Tag: Kurtág

Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Downtown, File Under?, New York, Songs, Violin

Saturday, March 30th: Kafka Fragments at Tenri

Saturday, March 30th: Kafka Fragments at Tenri

On Saturday at 8 PM, Kafka-Fragmente by  György Kurtág will be performed at Tenri Cultural Institute (43A West 13th Street,New York NY), by soprano Susan Narucki and violinist Curtis Macomber (tickets). Earlier this week, they performed it at another venue also abundantly supportive of contemporary classical music, Buffalo University.

 

Kafka-Fragmente is based on aphoristic texts by Franz Kafka from his diaries and correspondence. As is his practice, Kurtág brought the composition together gradually, collecting fragments over time and completing the piece in 1985. At seventy minutes in duration, until his opera Fin de Partie (2018), it was the composer’s longest piece. Not only are the forty movements based on brief texts, they are also miniature in design. The text-setting is exquisitely detailed, and the musical language is frequently dissonant and angular, drawing both from postwar modernism and Eastern European folk traditions of declamation and string performance.

Narucki and Macomber are both new music specialists. I have remembered a number of their performances with great pleasure, especially Narucki’s creation of the role of Mama in Elliott Carter’s opera What Next? and Macomber’s authoritative rendition of Mario Davidovsky’s Synchronism No. 9 for violin and tape.

To get acquainted with this distinctive music, listen below to excerpts from the soprano’s Avie CD The Edge of Silence, consisting entirely of vocal chamber works by Kurtág. It received a Grammy nomination in 2019, and demonstrates her command of the composer’s individual and demanding work.

 

 

Here is Macomber’s recording of the Davidovsky.

 

by Christian Carey
Best of, CD Review, Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, jazz

Best of 2021: ECM Recordings

Parker Quartet; Kim Kashkashian, viola

György Kurtág: Six moments musicaux; Officium breve

Antonin Dvořák: String Quintet op. 97

ECM Records

 

The Czech composer Antonin Dvořák (1844-1901) and Hungarian composer György Kurtág (1926-) are seldom mentioned in the same breath. One is more often likely to hear Dvořák being discussed in relation to his older colleague Johannes Brahms, and a similar pairing might be made between Kurtág and György Ligeti. However, they are paired by the Parker Quartet and violist Kim Kashkashian on a 2021 ECM CD. 

 

While their musical languages are worlds apart, connections between Dvořák and Kurtág, both as composers and teachers, might be found in their shared affinity for chamber music. The Parker Quartet and Kashkashian (who has recorded both Kurtág and Ligeti for ECM), provide a fitting approach to each piece on the recording.  In the Kurtág  selections, they make the most of the silences, extreme shifts of demeanor, and the aphoristic fragility of the often Webernian approach to line. This contrasts nicely with the warmly expressive interpretation they give to Dvořák’s String Quintet, op. 97. Written during his visit to America, it is one of Dvořák’s finest chamber pieces. Compelling playing and imaginative curation here.

 

Ayumi Tanaka Trio

Subaqueous Silence

Ayumi Tanaka, piano; Christian Meaas Svendsen, double bass; Per Oddvar Johansen, drums

ECM Records

 

Pianist Ayumi Tanaka makes her leader debut on ECM Records with Subaqueous Silence, a trio recording alongside bassist Christian Meaas Svendsen, who makes his label debut, and drummer Per Oddvar Johansen, who has recorded with a number of ECM’s other artists. Tanaka moved to Norway because she found the improvised music being made there compelling. She fits right with her colleagues in the trio, but also brings the sensibility of, as she describes it, “chamber music … Japanese classical music,” to create a distinctive sound and approach. Her use of space, with silences and pianissimo passages prominent in the texture, is counterbalanced by arpeggiations rife with dissonance and bass note stabs. Indeed, in places one wonders if Kurtág (see above), might be a touchstone. Elsewhere, her harmonies oscillate between jazz and extended chords that seem borrowed from early in the twentieth century; Tanaka certainly has Debussy and Schoenberg under her hands. Svendson is a study in opposites as well, grounding the harmony with slow-moving bass notes, and playing raucous high harmonics in a few places. His arco playing is quite attractive. Johansen is a perfect percussionist for this setting, subtle, responsive, and more textural than propulsive. One hopes this is the beginning of a long term collaboration for these three talented improvisers. 

