Paradigms: New Sounds for the Modern Orchestra

We live in a time in the arts that cannot yet be captured by one word. It is most certainly "the period after" what came before, but what is that? It is only to say that it is today, not yesterday. Is that necessarily a bad thing? In the field of new music one thing positive about it is that there is no "cultural police" dictating what one must create, no special "out" or "in" group. Oh I suppose you could single out loosely grouped coteries with certain stylistic affinities: high modernists, post-modernists, minimalists, those that create music that could be termed neo-early, neo-classical, or neo-romantic, and of course the avant garde lives on, and so forth, but no one group dominates. What it means to the listener is that there is a wide variety of styles in play in the music being created right now. That's probably healthy and it certainly gives the music lover much to choose from.

With that in mind we look at the new anthology Paradigms: New Sounds for the Modern Orchestra (Navona 5880). Here we have six recent compositions, convincingly played by the Slovak Radio Symphony under Robert Black, and the Moravian Philharmonic under Petr Vronsky, respectively.

There are composers attached to these works that you might not have heard of: Warren Gooch, Rain Worthington, Howard Quilling, Allen Brings, Paula Diehl, and Joseph Koykkar. Yet they are a talented bunch, each providing a work that shows mastery of craft and creative spark.

If you were to try and label the music, it is primarily post- and neo- with some shades of modernism thrown in for good measure. All of the works make convincing statements, make good use of the orchestra as an instrument of color and contrast, and sound contemporary.

The musical as a whole typifies an aspect of the contemporary orchestral scene and does it with some very good, very listenable new music.

Balada, Caprichos No. 1 and 5; Temes, Iberian Chamber Orchestra

Leonardo Balada (b. 1933) has a sweeping grasp on the music of his native Catalan and often combines it with his own take on classical modernity to forge a strong musical identity. You can hear that clearly and most pleasurably on the new release by the Iberian Chamber Orchestra under Jose Luis Temes (Naxos 8.572625). Caprichos 1 and 5 form the centerpieces of the program.

"Caprichos No. 1" (2003) is a homage to the poet Frederico Garcia Lorca and features Bertrand Pietu on classical Spanish guitar. It has vibrancy, much in the way of folk-dance allusion, a lively solo guitar part and the spicy tang of modern harmonic transformations. "Caprichos No. 5" (2008) honors composer Isaac Albeniz, puts Aldo Mata's cello work into prominence and features well-wrought transformations/resituations of Albeniz's music. The string orchestra parts again have the tang of the present along with a "through the looking glass" treatment of Albeniz themes.

Both works show Balada as the master of string orchestral writing, with brightness and depth coming out of a solo-orchestral dialog more concerned with musical affect and expressive lyric/dynamic modernism than with displays of technical acrobatics, though the players show a beautiful sense of form and dramatics in the performance of their parts.

These are extraordinarily appealing works that show Balada to be in full command of his own voice, characteristically adept at making the old and new his own.

As an added bonus there are two additional works, "A Little Night Music in Harlem" (2006) and "Reflejos" (1988), the latter featuring a solo flute part played with zest and enthusiasm by Tatiana Franco. These pieces continue the modern-meets-local-tradition thematics of the Caprichos.

This is music of immense charm, played with joyful concentration and forceful dynamism by the Iberian Chamber Orchestra and the soloists under the masterful conductorship of Jose Luis Temes. This is a side of Balada that many will find nigh irresistable, I would think.

Villa-Lobos' "Forest of the Amazon": Complete Version by the Moscow Radio Symphony

Nearing the end of his life Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos wrote the symphonic soundtrack for a movie version of Green Mansions. When that movie failed, so the story goes, Villa-Lobos expanded the music into a full symphonic work, Forest of the Amazon. It is in its own way one of the composer's masterworks, though for a time it was not often performed, if at all. The definitive recording is still probably the one conducted by the composer and released on LP around 1959.

However the first recording left off a good deal of the music due to the time limitations of the 12-inch LP format. The full score was never collated by the composer, as the parts originally recorded became the main concern. Conductor Alfred Heller, a Villa-Lobos protege during Heitor's final years, has reconstructed a critical edition of the score and produced an important new recording of the work, containing 50 minutes more music than the LP was able to present. Renee Fleming rivals original soprano Bidu Sayao in recreating the solo vocal part and the Moscow Radio Symphony does a good job with the now 74-minute version. The recording was around for a number of years but went out of print. It is now available as a Delos CD.

I've long listened to the original LP and it is still an exhilarating experience for this writer. However the full-length version is a revelation. Themes return, are more fully developed, and the enchanted mood of the score is that much more intensified. My only quibble is that the Moscow Radio Symphony does not always capture the fully Brazilian quality of some of the passages, especially those which bring in the chorus.

Nonetheless Alfred Heller has given us a dynamic and exciting version of the full score that rewards the listener with all the color of Villa-Lobos at his orchestral-orchestrational best.

Ideally one should have the original recording along with this one. If you can't manage to find both, then this one makes a fine substitute and gives you everything originally intended to be a part of the work. It should be heard by anyone with an interest in the composer and/or the modern orchestral palette.