Lisa Illean
Arcing, stilling, bending, gathering
NMC Records, 2024
Composer Lisa Illean (b. 1983) is from Australia and has been based in recent years in the UK. Her work encompasses a variety of techniques, including alternate tunings and sampled electronics. These are means to consummately expressive ends, and Illean’s music maintains an organic sensibility irrespective of how the sounds are formed.
The title piece, performed by the Australian Academy of Music, is split into various constellations of sound: small groups of strings, solo piano, and pre-recorded sound. Illean uses detuned pitch collections to make a supple harmonic language. Like much of the composer’s music, the primarily soft dynamics are belied by an underlying intensity.
This intensity comes to the fore in Tiding 2 (Silentium), recorded by the GBSR Duo (percussionist George Barton and pianist Siwan Rhys) and soprano saxophonist David Zucchi. Although much of the music remains hushed, there is a sense of unease in the interwoven counterpoint of the music. Gongs, piano chords, string samples, and sustained saxophone are broken up by sudden emphatic attacks, only to subside into another ominous, overlapping sequence. It culminates with several swells into coloristic chords with shimmering percussion.
The soprano Juliet Fraser has been a champion of Illean’s music, and she appears here in a group of settings of the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. Fraser and the Explore Ensemble are accompanied by electronics – samples of detuned zithers – which provides a haunting ambience that surrounds the soprano’s emotive singing and ensemble’s own microtonal excursions. Few composers whom I have heard set Hopkins have tapped into the essential melancholia and isolation he often expressed. Illean creates a slowly moving atmosphere that channels the doleful aspects of Hopkins eloquently.
David Robertson conducts the Sydney Orchestra in Land’s End, the final piece on the recording. Illean’s penchant for piano dynamics is made all the more poignant by the held-back quality of the ensemble. Robertson takes care to balance the various textures, a web of sliding tones and piquant verticals alongside occasional brass interjections. The landscape drawings of Latvian artist Vija Celmins were a point of inspiration, and these spare, deserted pictures correspond well to the gradual movement of Land’s End. An ascending harp pattern and sustained solo violin send the piece into a slightly more animated section, as if the patterns of the wind have shifted, and a piano solo that adds arpeggiations doubling the melodic material follows. Wispy descending lines that offset one another gradually crescendo into a smearing of dissonance. A darkly hued cloud of low register harmonies provides a portentous moment, only to have strings and winds return playing pianissimo counterpoint, with single trumpet notes, drums, and soft gongs punctuating the passage. Instruments begin to slide towards the same pitch in octaves, only to have a mysterious and harmonically ambiguous close take over, with ascending piano scales and solo violin bringing the piece to a stratospheric close.
Illean’s music is distinctively compelling, and one expects that more orchestras and ensembles will be clamoring for new pieces from her.
Sequenza 21 friend Nick Norton has speedily put together a digital compilation called “Canyons”to benefit LA firefighters. It is a loaded setlist, with contributions from India Galley, Dustin Wong, Molly Pease, Isaac Schankler, Nicholas Deyoe, Warp Trio, and more. The release is pay what you like on Bandcamp (embed below), but don’t be stingy; the firefighters can use all the help they can get.
Kalevi Aho (1949-) is a prominent Finnish composer whose oeuvre includes a number of orchestral and chamber works and a smaller body of vocal music. His string quartets are from relatively early in his career, the first from quite early, written when he was only eighteen. All three are included on a BIS recording made by the Stenhammar Quartet, a group from Sweden.
The pieces are presented out of order, beginning with the second quartet, which was written in 1970, during his studies with Einojuhani Rautavaara at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. It was created just a couple years after his conservatively tonal first quartet (discussed below), but it’s clear that Rautavaara had given Aho a grounding in twentieth century music. After a sinuous opening Adagio movement is a Presto that begins with a chromatic fugue soon surrounded by flurries of dissonance, a welter of sound. The fugue speeds up alongside ascending glissandos, ending on slashing verticals and prestissimo lines moving in contrary motion. The last movement returns to an Adagio tempo, with yearning counterpoint and a diaphanous texture, closing with an open-spaced quartal harmony.
