The City of Tomorrow, Nature

Who is the City of Tomorrow? It is a fine wind quintet that concentrates on new and newer works, whether in premiere performances or more or less in the repertoire, as much as one can assert the latter in the wind quintet medium. Their recent album Nature (Ravello 7904) shows us what they can do with four contemporary works of note.

Those pieces cover a broad expanse of stylistic trends today, from the late Berio work "Ricorrenze" (1985-87), the lesser known "...a certain chinese cyclopaedia..." (1986) by Denys Bouliane, David Lang's "breathless" (2003) and the quite recent "Music for Breathing" (2013) by Nat Evans.

Each piece occupies a world of its own. The Lang work has a blurred sort of mirrored cannon counterpoint that creates a prismatic multiple sound image in a more or less radically tonal vein. The Berio work has a later period individuality, based on a painting by DuBuffet. It seeks to portray via virtuoso multiple lines the growth of a lushly fruitful plant from a small seed.

The Bouliane piece creates a musical taxonomy from a theme in a short story by Jorges Luis Borges. It translates the taxonomic idea into somewhat frenetic waves of sound that meld shifting collages of bebop jazz vocabulary. The selective linear transformations are such that the music is more abstract-modern than bebop-ish per se, but no less interesting for it.

The concluding Nat Evans work comes to terms with his experience with asthma and many long hikes through the woods. The concept of "nature" as an ever-active process rather than a romantic pastoral beauty is out front. The music uses extended techniques, improvisation within set boundaries, solo spotlights and the use of conch shells and stones to encapsule the hiking and chanting practices of Yamabushi Buddhists. There is at times a kind of ritual tonality to be heard here, captivating and ever shifting like the "nature" Evans has observed over the years.

The four works contrast well. The performances are dramatic and exhilarating. In the end we are left with four distinct impressions of what wind quintets can be today. It is a tribute to the all-encompassing grasp that the City of Tomorrow espouses in the realm of new music and a tribute too to their magnificent musicianship.

Recommended.

Howard Bashaw, 15 for Piano, Form Archimage, Roger Admiral

Today we are running "on instruments!" I have no information on the music at hand save the title, artist, composer and label and that the composer no doubt hails from Canada. Part of that has to do with technical incompatibilities, the other is sheer technological serendipity. Nevertheless the music speaks volumes, and it is to the music we must turn in the end, after all.

This is a CD of piano music, very modern piano music. The composer is Howard Bashaw, the pianist is Roger Admiral, the music is entitled 15 for Piano, Form Archimage (Centredisks), two formidable multi-part suites played heroically and enthusiastically by Roger Admiral.

The music is highly dynamic, very modern, with the sort of panache one gets if one combined Scriabin in his later phase, Charles Ives at his boldest, and perhaps even a little of the aggressively soaring sense of a Cecil Taylor. There is a bit of minimalist repetition here and there, but it is not central and it is not at all typical. More repeats of brief phrasings than minimalism per se. The totality of the music combines all of this (and perhaps more) with an originality which makes it all very much the music of Howard Bashaw.

All that being said, it is music of fullness, a roar of sound at times, spelled by quieter, less extroverted introspection.

It is a marvelously contemporary expressionism we get. It is music that will not be denied, very much foreground and assuredly NOT background music. All the better, because this is piano music that makes great demands on the player in its maelstroms of sound and Roger Admiral responds with zeal and great success.

A pianistic world of tomorrow, yesterday and today, all together, this is. It is a kind of wonder and will appeal to the modernist quite aptly, I think. I certainly appreciate it. Highly recommended.

Sergio Cervetti, Transits, Minimal to Mayhem, 1975-2013

The music of Sergio Cervetti has gotten the spotlight on these pages before (type his name in the search box for previous reviews). He returns to us today with a nice kind of mini-retrospective of pieces written between 1975 and 2013, on Transits, Minimal to Mayhem (Navona 6001). Here we experience a variety of works, all of interest, from the recent piano and winds "Concertino" (2013), the orchestral "Candombe" (1996), to the piano and electronics "Exiles" (1980), the bandoneon and electronics "El Rio De Los Pajaros Pintados" (1979) and the "Guitar Music" (1975).

