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Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Downtown, File Under?, New York, Songs, Violin

Saturday, March 30th: Kafka Fragments at Tenri

Saturday, March 30th: Kafka Fragments at Tenri

On Saturday at 8 PM, Kafka-Fragmente by  György Kurtág will be performed at Tenri Cultural Institute (43A West 13th Street,New York NY), by soprano Susan Narucki and violinist Curtis Macomber (tickets). Earlier this week, they performed it at another venue also abundantly supportive of contemporary classical music, Buffalo University.

 

Kafka-Fragmente is based on aphoristic texts by Franz Kafka from his diaries and correspondence. As is his practice, Kurtág brought the composition together gradually, collecting fragments over time and completing the piece in 1985. At seventy minutes in duration, until his opera Fin de Partie (2018), it was the composer’s longest piece. Not only are the forty movements based on brief texts, they are also miniature in design. The text-setting is exquisitely detailed, and the musical language is frequently dissonant and angular, drawing both from postwar modernism and Eastern European folk traditions of declamation and string performance.

Narucki and Macomber are both new music specialists. I have remembered a number of their performances with great pleasure, especially Narucki’s creation of the role of Mama in Elliott Carter’s opera What Next? and Macomber’s authoritative rendition of Mario Davidovsky’s Synchronism No. 9 for violin and tape.

To get acquainted with this distinctive music, listen below to excerpts from the soprano’s Avie CD The Edge of Silence, consisting entirely of vocal chamber works by Kurtág. It received a Grammy nomination in 2019, and demonstrates her command of the composer’s individual and demanding work.

 

 

Here is Macomber’s recording of the Davidovsky.

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Composers, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Minimalism, Saxophone

Kinds of ~Nois (CD Review)

Kinds of ~Nois

~Nois, Kinds of Kings

Bright Shiny Things

 

The Bright Shiny Things recording Kinds of ~Nois is the result of a six-year long collaboration between the saxophone quartet ~Nois (Julian Velasco, soprano; Hunter Bockes, alto; Jordan Lulloff, tenor; János Csontos, baritone) and the composer collective Kinds of Kings (Shelley Washington, Maria Kaoutzani, and Gemma Peacocke). The recorded works are generally in a complexly post-minimal style, but each composer has their own distinctive voice. ~Nois’s rich ensemble tone and dexterous rhythms serve the music quite well. One can readily hear that a lot of preparation was put into Kinds of ~Nois, as the performances are note-perfect and assuredly interpreted. 

 

Peacocke’s Hazel begins the recording. A slow introduction of polychords is succeeded by mercurial ostinatos that ricochet between parts. The harmonies are equally quixotic, with shifting tonalities and glissandos distressing their framework. Chordal passages, culminating in quickly repeating verticals, descending glissandos, and a boisterous bass-line. This is ultimately offset by a new theme in the alto and soprano saxophones. A smoky slow section creates a mysterious interlude, only to have the fast-paced ostinatos from earlier return and morph into a syncopated groove. 

 

Eternal Present, by Washington, is cast in two movements: I. Now; II. Always. The first movement has a mournful cast, with a plaintive melody and repeating sections of equally doleful verticals. The second movement is sprightly, with short phrases of minor key ostinatos and duets alternating between the upper and lower cohorts of the saxophone quartet. The ostinatos gradually build into a spiderweb of overlapping lines. This is cut into swaths of material interrupted by rests with soft oscillating thirds in the upper voices and a bellicose bass melody. A chorale of repeated chords, followed by the opening passagework, gradually builds into a mass of overlapping gestures played forte, with surprising harmonic shifts interrupted by several pregnant pauses.  

 

Kaoutzani’s Count Me In is a vigorous workout for the quartet that begins with stentorian repetitions that are then replaced by a softer section of the same. Angular duets appear, only to be supplanted by a martial headlong passage of staccato rhythms. Octaves and overtones arrive in a slower tempo, placed in the foreground, but are soon rejected by a speedy agitato rejoinder. The slow music returns with a wispy melody winding its way through various registers, creating a supple denouement.  