 

Eberhard Weber

Once Upon a Time

ECM Records

 

On Once Upon a Time, Bassist Eberhard Weber is captured in a live performance from 1994 at Avignon’s Théâtre des Halles, part of a festival celebrating bassists organized by Barre Phillips. Weber explores a number of his then recently recorded works, including ensemble pieces such as his Trio for Bassoon and Bass, deconstructing and reanimating them in this solo setting. One of the ways that he accomplishes this is by using delay pedals to create five-second loops, over which he adds additional voices. Weber often opts for a clean sound, but allows for some timbral modifications around the edges, again via pedals. These are particularly surprising in the one standard on the CD, “My Favorite Things,” which is given the overdub treatment; particularly rousing riffs and squalling notes from the highest register appear over the chordal vamp. Another standout is the extended workout Weber gives to his piece “Pendulum,” with an attractive melody and variation after variation explored throughout the compass of the instrument. “Delirium” explores chords and harmonics in equal measure, while “Ready out There” is a feast of virtuosity. 

Marc Johnson

Overpass

ECM Records

 

For an entirely different kind of solo bass recording, Marc Johnson plays originals and others’ compositions significant to his work from throughout his career on double bass. Thus, “Love Theme from Spartacus” recalls his work in 1970 with Bill Evans’ last trio, as does a welcome return to his showcase “Nardis.” Both of these have grown in conception and are thoughtfully reinvestigated. The oft recorded “Freedom Jazz Dance,” by Eddie Harris, elicits a polyphonic performance with a low-register ostinato and florid soloing in the cello register. Among Johnson’s own compositions, particularly impressive is “Strike Each Tuneful String,” which references the African instrument with ox tendon strings called the Inanga. It features a melody in the low register complemented by chordal harmonics. The exoticism of “Samurai Fly,” a reworking of Johnson’s eighties tune “Samurai Hee-Haw,” features Asian exoticism in a more overt tip of the hat to nonwestern musical material. It also includes a small amount of overdubbing, more subtle than Weber’s looping but just as effective. “Yin and Yang” instead plays with using four-string strumming to create a thickened texture, while the closer “Whorled Whirled World,” appropriate to the title, features circular patterning that resembles double time walking with a splash of minimalism tossed in for good measure. A varied and compelling outing that will occupy a well-deserved spot among ECM’s collection of solo bass recordings. 

 

Andrew Cyrille Quartet

The News 

ECM Records

David Virelles, piano; Bill Frisell, guitar; Ben Street, bass; Andrew Cyrille, drums and percussion

 

Andrew Cyrille is now an octogenarian, an age at which many musicians have already retired or are slowing down. Cyrille retains a superlative technique and while his latest quartet outing for ECM, The News, emphasizes interplay and texture over power, it is clear that there is much of that yet remaining in the drummer’s arsenal as well. 

 

Cyrille is credited with three of the compositions on The News. The title track was originally a solo percussion piece. Recast for the quartet, it is the most experimental sounding piece on the album. David Virelles plays synth as well as his usual instrument, the piano, Ben Street plays the bass both arco and pizzicato, guitarist Bill Frisell daubs dissonance and darting linear flurries here and there, and Cyrille employs a number of drums and percussion instruments in a spell binding, unorthodox fashion. The drummer places newspaper over the snare and toms and plays with brushes: an intriguing timbral choice. “The Dance of the Nuances,” co-authored by Cyrille with the group’s pianist David Virelles, features bowed bass and single line solos punctuated by Cyrille’s syncopated drumming.

 

Three pieces are credited to Frisell. “Go Happy Lucky” is a mid tempo blues bounce that is jubilant in tone. Frisell plays the head and the first solo section in jaunty fashion, followed by succulent arpeggiations  from Virelles. Cyrille’s drumming is propulsive and responsive to the melodic gestures of the soloists. Street plays walking lines that lead to the return of the head, this time with the whole group digging in and matching Frisell. “The Mountain” begins with a simple melody and chord progression played by Frisell. Gradually, it becomes more chromatic and embellished as Virelles and Street push the guitarist’s material outside. Cyrille adds a counter rhythm that also complicates the piece’s surface. “Baby” is one of Frisell’s pastoral Americana style pieces. His honeyed melody is supplied counterpoint by Street, Fender Rhodes comping from Virelles, and subdued drumming by Cyrille. Virelles contributes the composition “Incienso,” which has an ambling melody and an intricate chord structure filled with Brazilian allusions and polytonal reference points. 

 

The one piece used by a musician outside the group is “Leaving East of Java” by Steve Colson. This is a felicitous inclusion. A performer, composer, and educator, it is unfortunate that Colson’s work isn’t better known today. “Leaving East of Java” includes guitar and piano in octaves and intricate chords rolled by Virelles. Synthetic scales evoke the exoticism, if not the specific content, of Javanese gamelan. Partway through, Street takes a suave solo succeeded by florid playing from Frisell and a repeated riff from Virelles. The pianist then plummets into the bass register, placing quick scalar passages underneath Street’s legato playing. The octaves return briefly to punctuate the piece’s close. 

