Tag: File Under ?

CD Review, early music, File Under?

Gesualdo Six – Queen of Hearts (CD Review)

Queen of Hearts

Gesualdo Six, Owain Park, director

Alasdair Austin, countertenor (final track only)

Hyperion Records, 2024

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Christian Carey

 

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

Neave Trio – Rooted (CD Review)

Neave Trio

Rooted

Chandos Records (2024)

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

-Christian Carey

 

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

Thomas Adés – Dante (CD/DVD review)

Thomas Adés 

Dante

Los Angeles Master Chorale, Los Angeles Symphony, Gustavo Dudamel, conductor

Nonesuch CD

 

Thomas Adés

The Dante Project

London Symphony Chorus, Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Koen Kessels, conductor

Opus Arte Bluray DVD

 

It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to use Dante as the centerpiece of one’s own creative work. Thomas Adés has courage in spades, as he has created an ambitious  ballet based on the Divine Comedy, for dancers, chorus, and orchestra, commemorating the 700th anniversary of the poet’s death. Two documents of the piece are currently available, a Nonesuch recording of the Los Angeles Symphony, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, and an Opus Arte Bluray DVD.

 

Dudamel is firmly in command of the concert version of Dante, balancing its powerful, often intricate, orchestration. The vivid imagery of the poem is ideal material for Adés to use the leitmotifs that so often appear in his theatrical work. In The Inferno section, the “Abandon All Hope” motif, which opens the ballet, is memorable in its angst-filled stridency, “The Ferryman” contains a recurring melody with exquisite writing in the winds, and the Dies Irae is given a set of suitably diabolical variations. “Paolo and Francesca – the endless whirlwind,” is dervish like in its peregrinations. “The Pope’s Adagio – Head First,” contains a soaring, neo-romantic melody. Immediately followed by “The Hypocrites – coated in lead,” which nicely juxtaposes the Pope’s music with slowly moving, low register chromaticism and an inexorable drumbeat. “The Thieves – devoured by reptiles” depicts the chase between condemned and tormentors in a quick dance that, more than anything else in the ballet, channels Tchaikovsky.

 

Some truly terrifying music ensues: the timpani and howling lower brass for “The suicides,” followed by cymbals and upward wind glissandos, has echoes of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. “Satan – in the lake of ice” closes the Inferno section with a harrowing slow movement with dissonant brass chorales juxtaposed with shimmering high winds and strings. It is among the most moving sections of the work.

 

Recorded voices of an ancient Syrian Jewish prayer are intoned at the beginning of Purgatorio, its accompanying music depicting “Dawn on the Sea of Purgatory,” with the sound of recorded waves and modal interludes that resemble the scales being chanted. Voices reappear in “Valley of Flowers” alongside a Middle Eastern dance with ebullient percussion in whirling patterns that gradually speed up, only to be replaced by a slow cadenza. Recorded voices continue their singing and the strings take a long-threaded melody on “The Healing Fire.” Purgatorio in its final three movements begins to depict the uplift of souls to heaven. “The Earthly Paradise” uses a melody from the recorded voices in a brass-forward quick section that ends with a flourish. “The Heavenly Procession” slows the tempo back to that of the initial chanting of the prayer, which is accompanied by chiming punctuations, haloing strings, and an eloquent horn solo. “The Ascent” is triumphant, filled with ringing changes and ascending scales imitated in all the sections of the orchestra.

 

What follows is a compositional tour-de-force.  Paradisum is cast in a single, 27-minute long movement, with the following subsections, “Awakening – Moon – Mercury – Venus – Sun – Mars – Jupiter.” A slow build begins with “Awakening” that continues throughout, with a registral ascent and marshaling of forces culminating in the addition of chorus. Dudamel paces the piece with an exquisite sense of its long architecture, making sure that there is intensity left by the time the music reaches “Jupiter.” Adés’s incorporation of transformed versions of previous leitmotifs provides Paradisum with a sense of closure.  

