Laurent Petitgirard, The Little Prince, A Ballet

There are some works that come at me in ways I am not always prepared for. French composer Laurent Petitgirard's ballet The Little Prince (Naxos) qualifies. It combines choir and orchestra in ways that do not completely connect with me at certain points, largely in fact in the opening sections where it is the choir singing acapella. I feel the same way listening to those first passages as I did hearing Gorecki's Third Symphony. I recognize that many will find it accessible, yet it does not entirely move me.

The ballet begins, then, which a series of elementary choral block chords, a series of "aaahs" as it were, which to me seems a little too much on the movie music edge of things, rather undistinguished to my ears. But that fairly quickly becomes more subtle, quieter, as instruments enter now and again. Finally a solo clarinet announces the end and a new beginning as the choir takes over once again, this time with a modern-almost-Gregorian line punctuated by bells and chimes.

From here on in the music takes on character, more complex themes and development entering the fray. This isn't minimalism, but there is a stark facticity at times that has some of paired-down qualities of some of the more repetitious fare. By the middle of the third section there arrives a pulse on the mallets underneath choral "aahs" that have more sophistication to them, especially as punctuated by effective clarinet writing.

It has some rhythmic bite with an insistent figure in seven, articulated by the chorus and taken to a more directly driving end by percussion and winds. The Budapest Studio Choir and the Honved Male Choir have plenty of pep and enthusiasm but sometimes seem not quite up the the long "aahing" that is required of them, especially in the fortissimo zone. The Hungarian Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer fares better. They often appear in smaller combinations, rarely tutti, but the parts are interesting enough and the playing has character fitting to the score.

Once we get to sections five through 14 we are on solid musical ground. There still are some "aahs" left but everything takes on a more inventive way, a more substantial melodic set of arcs, sometimes mysterious, all rather theatrical.

So if I as a listener simply started with the fifth section, I would have less to dislike. In the end Petitgirard has an originality, there is a spark of inspiration. Perhaps other works to come will fully satisfy me. As to The Little Prince there is good music to be heard but some of the choral writing/performance seems less than angelic, yet not really demonic either. As with all Naxos releases, you cannot beat the price. Unless you are a rabid Francophile this one is not essential.

Dimitri Voudouris, Electro-Acoustic Music

Greek-born Dimitri Voudouris (b 1961) writes electro-acoustic music in the grand manner. Like Xenakis and Stockhausen before him, he favors long audio-audible poems that utilize complex sounds in an almost symphonic manner, except this is high avant garde in result. And he does not remind of either composer in any concrete way. He does sound very much individual, original.

His four-work release on Pogus (21056-2) brings some important music to our attention. Complex pitch-noise constructions come together and undergo extensive development and transformation in the long-formed pieces we hear. According to the liner notes, he "bases his technical and theoretical compositional approach on research of cognitive psycho-acoustic behavioural patterns in humans, and the behaviour of sounds in relation to continued environmental changes." Hearing in this case is believing.

The music is more in the realm of flowing sustained soundscapes than it is a matter of serialist hot-potato passing. And for such flow the music is invitingly narrative-like. Each work seems a story in sound with no literal meaning but quite meaningful in an abstracted way.

Voudouris to my mind is a major voice in the electronic music of the present. For all that this release gives you an excellent sampling of what he is about. All Gyro Gearloose folks like me will find it most pleasingly enveloping. Definitely recommended.

Bartlomiej Pekiel, The Sixteen

It has been said of some artists that they could sing the phone book (for those of you who remember what that is) and still sound great. I have no doubt that the early music ensemble The Sixteen could do that. But there is so much else to perform that's worth hearing, why would they?

Today's CD is a good example. It is the music of Bartlomiej Pekiel (1633-70) (CORO 16110), a Polish baroque master who is virtually unknown over here in the States, and in the hands of The Sixteen comes through with all the charm and grace inherent in his music. The Sixteen under Eamonn Dougan give us authentic period performances with a flourish.

Essentially the program consists of two mass settings, the brief "Missa a14," and the extended "Missa Concertata 'La Lombardesca,'" plus a number of shorter choral works. Some are acapella, some include accompanying instruments, all are movingly well wrought.

I do recognize an adaptation of an old English carol (or vice versa); otherwise this is very much new music to me. It is beautifully performed, and I promise you that Pekiel is infinity more interesting than a performance of the phone book. In fact he is masterful.

Composers of the Polish baroque? Here is one of the very best of the lot. And that is an excellent thing.

Bartok, Violin Concertos 1 & 2, Isabelle Faust, Swedish Radio Symphony

Bartok's Second Violin Concerto is a favorite with music lovers. His First is less well known. It was lost and only rediscovered after the composer's death. Plus it was written 30 years before his 1930s No. 2, so it goes back to the early days of his composing career. Isabelle Faust, a violinist with whom readers of this blog will be well acquainted, went back to the original manuscripts to make sure the performance edition she used was truly the authentic version.

The result is Isabelle with the Swedish Radio Symphony under Daniel Harding in a new recording of the two concertos together (Harmonia Mundi). It is manna for Bartok enthusiasts; indeed beautiful music for anyone with ears.

