Composer Tobias Picker won a Grammy for his 2020 operatic version of The Fantastic Mister Fox, and many pianists have first encountered him through the diatonic piece The Old and Lost Rivers. Picker has another side to his musical persona that is in no small measure reflective of his time as a student of Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter, and Charles Wuorinen. The Bright Shiny Things recording NOVA includes chamber music that celebrates these high modernist roots, as well as forays into postmodernism.
The title work is the latter, a riff on both the appropriate accompaniment, at least in Manhattan, for a bagel and cream cheese, as well as a send-up of one of Franz Schubert’s most enduring chamber pieces, the Trout Quintet. The result is lively, with tongue in cheek humor giving way to expert writing for the instruments, the composer distinguishing himself as a performer, undertaking the piano part.
The recording sessions for NOVA were completed at various times, and some of the performers are no longer living. The late Lynne Harrell’s performance in Suite for Cello and Piano is memorable. He plays with yearning legato in“Serenade,” its first movement, and puckish pizzicato in “Daylight,” its second. Ann-Marie McDermott, who is still with us, also distinguishes herself, with expressive and assured playing throughout. The third movement, “Lament,” is more dramatic than doleful, and Harrell performs with incendiary phrasing. The suite’s final movement, titled “Alone,” is still a duo, but it is lonesome and solitary in its demeanor. Another departed musician, Peter Serkin, plays Three Pieces for Piano with sensitivity and virtuosity in equal measure, elucidating the complex phrasing of “Svelto,” its first movement, emphasising the dynamic and rhythmic nuances in the second, “Liberamente,” and, performing the assertive gestures of the “Feroce” third movement con brio.
Happily most of the performers are still around to enjoy the fruits of their labors. Pianist Ursula Oppens makes multiple appearances, with Charles Neidich in “Nocturne,” a brief, gentle duet, and solo in the more extensive “Pianorama.” Violinist Young Uck Kim and Emmanuel Ax collaborate well on Invisible Lilacs, a three movement piece with an opener marked “Fast,” which it certainly is here, a pensive “Elegy,”, and a concluding “Moto Perpetuo” movement that is impressively played.
The disc’s final piece, Blue Hula. features Speculum Musicae, a chamber ensemble that boasted some of the best performers of modern classical music. It is a formidable piece that suits them well, with a finely etched gestural profile of corruscating lines. As the piece progresses, its rhythmic drive increases, culminating in the breakneck pace of the third movement, marked “very fast.”
NOVA presents another side of Picker’s music, one that embraces complexity but sacrifices none of the directness of expression that characterizes his more recent music.
Thomas Wilkins conducts TMC Orchestra. Photo: Hilary Scott (courtesy of BSO).
2025 Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music
Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra
July 28, 2025
LENOX – This year’s Festival of Contemporary Music was curated by composer Gabriela Ortiz. Born in Mexico City, Ortiz is one of the most prominent Latinx figures in twenty-first century classical music. Among other honors, she is composer-in-residence at Carnegie Hall and the Curtis Institute. Revolucióndiamantina, a recording of her music by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, won three GRAMMY Awards in 2025. This year, FCM has spotlighted music from Mexico, as well as that of women composers. After four chamber ensemble programs, including one consisting entirely of music for percussion, the festival concluded with a concert performed by the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, conducted by Thomas Wilkins and two fellows, Yiran Zhao and Leonard Weiss (Zhao is a former student of mine, so I will limit my remarks to saying that her teacher was proud). TMC is a student orchestra, but their talent and hard work abetted a high level of playing throughout. All of the concert’s music was written in the twenty-first century by living composers.
Bioluminescence Chaconne (2019), by Gabriella Smith (b. 1991), is built around overlapping ostinatos. String tremolandos are prominent in the beginning, and glissandos take on an increasingly important role. The piece has a gradual buildup to a powerful central section with brash tutti and stretches of syncopated percussion, followed by a return to its opening demeanor to conclude. Smith is a violinist, and it shows in the deft deployment of strings here. She has cited Bach’s D minor Chaconne as a touchstone, but its form repeats in a more symmetrical fashion than the shape of Bioluminescence Chaconne. The first word of the title may be more telling, as Smith has suggested that her experiences scuba diving, accompanying a team of researchers, was an inspiration for the piece. The piece works well, so well that next year the Boston Symphony Orchestra is playing it too.
Ellen Reid (b. 1983) won the Pulitzer Prize in 2019, and her piece When the World as You’ve Known It Doesn’t Exist (2019) was commissioned and premiered by the New York Philharmonic. In addition to a large orchestra, it features three sopranos in wide ranging wordless parts encompassing animated and sustained passages. Zoe McCormick, Kerrigan Bigelow, and Sarah Davis sang skilfully, blending well together and with the orchestra. Like Smith, Reid uses ostinatos, and these are contrasted with aching pitch slides and clusters. When the World… is likely her most dissonant piece, with both major and minor seconds featuring prominently in the motivic and harmonic material. Weiss brought out dynamic contrasts and imbued the legato sections with a strong sense of line.
Reid wrote When the World… for the NY Phil’s Project 19, which celebrated a centenary of women’s suffrage in the United States. Her program note suggests that it doesn’t directly reflect this issue, and is instead focused on an emotional artistic journey, delineated in stages not dissimilar to those frequently found in grieving, moving from questioning to anger to acceptance.
