Roussel, Piano Music 1, Sonatine, The Sandman, Trois Pieces, Jean-Pierre Armengaud

Sometimes the world appears as a field of vision, a gestalt whole, and looking at it throughout your life there are details that only emerge gradually from the background. I am having that sort of breakthrough with the composer Albert Roussel (1869-1937) who before now I tended to lump together with the French Impressionists, meaning that I paid too little attention to what makes Roussel a voice in very much his own right.

That changed a few weeks ago when I put on the first of a projected (complete?) series of volumes devoted to his solo piano music. Piano Music 1 (Naxos 8.573093) gives us Jean-Pierre Armengaud's renditions of a good selection of Roussel works spanning the period 1904 to 1933, much of his career.

What is surprising is that other than "Le Marchand de sable qui passe - musique de scene, Op 13" (1908) which enjoys its first recording in the piano version, there is less of an obvious Debussian-Impressionist flavor to this music than I would have expected. Or rather it would be more accurate to say that Roussel is on his own turf from the 1912 "Sonatine" on. There are proto-modernist moments, an idiomatic pianism, a distinctive melodic-harmonic fluorescence, a sensuous quality to his music that cannot be reduced to "what was in the air" at the time.

The "Trois Pieces, Op. 49" (1933) is an excellent example. There is rhythmic vitality, a quirky melodic asymmetry, a modern modulatory sort of feel.

There are no clinker pieces on this disk. Everything is very well imagined and executed, even the earlier works. Jean-Pierre Armengaud has the drive and pianistic poeticism to make these performances sound in a way Roussel no doubt would have approved. The man who taught Satie and Varese had his own way. You can hear that quite nicely on this Volume One. Bring on the second!

Definitely recommended.

Kara Karayev, The Seven Beauties, The Path of Thunder (Ballet Suites), Royal Philharmonic, Dmitry Yablonsky

The end of the Soviet Union and the reorganization of Russia and its formerly or continuing Federated States has meant that the "West" has seen a dramatic blossoming of Russian music and musicians on our turf, perhaps as never before. It makes sense. It's easier to work outside of Russia than it was I can assume and the music can travel with less bureaucratic obstacles on either side.

So today we have a Russian-Azerbaijanian conductor (Dmitry Yablonsky) conducting the English powerhouse, the Royal Philharmonic in a program of two ballet suites by the Azerbaijani-Soviet composer Kara Karayev (1918-1982). The two suites are from 1953 and 1958, respectively. They are The Seven Beauties and The Path of Thunder (Naxos 8.573122).

Karayev notably was Shostakovich's favorite pupil in the master's later days. And Karayev also made a point of incorporating folk-like melodies, from Azerbaijan, into his music on a regular basis. All that helps to explain his music in some way, but perhaps not always in the obvious ones.

The Seven Beauties comes out of Nizami's 1197 poem on the legend of a king who was married to seven beautiful women, each living in her own pavilion. The ballet and its suite's central section devotes a movement to each of the women who are in part defined ethnically-nationally, so we have "The Indian Beauty", "The Byzantine Beauty", the Slavonic, the Chinese, etc. Each gives Karayev the opportunity to write folkish movements. There are Azerbaijani related melodies when appropriate but then there are those that enable Karayev to extend the range of his expression. This is descriptive ballet music that sounds as much appropriate for the Russian ballet as it stands on its own as concert fare in the suite. One is occasionally reminded of Prokofiev's ballet Cinderella for the broad sweep of its themes and the more descriptive "Euro-Russian" sorts of passages to be found there. There is more to it than that, though.

The same might be said of his second ballet suite, The Path of Thunder, which concerns forbidden love in Apartheid South Africa. This music, too, has descriptive movements that make an effort to incorporate local folk elements into the score, though I must say I don't hear much that sounds especially South African to it. No matter. In this case too there is less of the obvious Azerbaijani strains to be heard, but you'll hear them now and again if you listen closely.

In so far as Karayev's relationship to Shostakovich goes, it comes out especially in Karayev's orchestrational rigor. All the music sounds especially well for the full orchestra and he excels in the manner of the master. Otherwise a Shostakovichian influence can be especially heard in some of the scherzo-like passages that reflect an almost whimsical approach, perfectly well suited for the dances they were intended for.

Karayev here is not a mirror reflection of Shostakovich or anyone else. He was not thoroughgoing in following Shostakovich in his later period, when Dmitri was more open to modernist and more expanded, increasingly personal approaches to the 20th century he was a part of. Karayev is more Russian than modernist. Some of the music here might almost have come from the pen of later Tchaikovsky, still more the Russian nationalists. That is only to say that Karayev stayed more closely to the Russian later Romantic model.

