CD Review, early music, File Under?

Gesualdo Six – Queen of Hearts (CD Review)

Queen of Hearts

Gesualdo Six, Owain Park, director

Alasdair Austin, countertenor (final track only)

Hyperion Records, 2024

 

On Queen of Hearts, the low male vocal ensemble Gesualdo Six explores pieces devoted to queens, both the Virgin Mary (in her guise as Queen of Heaven), and queens from England and Continental Europe during the renaissance era. Some of the selections blur identities, linking the saintly actions of earthly monarchs with those of Mary. 

The Song of Songs, from the Hebrew Bible, has an interesting place in both sacred and secular music of the Renaissance. In liturgical pieces, it is an insertion that venerates the Virgin Mary. In secular motet-chansons, it is often incorporated to make a connection between virtuous secular queens and Mary. As is their usual mode of operations, Gesualdo Six present a well-researched and musically inspired program. The eminent musicologist Guy James prepared editions of the music sung on Queen of Hearts, making it a bespoke collection that reflects the most recent and respected editorial trends. 

 

The motet-chanson, particularly the regretz chansons, are a pivotal part of the program of Queen of Hearts. In the regretz genre, the beloved’s heart is broken because the desired one doesn’t reciprocate their affection or they aren’t available to each other. As James discusses in his excellent liner notes, the first regretz chansons were dedicated to Margaret of Austria, who had them collected in a large songbook, then called a chansonnier. Secret regretz, by Pierre de la Rue, begins in duet textures, eventually fanning out into four-voice polyphony. The poem’s author refuses to be defeated, asking for aid from fellow poets to raise his spirits. This response is against the grain of many regretz texts, suggesting that the genre didn’t cohere at first, exploring various themes before settling on just a few. 

 

Several regretz chansons were dedicated to Anne of Brittany, who throughout her life had a series of relationships end in heartbreak. Jean Mouton’s De tous regretz was likely written while the composer was at Anne’s court. Gesualdo Six plays up the antiphonal passages with a slight accelerando, while liquescent legato lines provide the piece’s moving conclusion.

 

Antoine de Févin is represented by Fors Seulement, with tight upper duet constructions offset by registrally dispersed lower voices. There are multiple settings that honor “Gentle Févin” after his passing. It is speculated that Dulcis amica dei by Johannes Prioris might have been one. The piece’s melody was popular enough to be used by other composers at the French court. Another piece by Prioris, this one likely dedicated to Anne of Brittany upon her passing, Consommo la vita mia, is even more attractive, with each phrase beginning with slowly articulated melodic lines and concluding with achingly slow. chordal descents. Prioris should be better known, and it is typical of Gesualdo Six’s programming that they include such composers alongside those more frequently programmed. Only one composer from Italy appears on Queen of Hearts, but Costanzo Festa’s Quis dabit oculis is a riveting extended motet that also mourns the death of Anne. Its doleful chords and a proto-fugue are given an expressive performance by the ensemble.

 

Anne Boleyn’s songbook contained a number of pieces by Joquin, in addition those by other continental composers. Josquin’s Mille Regretz is perhaps the most popular of the genre. One can readily hear why; it is exquisitely well-constructed, with an initial architecture of leaps eventually filled in to make for a seamless conclusion. Praeter rerum seriem is a Marian motet with canons, beginning from the bass, with text describing the visitation of Mary by the Holy Spirit. The second section begins with an upper duet that then accumulates, top-down this time, into six-part writing. A favorite of mine from the Boleyn songbook is Antoine Brumel’s setting of a devotion to Mary, Sub tuum praesidium. Homophonic duets in the upper voices are juxtaposed with polyphony that begins its rise from the lowest voices. The resulting harmonies are gorgeous. 

 

Two new pieces were commissioned for Queen of Hearts. One is by Gesualdo Six’s director, Owain Park, Prière pour Marie. The text is a prayer that was said to have been uttered by peasants about Mary Tudor when she was glimpsed traveling towards her wedding to Louis XII. “Mary on earth, Mary in the sky.” Park has a fine command of the polychords and chromatic tonal shifts frequently found in 21st century choral music. The piece’s declamation combines stacked verticals, and canons found amid other voices in free counterpoint. Its mood is portentous, as if the peasants have, by analogizing one queen to another, felt as if they have seen a divine vision. Plaisir N’ai plus by Nifea Cruttwell-Reade, is full of harmonic surprises, especially ones that resolve curiously against a pedal tone. In places, it appears that Cruttwell-Reade  is repurposing the chromatic cadences that occurred in the renaissance to function in their own polytonal idiom. 

 

The recording ends with one of the great pieces of the middle Renaissance, the Song of Songs setting Ego flos campi by Clemens non Papa. A seventh singer, the countertenor Alasdair Austin, is added to the performance. Perhaps Clemens’s best known piece, it is a beautiful treasure. Gesualdo Six plus one give a memorably expressive performance of it.

