Lee Actor, Piano Concerto

In the ever-permutating stylistic world of modern classical we have music to consider on today's blog post built of neo-classical and neo-romantic elements. The composer is Lee Actor (b. 1952) and his Piano Concerto (Navona 5986) (2012) is the featured work alongside his "Divertimento" (2011) and his "Symphony No. 3" (2013). The Slovak National Symphony Orchestra under Kirk Trevor does the honors fittingly, with Daniel Glover in the piano role for the "Concerto." All comes across well.

Actor is a polymath personality, practicing in his career as software engineer as well as a concert artist/composer. Perhaps this explains his deft manipulation of structural elements in his music. At any rate all three works bring traditional elements to bear in ways that both hearken back and look forward.

The music has a general rhythmic vitality, a sure sense of orchestrational color and an inventiveness that makes his music neo- more than retro-. It is music that has a tonal centrality that does not introduce much in the way of dissonance, instead using rhythmic continuity-discontinuity and thematic development to express a compositional ethos. (The symphony has an increased chromaticism in keeping with a late-romantic/modern ethos, however.)

You can hear both rhythmic and developmental elements especially vividly at work in the "Divertimento" and the final movement of the "Concerto," but it is continually a factor.

Here is the sort of music that grows inside of you with repeated listens. That of course may be true of most classical music but in Actor's case it is especially true. On the first hearing of the program, style hit me foremost. Then on subsequent listens the internal workings within style became more and more apparent and memorable.

"Symphony No. 3" is a good example. There is late romantic seriousness of purpose in the opening movement "Premonition," but it comes at you more and more impressively as you hear the movement a number of times. Perhaps, yes, there is something that reminds you of Schumann, Brahms, Wagner, Bruckner in its monumental moroseness. Yet as you listen again the articulation of the orchestral blocks of sound become more and more Lee Actor and less derivative in the way it all hangs together beautifully.

The inner movements break the spell with a great headlong plunge into rhythmically rapid string figuration and grand punctuations from brass and woodwinds ("Scherzo I"). In contrast "Reflections" begins in a lyrically dark-somber mood, then goes on to a rather chromatic music of contemplation with dynamic outbursts that remind you we are in a post- and neo- world. "Scherzo II" brings us back to fleeting motion, the entire orchestra taking part in the moving panorama of tone with deftly orchestrated passages. The "Finale" returns to an ominous darkness that creeps forward with insistency and shows off the coloration-orchestrational acuity of the composer with distinctive writing for winds, brass and strings in various combinations. Somewhere in midpoint there are darkly dramatic outbursts that gradually build momentum into agitated climaxes of tangible power and clout. The cloudiness of the opening movement returns before a great hurrah ends it all.

So there you have it. Actor comes through with three distinctive works that give us a vivid picture of his latest orchestral music. This is not music on the edge of avant futurism so much as a new synthesis of classical-to-modern orchestral practices, resulting in an idiomatically personal approach that shows thematic and orchestrational prowess.

It is music that one welcomes more heartily back into one's music hearth the more one returns to it. If you like new music that delves into the past transformatively, this will give you plenty to savor!

Hilary Tann, Musical Landscapes

Some music lately has taken an unabashed turn to tonal beauty. That is true of the music of Hilary Tann, as heard in chamber works on Musical Landscapes (Centaur 3357). On it we experience eight short to mid-length works written by Ms. Tann between 1984 and 2012. The works are for configurations of violin, cello and piano, alone and in various groupings.

The works sometimes refer backwards to earlier styles, from Gregorian Chant onwards, but nevertheless the musical syntax has the stamp of Hilary Tann on it throughout. Perhaps post-romantic radical tonality might be a way of thinking of the music. There is a "beyond" quality that speaks to our own times in an original way. Pianists Eunmi Ko and Albert Kim, violinist Sini Virtanen and cellist Andrew Barnhart bring out the expressive eloquence of the music with care and heartful feeling.

There is an introspective restraint at times that puts the listener in a sort of dream landscape very pleasant to experience. But the music has underlying sinew and substance.

I am captivated by the program and recommended it to you who seek new avenues in tonality today. It charms consistently without pandering in the slightest. New age it isn't. Our age it is.

Walter Ross, Triumvirate, Concertos for Clarinet, Piano and Double Bass

The number of composer active today is virtually as countless as the stars in the firmament, as is the number of releases devoted to them. It is impossible to keep up with the statistical density of what's being produced. All one can do is listen and report in on the ones that impress as worthy whenever one can.

Such a composer is Walter Ross (b. 1936) who studied under Robert Beadell, Robert Palmer and Karel Husa. He is active as a double bassist (in the Blue Ridge Chamber Orchestra) in addition to his composing.

The present volume serves as a good introduction to his music, covering his "Concerto for Double Bass and Orchestra", his "Piano Concerto 'Mosaics'", and his "Clarinet Concerto". Triumvirate (Ravello 7893) is the title, not inappropriately. Ross gives us a modernist tonality in a style that fits in with some of the American composers of the 20th century, expressively neo-romantic at times, classically formed, with a slight rusticity that hearkens back ever so subtly to an Americana of yesterday while at the same time having a booster-ish progressivity.

That does not quite describe the impact of the music, but it does comes close. There is a lyrical side that can especially be heard to good advantage on the "Piano Concerto", a rhythmic vitality apparent throughout, and thematic inventiveness.

The "Double Bass Concerto" is one of a very few out there, so it is especially welcome. There are soaring arco lines that make the bass sound as if it were a deep-ranged sibling of the cello, which of course makes sense. The music has a stately, measured quality in keeping with the regal personality of the solo part.

The "Piano Concerto" seems especially strong and original, with a good deal of forward moving energy and momentum, a busy thematic unwinding shared and dialogued between piano and orchestra.

The momentum continues in the "Clarinet Concerto", with some wonderful clarinet passages and a rustic dance quality in the first movement, a tender lyricism in the second and a stirring liveliness in the finale that once again suggests a country dance.

The orchestral duties are divided between the St. Petersberg State Symphony Orchestra, the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Warsaw National Philharmonic, all of whom give us quite respectable, lively readings. Kudos to the soloists are in order: Artim Chirkov on double bass, Marjorie Mitchell, piano, and the great Richard Stoltzman on clarinet.

All-in-all this is a fine recording. It will appeal especially to those who follow the American compositional modernist scene, who are open to a lesser-known yet worthy figure. It transcends those boundaries too, so that the music speaks across borders to anyone open to a middle-road modernism.

Frederic Rzewski, Four Pieces, Hard Cuts, The Housewife's Lament, Ralph van Raat

American-born Frederic Rzewski (b. 1938) has roots in improvised as well as composed music. He was a pioneering founder member of Musica Elettronica Viva (MEV) along with Richard Teitelbaum and Alvin Curran in the '60s, a cooperative ensemble that created exploratory improvisational music which spanned the gap between free jazz and new music; it also notably featured live electronics along with conventional instrumentation. They were one of the first who covered this territory and helped spawn an avant garde hybrid that continues to be important today, especially in Europe but in the USA as well.

He is a virtuoso pianist and of course a composer, initially studying with Sessions, Piston and Babbitt among others, then making his way primarily in Europe.

His piano solo compositions are especially well-known. "The People United Will Never Be Defeated" is one of the more popular, having enjoyed a fair number of recordings over the years, including one by pianist Ralph van Raat, who also is the pianist on the new release discussed here.

Four Pieces, etc. (Naxos 8.559759) features three compositions/suites covering a wide span of Rzewski's output from 1977 to 2011. "Four Pieces" (1977) finds the composer in an expressive, tumultuous mode typical of his music of that period. "Hard Cuts" (2011) is in three movements and joins pianist van Raat with the chamber ensemble Lunapark for a fascinating quasi-concerted work that has expressive chromatics joined with well-configured, continually forward moving modern harmonic transformations-modulations in an edgy mode. In the final movement "Like Bees" it turns to a bee's nest buzz of drones that builds outward to a high modernist return to open tonality.

"The Housewife's Lament" (1980) takes an anonymous, Beethovenesque tune from the mid-19th century and constructs a set of very exploratory variations around it.

It is all exemplary Rzewski, a composer never comfortable to remain in formalist high-modern expression, but ever searching for stylistic linkages with the past, the world and the future. Ralph van Raat has the technique and a temperamental affinity with Rzewski that makes each of the three works sing with energy and panache.

The volume serves as a good introduction to the composer for those who do not know him well. Rzewski afficionados will welcome the volume, too.

Quite recommended!

Chris Campbell, Things You Already Know

For music you don't expect, when you don't expect it, Chris Campbell can give it to you. And he does. Today I'm digging into his third album for Innova (860), Things You Already Know. I've review favorably the other two on the blogs. The third confirms what I already knew--that you have to chuck out the categories in his music, or create a new one with lots of hyphens.

Call it progressive-classical-postminimal-rock-psychedelic-radical tonality? OK, that might cover it. What we get is a 33 minute quasi-suite of seven parts on vinyl or CD.

The instrumentation includes strings, fuzz guitars, some kinds of junk percussion, and more. It has some of the repetition of progressive rock but structured and conflated with some drones, collaged combinations out of different sounds and styles, and a sure sense that this Maestro Chris Campbell knows where he is taking you. Things build up, then collapse into the next pathway to the next station, that in turn builds up and on from there.

It has the feel of what we (who were around for it) heard in the more extreme psychedelics of the Beatles and other early prog experiments. Only there is more of it and the "it" has the unmistakable stance of a composer of talent. Nothing is quite random yet it feels much like open form when you are inside various parts.

At times it is quite beautiful. At times it is quite bracing. It never sequences in ways you would expect.

Make no mistake. This is new music. It is not old music. It captures the mysterious resonances of earlier rock at its most experimental and makes something complex and structured, bold and intrepid in where it goes and the lovely results it insists on providing your listening mind.

Lyrical and cosmic--a combination that really appeals when it's done as well as Chris Campbell does it here. Get this one only if you want an adventure. But then latch on to your anchor or ballast! Excellent.

Max Lifchitz, Rhythmic Soundscape

First, a disclosure, I was a student of Max Lifchitz back when he was teaching at the free-form School of Contemporary Music in the Boston area, while he was getting his doctorate at Harvard, in 1972-3. I doubt he'd remember me but he was an impressive teacher with a lively musical mind. Since then he of course has gone on to have a distinguished career as composer, teacher, pianist and director of the North/South Consonance and their musical endeavors.

Today we have a recording of his music for percussion, Rhythmic Soundscape (North/South 1059). On it we are treated to six works for percussion in various configurations, written over the period 1977-2005. The McCormick Percussion Group under director Robert McCormick do a fine job with the music.

Maestro Lifchitz's 1977 "Music for Percussion" has some of the more abstract rhythmic structures of all the works. It is advanced in a manner that fits in with the percussion ensemble music of that era, yet bears the stamp and the logical flow of Max Lifchitz the composer.

At the other extreme is the recent "Dos Danzas" (2005), which as the title suggests takes on dance forms in a lively manner.

Between those two poles we have a variety of pieces that stay in the mind in memorable ways. One of the highlights is the concerto-like "Rhythmic Soundscape No. 5", with Max at the piano in fluent dialogue with a percussion quintet. The demanding and rewarding work for solo percussionist, "Inner Pulse" (1983), is a piece of challenge, virtuosity and cohesiveness, performed impressively by Beran Harp.

In the end we get a personally idiomatic program of works that give us a side of Lifchitz that is rhythmically involved, complex or more direct as the composer sees fit, and extraordinarily well-wrought. The earlier works sometimes show the elated, pioneering elegance of some of the works of early-mid last century. The music goes beyond that in later works to establish a melodic percussion language more Lifchitzian. It's not just percussion music, it's Max Lifchitz percussion music and as such is an impressive addition to his recorded output. The performances are stirringly right. Bravo!

Recommended.

Andrew Rindfleisch, In the Zone

When a composer has an definite affinity to the brass ensemble and has absorbed the repertoire from the periods and locales when it had the most influence on the music in the air at the time, one can expect good things. That is so if the composer is Andrew Rindfleisch, at any rate, as heard on the recent disk by the Meridian Arts Ensemble, In the Zone (Innova 850).

What we have are four works for either full quintet ensemble, two trumpets, or trumpet and trombone, and rearrangements of an old hymn and four 19th century popular songs for quintet or quartet.

The composer has a pronounced knack for combining the brass ensemble sounds of yesterday and the day before with the modernist touch and a personal compositional stamp. The music is very brass-idiomatic yet occupies a rewarding space almost outside of time, or as if we were on a brass-seeking time machine that is reentering the present through the past.

It all works very well, in part because the Meridian Arts Ensemble plays the music with obvious relish, care, even devotion. They love this music and bring it to us in a most sympathetic light. But then why shouldn't they? It is so brass-proud!

And so we pleasurably traipse through Rindfleisch's "In the Zone" (2009), "Four Fanfares for Two Trumpets" (2011), "Fanfare" (1988) for quintet, "A Little Fanfare Music (By Lady Macbeth)", "Four Vintage Songs" (2011), and Henry Monk's 1861 "Abide with Me". And we get it, the humor, high spirits and love of brass congregations.

This one is pure fun but with the promise of purely weighty content! Recommended.

Ken Field, Sensorium: Music for Dance & Film

Ken Field began composing music in the late '80s for the animated films of his wife, the late Karen Aqua. Sometime later New York based choreographer-dancers Art Bridgman and Myrna Packer began commissioning Field to write for their troupe Bridgman/Packer Dance. Ken Field's new disk presents the latest work he's done in both contexts. Sensorium: Music for Dance & Film (Innova 836) gives us three numbers from his film work and 11 for dance, all relatively short pieces lasting from just a minute to over eight minutes.

As Field describes in the liner notes, there was a beginning to these projects of layered saxes, flutes and percussion, then the gradual incorporation of electronics, electronic effects and other instruments. By the time we get to these later works, anything goes along these lines. There are pieces just for percussion, others for various combinations of instruments and electronics. The music can be in a minimalist vein sometimes, other times jazz and rock influences are there, still other times it's music, pure and simple. with no particular stylistic-camp affiliation.

The sheer variety of what comes keeps the listener interested. There are works that dazzle in their musicality, a few have more of the incidental feel, and that's only natural, given the contexts in which the music functioned.

If it matters to you, this is not high-modernist height-scaling. It's more pomo anything-goes music. And for all that it makes for a very good listen.

Michael Hersch, The Sudden Pianist

In the swirl and chaos of (post) modern life, it is hard to get noticed. There are so many others, all vieing (no spell-check, not "pieing") for attention. There needs to be something about you that can draw in the listener, or some theme that people will be disposed toward. Composer-pianist Michael Hersch has something natural to him that is indeed a good way to first experience him in an otherwise deaf and blind world.

He came onto the piano at a late age. And he developed rapidly a formidable technical grasp of the instrument--as a vehicle for his own compositional mazes and labyrinths.

All this is addressed in the CD/DVD set The Sudden Pianist (Innova 859). There is a performance of his solo piano work "Suite from the Vanishing Pavilions," a one-hour version of the initial piano work written some years ago. These are some of the most essential sections of the longer work, arranged in a flowing sequence. He performs the work live at Merkin Hall in New York. It fills a CD and is also presented as a video on the DVD. The DVD then also includes Richard Anderson's half-hour film that gives the title to the set, The Sudden Pianist.

The music is masterful, very modern, filled with extraordinarily difficult passages of expanded tonal-atonal virtuosity. Crumb-meets-Messiaen-meets-Cecil Taylor? A "Concord Sonata" for today? Not exactly, but there is something of all that happening. Only this is quite original, fascinating, brilliant music in its own right.

The movie looks at Michael Hersch's involvement as pianist and composer for the piano in a way that makes you want to hear all of the music afterwards. He is articulate and the narrative lays out his story with enough depth and skillful creation-editing that personally I was riveted by it.

The "Suite from the Vanishing Pavilions" most certainly qualifies as one of the essential piano works of this century thus far. It has spaciousness, poetic pacing, and real musical dash.

Michael Hersch has the tools and the imagination to be one of the leading lights of modern music. This set does much to convince me of that. But it also has the ravishing piano work for us to experience again and again. For the modernist out there, it will bring joy. It may convert more than a few listeners to modernism, too! Do not miss this one.

Christopher Shultis, "Devisadero:" New Music from New Mexico

New-Mexico-based composer Christopher Shultis gives us something original and good for the ear on his CD of four contrasting compositions, Devisadero (Navona 5849). There's a four-part suite for wind symphony ("Openings"), a song cycle for soprano and piano ("Songs of Love and Longing"), a reflective work for soprano sax and winds ("a little light, in darkness") and a suite for solo piano ("Devisadaro").

Generally this is a modern, original take on American post-impressionism, with tone painting that evokes the stunning landscape of New Mexico.

"Openings" has plenty of contrast, some very dynamic percussion-winds interplay, chorale-like grandeur, and orchestrational depth and transparency. "Songs of Love and Longing" pits a homespun charm against contrasting blocks of emotive expressiveness, American Chopin-Liszt-and beyond pianisms of idiomatic writing, some of the simplicity-in-sophistication of the Ives-Barber lineage, and a hint of later Strauss songsmithing for a kind of exquisite expression of lack.

"A little light in darkness" nicely juxtiposes acapella soprano sax with alternately sparse and full wind thematics. There is an introspective drama in the quiet parts, a little more espisodic urgency in the sectional, multi-solo tuttis. "Devisadaro" makes good use of recurring motifs in a series of poetic through-composed soliloquies.

Throughout Shultis goes after a modern shimmer, the small sounds of the landscape and the large, a sensitivity to the micro and the macro, in ways that reference past classical styles while harnessing them to the insistent and consistently inventive musical imagination of Christopher Shultis.