Vagn Holmboe, Concertos, Norrköping Symphony Orchestra, Heide, Tomter, Slobodeniouk

Vagn Holmboe (1909-1996) was the leading Danish composer of his generation, successor to Carl Nielsen, who produced a large body of works that bore his own stamp, and are becoming slowly absorbed and increasingly appreciated throughout the world. Three years ago (August 26, 2010) I posted a review of his complete String Quartets (see link on this page to the Gapplegate Music Review site), which I found quite impressive. Today we turn to a fine disk of three of his Concertos (DaCapo), performed by the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra, with soloists Erik Heide, violin, Lars Anders Tomter, viola, Dina Slobodeniouk, conductor.

There are three works represented, the "Concerto for Viola, op. 189" (1992), the "Concerto for Orchestra" (1929), and the "Concerto for Violin no. 2, op. 139" (1979).

These are works that have a great deal to recommend them, whether written rather earlier in his career as the Concerto for Orchestra, or towards the end, as the other two.

Holmboe writes music that belongs to the last century. The concertos are not as much neo-anything as following a personal muse. These works generally show a respect for classical forms but incorporate a thematic expressivity and folk and chromatic-harmonic elements not characteristic of earlier eras. Vagn Holmboe has his own way and the concertos are very inventive and well-wrought, requiring some time to digest and appreciate, but then rewarding patience with a world of music one is glad to linger within.

This is high-caliber music, showing the composer as a man of genuine talent and originality. The performances are pristine on all counts with excellent solo dynamics, nicely staged orchestral dramatics and a program that bears close scrutiny.

Kurt Weill, Zaubernacht, Arte Ensemble

The original orchestration for Kurt Weill's Zaubernachte (Magic Night) (1922) for soprano and eight chamber musicians, was lost for 80 years, rather miraculously turning up in 2006. A critical edition of the score was subsequently made available. The Arte Ensemble has made a full recording with Anna Vegry in the brief soprano role (CPO 777 767-2) and the CD is now available in the States.

Zaubernachte was written as a children's pantomime and thus has a literal fairy-tale sort of story line the music goes along with. The original scoring includes string quartet, winds, percussion, piano, a kind of miniature orchestra well-served by Weill's score.

The music is typical of Weill in the earlier period in that there is a bit less of the vernacular ragtime/jazz/cabaret influence than later on. This music is nonetheless quite playfully lively, in an almost neo-classical vein but with the tang of the modern on the palette.

Fact is, it is music that delights in every way. The Arte Ensemble gives a detailed, perfectly idiomatic performance that sounds great on disk.

This will be manna to Weill enthusiasts (like me). And it is fully engaging as a work in its own right. Those who are delighted by such things as Stravinsky's "Tango" (and who isn't?) in its chamber version will fall right in with this music. It's pure charm!

Percy Grainger, Works for Large Chorus and Orchestra, Davis, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Not every composer of the 20th century occupies a secure and well-defined niche, of course. The composer Percy Grainger (1882-1961) is perhaps one whose reputation has yet to solidify, at least in my own head. He is a precursor to Britten in some ways, a sort of lesser Vaughan Williams, perhaps. Or is he? His piano music seems very English, folk-based at many points, somewhat impressionistic at times, creating a kind of down-home aura Anglophiles appreciate, but not always the general modern classical listener. Ironically however he was born in Australia, lived only 13 years in England, and spent the vast remainder of life in the United States, from 1914 on. So he isn't quite English in terms of pedigree, yet he seems to belong musically to that locale in spirit.

And what of his work with larger aggregations? I'll admit I have been until now rather ignorant of it. Now there's Sir Andrew Davis conducting the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in a solid set of examples, Works for Large Chorus and Orchestra (Chandos).

These are premiere recordings (some of them anyway) and there are ten brief to mid-length compositions to be had. Certainly no fault can be found in the performing artists. They come through with very spirited and appealing renditions.

As for the music you once again get a get a good bit of folk-song adaptions, arrangements and compositions that reflect such roots. These have strong attraction for the most part, although I cannot say I was overly enamored with the piece based on "Camptown Races". There is a huzzah factor at work here that can be rousing. Get a large chorus and orchestra and give them something well put together and exciting, you get something that gives pleasure. Sometimes it's like hearing Ives without the Ivesian or Vaughan Williams without what made him quirkily himself. That isn't to say there aren't personal twists and turns of Graingerian personality in there, they just don't seem very out front.

In short I still don't find myself convinced that we have a titan of the century at work here. And perhaps that doesn't matter. We do have a very well performed sampling of his works for larger aggregates of singers and a full orchestra. We have time to listen, enjoy, and ultimately decide for ourselves about his music.

And so Davis and company have done us a great service, and at the same time given us a full CD of music that we can enjoy and explore.

