Beauty Crying Forth, Flute Music By Women Across Time, Sarah Frisof, Daniel Pesca

 

An album generally starts in your experience with a cover image. So the image above peered back at me as I opened the package that contained it. The title told me what to expect, Beauty Crying Forth, Flute Music By Women Across Time (Furious Artisans FACD6826). It is performed, as the jacket explained, by Sarah Frisof on flute, Daniel Pesca at the piano, and for one work Hannah Collins joining in on cello.

Of course it is in the listening that everything takes form. So it is, very noticeably so, with this album. The deep impression one gets immediately is what a remarkable flautist is Sarah Frisof. She has a markedly sweet and musical tone, considerable agility and a sure and poetic sense of phrasing. Pianist Daniel Pesca has interpretive talent in his own way, plus too a personal commitment to sounding his part with care and imagination. In tandem the two together approach every work with a fresh start and a feel for the individuality of each piece. Hannah Collins fits right in too, quite impressively, on the Saariaho work she participates in.

And that strength of individual performance character ideally suits the wide-ranging program, spanning from Clara Schumann's expressively intimate "Three Romances" of 1853 through to Shulamit Ran's now-ish 2014 "Birds of Paradise."

The opening "Alma" (2007) by Tania Leon brilliantly manages to bring an opening and closing New Music representation of wind chimes to a virtuoso array of kaleidoscopic middle sections of great spirit, one passage sounding especially, pronouncedly Cuban-Latin-New Music fused. It is all a delight.

Clara's "Romances" follows, giving us a ravishingly contrasting lyrical tenderness and some soaring flute-piano interplay. Sarah's flute literally glows with warmth here and we feel the inventive period talent of Ms. Schumann fully and happily. 

Amy Williams contrasts the above with the eleven movement, very boldly New Music work "First Lines." It gives us fascinatingly vivid and ornately varying sound-color miniatures with a great deal of panache. 

The gone-much-too-soon Lili Boulanger (1893-1918) appears before us with the brightly beautiful brief and Impressionistic gems "Nocturne" and "D'un matin de printemps," played with lovely care. Just these alone make all worthwhile.

Next we get the spacefully sonic trio for flute, cello and piano, the 1998 "Cendres" by Kaija Saariaho. It bursts forward with a marvelously evocative quality, suggesting and making present landscapes that burst forward for miles and must be taken in with their many imaginative musical motions. Marvelous.

The finale in "Birds of Paradise" brings to us the immediacy of the last decade (2014) and Shulamit Ran's energetically dynamic, deeply contemplative, probing music.

So we end where we began, roughly in the present, having traversed the now and the then with some excellent music by women composers of real stature, played with exceptional poise by Sarah Frisof, Daniel Pesca and Hannah Collins. Strongly recommended for anyone who loves the flute and is open to great chamber music by women past and present. Bravo!   

Gene Pritsker, EroicAnization

 

With the music of Gene Pritsker a reliable constant is his brilliant unexpectedness, it seems to me. Last month (December) marked the 250th birthday of Beethoven. Part of the festivities honoring the occasion surely is Gene's album EroicAnization (Composer's Condordance), which selects musical passages from the 3rd Symphony and in one instance "Fur Elise" to rework them extensively into various stylistic exceptionalities. 

So for example the opening "Ludwig's Night Out" combines Gene's noteful electric guitar work with electric piano, bass and drums for a Fusion wonderment that makes a very different sense out of Beethoven while retaining Ludwig's melodic edge.

"Eroica Erupted" takes an old recording of the Eroica and electronically manipulates it, while adding a sort of demonically lively Hip Hop for strings, drums, etc. As is the case throughout the album, it is not just what Gene does to the Beethoven lines, it is the how of the transformation, how it works as something unleashed anew. 

"Eroica Extracted" makes lyrical ensemble sense out of another passage extracted from a recording and pulled apart as the ensemble puts it back together again differently, happily, contrapuntally engaging it and creating something wholly new amidst hypnotic counterlines that help put it all together.

"Erotic Eroica" makes up a slinky progressive heaviness that feels right, somehow. 

