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.
It was a valiant effort, and one that might work better in the studio than onstage, but there’s a reason why the coupling of harp and piano, especially with an orchestra behind them, is a rare one: barring extraordinary measures (e.g., amplification, spatial separation or having the instruments play alternately instead of together), the piano will always overpower the harp. This was the unfortunate case in Seattle Symphony’s premiere of Hanoï Songs by Benjamin Attahir, a young composer who’s shown more invention in works like Adh Dhohr (a concerto for the Renaissance-era serpent and orchestra) and Al’ Asr (just given its premiere recording by Quatuor Arod), both of which offer a more subtly-drawn extension of the Dutilleux/Dalbavie strain of post-Messiaen French orchestral writing. His new double concerto—ostensibly a sound portrait of Vietnam that vacillates between antiquity and the colonial war era—does have attractive details, including an array of percussion colors that features nine tuned gongs (four are visible in the photo below). But beyond the balance issues, its essential neoclassicism often slides into Hollywood-esque grandiloquence, a domain where the John Williams of the world will, like the piano in Hanoï Songs, inevitably overshadow the strivers.
Valerie Muzzolini and Ludovic Morlot after Ravel: Introduction and Allegro (photo by Brandon Patoc/Seattle Symphony)
Regardless, the Ravel and Fauré offerings in this all-French program (composers and soloists!) sounded wonderful on Saturday night. Particularly enlightening was the juxtaposition of Charles Koechlin’s competent but straightforward orchestration of his teacher Fauré’s Pelléas et Mélisande suite with Ravel’s virtuosic deployment of instrumental color in Ma mère l’Oye. His Introduction and Allegro provided an additional vehicle for the Symphony‘s longstanding and much-admired principal harpist Valerie Muzzolini (this time without competition from Jean-Yves Thibaudet’s piano). And it’s been comforting to have Ludovic Morlot back in town leading both these concerts and Seattle Opera‘s Les Troyens following the tumult of early 2025, including Trump 2.0, the sacking of the Symphony’s executive leadership, and the Southern California fires that destroyed thousands of homes, including Morlot’s. Here’s to Western art music as a soothing social unguent.
Attahir’s Adh Dhohr and Al’ Asr were featured in this concert preview from KBCS-FM’s Flotation Device program.
In a Grove at Prototype Festival 2025 (credit Maria Baranova)
PROTOTYPE – OPERA | THEATRE | NOW defines itself as a “festival of visionary opera-theatre and music-theatre works”. Its presentation of In a Grove (January 16 – 19, 2025) was as close as Prototype comes to conventional opera in the context of eschewing tradition. It was also one of the most compelling productions I’ve seen in a long time. The intimate setting at La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart Theater augmented the visceral impact.
The story unfolded in four sections, each expressing a different character’s point of view of a murder in the woods. If that description sounds like the Kurosawa film Rashomon, it’s because that film was based on the same book: In a Grove, a century-old short story by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa.
The four singers: John Brancy, Chuanyuan Liu, Paul Appleby, and Mikaela Bennett, all excellent vocalists and actors, played multiple roles. Surtitles were projected above the stage, but for the most part they were not necessary to decipher Stephanie Fleishman’s effective libretto.
Christopher Cerrone’s melodic material was memorable without being trite. As I left the theatre after the performance, the haunting lament of the last scene continued to ring in my ears. Director Mary Birnbaum’s concept was exceptionally powerful in its simplicity, with no props and no set, save for a large pane of glass that glided in to bisect the stage at certain points. The glass panel also served as a mirror in some scenes.
Cerrone’s vocal score was accompanied by ten instrumentalists of the Metropolis Ensemble, led by Luke Poeppel (standing in for music director Raquel Acevedo Klein on the day I attended). The orchestration included some appropriately eerie effects, such as drawing a violin bow across the edge of a xylophone.
I was very much captivated by this powerful drama and its excellent performance.
The Pakistani-American singer and composer Arooj Aftab’s performance couldn’t be classified as an opera at all, though one can think of her concept album Night Reigns as a dramatic song cycle in the guise of pop culture. She appeared with her band for a one-hour set at HERE’s Dorothy B. Williams Theatre January 15 – 17.
Aftab’s style bridges world music and jazz with an ethereal aesthetic. Her presentation was casual and unusual – she distributed shots of whiskey to the audience in mid-show. It was also transporting; an atmosphere and music that took me out of the real world, and her clear lilting voice had an emotional impact. Never mind that most of the words were in Urdu. The meaning came across easily.
In this intimate space, seeing Arooj and her band – harpist Maeve Gilchrist, bass player Zwelakhe-Duma Bell Le Pere and Engin Kaan Gunaydin on percussion – was a visceral, and, enhanced by whisps of smoke created by dry ice, often ethereal experience.
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.
It’s been a somber year, with wars, conflicts, and intractable cultural and political divisions weighing on the lives and thoughts of many, including those with an investment in Western art music. I’ll endeavor to assess the situation not only musically, but also against the backdrop of a serious decline in the prestige and influence of the Anglosphere’s cultural left, particularly in the US, where its ambitions have come up hard against the judgment of the general population.
But let’s start with some new albums…
New and monumental
Sofia Gubaidulina: Triple Concerto for Violin, Cello and Bayan(Orfeo) Gubaidulina currently holds the consensus title of “most important living female composer” and—notwithstanding her longtime residence in Germany—“most important living Russian composer” as well. Her 2017 Triple Concerto, just given its premiere recording by Andrew Manze and the NDR Radiophilharmonie, duplicates the format of Beethoven’s Triple Concerto, but with the humble Russian bayan (played by Elsbeth Moser, who suggested the concept to Gubaidulina) replacing the piano. The result is a mix of folk and modernist resonances, alternately dramatic and introspective. Gubaidulina’s health has declined since she turned 90 in 2021, and we’ve heard all we’re going to hear from her. So even if her Concerto doesn’t quite match the impact of Offertorium or the St. John Passion, its premiere recording by Moser and her fellow soloists Baiba Skride and Harriet Krijgh (who also contribute a performance of the composer’s 1981 duo Rejoice!) is something to cherish.