 

Watson is not only an accomplished composer, she is also a baritone saxophonist. Csontos is joined by Watson on her baritone saxophone duo piece BIG TALK, a work excoriating rape culture. It begins with a spoken word “Opening Poem,” followed by growling overtones, squalling high notes, and dissonant counterpoint in a fast groove. Octave oscillations, rough low notes, and brawny repetitions are added to the mix. There, there is an interlude with slowly dovetailing lines and a microtonal devolvement of a unison. Howling ascents create a visceral effect, as do altissimo shrieks. This is succeeded by a quick polyrhythmic duet in the low register, aggressive in demeanor. Repeated unisons are gradually replaced by complex overlaps of imitative lines. The duo adds noise to inexorable repetitions. Once again, there is a set of polyrhythms, this time a heterophonic unison melody. Two-voice counterpoint speeds towards repeated notes, unisons that are then distressed with dissonant seconds. A melody is overlaid in the top voice and a new ostinato, wide-ranging with sepulchral bass notes, articulates the phrase structure. An abrupt close slams the door on this violent piece that provides commentary that even eloquent texts about rape culture might not.

 

Shore to Shore by Kaoutzani is the most adventurous piece, with multiphonics and fluttering trills adorning the first section’s slow-moving, lyrical ambience. Stacked canons are then unfurled to create an animated, contrapuntal coda. Peacocke’s Dwalm ends the recording with a polytempo excursion in which slow drones and chords are juxtaposed against repeated notes and quickly moving ostinatos. As these elapse, the quartet drops into synced motoric passages. The coda brings in an attractive new melody that once again is deconstructed in overlapping fashion, followed by repeating octaves that pulse until a sudden final vertical. Dwalm’s digressive character is a fetching approach to retaining minimal elements while still featuring an element of surprise. An excellent closer to Kinds of ~Nois: a recording that is highly recommended. 

 

-Christian Carey


by Christian Carey
CD Review, Chamber Music, Classical Music, File Under?, Twentieth Century Composer

Euclid Quartet – Breve (Recording Review)

Breve

Euclid Quartet

Afinat

 

The Breve Quartet has been in residence at Indiana University South Bend for sixteen years. During that time they have recorded a wide range of repertoire. Like so many ensembles, their catalog was put on ice during the pandemic, and their latest since 2017 for Afinat, Breve, returns with eleven miniatures in disparate styles. Listeners are encouraged to shuffle them to hear in any order. 

 

Miniatures are often thought of as the fare of encores, but a full program of them suggests that small doesn’t mean insubstantial or merely flashy. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s C-minor Adagio and Fugue is a case in point, with rigorously constructed counterpoint that reminds us of his possession of a copy of J.S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. 

 

Another standout is Graceful Ghost Rag, a transcription of one of William Bolcom’s well-known piano rags that the quartet plays jauntily. In a similar pocket is their graceful rendition of George Gershwin’s Lullaby. Shostakovich’s Polka, From the Golden Age is a mischievous sendup of the popular dance, with deliberate “wrong notes” and pizzicatos and glissandos lampooning the saccharine lushness of bourgeois culture. One could imagine all of them appearing as part of an updated soundtrack for a film of the silent era. 

 

Quartettsatz by Franz Schubert features an uplifting theme offset by transitions rife with portentous diminished harmonies. Hugo Wolf’s Italian Serenade takes an archetypal form and adorns it with his characteristic chromaticism. Although he is best known as a member of the Second Viennese School of early 12-tone composers, Anton Webern’s Langsamer Satz is a reminder that he also wrote attractive tonal works. Christantemi is full of the plangent melodies one also hears in Giacomo Puccini’s operas.

 

Metro Chabacano by Javier Álvarez recreates a ride on the Mexico City train line with repeated chords for chugging and zooming melodies that depict the rush of commuter travel. Four, For Tango written by the composer and master bandoneonist Dino Saluzzi, mixes the dance’s characteristic rhythmic patterns with open-string chords and altissimo upward slides. If you are listening straight through, Hector Villa-Lobos’ La Oración del Torero closes the disc with another dose of traditional Latinx rhythms and modal tunes, interspersed with recitative-like melodic passages.