"Eulogy Eroica" gives us a plaintive and thoughtful chamber ensemble movement, then a nicely engaged song with an expressive vocal in a Modern Contemporary Pop sort of way with an edginess that one might expect from Pritsker. 

"Erroneous Eroica" works very productively with the scherzo--an orchestral excerpt as electronic source along with ensemble. It is wonderfully playful, wild and funny, too. Everything works together to conjure surprising variations and hairpin turns away from an expected destination.

"Eka Tala Eroica" gives us a sort of Indianization in ways that intrigue and delight. 

Finally "Fur Elise Charleston"--is just what the title suggests. It has that old band 1920s sound and yet it is indeed "Fur Elise" in a lively disguise. Then just as one thinks one knows what is next, up comes rap from the MC! It is funny but brilliant, too.

So we have a homage to the great Ludwig that marks his milestone birthday in ways that are really quite fun and substantive, typically Pritzkerian in that it takes nothing for granted and traces a contemporary Modern set of ties back to dear old Beethoven without a conscious throwback sort of nostalgia. It is someth9ng  stylistically possible only right now, today, and for that matter something nobody else but Gene Pritsker could quite pull off so convincingly. Bravo!

Leslie Tung, Beethoven, Piano Sonatas Nos. 14, 8 & 13

 

Ludwig van Beethoven was born in December of 1770 and if I did not mark the 250th anniversary of it last month in truth I celebrate it often enough by experiencing his music in my life continually ever since at around 13 years of age I came upon his Eroica. Here today and tomorrow however I will mark the anniversary anyway. Today there is pianist Leslie Tung doing the Piano Sonatas Nos. 14, 8 and 13 (MSR Classics MS 1733), 14 of course known as the "Moonlight Sonata" and 8 as the "Pathetique." 

The first thing that sets this apart from others is the fact that Maestro Tung makes use of a pianoforte built by Janine Johnson and Paul Poletti in 1983. It is based on a c.1795 instrument by Johan Lodewijk Dulcken, Munich. The date and province of the instrument means that it is one hopes characteristic of the sound of the pianos Beethoven played and composed upon in his prime. Of course the pianos from that period have a quieter and sweeter sound to them in general, making the pianissimo passages more delicate and fragile, the fortissimo passages less clangorous. I am no expert as to the hows and whys of such things but the less tempered tunings of period instruments is not a large factor in this particular reconstruction. Yet there is still a sort of shimmering sound to the notes, especially mid-register. And so much the better for it.

Leslie Tung gives us poetic readings of all three sonatas, readings that make creative and very musical use of the characteristics of the period-style piano. Listen to the adagio cantabile movement from Sonata 8 and you will be treated to a beautiful synergy of artist and instrument. 

The misted mooniness of the opening movement of the "Moonlight Sonata" is also a rather remarkable melding of artist and piano. I cannot help but imagine that Ludwig would have approved. Maestro Tung has plenty of technique on display throughout, but the emphasis is on the actually sounding, the bringing to bear of the notes as Beethoven himself might have imagined them played when he wrote each sonata. What an extraordinary artist was this Beethoven, we inevitably think as we hear Maestro Tung put all three sonatas through their paces with care, imagination, reflectiveness and dash. Listen to the last movement of the Moonlight Sonata for the uncanny synchronicity of artist and instrument, the slight rubato to emphasize the inner connectedness and the heroics of the brilliant passagework. It all makes sense.

In Nietzsche terms these readings are more Apollonian than Dionysian. And nicely the better for that. You may not come away from this program thinking "what an amazing pianist." It is more "what an interestingly faithful representation of Beethoven." 

I am glad to hear and have this one. I reminds me of course of the very happy part of birthday 250! Give this one a hearing. Recommended.

Alexina Louie, Take The Dog Sled, Evie Mark, Akinisie Sivuarapik, Esprit Orchestra, Alex Pauk

 

Some music fits a season so well that it seems right to hear it at that point. It is true of  deep winter and the Alexina Louie work for Inuit Throat Singers and Ensemble, Take The Dog Sled (Centrediscs CMCCD 28320).  The performance features seven musicians from the Esprit Orchestra and throat singers Evie Mark and Akinisie Sivuarapik, all under the direction of conductor Alex Pauk.