 

Queen of Hearts is both curated and performed with exquisite care. It is one of my favorites thus far of 2024.

 

Christian Carey

 

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

Neave Trio – Rooted (CD Review)

Neave Trio

Rooted

Chandos Records (2024)

 

Neave Trio – violinist Anna Williams, cellist Mikhail Veselov, and pianist Eri Nakamura – has recently made several imaginative recordings for Chandos. Rooted is influenced by traditional music and by Antonín Dvořák, who brought the concept of using your country of origin’s folk music in concert works to the United States and, in the case of one of the programmed composers, influenced those in the UK as well.

 

Bedrich Smetana (1824-1884) was thought of as the premiere Czech composer of his day. Piano Trio, Op. 15 (1857), was written in the midst of grief at the loss of his four-year old daughter Bedřiška. The first two movements, a sonata and a march-like scherzo, take on a mournful cast. After stricken music at its outset, the soaring tune in the finale seems transcendent. The piece is known to be a challenging example of the piano trio literature, but the members of Neave Trio perform it fluently and expressively. Particularly admirable are the inflections of dynamics and slight fluctuations of tempo, both to expressive ends. 

 

A composer of African descent on his father’s side and British on his mother’s, Samuel Coleridge Taylor (1875-1912) used American folk and vernacular melodies in his music, arranging spirituals from a set of piano pieces as Five Negro Melodies for Piano Trio (1906). “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” employs chromaticism and various borrowed sevenths to replicate the inflections a gospel choir would use to spice up their performance. “I Was Way Down Yonder” takes on the ambience of parlor music. “Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel” has a sheen of piano glissandos and corresponding slides in blues scales played by the strings. An octave-doubled descent through the blues scale is followed by an unadorned tutti major triad. “They Will Not Lend Me a Child” starts in a minor key blues, with chromatic adornments and colorful harmonies in the piano buoying a melody in the violin. A winsome countermelody in the cello makes for a supple, poignant duet. The piano adds echoes of both’s melodic gestures and then points them up with rolled arpeggios. Its conclusion moves into a major key with borrowed chords that creates a touching conclusion. The final movement,”My Lord Delivered Daniel” has a repeated refrain over barn dance rhythms. Its eventual destination is full of emphatic octaves underscoring quickly shift harmonies.

 

Joseph Suk studied with Dvořák, and his Petit Piano Trio, Op. 2, was written under the elder composer’s tutelage. Given its early status in Suk’s catalog, it is remarkably assured. A typical three-movement form, it has a boisterous sonata allegro, a gently dancing andante movement, and a vivace allegro movement that is the best of the three, an energetic conclusion that displays the technical and interpretative skills of the Neave Trio to best advantage.

 

The final work on the recording emphasizes the connection between French composers and Irish folk music: Frank Martin’s Trio sur des mélodies populaires irlandaises. The first movement briskly explores multiple pentatonic tunes. The second features a ballad, first played solo in the cello, then accompanied with modal harmonies in the piano, and finally explored contrapuntally by the entire trio. Almost inevitably, the last movement is a jaunty gigue with Martin’s characteristic impressionist harmonic inflections.

 

Rooted is a well-conceived program that Neave Trio executes with seamless ensemble coordination and distinctive musicianship. Recommended.

 

-Christian Carey

 

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

Zwilich Recorded by BMOP (CD Review)

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich: Symphony No. 5

Sarah Brady, flute; Gabriela Diaz, violin

Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Gil Rose, Music Director

BMOP/Sound 1098

 

Composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich turned eighty-five in April, and one of the many celebrations of her life and work is a recording by Boston Modern Orchestra Project. Directed by Gil Rose and featuring flutist Sarah Brady and violinist Gabriela Diaz as concerto soloists, it is a generous program of her music. The centerpiece is Zwilich’s Symphony No. 5 (2008), a powerful four-movement work that combines traditional formal structure with a musical language of a more recent vintage. 

 

Upbeat! (1998) opens the recording with a brief, sprightly overture that resembles its title, with neoclassical string motives and ebullient brass and percussion entrances juxtaposing in comedic fashion. Concerto Elegia for Solo Flute and Strings explores an entirely different emotion, that of mourning. The first movement, “Elegy,” introduces flutist Sarah Brady as its protagonist, with a fluid sound and emotive, but never bathetic, delivery of limpid runs and ardent crescendos. “Soliloquy” features a modal theme against poly-interval chords and another motive on the violin’s g-string. The music proceeds through a variety of melodies and embellishments that have a doleful demeanor. The “Epilogue” begins with diaphanous string verticals, and then a legato main theme that is offset by pizzicatos. Then the music shifts towards early jazz. The pizzicato theme recurs, but this time played arco, with the flute doubling it in octaves. The melodic doublings continue, with the rest of the strings going back and forth between pizzicato and sostenuto chords, and the piece ends in an apotheosis of major harmony. 