In the end what matters is the music. The two suites here make for captivating listening for anyone with an ear for the symphonic unfolding of the past 200 years. Yablonsky gives the Royal Philharmonic plenty of inspiration and they respond with dramatic readings that bring the music to concrete life. Karayev in the end is no Shostakovich, and that is in his favor, really, since a carbon copy is not what we need. He is an excellent craftsman and the music has some moments of brilliance that spark an otherwise totally well-mapped and well-conceived series of suites.

It will most certainly appeal to the confirmed Russophile and those who seek to know more of the Azerbaijani contingent of Russian composers of the past century. It's also just plain good listening.

Alvin Lucier, Still and Moving Lines, Decibel

Alvin Lucier somehow manages to come up with compositions that have such a personal singleness of purpose that they may exasperate you at first. But the more you listen, the more you cannot forget them. You even at the end like them, or I usually do, but as part of a process. I remember buying his two-LP set years ago, Music On A Long Thin Wire. I was not a very patient person then. Life was something I had to "do" at that point, the more quickly, the better. That music was oh, so slowly moving that I could not at that time bear it. Only later, in fact only in the last 10 years when it was available on CD did I come to appreciate it a great deal.

Now I am not saying that you are going to feel the same way about the group Decibel's performance of four Lucier works, on the CD Still and Moving Lines (Pogus 21072-2). I don't think exasperation will be your reaction, even the first time out. In fact you may well find the works more readily accessible like I did. That may have something to do with the very sympathetic reading that Decibel gives them. They are a Perth, Australia based new music ensemble that favors works that combine acoustic instruments, electronics and the incorporation of the environment into performances. And it just so happens that the four Lucier works do all of that in varying degrees.

Perhaps the more difficult work is "Shelter" (1967) for vibration pickups, amplification system and enclosed space. They use the auditorium of an Australian music conservatory, placing pickups on walls, doors, etc., that receive everyday, typical sound vibrations coming from outside the auditorium and then generate the external-internal filtering and amplification of those sounds into the auditorium via loudspeakers. This is an example of Lucier's more experimental period and the sounds are fascinating but do take some getting used to.

On the other hand, his "Ever Present" (2002) for flute, saxophone and piano with slow sweep pure wave oscillator is much more readily grasped. The combination of instrumental parts and the ever changing pitch of the oscillator has a somewhat more conventional "new music" sound to it and it is masterfully performed.

"Hands" (1994) and "Carbon Copies" (1989) are somewhere in between the two extremes, but generally have that sustained performative rigor (and vigor) that define the best of instrumental Lucier.

It is surely something to do with the talent and sensitivity of Decibel that these works are so communicative. But of course, again, these are some excellent Lucier works covering a wide span of time.

If you want to experience Alvin Lucier and why he remains so central and vibrant to the new music scene, this is a great place to start. It definitely is up among his very best.

Gheorghe Costinescu, An Evolving Cycle, Stephen Gosling

Gheorghe Costinescu (b 1934), a composer we should know more of than we do, was and is a primary modernist who earned an MA in Composition from Bucharest University, studied with Stockhausen, came to New York in 1969 and studied with Berio at Julliard, then went on to receive his PhD from Columbia after studying there with Chou Wen-chung.

On July 31, 2012 I reviewed his Jubilus and Pantomime DVD here and it woke me up to the man's music. Today we return to him in a CD of his piano music, An Evolving Cycle (Ravello 7878). It contains a chronology of four piano works composed between 1956 and 2011, sometimes of Promethean difficulty, reflecting the stylistic movement from baroque through very modern forms, becoming ever more expressionistic and extra-tonal. The works are played with dramatic, dynamic virtuosity by Stephen Gosling, who judging from this recording is a vastly talented artist. He has the fire and the technique these works call for, and has it in abundance. The performances are remarkable.

The four works show the evolution of the composer's thinking from the very early (1956) "Theme and Variations", which shows an already gifted inventive sense, through to the "Sonata for Piano" (1957, revised 2007-08), the "Evolving Cycle of Two-Part Inventions for Piano" (1964) reflecting the gamut of period styles from the baroque onward in inimitable ways, and finally the very abstract "Essay in Sound" from 2011.

The music impresses by its singular dedication to drawing highly structured yet extraordinarily expressive, pianistically sympathetic, beautifully inventive music for 88 keys and a virtuoso with colossal dedication.

I have to say, this one is a milestone in modern piano works and their performance. From first until last we are treated to a major composer (albeit rather unknown) as played by an extraordinarily gifted pianist.

If the modern, advanced world of contemporary pianism rings the right resonances with you, this will be a revelation. By all means listen to this one!