Kaija Saariaho: Maan Varjot, Chateau de l’Âme, True Fire, Offrande (Radio France) The late Franco-Finnish composer is represented by two premiere recordings, most notably that of her second opera, Adriana Mater. First produced in 2006 to a French-language libretto by Amin Maalouf (a survivor of the Lebanese civil war), it recounts the story of a young woman raped by a soldier who then leaves to fight. She decides to keep the baby, telling her skeptical sister “The child is mine, not the rapist’s”. Seventeen years later her son vows vengeance on his erstwhile father, but upon tracking him down finds him blind and decrepit. Unable to finish the deed, he runs off, unsure whether he’s being cowardly or courageous. In the final scene his mother says “That man deserved to die, but you, my son, didn’t deserve to kill him. We are not avenged, but we are saved.” Saariaho’s score presents her usual blend of sonorist and impressionist sonorities, with melodic fragments emerging from a slowly-changing orchestral haze. But it’s often quite close to Sibelius as well, as in a passage from Act I whose alternation between two string chords recalls the second theme from Luonnotar. Among the featured soloists, the dark bass voice of Christopher Purves is notable as the violent father. Also remarkable is the chorus, which has no text of its own, but acknowledges the proceedings using nonsense syllables or echoes of the principals’ lines, reminiscent of the Chorus of Shadows in Harry Partch’s stage works.
Adriana Mater in Paris 2006 by François Fogel
Also receiving its premiere recording is Offrande, a brief duet for cello and pipe organ, arranged from Saariaho’s orchestral piece Maan varjot.
Žibuoklė Martinaitytė: Aletheia (Ondine) Martinaitytė, born 20 years after Saariaho, could be considered an inheritor of the latter’s stylistic line. Her album Aletheia, featuring the Latvian Radio Choir, demonstrates that it’s still possible to write compelling music for a cappella choir, using no instruments and no texts. Both the title work and Ululations (from 2023) receive their premiere recording here, reveling in their tapestry of textures, drones and extended techniques including overtone singing.
Louis Andriessen: Tales of song and sadness (Pentatone) Andriessen was probably the greatest Dutch composer to come along since the 17th century. His final composition, May, was completed in 2019 just before Alzheimer’s disease ended his career. It sets a melancholy poem by Herman Gorter (translated into English) using a nostalgic style that features a prominent recorder part in its opening bars, followed by suggestions of songs remembered from an earlier time. The music is dramatic, but closer to neoclassicism than to the provocative early works like Hoketus and Workers Union that established his reputation as Europe’s most trenchant minimalist.
John Adams: Girls of the Golden West (Nonesuch) Adams, who currently enjoys the second highest public profile (after Philip Glass) of any living American composer of concert music, has also strayed from his minimalist roots in recent years. His opera Girls of the Golden West will never displace Puccini’s La fanciulla del West (or Nixon in China for that matter), and its libretto, which in this premiere recording has been greatly condensed from its 2017 debut, suffers from dull lyrics and one-dimensional characters. But Adams can still ply the neoclassical trade with far more substance and color than most of his colleagues.
Trial scene from Girls of the Golden West via San Francisco Opera
John Corigliano: The Lord of Cries (Pentatone) More compelling dramatically is The Lord of Cries, first staged in 2021 by Santa Fe Opera, and only the second opera by this accomplished American neoromantic. The libretto by Corigliano’s husband Mark Adamo recounts the story of Euripides’ Bacchae using the setting and characters of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, a clever trick that deserves more approbation than has yet fallen on this work, which still awaits a second production. Its premiere audio recording features Odyssey Opera and Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and is headlined by the formidable countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, who just assumed the general directorship of Opera Philadelphia.
Beethoven ‘Emperor’ concerto, Brett Dean ‘A Winter’s Journey’ (Orchid Classics) One recent opera that has gotten its due is Brett Dean’s Hamlet, whose recent mounting by the Met was one of my Picks of 2023. Dean returns to the work in Rooms of Elsinore, an anthology of chamber and orchestral works derived from the opera, ranging from voice and guitar songs using Gertrude’s lines as lyrics, to a viola sonata performed by the composer, and a lively accordion concerto adapted from the music to the play-within-a-play The Murder of Gonzago. A separate offering from Orchid Classics features Dean’s piano concerto Gneixendorfer Musik – Eine Winterreise, written for Jonathan Biss as a companion piece to Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto.
Bernhard Lang: Voice and Ensemble (Kairos) With Andriessen’s demise, Bernhard Lang may now be Europe’s leading exponent of classic minimalism. His affinity for glitch music is showcased in this triple-CD from Kairos that features several recent works, including Das Hirn (which will appeal to fans of Friedrich Dürrenmatt) and The Travel Agency is on Fire (a bellicose setting of William S. Burroughs cut-ups). Soprano Sarah Maria Sun is outstanding as always in both German and English.