 

The Euclid Quartet performs in all of the afore-mentioned, stylisitically disparate pieces with both technical and interpretive assuredness. Sometimes less is more, as evidenced by Breve. 

 

-Christian Carey



by Christian Carey
Canada, CD Review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Piano

Martin Arnold – Flax (CD Review)

Martin Arnold 

Flax

Kerry Yong, piano

Another Timbre

 

Martin Arnold’s solo piano work Flax has a sad backstory. It was originally commissioned by the abundantly talented new music pianist Philip Thomas, who shortly afterward became seriously ill and was unable to premiere the work. Kerry Yong performs the piece in his honor on an Another Timbre CD. The piece was already well underway when this transpired, but one cannot hear the considerable poignancy and elegant gracefulness of Flax without connecting it to Thomas’s loss of health. 

 

Arnold is a Canadian composer whose work is influenced by Morton Feldman and the Wandelweiser Collective. Feldman is a nexus between Arnold and Thomas, whose recordings of Feldman’s complete piano music are superlative. Flax, at over eighty minutes in duration and in a slow tempo throughout, is certainly reminiscent of the aforementioned influences. However, when creating Flax, Arnold also had other considerations to ponder. In the CD’s program note essay, we learn  that Thomas had mentioned to Arnold that the composer’s use of the upper register had made the pianist rethink it. Thus, Flax prioritizes the top two octaves of the piano. When writing the piece, Arnold was also considering bebop and early modern jazz, how there are dissonances added to the changes that create harmonic ambiguity. The first two thirds of Flax use extended verticals garnered from this practice. The ending section of the piece returns to modality and organum, both aspects of much of Arnold’s other music. 

Thelonious Monk’s voicings and Feldman-esque delicate slowness are an interesting mix. The placement of much of the music in the upper register also reframes the harmony. Until nearly halfway through, when a bass note appears, it feels like an event. At that point, there begins to be a duet between diminished chords and bass notes in the left hand and slow motion bop in the right. 

 

Kerry Yong is a persuasive interpreter of Flax, with a detailed approach to dynamics and phrasing that punctuates distinctive registral spaces in the music. Voicing of the harmony is a pivotal component of this piece, and it is where Yong truly excels, providing a sense of trajectory throughout.  

 

I don’t think that I have heard a Wandelweiser adjacent work that embodies anything close to this one. That said, Flax is a successful experiment from Arnold, stretching his language in surprising and appealing ways. Recommended.

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
File Under?, Pop, Teaser Track

Venusian Motel Guests: “The Re-entry of Embers” (single)



Guitarist Mike Skagerlind and synth-player Chris Romero, alongside electronic beats, perform as Venusian Motel Guests. I’ve been spending a fair bit of time listening to their upcoming EP, All Was Carbon, which will be released on April 24th.

Today their first teaser track, “The Re-entry of Embers,” has been released (see the Bandcamp embed below to stream). It embodies just one of the many moods found on the EP, with a laidback groove featuring melodic guitar riffs and a bass synth providing a countermelody and occasional surges that add to the syncopated feel of the track.



by Christian Carey
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Jeffrey Mumford – Echoing Depths on Albany

Jeffrey Mumford

Echoing Depths

Albany Records

Jeffrey Mumford’s music channels high modernism into imaginative works that are luminously textured. His latest Albany release, Echoing Depths, features two pieces for orchestra and another for piano and ensemble. All three are concertos, a form that befits Mumford’s penchant for virtuosity. 

