Higdon - Clearfield - Primosch, Metamorphosis, Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia

The Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia, a venerable choral organization, has been concertizing for 138 years. Only in the current tenure of artistic director Alan Harler however have they turned to commissioning new works. My press information informs me that there have been nearly 50 such commissions over the last two decades. Harler and the chorus have teamed with the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia to record three recent commissions and the results are now available as Metamorphosis (Innova 806).

They chose three contrasting works by some of the leading lights among Philadelphia composers. Jennifer Higdon's music has gained the most currency of the three, having been the subject of a number of acclaimed recordings and even more performances on the concert scene of late. Her "On the Death of the Righteous" is based on a John Donne sermon. The choral-orchestral writing nicely underscores the mystical-judicial-ecstatic aspects of the sermon's concern with the equality of all righteous beings at the last judgement. There is a rather striking contrast between a somewhat tumultuous orchestral brilliance and the gentle persistence of the block sonorities of the chorus.

Andrea Clearfield's "The Golem Psalms" is almost an oratorio, relating the story of the ill-fated humonculous of Hebrew folklore, his creation, fall and destruction. There is a good bit of choral recitation in an orchestral setting, spiced by the effective narrative part handled well by Sanford Sylvan, baritone. It is a work that largely succeeds in creating dramatic tension and a sense of mystery and foreboding.

James Primosch's "Fire Memory/River Memory" has a more choral/symphonic through-composed quality. The music has a harmonically more adventurous palette and well crafted choral-symphonic sonances. Of the three works, this one has the most sweeping flow to it. It revels in suspension and release, choral part writing that is set off very effectively by poetic orchestration, a solo violin part that weaves in and out of the neo-impressionist orchestral light and shadow. The final of the two movements has some fireworks of an orchestral sort and more of the beautiful choral writing that permeates the work as a whole.

This recording may not set the world on fire, but in the end it is a satisfying look at a marvelous choral organization and three interesting contemporary works. It may not be an essential addition to your library of contemporary music, but for those who favor works of a neo-romantic and beyond quality in the choral-orchestral genre it will be of genuine interest.

The Eleanor Hovda Collection

If like me, you have somehow managed largely to miss the music of Eleanor Hovda (1940-2009) you are in for a nice surprise. Innova has amassed a four-CD collection of her music, The Eleanor Hovda Collection (Innova 808), and it is a revelation.

Ms. Hovda has a sense of musical space that at times is a bit East Asian. Like some Chinese, Japanese and Korean traditional classical music, the sound and its wrapping in musically reverberant silence can be integral to the effect. Her attention to the dramatics of sound production also has some Asian qualities. For her, the impact of the music need not reside in the dual contrast quiet/loud, though that can be part of her dynamic. Intensity of sound color versus a more "grey" quiescence, musically italicized articulation version a more everyday "Roman" ordinariness of sound, a more vertical than a horizontal orientation to the sound events, in the sense that there are a series of inter-related occurrences more than a linear narrative, these are a few of the things that set her apart.

Whether it's a matter of a single conventional instrument, an ensemble, an electroacoustic or electronically generated sound source, or a combination of any of these elements, her singular attention to sound sculpturing and the nature of that attention mark her as very much in her own musical world. It's as if you take some of the sheer sensual sound extensions of Crumb's and Cage's piano works and make that a basis, a starting point to go somewhere very much your own. She seems to do that. She also does not in her music draw brackets around "electroacoustic" and "conventional" sound production. She approaches both from a kind of uniformly personal stylistic perspective. All become Hovda.

The four CDs of the set include so much music of interest that I don't think I can easily highlight the high points without over-encumbering this review with too many details. Suffice to say that there is some startlingly singular music generated throughout. It is one vast soundscape in some ways, each piece a part of a larger whole which encompasses all. And that whole reveals a composer we need to hear with concentration.