Beat Furrer: Furrer 70 (Klangforum Wien) Klangforum Wien honors its founder Beat Furrer for his 70th birthday with a six-CD box set featuring numerous premiere recordings, including recent concertos for violin and clarinet. Their lively and obsessive, but unpredictable, rhythms make a pleasant contrast to the preponderance of slow music in contemporary praxis. The influence of Nancarrow and late Ligeti is often felt, as in Furrer’s 2007 Piano Concerto and his 1998 piano quintet Spur which anticipates Bryn Harrison’s heterostatic Piano Quintet from 2017. At other times the affinity is with Sciarrino and Lachenmann, as in his sparse and scratchy piano trio Retour an Dich. It’s an essential item for Furrer enthusiasts, even if some of the material is unbearably hagiographic, including a booklet cataloging his personal library (impressive, but not in the same league as Umberto Eco) and a half-hour silent video that shows the seated übermensch hard at work on his new opera Das grosse Feuer.
Toshio Hosokawa: Orchestral Works, Vol. 4 (Naxos) Japan’s most important living composer gets a new portrait album from Naxos whose highlights include a tone poem entitled Uzu (“whirlpool”) and the violin concerto Genesis in which the composer imagines the soloist as a human life passing from conception to death, with the orchestra representing the universe.
Ives at 150
Charles Ives by Clara SipprellIves Denk (Nonesuch) America’s music institutions paid scant attention to the sesquicentennial of their country’s first great composer (compare that to the Ravel at 150 hoopla that’s already underway for 2025). Fortunately a handful of dedicated individuals helped make up the slack with several notable releases, of which the most compelling features the young virtuoso Stefan Jackiw tackling Ives’ four Violin Sonatas with pianist Jeremy Denk. These relatively digestible works, all set in a familiar three movements, tend to attract lackluster performances (such as Hilary Hahn’s disappointing cycle for Deutsche Grammophon). But Jackiw and Denk find plenty of fresh nuances to savor. Ives’s violin writing can be awkward, but even the passages that usually sound ragged, like the Allegro risoluto con brio section in the first movement of Sonata No. 2, come off beautifully here, showcasing Jackiw’s flawless intonation, conveyed without using a habitual vibrato to smooth out the imperfections. The album’s second CD features a remastered version of Denk’s 2010 recording of Ives’ two piano sonatas, of which his Concord is one of the few interpretations to meet the bar set by Gilbert Kalish’s definitive 1976 rendering, also for Nonesuch.
Charles Ives: First Piano Sonata (Albany, with John Noel Roberts) 2024 brought us a few brand-new traversals of the Concord Sonata, but it’s John Noel Robert’s recording of the first Sonata that most captured my attention. This underheralded work would surely be included in everyone’s list of 20th century piano classics if it had only been composed by someone else. Roberts’ approach is confident but introverted, emphasizing the work’s connections to the 19th century, by contrast with the equally definitive but more percussive interpretations by William Masselos and Sara Laimon that emphasize its foreshadowing of Monk and Ustvolskaya, especially in the second scherzo.
Charles Ives: Orchestral Works (Naxos) The venerable Ives scholar James Sinclair returns with a collection of chamber orchestra pieces, including the premiere recordings of several small fragments, alternate versions and incomplete works.
Charles Ives: Choral works (2024 Remastered Version) (Columbia/Sony Classical)
Charles Ives: The Anniversary Edition (Columbia/Sony Classical) Another set of reissues reclaims the Gregg Smith Singers’ anthology of Ives’ choral music, including several of his surviving sacred works (others of which were lost when Manhattan’s Central Presbyterian Church, where Ives had been the organist, relocated in 1915). Originally released on a Columbia Records LP in 1966, it boasted horrible sound quality. But for many years it was the only way to hear these works on record. Even today it’s almost the only professional recording of Ives’ remarkable Harvest Home Chorales, whose middle movement is possibly the most explicit expression of Ives’ fascination with polymeters. Happily the performances sound much better in this remastered digital edition.
Of more specialized interest is the new digital reissue of The Anniversary Edition, originally put together for Ives’ centenary in 1974. The big highlight here is Vivian Perlis’s compilation of recorded reminiscences by Ives’ friends, relatives, business partners and fellow composers (including Elliott Carter and Bernard Herrmann) which she eventually transcribed for her book Charles Ives Remembered. And although the musical selections have all been recorded elsewhere, their assemblage here creates a pleasant sampling of the range and originality of this unique fount of American maverickism, free atonality, postmodern collage and polystylism.
“The future of music may not lie entirely in music itself, but rather in the way it encourages and extends, rather than limits, the aspirations and ideals of the people.” (Charles Ives)
“This music is all a part of another tomorrow. Another kind of language.” (Sun Ra)
More reissues and archival releases
The Complete Obscure Records Collection 1975–1978 (Dialogo) The short-lived but high-impact label Obscure Records brought the world such classics as Gavin Bryars’ Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet, Brian Eno’s Discreet Music, and John Adams’ Christian Zeal and Activity (his first canonical work) in their premiere recordings, as well the debut album by Penguin Cafe Orchestra. Obscure’s anthology of Machine Music compositions by the English minimalist John White is also worth noting in light of his passing in early 2024, as is a recording of John Cage’s Forever and Sunsmell featuring the unaccompanied voice of Carla Bley. Though some of these albums materialized in digital form over the years, this wonderful 10-CD box set is the first complete digital release of the entire Obscure discography.
William Masselos: The Complete RCA and Columbia Album Collection (Sony Classical) Masselos, whose career was cut short by Parkinson’s disease, gave the world premieres of Ives’ First Piano Sonata and Copland’s Piano Fantasy, and his recordings of those masterworks are still definitive today, especially in their newly remastered digital versions. The Copland in particular ought to be mandatory listening for anyone inclined to dismiss his career based solely on his most popular works (the Fantasy is just as sophisticated as Messiaen’s piano pieces, and far more interesting rhythmically). Brahms, Satie, Ben Weber and Paul Bowles are also represented in this attractive 7-CD box set.