Ortiz had two pieces on the program, one concluding the first half and the other played after intermission. Guest flutist Alejandro Escuer was the soloist on Altar de Viento (“Altar of the Wind,” 2015), a concerto specifically written for him. Escuer’s proficiency with extended techniques is comprehensive, and Ortiz makes good use of them in the piece. Escuer’s approach is also attuned to rhythm, and he even moves a bit during interludes where he isn’t playing, underlining the dance rhythms so often present in Altar de Viento. Indeed, the percussion section once again got a workout, playing traditional dances and new music gestures with equal aplomb. The rest of the orchestra was game to groove as well, and Wilkins led them through myriad metric shifts with suavity and clarity.
Hominum, Concerto for Orchestra (2017), is an imposing half-hour long piece. One of Ortiz’s finest, it was premiered in 2017 by another exemplary student ensemble, the Juilliard Orchestra. There’s nothing about the concerto that suggests it was sculpted with emerging artists in mind, as it is quite challenging. Composers who write a concerto for orchestra usually provide each cohort of the ensemble with music that spotlights their capacities and instruments’ essential characteristics. Ortiz revels in exploring the many textures that an orchestra can achieve in the twenty-first century. The virtuosity that talented musicians possess is explored as well. Hominum is at turns vivacious, brash, reflective, and powerful, and served as a rousing closer for FCM.
Midsummer Musicfest at Kaufmann Concert Hall, 92nd Street Y
July 9, 2025
NEW YORK – July often finds New York-based musicians playing in summer festivals well outside the city. The 92nd Street Y’s Midsummer MusicFest enticed a small handful of luminaries back to town to play chamber music at the venue’s Kaufmann Concert Hall. Violinist Joshua Bell, cellist Steven Isserlis, and pianist Jeremy Denk have joined forces before, but not for a while in New York. In 2024, to commemorate the one hundredth year of his passing, they toured programs of music by the French composer Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924). They revisited these works at the Y on Wednesday, July 9 and Saturday, July 12.
As Isserlis pointed out in remarks from the stage, Fauré isn’t usually mentioned in the same breath as Debussy and Ravel, but he probably should be. The likely reason is that relatively little of his music was large-scale, and of these only the orchestral arrangement of the Pavane and the Requiem are regularly programmed. On the other hand, his songs and chamber music are a rich repertoire demonstrating abundant compositional gifts; memorable melodies, vivid harmonies, and consummate craftsmanship. Isserlis’s case for Fauré was eloquent, and the playing by the trio, joined by violinist Irène Duval and violist Blythe Teh Engstroem, even more so.
One of the most challenging aspects of playing Fauré’s music is the issue of tempo, namely how much rubato one should use. Reports of the composer’s frequent performances as a pianist suggest that he preferred steady tempos, with flexibility where indicated, seldom admitting extravagances. This became even more true in his late performances, where profound hearing loss meant that coordination with collaborators became all the more important.
In their renditions of the Violin Sonata No. 1 in A Major, Opus 13, Bell and Denk proved that one can be amply expressive without excessive rubato. Their version of the sonata presented its many beautiful tunes and intricate phrasing with both detailed attention and luminous warmth. Its soaring first theme is tempting to exaggerate in the aforementioned manner. Bell instead played expressively, never overdoing it. The audience at the Y couldn’t restrain themselves from bursting into applause after the conclusion of the first movement, enthusiasm trumping any worries about a faux pas. Fauré was ambidextrous, and even when they are not virtuosic, his piano parts can prove challenging. Denk enjoys a good challenge, and he inhabits Fauré’s music with estimable suavity. The sense of ensemble reminded one that these are avid chamber musicians who, by long association, are attuned to one another with razor focus. The second and third movements were no less impressive, and the applause after the entire work’s conclusion was no less resounding.
Isserlis joined Denk for a duo version of the Barcarolle in F-sharp Minor, Opus 66. The cellist has performed Fauré’s Cello Sonata with Denk, but on this evening he contented himself with arrangements of some of the composer’s best-loved piano pieces, their melodies underscored by the addition of cello. In the second half, he also performed the Sicilienne, Opus 78, and Berceuse, Opus 16. The pieces recast in this way underscore memorable melodies, and elsewhere resonant bass notes are doubled and thereby amplified. Denk made sure that the piano, despite inherently different attack and decay profiles from the cello, was in sync with the string instrument, making for a beautiful blended sound.
Photo: Michael Priest.
Duval and Teh Engstroem performed with the trio in the Piano Quintet No. 1 in D minor, Opus 89. The resulting group had a simpatico interaction, its opening allegro movement’s interlacing lines being given particular attention, and throughout a buoyant sense of phrasing. D minor is often used in funereal contexts, the Mozart Requiem and Bach’s D minor Toccata for solo violin to name two. Even in its lyrical slow movement, Fauré’s Piano Quintet never seems to plumb dolorous depths. Instead, the piece feels like a dramatic journey that seldom loses hope for a destination. The concluding third movement was an ample payoff. Instead of ending in minor, it is in D major, with its main theme principally scalar in design. There are little modal inflections around the edges, imparting an impressionist ambience. The performance itself was effusive and unerring, with pinpoint execution of complexly overlapping entrances, thoughtfully nuanced dynamics, and rousing tutti passages. Its close was triumphal in character.
There may not be many hits among Fauré’s orchestral works, but the quintet is chamber music writ large. It is an ambitious piece cast in three sizable movements that clocks in at around a half hour in duration. The composer took great pains to create the version that audiences hear today, starting it around 1887 and taking nearly twenty years to finalize the score. He wrote a second in C minor, completed in 1921, and they both have set a high standard for the genre. The Y’s Midsummer Musicfest fete of Fauré did well by him, and one hopes that it doesn’t take an anniversary year for further championing of this fine composer.