I believe that The Eleanor Hovda Collection is destined to join the ranks of the most important releases of this decade in the "New Music"/"Avant Classical" categories. It contains some remarkable music. It should go a long way in establishing Ms. Hovda as one of the more important sound artists/composers of our era.

Alexander Melnikov: Dmitri Shostakovich: Piano Concertos

For whatever reason, it took me a while to appreciate the music of Shostakovich in my early listening days. He seemed overshadowed by Stravinsky, Prokofiev and a dozen or so innovative modernist composers that were and still are in currency. Shostakovich struck me as being a somewhat lesser figure.

Eventually I came to know and love the symphonies, and that took a lot of time because there were so many and they embraced such stylistic diversity and evolutionary development. Then came the string quartets and finally the solo piano music. I now appreciate him, though I feel it's still better not to compare but to approach him on his own terms.

I will confess that I've listened to most if not all his concerti repeatedly, but find less there to like. It may just be that I am not focusing enough. I don't dislike the music, but it doesn't linger in my memory either.

Perhaps until now. Pianist Alexander Melnikov takes on in a new recording the Piano Concerto No. 2 Op. 102 in F Major, the Concerto for Piano, Trumpet and String orchestra Op. 35 in C Minor, and as a bonus, the Sonata for Violin and Piano Op. 134 in F Major (Harmonia Mundi). He is accompanied by the Mahler Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Teodor Currentzis.

The Piano Concerto No. 2 is given a specially sensitive reading, with the slow movement sunk in revery, the outer movements bristling with animated grace.

Melnikov quite obviously is the right pianist for the job, and he can startle one with his brilliance. I am glad to have his version of the Opus 35, which seems close to being definitive.

This aspect of Shostakovich's ouevre continues to perculate inside me. I have not entirely converted to its point of view. Melnikov and Company however come as close as I think anybody in convincing me.

Andrea Centazzo, The Heart of Wax

Andrea Centazzo the composer continues to unfold before my ears as I listen to his minimalist opus The Heart of Wax (Ictus 301), a 12-part dance suite for a large chamber ensemble, string quartet and soloists.

This is an infectiously rhythmic and melodically memorable set of contrapuntal movements, inflected at times by rock, jazz and world elements, following out of similar mallet-wind-string ensemble works by Reich, yet bearing palpably the recognizable imprint of Andrea Centazzo's own originality.

For minimalism to work, there must be inventive scoring. Nothing can be more dreary to my mind than a minimalism of uninspired and uninteresting motifs and/or one-dimensional instrumentation. Thankfully that is not the case with Centazzo's work in the style in general and in Heart of Wax especially.

There is much to occupy the actively listening ear on this one. It's a refreshing hybrid that operates on a high plane throughout. Give it a listen.

Wolfgang Rihm, Astralis and Other Choral Works

Composer Wolfgang Rihm celebrates his 60th birthday this month. Fittingly a major release devoted to his music, Astralis and Other Choral Works (Harmonia Mundi 902129), has just been released. It shows you in moving fashion the composer's post-high modernist stance, and the influence of early music, a penchant he shares with contemporary composers Part and Gubaidulina, among others. That does not mean that a close listener would mistake his vocal music for the others in a blindfold test. It has its own trajectory, perhaps more linear in its unfolding.

The Astralis release covers three of his mostly acappella choral works: Fragmenta passionis, written when the composer was only 16, Sieben passion-texte, and the 2001 Astralis. All three are performed with care by the RIAS Kammerchor under Hans-Christoph Redemann.

There is a cosmically ambient quality to this music, with less contrapuntal part writing than a slowly unfolding modern-archaic quality, a harmonic sounding of a shifting simultaneity. It's quite beautiful, quite aetherial and a affective experience. Astralis gives you a side of Rihm you will want to appreciate. The sound is excellent and the music on the side of the angels.