 

The final composition, “With You in Mind” by Cyrille, features the drummer intoning a spoken word introduction of an original poem. The main section of the piece starts as a duo, with Virelles and Street creating a gently lilting ambience with traditional harmonies and rhythmic gestures that reflect the poetry (it would be great to see this poem set with the tune for singers). A piquant piano chord invites Frisell and Virelles to join the proceedings, with the guitarist creating an arrangement of the tune with chordal embellishments and Cyrille imparting the time with graceful poise. It ends in a whorl of chordal extensions and soft cymbal sizzle. 

 

Jazz players and audiences alike are often seeking “new standards” to canonize. There are several tunes here that qualify. The News is one of our Best of 2021 recordings. 

 

-Christian Carey

 

 

 

by Christian Carey
Chamber Music, Concert review, Contemporary Classical

Kopatchinskaya and Hong perform Kurtág in Seattle

Few composers have embraced the Webernian aesthetic of brevity more closely than the Hungarian György Kurtág (b.1926). Starting with his earliest canonical work, the Op. 1 String Quartet (1959), he steadily built an international career entirely from bagatelles, usually written for small ensembles and gathered into collections linked by instrumentation and concept, and always unsurpassed in concentrated intensity. Kurtág’s commitment to epigrammatic potency reached an apogee with Kafka Fragments (1985–87), 40 brief German texts from the novelist’s diaries and posthumous writings adapted into an hour of music of such resolute focus that the composer limited its instrumentation to one soprano and one violinist.

Despite the challenges that it poses in sustaining such constricted severity—not to mention the demands it places on the musicians’ technique and stamina—Kafka Fragments is among Kurtág’s most frequently recorded compositions. So it was of great interest when, in the midst of a US tour that brought her to the Pacific Northwest to play Shostakovich with the Seattle Symphony, the acclaimed and iconoclastic Moldovan violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaya (PatKop as she is known among associates) devoted the evening of January 29, 2020 to this one composition, presented in the Symphony’s recently inaugurated and pocket-sized Octave 9 space with Ah Young Hong, a soprano currently based at the Peabody Institute whose advocacy of new music is closely associated with composer Michael Hersch. Not surprisingly, the duo delivered a novel and thought-provoking take on the piece, fulfilling the wish expressed in Kopatchinskaya’s pre-performance remarks of “an enriching and uncomfortable evening”—one whose resonances turned out to be unexpectedly timely.

The interpretive affinity between the two women was evident from the get-go. Like many soloists of her generation, Kopatchinskaya eschews the habitual wide vibrato of the Kreisler/Heifetz school in favor of a more nuanced approach. Hong too is capable of deploying a “cooler” technique, allowing for the gradations needed to convey the mood swings in a song like Einmal brach ich mir das Bein (Once I broke my leg) or for backgrounding the voice in a song like Der wahre Weg (The True Path) where the violin is usually in the lead.

Particularly impressive were the vocal leaps in Wiederum, wiederum (Again, Again) that accompany the line “mountains, desert, wide country to wander through”. Most sopranos try to smooth over these jumps, but Hong attacked them in a dazzling fashion, reminiscent of the wordless exhortation that begins ¿De dónde vienes, amor, mi niño? from Crumb’s Ancient Voices of Children (1970) one of the Fragments’ more palpable stylistic precedents.

Together, the performers delivered sufficient volume to overpower the persistent white noise emitted by the LED cooling fans in Octave 9’s low ceilings, the space’s most distracting acoustic issue. In this regard they were aided by its vaunted Constellation sound projection system, whose computer-backed array of ceiling microphones and loudspeakers is capable of simulating a variety of acoustic environments while accommodating ambulatory musicians (this being essential for a work like the Fragments, where the performer’s stage positions are often specified).

Commenting on the choice of presets, Kopatchinskaya said “I thought about the sound of the burning Notre Dame cathedral (it seems it is not yet programmed in the system), but we now have perhaps something similar to a synagogue in Prague from the last century, at least in our imagination”.

The most striking aspect of the evening’s performance, though, was its emphasis on contrast. With the Fragments’ instrumentation confined to a pair of treble instruments whose range and expressive characteristics largely overlap, the resulting sound world can easily seem unrooted. Accordingly, most of the work’s interpreters have sought to achieve maximum unity of timbre, rhythm and articulation. But the Hong/PatKop traversal frequently exploited differences between the two parts, as evinced in the very first song, Die Guten gehn im glichen Schritt (The good march in the same step), where on the word gleichen (same) the voice begins to straggle behind the violin’s steady pace:

score excerpt

Singers usually take this passage in strict tempo, producing exact syncopation at the divergence. But Hong allowed herself the slightest hint of rubato, suggesting a more neurotic relationship with Kopatchinskaya’s indifferente beat.

