Balada, Caprichos No. 1 and 5; Temes, Iberian Chamber Orchestra

Leonardo Balada (b. 1933) has a sweeping grasp on the music of his native Catalan and often combines it with his own take on classical modernity to forge a strong musical identity. You can hear that clearly and most pleasurably on the new release by the Iberian Chamber Orchestra under Jose Luis Temes (Naxos 8.572625). Caprichos 1 and 5 form the centerpieces of the program.

"Caprichos No. 1" (2003) is a homage to the poet Frederico Garcia Lorca and features Bertrand Pietu on classical Spanish guitar. It has vibrancy, much in the way of folk-dance allusion, a lively solo guitar part and the spicy tang of modern harmonic transformations. "Caprichos No. 5" (2008) honors composer Isaac Albeniz, puts Aldo Mata's cello work into prominence and features well-wrought transformations/resituations of Albeniz's music. The string orchestra parts again have the tang of the present along with a "through the looking glass" treatment of Albeniz themes.

Both works show Balada as the master of string orchestral writing, with brightness and depth coming out of a solo-orchestral dialog more concerned with musical affect and expressive lyric/dynamic modernism than with displays of technical acrobatics, though the players show a beautiful sense of form and dramatics in the performance of their parts.

These are extraordinarily appealing works that show Balada to be in full command of his own voice, characteristically adept at making the old and new his own.

As an added bonus there are two additional works, "A Little Night Music in Harlem" (2006) and "Reflejos" (1988), the latter featuring a solo flute part played with zest and enthusiasm by Tatiana Franco. These pieces continue the modern-meets-local-tradition thematics of the Caprichos.

This is music of immense charm, played with joyful concentration and forceful dynamism by the Iberian Chamber Orchestra and the soloists under the masterful conductorship of Jose Luis Temes. This is a side of Balada that many will find nigh irresistable, I would think.

Rautavaara: Modificata, Incantations, Towards the Horizon; John Storgards

I've come to the music of Rautavaara (b. 1928) only in the last few years. He has a few stylistic periods but there is an overall musical personality that prevails, though I have yet to grasp it fully. I have had the chance to listen with some care to a new release in the last few days that covers with finesse and interpretive sensitivity two later works and one earlier (though recently revised). John Storgards and the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra take on Rautavaara's "Modificata" (1957/2003), his Percussion Concerto "Incantations" (2008) and his Cello Concerto No. 2 "Towards the Horizon" (2008-09) (Ondine 1178-2).

"Modificata" has the singing lyricism and rhapsodic sprawl of his later works, only it utilizes a 12-tone row as its principal generating device. It has a northern sensibility, following in part in the footsteps of Sibelius insofar as a skillful and poetic orchestrational ability is quite evident even in the earlier period. The row expands the tonality of necessity, yet it sounds less atonal than it does key-centered and expanded in tonality. The orchestra evokes; the music fills one with a certain wonder. Rautavaara paints in tones, as is clear even then, and one emerges from the work with a feeling of having received a musical revery and reflection that goes beyond the verbal. It's a work of seriously beautiful and moving sounds.

The Cello Concerto No. 2 finds us in more declamatory territory, with soaring phrases that have complex harmonic modernisms yet also have an emotive romantic quality. The cello part, well played by Truls Mork, functions in part as the lead melodic vehicle around which the orchestra responds and converses in lyrically mysterioso ways. Rautavaara the rhapsodist is in full play in this work, yet his way with harmonic density makes the music sound modern.

His other late work on the program, "Incantations," brings a harder edge to the rhapsodism with the wooden tone of marimba and the sharper edged virtuoso drum melodics putting the music into energy-motor territory. The percussion part is no doubt difficult to play well and Colin Currie as the soloist does a great job phrasing the dynamic, ever-transforming part in ultra-musical terms. Despite the more overtly extroverted nature of the work there still pervades a kind of wondrousness to the music that should appeal to many. There is a largoesque middle movement that brings in a more ruminative state, then the finale highlights agitated marimba work and restless strings, impressive drum and cymbal fanfares and fluttering winds. A rather restrained middle section has glowing vibraphone motor candenza passages. Then the full orchestra emerges for a rousing sort of lyrical hardness, recapitulating the thematic material from the first movement.

