Contemporary Classical

BBC Proms BBC Singers Varese Koechlin Gubaidulina

Another theme of this year’s Proms is the 150th Anniversary of the birth of Henry Wood, the founder of the Proms. This celebration includes a survey of works which he introduced to Britain, and their number is legion, ranging from works of British composers, to composers such as Ravel and Sibelius, through works of Schoenberg and Webern. This anniversary was also the occasion for a concert at Holy Sepulchre London (Otherwise known as St. Sepulchre-without-Newgate}. Henry Wood’s father was a tenor in the choir of the church, and Wood himself studied organ at the church and later became assistant organist. He is also buried there, and there is a memorial window to Wood (along with windows to John Ireland, Nellie Melba, and Walter Carroll) which was dedicated in 1946, in the side chapel of the church, which has, since 1955, been designated as The Musician’s Chapel. There is a book of remembrance, maintained by Friends of the Musician’s Chapel memorializing many musicians, including John Cage. This concert, on August 17, was presented by the BBC Singers, conducted by Sofie Jeannin, was. in fact. a showcase of 20th and 21st century British choral music. The concert opened with Where Does the Uttered Music Go? by William Walton, setting a poem by John Masefield, who was at the time Poet Laureate of The UK, which had been written for the dedication of the Henry Wood memorial window, and it ended with a short new piece by Joanna Lee, At This Man’s Hand, a BBC Commision, setting a short poem by Masefield which is in fact in the window. In between those two works the concert included shorter pieces by John Ireland, Vaughan Williams, Helena Paish (a winner of the INSPIRE competition for young composers), and Eizabeth Maconchy. There were also three large works, Sacred and Profane by Benjamin Britten, Rorate Coeli by Thea Musgrave, and Missa del Cid by Judith Weir.

Sacred and Profane, written in the last year of Britten’s life, is a set of eight relatively short pieces setting texts in Middle English. One might cynically think that Britten was trying to recapture the success of the Ceremony of Carols, whose texts are also in Middle English, but Sacred and Profane is much more astringent both in sound and in manner, and comes off as being downright forbidding. The Musgrave, setting texts of the Scottish poet William Dunbar, is intense and loud and exciting, and somewhat unvaried. It leave an impression of being a big impressive block of continuous sound, without all the much detail–certainly not in clarity of its text.. Judith Weir’s Missa el Cid, combines parts of a translation of a Spanish medieval poem celebrating El Cid’s reconquest of Spain from the Moors and some of the text of the mass, presenting and shaping the story of El Cid in the form of the mass The use of a speaking narration at the beginning of each section is reminiscent of the manner of Weir’s earlier work King Harald’s Saga, and the effect here, as in the earlier piece, is clever, oddly dramatic, and effective.

Music by Walton, which began the concert on August 17, ended the Prom presented on August 20 by The London Symphony Orchestra, along with the London Symphony Chorus, and Orfeó Català and the Orfeó Català Youth Choir, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. The choruses consisted of many singers, and they and the orchestra, assisted by two brass groups, made a big sound in Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast one of the archetypal big British works for chorus and orchestra, which more than filled the enormous space of the Albert Hall. Gerald Finley was the baritone soloist. Their performance was vivid and full of detail and exciting.

The concert began with Les Bandar-log by Charles Koechlin, and Edgar Varèse’s Amériques in its original version of 1921. The Koechlin, evoking Kipling’s The Jungle Book, where the band of monkeys are called by a Hindi term, ‘bandar-log’, to satirize musical trends and contemporary composers of the 1930s, using 12 note tunes and neo-classical fugual textures to portray the composers as gleeful followers of any newfangled trend that comes along. Koechlin was an extremely subtle and skillful composer, and a fabulous orchestrator, and his satire is achieved through the most polished and suave means, producing a very engaging narrative. Varèse started Amériques, his biggest single work, in New York right after he had immigrated to the United States and it is full of what could be described as big city music, portraying the sounds of New York as, he wrote, “all, discoveries, all adventures….the Unknown, new worlds on this planet, in outer space, and in the minds of man.” That big conception is realized with extravagant abandon, with lots of notes and lots of sound produced by an enormous orchestra, including 13 percussionists who seem to play continuously. For all its excessive motion and hyperactive surface, the work is essentially static, and, for this listener, anyway, wears out its welcome before it stops, but it’s exciting and bracing all the while it’s going on. It was striking how well matched the three enormous, noisy and not immediately apparently compatible pieces fit together to make an interesting and satisfying program featuring both their differences and their similarities in languages and manners and spirit..