Best known of Aho’s quartets is his Third (1971), which is programmed frequently and considered one of the pieces that first garnered him significant attention. With most of the movements continuing attacca, it begins Vivace with a mischievous Bartôkian tune that is eventually offset by long legato phrases. The movement ends with a cello ostinato and altissimo register violin surrounding bustling inner parts. The second movement, marked Andante, builds up from the lower register in a fugue with a long legato subject. This condenses into tightly constructed vertical presentations of the subject, and concludes with held chords and pizzicato bass notes. The aphoristic Presto third movement features clarion violin lines against repeated notes in the viola and cello. It is succeeded by a fourth movement with shades of Shostakovich. It has a somewhat wayward theme that Aho once again treats fugally against acerbic harmonies. Swooping crescendos are succeeded by a Presto with quick filigrees in the violin countered by a duet texture in the lower strings and fragmented accompaniment from the second violin. In the sixth movement, clusters in the violins and lower strings, first in pairs then combined, take over, while the seventh is a relatively brief Adagio that returns to minor-inflected imitative writing. The finale begins with a triplet-filled melody in the violin while seconds in the other instruments provide a bitter underpinning. A countermelody in the second violin and repeated notes in the cello elaborate the proceedings, while secundal violin lines descend from the uppermost register. A midrange duet imitates the previous passage to conclude enigmatically.
While it is juvenalia, the inclusion of the First Quartet demonstrates that even early on Aho possessed a fine musical ear and sense of formal design. At the time, the composer was playing the violin and he used the standard repertoire he had been assigned as models for the quartet. It is a mix of Baroque sequences and Romantic harmony. The first movement, marked moderato, is a set of variations built on a circle-of-fifths progression. The second, marked Andante-Vivace, is considerably charming, with a wending mixed meter folk dance at its beginning that is replaced by a brusque scherzo section. The dance returns, more emphatic this time. The Presto third movement is a moto perpetuo in 6/8, and the finale returns to an Andante tempo, with a Brahmsian principal theme that is, appropriately, supplied with a series of developing variations, including a minor key variant that is interesting both harmonically and in its rhythmic patterning. The return to major is given a stately rendition by the Stenhammar players, concluding the piece with a foreshadowing of Aho’s future talent.
The string quartet Ethel presents a characteristically diverse program of contemporary music on Persist, their first recording for Sono Luminus. They are joined by composer/flutist Allison Loggins-Hull and the resulting quintet are strong advocates for the emerging composers featured here.
The title work is by Loggins-Hull, currently a composer fellow with the Cleveland Orchestra. Her work is gracefully written and appealing. Persist begins with an ambling section with an angular flute melody, pizzicato strings and percussion instruments. This is varied throughout, juxtaposed with presto passages featuring quickfire flute lines accompanied by circling countermelodies in the strings and pulsating drumming. In 2024, the title’s meaning is self-explanatory and timely, and Loggins-Hull’s piece aptly depicts both the current exhaustion and perennial indomitability of the progressive movement.
PillowTalk by Xavier Muzik opens slowly, with oscillating thirds in the flute and impressionist harmonies in the strings. Languorous in demeanor and gradual in its unfolding, the color chords are eventually augmented by a pentatonic tune in octaves and a more elaborate flute solo that dovetails with pizzicato cello. The violin then takes a turn duetting with the flute. A fast passage with sliding tones and birdsong affords some much-belated energy, indeed making up for lost time in its latter half. A return to slow music reminiscent of the opening brings the piece full circle.
Migiwa Miyajima presents a stylistically varied four-movement piece with her Reconciliation Suite. The first movement, “The Unknowns” is rhythmically vibrant and hews close to the cinematic. The second, “Never Be the Same,” features a flute solo that explores the low register of the instrument with gradual accelerations and slowdowns. Partway through, the cello adds a drone to accompany it. The flute moves higher, and the rest of the strings join with lush harmonies. “Mr. Rubber Sole from the Digital World” has fun with ostinatos á la rock ‘n roll. The suite concludes with “The Blooming Season,” a lushly attired pastorale.