Sun Ra: Lights on a Satellite: Live at the Left Bank (Resonance)
Sun Ra: At The Showcase: Live in Chicago 1976–1977 (Jazz Detective/Elemental Music)
Sun Ra: Inside the Light World: Sun Ra Meets The OVC (Strut)
Sun Ra: Strange Strings Expanded Edition (Cosmic Myth) Three fascinating archival releases from three different labels, plus a major reissue from a fourth label, helped keep Sun Ra’s legacy in the spotlight in 2024. The continuing activity of his Arkestra under the leadership of his indefatigable saxophonist Marshall Allen, who turned 100 in May, have also played a crucial role. Perhaps the most interesting of these albums is Lights on a Satellite, recorded at the Left Bank Jazz Society (in Baltimore, not Paris) at a live 1978 gig that’s famous for its inclusion in Robert Mugge’s documentary film Sun Ra: A Joyful Noise. This is the first time that the entire concert has been available for listening, though, thanks to the recent discovery of the complete stereo tape of the event.
At The Showcase also covers the late 70s era Arkestra, and its customary “variety show” mix of swing tunes, free improvisations, and Afrofuturist songs (often delivered by two or three female vocalists/dancers performing in front of the all-male band). It comes with an attractive booklet featuring photos, articles and Marshall Allen’s personal account of meeting this most eccentric of all American mavericks for the first time in 1958.
Inside the Light World is a tad less compelling if only because it dates from 1986, after Sun Ra’s heyday as an avant-gardist is usually deemed to have ended. It does have an interesting rendition of Theme of the Stargazers though, which emphasizes whole-tone scale figuration. Finally there’s the aptly-named Strange Strings, one of the most peculiar of all Sun Ra albums, a self-styled “study in ignorance” wherein his wind players are given unfamiliar string instruments to play. Cosmic Myth has given it a new expanded reissue with digital remasterings of the original mono pressings plus newly-discovered stereo versions of some of the 1965 source recordings. It makes an interesting contrast with Mauricio Kagel’s Exotica, which was recorded seven years later with European musicians.
Also of interest is Outer Spaceways Incorporated: Kronos Quartet & Friends Meet Sun Ra (Red Hot Org), one of whose tracks features Marshall Allen and Laurie Anderson jamming with bassist Tony Scherr, and John Blum Quartet: Deep Space (Astral Spirits) which again features Allen on alto sax and EVI.
Sun Ra in 1978 at the Left Bank Jazz Society, Baltimore by Robert Mugge
More from our predecessors
Erick Hawkins, Lucia Dlugoszewski and Dana Madole via the Hawkins estateLucia Dlugoszewski: Abyss and Caress (Col Legno) Klangforum Wien offers premiere recordings of several works by this quirky composer who’s long been better known among dancers than musicians (she was Erick Hawkins’ longtime music director, and eventually his wife). Her music often uses custom-built instruments (one is visible in the accompanying photo), and the title piece features trumpeter Peter Evans in a particularly demanding solo role.
Julia Perry, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson: American Counterpoints (Bright Shiny Things) The highlight here is the first recording of the astringent Symphony in One Movement for Violas and String Basses by Julia Perry (1924–1979), whose previously-recorded Short Piece For Orchestra is a similarly brief but compelling representative of uncompromising American post-serialism. Perry’s output is largely unrecorded, and admittedly uneven. But its neglect compared to Florence Price (1887–1953)—whose biography as a rediscovered African-American composer is similarly compelling, but whose music is far less original—seems emblematic of the state of institutional orchestra programming in the US.
George Crumb Edition 21: Kronos-Kryptos (Bridge) The 21st and presumably final volume in Bridge Records’ Complete Crumb Edition features his last premiere recording: the percussion quintet Kronos-Kryptos, written in 2018, revised in 2020, and as it turns out, the only Crumb composition for percussion alone. I discuss it, and Crumb’s complicated legacy, in this article.
Julia Perry via Rider UniversityKaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji: Toccata Terza (Brilliant Classics, with Abel Sánchez-Aguilera)
Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji: Opus clavicembalisticum (Passacaille, with Daan Vandewalle) One of the most eccentric (and irascible) of all 20th century composers—comparable to Nancarrow in his isolation, if not his influence—Sorabji continues to receive premiere recordings of his long, dense and complicated piano works. The latest selection to see the light of day is the third of his four Toccatas, whose manuscript was rediscovered in 2019 in a private collection. Sorabji’s formal model was Bach (the multi-movement harpsichord toccatas, not the more famous works for pipe organ), but the harmonic language of this two-hour piece is closer to Scriabin. Also of note is Daan Vandewalle’s new recording of Opus clavicembalisticum, made famous by its persistent listing in Guinness Book of World Records as the “longest non-repetitious piano composition” ever written. In reality it’s not even Sorabji’s longest piano piece (his Sequentia Cyclica super Dies Irae lasts 8½ hours), but Opus clavicembalisticum remains his best known work, and one of the very few Sorabji compositions that’s been recorded multiple times. Give it a listen and decide for yourself whether it’s the work of a crank or a visionary.
Pehr Henrik Nordgren: Streams (Alba) Although little-known outside Scandinavia, Nordgren (1944–2008) might be the most intriguing Finnish composer between Sibelius and Saariaho. This album features the premiere recording of his Chamber Symphony from 1995, which, like most of his music, combines post-serial and folk-inflected styles. Nordgren was born in the Swedish-speaking Åland Islands, and instead of attending the Sibelius Academy like most Finnish composers, he left to study composition in Japan, where he met his wife. Upon his return he eschewed the capital Helsinki in favor of the small northern town of Kaustinen. His Chamber Symphony begins with drums and woodwinds imitating the sound of a gagaku orchestra, and ends with a chorale-like passage, seemingly epitomizing the unique, multicultural biography of this intriguing composer.
