Prismatic/Plasmonic EP Music for flute and electronics Laura Lentz, flutes; Sean William Calhoun, electronics Blue on Blue Records
Laura Lentz’s Prismatic/Plasmonic EP consists of three works, each addressing contemporary approaches in a different fashion. Lentz plays beautifully, with enviable control and supple phrasing. Although the pieces include amplification and electronics, they do not dilute her sound in the slightest.
Prismatic Wind by Chloe Upshaw is a work meant to abet sound healing. Upshaw is a flutist who lives in Arizona and the idea of supporting the health of others, particularly other musicians, through a composed version of music therapy is an important part of her work. Prismatic Wind features gestures of rising tension and gentle release, affording an experience not dissimilar to meditative breathing. Electronics are used to add resonance to the flute and to underscore the aforementioned phrasing.
Plasmonic Mirror is written by Rochester-based composer/electronic musician William Calhoun. Cast in four short movements, the piecebegins with a lyrical flute passage, followed by beat heavy electronica, altissimo passages, a synth interlude, an IDM pattern with a new theme in the flute, altissimo flute lines, and dovetailing with a bass synth. It closes with the synths and beats moving double time with the flute playing trills and a triumphal ascent.
Lentz and Calhoun collaborate on what is effectively a remix of Claude Debussy’s 1913 solo flute piece Syrinx. Lentz plays alto flute and Calhoun incorporates a warm bed of synths and a high countermelody, all accentuating the modal and whole-tone writing in Syrinx. It is an intriguing experiment. One eagerly awaits Lentz’s next full length recording, but for now, there is plenty to savor in Primatic/Plasmonic.
Miller Theatre Early Music Series at Church of St. Mary the Virgin
Saturday, October 26, 2024
NEW YORK – This past Saturday, renowned British vocal ensemble The Sixteen, conducted by Harry Christophers, made their Miller Theatre Early Music Series debut. Presented at Church of St. Mary the Virgin in midtown, the group performed music from their latest recording on Coro, The Deer’s Cry. Consisting of works by English Renaissance composer William Byrd (1540-1623) and Estonian composer Arvo Pärt (1935-), this seemingly eclectic pairing worked well together. Christophers may often be economical in his gestures, but he elicits a beautiful sound and detailed approach from The Sixteen. St. Mary’s is a wonderfully resonant space in which to sing, allowing the ensemble to be shown to its best advantage.
Byrd was a recusant Catholic, refusing to join the Church of England at a time when his own faith was frequently persecuted. He was fortunate to have the most influential patron one could hope for: Queen Elizabeth. She gave Byrd and his older colleague Thomas Tallis exclusive rights to publish music in England, and for the most part was able to shield Byrd from the authorities. Some of the biblical texts he set, such as Ab Dominum cum tribular, heard on The Sixteen’s program, were repurposed to comment on the tenuous position of Catholicism in England.
The Sixteen presented a number of Byrd’s Latin motets. The composer delighted in learned devices such as canon. The evening’s opener, the eight-voice motet Diliges Dominum, features a “crab canon,” one in which the tune is designed to be performed forwards and backwards. This complex concoction likely delighted the composer, and was notated in customary fashion, with a poem indicating how to realize the canon; a code to crack for the performers. Miserere nostri is a collaboration between Tallis and Byrd, in which four lines were written by Byrd and another three by Tallis. Once again, canonic procedures are utilized, this time dealing with proportional lengths of melodic lines and intervallic inversion. Ab Dominum cum tribularer uses imitative motives that move throughout its eight parts to create a contrapuntal web. Christe qui lux es et dies takes a different approach, alternating chant and chordal passages, demonstrating Byrd’s capacity to create a simple, yet poignant, motet as well.
The program’s title work, by Pärt, is a setting of a modern English translation of the Irish prayer also known as St. Patrick’s Breastplate. There is a sustained soprano line with harmony in blocks in the men’s voices. Partway through, all the voices join in a rousing tutti, followed by a long decrescendo to conclude. The Sixteen sings with an extraordinary capacity for dynamic control and nuance, which was amply demonstrated here. Pärt’s Nunc Dimittis, the text a part of the evening prayer service, uses his signature tintinnabuli (bells) style, where some singers perform mostly linear chant-like melodies and others arpeggiate triads, creating both moments of consonance and dissonance in turn. Nunc Dimittis overlaps a number of parts, creating what feels like an entire set of cathedral bells pealing. The Woman With the Alabaster Box recounts the story from the Gospel of Luke, where a woman anoints Jesus’s head with expensive ointment. The disciples object to this opulent gesture, but Jesus tells them that it is appropriate.Here, the musical language is sparer, even severe in the dialogue between Jesus and the disciples. Perhaps Pärt agrees with the commentators who suggest that the anointing is, metaphorically, a preparation for Jesus’s death. The three selections by the Estonian composer showed the multiplicity of elements in his music, a vivid palette that too often has been mislabeled “holy minimalism.”