Patricia Morehead, Good News Falls Gently

Patricia Morehead composes music that is tonal and lyrical with a touch of Americana meets early-mid Schoenberg. That's perhaps too much of a simplification, and she goes about it all in her own way, but it is the impression I get listening to Good News Falls Gently (Navona 5854), a recent CD devoted to her chamber/chamber orchestral works. There are five of them represented on the disk. All have a particular world to occupy and they do it in memorably pleasing ways.

"Disquieted Souls" for mid-sized chamber ensemble has a fair amount of the lyric Americana side of her work mixed in with some modern melodic architecture. It alternates interestingly a kind of post-Shaker semi-simplicity with a tone-row sort of semi-complexity (though she does not appear to be writing in rigorous 12-tone fashion at any point). Carolyn Hove does the honors on the beautifully wrought solo English Horn part and sounds very good indeed.

"The Handmaid's Tale" for two pianos is unabashedly modern sounding, combining chromatic expanded tonality/12 tonality with transformed melodic material that sometimes alludes to early blues/stride, other times something more contrapuntal-fugal.

"It is Dangerous to Read Newspapers" for soprano and piano is marred by the soprano's rather exaggerated operatic declamation, very dramatic and filled with a rather wide vibrato that does not seem in keeping with the work.

"Ladders of Anxiety" for mixed chamber group and solo flute (played well by Caroline Pittman) brings back the well-conceived mix of lyricism and more-or-less pre-serial modernism. It engages in some interesting contrapuntal interplay, with each separate line having inventive interest yet all blending together well as a cohesive statement.

The final, title track is for full chamber orchestra and soprano (Jonita Lattimore). This time the soprano's style of presentation suits the musical context more appropriately. The work nicely exemplifies with lyrical-modern grace the Americana meets early modernism of Ms. Morehead's style.

This is a disk that gives one a good look at a rather little-known composer. I must say that the effect is very good overall and that it made me want to hear more of her work. She writes music that makes full use of wind-string sonarities with a sound as colorful as it is melodically vivid. Bravo.

Vaughan Williams, A London Symphony (Symphony No. 2), Serenade to Music; Seaman, Rochester Philharmonic

I find that the first version of a classical work that I have heard (assuming that I own it and listen to it successively over the years) is the one that I almost involuntarily use as my benchmark when hearing new versions. That has been true of Ralph Vaughan Williams's A London Symphony (Symphony No. 2) which Christopher Seaman and the Rochester Philharmonic have recorded and now released this month in a program that includes Vaughan Williams' "Serenade to Music" (Harmonia Mundi).

It doesn't matter who did the version I still have on LP, because I am sure it is long out of print (it isn't Boult). What matters is that I heard that version in my head as I first listened to Seaman's/Rochester's new recording. The symphony was first performed in 1914, then was lost and had to be rewritten from memory by the composer, who in the process revised it somewhat. By 1920 the present version was well in hand. I say all of that only because there is a marked contrast between the London and Ralph's First "Sea" Symphony, which was in part more in the romantic, epic mode whereas the London work has budding folk, vernacular and English impressionist elements.

The symphony has programmatic aspects as well, each movement more or less depicting a particular scene at a particular time, or alternately, the passing of the old order in the last movement.

It is a work of quite accessible charm, lyrical homespun unpretentiousness, one of many such Vaughan Williams compositions. The LP version I have long heard has perhaps more of the grandeur latent in the score. Seaman and the Rochester Philharmonic temper that grandeur more with the homespun Vaughan Williams, so perhaps it is a more balanced reading. It is impressive in its overall treatment, but especially so in the lento and scherzo movements. The performance celebrates and marks the end of Seaman's 13 years as Music Director of the Philharmonic; quite appropriately so, one might add.

The disk also contains a rather lovely reading of "Serenade to Music," soloists, choir and orchestra sounding suitably plaintive and stirring in turn.

If you don't have the symphony already this version is a good bet. If you do the treatment of the lento sections will no doubt be welcome. Recommended.