The cello concerto Of fields unfolding … echoing depths of resonant light is dedicated to the composer Elliott Carter, a centenarian who passed away in 2011. Carter has been a key influence on Mumford’s music and was one of his composition teachers. Christine Lamprea is the soloist with the Detroit Symphony, conducted by Kazem Abdullah. Lamprea is a skilful cellist, and her intonation is clear, even in angular motives and widely stretched multi-stops. Her performance of the piece, energetic and crystalline, is reminiscent of Fred Sherry’s rendition of Carter’s Cello Concerto. Indeed, the piece itself channels Carter’s concerto style, with disparate scorings depicting various demeanors in a complex colloquy. Of Fields unfolding…’s several cadenzas are abundantly virtuosic, and Lamprea assays them with command. Detroit has become an imposing ensemble in recent years, and they address the considerable demands of the score with aplomb, Abdullah leading them in a rousing performance.

Becoming is a chamber concerto for piano. Winston Choi is the soloist with Ensemble dal Niente, conducted by Michael Lewanski. The overlapping of pitched percussion and piano creates a super instrument redolent of fleet and punctilious articulations. Choi has made a specialty of Elliott Carter’s music, and thus has an entryway to Mumford’s style that relatively few other artists have. His tone is brilliant and incisive, which better matches the correspondence with the percussionists. Ensemble dal Niente is a go-to group for contemporary music, and Lewanski is the conducting equivalent. Becoming is elegantly shaped and a microcosm of Mumford’s music writ large.

Mumford’s second violin concerto, Verdant cycles of deepening Spring, is the final work on the disc. Soloist Christine Wu joins the Chicago Composers Orchestra, conducted by Allen Tinkham. The ensemble is well-rehearsed, with corruscating entrances and complexly balanced timbres rendered with authority. Tinkham excels at dealing with the frequent tempo shifts and, once again, it is impressive how accurate the recording is. Wu is an imposing soloist, playing the mercurial passagework, wide leaps, and frequent dynamic contrasts with attitude and accuracy. She has a supple, versatile tone and embodies the sense of conflict that typifies the piece.

Echoing Depths has the high quality of performances that most composers dream of when putting together a portrait CD. Mumford’s chamber works were previously familiar to me, but this disc of concertos shows that his music is a powerful force when writ large. Recommended.

-Christian Carey

 



by Christian Carey
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, File Under?, Film Music

Skjálfti on Sono Luminus (Recording review)

Skjálfti 

Páll Ragnar Pálsson and Eðvarð Egilsson

Sono Luminus SLE-70031

 

Today, where the list of practitioners frequently overlap, how does film music translate to concert music adaptation? On the Sono Luminus release Skjálfti (translated: Quake), the Icelandic composers Páll Ragnar Pálsson and Eðvarð Egilsson present a compelling album length suite that is more ambitious than the clip show often heard on soundtrack recordings. 

 

The cello concerto Quake is Pálsson’s best known piece, but Skjálfti doesn’t feature music from it. Instead, it is from Tinna Hrafnsdóttir’s film of the same name, for which Pálsson and Egilsson composed the soundtrack. The album isn’t merely excerpts, but fully developed pieces based on the themes and mood of the film. Electronics, piano, strings, and subtle use of voices populate the music with a hybrid ensemble. It’s not dissimilar from the makeup of totalist ensembles such as Bang on a Can and Icebreaker, but the vibe is far more ambient than the prevailing one for these groups. 

 

“Saga” is one of the best movements of the work. It is like a mini-symphony, developing an ambitious amount of material in three minutes. “Safavél” and “Miklabraut” are other favorites, the former starting with a string and keyboard ostinato until, partway through, a pause, and then guitars and drums join. The accumulation of material and long crescendo is reminiscent of post-rock. Tortoise watch out. 

 

“Gleyma” is listed on the streamers as the hit tune. It begins with mysterious drones and pentatonic shimmering, to which is added an undulating guitar pattern, pattering percussion, and string synth pads. Ostinatos are a time-honored tradition, but they get bogged down in lots of film scores. Pálsson and Egilsson avoid this by creating asymmetric shifts in the texture. Here, a melody and counter melody wend their way around the chord progression in a pleasingly asymmetric fashion.

 

Skjálfti is an intriguing and enjoyable project: one hopes for further collaborations by the duo, both for film and concert music adaptation. 

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
Choral Music, Concert review, early music, File Under?