Rautavaara, early or late, writes orchestral music of a very personal stamp. The three works presented here give us a fascinating glimpse into his development as a musical voice at the beginning and in the later stages of his compositional career. These are impressive and pleasing works. Storgards, the Helsinki Philharmonic and the soloists do the music justice with sonorously impressive readings and enthusiastic verve.

Recommended for both samplers and completists.

Pierre Boulez, Memoriale, Derive, 1 Derive 2, Daniel Kawka, Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain

Of all the composers that came into prominence in the second half of the twentieth century, Pierre Boulez remains as central as ever to the original style he helped initiate and develop. He has, perhaps with similarities to Elliot Carter on this side of the pond, sought to realize more and more fully the complex musical language he helped forge, in the process remaining one of its singularly most fluent and eloquent voices. He has not changed his style to suit the passing fancies of later years, but instead has worked and reworked the interlocking complexities he favors to a level that may never be surpassed for sublimity and profound refinement.

A new disk of some of this later works demonstrates this with admirable spirit and clarity. Daniel Kawka and the Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain offer some essential readings of Boulez's "Memoriale" (1985), his "Derive 1" (1984) and "Derive 2" (1988, rev. 2001, 2008). The former works are short, succinct, in some ways preparations for the now 55 minute "Derive 2." And for all the charm and brilliance of the two earlier works, "Derive 2" in Kawka's hands transcends the merely modern to become a thing-in-itself--a dense contrapuntal rush of motion and transformation. Boulez himself made a rather wonderful recording of the two Derives some time ago, but he has not to my knowledge recorded the revised version of the #2. And if anything this piece shines ever more brightly on the Naive (782183) release at hand.

Like Bach's later works, Boulez's "Derive 2" reworks the prexistent (Darmstadt School) style to a point of transcendent brilliance. Mercurial phrases jostle against each other as sectional blocks of the chamber orchestra contribute aurally striking and melodically vital post-tonal parts to the jigsaw puzzle of the whole.

It is certainly one of the master's finest works. Kawka and the Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain emphasize the remarkable plasticity of form and inventiveness of content in a rendition that ought to be one of the primary benchmarks for the work and Boulez's later period in general for many years to come.

Charles Tournemire, Trinitas: Vincent Boucher on Organ

The French Organ School that began with Franck and ended more-or-less with Messiaen is a body of music that established the cathedral organ as an instrument of symphonic proportions and made the freely composed fantasia-like organ style a dynamic, breathing modern art form.

Somewhere in the center of it all is Charles Tournemire (1870-1939), who wrote sprawling masterpieces of freely mystical, cosmic breadth.

A new disk, Trinitas (Atma Classique 2472) of some of his solo organ gems just came out with Vincent Boucher offering a very pleasing program played on a marvelous instrument, with ravishing sound.

Boucher gives us near definitive performances of Tournemire's "Triple Choral," three movements from "Postludes libres pour des Antiennes de Magnificat," and five from "L'Orgue mystique."

Partially because of the nature of the function of the organ in the liturgical setting it has long been an instrument that cultivates great improvisers--from at least Bach's time onwards, and Tournemire's music has that freshly improvised feel. In the hands of Boucher and with the pristine dynamic range and audio depth in this excellent recording, we hear Tournemire in his many-layered complexities, almost as if for the first time.

For all those devotees of the French school, or those new to it, Trinitas is a (pardon the pun) Godsend!

Bang On A Can All Stars, "Big Beautiful Dark and Scary"

Whatever minimalism is in music today, or whatever word you would rather use to describe the contemporary classical music of recurring periodicity, the Bang On A Can All Stars are at the vanguard of it, at least here in and around Manhattan. So when they come up with a special 2-CD set commemorating their continued success, namely Big Beautiful Dark and Scary (Canteloupe 21074) it is rather an occasion.