Mark Padmore, Nicholas Daniel, Britten Sinfonia and Jacqueline Shave, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Ten Blake Songs, On Wenlock Edge, Jonathan Dove, The End, Peter Warlock, The Curlew

This somewhat unusual release (Harmonia Mundi 807566) features tenor Mark Padmore in a series of song settings by 20th and 21st century English composers. The Britten Sinfonia accompany him for Jonathan Dove's "The End", a newly commissioned work of melancholy beauty. They also provide the same for Peter Warlock's "The Curlew", a pastoral song cycle with an kind of English impressionist glimmer in a moody setting.

Vaughan Williams is represented by two of his somewhat lesser performed but nonetheless enchanting works. "On Wentlock Edge" is a cycle for tenor, piano, and Sinfonia members, the piano part performed nicely enough by Huw Watkins. "Ten Blake Songs" are for tenor and oboe, with Nicholas Daniel playing the oboe part with definitive evocative assurance. Both represent the rustic side of Vaughan Williams and are alone worth the price of admission.

Ultimately it is Mark Padmore who reigns supreme in this set. He shows himself a singer of passion and dramatic elan. The series of works represented here have in common a set of moods and a quasi-impressionist palette of sound transparency.

Recommended.

Heinavanker, Songs of Olden Times, Estonian Folk Hymns and Runic Songs

When you hear a body of music previously unknown to you and the performances are very good, it's sometimes something like meeting up with a relative later in life whose path you never crossed. There is something so familiar about that person, yet you have never seen her or him before.

That's the feeling I get listening to the choral group Heinavanker and their album Songs of Olden Times, Estonian Folk Hymns and Runic Songs (Harmonia Mundi 907488). This is a terrific group and the music. . . I have never had the pleasure to hear the archaic vocal works of old Estonia. As I listened I heard something I've never heard before, with echoes of Orthodox Chant, Gregorian Chant, choral music of Georgia and the Ukraine, Medieval Organum, Mongolian throat singing, all kinds of things it had some relation to yet so different it clearly was not a direct product of any of the others. And it's so pleasingly old that it sounds like it could be an old-in-the-new series of contemporary works. It isn't. The fact that Arvo Part hails from Estonia led me to search for things that reminded me of his work, but it isn't quite like that, either.

Heinavanker, which means in Estonian "The Hay Wain", is a vocal ensemble formed by local composer Margo Kolar in 1996. They sound as they must be, that is, totally immersed in the archaic chant style of the region. They sound phenomenal.

The music covers quite a bit of ground. The melodies range from strictly but evocatively chant-like to folkish song form and everywhere between the two. Harmonies have thirds fourths and fifths and sometimes move in parallel motion, sometimes not. There are occasionally drone elements and then the throat singing makes its appearance now and again, with mostly the whistling sort of technique employed to add color to the ensemble while others sing in normal voice.

This is music you don't forget easily. It haunts. It evokes a world we inherited but never knew about (certainly not in the US anyway) until the recorded medium began bringing world and time to our shores, to our listening ears and hearts. And even at that Estonian vocal music has not been around much here. This is a first for me at least.

Songs of Olden Times is all about discovery. It is about a music that lives on and sounds as much relevant to our musical beings as anything. It's so old it almost sounds new. It is extraordinary music. The performances are totally compelling. Grab this one and drift off to a new yet ancient musical world.

Palestrina, Volume 4, The Sixteen, Harry Christophers

I tend to associate cold weather with early vocal music, the baroque especially. Of course there is no one season for it, but it warms my insides this time of year. So as I play the disk up for review this morning I feel a little more warm. You can do little better than Palestrina, that incredibly deft master of counterpoint. The Sixteen give his music loving care as they give is their Volume 4 (CORO 16114) of his music for unaccompanied choir.

As usual the Sixteen under Harry Christophers are an ideal ensemble for the music. They sing with haunting period luminescence. Anybody who at one time ended up with some of the lesser quality Palestrina devoted LPs of the earlier days knows how much the music virtually stands or falls on a passionate, period-oriented vocal ensemble. Early music performances on disk have progressed, thankfully, so that you meet up with clinkers less, but the Sixteen are as near perfect as you can get, virtually speaking.

The program of Vol. 4 is at a high level, with some relative obscurities, like "Missa O Magnum Mysterium", and some others better known, like "Song of Songs", Nos, 7, 8 & 12, but all are quite beautiful. There's a Gregorian Chant arranged for polyphony in the idiomatic Palestrinian style, written to be sung on Christmas morning.

It's all transportingly lovely. Those old cathedrals must have been very drafty back in the day, but the music had to have warmed them up. It does that to me. Palestrina well sung transcends season and time, but listening right now seems especially fine.

Another winner from the Sixteen!