The Tallis Scholars at St. Mary the Virgin (Concert Review)

Photo: Rodrigo Pérez

 

Tallis Scholars, Peter Phillips, director

Church of St. Mary the Virgin

December 9, 2023

 

NEW YORK – It is the fiftieth anniversary of the renaissance ensemble the Tallis Scholars, directed during that entire time by Peter Phillips. Their annual December visit to St. Mary the Virgin Church in midtown often consists of a predominantly Marian program, both to suit that setting and church calendar. This year, there were two large pieces devoted to Mary – settings of Salve Regina by Jacob Obrecht (1457-1505) and Peter Philips (1560-1628; the early baroque composer, not the eponymous conductor of the Tallis Scholars). The bulk of the music was instead devoted to a different theme, “While Shepherds Watched,” with its centerpiece being Missa Pastoris quidnam vidistis by Jacobus Clemens Non Papa (c. 1510-1556; “not the pope” – Pope Clement – was thought to be an affectionate nickname). This parody mass, based on the motet Pastoris quidnam vidistis by Clemens, was recorded in 1987 by the Tallis Scholars. Its reappearance at the concert at St. Mary’s was a welcome return. 

 

The concert began with Clemens’s motet, a dramatic setting depicting the visitation of  angels to a group of shepherds, announcing the birth of the messiah and urging them to go and find him. The composer comes from the post-Josquin generation, the mid-period of the renaissance in which elaborate counterpoint often took precedence over clarity of text, but with considerable expressiveness achieved by musical atmosphere. 

 

The mass incorporates a number of aspects of the motet, its opening figure treated in a number of passages, sometimes the entire tune, and at others, its rising head motto. The Kyrie bustles with activity, free counterpoint encircled by imitation. The Gloria has a canon in the lower voices and an elaborated melody in the high soprano. As it is often performed, the final section, “qui tollis,” speeds up. Here, because of the prevalence of syncopation, the effect was thrilling. The jubilation of the shepherds at the motet’s close is mirrored in the exuberance of the Sanctus’ “Alleluia.” An extra bass part was added to the Agnus Dei, reinforcing the sonority of the close of the mass.

 

Three motets on the “While Shepherds Watched” theme ensued. One of the greatest Christmas motets from the renaissance in Iberia is the six-voice Quem vidistis, pastores by Tomás de Luis Victoria (1548-1611). The sopranos begin in canon, accompanied by a free part in the alto, suggesting, as compared with the text Clemens set, an early appearance of the angels. The three lower parts respond in an analogous configuration. The two trios then break out of mirrored deployments, speeding up in a nimble section that ends with a major cadence. The second part of the motet continues the mirroring effect, with the lower voices starting a new canon first, followed by the upper trio. After a spirited Alleluia section, the choir settled into a final set of phrases taking the text, “go and tell them,” finally arriving at another major cadence.

 

Two settings of Quaeramus cum pastoribus followed. It is a text in which an angel exhorts the shepherds to find the Messiah, followed by a refrain of Noés (noëls). Portuguese composer Pedro de Cristo (1545-1618) created a four-voice setting consisting of tightly spaced canons with the refrain moving to a sprightly triple meter. The Tallis Scholars reveled in its joyousness, but I can also imagine this motet being a good introduction to Renaissance Christmas music for an ambitious American church choir. Italian composer Giovanni de Croce (1557-1609), on the other hand,  sets the text in the Venetian style, with two quartets and much antiphony. The contrasting settings of the same text were a canny programming choice, and the singers thrived in this deployment.

 

Obrecht’s Salve Regina alternates chant and polyphony. It was performed with eloquent solemnity, providing a marked shift of demeanor. The Salve Regina by Philips, on the other hand, is a vibrant affair. Composed nearly a century after the Obrecht, it focuses on antiphonal polyphony rather than chant. Philips was a Catholic exile from England, and his Salve Regina setting has much in common with the Venetian polychoral style. 

 

After sustained applause, the Tallis Scholars performed a brief but pleasing encore, Salva Nos by French composer Jean Mouton (1459-1522). The piece gave the group’s lower voices considerable attention, its final chord richly sepulchral. Fifty years into their tenure, the Tallis Scholars and Phillips remain an energetic and authoritative presence. 

