Assi Karttunen, Beyond the River God, Harpsichord Works by Graham Lynch & Francois Couperin

Given the present-day, anything goes stylistic polycentrism that contemporary new music enjoys, we should expect any number of possibilities. So the dualistic program of harpsichordist Assi Karttunen on her Beyond the River God, Harpsichord Works by Graham Lynch & Francois Couperin (Divine Art 25120) should not surprise us. Yet a recital that alternates between French baroque master Couperin and rising modern composer Lynch is nonetheless an unusual one.

What it does in part is give us the chance to gauge any similarities and of course differences between the musical personalities, the eras represented and to bring us potentially contrasting sounds for the harpsichord.

Ms. Karttunen does a fine job with both series of works. The handful of Couperin pieces are generally well-known and she plays them with baroque grace. And she does complete justice to the Graham Lynch works as well, which are modern yet at times thoroughly neo-classical. Relatively young (b. 1957), London-born Lynch gives us music that seems specially suited to harpsichord sonorities.

In all we get six Lynch works/suites, the five-part title work, "Admiring Yoro Waterfall," the four-part "Petenera," "Ay!," the three-movement "Present-Past-Future-Present," and the brief concluding "Secret Prelude."

All make use to greater and lesser extent of an early classical veneer that at time runs deeper, but all in all there is a fantasie-like impromptu feel to the music, which strays pretty far at times from baroque thematic and harmonic orthodoxy, which is to be expected and even desired. Other times both musics share an expressive oneness that you may feel goes beyond the details of each composition, and sometimes Lynch makes a point of reaching back, only to go forward again. At least that was my reaction.

There is much worthwhile music to become familiar with. The regular recurrence of a Couperin classic grounds us with the accustomed while the Lynch explores various possibilities of what lies beyond it.

In the end we get a good deal of music that underscores what expressive means the baroque and the modern/postmodern share and how the harpsichord and specifically Ms. Karttunen act as the pivoting center to all the music. It is certainly a feather in the cap for Assi Karttunen and for Graham Lynch. At the same time it is music on a high level.

Recommended!

Gloria Cheng, Montage, Great Film Composers and the Piano

If you like me grew up with old movies as part of TV fare, you at one point realized that much of the old scores featured a warmed-over romanticism that did its job but was not necessarily compositionally self-sufficient. All that of course changed in time so that nowadays soundtracks can be that as well as quite functionally effective. Many stand up to musical scrutiny. The idea that a good or great composer may also write soundtracks is now quite understandable, though of course the older days had its share.

And as if to underscore that point pianist Gloria Cheng has looked at it all in reverse, that is, she selected from a few acclaimed soundtrack composers some works written expressly for solo piano. On Montage (Harmonia Mundi 907635) we have a chance to hear six acclaimed soundtrack composers bring all their "serious" composing skills to bear on six solo piano works/suites. They show us original and eclectic music that draws upon neo-romantic, neo-classical, neo-impressionist, song-form and modern tendencies to create recent works both absorbing and convincing, played with sensitivity and dash by Gloria Cheng. All of the works presented here enjoy their premiere recordings.

So we have Bruce Broughton and his "Five Pieces for Piano" (2010), Michael Giacchino and his "Composition 430" (2013), Don Davis and "Surface Tension" (2013), Alexandre Desplat and "The Embrace," from his "Three Etudes" (2012), John Williams and his four-part "Conversations" (2012-13), and Randy Newman's five-part "Family Album" (2013).

These are works Ms. Cheng either commissioned herself or were presented to her by the composer involved. They all have very much something to them; they are serious and contentful.

It is a pleasure to hear the program and you'll probably find yourself returning frequently to the music. It most certainly is a pleasant surprise!

Thomas Newman, Rick Cox, 35 Whirlpools Below Sound

The public notice of what is now called electroacoustic music is nowhere near as wide-spread than in the days when electronic music was a palpable force on the new music avant garde scene. Yet there is very good work being done if you look for it. An excellent example is 35 Whirlpools Below Sound (Cold Blue 0040), a collaborative effort between Thomas Newman and Rick Cox. (Type Cox's name into the search box above to see a review of another work of his.)

Rick is on prepared guitar, Xaphoon, cello and voice; Thomas plays a toy accordion, violin, piano and phase metals; Jeff Elmassian plays clarinet, and there are also field recordings of wind, leaves, water and cars.

All of these elements (and others, to my ears) combine in various stages of transformation for 19 very evocative soundscapes (utilizing 35 "whirlpools"). Many have a natural sort of ambiance, some less so, but altogether there is a sequence of sound events that makes very effective use of musical tone and noise to create vivid sound poetry.

