

By 22:00 the voices fade away and the distortion becomes noticeably softer. Some light piano phrases enter as a repeating melody, becoming louder and more hopeful as the distortion diminishes. The voices now return in force, slowly chanting the familiar words of the original: Dear one, the world is waiting for the sunrise… This adds to the sense of uplift as the piano line continues to spin out its optimistic melody. Even the distortion, now much reduced, seems to be contributing to the harmony of the lyrics. With a decrescendo, the voices, piano and electronic distortion slowly fade away to finish the piece.

There have been many virtual performances in the past months as a response to the conditions imposed by the pandemic. Less common, perhaps, are collaborative works like this one that have been created while the composers are in forced separation. Sunrise is a vivid narrative of the pandemic story both then and now artfully crafted and masterfully realized.

Sunrise is available directly from Cold Blue Music, digitally from Amazon and as a CD through other music retailers.




by Paul Muller
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Los Angeles

Chas Smith – Three

Three is a new CD release from Cold Blue Music by musician and master-machinist Chas Smith. Now residing in rural Grass Valley, California, Smith lived for many years in the San Fernando Valley, and this put him squarely in the center of the Los Angeles aerospace and movie industries. Smith was a student of James Tenney and Harold Budd, which led to later friendships with both men. Smith’s long experience as a machinist has resulted in the ability to fabricate specialized musical instruments and intriguing sound sculptures. His industrial metalworking is no doubt still in use, and his sound sculptures have been heard in a number of feature films. Several of these mechanical creations, with evocative names such as Que Lastas, Bertoia, Lockheed, Towers and Parabaloid, are heard on this new CD. Smith is also an accomplished steel guitarist and performs on two of the tracks. Chas Smith follows in the footsteps of pioneer Harry Partch and others who have conceived, designed and built their own instruments in order to realize a unique musical vision.

What does all this sound like? The press release declares that Three evokes “…a world of expansive musical tapestries, carefully woven textures, that evolve via slow, constant processes of change.” All of the tracks share a common form: an ambient cloud of sound, always in slow motion and subtly changing its emotional coloring.

Distance, the first track, opens with a buzzing and zooming sound while a sustained musical tone enters underneath. There are a variety of sounds present, but they all work together with exceptional coherence to create a warm glow. There is a sense of movement and power in lower registers that quietly rises and falls, as if passing by the listener at a distance. A low humming, like the beating of a multi-engine propeller aircraft is suggested, but this never dominates. No fewer than seven of Smith’s sonic sculptures and his steel guitar are included on this piece, yet these elements are perfectly realized and artfully mixed; they are always musical yet never lose their suggestion of the mechanical. The sounds are consistently engaging, but raise no expectations through tension and release. In the last two minutes bass pedal tones predominate, gradually reducing the sensation of movement and power as Distance fades to a deep finish, completing a captivating journey.

The Replicant, track 2, has a very different feel, starting with a deep, spacey sound that carries a mysterious, alien coolness and a sense of vast emptiness. There are artful combinations of musical tones and steely sounds, but in this piece a greater contrast is heard with the mechanical, now mostly in the foreground. Steely sounds in the middle registers seem to quiver like long, vibrating rods. Chimes are also heard, slightly less resonant than, say, church tower bells, but still well-shaped and full of presence. At about seven minutes in, deep, throbbing bass tones are heard, like the snoring of some great sleeping beast. As the piece proceeds, the texture is consistently rich but always changing on its surface. There is a gradual decrescendo in the final stages, as if we are slipping away in a dream.

The Replicant clearly features the mechanical sounds more prominently and while they often dominate, they are never intimidating. Smith’s realizations occupy a perfect middle ground between sound and music in the listener’s brain, and this works to expand one’s aural perception. Beautifully mixed and processed, The Replicant beguiles and engages.