 

Still another set of moods, along with historical characters, is explored in Commedia dell’Arte for Solo Violin and Orchestra (2012). Hundreds of years ago, each of the Commedia characters were memorably deployed at the Venice Carnival. They have evolved over the centuries; in England, one can see a resemblance to them in Punch and Judy. Both Stravinsky and Schoenberg revived them in the 1910s for Petroushka and Pierrot Lunaire, and several composers have investigated the characters since. 

 

Zwilich depicts the commedia in four separate movements. Arlecchino (the Harlequin) is propelled by slaps in the percussion and a florid melody, with blue note glissandos, ricocheting back and forth between the soloist and strings. Alongside it are puckish pizzicatos and brawny octave punctuations. Columbina, the romantic interest of both Arlecchino and the Capitano is given appropriately heart-throbbing music and a high-lying solo line. Martial drumming accompanies Capitano as well as a brisk tune that mercurially shifts through various keys. The close of the movement is a long decrescendo of drumming: the captain marches away. Cadenza and Finale begins with bell sonorities, out of which a cadenza that coopts all three previous tunes is played with energetic brilliance. The orchestra rejoins in luminous fashion, bells signaling a final flourish from the violin and the piece’s repeated octaves to conclude. 

 

Symphony No. 5 opens with a Lydian motive and fortissimo brass chords. After the relatively chamber-like ambience of the concertos, tutti strings and tangy brass up the ante. The transition incorporates winds in tropes on the first theme. The second theme is a Beethovenian gesture, an oscillating minor third that recalls a different fifth symphony. Timpani and hand drumming add driving intensity, but it is short-lived, broken up by a brief interruption of soft winds and high violins. Again, the forte brass and Beethoven’s minor third return. This alternation repeats once more, the movement concluding piano.

 

The second movement is a scherzo, with arcing chromatic lines in strings and winds, timpani punctuations, and overlapping trumpet solos. This is succeeded by the theme in mid-register winds and then emphatic repeated octaves, a gesture in common with the concertos. The strings return to the fore with quick ascending lines, played with admirable coordination by BMOP. Winds and brass repeat terse phrases, while soloists ascend too. Vigorous percussion is unleashed, and repeated chords conclude the movement. It is the briefest, but most potent, of the symphony’s sections. 

 

The third movement is slow, alternating rigor and lyricism. It opens with a flute solo, once again in Lydian. Brass takes on a chordal role beneath altissimo register violins, which develop the flute melody into a breathless line, accompanied by downward arpeggios. Brass, snare drums and timpani are added to the proceedings as modal scalar passages are deployed in the strings. A general crescendo is brought to a halt, the texture thinning, punctuated by snippets of the arpeggiated descending line. A shift in pitch center moves the thematic material upward, helping to gather intensity. A sudden hush, and oboe and bassoon get their own solo turns. Sostenuto violins and violas return, as does the arpeggiated motive in solo clarinet and low strings. Softly, low register repetitions of the wind solos and repeated brass chords provide a final thematic utterance, and pizzicatos conclude the movement.

 

The finale begins another Beethoven allusion, the thrice repeated string gesture found in the Eroica Symphony. The bassoon and double flutes are pitted against repeated brass chords and cymbals, while the minor third motif, from previously, is heard again as an accompanying gesture. In the next section, horn stabs and sustained low trombones build the texture, while the violins play a wide-ranging chromatic theme. The strings then hold a long, high note while brass and percussion repeat the rhythmic ostinato that has undergirded so much of the movement, but this time with thunderous attacks. The violins return to their expansive melodic material, but at yet a slower pace, with rearticulations continuing to contrast it. The modal scales come back, descending first in strings and winds, then ascending in high violins. The symphony comes to a powerful conclusion with the repeating verticals and clangorous percussion in a slow ritardando. 

 

Zwilich is well-served throughout, both by soloists and BMOP under Rose. These are benchmark recordings of pieces in her catalog that show both her connection to tradition and eagerness to explore. As she celebrates her eighty-fifth birth year, one hopes that more pieces are forthcoming from Zwilich. Recommended.

 

-Christian Carey


by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?, Rock

Guided by Voices – “I Am A Scientist” (30th Anniversary Version)

Photo: Trevor Naud

Video: Guided by Voices: “I Am A Scientist,” 30th Anniversary Version

 

Guided by Voices celebrates the thirtieth anniversary of their album Bee Thousand with a remake of one of their early, most-beloved songs, “I Am A Scientist,” via Rolling Stone.