The first concerto reflects Bartok's love for a young violinist of his acquaintance at the time, and so understandably has some tenderness and a romantic quality. It is fascinating music regardless, not flying quite to the heights of the second, but sounding ravishing enough with Ms. Faust and the Swedish Radio Orchestra giving it a passionate reading.

The second concerto has some of the most sublime and moving moments of any 20th century violin concerto, and that's saying quite a bit when you think of how many beautiful scores were created last century. Isabelle Faust is wholly simpatico with the music, reaching a contemporary high water mark in versions of the work, with a passionate attack that integrates the technical difficulties of her part with the broad sweep of the music. She sounds otherworldly. The Swedish Radio Symphony do a good job with Daniel Harding at the helm sounding fit and fully committed to the demands of the music.

The second concerto in Ms. Faust's hands reminds us that great music takes humanity well beyond the rather mundane biological animals we all too often are. It is what transcends all, that recreates us for a time as beings that dwell in the clouds.

Go there with this recording!

Ligeti String Quartets, Keller Quartett

Ligeti's String Quartets are capstone works of the '50s-'60s. They epitomise both the advances and the creative power of new music at the height of the high modern period. They are deep, advanced, yet able to communicate directly to the listener regardless of background or ear-experience.

The marvelous Keller Quartett from Budapest have newly recorded the two (ECM New Series B0018363-02) along with the original quartet version of Barber's "Adagio". The results are benchmark brilliance.

To bookend the two explosively supercharged Ligeti works with the compact warmth and lyricism of the Barber was a great idea. The touching qualities of the "Adagio" set off the more space encompassing, cosmic quartets in ways that move the listener from end point to end point with multiple feelings of closure.

The Ligeti works have never sounded better. In the Keller Quartett's hands the music gets maximum articulation, passion and precision, sonically spectacular realizations of alternating sotto voce mystery and expressive outbursts. The Barber too sounds just right.

I've heard no better renditions of either three works. The Keller Quartett do the music full justice, no easy task, and the spacious soundstaging of the stereo audio does much to capture the finely focused nuances of the quartet in high definition sound.

Very much recommended. You should have this one.

Stile Antico, The Phoenix Rising

The early is in the late, the late in the early. To hear Stile Antico's vocal performances of English Tudor Church music is to hear something very old yet somehow right for our ears today--not in terms of the actual musical sequences so much as the vibrato-less voices in their bell-like purity. All this can be heard in an excellently subtle-ecstatic manner on Antico's new release The Phoenix Rising (Harmonia Mundi 807572).

Early Music sounds current in its own way partially because there are some composers today, Arvo Part for one, that have been inspired by the sound of it all. That doesn't mean there is a close fit between something like Tudor Church Music and something in the Neo-Early vein. The Tudors represented here were masters of the long flowing contrapuntal line, the close harmonies, the various intervallic motions up or down according to what they thought was "right," these are things special to that period and style.

And the anthology at hand gives it to us in a great wealth of expressive voicings. The centerpiece is William Byrd's "Mass in Five Parts," but it is equally present in the short works by him, Tallis, Morley, Gibbons, Taverner, et al.

It's music that gives you the chills, for its ancient voices speaking clearly to us today, for the sheer beauty of its note choices and for the gracious transparency of Stile Antico's outstanding musicianship.

If you could have only one choral recording representing this style and time, this probably should be it. But if you have a wealth of early music in your music library, this will be most welcome to you, too. Stunning. Stunning all around.

ZOFO, Mosh Pit, One Piano Four Hands

The sound of music for two pianos is different than that of music for one piano and four hands. It means of course that actual unisons are not in the offing, that the full range of the pianoforte is always at hand, and so the sound has its own shadings.

The sound factor comes out front in dramatic ways for ZOFO's recording Mosh Pit (Sono Luminus 92167). It's a six-work program of widely contrasting fare, brought to you in sterling sound by the four-handed behemoth Keisuke Nakagoshi and Eva-Maria Zimmermann. This Sono Luminus release comes as a regular CD and a surround-sound Blue Ray disk, so you can hear the duo in super detail or normal state-of-the-art stereo.

In the end of course it's the music and performance that count first off. As with the notion of a mosh pit the artists bring together a widely contrasting program of early modern and newer works, all played with pretty exciting dash and sensitivity to motive balance.

So we have Gershwin's "Cuban Overture," Nancarrow's "Sonatina," Barber's "Souvenirs," then on to the present with John Corigliano's "Gazebo Dances," Allen Shawn's "Three Dance Portraits," and Paul Schoenfield's "Five Days from the Life of a Manic Depressive."

The music has drive and there are connecting links in the form of music that has roots in the dance, from Cuban-derived, ragtime, boogie-woogie and stride to some allusions to modern rock. It's a running thread present at times in the forefront only to recede, then come back again later. And in that way (Nancarrow being a direct link here) it does remind at times of the old player piano rolls which in fact often arranged the music in essence for what would take four hands to play. That is a pleasing reference that comes to bear at times but of course that is not to imply that ZOFO sound in any way mechanical. Far from it.

This is a talented pair of players who lock into the music as one hydra-being of coordinated sound. ZOFO sound great, the program is refreshing and the sound stands out. Outstanding for all that. Very captivating and so very nice to hear. Recommended!