Sam Wu’s Terraria features the flute imitating shakuhachi and the strings using sliding tone and other traditional gestures from Chinese music. It also has passages of neo-romantic arpeggiations. Particularly affecting are the central passages in which high flute and midrange strings double a folk-like melody above a low drone. The second appearance of the arpeggiations is accompanied by energetic flute runs. Harmonics and brief melodies in the flute create an evocative denouement, after which the flute returns to the shakuhachi manner of the opening to close.
Leilehua Lanzilotti is likely the best known of the programmed composers; she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Music. The final work on Persist is her We Began This Quilt There. It is about Lili‘uokalani, the first and only Hawaiian queen and last sovereign of the islands before their annexation by the US. She made artworks, including the Queen’s Quilt, while she was imprisoned. Kaona, hidden meanings, is a concept Lanzilotti feels is suggestive of the queen’s artwork. The three movements include quotations of prison songs and folk music. Lanzilotti allows these materials space to breathe, with the flute playing melodies over gentle strumming from the strings in the first movement. The second is brief but haunting with flute harmonics and pitch bends over a sustained midrange piece. The final movement, “Ku‘u pua i Paoakalani” is based on a musical composition by Lili‘uokalani, an ode for her supporters. Lanzilotti veils the ode with its musical surroundings. A buildup of triadic repeated notes in the strings is joined by the flute playing the song with the addition of repeated notes: a musical Kaona that concludes a beautiful and meaningful work.
With Persist, Ethel and Loggins-Hull demonstrate their continuing commitment to compositional voices from a variety of geographies and backgrounds. The programmed works are diverse in terms of their impetuses and styles, but uniformly of high quality. Recommended.
Raymond Brien, Michelle Hromin, Eb and bass clarinets
Chris Cundy, Yoni Silver, bass clarinets
Robert Burton, soprano saxophone
Julie Kjaer, alto saxophone, Tim Hodgkinson, alto saxophone and conducting
Jason Alder, baritone saxophone, contrabass clarinet
William Cole, conducting
A live recording made in England’s Cafe Oto, Music for Trumpets, Bass Clarinets, and Saxophones includes both brand new compositions for the assembled musicians and important pieces from the contemporary canon. An example of the latter is John Cage’s Five (1988) which is performed by trumpeter Rebecca Toal, Robert Burton, playing soprano saxophone, Chris Cundy and Raymond Brien playing bass clarinets, and Jason Adler playing baritone saxophone. Cage’s late number pieces are known for their slow, soft character. Written a year after Morton Feldman’s death, Five can sound like a valediction to a recently departed friend. This is particularly true in the supple and well-coordinated performance here.
The spectral composer Gérard Grisey’s Anubis (1983) is performed by Adler, here on contrabass clarinet. Thrumming mixed scalar passages offset short tritone based tunes in a sepulchral register. Adler also plays Giacinto Scelsi’s Maknongan (1976). Webs of conjunct melodies appear in the bottom octave, and there are several wide leaps. Scelsi uses what was then a forbidden interval in the avant-garde, the octave. The piece is tremendously challenging, and Adler performs it with intense commitment.
Julie Kjaer plays her solo alto saxophone piece Grain (2022). Single notes with gliding endings open the work, interrupted by plosive pops, the irregularities implied by the title. Grain gradually gains intensity, Kjaer building a motive out of the beginning tune that evoles into one with fast notes and altissimo glissandos. The piece’s climax is filled with rapid, wide ranging, howling lines reminiscent of free jazz. The coda disassembles the material until Grain concludes with a brief flourish. Kjaer is both a talented composer and a formidable saxophonist.