The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Music Director and Conductor
Angel Blue, Soprano
Carnegie Hall, April 18, 2025
Published on Sequenza 21
By Christian Carey
NEW YORK – Virtually since its inception, the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Met Orchestra for short, has given concerts alongside its main role accompanying operas. For over a hundred years, this has allowed the ensemble to stretch itself, performing vocal works, unstaged or semi-staged operas, repertoire staples, and several premieres. Yannick Nézet-Séguin has relished the opportunity to work with the musicians in this capacity. On Wednesday night, the Met Orchestra premiered a suite from Fire Up in My Bones, an opera staged at the Met by Terence Blanchard. They also performed pieces by Carnegie Hall’s current Debs Composer Chair Gabriela Ortiz, Leonard Bernstein, and Antonin Dvořák.
Ortiz’s piece, Antrópolis (2018, revised 2019), was an ebullient opener, recalling the various nightclubs the composer had frequented during her youthful years in Mexico City. The piece is a showcase for percussion, with varied dance rhythms, ranging from mambo and rumba to incipient techno, articulated by timpani soloist Parker Lee and the rest of the percussion cohort.
Symphony No. 1, “Jeremiah,” (1942), was written when Bernstein was twenty-three. Its directness of expression betrays a bit of naivete that makes it somewhat less compelling than his musical theater pieces of the forties. Still, the orchestration demonstrates an impressive grasp of mid-twentieth century music, both the Americana style of Aaron Copland and Roy Harris, and the neoclassical music of Stravinsky, who seems to loom large over the piece. Mahler, a composer for whom Bernstein, throughout his career, advocated strongly, serves as another touchstone, particularly in the inclusion of a soprano soloist in the final movement of Jeremiah. The texts are taken from the Hebrew Bible book “The Lamentations of Jeremiah,” selected to analogize the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem with the plight of Jewish people in Europe under the Nazi regime.
Soprano Angel Blue, standing on a platform in the midst of the orchestra, declaimed the music with an authoritative demeanor that underscored its mournful message, singing with flawless legato and rich tone. Here and elsewhere, Nézet-Séguin was a commanding presence, underscoring the rhythmic vitality of the piece’s earlier mixed meter sections only to build it to a stirring climax by the symphony’s conclusion.
Terence Blanchard’s opera Fire Up in My Bones was staged with jazz musicians, including Blanchard, participating. He created a suite of music from the opera with the Met Orchestra’s forces, sans additional musicians, in mind. Apart from an interlude depicting the sounds of a chicken processing plant, which includes syncopated percussion in playful fashion, Blanchard instead presents the opera’s powerful thematic material depicting human struggle. Charles M. Blow’s memoir, in which, among other experiences, he discusses being abused as a child and coming to terms with his homosexuality, is a compelling story, and the arias from Fire Up in My Bones provide it with the gravitas it deserves. The suite presents selections from these set pieces in sweeping melodies that are romantic in scope. The harmony sits astride Mahlerian late tonality and a fluid use of jazz vocabulary, ending on a charged chord rife with dissonant extensions. Blanchard’s scoring is fluent in a variety of idioms, and even if the suite only tells part of Fire Up in My Bones’s musical story, it is replete with well-paced dramatic contrasts.
The concert concluded with one of the most beloved pieces by Dvořák, his Symphony No. 9, “From the New World.” It was written in 1893, during his extended visit to the United States. Dvořák advocated for composers from the United States to explore their own nation’s folk music, mining it for material, just as he did with vernacular Czech music. Viewing the music of native Americans and spirituals as the most consummately authentic folk music in the US, he recommended that their works be collected and employed by the predominantly white male students who were his composition pupils in New York. One can argue about the authenticity of this practice through a contemporary lens, but it certainly made an impression on US composers of that generation and successive ones.
Musicologists love debating the derivation of the materials Dvořák used in the New World Symphony. He insisted that there were no direct quotations in the piece. Apart from the rhythm of a tom-tom drum, that is likely the case, although its most famous tune, the achingly beautiful theme from its second movement, was later used to create a spiritual-styled song. Much of the music sounds like it could just as easily have been written while Dvořák was in Europe. Whatever the pedigree of its sources, the Ninth Symphony is a fantastic piece and the Met Orchestra performed it gloriously.
Nézet-Séguin approached the piece in energetic fashion, allowing it to speak for itself mostly in tempo rather than using too much rubato. This returned a sense of balance to the phrasal and rhythmic construction of a piece that can, upon occasion, seem schmaltzy in its presentation. The sections of the aforementioned second movement that called for pliable moments seemed all the more noteworthy as a result. This was abetted by superlative playing from the winds and brass, particularly Pedro R. Díaz, who performed the English horn solo in eloquently beautiful fashion. The strings had many moments to shine as well, playing the theme of the scherzo, marked molto vivace, with rhythmically incisive élan. The blend in tutti sections was impressive as well.
While there were no pains to overstate it, the program was nicely tied together by the Symphony “From the New World.” Each composer in their own way explored the cultural and musical traditions that resonated with them. Ortiz’s Latin dance, Bernstein’s Jewish liturgical references and tropes on folk music, and Blanchard’s jazz chords, however different they sounded, came from a place of deep cultural resonance for each respective composer. Thus, the Met Orchestra’s concert was both diverse in its offerings and well curated. A memorable evening of music.
