Tag: BMOPsound

BMOP, CD Review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Dalit Warshaw on BMOP (CD Review)

Dalit Warshaw

Sirens

Carolina Eyck, theremin

Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Gil Rose, conductor

 

Dalit Warshaw (b. 1974) is a multi-threat artist. As a composer and pianist, she has created a distinguished career. Her first orchestra piece was commissioned when she was eight years old, and this prodigious distinction has been followed by a body of work that encompasses music for orchestra, chamber ensembles, vocalists, choruses, and Letters of Mademoiselle (2018), a staged song cycle for the talented soprano Nancy Allen Lundy. 

 

The theremin has become an important part of her work. Warshaw has performed the instrument in high profile settings, including appearances with the New York Philharmonic. Sirens is a recording of her theremin concerto and two other orchestral pieces, performed by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, conducted by Gil Rose. 

 

Responses (2016) is a triptych that reflects upon three of Brahms’s Intermezzos, piano repertoire that Warshaw has studied. Originally composed for solo piano and performed by Warshaw, it has been transformed into a work for large forces that sounds idiomatic in its instrumental writing. Indeed, Warshaw’s orchestration deftly captures both the sehnsucht of romanticism and her own aesthetic, which encompasses both neo-classical and mainstream contemporary classical elements. While the pieces themselves are earnestly serious (as was Brahms in his later years), one can have a bit of fun with the following listening game: without hunting down program notes, see if you can figure out from which intermezzo each movement takes its inspiration. 

 

Camille’s Dance (2000) is named after visual artist Camille Claudel, whose sculptures La Valse and La Fortune grace the cover and interior of the BMOP recording’s booklet. It is a stirring piece, rife with dissonant harmonies and muscular gestures that epitomize the striking characters depicted in Claudel’s sculptures, as well as her fraught relationship with Auguste Rodin. 

 

The soloist for Sirens is the thereminist Carolina Eyck. It is a three movement work that is inspired by Clara Rockmore and, of course, by the singing duo of temptresses found in Homer’s Odyssey, seen through the vantage point of Franz Kafka’s parable “The Silence of the Sirens.” The theremin was taken seriously as an instrument in part because of Rockmore’s advocacy. Eyck has explored an expansion of its capabilities with the Etherwave Pro instrument, which has an extended bass range. She also uses octave pedals to further extend the theremin’s compass. 

 

Rockmore’s first instrument was the violin, and her theremin performances reflected this; several of the pieces in her repertoire were transcriptions of violin repertoire. Thus, the opening movement of Sirens is titled “Clara’s Violin,” which includes thematic material based on her life story and also themes that are ciphers of names: Clara, Leon Theremin, her partner and the inventor of the eponymous instrument, and the KGB, whose agents hounded and even kidnapped Theremin. One needn’t know any of this to appreciate the abundant vitality and craft of the movement. Warshaw’s own experience as a thereminist and her close collaboration with Eyck have yielded a versatile and challenging solo part that belies the notion of the instrument as being limited to special effects and transcriptions. 

 

The second movement uses the Kafka story as a touchstone, with a stirring duo between theremin and piano that reminds us of the two-against-one scenario that Odysseus endured.  The third movement is a wild ride with glissandos galore, a theremin specialty, set alongside a fugue that once again employs ciphers of names as its thematic material: “Theremin” as its subject, with “Clara” and “Dalit” used as two countersubjects. The combination of these two elements shows Eyck and her bespoke electronics to best advantage. It also highlights the extraordinary facility of BMOP’s musicians. Careful preparation and the dynamic leadership of Rose are clear in the performances of all three of the programmed pieces, but the jubilation with which the concerto is rendered makes it a strong finale to a thoroughly engaging recording. Recommended. 

 

-Christian Carey

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

Two Recordings by David Felder (CD Review)

David Felder

Jeu de Tarot

Irvine Arditti, violin; Ensemble Signal, Brad Lubman, conductor; Arditti Quartet

Coviello CD COV91913

David Felder

Les Quatre Temps Cardinaux

Laura Aikin, soprano; Ethan Hesrchenfeld, bass;

Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Gil Rose, conductor

BMOPsound CD 1069

David Felder has taught for a number of years at SUNY Buffalo, running the June in Buffalo Festival and mentoring countless contemporary composers in the school’s illustrious graduate program. His own works are multi-faceted, incorporating muscular gestures, modernist harmonies, innovative timbres, and, oftentimes, electronics. Felder’s recent music is given sterling performances on two CDs, one of his chamber music on Coviello and another of his orchestra piece Les Quatre Temps Cardinaux on BMOPsound.