The Opus Arte Bluray DVD features the Royal Ballet’s Edward Watson in his last performance after twenty-seven years as a principal dancer. Directed by Kevin O’Hare and choreographed by Wayne McGregor, it is a beautifully danced and visually arresting production. Watson, as Dante, and Gary Avis as Virgil, wear tunics, Avis’s gold and Watson’s moving from aqua to half-red/half aqua in Purgatorio, and entirely red in Paradisum. Likewise, the dancers in Inferno wear charcoal body suits and those in Purgatorio and Paradisum are, respectively, light tan and then white. The symbolism of color is complemented by solo and group dancing that varies from undulating modernism to, by the score’s conclusion, more traditional ballet. Sarah Lamb dances the part of Beatrice with graceful versatility, and Dante’s love for her is depicted in affecting choreography. Throughout, McGregor, with a keen ear for its orchestration, captures the essence of Adés’s score.

 

Do I prefer the audio recording or the film? Glad to not have to choose, as they are both excellent documents. Dante is a major work by Adés, and one of his best to date. Highly recommended. 

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
Bass, Birthdays, CD Review, Experimental Music, File Under?, Improv, jazz

Happy 70th Birthday William Parker

The masterful bassist William Parker turns seventy today. Tonight (January 10th) through the 17th, Arts for Art, the foundation with which Parker is associated, is making available a livestream of Parker playing his hour long solo composition “Black Reflection and Meditation.” (Tickets here: Donation of at least $5 requested).

The number of labels and recordings on which Parker has appeared is formidable, but AUM Fidelity has been a mainstay in his career for some time (they are co-organizers of the online salon). Any deep dive into the bassist’s recorded output should include AUM CDs. One might start with some of his large ensemble works with Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra or opt for The Peach Orchard with the 1990s quartet In Order to Survive, which included pianist Cooper-Moore, saxophonist Rob Brown, and percussionist Susie Ibarra.

Parker has had a long musical relationship with pianist Matthew Shipp. A recent outing that displays their extraordinary interplay with the drummer Whit Dickey is 2021’s Village Mothership, released on the recent AUM offshoot Tao Forms. Parker has also recorded for 577 Records. Last September saw the release of Music Frees Our Souls, Vol. 1, on which Parker and Shipp joined drummer Francisco Mela for another rousing trio set. Comparing the two CDs, it is noteworthy how much a different drummer inspires Parker and Shipp to take a fresh approach to linear dialogue, harmonic choices, and use of space.

2021 also saw the release of the 10-CD boxed set (of all new music) Migration of Silence Into and Out of the Tone World. The set is a truly rewarding deep dive into Parker’s work. Another immersive experience is Universal Tonality (Duke University Press, 2021), the first full length book devoted to Parker’s life and music, written by the critic and historian Cisco Bradley.

So many ways to celebrate. Happy Birthday William Parker!

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

Adés Conducts Adés (CD Review)

Adés Conducts Adés

Kirill Gerstein, piano; Christianne Stotijn, mezzo-soprano; Mark Stone, baritone; 

Boston Symphony Orchestra, Thomas Adés, conductor

Deutsche Grammophon CD/DL 4837998

Thomas Adés is in his third year as Artistic Partner of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. It has been an extraordinarily fruitful pairing. Adés has performed with the ensemble as a conductor and pianist, contributed new pieces to its repertory, and curated events such as the Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood. In the midst of this plethora of activities, the March 2019 premiere of his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra was a highlight. Both the performance of the BSO under Adés’s direction and the brilliant playing of the work’s soloist, Kirill Gerstein, were widely acclaimed. The DG recording of its premiere confirms the buzz — the concerto is indeed a formidable work and the performance is radiant.

Cast in the traditional three movement structure (fast-slow-fast), the concerto demonstrates Adés’s encyclopedic familiarity with composers of the past, including hat-tips to Prokofiev, Ravel, Liszt, and Stravinsky. Despite revelling in touchstones of eras past, Adés ultimately distills them into a glinting, sharply contoured language with a distinctive character all its own. The first movement contrasts extensive glissandos with clock-like ostinatos. Sustained chorales create an aura of poignancy in the middle movement. The finale juxtaposes upward and downward scalar passages that provide a tilt-a-whirl of intensifying momentum that ends the piece aloft – and on a brilliantly orchestrated major triad to boot. 

