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CD Review, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, File Under?

Two Wandelweiser Recordings (CD Review)

Sivan Silver-Swartz

Untitled 6

Wandelweiser CD EWR 1920

Nigel Dean, violin; Patrick Behnke, Tanner Pfeiffer, viola; Tal Katz, Julian Tedaldi, cello

 

Antoine Beuger

Jankélévich Sextets

Another Timbre CD at168

Apartment House – James Opstad, double bass; Mark Knoop, accordion; Heather Roche, bass clarinet; Mira Benjamin, violin; Joe Qiu, bassoon; Bridget Carey, viola

 

At twenty-eight years of age, Sivan Silver-Swartz is the youngest member of the Wandelweiser collective. A native of Ohio, he received his undergraduate degree at Oberlin College and then relocated to California to get his Master’s at CalArts. He has remained in Los Angeles since getting his degree in 2019.

 

Silver-Swartz’s work fits in well with the interest of Wandelweiser composers in the New York School, notably late pieces by John Cage and Morton Feldman. Six of his string player friends perform Untitled 6, an hourlong piece that takes its cue from the slow, soft music Feldman favored and that Cage adopted in his Number Pieces. Silver-Swartz pursues a quasi-aleatoric device in the score, with one chart of events that “change and do not return” and one of events that “change but do return.” The design of the events structure is the composer’s, but it gives the musicians considerable latitude in realization. There is a fair bit of overlap and harmonic presentation in Untitled 6 and the tuning reveals overtones from just intonation. The pace is steady and gradual, sumptuously so.

 

Antoine Beuger is one of founding members of Wandelweiser. From 2003-2005, he wrote a series of pieces, each for a different ensemble, that referenced cultural or intellectual figures in their titles, including Canto, Ockeghem, and Tschirtner; these three have all appeared on the label Another Timbre. The group Apartment House recorded the fourth in the series, Jankélévich Sextets, written for an interesting hybrid ensemble consisting of three strings (violin, viola, and double bass), bass clarinet, bassoon, and accordion. Vladimir Jankélévich (1903-1983) was a philosopher and musicologist. A French child of Russian-Jewish parents, he fought in the Resistance during the Second World War and later taught at the Sorbonne.

 

Jankélévich Sextets is also an hourlong piece that is primarily slow and soft. The performance instructions indicate that tones should be “very quiet; long to very long,” and that rests should give time to breathe or be much longer. Each pagelong section starts with a unison pitch in all voices (notes may be played in any octave) followed by an additional six pitches on each staff, with some repeated notes. Beuger indicates that the number of these sections used in a performance, as well as their ordering, is free.

 

Generally, the Sextets are, in this recording, presented in a thicker texture than that of Untitled 6. Given the freedom of ordering provided, the sense of trajectory alongside spontaneity is noteworthy. Octave displacements and freedom of pacing result in complex verticals, which are frequently fascinating. Arresting too are the places where simple intervals are given voice. For example, a multi-octave presentation just shy of twenty minutes in is a powerful point of arrival.

 

Neophytes who think that Wandelweiser pieces must all ‘sound the same,’ because of the affinity of its members’ aesthetic aims, would do well to compare these two works. They may be contained in similarly constructed vessels, but each has an individual character all its own. Kudos to the performers of both pieces for their tremendous attention to detail and keen sense of collaboration.

 

-Christian Carey

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Chamber Music, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

City of Tomorrow on New Focus (CD Review)

City of Tomorrow

Blow

New Focus Records

 

The City of Tomorrow is a woodwind quintet dedicated to 20/21 music, particularly compositions that explore environmental themes. They first convened to play the title work on this recording. Blow, by Franco Donatoni, is a tour de force for woodwinds. In addition to the obvious association with embouchures, the piece also explores the qualities of wind, from a soothing breeze to gusts to gale force. The use of counterpoint in polyrhythms reminds one of the formidable craft Donatoni possessed – and expected of the musicians who play Blow. The confluence of “wind painting” and proportional imitation, as well as the piece’s relentless energy, are thrilling in City of Tomorrow’s authoritative performance. 

 

Hero and Leander, by Hannah Lash, also explores an environmental theme, if somewhat obliquely. The Greek myth involves Leander swimming the sea each night to reunite with Hero, only to be taken away by Poseidon in a vicious storm. In the wake of Tropical Storm Henri, and all the other hurricanes yet to come as climate change bears down on coastal communities, the piece has psychological resonances well beyond the archetypal tale of unrequited love. Hero and Leander is a nine-movement suite both varied in texture and harmony and unified by recurrent use of birdsong (played in piccolo and e-flat clarinet) and Poseidon’s heavy weather. Unlike Donatoni, Lash takes her time revealing the tale, with the calm before the storm just as emphasized as the lovers being kept apart. The last three movements bring Stravinskyian dissonances and clipped utterances (there are connections to his Oedipus)  and poignant stillness to the depiction of Hero’s grief at finding Leander’s body.  

 

In 2003, Esa-Pekka Salonen wrote a piece dedicated to the memory of Luciano Berio: Memoria. It was premiered alongside Laborintus 2, Berio’s own work dealing with memory. Beginning with heterophonic overlap and moving to a main section of vivacious rhythms, the short motifs and shifting meters suggest Stravinsky. Later there is another Stravinsky connection in Memoria. The finale consists of chorales that recall the Symphonies of Wind Instruments. Salonen manages to channel two great composers of the twentieth century while imposing his own kinetic spin on the proceedings. Once again, City of Tomorrow impresses with its dextrous delivery and the silvery tone of its soloists. Recommended. 

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Choral Music, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Cantus Records Manifesto

Cantus

Manifesto

Signum Classics

 

The all-male vocal ensemble Cantus’s first full length recording in seven years, Manifesto, features pieces, all in world premiere recordings, that explore relationships and identity. The title work is a piece by David Lang, the text taken from answers to a Google Search auto-complete list of the query “I want to be with someone who…” It was originally commissioned by Cantus for a program titled “The Four Loves.” Lang’s piece signifies romantic love and is written in a minimal style, the textual repetitions being a hallmark of his approach. “If I Profane,” by Libby Larsen, which features a tenor solo and swelling crescendos in its accompanying voices, is a setting of the love sonnet from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.  

 

Roger Treece’s Philia signifies friendly love, as does Timothy C Takach’s Luceat Eis, written in commemoration of service personnel who died on 9/11. Both artfully use polychords, the Luceat Eis bifurcated into low clusters and a chant-like upper melodic line. Ysaÿe M. Barnwell explores divine love in Tango with God. Here, the ensemble’s performance emphasizes exuberance rather than the suavity of the dance. To My Brother, by Joseph Gregorio, is about familial love. It begins with angular melody, gradually adding suspensions, homophonic declamation, and a few arpeggiations lending colorful cadences. 

 

It is not just love that resonates in this attractive program. Gagót, by Sidney Guillaume, is about dealing with life’s vicissitudes. Sarah Kirkland Snider’s luminous Psalm of the Soil connects nature and the divine. The longest setting on the recording, it is also the most intricate and interesting formally. 

 

Two song cycles complete the program. Poems by Hafiz, Rumi and Kabir are set in Paul John Rudoi’s Song of Sky and Sea. “At Every Instant” features elaborate syncopations, “The Infinite Dwelling” layers a webbing of contrapuntal passages. “Two Falling Stars” uses glissandos and descending lines in elaborate word painting, and spoken word and equally declamatory singing are featured in “As One Sky.” In addition to being a composer, Rudoi is a tenor vocalist, and one can hear him revel in writing the solo passages of “As One Sky.” 