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Chamber Music, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Strings

Gerald Cohen – Voyagers (CD Review)

 

Gerald Cohen

Voyagers

Innova Records

 

One can think of few chamber ensembles better suited to contemporary music than the Cassatt String Quartet. Their intonation, musicality, and interpretive powers are superlative. Composer Gerald Cohen has enlisted them to record three of his pieces on Innova, two originally commissioned for Cassatt. 

 

Cohen describes himself as a storyteller, both in his vocal and instrumental music. The three distinct narratives here are populated by musical quotations relevant to them, yet they never seem like pastiche. The title work is about the two Voyager spacecrafts, which were sent out into our solar system with a golden record of musical examples. The hope was that they could be played by any extraterrestrials that might be encountered, and give a sense of the cultural life on planet Earth. 

 

The piece is for clarinet – played by Narek Arutyunian –  and quartet. Four attacca movements each transform the material from a different selection on the gold record. “Cavatina” deals with the analogous section from Beethoven’s String Quartet Op. 130. Cohen also imagines it as the beginning of the spacecrafts’ journey. Shadowy harmonies and a limpid high violin line start the movement, which over the course of nine-and-a-half minutes treats Beethoven’s music in a highly individual way. 

 

The second movement, “Bhairavi,” deals with a raga. Arutyunian embodies the complex scalar patterns of the music with nuanced shaping, as do the members of the quartet. The accompaniment is deliberately simple – pizzicato repeated notes. As the movement develops, there is hocketing of the tune between the various players. “Galliard” is the quartet’s Scherzo movement, based on “The Fairy Round” by renaissance composer Anthony Holborne. Scraps of the tune are exchanged contrapuntally in a humorous, whirling dance. “Beyond the Heliosphere” concludes the quartet with sustained pitches in a complex of intricate harmony, a descending melody, sometimes winnowed down to just a minor third interval, passing from part to part. The Cavatina theme, followed by a high note from bass clarinet, send the Voyagers continuing on their journey.

 

Playing for Our Lives is a piece for quartet about the Terezin concentration camp, a “show camp” where the Red Cross was allowed admittance to see better conditions than the hellish death camps where prisoners would later be deported. Music-making was encouraged, and many pieces created in Terezin have survived, demonstrating the talent and resiliency of their creators. By far the most famous is Viktor Ullmann, whose opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis has entered the repertory. While in the camp, Ullmann arranged Beryozkele (“Little Birch Tree”), a popular Yiddish song. Cohen uses the song’s melody as a touchstone in the first movement. Other songs that are quoted are Czech, Hebrew, and Yiddish songs. The second movement “Brundibar,” takes as its title that of the children’s opera composed by Hans Krása.” The title of the entire work, Playing for our Lives, is based on a quote by one of the few survivors of the orchestra that played at Brundibar’s premiere, Paul Rabinowitsch, a then 14-year old trumpeter. The adolescent feared playing wrong notes, lest he be deported by the SS for his mistakes.

 

At first I found the last movement’s inclusion of the Dies Irae from Verdi’s Requiem to be curious, but recognized after a few listens that is a response to the SS officers who ran the camp, that they would be called to account for their evil deeds. Cohen’s music embodies the twentieth century neoclassicism and folk influences of the composers at Terezin, all the while presenting an eloquent rejoinder to hate and anti-Semitism.  Thus, it is a timely work. 

 

The recording closes with an unusual ensemble grouping: the Cassatt Quartet is joined by trombonist Colin Williams in a heterogenous quintet, “Preludes and Debka.” Once again, the connection to the present is palpable. A debka is a Middle Eastern circle dance, performed both by Jewish and Arab people at social gatherings, such as weddings. Sometimes the trombone is used for bass pedals, but more often it plays melodies as doublings or in counterpoint. Cohen manages to balance things well so that the trombone doesn’t overwhelm the strings, and Williams plays his solo turns, including a mid-piece cadenza, with supple lyricism. After the cadenza is a long, moody duet between first violin and trombone, a break in the dance rhythms. Gradually, the dance rhythms reinsert themselves into the texture, with an accelerando back into the debka. Apart from a few interjections of the slow central music, it whirls until the piece’s coda, where there is another lyrical interruption, and the dance comes to a jaunty conclusion. 