The Prom on August 18 was billed as ‘Youthful Beginnings”, consisted of firsts: the first Symphonies of Beethoven and Shostakovich, as well as Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto, written when the composer was sixteen, and Sofia Gubaidulina’s Fairytale Poem of 1971, her earliest completely orchestra work. The work is a piece of program music telling the story of a piece of chalk, who, although dreaming of drawing wonderful castles, gardens, and the sea, finds itself used for writing boring words, numbers and geometric figures. Just as the chalk has become worn down (literally) from all of this dreary work, it finds itself in total darkness and assumes it is dead. However the darkness is the pocket of a boy who has taken the chalk, and put it in his pocket. He uses the chalk for drawing pictures of wonderful castles, gardens, and the sea on sidewalks, so in the end the chalk finds happiness even though it also finds its extinction. The clarity of the story telling in Fairytale Story is not all that clear, but it is, nonetheless, continually and completely interesting and compelling as music.

by Rodney Lister
Contemporary Classical

Proms ENIGMA INSPIRE mixtape

The conductor Martyn Brabbins has been and continues to be a champion of new music and of British composers in particular. In celebration of his 60th birthday, the BBC commissioned fourteen composers with whom he has been associated to join in producing a collaborative work, entitled Pictured Within, which is related to the Elgar Enigma Variations, and this project was presented by Brabbins and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra on their Prom on August 13. The participating composers were Dai Fujikura, David Sawyer, Sally Beamish, Colin Matthews, Iris ter Schiphorst, Brett Dean, Wim Henderickx, Richard Blackford, Harrision Birtwistle, Judith Weir, Gavin Bryars, Kalevi Aho, Anthony Payne, and John Pickard. This new project was supplied with its own enigma: the theme, somewhat related to the Elgar original, was written by an anonymous composer. Each of the composers was asked to model his or her variation on one specific Elgar variation, and each of those variations was supposed to be roughly the same relative length as its model. The sense that each of the variations is a commentary on aspects of specific variations and on the Elgar as a whole in the voice of that particular composer gives the whole project a coherence and, frankly, interest that one might not have expected from first hearing about it. Not only did one get a range of various personalities and personal styles in the new work, but one retained some memory of those commentaries during the wonderful performance of the Elgar which ended the concert. The fact that the older work was providing the structure for the newer one, while the newer one was offering fresh perspectives on aspects of the older, made for a sort of two way conversation which was very satisfying. Between the two Enigma works, and flanking the intermission, there were performances of Vaughan Williams’s ethereal Serenade to Music (unfortunately not in the original version with sixteen soloists) and Brahms’s Song of Destiny in which the orchestra was joined by the BBC Singers and ENO Chorus. All of the playing and singing on the concert was exceptionally beautiful.

Since 1998, the BBC has run concurrently with the Proms a competition for pre-college composers called INSPIRE. The competition itself is the culmination of a whole series of localized events over the year. Each year there is a concert at which the winning works are presented. Over the years there has been some tinkering with exact format, but for some time now the concert, which is performed by the Aurora Orchestra, this year conducted not by its principal conductor, Nicholas Collon, but by Duncan Ward, who is himself a composer and a past winner of the Inspire competition, has contained only the winning works, not the highly commended ones as well. For the last few years, the concert has also included newly commissioned works from the previous year’s winning composers. In this year’s concert, which was given at the BBC Maida Vale Studios on August 13, the winning works were Alien Attack: Opening Sequence by Jacy de Sousa (born 2004), Melodie by Daniel Liu (born 2003), Cycle of the Sun by Madeleine Chassar-Hesketh (born2005), and Humans May Not Apply by Sasha Scott (born 2002). The newly commissioned pieces were Mare Tranquillitatis by Tom Hughes (born 2004), and Ambience by Isabel Wood (born 2000). Another winning work for chorus, Twilight by Helena Paish (born 2002), was performed on the BBC Singers concert on August 17. All of the compositions were on a level of quite impressive skill and maturity, and the playing was on a level that many, as it were, grown-up composers would just about kill to get.

The Late Night Prom on August 13, was billed as a “Late-Night Mixtape”, a “digital detox” whose contents “spanning repertoire from the 16th century to the present day” and dealing with the “the expansive themes of space, life, and death”, “with the rich, sinewy sound of the Northern Indian sarod running through it,” would “calm the mind and nourish the soul.” (In the words of Anna Russell, “I’m not making this up, you know.”). The selection of works included works by Arvo Pärt (Fratres–what else?), Max Richter (Vladimir’s Blues and On the Nature of Daylight), Ëriks Ešenvalds (Stars), Pëteris Vasks (The Fruits of Silence), Ola Gjeilo (The Spheres), Iain Farrington (Morning Song), Soumik Datta (Clouds), and John Taverner (The Lamb), along with works by Chopin, Bach, Lobo, Schubert, and some improvisation, apparently, by Soumik Datta (the sarod player) and Cormac Byrne (percussionist), bridging some of the gaps. The other players were pianist Martin James Bartlett, 12 Ensemble (a string orchestra whose artistic directors are Eloisa-Fleur Thoms and Max Ruisi), joined by the vocal ensemble Tenebrae. All of the new-agie, too cool for school, language was a little off-putting, but in fact most of the pieces (none of which was longer than three or four minutes) were quite good and good to hear, the sequence of them was interesting, the playing and singing was all fabulously beautiful, and, it was…sort of ..soothing….so….