In these times of pandemic and social distancing, Adés Totentanz (2013) is a particularly sobering piece. It is based upon the text of a fifteenth century frieze, which depicts all walks of life, from the Pope to an infant, being invited to dance with the Grim Reaper. Baritone Mark Stone embodies Death with a muscular and menacing delivery. Mezzo-soprano Christianne Stotijn sings the parts of the various people attempting to elude his grasp as heartfelt laments. Adés creates a searing score that allows space for declamation while interpolating ominous interludes, often supplying aggressively syncopated ostinatos that suggest the inexorable dance. Bracing listening, but engaging throughout. Recommended.

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Concerts, File Under?, jazz

10/13: Tonight at Nublu – Sun of Goldfinger

Sun of Goldfinger

On Sun of Goldfinger, his latest recording for ECM Records, saxophonist Tim Berne partners with guitarist David Torn and percussionist Ches Smith. The outing incorporates the avant-jazz palette usually adopted by Berne and Smith along with amplified sonics and effects incorporated by Torn.

There are three long-form pieces on Sun of Goldfinger. “Eye Meddle” builds from a fragmentary welter of ostinatos, each at first seeming to go their own direction, into a tightly interwoven and densely populated texture with wailing upper register saxophone accompanied by an insistent guitar melody and double time rhythms from Smith. Torn’s guitar then soars to match Berne, overdubs allowing for him to add a feisty rhythm guitar part to the mix. A filigreed, polyrhythmic denouement follows.

“Spartan, Before it Hit” opens with sustained upper register guitar answered by a mournful saxophone melody. A unison melody is offset by altissimo saxophone harmonics in imitation of the earlier high-lying guitars; Smith takes on a motoric beat while Torn contributes thunderous rock riffs and Berne corresponding squalls. The climax involves a huge crescendo from Smith, Torn’s laser beam guitar lines, and angular soloing from Berne. A subdued interlude, quite gentle in context, follows. Alternating with more forceful passages, an extended reflective demeanor explores fascinating musical pathways. At the conclusion, altissimo register saxophone alongside loping guitar is reasserted to make for a neat moment identifying the piece’s larger form.

The album’s closer, “Soften the Blow,” begins with oscillating dyads and bits of scalar passages. Sonorous guitar chords interrupt these fragments, followed by sci-fi effects, overblowing, and reverberating sounds from Smith. The drums finally enter, punctuating the music’s surface with short, muscular gestures. Berne then takes a solo that combines the fragments of the opening into piquant, post-tonal lines. While Torn reaches deep into the spacey side of his effects kit, the saxophone solo kicks into high octane, as do the drums. Smith creates a fascinating panoply of cymbal sounds and Torn’s solo matches Berne’s intensity, even bringing out the whammy bar for bent note emphasis. Behind all this is a doom-rock ostinato that propels the proceedings. The structure devolves, yielding a more ruminative passage where each member of the trio goes their own way. Wailing guitar and emphatic drums provide the link to another long crescendo in which Berne bides his time, allowing the spotlight to rest on his colleagues’ interaction for a time before rejoining the proceedings to lead it into fervent free jazz territory. A brief coda brings the boil back to simmer, leaving the listener with much to ponder.

Photo: Robert Lewis/ECM Records

On October 13th in New York City at Nublu 151 (151 Avenue C in the East Village), the trio will appear in a show at 9 PM; doors open at 8 (Tickets here).

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

Erika Fox – Paths (CD Review)

Erika Fox

Paths

Goldsfield Ensemble, Richard Baker, conductor

NMC Recordings

Once one hears Paths, the octogenarian Erika Fox’s first CD, their first reaction may mirror mine: one of incredulity. How is it possible that a composer this talented with such a distinctive and assured musical voice had to wait so long for a monograph recording? To their credit, NMC has been a strong advocate of female composers for a number of years; I’ve recently been enjoying their recordings of Elizabeth Lutyens’s music. Thank goodness they have partnered with the Goldfield Ensemble to present Fox’s work while she is still alive to hear the results.