Newer voices
Kate Soper as Shame in The Romance of the RoseKate Soper: The Hunt (New Focus)
Kate Soper: The Romance of the Rose (New Focus) Wet Ink Ensemble may be the most potent composer-led new music ensemble in North America, and its house vocalist, Kate Soper, might be our most important younger exponent of new music theater. Two major releases showcase her interest in ancient texts: The Hunt and The Romance of the Rose are both based on Medieval sources, with the former adapting the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries into an hour-long work for three female singers who accompany themselves on violin and ukulele while portraying virgins hired by a king to lure a unicorn into a trap. The Romance is a longer work (perhaps too long) based on the 13th century Roman de la Rose that recounts a dream vision wherein a Lover (who is female in Soper’s version) is beguiled first by the image of a rose reflected in a fountain, and subsequently by visits from Lady Reason, Shame (played by Soper), and the God of Love, accompanied respectively by a vocal harmonizer, a heavy-metal guitar and the instrumentalists of Wet Ink Ensemble. As usual, Soper deploys a range of vocal deliveries spanning unaccompanied dialog, spoken text with musical underscoring, and more conventionally declaimed or sung lyrics.
Gabriel Prokofiev: Pastoral 21 (Signum) Prokofiev enjoys lurking in the border regions where Western art music intersects with dance music and other popular genres. His latest album features Pastoral Reflections, a new meditation on Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony for string sextet and synthesizer, and Breaking Screens, an exercise in disco-meets-modernism.
Gabriela Ortiz: Revolución diamantina (Platoon) A breakthrough album for this Mexican composer, who’s just turned 60, featuring Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic performing three colorful orchestral works, including the violin concerto Altar de cuerda, and a ballet score for chorus and orchestra written to commemorate Mexico’s 2019 glitter revolution.
Gabriel Vicéns: Mural (Stradivarius) Vicéns’ music paints a barren but gripping soundscape that emphasizes sparse, disconnected chords. Vicéns was a competitive bicyclist for a while, and there’s a certain subdued relentlessness to his music that seems to channels that same kind of energy.
Brett Umlauf, Christiana Cole and Hirona Amamiya in The Hunt by Rob Davidson
Old meets New
Duo Yumeno by Kasia IdzkowskaTimothy Cooper, Ensemble 1604: Shadows That in Darkness Dwell (The Night With…) Dowland’s Flow My Tears is the springboard for recirculation and improvisation on Baroque-era and modern digital instruments in this interesting album from composer Timothy Cooper and the UK-based Ensemble 1604 (named for the year in which Dowland’s music was published).
Brian Andrew Inglis: To Byzantium and Beyond (Kairos) The humble recorder has seldom been embraced as a solo vehicle for experimental music, with Berio’s Gesti (1966) standing as a lone beacon in a barren contemporary landscape. The London-based composer Brian Andrew Inglis goes a long way toward rectifying this with an album of exploratory works for unaccompanied recorder that exploit such extended techniques as glissandos, multiphonics and singing while playing.
Ekmeles: We Live the Opposite Daring (New Focus) James Weeks’ Primo Libro expresses the old meets new philosophy quite vividly with a succession of 16 short madrigals written in 31-division equal temperament (derived from “quarter-comma meantone, a temperament commonly used in the Renaissance and early Baroque”), performed by the New York-based vocal sextet Ekmeles in their new album that also showcases works by Zosha Di Castri and Hannah Kendall.
Daron Hagen with Duo Yumeno: Heike Quinto (Naxos) New meets old meets East meets West in this setting of a medieval Japanese epic that chronicles the fall of a powerful but arrogant imperial family, performed by a pair of Japanese musicians who play koto and cello while singing the text in a manner that’s suggestive of the 13th century itinerant monks who would have been its original raconteurs. And was the case with Weeks, Hagen’s work additionally reflects the influence of the great Italian madrigalists, as suggested by its title.
Braxton meets post-Braxton
Anthony Braxton by Edu HawkinsAnthony Braxton: 10 Comp (Lorraine) 2022 (New Braxton House)
Ferry Good Company: Selected Works of Anthony Braxton (Don’t Look Back) Saxophonist Sam Newsome recently opined that improvised music uniquely “offers a space where creative minds can come together without being defined by race, gender or political affiliations”. And notwithstanding the roots of 1960s free jazz in African-American culture and activism, its most original thinkers have often been heterodox in both their musical and their social thinking. Sun Ra is an obvious, and previously noted example, while Anthony Braxton—a South Side avant-gardist and AACM veteran who spent decades in academia, and is arguably the most influential living American composer who’s not a minimalist—has also been a sharp critic of contemporary identity politics. Whatever the factors, the fires of musical innovation in the US have always burned brightest outside its academies and institutions, with improvised music remaining its most reliable crucible of new ideas.
Braxton’s two latest releases document his newfangled Lorraine composition method that combines written melodies (which resemble conventional jazz tunes) with graphic symbols and other directions to guide the associated improvisations. One of the most prominent novelties here (for Braxton anyway) is the use of computer-generated sounds that respond to the human musicians. It’s like having an automated Greek Choir in the ensemble. Both albums were recorded live in Europe with a variety of trios and quartets that feature saxophones, trumpet, accordion and voice—but no drums or bass. To the uninitiated, the music might seem long and meandering, which could make the Lithuanian ensemble Ferry Good Company’s new offering a better introductory album. Among other things it sports a rendition of Braxton’s famous “parade music” Composition No. 58 that debuted on his Creative Orchestra Music 1976 album.