The proms concerts are all available for a month on the BBC Sounds website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007v097.  The INSPIRE concert was recorded for later, date unspecified, broadcast on BBC Radio 3.

by Rodney Lister
Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Los Angeles

wasteLAnd Summer Academy Concert

On Saturday, August 10, 2019 wasteLAnd presented its first Summer Academy for Composition Concert at Art Share in downtown Los Angeles. The work of eight emerging composers was performed at this event with each having participated in an intensive course of study in contemporary music during the previous week. Their pieces were work-shopped with the musicians of the wasteLAnd ensemble and reviewed by the Academy faculty of Michelle Lou, Michael Pisaro, and Brian Griffeath-Loeb. A fine crowd filled the Art Share performance hall on a warm Los Angeles summer evening in the lively downtown Los Angeles Arts District.

The first participant premiere was To the dust of the well or They wore the sky on their chests a breath, a glance, a sign, (confiding a shadow), by Adam Zuckerman. A string trio consisting of a violin, viola and cello was on the stage, with electronic accompaniment played through the large speakers mounted above. The strings began the piece with soft, sustained tones, but this was overtaken by a low rumbling in the speakers that gradually increased in volume until the strings were only barely audible. After a few moments, the speakers went quiet, issuing just a few sporadic clanks and rattles, and this pause uncovered the soft sounds still coming from the trio. The reappearance of the musical tones and the intriguing harmonies of the strings quickly captured the attention of the listener, despite the hushed dynamic. After a short respite, the speakers again became active, pouring out what seemed to be a stream continuous white noise that once more covered up the strings. The cycle repeated, so that each time the noise ceased and the sounds of the trio re-emerged, one’s listening and focus automatically increased. The brain became conditioned to suspend aural attention when there was noise, as if waiting for the weather to clear, so that the musical tones could be given full concentration when they reappeared. To the dust of the well… is an interesting experiment in the engagement of listener perception by the alternation of loud noise and subtle musical sounds.

Luster was next, by Daniel Allas, and this featured a much larger ensemble that included bass clarinet, prepared guitar, percussion, euphonium and piccolo. Luster opened with a random series of solitary clicks that gradually increased in frequency. This was soon joined by a sustained ratcheting sound, filling the space with a wonderfully rhythmic atmosphere. Sharp piccolo riffs spiked through the air, adding to the free-form feel. A loud, sudden and sustained chord from the winds completely recast the texture, however. The prepared guitar, set flat on a table and bowed with a dowel, soon dominated with a series of rough, scratching sounds that immediately produced a sense of high anxiety. Just when it seemed unbearable, the guitar sounds ceased and a low fluttering came from the euphonium and bass clarinet. A soprano voice called out in a mournful wail, bringing the sense of distress to a maximum. The various parts began to drop out until only the low flutter of the winds remained before all sounds stopped suddenly. Luster fearlessly explores new trails into the unsettled territory of the powerfully distraught.

Evolvement II.B, by Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi followed and this began with the soft sound of an inverted metal bowl rubbed on a large square wooden surface. Airy sounds issued from the flute and clarinet while a low tremolo was barely heard from the viola. The speakers contributed some brief tones before dispensing a deep growl that gradually increased in volume. The instruments remained very soft although the air sounds from the flute were strongly audible and helped to create a ghostly atmosphere. A rubber ball dragged over a drum head and amplified contributed a loud fluttering sound that dominated the the unsettling texture, and added a powerful sense of menace. The instruments followed with a greater volume and the flute again was effective with the unlikely technique of rattling its keys. A hair-raising blast from the piccolo and the rising of the instruments in a great crescendo was heard, followed by the sudden cessation of all sound. Evolvement II.B is an instructive study in the building of tension through unexpected sounds made on standard instruments.

Webkitz, by Kelley Sheehan was preceded by a short explanation of the QR code that was attached to each concert program. At a certain point during the performance, those in the audience with cell phones were invited to take a photo of the QR code, and this would bring up a website that would allow individual interaction with the piece being. An overhead projection displayed a color-coded grid . A simple tapping rhythm was heard in the speakers, and as this repeated it increased in complexity. After a minute or two, a performer entered the stage and sat at the table holding a computer. By activating parts of the colored grid, as projected on the screen, additional rhythmic patterns were formed. The performer than rose from the computer table, crossed the stage, and began adding to the rhythms with a drum. This process occurred a total three times – a new performer arriving at the computer, adding some new rhythms from the grid, and moving to an acoustic instrument on stage, to add more notes. By now there was a great cloud of sounds – the rhythmic clicking in the speakers as well as drumming and mournful guitar sounds coming from on stage.