In an interview with RS, frontman and principal songwriter Robert Pollard describes “I Am A Scientist” and Bee Thousand as follows:“The song and the album opened the door for me and allowed me to play rock music for a living.” Prior to that, he was a science teacher.

Guided by Voices

Strut of Kings

GBV Inc. (2024)

The ever-prolific Pollard and band have released dozens of titles. Their most recent recording, Strut of Kings, streeted late last month. Pollard is joined by guitarists Doug Gillard and Bobby Bare, Jr., bassist Mark Shue, and drummer Kevin March in the current iteration of Guided by Voices, which debuted in 2017 and has proven a durable unit.

The opener, “Show Me the Castle,” has a slow, crunching guitar riff over which Pollard sings the first verse laconically, the second double-tracked with quirky interval relationships. The band double times in the chorus while Pollard’s line remains in the original tempo. A flute synth interlude leads into the third verse, which is adorned with a different vocal harmony, followed by a brief burst of sustained guitar. This moves directly into the next song, “Dear Onion,” which is played in a loping mid-tempo groove of interlocking rhythm guitars. Unlike “Show Me the Castle,” which is built up in multiple sections, “Dear Onion” is typical of Pollard’s more aphoristic song craft, in which an entire narrative can be found in under two minutes and the skin of an onion.

Even by the elliptical standards of Pollard’s titles and lyrics, “Olympus Cock in Radiana,” which includes the phrase “Strut of Kings” in the lyrics, is one of the more unusual ones. Power chords speed up and slow down, with Pollard’s voice serving as the eye in the hurricane. “Caveman Running Naked” is another weird title for a tuneful song, with March’s brusque fills offsetting the guitars’ duet breaks and Pollard’s quick delivery. The coda overlaps open string arpeggiations in a marked contrast to the rest of the song. “Leaving Umbrella” is led by a sinuous vocal, the band punctuating it with emphatic downbeats.

“Timing Voice” embodies the grandeur of seventies prog, incorporating a Romantic chord progression and a guitar solo that channels Steve Howe. “Fictional Environment Dream” is another standout, with duet vocals on a memorable chorus. “Serene King” and “Bicycle Garden” deliver a one-two punch to conclude the album, with its best hooks and most energetic performances from Pollard.

Some artists creatively dry up as they age, others flourish. Pollard is among the latter camp, and Strut of Kings is ample evidence. While Bee Thousand and other earlier albums should still play a part in live set lists, Guided by Voices also has memorable new songs to play.

-Christian Carey

by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?, Piano, Twentieth Century Composer

Donald Berman plays Ives (CD Review)

Donald Berman

Ives

Avie, 2024

 

Pianist and scholar Donald Berman has made a special inquiry into the music of American hyper-modernist composers, Charles Ives chief among them. This year marks the sesquicentenary of Ives’s birth, and Berman celebrates the occasion with an Avie CD of the original piano version of St. Guadens (“The Black March”), best known as one of the movements of the orchestra piece Three Places in New England, and his own scholarly edition of the totemic Piano Sonata No. 2, Concord Mass., 1840-1860, usually known by its nickname, the “Concord Sonata.”

 

One of the challenges of these pieces is the importance of spatiality in Ives’s approach to composition. In the liner notes, Berman acknowledges this, stating the goal of creating “three-dimensional” versions of the programmed works. In a two-channel stereo recording of a stationary piano, one cannot hope to mirror the spatiality of the orchestral version of Three Places in New England, where voices move through the orchestra and are bent in a simulacrum of the doppler effect. The piano score for St. Gaudens attempts this through shifts of register, texture, tempo, and dynamic that provide impressive contrasts. Civil War era songs and one by Stephen Foster are quoted. St. Gaudens is named after the statue on Boston Common of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, the first of all African-American soldiers. Their history was a bloody one, and, in a moving performance, Berman leans into the bellicose sections and allows for the softer ones, particularly the diaphanous coda, to emerge as wisps of sound.

 

St. Gaudens is a fine introduction to Ives’s approach at the piano, but the Concord Sonata presents his aesthetic writ large. Each of the four movements is dedicated to American transcendentalists: Emerson, Hawthorne, the Alcotts, and Thoreau. Transcendentalism was an important philosophical trend that shaped the thought of many Americans: philosophers, poets, novelists, artists, and, especially in Ives’s case, musicians. His concept of transcendentalism in music involves the aforementioned soundworld, as well as liberal quotation of sacred and secular tunes, often overlapping. At three quarters of an hour long, the stamina required by the piece is most formidable. 

