Sean Hickey, Concertos, St. Petersburgh State Symphony, Lande

American composer Sean Hickey (b. 1970) comes through as a talent to be heeded on the two-work recording of his music, Concertos (Delos 3448).

All hands make a fine showing: Dmitry Kouzov, cello, Alexander Fiterstein, clarinet, and Vladimir Lande conducting the St. Petersburg State Symphony. The works on this disk are the "Concerto for Cello and Orchestra," and the "Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra."

This is music that has everything going for it--melodic, heroic solo parts, symphonic breadth, dynamic form and a sort of post-romantic dash. Both were written in the last decade but show the influence of, and absorption in the symphonic concerto tradition from the viewpoint of the present. The clarinet concerto has a bit more chromaticism and an expanded melodic-harmonic outlook but both show ample evidence of craft and inspiration.

Sean Hickey has talent and an original take on the music. The performances are first-rate. The Clarinet Concerto was my favorite of the two but there are I am sure many listens to come for me in the years to follow, so check in with me then! Mr. Hickey is for real and the music offers much to the symphonic enthusiast. Give this one your ears!

Mark Isaacs, Children's Songs, Solo Piano Pieces

Where solo piano music is concerned, you could say that Mark Isaacs belongs to the modern tonal school. Children's Songs (SoundBrush 1029) finds Mark running through a grouping of 18 interrelated pieces. Without to my knowledge containing an improvisation per se, he nonetheless shows a little bit of jazz flavoring a la Keith Jarrett and Bill Evans, along with the influence of Debussy, in that there are glowing impressionistic expressions to be heard.

The music is something children might appreciate, but mostly it is music that shows Isaacs reflecting on childhood as an experience, a state-of-mind, a set of events and images of an exceptional nature. So in that sense it is more akin than not to something like Robert Schumann's Kinderszenen.

The music really is what shines. Isaacs has created a reflectively intimate tableau that does not engage in pyrotechnics but nonetheless shows the sure hand of a very creative musical brain and heart.

The playing is appropriately poetic; the music revels in dappled sunlight. . . so it's perfect for this season or for that matter any fair day or its memory!

Mark Isaacs comes through with 18 pieces you'll no doubt want to hear many times. Excellent piano music.

Toyohiko Satoh, De Visée, Lute Music

Robert de Visée (1650-1725), born around Coimbra, Portugal, made his name as lutenest, guitarist, singer and theorbo player in the court of Louis XIV in Paris. He left behind him a small but engaging body of published lute music, which Toyohiko Satoh gives vivid voice to on his CD devoted to the composer, De Visée (Carpe Diem Nostalgia 1202).

Satoh plays on the recording a marvelous old lute made by Laurentius Greiff in 1610. The music is engagigly typical for very good French School lute music of the period--very lyric, multi-part melody and accompanying counterpoint a prominent feature.

Maestro Satoh performs brilliantly, his attention to detail and the beautiful sound of the lute coming through in ways that enchant.

This is one of the nicest such recordings I have yet to hear of this sort. Satoh is a master, the instrument has incredible tone and the music is quite beautiful.

Bravo!

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!