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by Paul Muller
Contemporary Classical

BBC Proms Watkins, Takemitsu, Glanert, Weinberg

One of the themes of this year’s Proms season is the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. As part of this celebration the BBC commissioned Huw Watkins to write The Moon for the BBC National Orchestra of Wales whose Composer-in-Association he has been since 2016. They presented the first performance The Moon, in their Prom concert on August 8. In this performance, conducted by Tadaaki Otaka, they were joined by the BBC National Chorus of Wales and the Philharmonia Chorus. Watkin’s work, setting texts of Shelley, Larkin, and Whitman, begins with the consideration of the moon as an object of wonder observed from the earth, but moves, with a fragment from Whitman about the moon viewing the dead after a battle, to the idea that the moon is an observer of earthly events. In its being a poetic anthology with a structure of seemingly episodic sections that turn out to be part of a tight and compelling overarching form, The Moon is following in a tradition going back to Britten’s Nocturne, and it’s material evokes the sound world of that piece as well. The writing for both chorus and orchestra is always sonorous and skillful. In the hall the lack of clarity of the diction of the chorus was problem, although it was less so in the recording on the BBC website.

The concert opened with a performance of Twill by Twilight by Toru Takemitsu, written in 1988 as a memorial piece for his good friend Morton Feldman. The work had been first presented on the Proms by Tadaaki and this orchestra in 2004. There is speculation that some of the texture of this 13 minute long piece is what the Twill of the title refers to, as well as being a possible allusion to Feldman’s interest in woven carpets. As might be expected, given both the composers involved, the work is meditative and highly non-directional.

The Prom on August 11, presented by The BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Smyon Bychkov opened with the UK premiere of Weites Land (‘Musik mit Brhams” for orchestra) by Detlev Glanert. The piece has a rather traditional shape, involving episodes of ever increasing intensity and speed leading to an explosive climax with a quiet aftermath which has a sense of receding into a distant, ever quieter, infinity. The material is all derived from the first eight notes of the tune of the first movement of the Brahms Fourth Symphony, and Glanert asserts that there are two voices, his (atonal) and Brahms (tonal), at work throughout the piece. Setting aside the question of exactly what “tonal” and “atonal” might mean, the two voices are not terribly clearly differentiated and neither strand of music is particularly distinctive on its own. All of the technical aspects of the work–the writing in and of itself, the writing for instruments, the orchestration, and so on, are pretty much beyond reproach and the trajectory of the shaping of the piece is clear, convincing, and compelling. So it is in a way extremely successful and impressive. For this listener, however, it is also not particularly memorable.

The first half of the concert also contained Glanert’s orchestration of Einsamkeit by Schubert. Schubert’s work, setting a poem by Johann Mayrhofer, is a long–just over twenty minutes–continuous song in six sections, each reflecting a stage of life. Glanert chose to use a Schubert sized orchestra–double winds, horns, trumpets, timpani, and strings–evoking Schubert’s orchestral writing as well. The singer for this work was Christina Gansch. She sounded wonderful. She returned, with a costume change, in the second half, which was the Mahler Fourth Symphony, where she was radiant in the finale.

The Prom on August 6, presented by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Dalia Stasevska, included, along with the Sibelius Karella Suite and the Tschaikovsky Sixth Symphony, the ‘Cello Concerto of Mieczyslaw Weinberg, the centennial of whose birth in being commemorated by several performances on this year’s Proms. The soloist for the concerto was Sol Gabetta.  Born in Poland, Weinberg, escaped the German occupation by fleeing to Russia. He was a protégé of Shostakovich, and survived the turmoil of the Stalinist purges, including his imprisonment, to live til 1996. The ‘Cello Concerto, written in 1948 but was held back by Weinberg until 1956 when it was re-orchestrated in performed with Rostropvich as the soloist. The work is in four movements. The first wistful melodic movement, is followed by a sort of klezmerish habanera. The third movement is vigorous and folky and features a long brilliant cadenza. The final movement starts vigorously, but returns to the beginning tune and its reflective character.  The performance was eloquent and convincing.

The performances are available for a month on the BBC Sounds website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007v097.

by Rodney Lister
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Dominique Schafer on Kairos (CD Review)

Dominique Schafer

Vers une présence réelle

Ensemble Proton Bern, Matthias Kuhn, conducter

Kairos CD 0015036KAI

Born in 1967, Swiss composer Dominique Schafer spent time in Paris and Boston before taking up his present academic position at Chapman University in California. This is his first monograph CD. Ensemble Proto Bern supplies the recording’s eloquent performances, illuminating intricate timbres and revelling in the rhythmic intricacies of Schafer’s music. 