The final track is The End of Cognizance and this acts as a summing up of all the sounds heard on this album. The structure is similar to the earlier tracks, but fewer of Smith’s sound sculptures are included. The End of Cognizance has an upward-looking feel, managing to be simultaneously introspective and optimistic. Bright, mechanical chiming dominates, especially in the upper registers, with continuous tones accompanying in the bass. The experience resembles being inside a large wind-up clock and the mechanical undercurrent is artfully combined with the sunny sounds of the chimes. As this piece proceeds, a soft growling is heard in the deep registers as the metallic sounds become lower in pitch, darker and more ominous. An increase in the harsher metallic sounds soon overtakes the more musical elements below. By 10:00 all this attains an intent that now feels malevolent. At about 14:40, several higher pitched chimes are heard, solitary and spaced out, like welcome beacons of hope shining forth from the gathering gloom. The chimes descend again to the lower registers, like the sinking of a ship, with a long decrescendo and the thinning of texture until the piece fades to a finish.

The End of Cognizance, as with the other tracks, is masterfully realized and brings beauty to the ear. The mix of musical and mechanically generated sound is seamless. The recording was by Chas Smith in his studio at Grass Valley and the mastering by Scott Fraser in Los Angeles – and the results are truly impressive. Three achieves a level of integration between the sound sculptures and a steel guitar that reach out to new musical horizons. We can all look forward to hearing more from Grass Valley.

Three is available directly from Cold Blue Music, Amazon and numerous CD retailers.

by Paul Muller
Best of, CD Review, Composers, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Best of 2021: Christian Baldini Conducts UC Davis Symphony (CD Review)

Best of 2021: Varèse, Ligeti, Lutosławski, Baldini on Centaur 

Varèse, Ligeti, Lutosławski, Baldini

Munich Radio Orchestra; UC Davis Symphony Orchestra

Miranda Cuckson, violin; Maximilian Haft, violin

Christian Baldini, conductor

Centaur Records CD/DL

 

Conductor and composer Christian Baldini is making a name for himself on the West Coast, where he directs the UC Davis Orchestra and is a frequent guest conductor of the San Francisco Symphony, as well as abroad with a number of orchestras and opera companies. This Centaur CD features live performances of three pivotal European modernist works, as well as a piece by Baldini that negotiates similar territory. 

 

In Elapsing Twilight Shades, Baldini considers several complexes of gestures and harmonies, allowing them to slowly morph, to his mind much like the changing light at the end of the day. Elapsing Twilight Shades is an excellent curtain raiser for the program to follow. The piece alludes to the percussion writing of Varèse as well as angularity evocative of Lutosławski. Baldini is a true double threat conductor-composer. 

 

Currently pursuing doctoral studies at University of Leiden, violinist Maximilian Haft also has a California connection; he studied at the San Francisco Conservatory’s pre-college division. Chain II, completed in 1985 by Witold Lutosławski, is a prominent example of the exploration of limited aleatory in a large symphonic work. Each of the three movements is split into two demeanors, with passages that are meant to be played freely and others that adhere strictly to the beat. Haft renders the freer passages zestfully and his playing elsewhere demonstrates razor sharp focus. UC Davis Symphony Orchestra makes a strong impression in their collaboration with Baldini, playing with intensity and control in this considerably challenging work. Their playing is similarly distinguished in Ameriques by Edgard Varèse, a monolithic example from a composer who played a pivotal role in modernizing the orchestra. 

 

Győrgy Ligeti’s Violin Concerto, completed in 1993, was one of his most significant late works. In it, he explored his interests in microtonal tunings, folk dance rhythms, older forms such as Medieval hockets and Renaissance passacaglias, and unorthodox instrumentation (the winds double ocarinas) and playing techniques. The language moves between tonal (often modal) reference points and post-tonal construction. This may sound like quite an amalgam to navigate, but it is achieved with abundant success. Violinist Miranda Cuckson is a superlative interpreter of contemporary concert music, and she delivers a memorable rendition of concerto, with tremendous sensitivity to tuning and balance, authoritative command of challenging solos, and a dramatic portrayal of its narrative arc. Once again, Baldini proves an excellent partner, eliciting a tightly detailed performance from the UC Davis Symphony while giving Cuckson interpretive space as well. The performance of the cadenza displayed some of the violinist’s creativity. Cuckson started with four lines of the original version, composed with input from the concerto’s dedicatee Saschko Gawriloff, then continued with cadenza material she wrote herself. 

 

A cohesive and valuable program with fine performances of every work, this CD is one of our Best of 2021. Moreover, it puts UC Davis Symphony and Baldini on the map as performers of contemporary concert music to watch closely. 

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey