Laura Elise Schwendinger, High Wire Acts, Chamber Music

A new voice in modern music can be an exciting thing, if the person has something to offer. That is the case with Laura Elise Schwendinger. Her recent album of chamber music, High Wire Acts (Centaur 3098), gives us a distinctive musical personality, in the modernist camp yet not predictably so.

Five works are on the program, written between 1992-2006, each played by a different combination of instruments. The first two are somewhat larger ensembles: "High Wire Act" is a quintet played very well by the ensemble BrightMusic. It's based on characters from Alexander Calder's wire figure assemblage Le Cirque Calder. Scored for flute, viola, violin, cello, and piano it is a piece of absorbing interest, concrete abstractions that include the wide intervalic leaps you would expect in serial/post-serial compositions, but also interesting group velocity interactions and other inventive figurations.

The second, "Nonet" is another well constructed work in a similar vein, a hommage to Bach's Brandenburg Concertos and Stravinsky's Dumbarton Oaks, played with excellent musicianship by the Chicago Chamber Musicians.

The remaining works are for duos and solo: "Rumor" for flute and cello, "Sonata for Solo Violin" and "Two Little Whos" for violin and guitar. The performers are sensitive and accomplished, well suited for the works at hand. They are Christina Jennings, flute, Greg Sauer, cello, Katie Wolfe, violin, and Duo 46, who are Beth Ilana Schneider-Gould on violin and Matt Gould on guitar.

These more intimate works continue Schwendinger's abstract style in ways that ring with conviction and satisfy with abundant invention.

Laura Elise Schwendinger brings us a cornucopia of musical riches on this program. Any connoisseur of modern chamber music would do well to hear it.

Robert DeGaetano, Piano Concerto No. 1; Chopin, Piano Concerto No. 1; DeGaetano

Robert DeGaetano is a world-class pianist and, as is clear on the recording of his revised Piano Concerto No. 1 (Navona 5929) (coupled with his performance of Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1), a world-class composer.

The story of the concerto is related on the accompanying DVD, "Journey of Passion." The first version was dedicated to his parents and performed to acclaim in 1989. But he was not fully satisfied with the results, so the score sat in his desk drawer until fairly recently, when he set about revising portions of it, rededicating it to the memory of his brother, who passed not long ago.

The new version is given a rousing, sparkling performance on the disk by DeGaetano with the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra under John Yaffee. The inclusion of Chopin's first concerto is fitting, since the DeGaetano work is a modern member of the classically romantic concertos in the line of Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff and then its further expansion into wider tonality by such artists as Prokofiev. That is only to say that the DeGaetano work uses the piano as a spectacularly virtuosic springboard for eloquent dialog with the orchestra and some extraordinarily dynamic, expressive, kinetically charged music.

It's not that DeGaetano's work especially sounds like any of the forebears mentioned, but that the tradition, the evolved technique, the interplay is related to preceding composers as ancestors are to their progeny. The fourth movement "Danse exotique" is very rousing, nearly irresistible in its charm, and a very fitting capstone to a work of our time and yet timeless in its own way. DeGaetano and the orchestra are wondrously alive throughout. And the difficult solo part is handled with great elan.

The Chopin First Concerto is given an excellent reading as well. DeGaetano brings out the singing mellifluousity of the solo part and the orchestra responds in kind. It's one of the very best versions I have heard.

The 20-minute documentary DVD included with the release gives a good introduction to DeGaetano the composer, the pianist, the man with insightful narrative from the composer on his life and devotion to music, along with how he came to write and revise the concerto, and some glimpses into the session that put it all together for us to hear.

This is a release anyone with a love of the piano concerto in general will find a major addition to their collection, for DeGaetano's artistry with both his and Chopin's works. Those who follow contemporary music will surely want to hear the DeGaetano opus. And in general it's fine music, well performed, music of the sort that should appeal to anyone with a serious interest.

Bravo, Maestro DeGaetano!

Jeffrey Stadelman, Messenger and Other Works

Composer Jeffrey Stadelman writes the sort of music that has modernist breath and originality. His Messenger and Other Works (Navona 5896) gives us a bracing selection in a variety of configurations.

The title piece "Messenger" (2010-11) is a major offering in three movements for orchestra. It has swirling kaleidoscopes of sound in an expanded tonality. It shows an excellent feel for orchestration and sound-color painting, sonic contrasts of high drama and virtually endless invention. The Moravian Philharmonic under Per Vronsky is in excellent form throughout.

"Nine Bagatelles for Piano and Recorded Sound" (1987/2012) has wide leaps and complex pointillistic counterpoint. The heroically difficult piano part is played rousingly by the composer. The electro-acoustic part adds a second dimension that sequences with the piano for an almost concerted piano electro-ensemble interplay of an ultra-modern kind. It is music of endless fascination to me.

The brief solo flute suite "Evan's House" (2001) has three short movements in the jagged, angular virtuoso manner. It is played with very fine artistry by Elizabeth McNutt.

Finally we have a brief electro-acoustic movement "Koral 19" from a much longer work. It is fascinating and invites anticipation for the complete opus.

That's the run-down. The CD gives you an excellent introduction to what is a first-tier composer in the high-modernist tradition yet having clearly something of his own to say. I hope subsequent volumes appear in time, for Stadelman writes music we should all hear. Recommended.