Josh Modney: Ascending Primes (Pyroclastic) Spectralism meets the experimental big-band traditions of Sun Ra and Michael Mantler (with an emphasis on Braxtonian rhythmic disjunction) in this ambitious project by the violinist and Executive Director of Wet Ink Ensemble. As suggested by its title, Ascending Primes is a suite of improvisational works whose ensemble sizes, movement numbers and tuning systems are all based on prime numbers in the sequence 1-3-5-7-11. Trumpeter Nate Wooley, pianist Cory Smythe and drummer Kate Gentile are among the musicians from the greater Braxton orbit that are featured in the proceedings.
Sylvie Courvoisier by Véronique Hoegger (BW)Philip Zoubek Trio Extended: MIRAGE (Boomslang) In a similar rhythmic space as Gentile and Modney is Philip Zoubek and his Cologne-based ensemble that has helped that city become a hotbed of post-Braxton/Zorn/Zappa-style structured improvisation, building on the avant-garde credentials it inherited from the likes of Stockhausen, Musikfabrik and the WDR Studio for Electronic Music. Many of the musicians featured in MIRAGE also appear on Scott Field’s Sand album, which was one of my picks for 2023.
Nicole Mitchell, Alexander Hawkins: At Earth School (Astral Spirits)
Anna Webber, Matt Mitchell: Capacious Aeration (Tzadik) Two imaginative releases that successfully wrench the flute/piano duet combination away from the hackneyed realm of Prokofiev and Poulenc.
Matthew Shipp: The Data (RogueArt) A pair of New York-based pianists chime in with new solo offerings. The Swiss-born Courvoisier has been a prolific recording artist for nearly 20 years, but To Be Other-Wise is only her second solo outing, featuring both prepared and conventional piano improvisations that evince the influence of Messiaen, Cage, Nancarrow and Cecil Taylor. Shipp, by contrast, stays straight on the keys for most of his new double-CD. Taylor figures as an influence here too, along with McCoy Tyner and his penchant for mixed-fourth chords. But there’s also a good dose of Charles Ives in Shipp’s playing, especially in Track #11 which combines the rhythms of popular music with the dissonant harmonies of modernism.
More improv from Downtown and elsewhere
Amina Claudine MyersWadada Leo Smith, Amina Claudine Myers: Central Park’s Mosaic of Reservoir, Lake, Paths and Gardens (Red Hook) Braxton’s fellow AACM members Smith and Myers celebrate their recent 80th birthdays with a duet album from which the track Conservatory Gardens is a worthy sampling.
Adam Rudolph, Tyshawn Sorey: Archaisms (Meta/Yeros7/Defkaz) Rudolph specializes in hand drums while Sorey uses a conventional jazz set. The counterpoint makes for a compelling CD #1, while a second disc features a quartet, with percussionists Sae Hashimoto, Russell Greenberg and Levy Lorenzo joining Rudolph while Sorey conducts using his autoschediasms technique adapted from Butch Morris’s conduction and Braxton’s Language Music methods.
Wayne Horvitz, Bill Frisell: Live Forever, Vol. 3: Frankfurt, Knitting Factory 1989–1990 (Other Room) One of the most intriguing non-Sun Ra archival releases of the year features two veterans of the Downtown New York improv scene. Both played in John Zorn’s Naked City band during the time these tracks were recorded (Horvitz on keyboards, Frisell on guitar), and both would soon settle in the Northwest (where Horvitz remains). There’s plenty of good and exploratory music captured here, including a poignant rendering of a tune from Nino Rota’s soundtrack to Juliet of the Spirits.
Bill Frisell, Andrew Cyrille, Kit Downes at St. Luke in the Fields Church by Arianna Tae CimarostiBill Frisell, Kit Downes, Andrew Cyrille: Breaking the Shell (Red Hook) It’s nice to see Frisell return to his exploratory roots after building his career with more conventional jazz material. This recording features a unique grouping with Frisell joining Cecil Taylor’s longtime drummer Andrew Cyrille while the eclectic British keyboardist Kit Downes plays on the pipe organ of Manhattan’s St. Luke in the Fields.
Fred Frith: A Miscellany of Mishaps (Bandcamp) This unusual compilation of out of print, esoteric and previously unreleased items from the world’s leading avant-guitarist includes a characteristic solo track called Yui’s Workout (previously available only on a rare benefit album for a particular rural North Carolina middle school) and Snakes and Ladders, a decidedly un-characteristical postminimalist composition written for the Bang on a Can All-Stars in 2009.
Brandon Seabrook: Object of Unknown Function (Pyroclastic) The young Brandon Seabrook does for the banjo what Frith has done for the guitar in this new album that features a variety of rhythmically lively multilayered solo tracks.
Ben Goldberg, Todd Sickafoose, Scott Amendola: Here to There (Secret Hatch) Thelonious Monk tributes are a common thing, but this trio of clarinet, bass and drums takes an unusual approach, focusing on the bridge sections of famous Monk tunes and using the material for motivic, not chord-based, improvisation. The opening track, an adaptation of In Walked Bud, is a good example, using the rising fifth from Monk’s original as the basis for an extended downtempo fantasy.
Horse Lords: As It Happened: Horse Lords Live (RVNG)
Spinifex: Undrilling the Hole (TryTone) Two new albums from two veteran bands with a similar approach to glitchy avant-rock, off-kilter rhythms, and instrumentations that feature saxophones added to a standard power trio. Spinifex is based in Amsterdam, while the members of Horse Lords originally coalesced in Baltimore (but are dispersed across the Atlantic).