There are 89 minutes of music, pieces by Wolfe, Lang, Gordon, Ziporyn, Longstreth, Nancarrow, Andriessen, Moore--the founders and others. As is the nature of the Bang On A Can folks, they take chances and seek to do new things within the forms of contemporiety, so that not every composition is going to appeal to everybody. And for me some seemed just a hair on the crude side, others were interesting, still others I found quite beautiful and moving. There are pieces that show a kind of hard rock insistency, others that go off into space in exploratory ways and yet others that have a more lyrically expressive side.

So this is an occasion where in marking it BOAC shows they do not intend to drift into a complacent stance. They aim to innovate and they succeed, most of the time.

So if you want to be in a conceptual space where things are moving along, morphing, generating the excitement of the new, this set is one place you want to dwell within.

So do not miss out on the future. Here is part of it.

Tomas Marco, Symphonies Nos. 2, 8 and 9, Jose Serebrier

There's nothing quite like a new discovery to reassure one that the intensive work of listening to new music and writing these blogs is worthwhile. Today I cover the symphonies of contemporary Spanish composer Tomas Marco, more specifically Jose Serebrier and the Malaga Philharmonic's recording of Marco's Symphonies Nos. 2, 8 and 9 (Naxos 8.572684). Nos. 8 & 9 are world premier recordings.

Marco writes dense scores that have national elements as well as multipart structures that sometimes remind one of Ives's poly-thematic complexities, only working with original and Spanish grassroots musical idioms as building blocks to a very personal symphonic vocabulary.

Marco's No. 2 is perhaps the densest and most dramatic. No. 9 combines medieval motifs, the liner notes tell us, with a kind of portrait of the sea spirit "Thalassa." There is a recurring theme that recalls Stravinsky's "Rites" and it weaves its way throughout the work. No. 8 Gaia's Dance has rhythmic and melodic motives that suggest folk dance forms but are treated by Marco as raw material to his larger end of creating multistranded polysemantic orchestral significances.

This is a composer going his own way. There are complex dissonances and simple folk melodies conjoined in labyrinthian matrices, all bearing the stamp of originality. With Jose Serebrier at the helm the complexities of Marco's music are articulated with expressive heft and drive. Tomas Marcos and these symphonies should be heard by anyone with an interest in the modern symphony and contemporary Spanish music. A provocative recording that is not to be missed.

Grieg, String Quartets Arranged for String Orchestra; Nordheim, Rendezvous

Edvard Grieg (1843-1907) had a lyrical streak in him that has made him a favorite with all kinds of people. If you are like me you grew up hearing and loving his "Peer Gynt Suite" and later perhaps some of his singingly immediate solo piano music (plus the Piano Concerto) and have sought to reproduce that feeling by sampling his other works.

Nevertheless not everything Grieg wrote was at the same lyrical level. But there is more to Grieg than melodies you can whistle, of course. His treatment of folk-like material, his fine compositional craftsmanship, his Northern sensibility, musically speaking, his sunlight and sundowns.

The String Quartets are not as well known as perhaps they should be. They are filled with a lyric light--not in some whistle-able sense, but in the sense of his treatment of themes in the somewhat more formalist context of a string quartet. There are two quartets that survive, the completed Quartet in G minor, Op. 27 and the unfinished two movement F Major Quartet (there also was one that has been lost to us). Alf Ardal has arranged both works for String Orchestra and they are available in a new recording by the Oslo Camerata (Naxos 8.572441) along with Nordheim's "Rendezvous," an attractive string orchestra work from 1986.

The good news is that Ardal's arrangements successfully give us what seems like new Grieg. He has transformed the works so fully into the orchestral context that they seem like wholly new works. So what are they? Folk-laced excursions into the special lyricism for which Grieg is known and revered. The Oslo Camerata sounds quite lively and spirited, and the sound is quite decent, if a little on the reverberant side.

Oh, and the Arne Nordheim (1931-2010) composition gives you another 20 minutes of interesting Northern string orchestra music, in a more modern a vein of course.

Any lover of Grieg will find this disk a wonderful experience. Those who enjoy and appreciate the Scandanavian, Norwegian musical corpus in general will go for this as well. It's good music, too. Anybody should find it appealing.