 

Berman possesses both the virtuosity and interpretative acumen to give the sonata one of its most compelling recordings to date. “Emerson,” the sprawling eighteen-minute long first movement, could easily sound amorphous, but the pianist finds the formal boundaries and grounding lines in its diverse material. Some performers of Ives, perhaps giving recourse to the cranky elements of his biography, don’t understand the musicality that can be brought to bear instead of stentorian caricature. Indeed, Berman’s performance of “Emerson” captures dynamic nuances that few others adopt. In “Hawthorne,” Berman prioritizes bold rhythmic cross-accentuations and dramatic shifts from impressionist-tinged solos to a dissonant passage from one of Ives’s favorite songs, “They Are There.” There is a fair bit of proto ragtime in the latter part of the movement, as well a march filled with multiple quotes shifting kaleidoscopically. It ends with a bold, ascending chromatic scale.

 

“The Alcotts” is the briefest of the four movements, balancing hymnody, parlor piano of a Scottish cast, and a reharmonized rendition of the motive from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. There is also a melody often used by Ives, “the Human Faith” theme. The final movement, “Thoreau,” begins with the diaphanous music that Ives often uses to depict walking in nature, in this case, likely Thoreau’s beloved Walden Pond. In a gradual buildup, whole tone scales vie against chromaticism, and the Beethoven 5th Symphony motive returns to announce the final section. The coda brings the piece back to the Walden Pond music, as if a ruminative walk has found Thoreau returning to his cabin. Berman’s keen sense of molding frequent contrasts into a narrative concludes the piece with a thoughtful portrait of the most emblematic transcendentalist.

 

Berman’s Ives CD is one of my favorites thus far in 2024. Highly recommended.

 

  • Christian Carey  

 

  



by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?, Piano, Twentieth Century Composer, Violin, Vocals

Hannigan and Chamayou Perform Messiaen (CD Review)

Messiaen

Barbara Hannigan, soprano

Bertrand Chamayou, piano

Charles Sy, tenor; Vilde Frang, violin

Alpha (ALPHA1033, 2024)

 

Soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan is an extraordinarily talented and versatile performer. Bertrand Chamayou is a superlative player of the French repertoire. Putting  the two together in a recital of vocal works by Olivier Messiaen is inspired programming. The CD’s gestation is detailed in Hannigan’s program note, which describes the two artists’ first meeting and subsequent decision to collaborate. The soprano’s longtime duo partner, Reinbert de Leeuw, was too ill to continue performing, and by the time that Messiaen was recorded, it was after his passing. The sessions were done on de Leeuw’s piano at his home, a fitting tribute. Hannigan’s first impression of Chamayou’s playing was its “liquescent legato,” which she would emulate when they performed. This is certainly the case on Messiaen, where the soprano’s sound seems to celebrate a sense of luxuriant line.


The program consists of two song cycles, Chants de Terre et de Ciel (1938) and Poèmes pour Mi (1937), and the scene La Mort du Nombre (1930). All have texts written by the composer, with imagery and reference points taken from the New Testament. Chants de Terre et de Ciel, “Songs of Earth and Heaven,” is substantial, containing six songs but lasting over a half hour. The music celebrates the birth of his only son, Pascal. It begins with Bail Avec Mi, (pour ma femme), “A Pact with Mi (for my wife).” Mi was Messiaen’s nickname for his wife Claire Delbos, a composer in her own right whose works he championed. It has the quality of a recitative, the piano playing birdsong adornments. The rest of the cycle concerns Pascal, in the next three songs as a celebration of his arrival and life. The last two songs take a turn. Minuit pile et face (pour la Mort), “Midnight Heads and Tails (for Death),” is a nightmarish view of death, and it is followed by an ecstatic vision of the afterlife, Résurrection (pour le jour de Pâques), “Resurrection, for Easter Day.” These last two might seem incongruous, but what parent doesn’t fear the death of their child? And Messiaen devotedly looks to the promise of the Resurrection; he hopes and trusts that it will be experienced by his child. 

 

Poèmes pour Mi is dedicated to Delbos. It is about their romantic love and, as the cycle proceeds, a sense of the agape love that embodies both families on earth and the family of believers in union with the divine. The nine songs are split into two books, the first consisting of four and the second of five. This helps to underscore the move from eros to agape, from earthly to spiritual love. Messiaen recommended that the part be for a dramatic soprano, which is not how I would describe Hannigan’s voice. However, she declaims the forte passages strongly without ever pushing, maintaining the aforementioned liquescent legato. The piano part requires frequent shifts in demeanor, as Messiaen’s predilection for composing blocks of sound rather than formal throughlines is omnipresent. Possessing a seemingly endless reservoir of resources, Chamayou provides a different touch and timbre for each new section. There are several recordings of this cycle that I admire. In my estimation, Hannigan and Chamayou’s rendition has significant differences in approach but equals the benchmark recording by Phyllis Bryn-Julson and Mark Markham (Music and Arts 912). 