WASNT: Wasnt (Bandcamp) The debut album of this Seattle-based downtempo band features Julie Baldridge’s mournful violin solos, reminiscent of violist Mat Maneri. Speaking of which…
Lucian Ban, Mat Maneri: Transylvanian Dance (ECM) One of the most unusual albums of the year features pianist ban and violist Maneri (with his drawn-out solos that emphasize double stops and a slow, wide vibrato) recorded live in the Transylvania region of Eastern Europe where Ban was born and where Bartók made his groundbreaking recordings of folk music in the 1920s—recordings that these two New York-based musicians use as the starting point for their nostalgic and often mournful improvisations. One of Bartók’s Edison cylinders, transcribed below, became the first of his famous Romanian Folk Dances. Its soaring melody can just barely be discerned in the second track of this album.
Drones and darkness
Biliana Voutchkova and Phill Niblock at Silent Green, Berlin 2023Phill Niblock: Looking for Daniel (Unsounds)
Phill Niblock: V&LSG (XI) The late and beloved Phill Niblock (1933–2024), the godfather of drone minimalism and a lynchpin of New York’s musical avant-garde who produced hundreds of concerts at his SoHo loft space, is represented by his late composition Biliana, which features what might be his most beautiful drone of all, conveyed by the multitracked voice and violin of its dedicatee Biliana Voutchkova. Also notable is V&LSG, featuring the unusual combination of Loré Lixenberg on multitracked voice and Guy De Bièvre on lap steel guitar.
Éliane Radigue: OCCAM IX, Laetitia Sonami: A Song for Two Mothers (Black Truffle) Radigue is often viewed as a European counterpart to Niblock, but favoring thick drones of indefinite pitch to Niblock’s intense microtones. Following a succession of epic works created on an Arp 2500, Radigue turned to acoustic instruments at the turn of the 21st century, so this new work conceived for Sonami’s custom-designed Spring Spyre (featuring a large metal ring on which are mounted three long springs and three audio pickups) is something of a throwback for her. It’s paired with Sonami’s own solo piece for her new instrument.
Jürg Frey with Quatuor Bozzini: String Quartet No. 4 (Collection QB) Yet another flavor of minimalism is represented by this Swiss composer and co-founder of the Wandelweiser collective, whose work combines the influence of drone music with the sparse landscapes of Feldman. His new multi-movement quartet is traversed by Canada’s leading string quartet specializing in experimental music.
Éliane Radigue with Spring Spyre by Laetitia Sonami
Opera on the screen
Bronius Kutavičius: Lokys (The Bear) (Klaipėda State Music Theatre, OperaVision) With North America’s largest opera companies turning in a lackluster year on their mainstages, and with the Met inexplicably choosing to stream Jeanine Tesori’s justly-panned Grounded instead of either Golijov’s Ainadamar or John Adams’ new Anthony and Cleopatra, it was left to European companies to make up the slack. One of the most revelatory recent productions was this opera by Bronius Kutavičius (1932–2021) which recounts a tale of 19th century Lithuanian forest life and bestiality, set in a modernist idiom built from dissonant orchestral riffs overlaid by parlando voice lines. It’s like a darker, atonal Janáček that offers an alternative to the spiritual minimalist lineage pursued by other late Soviet composers whose spiritualty was of a more conventional Christian variety. Kutavičius’s interest in paganism aligns him with a young Stravinsky (who famously quoted a Lithuanian folk melody in The Rite of Spring). Some of the highlights of Lokys include several allusions to folk music (as at 36:00) and a passage where the orchestra’s wind players toot on ocarinas. The opera was composed in 2000, and an audio recording was released two years later by Ondine. But this is the first production professionally recorded on screen, captured live in October 2022 in Klaipėda on the Lithuanian coast.
Bronius Kutavičius: Lokys (photo M. Aleksos)
Alexander Raskatov: Animal Farm (Wiener Staatsoper, Ö1) Now that Gubaidulina’s composing days have sadly ended, Alexander Raskatov seems to have granted the consensus title of “most important active Russian composer”. His latest opera—an unnervingly prescient adaptation of Animal Farm—is sung in English (slightly updated from Orwell’s 1940s prose), a decision that had profound effects on the music’s construction. “Working on Animal Farm I found a method of using mostly short scalpel-like phrases, [with] hocketing between the ensembles.” Raskatov also employs onomatopoeia (e.g., vocal imitations of horse whinnying), but the dominant influence is Stravinsky at his most modernist, particularly the rustic Les Noces and the orientalist Nightengale, as evinced in Animal Farm by the distortion-mirror folk elements that characterize the first solo passage for the coloratura equine Mollie (whose role is more prominent here than in the novella). At other times the pastiche of Schnittke asserts its influence, as in Squealer’s Second Act appearance as a downscale crooner. A co-commission between Dutch National Opera (which premiered the work in 2023) and Vienna State Opera (which streamed it the next year), Animal Farm‘s references to Soviet and Putinist Russia are quite clear. An interesting directorial choice was to have the performers who portray animals wear masks, but remove them when their characters become more “human”.
Alexander Raskatov: Animal Farm by Ruth Waltz, Dutch National Opera
Peter Eötvös: Valuska (Hungarian State Opera) One last Eastern European entry is worth noting: the 13th and final opera (and the only one set in his native Hungarian) by the late Peter Eötvös. As a numbers opera with intervening spoken dialog, it can get tedious for non-Hungarian speakers. And it’s not as compelling as Eötvös’s Angels in America or his kabuki adaptation of Three Sisters. But it still delivers the composer’s idiomatic whimsy flecked with dark humor. Its eclectic music includes allusions to Tchaikovsky and the ritual orchestra of Tibetan Buddhism.