The music covers, as the title suggests, a movement from stylistic way-station-to-way-station. Minimalism is out front on the mesmeric, primal repetitiveness of "Guitar Music," has a more developmental flourish on "Candombe," and shifts to a sort of ethereal radical tonality on the soundscape singularities of "El Rio De Los Pajaros Pintados" and "Exiles." The final work chronologically, "Concertino," has a modern neo-classicism and a nicely developed thematic arc.

These are very worthwhile works, performed in the main quite well, but in any case some high points in Cervetti's compositional oeuvre over the past 40 years, give or take. They stand out with distinction and show us his essential qualities as melodist and colorist, his rhythmic vitality and harmonically modern sophistication.

I was taken by this anthology and will certainly come back to it to savor the originality and lively pointedness of Cervetti at his best. I recommend you hear it, too.

Lionel Sainsbury, Andalusian Fantasy, Piano Works

The musical traditions of Spain and Latin America are rich and vital. English composer Lionel Sainsbury (b. 1958) has long been taken with it all. On his Andalusian Fantasy (Navona 5999) we get to hear how his fascination and love for the music becomes a creative force in his own music, in this case a series of works for solo piano.

Is he the Boccherini of today? To the extent that he immerses himself in the music and gives back creatively in kind, perhaps yes. Otherwise, such comparisons are not all that illuminating, for Sainsbury has the modern present in him as well as the Latin-Spanish influences, so you hear some of the presence of jazz precedents (Gershwin and Ellington, perhaps) and a post-impressionist glow as well.

The Spanish-Latin rhythms of dance and the melodic-harmonic particularities are readily heard in the works presented in this collection. All are well performed by the composer himself with a flair and liveliness in keeping with his dynamic style. There are moments of relative repose and introspection to be heard as well. And the jazz-oriented element can be heard directly or indirectly depending on the work or movement. It is not always the jazz of today or tomorrow so much as a recapturing of jazz-oriented compositional ways of pre-mid-20th century masters. But even then it is not a direct imitation as much as a personal rechanneling.

In all we hear six very worthwhile pieces: The "Andalusian Fantasy," the "Nocturne Op. 18," the "South American Suite," "Twelve Preludes Op. 11," "Esquisse," and the "Cuban Fantasy."

Through it all the music personality of Sainsbury shines forth. He is not merely showing how the Spanish and Latin traditions have entered his musical thought, he transforms those elements into a music that has originality and a modern-classical thrust that remains his, while channeling some of the pianistic traditions of such adaptations from the French and Spanish impressionists and post-impressionists. In the end you have a very personal and very delightful set of works that show us an inventively vivid side of Lionel Sainsbury. Recommended!

Steve Reich, Music for 18 Musicians, Ensemble Signal

I think most serious students of musical minimalism when called upon to name only two works that best represented the first and central phase of the music would choose Terry Riley's In C and Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians. Those two, as attested by frequency of performances over the years and the recognized, inherently brilliant qualities of the music, best capture minimalism in its pulsating trance origins.

We have today a very beautiful new performance of Music for 18 Musicians (1974-76) by Ensemble Signal (Harmonia Mundi 907608). The first recording by Reich and his ensemble many years ago on ECM set the standard and there have been some good versions that followed, but Ensemble Signal shows you what can happen after a work has been thoroughly assimilated into the collective "mind" of the period. They may actually top the Reich version, which is saying much.

Ensemble Signal takes things at a nicely brisk pace, faster than the original and others that followed according to my naked ears. The music is the mature end-result of the years Reich spent studying traditional African music. His combination of genuinely moving rhythmic figures and melodically memorable material makes the work irresistibly compelling. The movement from section to section in a logical and very inventive framework gives the listener ever fresh possibilities while retaining momentum without pause. The ensemble writing for mallets, piano, winds, strings and wordless vocals is without peer. The work was a kind of beacon of the period. It set the stage for works that followed by both Reich and others that walked in his path.