Theatrum Mundi (2022) by Thanos Chrysakis is an imposing piece. Its seventeen and a half minute duration is filled with waves of angular lines, microtones, and glissandos. The harmony initially is built from clangorous verticals, with the climax adding overtone chords in intense crescendos. After its crest, a denouement counters, with repeated notes and multiphonics played pianissimo. Chrysakis’ Doe of Stars (2014) is played by Toal and Adler, who switches back to baritone saxophone. Microtones and multiphonics serrate the edges of post-tonal melodies and reconstruct dyads into shadowy shapes. The music morphs into rapid re-articulations of single pitches. A rollicking saxophone solo is followed by a winding unison melody, with a widely spaced dyad to close.
Tim Hodgkinson stepped out of the saxophone section to conduct his work Spelaion (2022), and one can readily hear why. The piece has myriad contrapuntal entrances and complexly accumulating passages. The pile-up of corruscating lines and repeated pitches creates slowly evolving and fascinatingly distressed textures. The whole ensemble participates in Spelaion to close this extraordinary evening that revelled in intricate music and superlative music-making.
Classics for Christmas: Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven
Musica Sacra Chorus and Orchestra
Kent Tritle, conductor
Simone Dinnerstein, piano
Susanna Phillips, soprano
Carnegie Hall
December 18, 2024
NEW YORK – Musica Sacra, directed by Kent Tritle, gave a concert of Christmas music on Thursday, but you didn’t hear caroling. The group presented choral pieces with Christmas texts, and topped things off with the Beethoven Choral Fantasy, a piece premiered in December 1822 but having little to do with the holiday. Still, the work, which is part piano concerto and part choral cantata, is festive and was jubilantly performed.
Three movements from Bach’s Christmas oratorio started the concert by displaying the group’s radiant sound, from impressive high sopranos to sepulchral second basses.
The orchestra acquitted themselves well, with bright trumpets and thrumming timpani drums creating a joyous atmosphere in Jauchzet, frohlocket, aur, preiser die Tage.
Francis Poulenc’s motet Hodie Christus natus est resembles the language of his larger work, Gloria; both give tenors high melodic lines and the whole choir unorthodox, at times jazzy, harmonies to sing. Morten Lauridsen’s O magnum mysterium is now thirty years old, and has become a staple of choirs, especially at Christmastime. It was one of a few color chord pieces, with stacks of seconds added to triads, that were performed by the choir. Tritle takes it slightly faster than I am accustomed to hearing it, which better accommodates the chamber character of his choir. I liked that it had a sense of momentum.
Susanna Phillips sang the soprano solo in Mozart’s Exultate, jubilate with a warm tone and impressive coloratura. She returned to sing one of the soprano solo parts in the Beethoven Choral Fantasy. Two more a cappella works were shared. James Bassi, a talented choral composer, was in attendance for the performance of his Quem pastores laudavere, volubly applauding along with the enthusiastic acclamation that greeted his work, a mix of humming and singing with supple harmonies. Franz Biebl’s Ave Maria is another popular offering, with a similar, though more restrained, use of added-note chords to the preceding two contemporary works. It is the memorable and tuneful melodic writing, however, that makes it a special piece.
The piano soloist in Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy, Simone Dinnerstein, kept in mind that Beethoven had improvised the solo in the first performance, and played with supple rubato and surprising dynamic shifts. When the orchestra joined, her soaring melody lines and virtuosic scales and arpeggios accompanied the singing, carrying brilliantly to be heard over both the chorus and orchestra. The tune given to the singers is originally from a Beethoven lieder, and sounds close to the one used in the composer’s Ninth Symphony. Indeed the piece feels in many ways like a sketch for the larger work. It was a rousing way to end the concert, and one felt suitably ushered into the season.
Musica Viva Choir and Orchestra, Alejandro Hernandez-Valdez, conductor
Erin Sensenig, soprano
Frederica von Stade, mezzo-soprano
After a lengthy and illustrious career, the mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade says farewell on Crimson Roses, an album recorded by Musica Viva that includes three contemporary choral pieces. The title work, And Crimson Roses Once Again Be Fair, composed by Joseph Turrin, features both von Stade and soprano Erin Sensenig. It is a forty-five minute long cantata that commemorates the 100th anniversary of the First World War. Turrin set three poets who were part of the war effort or wrote about those they had lost, Wilfred Owen (also set in Britten’s War Requiem), Vera Brittain, and Siegfried Sassoon. The soloists are both in fine voice, with von Stade making up for a bit less bloom in tone with an expressive, indeed moving, performance of the cantata’s penultimate movement “Perhaps.” Sensenig, who is a member of Musica Viva, demonstrates both musicality and radiant top notes on the seventh movement, “Soliloquy and the Last Meeting.” The orchestra and choir acquit themselves well in Turrin’s neo-romantic score. Kudos to conductor Alejandro Hernandez-Valdez for leading the piece in a well-paced and thoughtful interpretation.