Sequenza 21 readers know Carey very well through his insightful reviews of concerts and recordings in this publication. He is also a superb composer with a lengthy catalogue of varied works.
Christian B. Carey
Quintet 2 is scored for oboe, clarinet, violin, cello and piano, and Carey wrote it for the East Coast Contemporary Ensemble, who commissioned it and premiered it in 2016. In his program note, Carey writes that much of his music – including this work – is based on the idea of labyrinthine structuring. “Quintet 2 deals with a spectrum of harmonic shadings, from triads to microtonal verticals with a great deal expressed in between. Likewise, the short melody at the beginning is offset by long passages of linear counterpoint. A number of rhythmic layers corruscate to create overlapping and frequently syncopated gestures.”
Also on the program, music by Augusta Read Thomas, Oliver Knusson, Jeremy Beck, Jonathan Newman and the world premiere of “I Like Chocolate Ice Cream” by David Macdonald (me too, says the writer).
Performers include: Calvin Wiersma and Conrad Harris, violins; Daniel Panner, viola; Chris Gross and Peter Seidenberg, cellos; Huan-Fong Chen, oboe; Benjamin Fingland, clarinet; Jonathan Faiman, piano; Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek, mezzo-soprano
Taylor Ward, Baritone; Don-Paul Kahl, Alto Saxophone
Talea Ensemble, James Baker, conductor
American Wild Ensemble
Composer Yotam Haber’s Bloodsnow is based on life events and contemporary concerns. The title work was from a harrowing experience. Haber was caring for a friend’s sled dogs during her first Iditarod, and sustained a serious injury to his finger. The blood mixing with snow, the fear of finding treatment for the wound, and the sense of dizziness from blood loss are all musically depicted with bracing verisimilitude. Talea Ensemble, conducted by James Baker, catches every nuance of its quixotic span.
Foreboding bass winds and dampened piano percussion open the piece. Blurry runs and woodwind multiphonics add a sense of disassociation. Harp glissandos and piano clusters further depict the ambience. A high violin, syncopated piano runs, and upper winds, imitating the previous low winds’ material, move the piece into a second section, closely followed upon by jazzy bass clarinet, thrumming piano notes in its low register, and prestissimo string runs. The eye of the hurricane features extended triadic harmonies from the piano and hushed strings. With suddenness, this moves back to the previous aggressive demeanor, with keyboard stabs and swelling string chords. The digressive nature of these sharp turns seem to embody the frantic mood of someone bleeding. Even the occasional musical oasis makes sense; the woozy figures depicting the blood loss into the snow. Ascending piano chords and darting winds suggest a denouement, but a coda of bustling energy, with cascading runs in the piano mirrored in the other instruments, then abruptly ending, concludes the piece with a satisfying surprise.
Baritone Taylor Ward joins the ensemble to sing They Say You Are My Disaster, a set of two songs with texts by women from different generations. “Schnitzel,” by Dorit Weisman, combines two different through lines: breast cancer surgery and meal preparation. The music veers between violence and quietude, with Ward displaying a wide range and impressive dynamic control. “Oh, My Bank” by Tahel Frosh again deals with two subject matters, both giving rise to the narrator’s anger: the repressive nature of late capitalism and the role of women in such a society. Snarling Sprechstimme and disjunct lines from Ward are accompanied by a bass clarinet solo, in similarly high dudgeon, and powerful instrumental swells. The coda initially quiets these elements, with one final vocal cry and a crescendo leaving a sense of ominousness in the song’s wake.
Resistance is an extensive piece for solo saxophone, played by Don-Paul Kahl. It is filled with special techniques, percussive pops, aggressive growls, microtones, and multiphonics, to name a partial list. There is much shifting between a number of melodic cells, with mercurial changes between jazzy runs and combustible angularity. However, it is the melodies submerged beneath these playing methods, visible at the edges and seemingly trying to find their way to the surface of the texture, perhaps a titular metaphor, that allow Resistance to transcend its formidable technical demands to become a work of rich expressiveness.
The recording closes where it began, in the Alaskan wilderness. The ensemble work Choref is about Haber’s week spent hiking in Wrangell-St. Elias. Its two demeanors picture the stillness of the surroundings with slow, sustained harmonies, and the burbling vitality of life that persists, even in such conditions. As the piece moves through its trajectory, what began as two distinct sectional boundaries are commingled into music of varied textures, with bustling woodwind bird calls, high modal lines, sepulchral bass clarinet, string tremolos, and intricately constructed harmonies.
Haber’s music revels in complexity that is in service of larger narratives, never for its own sake. He is an imaginative and skillful creator, willing to look at his own terror alongside the peace of nature, managing to make them pieces of a whole.
William Bolcom has been an important exponent of the ragtime revival. He helped to mount Scott Joplin’s ragtime opera Treemonisha, has performed Joplin and much of the ragtime repertoire. Bolcom may have had a hand in Joshua Rifkin’s famed Joplin recordings, which were used in the movie The Sting. As Bolcom tells it, he played Rifkin rags by Joplin at a party before the recording was made. Bolcom also encouraged contemporary American composers to return to ragtime, trading many rags with composer William Albright (one of the pieces on this recording is a collaboration between them), and performing the rags written by a number of others, mainly during the 1970s. His own catalog of rags is considerable, and considerably varied.