The work was commissioned by Kent Nagano and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, completed in 2008 and first performed by the MSO during their tour of Nunavek in far Northern Quebec. After a good number of performances we happily have this worthy recording.

The work centers around an adaptation of traditional Inuit Game Songs, a unique musical pastime for two singers with greatly varying, aurally fascinating duet articulations of pitched throat singing and percussively breathed vocal twists and turns. There is nothing quite like this music in sound quality, the interlocking vocal bursts proceeding with unprecedented timbral depth through close repetitions of short call-and-response phrases.

Take The Dog Sled utilizes Game Song phrasing sung by the two throat singers, countered with a chamber orchestra that takes its musical form in part from Game Song phrasings and adds depictive open tonal passages that in the eight-part whole give a vivid impression of the plasticity of Inuit social and everyday life. It at times seems almost a concerto for throat singers and ensemble, yet it travels beyond that to instrumental tutti that take it all some distance from the short phrased vocals yet are shot through with their influence.

This is music both evocative and fun, seriously expressive yet filled with a joy of gaming in its own way. It is not your expected Modern Chamber fare and so refreshing in its somewhat independant cast. Very recommended.

David Claman, Gradus

 

There are new musics that strike out on untrodden or little trodden paths. We are invited to follow. Those who answer the call enter another musical landscape, or series of landscapes. Perhaps these sorts of musical possibilities are not always for the multitudes. I cover such things here. Some of the music on these pages is not especially geared for the vast, teeming crowd, though perhaps a future crowd might discover some of it in time. 

So in this light we consider the recent music of David Claman, Gradus (Albany TROY1837). It is music like that, something for a discerning listener with a sense of attraction for the unknown, the unexpected.

The passage from beginning to end takes us through 13 separate parts, 13 tracks, 13 universes of sound that relate one to the other with enough sameness and enough difference that you feel a movement towards a destination place, musically.

Claman teaches at Lehman College, SUNY and earned degrees from Wesleyan, the University of Colorado and Princeton. He also studied Classical Indian music in South Asia for a time. That influence factors into the music nicely at times but then  everything shows an individual stamp. He muses in the liner notes how initially NOT understanding, whether music or some other life experience element, can be influential in what one becomes, that the experience in fact can "rewire the brain." So composition for him is producing "a different way of hearing." So too for Claman different states, other different ways came about out of other specific experiences, for example Melville's Moby Dick (as especially an escaping from Western Civilization perhaps), as with Tamil sayings from the 1st Century AD, and so too out of hearing the music of South Indian composer Syama Sastri, as well as improvisation as a way of knowing. These and other forms of coming to know form a key part of the music we hear on Gradus.

One way or another the 13 segments that make up Gradus form a make-knowing out of the originally unknown so to say, this all made up in turn out of conventional instruments, the voice and electronics. 

So relevant poetic and depictive spoken and sung texts mingle with tonal drone and primal tonality, very Post-Romantic, Indian and adagio expressiveness, shifting ratio temporality, in a very stimulating  and fascinatingly contrasting program that exudes a lyricality without the trappings of sentimentality and so sounding futuristic in its own way, in an aurally singular way.

Emerging from extended listenings I do not hesitate to recommend this one heartily for you who seek another angle on the music happening right now. Claman has his own stylistic parameters and they are very nice to ponder. Bravo! Do hear this one.

Gail Archer, Chernivtsi, Contemporary Ukrainian Organ Music

 

Before the fall of the USSR last century I like many in the States was not very aware of a Ukrainian musical scene per se. Now of course all that has changed and we can follow what is happening there directly. 

A nice example has come out recently--Gail Archer's Chernivtsi, Contemporary Ukrainian Organ Music (Swan Studios MM20042). On it some six contemporary composers give us seven works in all.

It follows on the heels of  Ms. Archer's A Russian Journey, Music of the "Russian Five" (see my post on February 13, 2018 for information on that one). Both volumes are the first in a series of albums on the organ music of Eastern Europe. A third album covering Modern Polish Organ Music will be released shortly.