 

Dale Warland incorporates piano, played here by Andrew Fleser, in his Evening Star triptych. Warland is well known for his direction of vocal groups, including his own Singers. Evening Star demonstrates his skillful composing in a neo-romantic idiom. Sara Teasdale’s poetry is about the stages of grieving that ultimately lead to acceptance of loss. Octave leaps supply “The Falling Star” with powerful resonance,“On a Winter Night,” the middle movement, is particularly haunting, and Cantus impresses in its a cappella tuning between piano interludes in “Stars Over Snow.” Cantus combines beautifully blended passages with strong individual voices. They are welcome to return to the recording studio ASAP. 

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?

My Tree (CD Review)

My Tree

Where the Grace Is

Self-released, 2021

 

The duo My Tree consists of vocalist Caroline Davis and multi-instrumentalist Ben ‘Jamal’ Hoffmann. Davis is best known as a jazz saxophonist and flutist, but on My Tree’s latest recording, Where the Grace Is, she demonstrates an attractive voice comfortable in a hybrid blend of musical styles. These encompass funk and fusion from the seventies and more recent electronic pop. Hoffmann favors vintage gear, including analog synths and a Linn drum machine. He crafts intricate and memorable arrangements and demonstrates keen versatility.

 

Davis’s supple singing serves well the uplifting songs “One More Time,” “What a Joy,” and “Afterglow.” My Tree also addresses social issues in more challenging pieces. “Where the Grace Is” documents the murder of Ahmaud Arbery. Rico Sisney is a guest MC on “Run and Rag On,” an energetic and socially conscious anthem repudiating the New Jim Crow. “Our Land Oh” is another track about a recent and regrettable event, the Pulse Nightclub shooting. One can sense the grief contained in Davis’s overdubbed delivery and Hoffmann  plays a tense ostinato riff on Rhodes beside a weighty countermelody in the bass. “Liteshine” juxtaposes the power of the sun with the climate crisis. 

 

My Tree reminds us that we needn’t forget hope and even joy in the midst of the adversity of recent days. Where the Grace Is — a balm for late summer blues. 

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Choral Music, early music, File Under?

Cinquecento Sings Isaac (CD Review)

Heinrich Isaac

Missa Wohlauff gut Gsell von hinnen and other works

Cinquecento

Hyperion Records 

 

While not as famous today as Josquin, Heinrich Isaac (1450-1517) was a contemporary and rival much esteemed during his lifetime. The main work programmed on this recording, Missa Wohlauff gut Gsell von hinnen, makes an explicit connection between the two composers. Comment peult avoir joye?, a monophonic chanson also set polyphonically by Josquin (included on the CD for comparison’s sake), was the subject of a paraphrase mass set early in his career by Isaac. Later, when Isaac was in the service of the Habsburg Emperor Maximilian I, the composer discovered a contrafactum text of the song in German, Wohlauff gut Gsell von hinnen. With this in mind, Isaac decided to revisit his earlier mass and greatly expand and elaborate it. The result was one of the most extensive and imposing works of his career. 

 

A six-voice setting, subgroups thereof appear frequently, and the same reduced scorings seldom recur adjacently, creating a wide variety of textures. The male vocal sextet Cinquecento sings with impressive resonance, rendering the counterpoint with clarity, phrasing with sensitivity,  and tutti passages with sonority. They adopt flowing tempos that befit the overlapping lines, particularly those in canon. Missa Wohlauff is a tour-de-force of a variety of canons:  intervallic, proportional, 4-ex-2, and 3-ex-1 (two of them used in the Agnus Dei to end triumphantly). 