Gilda Lyons’ Monotombo is a five-movement a capella piece in which she sets poems about the volcanic landscape in Nicaragua. Lyons uses overlapping counterpoint, color chords, glissandos, and steaming sound effects to provide vivid renditions of the texts. Richard Einhorn’s The Luminous Ground uses plucked strings and vocalise to depict the eponymous light installation by James Turrell. While economical in material, the pieces is most affecting.
This is the tenth anniversary of Hernandez-Valdez’s tenure with Musica Viva, and the contemporary pieces that were selected for the recording demonstrate both his dedicated curation and the versatility and talent of the group.
Jeremy Denk, piano Kaufmann Concert Hall 92nd Street Y
92nd Street Y
Thursday, December 2024
Photos courtesy of Joseph Sinnott
NEW YORK – When devising a recital program, pianist Jeremy Denk always provides thematic interest to abet the musical diversions. The centerpiece and entire second half of his performance at the 92nd Street Y was the Concord Sonata by Charles Ives, a totemic work in the repertoire of twentieth century piano music. Denk is an Ives specialist, having recorded both the piano and violin sonatas for Nonesuch (more on that later).
The first half of the recital complemented Ives with a composer he revered (and quoted in the Concord Sonata), Beethoven. The Opus 90 Piano Sonata in E-minor is a two movement piece that moves to E-major in the second movement. It is relatively brief but chock full of mercurial scalar passages in its first movement. The second movement, at a slower tempo but still played with quicksilver ornaments, is a theme and variations of a fetching melody, “to be played in a singing manner.” The recital’s first half concluded with a sonata from Beethoven’s late period, his second to last to be written, Op, 110 in A-flat Major. The first movement, marked moderato cantabile, is slower than the usual allegro one finds in this part of a sonata. However, it has two distinct themes and a minor key development, keeping it in the sonata genre. It’s no accident that during this time period Beethoven was also working on the Missa Solemnis. The incisive second movement features bold attacks and anapestic cascades of short motives. The finale is fascinating, with material that imitates recitatives and quotes Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, which is followed by a fugue in the tonic key. Denk played both sonatas fluently, occasionally looking out at the audience to share Beethoven’s mood with a bold visage.
Sandwiched between the sonatas was a group of miniatures that explored Black American musical genres. Scott Joplin’s rag Bethena began the group with characteristically syncopated rhythms and imaginative chord progressions. This was followed by The Banjo, a piece by Louis Moreau Gottschalk that Denk took at a spirited pace. Its refrain is a keen imitation of the African instrument transplanted to the US, but the piece takes off into stratospheric arpeggios and nimble runs that transform the material into a virtuosic vehicle. William Bolcom was a pivotal figure in the ragtime revival, and one of his rags, “Graceful Ghost Rag,” provided a stylistically true homage to the composer. A musical theater song, “Just in TIme,” by Jule Styne was presented in an extroverted arrangement by the pianist Ethan Iverson of Nina Simone’s iconic recording.
Piano Sonata No. 2, “Concord, Mass., 1840-1860,” pays tribute to the American transcendentalists, an important philosophical movement for Ives. Its gestation is a moving target, the first edition composed between 1916-1920 and the piece, characteristic of Ives, being edited over and over until the premiere in 1938 by John Kilpatrick. It is intricately notated, with few barlines, complex rhythms, and overlapping lines and chords. Ives felt that the lack of conventional structuring would help the music to flow.