While musical style and geography of scenes aren’t always complimentary, Schafer’s time in Paris is a clear point of departure for post-spectralist works Cendre, for bass flute and 8-channel electronics, and Ringwood, for clarinet and live electronics. Both flutist Bettina Berger and clarinetist Richard Haynes are estimable advocates who take extended techniques in stride. Microtones and colorful alternate fingerings are haloed by electronically deployed harmonic series.The varied, muscular gestural palette that ensemble works such as the title composition, Anima, and INFR-A-KTION possess suggests that Schafer’s time at Harvard may have imbued his work with more than a hint of East coast modernism. Whatever the source of his inspiration, Schafer’s is an attractive, polyglot musical language.  

Vers une présence réelle  demonstrates the variety Schafer seamlessly brings to bear. Verticals are frequently treated to intervals that fall outside of the equal temperament spectrum, coloring chords with tart microtones and overblown howls. Piano and harp, both playing in equal temperament, supply a contrasting harmonic spectrum. These are offset by half-step oscillations and repeated notes in the strings and dissonant trumpet fanfares. Surging wind harmonics, contrasted by wide-ranging piano arpeggiations and flurries of violin, populate the coda with echoes of the main body of the piece.   

The instrumentation of most of the pieces can be accommodated by standard instrumentation. However, INFR-A-KTION features lupophone, an extremely low oboe, played by Martin Bligginstorfer, and contraforte, a contrabassoon on steroids played by Elise Jacoberger.  The overall registral deployment of the piece sits low, providing a sepulchral environment in which to hear these portentous low winds to good effect. Strings arc overhead, playing angular filigrees in contrast to the bass register utterances.  

Vers une présence réelle provides an excellent introduction to the breadth of expression in Dominique Schafer’s music. One eagerly awaits future recorded documentation, perhaps of some of his orchestra music.

-Christian Carey

by Christian Carey
Classical Music, Composers, Concert review, Concerts, Contemporary Classical

Orchestra of St. Luke’s Robert DeGaetano Composition Institute

Robert DeGaetano (1946-2015)

In these days of swiping right and hooking up, having a long-term commitment is something special. So when the Orchestra of St. Luke’s founded the Robert DeGaetano Composition Institute with plans to carry on for 15 years, that is cause for celebration.  RDCI is funded by the estate of the Juilliard-trained pianist and composer Robert DeGaetano, who passed away in 2015.  Each year until 2033, four composers at the beginning of their career will be selected for the Institute. They’re given one-on-one guidance and instruction from a mentor composer (Anna Clyne in 2019) for several months, a week-long residency in New York during which they take part in professional development sessions, and a chance to work with the musicians of the OSL, workshopping their compositions and ultimately getting a public performance.

The Robert DeGaetano Composition Institute launched this year with four composers selected from a field of over 100 applicants: Liza Sobel, Jose Martinez, James Diaz, and Viet Cuong. On July 19, 2019, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Ben Gernon conducting, brought four new pieces to the public, performing a world premiere by each composer at The DiMenna Center. The program was a diverse collection of background and styles. If these works had any one thing in common, it was how well they all painted a visual picture, and created a sense of place with their music. 

Liza Sobel’s Sandia Reflections was inspired by a halting tramway journey into the mountains. Her work echoed the experience of the tram periodically lurching to a stop to allow oncoming traffic to pass. Sobel’s piece was cinematic in nature; melodic and cheerful, with robust use of brass, winds and percussion. Sporadic cascading motifs led to a conclusion with the kind of calm serenity that the composer, in her remarks before the performance, said that she experienced when she finally arrived to her mountain destination. 

In his comments to the audience, Jose Martinez confided to the audience that it was the first time any of his music was performed in New York. His En El Otro Lado / On the Other Side was a dramatic aural painting that opened with dark, mysterious chords, giving way to pizzicato strings and percussion which drove home a sense of urgency. After an intense and turbulent section that was punctuated by the insistent thud of the timpani, a rapid decrescendo brought the work to its conclusion; ending, effectively, with a measure of silence.

James Diaz’s Detras de un muro de ilusiones / Behind a wall of illusions was inspired by the work of a visual artist and a Beatles song. In his composition, dissonant sonorities in the strings created an aural canvas over which large waves of chords floated.

Viet Cuong’s idea for Bullish was sparked by a Picasso drawing in which the artist captured the essence of an animal with a simple line or two. OSL embraced the whimsey of opening tango of Cuong’s piece, with a varied texture characterized by muted trumpets. Over the course of the lively work, the rhythms morphed into increasingly irregular patterns. As the piece progressed, many of the orchestral elements were pared away, exposing several instruments in solo lines.