In print
Jimmy Carter and Cecil Taylor in 1978Philip Freeman: In the Brewing Luminous: The Life & Music of Cecil Taylor (Wolke Verlag) The first book-length biography of one of America’s most innovative musicians is something of a specialty read: Taylor’s life story isn’t as fascinating as Sun Ra or Miles Davis, and Freeman isn’t as gifted a raconteur as John Szwed or Quincy Troupe. But fans of Taylor’s music will find this an essential volume, tracing his career, influences, and—to an extent anyway—his personal life. Freeman downplays the oft-claimed importance of Messiaen in Taylor’s development, sympathizing with critics who consider the connection between Taylor’s atonality and European postserialism “superficial”. Freeman does concede that during Taylor’s time at New England Conservatory, Messiaen visited Boston for the premiere of Turangalîla and a performance of the Quartet for the End of Time that featured one of Taylor’s professors on cello. An interesting connection that Freeman does make is with Richard Twardzik, an obscure New England pianist whose playing combined Bud Powell, Erroll Garner and Schoenberg.
Freeman confirms what’s long been known in private about Taylor’s sexuality, revealing that although Taylor was rarely open about his homosexuality, he understood his attraction to men from an early age (leading to an estrangement from his father). Taylor’s use of cocaine to help fuel his hyperactive marathon solo sessions is also acknowledged. Freeman portrays his subject as socially awkward, sacrificing almost everything for his music, and William Parker is quoted about Taylor’s seeming lack of empathy. But there’s otherwise relatively little insight into what made up the personality of such a complex, driven man. I could have also used more detail about Taylor’s aesthetic philosophy, including his Afrocentric view of musical structure in relation to the human body. But the dutiful chronicling of recording and performance dates and personnel will be useful to aficionados, and there’s no denying the importance of Freeman’s effort in furthering our understanding of this controversial and enigmatic musician.
Joonas Sildre: Between Two Sounds: Arvo Pärt’s Journey to His Musical Language (Plough) First published in 2018 in Estonian, and now available in its first English-language edition, this unusual book is stunning if only for the sheer audacity of producing a “lives of the great composers”-style graphic novel about a late 20th century post-Soviet musician, a cartoon book in the style of Maus or Persepolis that traces the biography of spiritual minimalism’s most commercially successful representative. Pärt’s life story, like Taylor’s, revolves around overcoming challenges, but is not unique among Eastern European composers who languished (or worse) in the repressive environment of the Soviet bloc. But the imaginative visual milieu with stylized staffs and noteheads is a nice touch. And the reading experience is pleasant and fast-paced. An especially touching moment is Pärt’s prophetic boyhood memory of hearing Estonian radio’s music broadcasts played over a loudspeaker in a nearby market square. “Occasionally, the wind carries fragments of melody to Arvo’s backyard. It brings with it a sense of longing…”
Prospectus
I write this amid a season of gloom for the American left, as it faces a prospect that some of us have been dreading (and warning about) for several years: the coalescence of a multiethnic right-wing coalition founded on economic populism and social conservatism that attracted the votes of ½ of Latino men, ¼ of black men, and an alarming percentage of voters under 30 by acknowledging that in contemporary American society, class is as potent a cultural and political determinant as fixed identity. Progressives, hobbled by their abandonment of classical liberalism a decade ago in favor of left-identitarianism, have failed to grasp this, while simultaneously and unwittingly encouraging a resurgence of white nationalism.
It’s not just the political left that’s collapsed though. The cultural left in the US—the sector involved in the arts, sciences, humanities, media and academia—has become more reviled by, and isolated from, the broader population than at any time since the 1930s, if not longer. Reversing this estrangement will requiring repudiating—or at least tuning out—the voices and ideology that have led us over the cliff.
This needn’t require cancelling anyone, or dumbing down the cultivated arts. A few years ago, during the flap in the band and music ed communities over “Keiko Yamada” (who turned out to be the pen name of composer Larry Clark), I ventured to the publisher’s Web site to familiarize myself with “her” music. It was uniformly dull and derivative, relying on clichés like black-key scales to sound “oriental”. Yet I found no evidence that the outraged voices on social media had objected to the poor quality of the music when they thought it was being written by a Japanese woman. The unfortunate lesson of DEI is that so long as a preoccupation with fixed identity overwhelms everything else, then we’ll keep getting Keiko Yamadas, Jessica Krugs and Yi-Fen Chous, along with the earnest mediocrity whose elevation has caused our arts institutions to falter. Returning to a more generative, liberal philosophy will encourage our most innovative, challenging and affirmational voices—fancy Julia Perry at the Symphony instead of Florence Price, an Anthony Braxton commission instead of Carlos Simon, or Adriana Mater streamed in HD instead of Grounded.
But if artistic excellence and cultural standing don’t provide enough motivation to change courses, there are always the election results of November 5 to think about. And the trajectory of a nation’s cultural health often portends its social prognosis as well.
Photo collage: Žibuoklė Martinaitytė by Lina Aiduke, Charles Ives in 1913, Biliana Voutchkova and Phill Niblock at Silent Green Berlin in 2023, Toshio Hosokawa by Kaz Ishikawa, Sofia Gubaidulina by Mario Wezel, Wayne Horvitz and Bill Frisell via Other Room Music, Julia Perry via the Rider University Libraries Julia A. Perry Collection, Lucia Dlugoszewski via Col Legno, Sun Ra by Robert Mugge, Kate Soper as Shame in The Romance of the Rose, Wadada Leo Smith by Tom Beetz, Duo Yumeno (Hikaru Tamaki and Yoko Reikano Kimura) by Kasia Idzkowska, Kaikhosru Sorabji by Joan Muspratt, Anthony Braxton and Brandon Seabrook via Brandon Seabrook, Adriana Mater in Paris 2006 by François Fogel, Gabriel Prokofiev by Nathan Gallagher, Sylvie Courvoisier by Véronique Hoegger, George Crumb by Rob Starobin, Between Two Sounds: Arvo Pärt’s Journey to His Musical Language by Joonas Sildre, Gabriela Ortiz by Mara Arteaga.
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.