There's nothing truly jarring in this series of whirlpools, so it invites you to drift along with its ever-varying architectonics and sound washes.

I found it fascinating and very worthwhile. You traverse diverse landscapes willingly and with satisfaction, and perhaps you attentively dream of other worlds as you listen.

Very nice, indeed.

Lee Actor, Piano Concerto

In the ever-permutating stylistic world of modern classical we have music to consider on today's blog post built of neo-classical and neo-romantic elements. The composer is Lee Actor (b. 1952) and his Piano Concerto (Navona 5986) (2012) is the featured work alongside his "Divertimento" (2011) and his "Symphony No. 3" (2013). The Slovak National Symphony Orchestra under Kirk Trevor does the honors fittingly, with Daniel Glover in the piano role for the "Concerto." All comes across well.

Actor is a polymath personality, practicing in his career as software engineer as well as a concert artist/composer. Perhaps this explains his deft manipulation of structural elements in his music. At any rate all three works bring traditional elements to bear in ways that both hearken back and look forward.

The music has a general rhythmic vitality, a sure sense of orchestrational color and an inventiveness that makes his music neo- more than retro-. It is music that has a tonal centrality that does not introduce much in the way of dissonance, instead using rhythmic continuity-discontinuity and thematic development to express a compositional ethos. (The symphony has an increased chromaticism in keeping with a late-romantic/modern ethos, however.)

You can hear both rhythmic and developmental elements especially vividly at work in the "Divertimento" and the final movement of the "Concerto," but it is continually a factor.

Here is the sort of music that grows inside of you with repeated listens. That of course may be true of most classical music but in Actor's case it is especially true. On the first hearing of the program, style hit me foremost. Then on subsequent listens the internal workings within style became more and more apparent and memorable.

"Symphony No. 3" is a good example. There is late romantic seriousness of purpose in the opening movement "Premonition," but it comes at you more and more impressively as you hear the movement a number of times. Perhaps, yes, there is something that reminds you of Schumann, Brahms, Wagner, Bruckner in its monumental moroseness. Yet as you listen again the articulation of the orchestral blocks of sound become more and more Lee Actor and less derivative in the way it all hangs together beautifully.

The inner movements break the spell with a great headlong plunge into rhythmically rapid string figuration and grand punctuations from brass and woodwinds ("Scherzo I"). In contrast "Reflections" begins in a lyrically dark-somber mood, then goes on to a rather chromatic music of contemplation with dynamic outbursts that remind you we are in a post- and neo- world. "Scherzo II" brings us back to fleeting motion, the entire orchestra taking part in the moving panorama of tone with deftly orchestrated passages. The "Finale" returns to an ominous darkness that creeps forward with insistency and shows off the coloration-orchestrational acuity of the composer with distinctive writing for winds, brass and strings in various combinations. Somewhere in midpoint there are darkly dramatic outbursts that gradually build momentum into agitated climaxes of tangible power and clout. The cloudiness of the opening movement returns before a great hurrah ends it all.

So there you have it. Actor comes through with three distinctive works that give us a vivid picture of his latest orchestral music. This is not music on the edge of avant futurism so much as a new synthesis of classical-to-modern orchestral practices, resulting in an idiomatically personal approach that shows thematic and orchestrational prowess.

It is music that one welcomes more heartily back into one's music hearth the more one returns to it. If you like new music that delves into the past transformatively, this will give you plenty to savor!

Dan Roman, Musica de Palladium

Later incarnations of minimalism can tend to relax the strictures of continual ostinatos and nothing but. Puerto Rican composer Dan Roman combines repetition with through-composed elements and development very intriguingly on his album of chamber music, Musica de Palladium (Innova 904).

On the disk are five thoroughgoingly unformulaic, bright and attractive, finely crafted works of originality. Each features a typical small chamber instrumentation and each has an eclecticism that transcends the expected to keep you fascinated.

The title work "Musica de Palladium" uses violin, viola, cello, and piano, "La Machina Line" alto saxaphone and viola, "Retrospecto" cello and piano, "Fabulas" violin and piano, and "Passing Puntos" violin, cello and piano.

All of the works have rhythmic vitality, some reflecting Roman's Puerto Rican roots but also what you might call neo-classical elements and modernist touches. What's especially compelling to me about the music is how each element is thoroughly integrated into the whole so that there is a seamlessness. The music develops and unfolds inventively, bypassing the trance-like mesmerization of classic minimalism, often enough using the ostinatos as a classical element, only perhaps they have a greater importance here than in pre-minimalism but also that they continually shift to fit the arc of melodic thematics that he constructs so convincingly.

The performances are first-rate. They bring us the liveliness of expression with contemporary brio and zest.

This is music that should appeal to many for its mostly tonal lyricism. At the same time there is substance to all the works to exercise the ears of those careful listeners who seek more than congenial sounds.

Dan Roman has talent. You should give this one a careful listen if you want to hear where minimalism or post-minimalism is going these days.

Elements Rising, Modern Works for Chamber Ensemble, Various Artists

Modernism lives. It may not be the only game in town these days but it continues to evolve and consolidate in various ways, with various composers vibrantly active and good works coming to our attention every month. We get interesting examples of new music in the chamber mode today on the recent anthology Elements Rising, Modern Works for Chamber Ensemble (Navona 5990).

On it we hear six varied works by five composers who may not be familiar to you unless you are thoroughly immersed in Navona releases. Each has something to offer and does so with lively performances. All have in common a post-Darmstadtian modernism in gesture and a wider tonal palette for the most part.

Yves Ramette starts off the program with "Introduction et Allegro" for flute, oboe, Bb clarinet, bassoon and piano. It is a worthy example of small chamber ensemble writing today, very sonorically stimulating and gesturally dynamic. From there we go on to Steven Block's "Fire Tiger" for violin and piano, Rain Worthington's "Night Stream" for two violins, and "Rhythm Modes" for string quartet, all very worth hearing.

Paula Diehl's "Gambit" as played by the Moravian Philharmonic Chamber Players under Petr Vronsky has the largest and most sonorically distinct aura in part because of the forces involved. It stands out for that reason and gives the ear a refreshing change. At the same time it has an ambience and sound color that set it apart regardless of its juxtaposition.

Allen Brings closes off the program with his "Duo for Violin and Cello," a study in shifting thematic elements with rhythmic insistency, a memorable conclusion to an excellent disk.

In the end we get a judicious assortment of extremely well-crafted works that show in each case the hand of an original voice, each rooted in the modernist heritage yet tackling the varied instrumentation with a skilled sense of what will sound well with the instruments at hand. We get folk elements now and then and rhythmic approaches that range from a jagged event-sounding approach to a more symmetrical regularity. A timbral openness and refreshing approach to form applies in various ways to all the compositions included in the set.

It is music with complexities that must be digested over time. With a little ear work you are rewarded with six windows that open each to its own universe of sound and structure. In the end the experience is filled with much to appreciate and ponder.

Highly recommended.

Ten Holt, Incantatie IV, for Three Pianos, Jeroen and Sandra van Veen, Tamara Rumiantsev

Minimalist repetition (or what Gertrude Stein called "insistence") was hardly a new thing in essence when works started appearing under that rubric. African and Balinese music, for example, had made it a part of the music for many centuries, blues and rock had it as an important part of the music, and of course one might look elsewhere as well. But for a combination of insistence and a more or less classical framework, Satie may have been the principal progenitor but it was something new nonetheless.

By now there have been a good number of works to experience, some better, some less better, but by all means Simeon ten Holt (1923-2012) can be considered one of the major exponents. I say that after I have listened in depth to the 4-CD performance of Canto Ostinato XXL by Jeroen Van Veen and company (see my November 17, 2014 review) and now Incantatie IV (Brilliant 24918, 2CDs) for three pianos, performed by Jeroen and Sandra van Veen and Tamara Rumiantsev.

Like the Canto Ostinato XXL it contains choice on the part of performers as to what to include and what to leave out, along with choices in timbre and pitch, style and tempo, instrumentation and length of repetitions. Van Veen and company choose a moderately fast tempo and put the music in a minor mode. The score has complexities in its 15 layers. The three pianists negotiate them deftly, coming up with material from the score that would sound well even if not repeated, in a way that in the end is very pianistic. And perhaps that is one of the keys to what makes Simeon ten Holt so intriguing, that the compositional materials are composed of thematic elements that hold interest both in their repetition and in their transformation. Not all minimalist exponents are melodists of this caliber. Riley and Reich, surely, but some others less so.

And even then Simeon ten Holt's transformation options are sequentially dramatic but interrelated in fine ways, perhaps more classical ways than with some composers. That and the van Veen ensemble's very skilful and music interpretations make this music come alive beautifully. In the end Canto Ostinato XXL may have a slight edge in my mind over Incantatie IV, but one should ideally revel in both.

Ten Holt is up there with the very finest minimalists; Van Veen's ensemble is the one to give the music its just due. The music both sings and swings admirably. Fabulous!