Ensemble Signal handles it all adroitly. At first hearing I thought the mallets were slightly low in the balance, but in subsequent hearings that impression vanished and now I hear it as the well-blended composite that it is. They understand the balance between rhythmic thrust and melodic definition and give us a rendition that is superb, with the contours crisp and filled with the sort of elevated lyricism that Reich had in mind.

If you are a fanatic on this piece, as I am, you will welcome this version wholeheartedly. If for some reason you never heard the work, this is undoubtedly the one I would recommend you get, at least for starters. A seminal work of our time that all need to hear!

Alkan, Chanson de la folle au bord de la mer, Vincenzo Maltempo

Charles Alkan (1813-1888) wrote music that was anything but typical of his times. Perhaps a parallel example was Mussorgsky in Russia (unless we want to talk about Sorobji, only he was later), but the music of the two are not really comparable, just their uniqueness. Alkan created a body of solo piano works that reflected the romanticism of his era at the same time as it took steps beyond it. For difficulty in execution they are often enough notorious, but what strikes one who spends time with his music is its eccentricity. Therefore Vincenzo Maltempo's fifth album of Alkan works is rightly subtitled A Collection of Eccentric Piano Works.

Chanson de la folle au bord de la mer (Piano Classics 0083) fits the description. These are some of Alkan's more unusual and iconoclastic works, eleven in all, played wonderfully well by Maltempo on an 1899 Erard grand piano. Maltempo makes the case that Alkan's works are after all meant to be played on a piano of his era, and listening to this volume, you can readily hear the subtle and sometimes dramatic differences. What is true of Mozart, of Beethoven, Brahms or Schumann is perhaps even more true of Alkan. It sounds different on a period piano, sometimes dramatically so.

That is, the period piano's sonarity is so different to the modern pianoforte that you hear the music in a new light. The forte is much more subdued in volume, each register has its own acoustic characteristics, and the upper notes do not tend to naturally ring out, just to note a few of the obvious characteristics of the earlier pianos.

So with these Alkan chestnuts, many if not most of which will be familiar to Alkan enthusiasts, you hear the voicings and the balance the way one presumes Alkan meant them to be heard. This is of course as much a product of Vincenzo Maltempo's artistry and genuine understanding of the music as it is the piano itself. It removes much of the slam-bang pianism in romantic interpretation of the ensuing 20th and 21st centuries for an appreciation of the nuance of voice.

The eleven mostly quite brief works sound breathtakingly well in the hands of Maltempo and his Erard, whether it is a matter of the "Tres Petites Fantaisies Op. 41" or the title work, "Song of the Madwomen on the Seashore," which is a part of the "25 Preludes Op. 31."

Maltempo's period performances are revelatory and triumphant. You hear Alkan in a new light. Recommended for those not much familiar with Alkan as well as his devotees. It is a delight, either way!

Christopher Janwong McKiggan, Paganimania

Christopher Janwong McKiggan, a pianist with a multicultural heritage (English, Scottish, Chinese, Thai) has drawn on his corresponding interest in composers from around the world and his enthusiasm for Paganini to commission an international coterie of composers each to create a new solo piano work based on Paganini's 24th Caprice. The gathering of differing approaches has resulted in the solo piano album Paganimania (Albany TROY 1543).

Seven composers from around the world have created seven very varied pieces which McKiggan performs with poeticism and grace. The world is represented by composers from America, Canada, Thailand, China, Korea and the Middle East. The composers are Robert Beaser, Moon Young Ha, Karim Al-Zand, Narong Prangcharoen, Zhou Jing, S. Peace Nistades and James Mobberley.

The works are all generally of an international contemporary modernist/postmodernist cast. Some are quite difficult to play but McKiggan gives us a satisfying first recorded performance of all. It can be imaged that with years more experience of these works McKiggan might well top himself with ever finer performances, but that is of no moment in the present, since the outcome is good and the various approaches contrast in interesting ways and make for a fine listening experience.

Paganini's 24th Caprice may not always be readily audible in the way each composer transforms it to create something new. And the cultural-musical backgrounds of each composer are also subtly present. Both factors however are very much integral to the final results and show themselves in varied ways with careful listening over time.

It is a fascinating program, well conceived and well played. McKiggan takes a good idea and brings it to full fruition on Paganimania. Bravo!