Joplin’s sheet music often included the admonition, “do not play fast,” instead urging a deliberate pace. Bolcom takes this to heart, and pianist Marc-André Hamelin, the interpreter on this recording, pays studious attention to the details of tempo and phrasing that define ragtime. Like most classic rags, Bolcom uses titles that hearken back to ragtime progenitors past (“Eubie’s Luckey Day,” “Seabiscuit’s Rag”), give a sense of character and gesture (“Tabby Cat Walk,” “Rag-Tango”), or are punnish (“Brooklyn Dodge”).
Many of Bolcom’s rags are suavely stylish, such as the well-titled “Contentment” and “Tabby Cat Walk.” Of course, not fast is not ubiquitous. In a set of rags titled “Eden,” the third, “The Serpent’s Kiss,” is rollicking, “girl on the railroad tracks” music with a taste of silent film accompaniment. The Allbright-Bolcoe collaboration, “Brass Knuckles,” avails itself of splashes of dissonance, recalling Nancarrow and Monk through a Joplin lens. In “Rag-Tango” and “Estela – Rag Latino,” other genres are successfully amalgamated into ragtime. It is difficult to pick favorites, but I’m partial to “Three Ghost Rags,” in which music of times past is echoed. Hamelin plays this group with particular sensitivity.
Like Joplin’s rags in the 1970s, Bolcom’s in the 2020’s deserve wider currency. Some are quite difficult, requiring the chops of a pianist of Hamelin’s caliber. Others would be excellent pieces for competitions or study. The liner notes, with an essay by Bolcom, give an erudite, encapsulated view of classical rags and contemporary contributions. Highly recommended.
While scholarly consensus on Josquin’s birthdate has moved around over time (current estimates are around 1450), his death was in 1521, five hundred years ago. To mark this anniversary, three of the best ensembles singing early music have released recordings devoted to the composer’s works.
The Tallis Scholars began their Josquin masses recording project decades ago, and this program of Missa Hercules Dux Ferrarie,Missa D’ung aultre amer, and Missa Faysant regretz completes their cycle of these totemic works with a ninth recording (on a previous CD, they even included a mass that may be by Bauldewyn or Josquin, just to be safe). They have saved some of the best works for last. Missa Hercules Dux Ferrari is the first known soggetto cavato mass, mapping syllables of the name of its dedicatee, Duke Ercole I D’este of Ferrara, onto solfege syllables. The motive is repeated a number of times, often in the texturally prominent tenor voice, commemorating the dedicatee resplendently and demonstrating a technique that would be taken up by a number of composers. Missa D’ung aultre amer is an earlier and relatively compact work, with more syllabic and homophonic writing than one often finds in Josquin. It uses a rondeau quatrain by Johannes Ockeghem as its principal building blocks. Unusual yes, but also fascinating and fetching. Missa Faysant regretz is based on a three-part rondeau that is either by Gille Binchois or Walter Frye. The mass is saturated with a four-note motive that appears more than 200 times; it is divided up among all of the voices and appears in various rhythmic guises. Faysant regretz rivals Missa Hercules in compositional virtuosity. While retaining a number of longtime personnel, the Tallis Scholars sound vivacious and well-balanced from sonorous basses to shimmering upper sopranos. They keep a crisp pacing throughout, and the rhythmic verve they demonstrate serves to clearly delineate the counterpoint in all three masses.
A collection of motets and mass movements are featured on the Brabant Ensemble’s recording. Ricocheting entrances contrast sumptuous, widely spaced verticals in O Bone et dulcissime Jesu. Pungent dissonances and imitative counterpoint enliven a setting of the Stabat Mater. The included mass movements, rather than being part of an Ordinary cycle, are freestanding. The Gloria de beata virgine and the Sanctus and Benedictus de Passione are easily as musically substantial as sections of complete mass settings and serve as a reminder that, irrespective of the way in which Renaissance music is often presented in concert and on disc, service music in practice was far from a tradition of monolithic cycles. The Brabant Ensemble and Stile Antico share some personnel, notably Helen, Kate, and Emma Ashby in the soprano and alto sections. The singers in both groups create a warm and impressively blended sound.
Stile Antico’s first Decca CD features a premiere recording of the beautiful chanson Vivrai je toujours. The rest of their selections include some “greatest hits” – Ave Maria Virgo Serena, Inviolate, integra, et casta es, Salve Regina, and a charming but slightly incongruous inclusion of El Grillo. The centerpiece is Missa Pange Lingua, a paraphrase mass from late in Josquin’s career that employs one of the central hymns of the Catholic liturgy. Stile Antico takes a spacious approach to the mass, with relaxed tempos and impressive delineation of the pervasive appearances of the hymn that define much of the mass. Two laments on the death of Josquin, Dum vastos Adriae fluctus by Jacquet De Mantua and O mors inevitabilis by Hieronymus Vinders, provide a fitting and stirring conclusion to this compelling recording. If asked to choose I would say: get all three.
Pianist Philip Thomas is a prolific artist. A member of Apartment House, he recently participated in their recording of Ryoko Akama’s compositions for Another Timbre. Also on Another Timbre is Thomas’s gargantuan CD set of piano music by Morton Feldman, which includes several previously unreleased pieces.