Valentin Silvestrov, Piano Works, Elisaveta Blumina

Solo piano music in the classical realm has its own trajectory, compared with orchestral or vocal music. The shading and color of the music can be distinct of course, but the nature of the pianoforte lends itself to intimacy, to the nature of the notes and harmonic content in a more unified, direct way, and of course then how it all is shaded by the composer and in turn the performer. The result of this is that a composer may show a very distinct side of him or herself in solo piano works.

In the case of Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov this seems very much so, as heard in Elisaveta Blumina's very lovely rendition of select Piano Works (Grand Piano 639).

The disk covers a long period of the composers' ouevre, from 1954-55 (rev. 1993) through to 2011. In contrast to the works for larger forces (some of which I have covered on these pages in the recent past), he seems to glance backward more continuously and to some peak periods in the stylistic canon of solo piano music.

So we get some beautiful music that touches strongly upon classical Mozartian, romantic Schumannian, Brahmsian and Chopanesque, and Debussian, Ravellian and Satiean moments, all as recalled in a dream, or in other words as refracted by the musical equivalent of light, water, air, and memory. It's a beautiful lyric set of works, given a supremely sympathetic performance that enters deeply into the world of the music.

It's piano music that could have been written 100 years ago or even more, that would not seem out of place in such a period. It in a way involves a refusal of the world of modernity, a very gentle one. And one most certainly gets the feeling that the music is what Silvestrov felt as he sat down to the piano, that it flowed out of him naturally, unforced. I say that because the musical language sounds so "native" to the composer.

Performance, music and production are of the highest levels. The music is so pleasingly engaging that it will appeal to just about everyone if they give it a chance. Music that dreams of other eras may have to emerge from that dream someday, but perhaps not, perhaps it will go on with the dream forever. Either way, Silvestrov shows himself possessed with the spirit of the time before ours in this music. We follow the path and revel in the sounds, knowing all too well we must return to the present. The music, perhaps, will ever stay in its limbo world, where we can return to it at will.

A most unusual disk and quite beautiful!

Rachmaninov, Symphony No. 3, Symphonic Dances, Slatkin, Detroit

An old boss of mine, who was good to me, was surprised when I told her that Rachmaninov lived in the 20th century and died in the '40s. She thought he belonged to the century preceding the 20th. It is not surprising, especially if you are familiar with some of the piano pieces and his concertos. Essentially he did belong to the late 19th century in spirit. Unlike his compatriots Stravinsky and Prokofiev, he was never really involved with the modern fashions so much a part of his era. He was very much into a Russian sound, regardless, and in the end his music was so much his that none of it really mattered.

This is as true of his Symphony No. 3, op. 44 and the Symphonic Dances, op. 45 (Naxos 8.573051) as of any of his works. And the Third Symphony is essential to his output. Grand Doyen Leonard Slatkin conducts the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in recent performances of the above works in a nicely produced budget version on Naxos.

The orchestra under Slatkin gives very detailed renditions of the works, with strongly defined and balanced wind/brass parts and a slightly less predominant string section than can sometimes be the case, especially in some classic Russian renditions that I am used to hearing.

This took me a few listens to get acclimated to, and now I must say I find the disk quite worthwhile, not less impassioned than the versions I have heard on timeless occasions, and in a way more sympathetic to the entire gestalt of these works.

The symphony has strongly cohesive and memorable thematic development, and surely belongs as one of his very greatest endeavors, though his Second sometimes has gotten more general coverage because of in part an attractive theme that entered popular music last century. The first symphony has a most youthful dash and slightly frenetic demeanor which has over the years given me much pleasure. But it is the Third that in the end takes the brass ring.

The Symphonic Dances contain a great deal of fantastic music as well, especially in the folksy-brilliant Slavic drive of the first movement. Slatkin handles it all well and the orchestra does not flag, though this may not be the definitive version. Again however, you get an excellent balance of the overall orchestra in the soundstage.

If you are on a budget (and who isn't these days?) you are royally served by this Naxos release. And for those who already have a number of versions of these works, Slatkin/Detroit give you another take, well-worth your time and effort.

Theodor Grigoriu, Byzantium after Byzantium

When all is said, the music a composer writes is not just the product of where he or she is from. Theodor Grigoru is a case in point. He is Romanian. Yet his music, at least the music contained in Byzantium after Byzantium (Toccata Classics 0131), hits the listener on reflection as having an overall thrust as much international/Eastern as specifically Romanian, at least to my ears.

Perhaps that is due in part to the works contained in Byzantium after Byzantium. They are thematically related in extra-musical content--as three works that meditate on what survived of Byzantine culture after its political disappearance ages ago. The composer describes it as in part the pervading persistence of Byzantine liturgical music in the Orthodox service (or more poetically, as "angels singing") and by implication the persistence of Christianity from Byzantine roots in the East and beyond. So then in this way the composer, who serves much more than the ethos of his homeland, situates himself in a wider horizon.

