Zimmermann, "Die Soldaten": A Modern Opera Masterwork Done to A Turn by Bernhard Kontarsky and Staatsorchester Stuttgart

Bernard Alois Zimmermann (1918-1970) was a composer of some renown in Europe during his lifetime but got less attention here in the States at the time, compared with Boulez or Stockhausen. Yet several import recordings made their way over here and were appreciated by the devoted modernist cotery of the era. His untimely death in 1970 more or less put a period to his influence here. But not permanently.

His most impressive full-scale work surely is the opera Die Soldaten (2-CD Warner Classic/Teldec 2564 66708-0). The newly issued domestic release we'll look at today, a version by Bernard Kontarsky, Chor des Staatstheaters Stuttgart, Staatsorchester Stuttgart and soloists should go some way in cementing his reputation here.

The recording was originally released in the '90s, but should be much easier to find in the States now. It is an excitingly expressive, spirited and well executed performance by all concerned. Credit should go to Maestro Kontarsky, who is one of the very best of the new music conductors active today. The performance here, the second recording of the work extant, has a remarkable flow to it. The wide intervalic skips and rhythmically irregular serialist-edge-of-tonality vocal lines combine with the vividly imagistic orchestral and choral parts in ways that make sense of Zimmerman's music. Everything must be phrased as natural sounding and grouped according to the logic of the harmonic-melodic arch of the score for the music to work. Kontarsky has gotten a magical result that brings the music to life like one composite being, an eloquently speaking, naturally breathing, remarkable music-making creature of art. Deserving credit should also be given to the soloists, choir and orchestra. They are magnificent. But it's plain to hear that Kontarsky has spent painstaking time in rehearsal, working on the fine points and nuances of the score. He brings out the best in the performers.

As you listen a number of times to the result of such careful and expressive execution, you begin to appreciate what a musical masterpiece Die Soldaten is.

This is a marvelously ultra-modern work. The Kontarsky version will be hard to beat. Get this one by all means if you have a liking for the utopian new music in its classic phase.

Thierry Lancino, "Requiem," Inbal, Orchestre Philharmonic de Radio France

Not having been acquainted previously with the compositions of Thierry Lancino, I was pleasantly rewarded lately by listening a number of times to his dramatic Requiem (Naxos) as performed by the massed forces of Choer de Radio France, Orchestre Philharmonic de Radio France, soloists and conductor Eliahu Inbal.

It's a 70-plus minute journey into an expressively modern treatment of the requiem form. The soloists express themselves with musicality and passion, the choir and orchestra are artfully served with a score that bubbles over like a cauldron of molten fire at times, and other times indulges in pianissimo murmurs that fit the sorrowful expression of the text by the solo vocalists. The orchestra reinforces and underscores the choir and soloists, as is fitting in such a work. A kind of murky gloominess in the score at times is virtually unremitting and perhaps that is exactly as Lancino intended, as temperamentally fitting for a requiem. The singers and choir emerge out of an often muddy orchestral oppressiveness that creates a powerfully unified mood, characterizes the work and sets it apart. And I don't mean that as necessarily a negative. It makes for a different work than otherwise might be the case these days. It gives it a unique quality.

The piece as a whole has a late romantic largeness combined with high modernity-Bergian dynamic sonority and occasionally an Orffian chanting insistence.

The performance is spirited and excellent. Lancino's music has undoubtedly some considerable merit. I would most definitely like to hear more of it. If I did not respond to this work with keen absorption, it may have something to do with my current mood. I appreciate it on a cerebral level, but it is not grabbing my emotions yet. Some works take many listens before that comes about, so I reserve some of my feelings for now. It is undoubtedly a work and a performance that merit the attention of modern music lovers. At the Naxos budget price you get further incentive to envelop yourself in its dramatic sounds.

Rautavaara, "Marjatta the Lowly Maiden," Works for Children's Choir

The Tapiola Choir under Pasi Hyokki presents a program of Rautavaara's works for children's choir on Marjatta the Lowly Maiden (Ondine 1169-2). The Marjatta mystery play and the Children's Mass (Lapsimessu) form substantial bookends for the program, between which are a number of shorter incidental works. Sonorically delightful acapella sounds occupy a good portion of the program, with effective selected instrumental parts dotting "Marjatta" and a moving string orchestra part (by the Tapiola Youth Symphony Orchestra) sharing space with the choir on the "Children's Mass."

The choir sounds lovely, the bookend works give us rich examples of Rautavaara's 1970's style, and the incidental works shed additional light and give pleasure. It's an unusual but very enjoyable program, and should appeal to a wide spectrum of music lovers.

Bruno Maderna, Piano Concertos/Quadrivium, Carlo Miotto, Aldo Orvieto

Since his sudden death in 1973 we may have been guilty of forgetting about composer Bruno Maderna's music just a bit. Yet his signal achievements in the thick of high modernism, and his position of pre-eminence among a small group of the most highly regarded Italian composers of his generation should have ensured him an enduring reputation.

All is not lost. There was a period of reaction for a time, where high modernism declined in fashion and his reputation suffered along with many others of his era. Yet his music never had a dogmatic quality. It drew on early music as well as it looked forward to a futurist avant-topia. At any rate he is a master figure in the music of his day. And things may be changing in how we perceive him and the modernist period in general.