 

La Mort du Nombre (The Death of the Number) includes two guest artists, tenor Charles Sy, a frequent collaborator of Hannigan’s, and violinist Vilde Frang, acquainted with Chamayou but new to working with the soprano. Both acquit themselves memorably in this comparative rarity from Messiaen’s early catalog. In the part of the Second Soul, Sy plaintively sings a text floridly rich with allegory about being kept distant from God. The First Soul, sung by Hannigan, urges her counterpart to take courage and stay the course, gently declaiming a recitative of koan-like aphorisms. Chamayou is then given a virtuosic part to accompany Sy. Frang follows with an interlude that is accompanied by music in the piano filled with the coloristic harmonies Messiaen used to represent resurrection. Hannigan joins, singing an arioso over whole-tone arpeggiations from the instruments, the poetry describing “an eternal spring.” La Mort du Nombre betrays its youthful naivete in places, but it also reveals a number of musical and textual reference points that would remain constants for Messiaen’s entire career. Well worth reviving.

 

The recording is distinguished by sterling production values, affording the performers a resonant, yet not overly reverberant, acoustic, that captures even the most subtle dynamic shifts. One hopes that Messiaen is just the beginning of the musical partnership of Hannigan and Chamayou. It is one of my favorite CD’s thus far in 2024.

 

-Christian Carey, Sequenza 21


by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?, Orchestras, Twentieth Century Composer

Falletta Conducts Foss on Naxos (CD review)

Lukas Foss – Symphony 1

Amy Porter, Flute; Nikki Chooi, Violin

Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, JoAnn Falletta, conductor

Naxos American Classics

 

Lukas Foss (1922-2009) was an omnivorous composer who, over the course of his career,  went through multiple style periods. When he was a teenager, he studied with Hindemith at Yale and then made close contacts at the Berkshire Music Center (now Tanglewood) with Serge Koussivitzky, Aaron Copland, and Leonard Bernstein (a lifelong friend and supporter). In the 1940s, his music resembled the Americana and neoclassical styles being pursued by a plethora of American composers. In Ode (1944, revised 1958) Foss clearly adopted Americana’s signatures, with thunderous brass and timpani, and intricate string and wind lines. There are tonal centers, but ones elaborated by polytonal chords. While one could imagine this kind of material sounding triumphal, there is instead a portentous atmosphere, and with good reason. Foss was inspired to write Ode to lament the loss of Allied soldiers during the Second World War. On this Naxos CD, JoAnn Fallatta leads the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra in a muscular performance with brilliant tone and clear balancing of the various sections.

Photo: David A. Beloff

Three Early American Pieces (1944-1945, orchestrated in 1989) finds Foss returning to early material, three pieces for violin and piano. Rather than score the work in his late style, Foss returned to the sound world of his early music. No. 1 Early Song: Andante is reminiscent of the neo-classicism of Hindemith, with paired flutes playing an introduction followed by a supple violin solo accompanied by modal writing in winds and strings that concludes with a propulsive dance section. No. 2 Dedication: Lento has a pastoral quality. Vaughan Williams is not a composer usually associated with Foss, but there is more than a whiff of The Lark Ascending in Early Song. No. 3, Composer’s Holiday: Allegro, in an obvious nod to Copland’s Rodeo (1942), is an ebullient hoe-down. In all three, violinist Nikki Chooi plays the violin solo part with artful phrasing and ebullient demeanor.

 

The First Symphony (1944) was written (as was Ode) during a residency at the MacDowell Colony. It is the apotheosis of Foss’s Americana and neoclassical period. The piece is conservatively made, with four movements that correspond to those expected in a symphony by Mozart or Beethoven: The first movement has an andantino introduction followed by an allegretto sonata form, the second is an adagio, the third a scherzo, and the finale mirrors and recalls the first movement, with an andante introduction followed by an allegro finale. Many American neoclassicists employed tried and true formal designs, but the harmonies and rhythms that caught their ear were decidedly from the twentieth century. There is an interesting dichotomy in Foss’s First Symphony, between Hindemith’s sense of balance and Stravinsky’s zest for innovation. Adding a bit of Americana á la Copland, and Foss provides a comprehensive picture of his influences in the mid 1940s. The symphony is a stalwart addition to the mid-century  repertoire. Falletta leads the Buffalo Philharmonic in an ideal rendition of the piece.