With his posthumous gift, DeGaetano created a legacy – one that will help 60 emerging composers over the next 15 years advance their careers.

by Gail Wein
CD Review, Composers, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Erika Fox – Paths (CD Review)

Erika Fox

Paths

Goldsfield Ensemble, Richard Baker, conductor

NMC Recordings

Once one hears Paths, the octogenarian Erika Fox’s first CD, their first reaction may mirror mine: one of incredulity. How is it possible that a composer this talented with such a distinctive and assured musical voice had to wait so long for a monograph recording? To their credit, NMC has been a strong advocate of female composers for a number of years; I’ve recently been enjoying their recordings of Elizabeth Lutyens’s music. Thank goodness they have partnered with the Goldfield Ensemble to present Fox’s work while she is still alive to hear the results.

Born in Vienna in 1936, Fox was a war refugee who moved as a child to England. Her music is strongly infused with cultural heritage; Chasidic chant plays a large role in its conceptual framework. A strong sense of linearity is offset by a piquant harmonic palette and lively rhythms. In addition to a deft hand with pitched instruments, the works on Paths display Fox’s imaginative sense of timbre in her use of percussion. Goldfield had to retain a large battery of instruments to realize the CD’s program. Ensemble member Kate Romano points out in personable and informative liner notes that traditional development isn’t deployed. Instead a single line will weave discontinuous musical arguments that don’t return for a recapitulatory visit. 

The CD begins withPaths Where the Mourners Tread,a substantial work in which the aforementioned linear narrative is passed from instrument to instrument. One gets the sense of wending through a labyrinth of contrasting textures, holding on to the aforementioned linear thread like breadcrumbs through the forest. Fox’s provides a delightful, mysterious sound world in which to get lost. This is equally true of Quasi una Cadenza, which contains beguiling writing for winds. A downloadable bonus track, Kaleidoscope, is equally varied and compelling.

Pianist Richard Uttley supplies an incisive and persuasive performance of the solo work On Visiting Stravinsky’s Grave at San Michele, where Fox embraces the influence of other composers. Blocks of material and incisive rhythms evoke Stravinsky, particularly his late dodecaphonic pieces. There is also a hint of Messiaen in the bird call-like cries of the upper line. Another piece indebted to a twentieth century composer is Malinconia Militaire, which is based on a poem that references Anton Webern’s Opus 4 songs. 

Café Warsaw 1944 closes the CD. It is a piece inspired by the Czeslaw Milosz poem “Café. All four, relatively brief, movements, are led by the percussion section. The poem’s discussion of “the quick and the dead” and the small distance between them once again inspires Fox to inhabit the work of the Second Viennese School, but pointillism and chromaticism are contrasted with repeated chords and arpeggiations from the piano and taut percussion lines. 

Fox’s music often seeks rapprochement with the past, addressing the experiences of her refugee childhood and Jewish background as well as the ghosts of midcentury concert music. Still, the manner in which the composer synthesizes these elements supplies vividness and urgency very much in keeping with present day concerns. The Goldfield Ensemble plays assuredly throughout, giving these underserved works excellent documentation. Now it is up to the rest of the musical world to take up Fox’s compelling music and make it much more widely known. One hopes this will happen forthwith. 

-Christian Carey

by Christian Carey
Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Festivals, Los Angeles

Dog Star 15 – Civil Twilight

The 15th annual Dog Star Orchestra series of concerts concluded with Civil Twilight, held at the CalArts Wild Beast and environs, presenting four pieces of experimental music. Three of the pieces were heard outdoors in the mild evening air, on this the second day of summer. Two of the pieces were keyed to local astronomical events – the setting of the sun and the positions of the stars occurring at exactly 8:00 PM on June 22, 2019. The entire concert was devoted to music that was both understated and sophisticated, inviting the audience to listen closely and carefully.

The first piece was to knowe the sprying of the dawenyng and the ende of the evening, the whiche ben called the two crepuscles (2019), by Ryan Seward. This had to start precisely at 8:10 PM on the outside lawn in order to coincide exactly with the point at which the sun was fully below the horizon. It was timed to last until 8:39 PM, the end of civil twilight – the point when light from the sun is considered to be no longer sufficient for ordinary outdoor activities. The players were scattered singly about the lawn and the audience joined them, having been encouraged to move about to experience the sounds in different locations.

