Grainne Mulvey, Akanos

There are some present-day composers one takes to almost naturally, depending on one's background and listening habits. I found such a composer in Grainne Mulvey, an Irish practitioner of the sonic arts of high modernism. She has a new album out, an all-Mulvey program named Akanos (Navona 5943) after the opening orchestral work featured on the disk.

The press sheet accompanying the release tells us that hers in a music of opposites, and you can see how that works in the pieces for live performers and electronic sound. Otherwise hers is a music of the epic gesture, high level sound color essays, a music at once post-Xenakis-ian and post-Berio-ian in direction.

"Akanos" starts things off with a rousingly gigantic dissonance, eight minutes of sheer dash, played well by the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra.

From there we hear five works for a live instrumentalist and electronics, involving two for flute, two for soprano, one for cello plus a ten-minute work ("Steel Grey Splinters") that makes good use of unusual timbres on the piano.

What impresses about the electronic-live works is the finely attuned way the electronics complement the live part and vice versa. "Shifting Colours" for example brings to the electronics manipulated flute and breathy sounds that act as a kind of specially sonic orchestra to the flute's solo part.

Ms. Mulvey gives you fully developed electronic scores in the more through-composed classic avant sense. The sounds have flow and structure, in other words.

I would love to hear more of her orchestral works in particular, since "Akanos" is a wonderful kind of teaser for what I hope is a large body of works. The electronics-performer pieces are satisfying in themselves, however, so there is a good bit of her music to digest and appreciate.You don't feel that there's anything missing. She has style and dramatic power, of that there is no doubt.

Thoroughly recommended for those who respond to well-wrought avant classical.

Andrew May, Imaginary Friends: Music for Instruments and Computer

By now the history of compositions for computer and conventional instruments is pretty long, over 60 years give or take, Varese's Deserts from 1950 or so being the first important work that comes to mind.

And after that many years being exposed to electronic music, and its entrance into the pop world in various guises, we no longer find it so much an exotic world. I can remember nightly newscasts on TV as a kid that took advantage of sometimes crude computer themes as part of their sign off/sign off. It was the cutting edge of sonority and a sign of the space age, though often enough there wasn't much substance, musically speaking.

The world of classical-modernism spawned some masterpieces over the years and I need not rehearse them. Suffice to say it is an integral part of the contemporary scene now.

Enter composer Andrew May and his album Imaginary Friends (Ravello 7861). It groups together seven of his works for instruments and computer, all of solid modernist construction, seamless integration of acoustic and electric sounds, and high musical interest.

This is his first release and I must say I am pleased and impressed with his knack for creating works that display orchestrally complex sound worlds. There are five works for a single instrument and computer sounds: piano, clarinet, 5-string electric violin and two for flute, respectively. There is one for two clarinets and electronics, and a final, longish work for electronics and chamber ensemble.

May convinces, sounds contemporary without attaching to any particular stylistic school, and gives the lover of the new much to hear and appreciate.

Andrew May? Recommended listening.

Alejandro Rutty, The Conscious Sleepwalker

Alejandro Rutty's disk of new music coming out of the tango, The Conscious Sleepwalker (Navona 5870) brings on some fascinating and well-done compositions for saxophone quartet, tango ensemble, chamber ensemble and orchestra. He joins the ranks of some notable others who have worked flirtatiously or extensively with the form, from Stravinsky to Piazzolla. This is music, however, very much on Rutty's own terms.

The Concerto for Saxophone Quartet and Orchestra, aka A Future of Tango starts things off with some very engaging music. It's modernist-eclectic in the way Frank Zappa's more "serious" compositional work was, in that it draws on the music in the air around the composer and melds it into something personal.

The Conscious Sleepwalker Loops for orchestra at the start seems to veer away from the overt adaptation of the tango form to focus on a kind of symphonic poem of distinct interest, but even here the tango melodic-rhythmic feel makes itself known sooner or later.

The rest of the program continues to unveil Rutty's unique stylistic amalgam with various configurations from sax quartet to large chamber ensemble.

At no point do you feel like this is music of a derivative sort. Rutty has his own way which is neither avant garde nor strictly tied to tango. His music has a logic and charm all of its own and it captures the ear throughout. Recommended.

Sofia Gubaidulina, Canticle of the Sun, Kremerata Baltica, Riga Chamber Choir

Sofia Gubaidulina is one of the originals of our era. A new release comes to us from ECM this week, confirming and extending that idea. Canticle of the Sun (ECM New Series B0016445-02) presents the title work as performed by the Riga Chamber Choir, Maris Sirmais conducting, with Nicolas Altstaedt as cello soloist plus two percussion and celesta. The disk also features the world premiere recording of "The Lyre of Orpheus" with Gidon Kremer as violin soloist, Marta Sudraba, cello soloist and the Kremerata Baltica.

Both works are substantial, well performed and sound terrific.