Born in Vienna in 1936, Fox was a war refugee who moved as a child to England. Her music is strongly infused with cultural heritage; Chasidic chant plays a large role in its conceptual framework. A strong sense of linearity is offset by a piquant harmonic palette and lively rhythms. In addition to a deft hand with pitched instruments, the works on Paths display Fox’s imaginative sense of timbre in her use of percussion. Goldfield had to retain a large battery of instruments to realize the CD’s program. Ensemble member Kate Romano points out in personable and informative liner notes that traditional development isn’t deployed. Instead a single line will weave discontinuous musical arguments that don’t return for a recapitulatory visit. 

The CD begins withPaths Where the Mourners Tread,a substantial work in which the aforementioned linear narrative is passed from instrument to instrument. One gets the sense of wending through a labyrinth of contrasting textures, holding on to the aforementioned linear thread like breadcrumbs through the forest. Fox’s provides a delightful, mysterious sound world in which to get lost. This is equally true of Quasi una Cadenza, which contains beguiling writing for winds. A downloadable bonus track, Kaleidoscope, is equally varied and compelling.

Pianist Richard Uttley supplies an incisive and persuasive performance of the solo work On Visiting Stravinsky’s Grave at San Michele, where Fox embraces the influence of other composers. Blocks of material and incisive rhythms evoke Stravinsky, particularly his late dodecaphonic pieces. There is also a hint of Messiaen in the bird call-like cries of the upper line. Another piece indebted to a twentieth century composer is Malinconia Militaire, which is based on a poem that references Anton Webern’s Opus 4 songs. 

Café Warsaw 1944 closes the CD. It is a piece inspired by the Czeslaw Milosz poem “Café. All four, relatively brief, movements, are led by the percussion section. The poem’s discussion of “the quick and the dead” and the small distance between them once again inspires Fox to inhabit the work of the Second Viennese School, but pointillism and chromaticism are contrasted with repeated chords and arpeggiations from the piano and taut percussion lines. 

Fox’s music often seeks rapprochement with the past, addressing the experiences of her refugee childhood and Jewish background as well as the ghosts of midcentury concert music. Still, the manner in which the composer synthesizes these elements supplies vividness and urgency very much in keeping with present day concerns. The Goldfield Ensemble plays assuredly throughout, giving these underserved works excellent documentation. Now it is up to the rest of the musical world to take up Fox’s compelling music and make it much more widely known. One hopes this will happen forthwith. 

-Christian Carey

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

CD Review: Riot Ensemble

Speak, Be Silent

Riot Ensemble, Aaron Holloway-Nahum, conductor

Works by Chaya Czernowin, Anna Thorvaldsdóttor, Mirela Ivičević, Liza Lim, and Rebecca Saunders

Huddersfield Contemporary Records HCR20CD

2019


Riot Ensemble’s latest CD features five works by female composers who hail from a diverse group of countries: Israel, Iceland, Croatia, Australia, and the UK. Speak, Be Silentcomes at a time when, coinciding with overdue shifts in the broader culture, raising awareness of the abundant diversity of contemporary composers making vital music has taken on especial urgency. All of the pieces on Speak, Be Silent are recent; the earliest is from 2008. Thus, the CD also serves as a catalog of what vanguard composers are doing today.

Ayre: Towed through plumes, thicket, asphalt, sawdust and hazardous air I shall not forget the sound of, by Chaya Czernowin, incorporates all manner of noises alongside microtonal verticals and just a taste of the melodic line, often glissando, that its title suggests. It is a powerful piece in which Czernowin deploys a wide-ranging sonic palette with sure-footed trajectory. Ayre’s close sounds like the slamming of a plethora of recalcitrant, squeaky doors: a strongly articulated gesture of finality. 

Ró, by Anna Thorvaldsdottir, employs a more delicate palette, with sustained pitches building shimmering overtone chords that are punctuated by gentle solos and occasional articulations from the harp and the percussion section. Ró features sumptuous wind and string writing, with duets succeeding the aforementioned solos in sinuous counterpoint. Pacing is slow, deliciously so, and the final cadence serves as both harmonic and gestural closure.