The Coviello disc consists of three works that feature violinist Irvine Arditti. Its centerpiece, Jeu de Tarot, a chamber violin concerto based on seven of the twenty-two main tarot cards, reveals a mystical side to Felder’s music. Each movement is an interpretation of the character on its card – The Juggler, the Fool, the High Priestess, et cetera. Thus, the musical surface is multifaceted, unspooling a variety of characteristic textures. Arditti performs the solo part with laser beam incisiveness and Signal supplies comparable clarity, performing the piece’s interlocking rhythms with impressive coordination. Some sections of the piece, such as its finale “Moonlight,” explore a mysterious ambiance akin to Expressionism. Here, Arditti’s tone takes on a supple quality. He dovetails with the winds to provide intricate counterpoint.

The Arditti Quartet contributes Netivot, a work for strings and electronics, to the disc. On Felder’s website, you can see the optional video component, which adds another layer to the piece. By itself in two channels, there is considerable antiphony and with this setting one can only imagine how immersive the piece must be live. The recording also has an SACD layer which allows for surround listening, an engaging adventure that gets the listener closer to being there.

At times, string harmonics and pizzicatos meld with synthesized parts. Elsewhere, the strings and electronics trade registers. The overall effect is one of extensive integration of the elements into a “super-instrument” that swirls colorfully. Irvine Arditti concludes the disc with a solo piece, Another Face. Motoric ostinatos, mercurial leaps, and microtonal inflections contribute to an overarchingly variegated impression. Arditti plays with virtuoso technique and a questing manner.   

Joined by soprano Laura Aiken and bass Ethan Herschenfeld, Boston Modern Orchestra Project performs one of Felder’s most prominent pieces, Les Quatre Temps Cardinaux. This is the second recording of the piece; the other is by Ensemble Signal with members of SUNY Buffalo’s Slee Sinfonietta. Each is an assured rendition, with BMOP stressing the dramatic sweep of the piece while Signal focuses with granularity of detail. The texts Felder employs in Les Quatre Temps Cardinaux are by Réne Daumal, Robert Creely, Pablo Neruda, and Dana Gioia. Most are Daumal’s, whose work Felder discovered via Buffalo-based writer Kathleen Frederick Rosenblatt’s biography of the polymath author. Felder does interesting things to treat the texts. He intermingles electronics with the vowels of the Daumal to create an ethereal quality. One of the two movements featuring Creeley’s poems emphasizes its sibilants, the other maps the consonant attacks onto the percussion, creating an intriguing sound world. Gioia’s poem is treated to the piece’s most stentorian and angular writing, clearly distinguishing it from the other texts.

Felder was a chorister with the Cleveland Orchestra in his teens but has only recently begun to set text. His vocal writing is ambitious, operatic in scope and compass. The piece opens with a series of spectral chords, over which Aiken’s voice soars, effortlessly managing pianissimo dynamics and altissimo high notes. She is worthily matched by Herschenfeld’s resonant low notes and seamless legato phrasing. The first section culminates in a rapturous duet in which the vocalists both navigate their upper registers fluently. In the section “Fragments (from Neruda),” an impressively thunderous tutti orchestral passage is matched by clarion singing from Aiken. A rousing duet rendition of Daumal’s “Stanza 3b” matches the Neruda’s intensity, and “Stanza 4a” is treated to a sepulchral solo by Herschenfeld in which he is accompanied by intertwining brass. He goes still lower on “Stanza 4b,” shadowed by sustained chords that move from strings to brass. Then, the vocal line is mimicked in counterpoint by the lower brass. Timpani thrumming is juxtaposed against choral-like passages as the piece moves into an instrumental postlude in which a clamorous buildup of drums heralds the final entrance of Aiken, her arcing solo haloed by trumpet glissandos, ascending to her top register and then plummeting down to conclude the piece.

Throughout, BMOP plays impressively. Rose shapes the piece beautifully and provides a detailed account of its myriad details. Hopefully, Les Quatre Temps Cardinaux will be followed by more vocal music from Felder. It is a formidable entry into his catalogue of works. Recommended.  

Christian Carey is editor at Sequenza 21 and an Associate Professor of Music Composition, History, and Theory at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey (www.christianbcarey.com).

by Christian Carey