Two of the pianist’s other recent projects focus on other members of the New York School. His deep dive into Cage’s Concert for Piano (again with Apartment House) has resulted in a book, recording, and an interactive online project, Cageconcert (cageconcert.org) that also includes apps to work with segments of the piece and make one’s own versions. He has also released a recording of Christian Wolff’s piano music. Finally, Thomas has recorded a CD of composer-pianist Chris Burn’s work, including transcriptions of improvisations by the late guitarist (and author of one of the key books on improvisation) Derek Bailey. As the interview below demonstrates, Thomas’s performance and recording schedule shows no signs of let-up. (Note: Philip and I talked before the pandemic, so some of his future projects are now TBA).
How did you and
Martin Iddon come to collaborate on a book about Cage’s Concert for Piano
(1957-’58)? Were the book and recording in process before the website and apps
were conceived or was the idea of multiple presentations part of the initial
concept?
This goes back a long
way! I had it in my thoughts that, having performed the piece a number of
times, with Apartment House but also with others, including the Merce
Cunningham Dance Company for the dance ‘Antic Meet’, it was a far richer piece
than had perhaps history had credited it. It’s such a well-known piece, not
least from its visual appearance, and its historic performance value has
influenced what we think of as a Cage-ian performance practice. Plus the
premiere performance and recording is notorious from its depiction on the
Twenty-Fifth Retrospective Concert album. But I felt strongly that there was
much that is not more widely known when digging a little deeper, both about the
way it can be performed, about the graphic notations of the ‘Solo for Piano’,
and about the instrumental and conductor parts. And I was aware that
performance as both historical and contemporary practice has a lot to say about
the music, not least because of the unusually long time one has to spend with
the piano part in order to arrive at something which is playable. So I set to
thinking about this as a major research project and immediately thought of
Martin as being an ideal collaborator, particularly due to his brilliant book
about Cage and Tudor, as well as his Darmstadt book. So over lunch in London
one day we dreamt up the project, which over the following year developed and
formed to include the book, the website and apps, as well as the involvement of
Apartment House. Then there was the inevitable long wait until we found out our
grant application was successful. The grant was for a 3-year project but
inevitably aspects of that spill over into the months since – and I’ve just now
finished the index for the book! The apps grew from a simple idea that we
thought might be nice to a far more complex concept than any of us could have
imagined, forming a vital part of the project. The team expanded to include two
research assistants, Emily Payne and Chris Melen – Chris being the developer of
the Solo for Piano app – with additional help from others, including Stuart
Mellor who designed the Concert Player app.
As a pianist who
specializes in experimental music, Concert for Piano seems like a natural work
to explore from multiple vantage points. When did you first become acquainted
with the piece, and what does it mean to you as an interpreter?
I’ve mostly played it with Apartment House. I think possibly the earliest occasion was in 2008 when I organised a 50th anniversary concert of the 25-year retrospective concert. My experience then was as it continues to be, that this is an exceptionally rich and lively piece, full of surprises, and one which is a total joy to perform – each moment is alive and fresh, and my experience as a performer is of being part of music being made, rather than something which is ‘re-played’. We don’t rehearse, everyone works on their own materials, and then it’s put together, so for everyone playing the experience is as new as it is for the audience. In the spirit of embracing the unpredictable, much like aficionados who seek out betting sites not on Gamstop to experience the thrill of the game without restrictions, the musicians and audience alike are invited to a unique event where anything can happen. Just as players on those betting platforms revel in the unexpected outcomes, so do we find a visceral pleasure in the spontaneous creation of our art. This is true of many pieces by Cage of course, but this piece seems to heighten those senses and the material is so exaggerated in its range here – noises, pitches, highs and lows, louds and softs, etc.
The website and apps
provided detailed and varied material from Concert. Will you share with us some
of the features you consider to be highlights?
There’s so much
there, a few of my favourite things include:
Interviews with
Apartment House – I love to hear the musicians of Apartment House talk about
what they do. These interviews are brimming with insight. I especially like the
films which combine their different insights, such as the ‘Performing the
Concert’
film and the last 10 minutes of the conductor film.
Watching the films of
our performances of the ‘Concert’ and also Christian Wolff’s ‘Resistance’ is a particular
thrill, because, as I suggested above, there’s so much unknown in the
performance itself that it’s great to get a stronger sense of the kinds of
things the other musicians are doing.
This one is not yet
on the website but will be appearing very soon – I have made a studio recording
of the complete ‘Solo for Piano’, which has never been done. It’s completely
different from the version I play with Apartment House – for this I recorded
each notation individually, according to a space time measurement of 3 minutes
per page, and then Alex Bonney has mapped them together like a patchwork quilt,
to get a complete 3 hours and 9 minutes performance of the Solo. You can hear
it now actually on the Concert Player app as it’s this recording which we use
for the app.
For the uninitiated person
finding this on the web, what do you think they apps will demonstrate to them?
I hope firstly that
it’ll just be a great entry into the music – that this is music people play and
love to play, and is really great to play, instead of perhaps either that it is
too ‘far-out’ or obfuscatory, or, the flip-side, that it is entirely open and
‘free’! For users trying out the Solo for Piano app, I hope it’ll both be a
great way of playing with the notations and their conditions for performance,
to see what might be possible and conversely what is not possible with each,
and to play with the multiple possibilities the notation offers; and that it
will also be an aid to performance. Of course each pianist will want to try it
out in their own way, but at the least I hope that for some notations this will
be a time-saver, offering possibilities to randomly generate multiple outcomes
and to print them off in usable formats. An obvious criticism of the app is
that it removes the fun of working these things out yourself – I think it
manages to keep the fun of playing with each notation, whilst cutting down on
the work needed to write these things out. And we’ve been careful to always
show where and how we’ve made interpretative decision when others might make
other choices, so it’s clear that this is both a facility AND an
interpretation.
