Tigran Mansurian, Requiem

Armenian lyrical composer Tigran Mansurian chimes in with a remarkable Requiem (ECM New Series 2508) dedicated to the victims of the Turkish genocide against Armenians (1915-17). There is a haunting aura about it all, born of  heartfelt sorrow and the melding of traditional Armenian modal byways and Western modern and early music elements.

On the surface of it such combinations are not surprising, but then this music is inspired. The RIAS Kammerchoir and the Munchener Kammerorchester under Alexander Lienreich take advantage of the spacious ECM production values to create a remarkable sonic aura that gives maximum expressive reflectiveness.

The various movements of the Requiem Mass have each their own beauty, regret and sorrow being of course a common denominator but expressive power and tenderness holding sway in contrasting ways.

After all has ended one feels like one has been subject to a ghostly visitation, an otherworldly presence of the long deceased victims, while alternately agitation and an unearthly peace reigns, There are few contemporary choral works more moving and singular than this. Performances are as close to perfection as one might dare to expect for such a new work.

Schoenberg, Chamber Symphonies, Five Pieces Op. 16, Berg, Webern, Two Pianos & Piano Four Hands Versions, Matteo Fossi, Marco Gaggini

The contingent of Arnold Schoenberg and his students Alban Berg and Anton Webern did as much or more than anybody to shape the modern classical world in the early-to-middle twentieth century and beyond. Schoenberg was the lynchpin of the three, of course, though Berg and Webern each made of it all something extraordinary in their own right. Schoenberg's Chamber Symphonies & Five Pieces Op. 16 (Brilliant  94957) were landmark achievements in the movement away from conventional tonality but also compellingly significant as absorbing listens in themselves today.

"Chamber Symphony No. 1" was completed in 1906, "Five Pieces Op. 16" in 1909, "Chamber Symphony No. 2" in 1916. Early performances caused much controversy. They were followed by piano arrangements: a four-hands version of the first Chamber Symphony by Alban Berg, a two-piano version of the "Five Pieces for Orchestra" by Anton Webern, and Schoenberg's own two-piano version of the second Chamber Symphony.

Matteo Fossi and Marco Gaggini bring us spirited and idiomatic readings of the piano versions. What is remarkable especially is how, stripped of the orchestral tone colors and boiled down to their essences, each work exhibits its harmonic and melodic brilliance like a old master painting cleaned and scraped bare of yellowed varnish and grime, exposed to our view once again the way the artist originally conceived it. That of course is not to criticize the orchestrations so much as to underscore how hearing these versions renew for us the hearing of the vitally new, the revolutionary core of the works as they sounded to listeners then.

The experience of listening to this disk has been revelatory to me. There in short is a wealth of naked musical truth that showcases Schoenberg's remarkably forged vocabulary as if for the first time. Nothing can quite compare. Fossi and Gaggini bring a new brightness to these works and in their hands the transcriptions themselves are almost startling to hear now.

Strongly recommended.

Caetani, The Two String Quartets, Alauda Quartet

Roffredo Caetani (1871-1961) ? Another 20th century Italian instrumental composer most of us do not know.  Like some others covered lately on these pages, he is not exactly a full-blown modernist. Far from it. But there is some very good music to be heard on the recent release The Two String Quartets (Brilliant Classics 95198). The youthful but considerable Alauda Quartet tackle Caetani's "Quartetto Op. 12 in F minor" and the "Quartetto Op.1 No. 1 in D."

The minor mode of the Op.12 brings out a gentle impressionist-romantic melancholy that the Alauda Quartet handles without sentimentality, with the matter-of-fact presence that we in our contemporary world need to hear in this music--as closer to our time than the 19th century. This is a work I would not like to hear the Budapest Quartet play, because they might give it a heart-on-sleeve nerve-driven reading that would miss the subtlety and transcendence that the Alauda give to the work.

The early Op. 1 No. 1 in a single movement has a somewhat similar hushed expectancy, and a moodiness that like the Op. 12 speaks with a kind of intimacy that is not unwelcome. It has moments that are perhaps a little less transparent and more romantic than not, but there is nothing perfunctory about it, either. Caetani speaks with his own sincerity, lives and expresses convincingly within the style sets he inhabits.

If you have some time to devote to unfamiliar music and feel a little moody yourself this is attractive music. Recommended for you who feel the lack or recall a life abundance now dissipated! Or for that matter it  is for you who just like the idea of a kind of mysteriously gentle impressionist-late romanticism.