The concert program concluded with Byrd’s Tribue domine, an elaborate six-voice setting of a prayer of supplication, in which there is much alternation between different portions of the ensemble and tutti singing. The encore was Vigilate. which The Sixteen recorded for A Watchful Gaze (2023), another album focused on Byrd’s music. Taken at a brisk tempo with a thrilling conclusion, The Sixteen and Christopher’s rendition of Vigilate was the most dramatically intense performance of Byrd I have ever heard. An untoppable conclusion to their first visit to St. Mary’s under the auspices of Miller Theatre. One hopes they return regularly.
Guitarist Yasmin Williams displayed a number of unconventional methods for playing acoustic guitar during her first two recorded outings, Unwind (2019) and Urban Driftwood (2022). These were no mere tricks of the trade, instead serving as organic components in her creation of supple folk instrumentals. Acadia is her first recording released on Nonesuch, and features a number of collaborators. In another first, Williams also writes lyrics for her music.
Although it is her primary instrument, on Acadia Williams doesn’t confine herself to the acoustic guitar. She also plays tap shoes, harp guitar, banjo, bass guitar, calabash drum, electric guitar, and kora. On the track “Cliffwalk,” alongside her guitar and tap shoe percussion, folk musician Don Flemons plays rhythm bones. One of the best tracks is “Harvest,” on which Williams and Kaki King trade rhythm guitar patterns while violinist Darian Donovan Thomas outlines a melismatic tune. Abetted by banjo-player Allison de Groot and fiddle player Tatiana Hargreaves, “Hummingbird” starts with an effortless hoe-down and then has a slow interlude in the piece’s middle, the fast music returning in ebullient fashion to conclude it. On “Dawning,” Aoife O’Donovan sings multiple layers of vocalise while percussionists Kafar and Nick Gareiss accompany Williams’s folk style finger-picking. Darlingside and Rich Ruth join Williams, who plays harp guitar, on “Virga,” another nuanced vocal piece.
“Sisters” may have the most collaborators joining Willams, a string trio, marimba player Steph Davis, and another acoustic string-slinger, William Tyler. The arrangement is artfully made, suggesting that Williams could easily do a convincing album with larger groups of musicians. “Dream Lake” is the first track on the album on which Williams plays electric guitar and bass, accompanied by drummer Malick Koly in a piece that opens and closes with New Age music only to rock out in the middle. Multi-instrumentalist Magro contributes drums, synths, and bass guitar to “Nectar,” on which electric guitar is also featured in a fluid solo. On the last piece, “Malamu,” Williams plays both acoustic and electric guitars, with introductions and interludes featuring the former and the verse and chorus abetted by overlapping with the latter. Joined by drummer Marcus Gilmore and saxophonist Emmanual Wilkins, “Malamu” demonstrates a more jazz influenced side of Williams’ playing.
Acadia is one of my favorite albums of 2024, and it reveals exciting potential pathways for Williams to take. I am eager to hear what’s next.
Tuesday, October 15th: Sacred and Profane, Sirota and Clement at Symphony Space
Tomorrow, Robert Sirota and Sheree Clement, two New York based composers, combine forces to present Sacred and Profane, a shared portrait concert at Symphony Space (7:30 PM, tickets here). Sirota may be best known for his stints as President at Peabody and Manhattan School of Music, but he’s remained active as a composer all along. Clement has also been involved as an arts administrator, having served as President of League of Composers/ISCM, Executive Director for New York New Music Ensemble, and, currently, on the board of Association for the Promotion of New Music. Like Sirota, Clement’s primary activities are as a composer. Her works bring together political engagement, humor, and dramatic, often staged, presentations.