The series of works captured on the disk at hand began as a commission from the Trinity Episcopal Church in Indianapolis in celebration of the 75th anniversary of their rebuilt cathedral. The commission came at a time when all of Eastern Europe was being transformed with the collapse of the Eastern Block political system. Naturally change, persistence and transformation were on Grigoru's mind.

Enough of the background details. You can read all about it in the liner notes booklet that comes with the CD. In any event the first work in the series was completed in 1994, and named "The Trinity Concerto." The second, "The Great Passage," in 1999. "The Eternal Return," the final work in the series, saw completion in 2004.

These first recordings take the three works in their intended sequence, chronologically as noted above. The solo violin part is handled in rather spectacular fashion by Sherban Lupu. For the concerto he is ably accompanied by Sinfonia da Camera, Ian Hobson conducting. "The Great Passage" is for unaccompanied violin, and "The Eternal Return" is in the form of a sonata for violin and piano, Andrei Tanasescu taking the latter part.

This is highly virtuostic violin music with much in the way of expressive fireworks that have a Romanian intensity. The concerto pits this against well-conceived orchestral expansiveness of a harmonically evolved and sometimes somewhat mystical nature, with a kind of melancholy at times and much in the way of chromatic movement.

"The Great Passage" in many ways continues the musical journey begun in the Concerto, almost as a supremely extended cadenza for the violin.

"The Eternal Return" acts as a kind of reaffirmation. Violin and piano engage in some beautiful cantabile, then modern-chromatic thrusts of drama and harmonic flow and flux. It is a bristling work of inspired abandon, dissonant motion, energy and complexity.

You end up in this sequence being quite impressed with the singularity of Grigoriu as an original voice of depth and complexity. It is music that takes some time to absorb. In fact there is so much to internalize that I must admit I still need time to assimilate what he has accomplished. I do know that this is music to grow into--sublime, difficult, yet beautifully expressive.

It's a bit of a blockbuster. The performances are seemingly definitive. Lupu, the orchestra and Tanasescu excel in their interpretations of the music, especially the violinist. It is clear that Grigoriu is an important force in Romanian music, the heir to Enescu's fire, his modern counterpart, yet wholly intact in his own right. Give this one a close listen!

Kenneth Fuchs, String Quartet No. 5 "American," Falling Canons, Falling Trio

American composer Kenneth Fuchs was in some ways an unknown quantity/quality for me until I started to listen to his new CD of chamber music, String Quartet No. 5 ("American"), Falling Canons, Falling Trio (Naxos 8.559733).

Now that I have listened to the CD more than a few times I can say that I DO know his recent music. This is the sort of album that seems to well epitomize what a composer is about. And Fuchs' music is singular enough that what is going on in his music stands out with a kind of hard-drawn clarity.

The Fifth String Quartet runs about a half hour, with one long movement centered around a theme that winds along at some length, descending rather slowly in a jagged fashion. The theme has a minor key tonal center and in some ways to me sounds not exactly American in some prototypical way. What does hit me is the quality of the contrapuntal and harmonic thematic development. For this quartet shows its structure as the interior of a building would if one were to see all the beams and supporting architectural features. There is dramatic theme and variations form with a fantasia-like freedom at times, a rigorous four-way interplay with free-flowing contrasts, followed by a change to diatonic major, a more countrified Americana feel, and an exciting allegro pitch to the finish line. The Debray String Quartet sounds great in their performance of what is a very pleasing, moving piece.

The other two works on the program relate to each other as offshoots of a previous work, "Man Falling," written for baritone and orchestra after Don DeLillo's novel touching on post-9-11 issues.

The "Falling Canons," in seven movements, works out some brilliant counterpoint for solo piano, based on a theme from "Man Falling." There is a set of intricate variations, canons, developed out of the chromatic falling theme motif. Christopher O'Riley shines in the solo role.

"Falling Trio" works out an expanded color palette made available by using a piano trio (piano, violin, cello). The same falling theme is again the basis for the one-movement work, and there is a mix of homophony and polyphonic counterpoint for a slightly less rigorous but more meditative and expressive result. There are moments of late romantic feeling that descend upon the music towards the end, with the jagged chromatic and minor mode descending that link this work with the two previous. It is elegaic in the end, and in this way we have a resolution of the contrapuntal tension that has built up. A penultimate, dramatic set of accented figures leads to an even more elegiac mood. Cascading piano, complemented by long-lined, long-toned figures in the strings leave us grounded, feeling moved and, perhaps, rather transcendent. Trio21 are exemplary on this piece.

When the music is finished and silence reigns (as much as there can be such a thing where I write) one is left with the feeling that a presence has gone, that as much as music can say what words cannot, that all has been said, that more would add nothing to what has been expressed.

Fuchs delivers an extremely powerful punch with these three works sequenced as they are on the CD. The triumvirate of sounds acts as a kind of monumental remembrance in musical terms. This is a high form of discourse indeed. Recommended!