 

Renaissance Concerto comes from the 1980s, when Foss had moved through two decades of experimentation at UCLA and Buffalo and begun to write works in a postmodern style that channeled early music. The composer likened it to a “handshake across the centuries.” The soloist, flutist Amy Porter, is a marvel, providing the microtonal inflections, frequent trills, and liquescent phrasing that this piece requires. She has an extraordinarily beautiful tone as well. The first movement, Intrada, begins with a long cadenza followed by a dancing section based on the English song The Carman’s Whistle, which was arranged for harpsichord by William Byrd. The cadenza returns and then dance and flute solo are juxtaposed, with the rest of the orchestra first shadowing and then boisterously accompanying the soloist. It ends with a delicate and slow passage for the soloist alone. The second movement, Baroque Interlude, is based on L’Enharmonique, a harpsichord piece by Rameau. The flutist plays a set of variations on the tune that twist and turn through a series of harmonic shifts and embellishments, while the orchestra provides a puckish accompaniment. The third movement, Recitative, is based on the lament aria from Monteverdi’s Orfeo. Rife with pitch bends and chromaticism, it replicates the keening of Orpheo in the opera, when he has realized that Eurydice has died. Porter and the orchestra provide a captivating rendition of the section. The finale, Jouissance, is based on a bawdy round from early seventeenth century composer David Melvill. Percussive extended techniques are added to the flute’s kit bag of extensions, and feisty lines from Porter contend with a web of counterpoint from the orchestra. A fugue rife with syncopation supplies the piece’s climax, after which the flute and tambourine provide a boisterous duet. The piece concludes with tightly overlapping melodies in the ensemble while the flute, with a bevy of ornaments, deconstructs the tune.

 

Like many of the chameleon-like identities Foss adopted, the concerto provides a window into his perspective on music of the past. In most of his late music (apart from a few pieces, like Solo Observed, that dally with minimalism), he approaches earlier composers’ music with curiosity, interested in mining their works’s capabilities and putting his unique stamp on the results. One hopes that Falletta revisits Foss on recording – often.

 

-Christian Carey

by Christian Carey
Contemporary Classical, Los Angeles, Opera

Synchromy – My Wings Burned Off

Mimi Hilaire

On June 8, 2024 Synchromy presented a workshop reading of My Wings Burned Off, an opera by Jason V. Barabba opera with libretto by June Carryl. This was in conjunction with the 2024 Opera America conference held at various venues all around Los Angeles. The conference is a place for opera musicians, composers, conductors and administrators to meet each year to exchange ideas, techniques and to pitch new productions. This reading of My Wings Burned Off was held in the Grand Rehearsal Hall at the USC Colburn School of Music downtown. A twelve-piece string orchestra was on hand as well as Mimi Hilaire, the soprano soloist, all conducted by Dr. Renee Baker.

The opera follows the heartbreaking story of Oluwatoyin Salau, a young black woman from Tallahassee. She became a leader in the Black Lives Matter movement and who was ultimately murdered at the hands of a black man. Librettist Carryl writes “I want other Black girls and women to know they matter. It meant everything to me that Jason wanted to tell her story again in this beautiful, brutal opera. Oluwatoyin Salau deserved better; she, they, we deserve better.”

My Wings Burned Off is a monodrama in one scene with ten parts. This performance included all of the singing and the orchestral score but there was no staging, scenery or acting. In any case, the music and libretto alone have sufficient power to sustain the relentless story line. Mimi Hilaire displayed an impressive combination of stamina and control, singing for the better part of an hour. The string orchestra included a number of leading Los Angeles musicians and Ms. Hilaire, at times, had to work to keep the vocals in the foreground. The soprano sings the dramatic libretto and the orchestra comments and adds appropriate atmospherics as the text unfolds. There is generally an abstract distance between the voice and the strings, and this highlights the severity of the story line.

The point of view is first person, with furious lines from Ms. Salau such as “What do I got to do to be human? What I gotta do? I can’t go nowhere, I can’t do nothing, can’t say nothing without being BLACK.” Frustration and anger cry out everywhere in the strings, effectively multiplying the dramatic impact of the text. The voice sings “The scream in my throat becomes a roar.” and the accompaniment echoes with a series of high, searing pitches. Whenever Salau mentions her mother, however, the strings turn soft and supportive. The story unfolds in seemingly disjointed sections, and this adds to the tension. This piece hammers the heart like a Baroque Passion, the words and the music delivering unsparing anguish.

For this reading, the full libretto was printed in the concert program and this was a great help. The vocals often occupied the same register as the many accompanying strings and Ms. Hilaire’s rich voice often blended into the mixture. The orchestra was just a few feet from the soloist and a dozen or so feet from the audience, so in an actual opera hall there will likely be enough sonic separation for better clarity. But unless the story is well known in advance by the listener, it would be a challenge to apprehend the dramatic arc without closely following the text. A printed libretto or captions on a projection screen would allow reading the words while hearing the music. This was the most effective way for me to follow the story and appreciate its power.

My Wings Burned Off is as an unflinching look at the hard reality that prevails for young Black activist women in our society today. Oluwatoyin Salau deserved better, as this opera powerfully testifies.