The musicians performing are a bevy of NYC’s finest contemporary players: soprano Ariadne Greif, baritone Paul Pinto, the Momenta Quartet, cellist Benjamin Larsen, pianist Hyungjin Choi, flutist Roberta Michel, violists Jonah Sirota and Nadia Sirota, and percussionist Katherine Fortunato. And yes, the two violists are Robert Sirota’s progeny, prodigious players with a number of ensembles and in solo contexts.
Each composer has contributed two pieces to the program. Sirota’s A Sinner’s Diary (2005) is for flute, two violas, cello, percussion, and piano, and Broken Places (2016) is for flute and cello. Receiving its premiere is Clement’s Mermaid Songs (2024)for soprano and string quartet. The live premiere of her vocal duet Table Manners (2020), directed by Mary Birnbaum, includes forty pounds of silverware in its staging. Who’s doing the dishes? You’ll only find out if you attend the concert!
Jennifer France, soprano; Lotte Betts-Dean, mezzo-soprano
Volker Hemken, bass clarinet
James Crabb, accordion
Juho Pohjonen, piano
Andrey Lebedev, classical guitar
Swedish Chamber Orchestra
Brett Dean, violist and conductor
Composer and violist Brett Dean has spent a number of years engaging with Hamlet, creating a controversial, successful, and musically compelling eponymous opera premiered in the UK in 2017 and subsequently produced at the Metropolitan Opera. Rooms of Elsinore (BIS, 2024) collects pieces serving as character sketches written in advance of the opera, those recasting material from the opera that premiered concurrently or subsequent to its premiere, and new musical imaginings of Hamlet. It is fascinating to compare to the opera’s music, but one needn’t have heard it to find Rooms of Elsinore an engaging stand alone listen.
The vocal work And Once I Played Ophelia is sung by soprano Jennifer France, who is accompanied by the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Dean. Its text is adapted from Shakespeare by Matthew Jocelyn, and it is a visceral piece cast in five movements. Interestingly, Jocelyn uses words that Ophelia says in the play and also lines directed at her (Hamlet’s “get thee to a nunnery”) The first section, marked “Fast, breathless,” is rife with stridency (a deliberate expression, not because France’s voice is anything but pliant) and intense, angular lines. “Hushed, distant, mysterious” begins with pianissimo utterances that indeed sound far off. Eventually, the singing moves closer in the soundstage, now lyrical yet enigmatic in expression. The third movement, marked “Fast, agitated,” uses the text “This is the ecstasy of love” as a recurrent motif that is elaborately described. France demonstrates adroitly rendered, ringing high notes alongside intimidating vocal fry. Dean employs brisk ostinatos with tritone weighted harmonies to add to the hysteria. It closes with a breathless recitative passage, as if all the energy has dissipated like the air from a balloon. The music moves attacca into the fourth section, “extremely still.” From questioning pianissimo to altissimo sustained notes, an entire range of expressive vocality is brought to bear in the “willow tree” text by France. The section concludes with a high register cello solo recasting some of the soprano’s music. The final section, “Slow austere,” begins by harmonizing the cello’s music with the string section, with clarion sostenuto lines followed by ones in supple decrescendo, employing the “Good night ladies … sweet ladies” text. The piece ends with a mysterious, thwarted gesture in the instruments. And Once I Played Ophelia … brings the listener straight into the soundworld of Dean’s Hamlet, and is superlatively performed by France and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra.
Dean and pianist Juho Pohjonen play the duo The Rooms of Elsinore, each musically describing part of the castle. It begins with “I. The Dark Gate,” with descending scalar string lines set against sepulchral bass melodies in the piano. Gradually, the viola and piano crescendo and ascend together to their high registers. The viola then plays rhythmic lines against chordal sections in the piano, the stringed instrument bridging to the second movement with an altissimo ostinato. “II. The Four Gate Courtyard” continues the viola line alongside lush verticals from the piano amid tuplet flourishes. A gradual decrescendo closes the movement, only to be followed closely upon by “III. The Platform,” with a sliding tone abetted theme in the viola against repeated notes and arpeggiations, including a bass register flourish, in the piano. A pause is followed by the viola descending in sliding harmonics against low register punctuations in the piano. Open strings close the movement. “IV. The King’s Chamber” positively bustles with florid runs, pizzicato passages, ascending chromatic harmonies, and quick attacks. As the centerpiece of the piece’s seven-movement framework, it is the longest movement (4’02”), and also the most developmentally consistent, presenting as a rondo. Sustained viola with microtones and punctilious fragments from the piano are developed in “V. The Chapel,” while silences are interspersed by duo attacks in “VI. The Queen’s Chamber,” which part way through splits runs between them. The movement ends with repeated note passages and a chromatic viola melody contrasted with color chords in the piano. Rooms of Elsinore concludes with “VII. The Trumpeter’s Tower,” in which repeated bass notes in the piano are juxtaposed with high chords and a liquescent viola melody. A long decrescendo ensues, with high viola harmonics and a slowed-down set of piano harmonies.