William Hellermann, Three Weeks in Cincinnati in December, Robert Dick

The minimal can turn out to be far from that; it can be an external cloak for the micro-maximal. That is very true of William Hellermann's soliloquy Three Weeks in Cincinnati in December (New World 80789-2). It has a never-ending, infinitely expansive way about it. A single work lasting some 50 minutes it proceeds with the premise that a small number of fundamental tones on Robert Dick's flute can be subjected to sound color variations via circular breathing, breath control, articulation, etc.

What unfolds is an opening into the fabric of aural space. Fundamental root tones, harmonic overtones and differing shades of tonal color inherent within the audio production of sounding--all get ample time for us to contemplate. The simple has within it the infinitely complex. That comes forward into our consciousness as Dick articulates Hellermann.

The liners describe the revolutionary act of the premiere performance, by Robert Dick at the American Center in Paris, 1979. The recent recording tells the rest. It is a music you feel, beyond its verbal description, which can only tell you what is, maybe, more so than what it feels like to hear it.

I would try and tell you more, of that inner world of feeling the hearing, But it is better that you simply hear it for yourself, repeatedly, without expectations. That will  be decisive for you.

I recommend you engage with this one. It might change you!

Lei Liang, Luminous

Some high modernist chamber excellence can be had on Chinese-American composer Lei Liang's Luminous (New World 80784-2). Five compositions for varied instrumentation fill the program. The liner notes no doubt say it all definitively so that I probably come to this with less insight.

The string quartet "Vergo Quartet" (2013) is an example of what Liang is about. There are Mongolian aspects but they are so well integrated into the whole that you may not notice. Instead this is very lively music that manages to be both tonal and modernistically three-dimensional.

"Trans" (2013) for solo percussionist (Steven Schick) has a spacious, sprawling quality. A dramatic series of waxing and waning burst of notes contrasts with suspended cymbal rolls. A sprightly, more densely rhythmic kind of dance follows.

The solo piano work "The moon is following us" (2015) has a Cagean Eastern quality and goes him one further.

"Inkscape" (2014) for Third Coast Percussion and pianist Michael Lewenthal is spacious like "Trans" but ever more structurally profound.

Then finally we have bass wonder Mark Dresser team up with the chamber ensemble Palimpsest for a lengthy modern narrative on "Luminous" (2014). Mark is called upon to show the wide range of sounds a master like himself can produce. The chamber ensemble parallels his beautiful playing with excellent contrapuntal dialectics.

I feel I have not done justice to the rewarding complexities of Lei Liang's music. The album has many riches that careful listening will uncover. I recommend you listen!

John Gibson, Traces

When the world seems the opposite of what you thought it was, there still is music and the love of the new. John Gibson comes to us with his album Traces (Innova 896), a fine collection of seven electroacoustic works, covering a fascinating spectrum of sounds that make a coherency--a very intelligent and moving program.

Some are pure electroacoustics, some add or are built around live instruments. In the latter category are "Out of Hand" which is built around Michael Tunnell's trumpet and Brett Schuster's trombone. Then there is "Red Plumes" with Craig Hultgrin on cello. Finally "Blue Traces" centers on the piano of Kati Gleiser.

The musicality and fresh musical thinking of Gibson predominates in any case, no matter what the work's premises and sound design.

Alban Berg, Wozzeck, Houston Symphony, Hans Graf

There is little doubt. Many would agree with me that Alban Berg's Wozzeck (Naxos 8.660390-91 2-CDs) is the greatest opera of the 20th century. In spite of its pioneering modernity--or more rightly because of its supremely appropriate adoption to a harrowing dramatic theme, it has been staged over the world continuously since its premiere in 1925. The uncanny, seamless fit between the expressionist music and tragic portrayal of a social misfit makes for riveting, bone-chilling fare.

There have been a number of performances on record since the advent of the LP. The Boulez with the Paris Opera and the Karl Bohm with the Orchester des Deutschen Opernhauses Berlin and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau  stand out in my mind as the definitive, pace setting winners. But now we have a new one on the budget Naxos label with soloists and the Houston Symphony under Hans Graf.

Roman Trekel in the role of Wozzeck, Anne Schwanewilms as Marie and Marc Molomot as Captain Hauptmann are convincing both dramatically and musically. The orchestra brings us a full, well-rounded interpretation, not perhaps as edgy as Boulez but fully in tune with the score and its remarkable fitness to the drama.

There are several moments in the opera that I have found remarkable in themselves. The whistling, the out-of-tune piano in the bar-room scene and the final scene with children playing and singing in chilling contrast to the brutal murder that marks the climax of the opera. Graaf  and company underscore the whistling very well. The bar piano seems a little under recorded, as does the children's choir and dialog at the end. No matter.

This version introduces anyone unfamiliar with the essential work nicely, and its middle-level expressivity marks a decided contrast to the Bohm and the Boulez, so much so that it is worth having as another take on the music. Either way Graaf's version is a winner.