The first movement, “Emerson,” introduces the opening motive of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony as an idée fixe that interpenetrates other movements of the sonata, but is developed, treated in counterpoint, and presented in the midst of shards of dissonance. As is Ives’s practice, frequent incongruous asides occur, including a stride passage in the middle of the movement and quotations of hymns and popular songs. This persists throughout.
The second movement, “Hawthorne,” begins with scherzo-like figures and continues to introduce sprightly material, even including a bit of ragtime, and later sonorities that are meant to evoke a church service, including bell sounds created by pressing the black keys with a block of wood. The Beethoven theme is only joined by the “main theme” of the piece in the third movement, “The Alcotts.” The polytonal voicing of the variations on Beethoven 5 move it into the harmonic world of Stravinsky. In the final movement, “Thoreau,” Claire Chase was the guest flutist that is an optional component of the sonata, providing a mischievous cameo. The piano meanwhile, incorporates snatches of popular music from the 1910s all the way back to the Civil War, the two themes, and Protestant hymnody into impressionist water music that signifies Thoreau’s residence at Walden Pond.
This was an authoritative performance, unbelievably accurate and technically assured despite its herculean challenges. Denk is one of the great Ives interpreters of our time. The audience applauded for more, but how do you follow the Concord Sonata? Denk took off his jacket and picked up his wood block to indicate that the memorable evening was concluded.
The 150th anniversary of Ives’s birth is being celebrated this year by a number of concerts and recordings. Denk’s recorded contribution is Ives Denk (Nonesuch). A double disc, it includes a remastered version of his benchmark recording of the piano sonatas as well as a recording of the violin sonatas with Stefan Jackiw. The violinist is an excellent partner, understanding the roles of quotation, collage, the doppler effect, and dissonance in these pieces. The revival meeting movement of the second sonata is incandescent, and the final movement of the first sonata opens with a thrill ride redolent with popular music. Its central section is slow, with folk melodies haloed by ambiguous arpeggiations. A gradual accelerando returns the music to its earlier demeanor, then the sonata concludes with a tremolandos and a fade. The entire Fourth Sonata, “Children’s Day at the Camp Meeting,” is delightful.
Denk’s traversal of the piano sonatas displays dazzling playing and thoughtful interpretations. Ives has emphatic tendencies, but his music can also display great tenderness. Denk embodies all of the contrasting shifts that result, providing detailed dynamic and articulative contrasts, shading the music with myriad tone colors. Ives Denk is one of my favorite recordings of 2024.
Composer Kenneth Hesketh has written several works for piano, and Clare Hammond has for years been their most dedicated advocate. Hände is a collection of her detailed performances of seven pieces, ranging from miniatures to two substantial works. The first of the latter is Poetic Conceits (2006), a six movement suite of character pieces. “Epigram,” “Epigraph,” “Epitaph,” and “Mad Pursuits” demonstrate colorful post-tonal harmony and angular gestures, while “Of Silence and Slow Time” and “Cold Pastoral” proceed gradually with aching lyricism.
Pour Henri (2013) is dedicated to the composer Henri Dutilleux, with whom Hesketh studied at Tanglewood. It employs several quotations, including the French song Bonne Anniversaire, the composer’s second piano prelude, and his iconic string quartet Ainsi la nuit; all of this in a compact minute and a quarter. It is a moving elegy. Lullaby of the Land Beyond (2018) is another valedictory piece, dedicated to Oliver Knussen. Similarly, it includes a number of Knussen quotations, as well as one from Boris Gudunov, a favorite of the late composer. Higglety Pigglety Pop, Knussen’s second opera, which concludes with the portrait of a dog’s afterlife, provides a receding, misty ambience for this poignant goodbye to a great figure in English music.
Heu, Heu, Heu… Einekleine ausschweifende (Hey, hey, hey… a little riotous celebration) (2012) is as advertised and requires staggering virtuosity, which Hammond has here and throughout in abundance. Chorales and Kolam (2019) is less boisterous but also makes a powerful impression all its own. A kolam is a geometric pattern drawn on the ground by women and girls in India and Southeast Asia for luck. The piece is built from reconstituted material from Hesketh’s piano concerto. The chorales are refracted in a series of variations that gradually unthread the verticals into stratified lines, only to have them gradually reassemble into arpeggiations in a shadowy coda.