 

The recording also contains a half-dozen motets: some of Isaac’s finest. O decus ecclesiae has a tenor built out of the white note, or “natural” hexachord, that subtracts and replaces notes throughout the piece, creating an intricate structure out of initially simple means. The motet is formidably scaled, in excess of twelve minutes in duration, with melismatic upper parts, thickly scored tutti, and a subterranean bass line. The second half moves in a sprightly three against the steady tenor. Recordare, Jesu Christe has a canon in the middle voices and overlapping rhythms in the others that prevent the procedure from being obvious; it closes with a hushed cadence of considerable beauty. Judea et Jerusalem may be by Obrecht, another member of the Josquin generation who deserves more attention today, instead of Isaac. A responsory from the Christmas Vigil built up from the chant in the bass, it consists of imitative counterpoint in long phrases adorned with sumptuous verticals. 

 

Cinquecento’s recording makes an eloquent case for Isaac as a composer of the first rank. Recommended.

 

  • Christian Carey

 

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

Danny Driver Records Ligeti (CD Review)

 

György Ligeti

The 18 Etudes

Danny Driver

Hyperion

 

Composed between 1985 and 2001, the 18 Etudes by György Ligeti are an eloquent summary of the techniques he had developed throughout his career. They rival the best collections of etudes for piano while adding substantially to the variety of technical means to be explored, particularly in the realms of polyrhythm and sonority. 

 

There are a number of recordings of the Etudes and it is difficult to choose a favorite: different ones excel at various aspects of these multifaceted works. Danny Driver’s is a strong contender. Amply powerful where required, Driver’s playing also brings out a variety of dynamic shadings, with passages of exceptional delicacy (notably absent in some other interpretations). For instance, Driver’s rendition of “White on White,” in which both hands play white note collections, is diaphanous in the beginning and coda and incisive in the moto perpetuo middle. He demonstrates mastery over the technical challenges and has a keen sense for the reference points found in each Etude. 

 

Several interests that Ligeti developed late in his career impacted the language of the Etudes: the minimalism of Steve Reich, African music, and an abiding love of rhythmic canons that expanded to encompass the work of Conlon Nancarrow. One can also see in the list of dedicatees – Pierre Boulez (to whom the first three Etudes are dedicated), Mauricio Kagel, György Kurtág, and Pierre-Laurent Aimard among them – the music and performance qualities of others respected by Ligeti that in turn filter through the Etudes. 

 

There are three books of Etudes, the first containing six, the second eight, and the last book four. Many have self-imposed restrictions that create intriguing, at times playful results. For instance, the first Etude Désordre consists of ascending and descending polyrhythms, with the left hand playing only black keys and the right white keys, thus juxtaposing pentatonic and pandiatonic collections. Galamb Borong also has a different scale for each hand, the two whole tone collections meant to stand in for the scales of Balinese gamelan. Automne à Varsovie is a canon in polytempo, with overlapping relationships of 3,4,5,6,7, and 8, and a perpetually descending motive.

 

Coloana Infinita, the 14th Etude, is the tour-de-force among formidable pieces. The original version was viewed as unplayable by humans, and made into a player piano piece a lá Nancarrow. The revised version is scarcely less daunting, Thick pile ups of chords build a multi-textured ascent. It sounds like at least three hands are required, but Driver manages just fine with two, wielding intensity and virtuosity in impressive fashion. He provides a similarly energetic performance of Vertige, its fortissimo, chromatic music, this time descending, devolves into a soft rumble only at its conclusion. 

 

The final work of Book Three, a brief Canon, is rendered with effusion and a coy, pianissimo coda that is an enigmatic valediction. Canon demonstrates Ligeti’s continued inspiration and considerable imagination late in life. Driver’s recording is a fitting celebration of the composer’s legacy. Recommended.

 

-Christian Carey

 

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

Magnus Lindberg on Ondine (CD Review)

 

Magnus Lindberg

Aura – Marea – Related Rocks

Emil Holmström, Joonas Ahonen, piano and keyboards; 

Jani Niinimaki, Jerry Plippomem, percussion 

Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Hannu Lintu

Ondine

 

This recording includes three live recordings of compositions from the 1990s by Magnus Lindberg. Hannu Lintu leads the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra in energetic and focused renditions of two of these challenging works, bringing out considerable detail from Lindberg’s vivid orchestrations. A quartet of pianists and percussionists perform the chamber piece, Related Rocks, an interesting corollary to the larger compositions. 