A soft soprano voice was heard, coming from high above on a balcony. The woodwind players began a series of quiet bird calls and small bells were rung. A wide variety of sounds were made by the other players; a horn call, some stones rattling across a patio, a purring from some speakers and some softly spoken speech. By changing positions, listeners would come into hearing range of some players and out of earshot of others, so that the mix constantly changed according to location. By staying on the move, the effect was very much like a walk in the woods at sunset, accompanied by a convincing series of quiet forest murmurs. There was, of course, some ambient traffic sounds, but the ‘virtual forest’ seemed to displace this noise from the hearing. The piece gradually decreased in volume as the sun dipped further below the horizon, finally fading into silence at end of civil twilight. With to knowe the sprying of the dawenyng… Ryan Seward has succeeded using reticence and subtlety to create a tranquil organic soundscape that inspires the imagination despite the more irritating outdoor noises of our urban environment.

More quiet music was heard in the second piece on the program, For 5+ Musicians (2016), by Christine Burke. This was heard indoors and the musicians were arrayed in shallow arc at the front of the Wild Beast. The excellent acoustics of the space and lack of outside ambient noise allowed every detail to be clearly heard. For 5+ Musicians began with the striking of highly pitched cymbals followed by a soft electronic tone from the speakers. A low, sustained flute note floated out into the audience as whistling and breaths of air were heard in accompaniment. All was subdued and hushed, with nothing loud or dramatic. At length, a muted trumpet was heard playing a long tone, and as other woodwinds joined in the dynamics increased, but only slightly. Moments of total silence were often observed, adding to the general sense of tranquility. As the piece proceeded, the woodwinds sounded together in slight dissonance, but this was the only trace of tension. By the finish, air moving through the horns and woodwinds was all that was to be heard. For 5+ Musicians is a peacefully reserved work that exists on the edge of aural perception, inviting the listener to experience new and rewarding sonic territory.

pájaros cargando memorias (2018), by Sergio Cote Barco followed, with the musicians assembled on a high balcony outside the Wild Beast, above the grassy lawn. The audience filed outside in the dark to the terraced sitting area cut into the hillside, directly below the balcony. The piece began as a small cymbal sounded along with quiet musical tones and a soft soprano voice that called out into the night. The subdued mix of sounds created a mystical feel, and the texture was never more than sparse. Often only one or two instruments were heard at a time, and all the musical sounds were almost secretively hushed. The playing at this low level was very disciplined, yet sensitive. At times, the ambient outside noises crowded in and obscured the piece, but this only served to focus the listening and created a sort of adversarial context for the music. The soprano voices, with their sustained and ethereal tones carried well and provided a rallying point for the listening audience. pájaros cargando memorias ultimately prevailed against the banality of the ambient street sounds, drifting peacefully out into the darkness like a cloud of pleasant memories.

The final piece of the evening was Ophiuchus (2019), by Marta Tiesenga, and this was also performed on the outside lawn. Ophiuchus is the thirteenth sign of the Zodiac, representing the constellation of a ‘serpent bearer’. As part of the composing process for this piece, the exact disposition of the stars for the date and time of this performance were worked out, and various angles, vectors and relationships transposed into pitches and tones for the notated score. A group of seven acoustic instruments were situated in a corner of one of the buildings and a computer station with speakers placed a dozen yards away, across the lawn. A low, electronic humming was heard at the opening, followed by the solitary ringing of bells from a walkway high above the grass. As the instruments joined in, their sounds interacted with the electronics to create a series of intriguing and mystical sonic patterns. The crowd caught on to this, and soon arranged itself on the grass between the two sound sources to receive the full effect. The low, sustained notes of two double basses were most effective when they changed pitch slightly to initiate a new set of interactions with the speakers. More players appeared, holding small bells and walking about the space, softly ringing out a series of solitary notes. At times they seemed to congregate in one place and this added a bit of density to their sounds. As they dispersed their ringing diminished until all the sounds faded away. A long and reverent silence followed as the starry night seemed to prolong the musical spell. Ophiuchus is an imaginative work with an inventive composing process that captures the timeless human fascination with the stars.

by Paul Muller
Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Los Angeles

Southland Ensemble – Land Images

On June 14, 2019 the Southland Ensemble presented Land Images, an evening of experimental music at Automata Arts in Chinatown. The concert was part of the 15th annual Dog Star Orchestra series, presenting a dozen different new music concerts at various locations around Los Angeles through June 22. A full house packed the cozy spaces of Automata anticipating works by Christian Wolff as well as pieces by three contemporary composers.

The first piece on the program was Groundspace or Large Groundspace, by Christian Wolff and was performed outside Automata in Chung King Court. About a dozen performers carrying various instruments gathered in the center of the court and began by playing quiet, sustained tones. This had a remote and distant feel to it, with nothing fast or rhythmic to disrupt the gentle harmonies. The players then began to slowly disperse into the square, so that their changing positions altered the spatial perspective of the listeners. The tones were consistently sustained and changed every minute or so by signal from a saxophone arpeggio. Some of the players slowly circled the outside perimeter of the square, creating variations in the intensity of the sonic field and adding an element of suspense. The audience was also encouraged to move about among the musicians so that position became an important and unique element of the experience. Chung King Court has buildings rising on three sides and opens onto busy Hill Street so that ambient traffic noise at times dominated the mix. Music and street noise often alternated, and this was effective in shifting the context of the piece and focusing the listening. The musicians eventually regrouped and filed inside Automata, and the concentration of their instrument sounds reasserted a fully musical perspective at the finish.