Photo: Bettina Stoess
Gertrude Fragments is performed by mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean and classical guitarist Andrey Lebedev. “I cast thy knighted color off” begins the group with a wide-ranging, angular setting. Betts-Dean has a versatile instrument, with a strong lower register and blossoming high notes. The guitar part is well-crafted, with elements of lute songs alongside chromatic harmonies and modernist gestures, notably the acerbic attacks in the second song, “Wring from him my cause.” The texts are adaptations of statements by Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude. They are more aphoristic than the Ophelia texts, but still afford wide emotional range. The third song, “My too much changed son,” is melismatic, almost sobbing at its beginning before a sense of gravitas is regained. “How is’t with you?” is the shortest and sparest of the songs, almost a preparation for the concluding “If words be made of breath,” which includes plaintive sighs alongside glissandos.
Bass clarinetist Volker Hemken performs Confessio, a ten minute long solo that references the entrance of Polonius. It is a technical tour-de-force, depicting the emotional tumult of the scene in lines throughout the compass of the instrument, special techniques, and a wide dynamic range.
In the final piece, accordionist James Crabb is the soloist in the twenty-minute long concerto The Players. Material from the analogous scene in the opera included Crabb as part of the cast, playing alongside pantomiming actors. The concerto includes an introduction and closing material for Crabb added to musical material from the opera, deftly translated in its scoring for the ensemble. In the play/opera, Hamlet nearly loses control of his faculties, with manic explosions and a clear desire for revenge. The scene is depicted not only by the accordion, but taunting winds, bumptious percussion, and bitonal strings.
The Players is an energetic closer for Rooms of Elsinore, an inspiring recording that suggests that Dean’s obsession with Hamlet may have room yet for more music about the dark prince of Denmark. If the works here are his last exploration of the play, Dean is still left with a tremendous legacy. One of my favorites recordings thus far in 2024.
Okay, I’ll admit it; this year I’m having a bit of trouble letting go of summer. Especially because September has brought the temperature down just enough to enjoy being outside; not so the new normal of climate change we experienced in July. The band Cal in Red seems similarly preoccupied. They released a number of singles during the summer, including the excellent “Kitchen,” on which they are joined by James Mercer (The Shins, Broken Bells). But the band held off on releasing their debut album Low Low until August 30th. It’s worth the wait.
They are a duo of brothers, Connor and Kendall Wright, from Grand Rapids, Michigan, and share vocal and instrumental duties in the studio. Low Low is indie rock, but with a delicate touch. Auto-tuned vocals are used as a texture rather than because of any liabilities. “Flagstaff” has a loping vocal chorus undergirded by powerful rhythm guitar and emphatic, economical drumming. It has a recently released video that shows the band in an Arizona tour stop and onstage, where Kendall plays guitar and Connor bass and synthesizers. “My Love” has duet vocals, an overlapping set of riffs as lead-in material to the verses and bridge. and soaring falsetto in the chorus.
“Boyfriend” is filled with eighth note repetitions in the bass-line and short syncopations in the rhythm guitar. A wash of synths and gradually unfolding vocals supply a slower layer, warmly spacious in its delivery. “1985” casually references that bygone era with art rock guitars and vocoder. “Frontside” is not only the best song Cal in Red has released to date, it also has a video that is an homage to countless eighties films. From the club to watching an apartment from the street, an innocent crush moves to obsession.
Low Low is a memorably tuneful debut that listeners may want to play on their way to the beach – just one more time.
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.
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, containingsix 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.
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.
Nancy Galbraith has taught for a number of years at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. During that time, she has created a body of compelling orchestral works. Colorfully scored and post-minimal in approach, Galbraith’s music has received prominent performances but been relatively underserved on recording. As a corrective, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, conducted by Gil Rose, has recorded for BMOPsound three of her concertos, all written in the past eight years.