 

By 1990, when Lindberg had completed Marea, he was already an established composer. Particularly noteworthy was 1985’s Kraft, with a large orchestra, multiple soloists, enormous gongs, and influences from German industrial music, notably Einstürzende Neubauten. Marea is for more modest forces, a sinfonietta; however, it sounds larger than the sum of its parts. The title means “tides,” and the piece is a single movement set of variations. There is much in Marea that is muscularly scored, indicating the powerful ebb and flow of the ocean. Indeed, the flowing nature of the music overwhelms its constructivist design to create densely imprinted textures and dramatic climaxes.

 

The chamber piece Related Rocks (1997). for a quartet of pianists and percussionists with electronics, was written at IRCAM. It has a similar instrumentation to the Bartôk Sonata for two pianos and percussion, and its raucous ending is certainly Bartôkian in design. Most of the piece departs from this script, with a blending of the instrumental cohort rather than the bifurcation of the Bartôk sonata. Lindberg explores gamelan-like harmonics with spectacular shimmer. Rhythmic canons between piano and pitched percussion provide rigorous contrast for the more vertically oriented passages. Lindberg demonstrates both the percussive and sonorous qualities of the instruments, and the software he uses allows one to morph from one sound to the next. 

 

Aura (1994) is dedicated to the memory of Wiltold Lutoslawski, who passed away while Lindberg was composing the piece. At forty minutes in duration, it is the longest piece in his catalogue. Cast in four movements, played attacca, with a scheme of fast-slow-scherzo-finale, Lindberg has said it is neither a symphony nor a concerto for orchestra. Instead it seems to flow organically, with successive movements commenting on their predecessors. The concerto designation is tantalizing because material is often deployed in smaller cohorts of the orchestra and soloists. The first movement’s brass fanfares are followed by ricocheting counterpoint from winds and strings. Each successive climax adds to the complexity of the vertical chords that announce it. Winds, strings, brass, and percussion each take a turn as active ensembles. A general pullback allows for diaphanous strings and whorls of woodwinds to blend together. This is supplanted by edgy ostinatos and rangy clarinet passages. The trading off intensifies, bringing the movement to a fortissimo pileup and moto perpetuo coda that leads into the spectral verticals that begin movement two. 

 

Lindberg is not known for writing slow movements, but the second one of Aura qualifies. Blocks of harmony are connected by trumpet filigrees. Overtone chords and long string lines are underscored by stentorian timpani and succeeded by wind trills. The chorale-like movement of the harmony continues, until heraldic brass announce descending cellos and divisi string harmonies. Oscillating cells and intricate blocks of chords cascade through much of the rest of the movement, with echoing harmonics and busily moving pitched percussion giving decay a boost. Percussion – gongs notable in their appearance – and glinting winds bring the movement to a close. It is followed by a Scherzo, with skittering lines, repeated motives, and wide-ranging cascading verticals. The finale is a boisterous summation, with allusions to the music that has come before, motorized by post-minimal ostinatos, generously scored string melodies, and triumphal brass. Aura is an imposing, impressive piece. 

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?

Mogwai: “As the Love Continues” (CD Review)

Mogwai

As the Love Continues

Rock Action/Temporary Residence Ltd.

 

On February 26th, twenty-five years into their recording career, Mogwai hit #1 on the UK charts. The band’s two previous full length releases were in the Top 10 in the UK, but the success of As the Love Continues, their tenth album, is remarkable.

 

Known for a live act that is one of the loudest in history, Mogwai retains a musicality that often hews close to the shaping of post-rock, with varied textures supplied both by synthesizers and electric guitars replete with pedals. The looping melody of “Dry Fantasy” evinces minimalist sympathies, as does “Here We, Here We, Here We Go Forever,” the latter combining a looping chordal ostinato with drums supplying one of the more danceable grooves in the band’s catalog.

 

Vocals treated with vocoder appear on a couple tracks, and the album opens with a spoken word excerpt – Benjamin John Power (Blanck Mass) apparently speaking in his sleep – that also serves as the song’s curious title, “To the Bin My Friend, Tonight We Vacate Earth.” What follows seems to emanate from a dreamstate, with heartbeat drums and haloing of harmonics giving way to overlapping melodies for synth-piano and guitar that provide a slow burn prior to one of the band’s patented anthemic choruses. Mogwai often gives their music enigmatic titles. The track “Ritchie Sacramento” was inspired by a record store clerk’s mishearing of Ryuichi Sakamoto. However, the piece, the only one with non-modified vocals, is more somber than this pun would suggest, referencing grief, not just for the COVID year, but for departed musician friends, among them David Berman.

 

Some emphases have changed, and As the Love Continues shows the band savoring a temperament for exploration. But Mogwai still makes thunderous rock. “Ceiling Granny” is inspired by a scene from The Exorcist, and the terror that Braithwaite experienced upon viewing it is translated into roaring guitars and triple forte drumming.  

 

Listen to an interview with Stuart Braithwaite and some live performances below.

 

KEXP interview and live performances:

“Ritchie Sacramento” Official Video: 

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Chamber Music, Electro-Acoustic, File Under?

Attacca Quartet – Real Life (CD Review)

Attacca Quartet

Real Life

Sony Music CD/DL

 

Kronos Quartet excepted, there have been a lot of really bad arrangements of pop music for string quartet. Part of the problem is that the arrangers of these covers attempt to translate a medium that involves amplification, electronics, and a flexible sense of rhythm into straight notation for acoustic ensemble. Attacca Quartet’s Real Life, on the other hand, sees the opportunity for collaboration in electronic music covers. 

 

Their recordings are subjected to production from some of the top electronic musicians in the industry: Tokimonsta, Squarepusher, and Daedelus among them. The songs are by the artists Flying Lotus (“Remind U” is a particular standout), Louis Cole, Anne Müller, and Mid-Air Thief. The title track, by Cole, features propulsive beats that are offset by chordal strings and the song’s melody doubled in octaves. After a fragmentary opening, Mid-air Thief’s “Why” is populated with reverberant crescendos. Pizzicatos, drumset, and quirky harmonies give Squarepusher’s “Xetaka 1” a fascinating, off-kilter feel, like Bartôk in a blender. 

 

At thirty-five minutes, the recording doesn’t overstay its welcome, with several of the selections truncated from their original versions. A welcome exception is “Drifting Circles” by Anne Müller, in which minimal ostinatos adorn the song’s sumptuous chord progression and evolving textures are explored. Cole’s “More Love Less Hate” provides an aphoristic, supple coda to the proceedings. 

 

  • Christian Carey

 

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

Martin Suckling on NMC (CD Review)

Martin Suckling

This Departing Landscape

NMC Recordings

CD/DL

Tamara Stefanovich (piano), Katherine Bryan (flute), BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, Ilan Volkov

 

Two concertos and two substantial orchestral works by Scottish composer Martin Suckling are programmed on This Departing Landscape, his debut portrait CD. The White Road (after Edmund de Waal) is inspired by De Waal’s ceramic artworks. It features flutist Katherine Bryan, a friend of Suckling’s since childhood – they played in youth orchestra together, and she managed to extract a promise of this commission some twenty years ago. Her virtuosic and energetic performance is remarkable. The violin part consists of frequent registral shifts, microtones, and angular melismas, often at high speed.  The White Road includes a series of cadenzas punctuated with brash interruptions from the orchestra. The orchestral writing also consists of “virtual flutes” that Suckling makes by selecting particular string harmonics with an uncanny resemblance to the flute’s sound quality. 

 

Release has a terrifying opening, with stentorian tutti followed by portentous silences. Gradually the spaces are filled in with echoes of microtones, then an English horn and viola duet, and a song-like theme in the upper register. Cascades of polyphony replace the tutti to create even more reverberant releases.

 

Although the piano is a fixed pitch instrument, microtonal harmony plays a significant role in the concerto too. Suckling, like Julian Anderson (a colleague who writes the liner notes for the CD) picks different instruments from the orchestra to supply quarter tones related to deviations from equal temperament in the overtone series. Anderson calls this technique “macrotonality,” and it is an effective way to exploit rich timbres. The rhythmic design is also intricate, with frequent use of polyrhythms.The concerto is cast in five movements, a fifteen movement first movement marked “Vigorously” followed by three intermezzi and a passacaglia as the finale. The first movement has a Carterian division of forces, with the piano interacting with different subsets of the orchestra: cor anglais and viola (the same combination found in Release), then strings, clarinets, oboes and horns (which contains some truly mind-blowing sounds), piccolo and violin, claves, and back to solo viola to finish the movement.

 

In Intermezzo 1 – Implacable,  a vigorous moto perpetuo inhabits the upper register with gradually introduced bass pedal points unfolding a chromatic ground against the dissonant counterpoint above. This leads attacca into the second Intermezzo, marked Luminous in which hushed repeated notes and chromatic melodies  on the piano are accompanied by high string harmonics, brief wind melodies, and brass swells. Intermezzo 3 has a more aggressive cast, with determined piano attacks, overblown flutes, and acerbic string lines. The final movement is a passacaglia that begins delicately, with ornamented lines in the piano and sustained strings. The piano builds corruscating lines over the ground bass, successively joined by members of the wind family who play sustained passages. Arcing strings and brass chords crescendo before cutting off to allow the solo piano to return to music reminiscent of the reflective opening, which here leads to a hushed close. Tamara Stefanovich is a powerful performer with a commanding presence, full sound, and facility in fleet passages. She also plays, in places such as the close of the final movement, with considerable delicacy. The Piano Concerto is an impressive, formally inventive, addition to the genre. 

 

The title work concludes the CD. In his program note, Suckling expresses the desire  to “write twenty minutes of orchestral music that lives its life in a perpetual state of high energy.” He achieves this goal, creating an imaginatively scored and formally intricate work. It begins with attacks from percussion and disjunct pitch cells and glissandos from strings and winds. These gradually accrete into a short ostinato in which bass octaves are followed by gear shifting gestures that alternate between sections of the orchestra. This ends with an accelerating, thunderous climax of hammering bass octaves and fortissimo polytonal tutti chords. It is succeeded by a quieter, but no less vivid, section for altissimo flutes and sustained strings. A sudden breakthrough of loud brass chords, exuberant drumming, and oscillating strings propels the piece forward only to be cut off in favor of solo timpani repetitions. 

 

The second movement begins attacca, with flute filigrees returning, set against brass swells this time, with a horn melody that begins to reestablish a sense of tonality. The brass moves from chorale to coloristic overtone chords. Microtonal adjustments added by instruments joining create a bevy of shimmer. Suckling maintains this spectral aura, tweaking it with overtones added and subtracted. In the midst, a lyrical theme appears first in lower brass and then oboe. We move gradually from microtones to a blurring into the micropolyphonic spectrum, with glissandos, clusters, and sustained notes competing for the field. This builds into an intense cluster chord that is echoed by a just major triad and then a harmonic laden overtone passage. Polychords in a reverberant echo, stacked verticals, and slashing melody are succeeded by an echo of the beginning of the first movement’s percussion attacks, which closes the piece. 

 

Martin Suckling has an unerring sense of pacing and is an abundantly talented orchestrator. This Departing Landscape establishes him as a distinctive voice. One hopes his second portrait CD isn’t long in coming. 

 

  • Christian Carey  
by Christian Carey