Mirela Ivicevic’sBaby Magnify/Lilith’s New Toy is an acerbic piece with clangor at key points interspersed with uneasily spacious phrases. Ivicevic’s use of percussion as both a motor and for accentuation is effective. The piece builds to a plethora of sliding tones and wind multiphonics, serving as a convincing counterweight to a battery of chiming pitches and stalwart drums. 

The title work, by Liza Lim, is the most substantial on the CD. Cast in three movements, it is a chamber concerto for violin. Soloist Sarah Saviet plays impressively with nimble musicality and a silvery tone. Lim creates a shimmering, sinuous harmonic fabric. The orchestration is vivid. Lim provides each section of the ensemble a chance to interact with the soloist, who withstands brash brass interpolations and chattering percussion but firmly stands her ground, each interruption giving rise to an ever more virtuosic solo response. Finally, pitched percussion, winds and strings get their spotlight turns, nearly upending the soloist’s ever more vigorous cadenza. Just when you think that there will never be accord between ensemble and soloist, a heterophonic line develops between them, followed by a richly scored climax and a cadenza that serves as a scalar denouement.  

The recording concludes with Rebecca Saunders’ Stirrings Still III. Vertiginous harmonics are haloed by piano chords and icy woodwind countermelodies. Like Thorvaldsdottir, Saunders adopts a slow gait, but Stirrings takes on a pervasively pensive, rather than spacious, ambiance. About two thirds of the way through, sustained lines, rumbling brass, and timpani impart a degree of urgency, but this is soon banished to return to more or less the original unsettled demeanor, which gradually vanishes. 

The Riot Ensemble, conducted by Aaron Holloway-Nahum, plays skillfully throughout, attending to each score’s myriad details. it is worth noting that the disc’s aesthetic touches, from appealing artwork and riveting sound to an engaging liner notes essay by Tim Rutherford-Johnson, are potent reminders that a physical artifact trumps the current craze for booklet-less (information-less) and sonically compromised streaming. Speak, Be Silent is one of 2019’s best recordings and certainly one of its most culturally relevant ones as well. 

-Christian Carey

by Christian Carey
Best of, CDs, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Best of 2018: Holiday CD, Opera Recording

Best of 2018: Holiday CD, Opera Recording

Best Holiday CD

Nine Lessons and Carols: 100 Years

King’s College Choir, Stephen Cleobury, Director

Choir of King’s College label

 

2018 is the hundredth anniversary of Lessons and Carols at King’s College (and ninetieth year of radio broadcasts of the event). In order to celebrate, the Choir of King’s College has released a two-CD set of some of their most famous offerings from broadcasts over the years, as well as new music commissioned for the occasion. The release also celebrates Director Stephen Cleobury, who will be stepping down after an illustrious tenure with the group. Through the years, King’s consistent, extraordinarily high level of singing is truly dazzling.

Best Opera

Dr. Atomic

John Adams

Gerald Finley, Julia Bullock; BBC Orchestra, BBC Singers, John Adams, conductor

Nonesuch

 

The Nonesuch recording of Dr. Atomic, an opera about the atomic bomb test at Los Alamos, is the first audio release of this 2005 collaboration between composer John Adams and director/librettist Peter Sellars. The text is assembled from letters, declassified documents, and poetry (the first test’s site was named Trinity by Robert Oppenheimer, after a John Donne poem). An integral component of the love scene between the Oppenheimers (played by Gerald Finley and Julia Bullock)  is a poem by Muriel Rukeyser. An island of respite in the midst of the intensity of the test countdown, it is some of the most affecting music written by Adams. Elsewhere, the orchestra and singers are given plenty of opportunities for fiery declamation. The large ensembles work on many levels, expounding the famously divergent historical viewpoints surrounding the test, ratcheting up the intensity until the inevitable big boom. Adams conducts a powerful performance of his most visceral work.

 

by Christian Carey