Jason Barabba and June Carryl

Photos courtesy of Synchromy

by Paul Muller
Concert review, Rock

Horse Lords in Seattle

Horse Lords (Owen Gardner, Sam Haberman, Andrew Bernstein, Max Eilbacher) at The Vera Project, July 2, 2024 by Michael Schell

The noted avant-fusion band Horse Lords is in the midst of a West Coast tour that brought them to Seattle Center’s Vera Project Tuesday night, an opportunity to sample their distinct brand of polyrhythmic, phase-shifting instrumental rock—live and in full volume.

The group originated in Baltimore a decade ago, configured as a power trio fortified by looper pedals and a fourth musician (Andrew Bernstein) who alternates between alto sax and an additional set of drums. Their reputation, like their residence, has spread across North America and Europe in the ensuing years, with three of their members now residing in Germany, and the band garnering approbation for its glitchy, minimalist music that’s more intense than The Necks and more complex than Carl Stone—resembling what Steve Reich might have turned into if he’d been a rock-n-roller instead of a classically-trained composer.

Vera Project configured its modest-sized performance space like a dance floor, leaving most of it seatless, presumably in expectation of hosting a conventional rock band with an audience eager to dance. But disco regimens are hard to maintain when the tunes are in 6 and 7 time—or in one instance progressing from 5 to 3 to 2 beats per measure, with a repeating saxophone lick that was one note shorter than the band’s meter so that it eventually cycled its way back into sync. This is music designed mainly to be listened to. And pulling it off requires a band that’s extremely tight: a prerequisite amply fulfilled as the musicians traversed selections from their recent Comradely Objects, The Common Task and As It Happened: Horse Lords Live albums.

Opening the program was a group you’re more likely to encounter at Northwest Folklife than at a rock concert: the Pacific Northwest Sacred Harp Singers, who specialize in a tradition of a cappella protestant hymnody that originated in New England, where it was associated with names like William Billings (a contemporary of Mozart) and a “primitivist” sound, characterized by successions of root position chords, and simple polyphonic lines in the lower voices that cycle through three- or four-note cells drawn from a gapped or pentatonic scale. The genre quickly spread to the southern states where it came to be known as shape-note singing, after the customized notation designed to facilitate solfege, as used in the famous 1844 anthology The Sacred Harp). The music also acquired a jubilant, Africanized vocal style that evinces a common connection with modern gospel groups. The tradition also seems to have informed the distinctive style of Polynesian congregational singing captured in mid-20th century recordings, and whose musical characteristics strongly suggest the intervention of American missionaries, as its sound is quite distinct from the monophony of indigenous hula dances and the heightened speech of Māori haka songs.

Since its move to Seattle Center in 2007, Vera Project has lurked in the shadow of neighboring McCaw Hall and Climate Pledge Arena with a reputation as a quirky and somewhat amateurish community arts center with little experience attracting performers with an international following. But its current season has seen an increase in notable concert activity, and the Horse Lords event managed to draw a crowd of about 70 people, including young families with children—pretty impressive for this kind of music on a non-descript Tuesday night. The band does have a following at the intersection of the new music and indie/DIY communities, and the concert benefited from promotional support by The Stranger‘s Dave Segal and KBCS-FM’s Flotation Device show. But it’s still encouraging to see that this venue might be on its way toward establishing itself as an alternative in Seattle’s Lower Queen Anne neighborhood to The Royal Room in Columbia City, the Chapel Performance Space in Wallingford and the Neptune Theatre in the University District.

Pacific Northwest Sacred Harp Singers at The Vera Project, July 2, 2024 by Michael Schell

by Michael Schell
CD Review, Chamber Music, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard and Quatuor Bozzini – Colliding Bubbles: Surface Tension and Release (CD Review))

Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard and Quatuor Bozzini – Colliding Bubbles: Surface Tension and Release (Important)

Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard is a composer based in Copenhagen. On his latest EP he joins forces with the premiere Canadian string quartet for new music, Quatuor Bozzini, to create a piece that deals with the perception of bubbles replicating the human experience. In addition to the harmonics played by the strings, the players are required to play harmonicas at the same time. At first blush, this might sound like a gimmick, but the conception of the piece as instability and friction emerging from continuous sound, like bubbles colliding in space and, concurrently, the often tense unpredictability of the human experience, makes these choices instead seem organic and well-considered. As the piece unfolds, the register of the pitch material makes a slow decline from the stratosphere to the ground floor with a simultaneous long decrescendo.  The quartet are masterful musicians, unfazed by the challenge of playing long bowings and long-breathed harmonica chords simultaneously. The resulting sound world is shimmering, liquescent, and surprising in its occasional metaphoric bubbles popping.

  • Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey