Mercy and Grand, the Music of Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan

The rethinking of rock-folk art song in more or less classical settings has become a factor in today's music world. There have been such treatments of the music of Robert Wyatt, Renaissance settings of the songs of Nick Drake (see the May 15th posting on this blog) and now...Mercy and Grand: The Music of Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan (GB Records BCGBCD18) arranged by Gavin Bryars, Joe Townsend and Jim Holmes, performed by the ensemble Opera North.

It's a musical conflagration that combines the folk-archaic qualities inherent in the accordion, winds, fiddle-violin and such with contemporary classical and rock touches. In the process the arrangements retain interest and set off the songs well. Mezzo-Soprano Jessica Walker holds forth throughout and her voice is dramatic and powerful. I'll admit it takes some getting used to hearing Tom Waits sung in her way, but once you erase expectations it increasingly works, or at least it has for me.

"September is reminding July, it's time to be saying goodbye."

A good selection of Waits-Brennan songs are complemented by a few very compatible songs by Kurt Weill, John Tams, and some old folk songs.

The mood can be dark and theater-of-the-absurd-like, socially critical, then comedic, world weary, snide and circus-like in turn, with moments of tenderness and vulnerability emerging from time to time as counter-realities. What matters is that the arrangements and Ms. Walker's voice come together to make a very fresh amalgam that grows on you the more you hear it.

Recommended.

Peter Maxwell Davies, Symphonies Nos. 4 and 5

I covered Maxwell Davies' Symphony No. 3 several weeks ago on this site. We are back with Maxwell-Davies-conducted versions of his Symphonies Nos. 4 and 5 (Naxos 8.572351), with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and the Philharmonia Orchestra, respectively.

What is true of No. 3 is generally true of 4 and 5 as well. If Boulez's orchestral music is often a sort of hard-edged, rapidly fracturing pointillism, the mature Davies gives us more of a soft-focus, more slowly unraveling variety. Not that Davies is in an all-andante mode, far from it. It is in the general pace, the presentation and combination of instrument families that this comparison applies.

No. 4 was written in 1989 and has four movements that do not sound neo-classically derived but break up into sections in similar ways and utilize the classical era orchestra in size and instrumentation. No. 5 comes from 1994 and is in one long movement, scored for a somewhat larger orchestra.

If I had to chose, I find No. 3 the more paradigmatic and aesthetically moving work. Symphonies 4 and 5 seem in many ways an extension of the music presented there. On the other hand the later symphonies complete the picture, so you'd probably do well getting both volumes, if you can swing it, especially given the Naxos price.

This volume has good sound and the performances are convincing.

So Percussion, Grey McMurray, Where [we] Live

Where [we] Live (Cantaloupe 21087) is all about home, and it's also all about genre bending. Guitarist-vocalist Grey McMurray joins So Percussion in an adventure that combines song forms, narrative, a bit of post-prog avant rock, new music, world music, post-minimalism and other channels of musical expression in a tightly sequenced program of music that shines forth in ways that stick in the mind.

The narrative recalls memories of home--the home of childhood, the homes after youth has flown. The McMurray (well sung) vocals center around personal images and reflected emotions about those homes, memory, and life.

Musically there are rather uncanny combinations of percussion ensemble music and rock, with synthesizers/keys and McMurray's forward leaning guitar work forming an important part of the mix.

So Percussion and McMurray collaborate on the music and lyrics. The result is a very new form of extended art song that has people like Mike Mantler, Robert Wyatt, Carla Bley and Jack Bruce as predecessors, but goes in a collectively personal direction that offshots from there.

The various combinations and interweavings of percussion, vocals, and guitar-synth ensemble provide the listener with an unforgettably memorable tapestry of music. If you abandon the categorical imperatives of genre and just sit back and listen, you will be rewarded with something most unusual, and most excellent.

Dan Styffe, Secret Memories

The contrabass has achieved prominence in jazz and improvisation circles over time. In the new music-classical field music for a contrabass soloist with various groupings is less often encountered, and the number of bonifide contrabass virtuosi somewhat proportionately less.

From the evidence of the album Secret Memories (SIMAX 1324), Dan Styffe is most certainly one of the best of them. It features Dan throughout in a wide variety of settings, solo, chamber and a concerto for double bass and orchestra. There are lesser known composers: Rolf Martinsson, for example, contributes the concerto. And some more established ones: Kurtag, Scelsi, Norgard.

Drawing it all together is the fine arco and sometimes pizzicato sensibilities of Styffe. He has a beautiful tone and very good technique harnessed to a totalizing musical sensibility.

Not all the compositions are of masterpiece quality. Martinsson's Double Bass Concerto No. 1 has a well thought-out solo part, played beautifully, but the orchestral writing veers on occasion to the overly cinematic to my tastes.

Nevertheless taken as a whole Secret Memories is one view, a very pleasurable one, of the contrabass as fully fledged solo instrument, in an effective meld of Styffe's very musical approach and some interesting compositions that put him in attractive and sometimes challenging settings.

Peteris Vasks, Dmitri Shostakovich, Boulanger Trio, Canto Perpetuo

The Boulanger (Piano) Trio show some fabulous interpretive abilities on their Canto Perpetuo (RBB Profil Edition Gunter Hanssler). The consistently interesting Peteris Vasks contributes his "Episode E Canto Perpetuo"; the program also includes Shostakovich's Trios Nos. 1 and 2.

It's weighty fare. Vasks' opus from 1985 has, as you might expect, a long and winding melodic quality, but also a bit more modernistic bite than some of his later works. It's a work that pays homage to Olivier Messiaen. It has moments of intense emotion, perhaps in reaction to momentous events in Russia at the time. As one might expect it also has a resonance with Messiaen's work--a widely tonal expression coupled with a kind of tender spirituality.

The first Shostakovich Trio is a little gem of his early period (op. 6), with a brashness and a contrasting tenderness that fits well as a transition from the Vasks to the later Shostakovich.

The second Shostakovich (op. 67) has a patently Shostakovichian, breathtaking motor pulsation in the allegro movement that's played with relish and fire by the trio. The first movement is more quiescent and mysterious; the third movement majestic and lyrically expressionist. The final movement has that melodic, dancing grotesquery quality that Prokofiev and Shostakovich mastered so well.

In the hands of the Boulanger Trio the works are given full, detailed, hard-edged and lyrical readings as called for. The trio seem ideal proponents of the music and breathe sonic life into the music throughout. The sound is quite good. Taking the music, performance and recording quality together as a package, we have a real winner. Bravo!

Heitor Villa-Lobos, Symphony No. 6 "On the Outline of the Mountains of Brazil," Symphony No. 7

As many readers will affirm Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959), Brazilian master composer, was a 100% original. His guitar music, his vocal music, his piano music, his orchestral works infuse a Brazilian sensibility into a limitless imagination. His orchestral music shows the sure hand of a brilliant orchestrator, a man of many timbres and colors, and a musical mind that conceived on a grand scale with great result, an original whose scores are nearly instantly recognizable as bearing his mark.

Today's CD shows all that quite well. It is the Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra under Isaac Karabtchevsky rendering Villa-Lobos' middle-later-period symphonies: No. 6 "On the Outline of the Mountains of Brazil" (1944), and No. 7 (1945) (Naxos 8.573043).

The No. 6 as the title suggest paints a symphonic picture of the beautiful mountainous terrain of his homeland, as a kind of ebb and flow musical transformation of the mountains' peaks and declivities, and does so in vivid terms. No. 7 has a majestic, epic quality as well. Both are superior examples of the Villa-Lobos orchestral style.

In the hands of Karabtchevsky and the Sao Paulo organization the works come alive in full flower. The sound is excellent and the performances inspired. As a Villa-Lobos afficianado I treasure this disk, and the works (not previously familiar to me) as performed here. Villa-Lobos in the orchestral zone has a lushness that communicates a grand epic symphonically without falling into Romanticism. Instead he is modern-leaning--but in a very personal, Brazilian manner. These are worthy performances that bring out those qualities well. With the Naxos price tag they are a must for anyone wanting to come to know this music in particular and his music in general.

Imogen Holst, Choral Music

Imogen Holst (1907-1984)? Daughter of Gustav Holst. A composer in her own right. The new Choral Music of Imogen Holst (Harmonia Mundi) gives you a good sampling of her work in that mode. In the hands of the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge, Graham Ross conducting, we get a very sonorous idea of her compositions. The music ranges from the Mass of 1927 to more secular pieces, following her involvement with the choral style through 1972.

Throughout she comes through convincingly with the influence of Vaughan Williams (with whom she studied) and the modern English tradition in general (she was Benjamin Britten's assistant from 1954 to 1964) as starting points. There is counterpoint, drama and folk-based music, all given a nice twist in Ms. Holst's hands.

The set concludes with Benjamin Britten's "Rejoice of the Lamb," aka "Festival Cantata," which is a work I am not familiar with but goes well as a bookend to Imogen Holst's work and rounds out the program well.

Ms. Holst most certainly qualifies as a discovery. The music is quite beautiful. The Clare College Choir and the Dimitri Ensemble for instrumental parts do the music full justice. And thank you Musical Director Graham Ross for bringing this music to us so vividly. Anglophiles rejoice.