Once inside the players began performing Sticks, also by Christian Wolff, and for this each player took up a handful of twigs and small branches. They set about breaking these and dropping the pieces noisily to the floor. The small space was soon filled with the crackling sound of breaking sticks. There was no effort to coordinate or organize this process, but the sounds could sometimes be perceived as rhythmic. The ‘timbre’ of the breaking sticks had a vaguely purposeful feel, and so invited a more industrial analogy. Towards the end of the piece, the performers began a warm and sustained humming that added a ceremonial flavor to the proceedings. Sticks has an organic and primal sensibility, as if we are witness to the every-day activities of some long-lost tribe.

(more…)

by Paul Muller
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

CD Review: Riot Ensemble

Speak, Be Silent

Riot Ensemble, Aaron Holloway-Nahum, conductor

Works by Chaya Czernowin, Anna Thorvaldsdóttor, Mirela Ivičević, Liza Lim, and Rebecca Saunders

Huddersfield Contemporary Records HCR20CD

2019


Riot Ensemble’s latest CD features five works by female composers who hail from a diverse group of countries: Israel, Iceland, Croatia, Australia, and the UK. Speak, Be Silentcomes at a time when, coinciding with overdue shifts in the broader culture, raising awareness of the abundant diversity of contemporary composers making vital music has taken on especial urgency. All of the pieces on Speak, Be Silent are recent; the earliest is from 2008. Thus, the CD also serves as a catalog of what vanguard composers are doing today.

Ayre: Towed through plumes, thicket, asphalt, sawdust and hazardous air I shall not forget the sound of, by Chaya Czernowin, incorporates all manner of noises alongside microtonal verticals and just a taste of the melodic line, often glissando, that its title suggests. It is a powerful piece in which Czernowin deploys a wide-ranging sonic palette with sure-footed trajectory. Ayre’s close sounds like the slamming of a plethora of recalcitrant, squeaky doors: a strongly articulated gesture of finality. 

Ró, by Anna Thorvaldsdottir, employs a more delicate palette, with sustained pitches building shimmering overtone chords that are punctuated by gentle solos and occasional articulations from the harp and the percussion section. Ró features sumptuous wind and string writing, with duets succeeding the aforementioned solos in sinuous counterpoint. Pacing is slow, deliciously so, and the final cadence serves as both harmonic and gestural closure.

Mirela Ivicevic’sBaby Magnify/Lilith’s New Toy is an acerbic piece with clangor at key points interspersed with uneasily spacious phrases. Ivicevic’s use of percussion as both a motor and for accentuation is effective. The piece builds to a plethora of sliding tones and wind multiphonics, serving as a convincing counterweight to a battery of chiming pitches and stalwart drums. 

The title work, by Liza Lim, is the most substantial on the CD. Cast in three movements, it is a chamber concerto for violin. Soloist Sarah Saviet plays impressively with nimble musicality and a silvery tone. Lim creates a shimmering, sinuous harmonic fabric. The orchestration is vivid. Lim provides each section of the ensemble a chance to interact with the soloist, who withstands brash brass interpolations and chattering percussion but firmly stands her ground, each interruption giving rise to an ever more virtuosic solo response. Finally, pitched percussion, winds and strings get their spotlight turns, nearly upending the soloist’s ever more vigorous cadenza. Just when you think that there will never be accord between ensemble and soloist, a heterophonic line develops between them, followed by a richly scored climax and a cadenza that serves as a scalar denouement.  

The recording concludes with Rebecca Saunders’ Stirrings Still III. Vertiginous harmonics are haloed by piano chords and icy woodwind countermelodies. Like Thorvaldsdottir, Saunders adopts a slow gait, but Stirrings takes on a pervasively pensive, rather than spacious, ambiance. About two thirds of the way through, sustained lines, rumbling brass, and timpani impart a degree of urgency, but this is soon banished to return to more or less the original unsettled demeanor, which gradually vanishes. 

The Riot Ensemble, conducted by Aaron Holloway-Nahum, plays skillfully throughout, attending to each score’s myriad details. it is worth noting that the disc’s aesthetic touches, from appealing artwork and riveting sound to an engaging liner notes essay by Tim Rutherford-Johnson, are potent reminders that a physical artifact trumps the current craze for booklet-less (information-less) and sonically compromised streaming. Speak, Be Silent is one of 2019’s best recordings and certainly one of its most culturally relevant ones as well. 

-Christian Carey

by Christian Carey