Gubaidulina makes a music with much space, ethereal headzone quietude and her own kind of tutti confluence. All the hallmarks of her mature style coexist in both works/performances: "Orpheus," a kind of meditative orchestral piece with prominent violin and cello solo parts; "Canticle," a choral essay combining echoes of Orthodox chant and post-serial expressivity, the old and the new. Ms. Gubaidulina so deftly interweaves such things in her best work. This is part of what makes her one of those great new Eastern European composers to my mind, contemporary in the most current sense.

It is an enthralling set of performances of music that helps define the world we are in.

Thierry Lancino, "Requiem," Inbal, Orchestre Philharmonic de Radio France

Not having been acquainted previously with the compositions of Thierry Lancino, I was pleasantly rewarded lately by listening a number of times to his dramatic Requiem (Naxos) as performed by the massed forces of Choer de Radio France, Orchestre Philharmonic de Radio France, soloists and conductor Eliahu Inbal.

It's a 70-plus minute journey into an expressively modern treatment of the requiem form. The soloists express themselves with musicality and passion, the choir and orchestra are artfully served with a score that bubbles over like a cauldron of molten fire at times, and other times indulges in pianissimo murmurs that fit the sorrowful expression of the text by the solo vocalists. The orchestra reinforces and underscores the choir and soloists, as is fitting in such a work. A kind of murky gloominess in the score at times is virtually unremitting and perhaps that is exactly as Lancino intended, as temperamentally fitting for a requiem. The singers and choir emerge out of an often muddy orchestral oppressiveness that creates a powerfully unified mood, characterizes the work and sets it apart. And I don't mean that as necessarily a negative. It makes for a different work than otherwise might be the case these days. It gives it a unique quality.

The piece as a whole has a late romantic largeness combined with high modernity-Bergian dynamic sonority and occasionally an Orffian chanting insistence.

The performance is spirited and excellent. Lancino's music has undoubtedly some considerable merit. I would most definitely like to hear more of it. If I did not respond to this work with keen absorption, it may have something to do with my current mood. I appreciate it on a cerebral level, but it is not grabbing my emotions yet. Some works take many listens before that comes about, so I reserve some of my feelings for now. It is undoubtedly a work and a performance that merit the attention of modern music lovers. At the Naxos budget price you get further incentive to envelop yourself in its dramatic sounds.

Harley Gaber, In Memoriam 2010

The mature Harley Gaber as composer favors long continuous sound matrixes of electro-acoustic poeticism. His The Winds Rise in the North from the seventies was an extraordinarily dissonant and intense piece that involved continuously modifying tone blocks of strings. I saw My Mother Ascending Mount Fuji (Innova) was a long-term project that used more consonant soundblocks and electro-acoustics combined with conventional instruments to create a mystical sort of rarified equivalent of high altitude in sound (see my review in the July 13th, 2010 posting of Gapplegate Music Review-- http://gapplegatemusicreview.blogspot.com).

The new release In Memorium 2010 (Innova 243) was commissioned by Dan Epstein in memory of Nancy Epstein. It is an elegaic six-movement electro-acoustic tone poem of eerie beauty. There are the continuous sound blocks again, but the sonics are more drenched (to my ears) in the sounds one might hear in an underwater world (to Mt. Fuiji's air). It is a strangely intriguing, ever shifting world he creates, the musical equivalent of a set of memories recalled as if in a dream.

It is in its own way an electro-acoustic near-masterpiece of our times. Happy Thanksgiving.

Extreme Avant Garde From Eli Keszler: "Oxtirn" in A New Expanded CD Version

Granted there may not be a lot of music lovers out there that respond to Bach's Suite for Cello (covered in the last review) and Eli Keszler's Oxtirn (ESP 4061) with equal pleasure. Since I am one who does I figure there must be others. For those who would vastly prefer one over the other, you are of course equally welcome here.

I imply that there is a vast difference in outlook and result between Bach and Keszler. I suppose that would be an understatement. Oxtirn IS a body of music that, like Bach's Suite, is produced entirely through human hands playing instruments of a non-electronic sort (except perhaps there is feedback from microphones, not sure of that). In Keszler's case you get drums, crotales, guitar, clarinet, trumpet, tuba, trombone, piano, plus unconventional sound making devices--like motors, sheet metal, spring harp and other prepared metal objects. The conventional instruments are not played conventionally much of the time, either. It is a great symphonic cacophony of noise sculpture that results. The LP version came out last year and sold out. This new CD version adds a third sonic event, which is a good addition, not an afterthought.

Oxtirn does what it does with a certain amount of excellence. Many people may find it unbearable. It is not music to put on at all but the most Bohemian cocktail parties, and even then this might be something for the very end of that get together, as it may well drive out the guests.

Nonetheless Keszler and his several cohorts make a very good job of it. As far as extreme avant music goes, this one deserves a serious hearing. It has some of the home-made sonic iconoclasm of Kagel's Acoustica (for those who know that piece), only it is far more grating.

Be warned, be entraced, be infuriated. That's your job as the audience. It's not music that you'll forget quickly.