And then the Concert
player app is simply a delight to hear – there are 16,383 possible instrumental
combinations of this piece, and we have a handful of recordings available.
Clearly, a recording of a work such as this can only hint at the slightest
possibility of how this piece may sound. But the app allows users to randomly
generate or select combinations, plus select pages, their durations, their
sequence, and then hear how that might sound. We’ve taken great care to ensure
the space-time properties of the music are upheld (measuring by the pixel!) and
so really this is a pretty accurate – no matter how inappropriate that word is
to this piece!! – realisation. I still listen to it regularly and am surprised
all the time by the combinations. It’s a thrill, so I hope people will just
dive in.
You have been
performing Morton Feldman’s music for over a quarter century. Still, the
recording you did for Another Timbre last year was a mammoth undertaking. How
long did it take to record? How do you keep so much detailed, long repertoire,
with irregular repetitions, in your brain and fingers?
Somehow it didn’t
feel like a mammoth task, more like a real pleasure to play these pieces again.
Perhaps surprisingly, I didn’t feel any kind of pressure to give a ‘definitive’
statement on the music – my performances on disc just happen to be a
representation of how I play this music today, after many years of thinking
about and playing it. If I were to record it all again in 10 years it may be
quite different, who knows? It was though a particular pleasure to discover a
few pieces that I hadn’t played before, namely the unpublished works I explored
at the Sacher Foundation in Basel, and the transcription I made of the Lipton
film music.
I recorded the music
over a period of about 2 years, in different sessions. It’s funny how the music
at times just sticks in terms of fingering, rhythmic detail, whilst at other
times what should be very familiar to me still seems strange. Certainly,
whereas I thought this project might draw a line in the sand for me – no more
Feldman! – I feel it’s done the opposite, opened up more possibilities, more
ways of thinking about the music. In particular, Triadic Memories, which
I’ve probably played more often than any other single piece of music, changed a
great deal for me in preparation for the recording and what I thought I knew
now feels more experimental, more curious, than ever. There’s a part of me that
sometimes tries to avoid Feldman’s music – it’s almost too gorgeous at times,
and I need to find something else, something of rougher hue, but those chords
keep pulling me back! Thankfully, there’s so much more to the music than just
beautiful sonorities, and in particular the music’s form and narrative feels to
me to be so strikingly original.
Are there surprises
among the previously unrecorded pieces?
Certainly, the
addition of struck drum and glass to the Feldman sound is pretty surprising,
bringing to mind much more the 1940s music by Cage, and here included as part
of a set of three pieces composed for the dance. In fact there’s a surprising
number of pieces composed for dance collaborations, not just for Cunningham,
but also for Merle Mersicano, as Ryan Dohoney has written about in considerable
detail recently. One of these is Figure of Memory which sounds nothing like
Feldman and more like some kind of sketch of a Satie piece, consisting simply
of repetitions of three short phrases.
Another recent
release is of music by Chris Burn, including a transcription of an
improvisation by Derek Bailey. How does that translate to the piano?
Well Chris is a
wonderful wonderful composer, and a brilliant pianist and improviser. And so he
is fully aware of the slightly perverse nature of what he was doing in writing
these pieces, not least as someone who used to play with Bailey. But these
pieces are not just really lovely pieces of music, but they also reveal
something about Chris and how he hears and thinks of music, as well as being
revealing of Bailey’s own work, and in particular of his love of Webern and his
close attention to pitch. So when the guitar-ness of the pieces is removed a
different side to Bailey’s music is revealed which is simply different but to
my ears no less remarkable.
As if 2019 weren’t
busy enough for you, a compendium of Christian Wolff’s piano music was released
on Sub Rosa. In the notes you say that “In all my performances of Wolff’s
music, I aim for interpretations that both interest and surprise me, allowing
the notations to lead me to new ways of playing and thinking about music,
whilst at
the same time trying
to lead the notations toward the unexpected.” When discussing the piano music
with Wolff, what were some insights he offered? What piece will most likely
surprise listeners?
The recent double
disc follows on from an earlier three-disc set, and hopefully precedes another
three-disc set to follow. Christian’s music is, when it comes down to it, the
music I feel closest to. I love the potential for change, for surprise, for
play. On the whole I tend not to ‘collaborate’ with composers (I trust them to
do what they do well and then it’s over to me) and so I love the moment when I
begin a new piece, I put it up on the piano and I start to think ‘ok so what am
I going to do with this’. This is where I am at my most creative, and
Christian’s music works especially well to that effect. I’ve never asked him
for his approval of what I do and most often he doesn’t hear my interpretations
until after I’ve performed or recorded it. Though the very first time we met,
in 2002, I played ‘Bread and Roses’ to him, waited for his response, and learnt
fairly quickly that his typical response was ‘Sure!’. He tends not to validate
not to denigrate peoples’ performances of his music and I appreciate that. He
doesn’t want to say ‘yes, this is how it should be played’ preferring instead
for the individuality of the player to find new solutions, new ways of playing.
And so I do hope with each performance I give of his music that I might offer
something that would surprise him, that might suggest possibilities in his
music which he’d not considered.
In this recent set
I’ve included a few pieces which are not published, so that surprised him too!