The current recording utilizes the Rieger-Kloss organ in the Armenian Catholic Church in Chernivtsi, Ukraine. It sounds powerful and full, fully appropriate for the very dynamic and detailed symphonic organ music we have the pleasure to hear. Ms. Archer happily was sent numerous relevant scores by her Ukrainian composition and organist colleagues and she chose these excellent examples to illuminate and enlighten us all.

Eastern European minor and chromatic Modern sensibilities dominate with a richness of imagination and dramatic flourish that mark the program out as notable and fascinating to hear in depth.

The album opens with two works by Bohdan Kotyuk (b. 1951), the "Fanfare" especially notable for its use of fourths to build harmonic spatiality. Listen also to the very chromatically full build up on the Mykola Kolessa (1903-2006) "Passacaglia." In contrast there is the end of the program, the firmly minor heritage of "Chacona" by Svitlana Ostrova (b. 1961) and a more extended, more freely unfolding "Fantasie" by Iwan Kryschanowskij (1867-1924).

In between there are interesting works by Tadeusz Machi (1922-2003) and Viktor Goncharenko  (b. 1959). 

This is a volume any organ music modernist-appreciator will gravitate towards, plus of course those wishing to explore what is happening organ-wise these days and what was happening a bit earlier in the Ukraine. Gail Archer casts a steady artistic light on the music in winning fashion. 

For music lovers in the New York Metro area Ms. Archer is slated to perform a trio of concerts centered around Eastern European Organ Music--on February 7, 2021 at Church of St. Francis Xavier, 55 West 15th St in New York Coty, 2:30 pm; for more information contact the church at  212.627.2100 or visit sfxavier.org; on March 16, 2021 at 7 pm at the St. Jean Baptiste Church, 184 East 76th Street, New York City; for more information contact the church at 212.288.5082 or visit sjbny.org; and on April 10, 2021 at 3:00 pm at St. John Nepomucine, 411 East 66th Street in New York City, for more information contact the church at 212.734.4613 or visit eastrivercatholics.org. All concerts are free, donations accepted.

JunctQin Keyboard Collective, reTHINK

 

From Canada we have six hands for pianos and what have you, the junctQin keyboard collective to be precise, and their album  reTHINK (Redshift TK479). They are celebrating ten years together with eight Modern works they have identified with and are in turn identified in if you will have it, which I certainly am happy to do by listening repeatedly. They are Elaine Lau, Joseph Ferretti and Stephanie Chua. In combination the works they play range from piano six hands to six hands in the piano, toy pianos, electronic keyboards, and more, all reminding us we live in an aurally extended universe these days, and how that is a good thing.

The works have in common a sense of adventure and a Modern slant. Schnittke's "Hommage a Stravinsky, Prokofiev & Shostakovich" brings out the rhythmic vitality of those composers and their very well developed melodic thrust. Schnittke sounds out that essentiality with some very masterful, stirring music.

Monica Pearce's "Chess Suite" makes lively use of two toy pianos and teases out the pulsative presence of such instruments well played, the beautifully fragile melodic possibilities and her own vital musical imagination.

Ravel's "Frontispice" hails from the end of WWI (1918) and is performed here for piano six hands. though it originally called for two pianos and five hands. I do not recall hearing it, ever, and it is very nice to hear at that--as done so well on this program.

Emily Doolittle's four-handed piano "Sorex (A Celebration of Untamed Shrews)" was inspired by Shakespeare in 2010 and thrives with nicely memorable pianisms throughout.

Tomi Raisanen "Insider" (as alluded to above) is the three mostly playing inside a grand piano. Pure adventure I suppose you could say it is, for it is.

Two works for piano six-hands follow, good things by Chris Thornborrow and Alex Eddington, both works ornate and nicely exploratory.

The program ends with an Elisha Denburg piece for piano, toy piano and Casio keyboard. "Welcome to the Warp Zone!" is nearly orchestral in scope. It leaves us with something truly fun, catchy, and "jazzy" if you will.

After all is said and done junctQin leaves us with a good reason why New Music remains a vital thing no matter what else the world may bring. The content is detailed and uniformly musical, the performances are bright and bristling with energy and sensitivity. If you seek something new and unexpected, here is a good one to grab.