Hände, Das leben und die Liebe eines zärtlichen Geschlechts (Hands: the life and love of the fairer sex) (2015) was commissioned for Hammond. When one views it live, the pianist plays along with an eponymous 1928 film that uses the play of hands nearly throughout (there are excerpts in the video below). Correspondingly, the musical work is based on the shape of hands. Not only is Hammond called upon to play repeated notes, chordal ostinatos, diaphanous rolls, and fleet gestures, she also plays inside the piano, uses knitting needles to strike the strings, and clangs six small bells set to the side of the instrument. Like the film, elements of surrealism abound. Hände is a major piece, tailor-made for Hammond’s imaginative and risk-taking approach to performing. The recording as a whole is an excellent showcase for both composer and pianist, and is one of my favorite CDs of 2024.
Iestyn Davies, countertenor, Fretwork, viols, and Silas Wollston, organ and virginal, Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall, December 3rd, 2024
The Tallis Scholars, presented by Miller Theatre’s Early Music Series at Church of St. Mary the Virgin, December 5th, 2024
NEW YORK – This past week’s concert schedule featured two early music ensembles, one specializing in early baroque music, and the other known for renaissance repertoire but presenting a more wide-ranging program.
The countertenor Iestyn Davies is a highly regarded interpreter of Handel’s operas. He also appeared in Claire van Kempen’s play Farinelli and the King, which bowed at London’s Globe Theatre and on Broadway. At Carnegie’s Zankel Hall, he joined the viol quintet Fretwork – Emilia Benjamin, Jonathan Rees, Joanna Levine, Sam Stadlen, and Richard Boothby – and Silas Wollston, who played organ and virginals, for a program of seventeenth century cantatas. Much of the program was from the CD Lamento (Signum Classics, 2021), and was organized as a geographical tour of repertoire.
Franz Tunder (1614-1667) was from Northern Germany, and a talented, underappreciated composer. His Salve mi Jesu and An Wasserflüssen Babylon began the concert. The sense of connection among the musicians was immediately apparent. Davies has a remarkably even and sleek-toned voice. Throughout his entire range in an extensive program of challenging repertoire, the countertenor never showed a hint of difficulty.
The viols, arranged from small to large in size, are fascinating instruments to watch being played, and Fretwork’s long acquaintance – they have performed together for four decades – was immediately apparent. They elicited tone colors that were alternatingly sweet, boisterous, and tinged with melancholy. After the Tunder, they performed a Canzon á 5 by Samuel Scheidt (1587-1654), which alternated between contrapuntal passages and vibrant tutti. A still more elaborate Canzona by the composer was included in the second half. Also on the first half was a suite of dances by Johann Hermann Schein (1586-1630), who was cantor at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, where J.S. Bach later worked. These elegant works embodied the various demeanors listed above with rhythmic suavity. An additional suite by Shein, with a more doleful cast, was performed on the second half.
Another northerner, Christian Geist (ca. 1650-1711) was represented by Es war aber an der Stätte, which featured tasteful organ playing by Wollston on an extended recitative. The first half ended with a composer in the prolific Bach line, Johann Christoph (1642-1703), the first Southerner represented, who spent his career in Eisenach. Ach, dass ich Wassers gnug hätte, subtitled Lamento, is a moving work, with harmonic swerves and chromatic embellishments that emphasize its grief-stricken text. Davies embodied the work’s sense of pathos with an emotive but elegantly rendered performance.
The second half first returned to a Northern German composer, Dietrich Buxtehude (ca. 1637-1707), whose Jubilate Domino, omnis terra changed the mood to one of ebullience. Davies fluidly sang the piece’s melismatic lines, while the syncopated rhythms of the viols and the organ’s ornaments emphasized the text’s joyous mood. The composer was also represented by Klage Lied, which returned to the mood of lamentation.