 

I couldn’t help imagining people from throughout the Middle East’s various faiths coming together and dancing. It seems far away at this writing, but Cohen’s eloquent piece stirred this hope in me. Cohen is a gifted storyteller and an equally formidable composer. The Cassatt Quartet once again prove to be stalwart advocates for contemporary music. Voyagers is one of my favorite releases of 2023.

 

-Christian Carey

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Organ

Anna Lapwood – Luna (CD Review)

 

Luna

Anna Lapwood

Chapel Choir of Pembroke College, Cambridge

Sony Classical

 

At 27, organist Anna Lapwood is a rising star, performing at the BBC Proms and recently being given the RPS Gamechanger Award at The Royal Philharmonic Society Awards. For her latest Sony recording, Luna, Lapwood focuses on transcriptions, a venerable tradition in organ music. Most of the transcriptions are Lapwood’s, and they prove that she knows the possibilities of pipe organs inside and out. Alongside staples of the classical repertoire, the organist plays a number of pieces from popular and film music. The blend of old and new transcriptions, as well as original organ works, creates a varied and attractive program. It celebrates the night sky, in a many-hued rendering.

 

Max Richter is an electronic musician whose work focuses on post-minimal ostinatos. The transcription of his On the Nature of Daylight layers wordless chorus – the Chapel Choir of Pembroke College, Cambridge –  on top of a chaconne in the organ in a sumptuous translation. Minimalism in general sounds great on pipe organ, and transcriptions of Philip Glass’s Mad Rush and Ludovico Einaudi’s Experience sound great here.

 

Film music also makes an impression. “Flying,” from James Newton Howard’s score for Peter Pan, is treated with contrasting stops and buoyant passagework combined with vigorous pedal motives. Dario Marinelli’s “Dawn,” from the score for Pride and Prejudice, employs the decorative chromaticism of the nineteenth century, making it an excellent choice to transcribe in the style of the French organ school.

 

In recent years, there has been a renaissance of the African-American Florence Price’s music. Her “Elf on a Moonbeam,” taken from the composer’s Short Organ Works, begins with incantatory arpeggios, gradually introducing an ascending melody accompanied by gospel-inflected chords. The central section contains puckish staccato harmonies, followed by a whole-tone transition that leads back to the gospel passage to conclude. Perhaps at some point Lapwood will record Price’s whole collection; Elf on a Moonbeam makes it seem promising.

 

“Grain Moon” by Olivia Belli is a mysterious, modally-inflected piece for which Lapwood employs the great variety of flute stops at her disposal. “Dreamland,” by Kristina Arakelyan, is filled with diaphanous textures and flowing arpeggios. Ghislaine Reece-Trapp’s “In Paradisum” contains several attractive melodies, and Lapwood distinguishes each with a different registration, providing a listening tour of the chapel organ at the Royal Hospital School, built in 1993 by Hill, Norman, and Beard.

 

My favorite piece on the recording is Ēriks Ešenvalds’s “Stars,” on which Lapwood again directs the Chapel Choir of Pembroke College, Cambridge. A work in the polychordal style, it contains stacked ascending entries and wide dynamic swells. The accompaniment is subtle, but includes a single-note refrain that distinguishes it from a merely supportive role. Ešenvalds is one of the most talented composers working today, and the choir does sterling work with the piece.

 

Popular classics, the Bach/Gounod Ave Maria, Chopin’s Nocturne No. 2 in E-flat Major, and, to close the album, a version of Debussy’s Clair de Lune, are all given sensitive performances. Lapwood is a gifted organist, and Arc also shares with us her talents as transcriber and choral conductor. It is one of my favorite recordings of 2023.

 

-Christian Carey



by Christian Carey