And though it was not explicitly coordinated, the musicians’ costuming likewise presented a thematic contrast. Hong wore a long, black, V-neck dress with a long-sleeved black coat and a long silvery necklace that emphasized the resulting oval framing. Combined with her expressive face and “Bohemian” hair, the visage suggested a voice emanating from darkness, in touch with invisible forces but not in particular control of them. At times, the prophesizing of Shakespearean witches came to mind. At others, as during the reprise of Verstecke (Hiding-Places) when Hong clutched her cheeks in a pantomime yell, it was the anxiety of Munch’s Scream that seemed to be channeled.

At this latter juncture, Kopatchinskaya crept behind Hong while playing sul ponticello tremolos like a buzzing mosquito. Her role, suggested by her trademark suit resembling an undersized tuxedo with tails and shoulder cutouts, was more akin to a tramp. A hatless and shoeless Chaplin (for PatKop always plays barefoot) who carries a violin bow instead of a cane. Perhaps a bit of a stretch, but for this American observer at least, even Kopatchinskaya’s expressions and occasional one-footed gestures of musical energy conjured up something of Chaplin’s mischievous physiognomy and comic kicks. Heightened by dim, magenta-hued “darkroom” lighting, with translations projected behind the performers, the presentation affirmed Kopatchinskaya’s vision of the Fragments as “full of musical literary moments that you could ponder for the rest of your life”.

Ah Young HongThe Kafka Fragments were an inflection point in Kurtág’s career, wherein the potentialities of chamber bagatelles and their sequencing into longer and longer assembled forms, are stretched to the verge of collapse. Kurtág’s organization of the 40 songs into four parts, divisions that the performers marked by sitting silently for a minute of rest, helps to mitigate two issues that have always bedeviled the song cycle form: the constant starts and stops, and the challenge of consuming a lengthy totality made up of numerous short units that don’t naturally combine into intermediate structures. One can still sense the composer’s struggle with the oppositional demands of brevity and heft though, and soon after completing the Fragments Kurtág finally began to write longer continuous pieces, often greatly expanding his ensembles in the process. The Double Concerto (1989–90) and the orchestral Stele (1993–94) were among the first manifestations of the newer, more “monumental” Kurtág which has perhaps reached its consummation with his aptly-titled full-length opera Fin de Partie (2018), after Beckett’s Endgame.

In a way it’s fitting that a transitional piece like Kafka Fragments would come to Octave 9 now, amplified by what’s arguably the biggest star power yet to appear at that venue. Fashioned from a generic storefront space at the corner of Seattle Symphony’s Benaroya Hall complex, its uses are divided between educational/community outreach events and contemporary music recitals featuring the Symphony’s musicians and guest artists. One of its goals has been to foster new works “without the risk of presenting them in front of 2500 people” (as Ludovic Morlot put it to me shortly before his departure as Music Director). Today, though, one year after its March 2019 unveiling, a mass exodus of executive-level talent from the Symphony has left Octave 9 shorn of all four of its principal architects: CEO Simon Woods, two key VPs (Elena Dubinets and Laura Reynolds, whose replacements have not yet arrived) and Morlot himself. Like Kurtág at the time of his Fragments, Octave 9 appears to be facing a crossroads.

Despite hosting a succession of noteworthy events, including a remarkable inaugural 24-hour contemporary music marathon, the space has yet to make a noticeable impact on the chronic fragmentation of Seattle’s new music community, whose denizens seem to be deterred by its ticket prices and downtown location (those that I saw in attendance at the PatKop/Hong event were mostly Symphony personnel). Instead the clientele for the venue’s new music events comes mainly from Symphony patrons, many of them downtown-dwelling professionals for whom the featured performers are celebrities. Speaking afterwards with some of these concertgoers, none of which had previously heard of Kurtág, I encountered several variations on “this music is a lot more interesting when you’re close to the musicians and can see their enthusiasm”, a sentiment that shows that the Octave 9 experiment is at least working for this cohort. Success at audience cultivation can portend broader successes down the road, and the potential on display at Octave 9 pleads for a replenished leadership team that will support it with the same vigor and creativity as its founding cadre.

Photos by James Holt/Seattle Symphony. Score excerpts via Stretta Music.

by Michael Schell