A program of seventeenth century music wouldn’t seem complete without Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672), and he was represented with Erbarm dich mein, O Herre Gott. In its tragic mood, one could hear the pain and suffering inflicted during the Thirty Years War, which virtually cleared Dresden’s choir loft and left the composer to write many solo cantatas and duos.
The program concluded with O dulce nomen Jesu, by the Italian composer Giovanni Felice Sances (ca. 1600-1679), who worked in Vienna at the Imperial Palace. The piece was quite akin to early opera, with the mellifluous repeated trills used by Monteverdi, triple dance rhythms, and dashes of modal writing. Davies’ operatic background made him right at home.
There were two encores, the first a surprise, Dave Brubeck’s “Weep No More” (arranged by Jonathan Rhys), which was performed with a bluesy,noirish feel. Fretwork proved that viols can play West Coast Jazz, and Davies adopted a cornet-like tone. The second, Wer sich dem Himmel immergëben by Philipp Heinrich Erlebach (1657-1714) left the audience basking in the ambience of the German baroque.
Tallis Scholars Photo: Hugo Glendinning
On December 5th at Church of St. Mary the Virgin in midtown, Miller Theatre’s Early Music Series presented The Tallis Scholars, directed by Peter Phillips. A nearly annual occurrence, the group often performs Renaissance music with a Marian subject.Last year the visit of angels to the shepherds provided different repertoire that included stirring music by Clemens non Papa. This year, the group focused on chant and chant-inspired pieces from the Christmas season that ranged in date from the 11th to the 21st centuries.
The theme for the concert was In dulci jubilo, and it began with two verses from the eponymous work by Hieronymous Praetorious (1560-1629). The plainchant In principio omnes by the cloistered nun and polymath Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) followed, with sopranos from the choir performing the chant and the rest holding a drone in octaves. Shifting to the later Renaissance, Salve Regina by Giovanni Pierluigi Palestrina (c. 1525-1594) alternated between canonic and tutti passages. It was followed by another chant by Hildegard, O virtus sapientiae, performed by the group’s women. Hildegard’s chants can be rangy, and the solid tone from top to bottom was impressively blended. Two more were featured later on the program, O ignis spiritus, in a poised solo by alto Elisabeh Paul, and a group performance of O ecclesia oculi tui.
Peter Phillips has written about the difficulties posed by the music of Orlando de Lassus (c. 1532-1594). Its ranges benefit from the incorporation of instruments on some of the parts, but the composer’s Nunc dimittis ‘Il Magnanimo Pietro’ sounded incredibly assured. Its performance was one of the best of the polyphonic music on the program.
The works of a living composer were also included. The Estonian Arvo Pärt (b. 1935) has been championed by the Tallis Scholars, who have recorded a disc of his music. Pärt writes in a bespoke style he calls tintinnabuli, where the titular bell sounds are created by two voices, one singing a linear, chant-like part, and the other arpeggiating triads. The result is lustrous with tangy dissonances. Magnificat is one of his best known pieces, and the Tallis Scholars performed it with superb tuning and imposing fervor. Da Pacem Domine was written in 2004, and dedicated to victims of the Madrid train bombings. Chords cascade between voices, including a downward lamento motive.
The program’s subordinate theme was Salve Regina, one of four antiphons dedicated to the Virgin Mary. In addition to the Palestrina motet, the group sang the antiphon and two other motets incorporating the chant. Salve Regina by Hernando Marco (c. 1532-1611) is among the first music written in Guatemala, and formidable in its demands. Tomás Luís de Victoria’s Salve Regina is a double choir piece in which the chant’s incipit begins the piece and the chant is threaded throughout the polyphony, ricocheting between the singing groups.
The program finished with a nineteenth century version of In dulci jubilo by Robert Lucas Pearsall (1795-1856), a colorful anthem featuring a tune that has remained part of the hymnody of various denominations. The encore returned to Praetorious for his setting of Joseph lieber, Joseph mein, concluding in a gently lyrical fashion. The Tallis Scholars at St. Mary’s always brings a welcome start to the season with a bevy of glorious singing.