So three variations on Satie, pieces he composed for John Tilbury, which he
never quite convinced himself as worth publishing but hopefully he’s convinced
now they’re out on disc – they’re wonderfully eccentric pieces. Also his
Incidental Music, which he has played and recorded (wonderfully, on Mode) but
which he’d not heard anyone else perform. He was delighted, so that’s great.
And for anyone familiar with Wolff’s music I hope that my playing brings both
recognition and surprise too.
What will be your
next recording/recital? What will Apartment House be up to in 2020?
Next concert, in Cambridge in April, features a brand-new piece that Toronto-based composer Allison Cameron is writing for me, which I’m delighted about. And Simon Reynell’s always dreaming up new ideas and introducing me to younger composers and I’m always happy to play a small part in that project. And as a result of the Feldman release we’ve been able to commission one of my very favourite composers, Martin Arnold, to write a large-scale new piece for me. But that won’t be for a while. Lots of ideas, lots of pieces I want to play, but actually I’m hoping for a bit of a quieter year this year!
Christian
Carey is a composer, performer, musicologist, and writer. His work has been
published in Perspectives of New Music, Intégral, Open Space, Tempo, Musical
America, Time Out New York, Signal to Noise, Early Music America, Sequenza 21,
Pop Matters, All About Jazz, and NewMusicBox. Carey’s research on
narrativity in late music by Elliott Carter, presented at IRCAM in Paris on the
composer’s 100th birthday, appears in Hommage à Elliott Carter (Editions
Delatour). He is Associate Professor of Composition, History, and Theory at
Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey.
Barbara Hannigan, soprano and conductor; Ludwig Orchestra
Alpha Classics
La Passione is soprano and conductor
Barbara Hannigan’s second CD with Ludwig Orchestra. Their first collaboration, Girl
Crazy, won a 2018 Grammy Award. Like Girl Crazy, the selections on La
Passione are disparate, but they cohere into a convincing program. Whether
she is performing a solo vocal piece by Luigi Nono, conducting a Haydn
symphony, or conducting and singing a spectral work by Grisey, Hannigan is a
compelling performer. This is also true of Ludwig Orchestra, who thrive in this
setting.
Luigi Nono’s solo vocal work Cjamila Boupacha eulogizes
a dissident who, during the lead up to the French-Algerian war, was raped and
murdered. Her story galvanized anti-colonial resistance in the country. The
piece is a vocalize that often accesses the extreme upper register of the
soprano’s range. Hannigan navigates its wide range and visceral expressive
qualities with eloquence and impeccable technique.
It might seem strange to pair a Haydn symphony with a Nono
piece, but Symphony No. 49, “La Passione,” explores grief with depth of feeling
and dramatic flair. Composed in 1768, it is one of Haydn’s “Sturm und Drang”
pieces. Its formal design is that of a church sonata, with an extensive slow
movement preceding the sonata allegro second movement. In terms of both form
and demeanor, it may have been played at Esterhazy during Holy Week. The first
movement extends a mournful demeanor over a quarter-hour, and it is followed by
a combative allegro. Hannigan provides a supple reading of the minuet and trio,
with the latter finally allowing the listener let-up from f-minor’s pathos, which
has thus far dominated the proceedings, with a glimpse, albeit brief, of F-major.
The emotional finale truly embodies the “Sturm und Drang” aesthetic, ending the
piece in powerful, albeit tragic, fashion.
French composer Gérard Grisey passed away in 1998 at
age 52 from an aneurysm, leaving behind a compact but compelling body of work
that helped to define the spectral approach to composition. His last completed piece
was Quatre Chants pour Franchir les Soueil (“Four Songs for Crossing the
Threshold”), premiered posthumously in 1999. In recent years Hannigan has
championed Quatre Chants, notably performing it with Ensemble
Intercontemporain conducted by Susanna Mälkki and Sir Simon Rattle conducting
the Berlin Philharmonic. On La Passione, she undertakes the daunting task
of both singing and conducting the piece. Of the recorded performance with
Ludwig Orchestra, Hannigan has remarked, “It took us to our limits.”
A variety of texts are used: Guez-Ricord’s The Hours of Night, Egyptian Sarcophagi of the Middle Empire,
a fragment from sixth century Greek poetess Erinna, and an extract from the
Babyloninan Epic of Gilgamesh (courtesy Tim
Rutherford-Johnson). Overtone chords and micro-tunings abound. The
instrumentation is distinctive, particularly the percussion cohort that
includes fifteen tuned gongs that are played in quick arpeggiations at a low
dynamic level, an impressive feat and singular sound. The bass drum has an
evocative role as well, serving to toll a memento mori that divides the
piece’s several sections. In the first song, “Death of the Angel”, is one of
the piece’s signatures, bracing unison lines between soprano and trumpet that shatter
an otherwise merely ominous atmosphere. A variety of wind instruments are
employed throughout, including saxophones. Hannigan’s singing seamlessly intermingles
with the various instruments, moving from sinuous angular lines to altissimo
shrieks with myriad gestures in between. After the four songs is a postlude, “Berceuse,”
haunting in its comparative reserve with a number of duets between Hannigan and
various instruments in floating vocal lines.
An ambitious program with a “can’t miss” piece (the Grisey)
and all of it exquisitely executed: recommended.
-Composer Christian Carey is Associate Professor at Westminster Choir College, Editor at Sequenza 21, and regularly contributes to Tempo, Musical America, and other publications. He has created eighty some compositions for orchestra, choir, solo voices, and chamber musicians. His electronic score for Gilgamesh Variations was produced at Bushwick Starr Theatre in Brooklyn, NY.