Violin Concerto No. 1 (2017) was premiered by its soloist here, Alyssa Wang, with the Carnegie Mellon Contemporary Ensemble. In the liner notes, Galbraith says that the piece was waiting for a talent like Wang with whom to collaborate. While it is surprising that it took the composer this long to create a violin concerto – she has written well for strings in the past – the piece is an important one in her catalog, in which she explores an abiding interest – Asian music.
The first movement employs the sliding tone and rotating pentatonic scales found in Chinese music. Alongside it is a riff using the same scalar elements but with a blues scale cast. The soloist remains in the world of Asia, while the ensemble traverses the musical distance between Beijing and the Bayou, particularly in the piano part and the movement’s final cadence. There is even a snatch in the middle of a Gershwin-like sauntering dance. The second movement, subtitled “Eggshell White Night,” inhabits an impressionist sound world, the solo intermingling with flute, harp, and an exotic theme in the strings and brass. It underscores the connection between French music at the turn of the twentieth century and the incorporation of non-Western materials.
The last movement intersperses short arcing cadenzas and perpetual motion passages with another theme using five-note scales in the strings. As the piece progresses, harp, chimes, and wind chords are added to the mix. The violin soloist plays modal arpeggiations against polyrhythms in the orchestra, then a final cadenza, beginning slowly with double-stops and building to an emphatic flourish. The orchestra rejoins, presenting the theme against a final scalar passage that closes the piece in the stratosphere. Here as elsewhere, Wang does a superb job balancing virtuosity and expressivity, creating a thoughtful and ebullient reading of the concerto that befits its heterogeneous identity.
Lindsey Goodman is the soloist in Galbraith’s Concerto for Flute and Orchestra (2019). The opening sets up metric transformations and mixed meters in bongos and other drums, and Goodman soon enters with a syncopated solo that serves as the theme for the movement. Her tone, even in the highest portions of the melody, is rich and dynamically nuanced. Chords in the strings and mallet instruments accompany a second melody, bifurcated into oscillations and arpeggiations. Repeated notes move the piece into a brisk section completed by a cadenza with a series of special effects. The main theme returns to complete the movement.
The second movement features chimes and imitation between the strings and the flute solo. It is an elegant combination of exoticism and pastoral effect. Eventually, the flute is joined in a contrapuntal version of its solo and then a ground bass in the strings that lead into another cadenza passage, this one using standard techniques with off-kilter phrasing. The chimes, other pitched percussion, and a registrally dispersed version of the string chords accompany a denouement in the soloist and winds. The final movement is a moto perpetuo redolent of South Asian rhythms and melodic elements. Once again, the bongos provide a strong groove that is soon replicated rhythmically by the flute in flurries of arpeggios. The soloist remains in the foreground, with harp and pizzicato strings joining. The tempo downshifts a bit and a muscular passage of string melodies and overblown flute is accompanied by clangorous percussion. A final cadenza brings the music to a boil, with a racing tutti passage accompanying the flute playing fleet arpeggios and an altissimo octave leap to conclude.
Everything Flows: Concerto for Solo Percussion and Orchestra, is an ideal showcase for the talented percussionist Abby Langhorst. Syncopated, jazz-inflected riffs include an Aeolian theme that serves as a refrain between solo breaks and appears fragmented elsewhere. An electric guitar adds to the vernacular quality of the orchestration. The percussionist plays a number of non-pitched instruments, including a plethora of different-sized drums, woodblock, brake drums, and cymbals. They embellish the refrain rhythms by successively troping it and adding contrasting polyrhythms. The percussionist also gets their own chance to play the refrain in glockenspiel passages. There is an oasis in the midst of the work, with the soloist undertaking a lyrical melody on vibraphone. The departure from it slowly rebuilds from small solo passages in several of the winds and then a subdued major key ground that adds vibraphone, guitar, and double bass. As this floats away, the final theme is announced by quick lines on the marimba. This is a feint, as we return to the earlier ambience. A chiming solo passage, accompanied by alto flute and sustained strings, is belatedly succeeded by a return to the uptempo riff on woodblock and a fortissimo cadenza of toms, bass drum, and, finally, the entire fleet of drums at the soloist’s disposal. The main theme returns in an artful division into the various sections in swinging counterpoint. The soloist buoys the ensemble with the groove from his final cadenza, the piece ending in a fortissimo tutti.
Galbraith’s recent concertos are expert creations. Abetted by abundantly talented soloists and the skilful advocacy and playing of BMOP under Rose, this release is highly recommended.