As if to remind us of what an appealing composer he is, a new recording of his Piano Concertos and the Quadrivium piece (Naxos 8.572642) has emerged of late. On it pianists Aldo Orvieto and Fausto Bongelli (the latter for the two-piano pieces), the percussion ensemble Gruppo 40.6, and Orchestra della Fondazione 'Arena di Verona' under conductor Carlo Miotto put together a program of Maderna convering both early (1942-48) and later (1969) phases of his ouevre.

The early Piano Concerto (1942) in both a one and two piano version are given here, the second a world premier recording, and it shows those of us who may have forgotten, how his early work has an appealing modern-lyrical poignancy. The second version increases the sonority of the piano part and so is a most welcome addition to this disc. The Concerto for Two Pianos and Instruments (1948) sees Maderna moving forward to a more 12-tone oriented style with the percussion ensemble understandably supplying sound coloration aspects that set this work apart from the earlier concerto. Quadrivium (1969) is Maderna in full flower, a writer of a poetic quality, with mystery and an impressively evocative sonority. This is the Maderna of genius, beyond serialist dogma, a supreme painter of sounds.

The performances are excellent. The program fleshes out a picture of Maderna as a vital force within the music of his time. This recording is a very good one for those who don't know his music. It is equally stimulating for those that do.

Matthias Kronsteiner, "Modified," Music for Bassoon

The bassoon has its many charms. It has a range of sounds all its own which, in the right hands, forms a singular timbral pallete of wide dimensions. For a time it was called upon to play the clown, especially in some late 19th century-early 20th century orchestral works. Those days are gone.

Matthis Kronsteiner is a bassoonist of stature, great facility and marvelous tone. He presents a recital of contemporary and near-contemporary compositions for bassoon alone, with small chamber configurations and with electronics on Modified, a part of the performer series on the new Composers Concordance label (005). Pieces by Villa-Lobos, David Lang, Gene Pritsker and others form a sequence that sets off Kronsteiner's virtuosity with a brilliance that keeps the ear continually attuned. In contemporary fashion the classical genre rubs shoulders with jazz, improvisation and rock, which is only fitting.

The contemporary bassoon is no jester. As incarnated in the presence of Matthias Kronsteiner, the bassoon is an eminently effective instrumental conduit of the best of today's concert music. That's clear from Modified.

Paul Hillier, Theatre of Voices, Ars Nova Copenhagen, The Christmas Story

There have been a number of recordings over the years of the chronology of the Christmas Pageant as portrayed in song. Of course this is an old practice originating in England and elsewhere in the Nativity Play musical-dramatical festivities from at least medieval times onwards. Since we covered a Paul Hillier/Ars Nova Copenhagen recording two days ago, it is fitting that we turn to another more specific to the season. Maestro Hillier, ANC and the Theatre of Voices have gotten together to create A Christmas Story (Harmonia Mundi). As one might expect this is a definitive choral depiction of the story as portrayed in early music masterpieces and some from a little later as well. So you get plainchant, "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel," "Es ist ein Ros entsprungen," through the birth songs, the "We Three Kings" song and so on. It is wonderful music, mostly familiar to anyone who knows the tradition, with a few that may be unfamiliar, at least to listeners in the States, and anon.

There is light instrumental support as called for, but the ravishing vocals of the twin ensembles are the central focus. And the songs. This is first-rate fare. I am happy personally to have it. It will give you something of substance to lighten the dark nights.

David Lang, "This Was Written By Hand" for Solo Piano

David Lang has increasingly struck me as one Bang On A Can composer who is especially bent upon forging a minimalist/post-minimalizt language all his own. The solo piano opus This Was Written By Hand (Canteloupe 21073) puts that forward somewhat emphatically. The album consists of the 13-minute title cut and eight shorter "Memory Pieces."

The title cut (2003) has a very pianistic left hand-right hand split, the right hand repeating and developing a central melody line, the left hand repeating and varying a figuration accompaniment for the most part. It is lyrical, reflective and appealing in its spare but musically impactful utterance.

The "Memory Pieces" (1992-1997) have a bit more in the way of motoristic movement, sometimes marimba-istic figuration that is more typically classic minimalist. Yet it is not linear, post-African trance groove that is coming out of the figurations for the most part. For the first piece it's a matter of rolling wide-interval trills (to stretch a term) that together form an overarching melodic movement that has a slower, more majestic trajectory. The second piece calls for rapidly articulated arpeggiations that again don't have groove as the intent, but rather verticalized harmonic sequences. Piece three is a kind of largo. Piece four slows the trill idea down and makes each pulse a more fortissimo chordal block. Number five is mercurial, a kind of drumming on the piano with Lang's own sort of rudiment-like execution. Six slows things down again for some delicate interlocking sequences of expressive meditation. Seven is a whirlwind of rapid cycles of piano drumming. The final piece returns in some ways to the feeling of the first, a kind of slower series of related melodic cycles, this time in the middle range of the piano, with punctuations in the upper and lower registers.

Pianist Andrew Zolinsky realizes the parts with a restrained poeticism that seems right for these two works.

This is music that keeps my interest while playing upon the more positive emotional affects that the solo piano has often evoked from the days of Mozart onwards. It should find a good number of adherents, I would think. And it is some of David Lang's most intimate and appealing music to date.