Villa-Lobos, The Guitar Manuscripts 3, Masterpieces and Lost Works, Andrea Bissoli, etc.

The long and very productive composing career of Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) included some of the finest music for guitar written in the last century. Yet there was a fair amount of it that has fallen into obscurity for various reasons. The Guitar Manuscripts series on Naxos addresses some of that, with Andrea Bissoli taking the solo guitar role, supplemented with others as called for.

We now find that The Guitar Manuscripts 3 (Naxos 8.573117) is out. It continues where the first two volumes left off (see my reviews of Vols 1 & 2 on these pages), with four works/sets of compositions, all most certainly of interest. The major contribution is the original 1928 versions of his "Etudes," then in 12 parts, that he wrote for Segovia. The final version was only published in 1953 and had been reworked somewhat, with changes, cuts and additions. This first version is fascinating to hear, as played by Bissoli on a 1917 Manuel Ramirez guitar, very similar to the 1912 Ramirez guitar Segovia was using when he and Villa-Lobos first met in 1924.

Opening the program is the brief but invigorating "Tarentella" (1911) which survived as a piano work but is here reconstructed by Bissoli in its hypothetical, original guitar version, convincingly so.

Villa-Lobos's "Guia pratico" was a series of short songs composed when Villa-Lobos was superintendent of music in Rio, 1932. The songs were intended for performance by schoolchildren, using various instrumentation depending on the resources at hand. Bissoli arranges fourteen of them for guitar and chamber ensemble. They are in first recording here (as is the guitar version of the "Tarentella), and are most certainly quite charming.

The final work is the 15-minute orchestral "O papagaio do moleque" from 1932. It is whimsical and a good bit of fun, yet also very much in the realm of Villa-Lobos as a brilliantly original orchestral stylist in his day, giving us a fitting close to a very pleasing program.

Not all of this music is monumental. But all is rather delightful. Anyone with a liking or even just a curiosity about Villa-Lobos in his early- to mid-period will find this a very enjoyable go-round. Bissoli gives us finely nuanced guitar renditions that all who dwell in the land of six strings will appreciate, too.

A good listen!

Weinberg, Cello-Violin-Flute Concertos, Rostropovich, Kogan, Korneyev

Mieczyslaw (aka Moissei) Weinberg (1919-1996) was not always in good graces with the powers that be over the many years he lived in Russia under the Soviet regime. This is not the place to go into the vicissitudes and dynamics of that relationship. Nonetheless there were a number of Melodiya LP releases of his music during his lifetime. Some of that is now generally available worldwide as a CD: the Cello-Violin-Flute Concertos collection (Melodiya MEL CD 10 02315). Recorded between 1961 and 1968, it features excellent performances by Mstislav Rostropovich on cello, Leonid Kogan on violin, and Alexander Korneyev on flute, respectively, in the solo roles.

The orchestral performances are not precisely perfect, but do show great spirit. The concertos are excellent Weinberg: "Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, op. 43" (1948) with the USSR State Symphony under Rozhdestvensky, the "Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, op. 67" (1959) with the Moscow Philharmonic under Kondrashin, and the "Concerto for Flute and Strings, op. 75" (1961) with the same orchestra under Barshai.

The soloists were of course some of Russia's very best; the recordings give us three masterful interpretations and very lively orchestral accompaniment. All three works show Weinberg in fine form, brilliant.

The historical importance of these recordings make them invaluable and the performances themselves give us much to appreciate. They may not be perfectly definitive in their totality, but the solo parts get a glorious treatment. They are seemingly essential, then, for any Weinberg enthusiast, and anyone who wishes to know more about Russian musical modernism in the mid-20th century.

Mathias Reumert, Solo, DVD

The prospects of a modern classical solo percussion recital DVD is one that appeals to this writer. After all, I studied classical percussion and have followed the music with interest for a long time. So when percussion adept Mathias Reumert and his video DVD Solo (Metier) became available recently, I made sure to get a copy for review.

It is a wide-ranging recital showing Reumert as a masterful exponent, someone with impressive technique and poetic interpretive skills, and a real dramatic, theatrical flair. All of this is very much a part of the works performed, in varying degrees according to the needs of each piece.

One first notices the excellent quality of the sound and the very musically sensitive video direction of Christian Holten Bonke. The choice of camera angles and cuts follows the music intelligently, and the works that call for special animated aspects and/or strong general visual components work especially well here.

We see this in the body percussion/theater work "?Corporel" by Vinko Globokar--as Reumert makes unusual percussive and expressive gestures showing a thorough command of the requirements of the work. The video representation of what is intended joins with the performance for something quite engaging.

There are nicely composed solo vibraphone and marimba works by Hans Werner Henze and Franco Donatoni that are played with true artistry.

The opening work "Time & Money" by Pierre Jodlowski has an extraordinary choreographed gestural dimension as well as difficult virtuoso drum set passages synchronized with electronics--all of which are executed with great skill and a theatrical presence.

Some of the high points are the two works by Xenakis, "Psappha" and "Rebonds," both with demanding multi-drum, multi-percussion solo parts that Reumert handles with great fluidity and musical logic. Ferneyhough's "Bone Alphabet" makes similar demands and is visually stimulating in its precision correlation of percussive parts and lighting effects.

In the end the video-DVD-high quality sound medium broadens the appreciation of the visual components of each work and the physicality of playing it, the theatrical elements, and the impressive virtuosity and artistry of Reumert.

Anyone interested in the possibilities of avant modern solo percussion will find this a fascinating and very provocative, even exciting recital. Reumert is extraordinary! Highly recommended.

Steve Holtje, A Man Full of Days, Soundtrack, with Black Crystal F_ck Wolf and Peckinpah

What we have at hand today is the soundtrack of the film A Man Full of Days (MechaBenzaiten MB 15). It features primarily the music of Steve Holtje. In full disclosure I count Steve as a friend and associate, mostly though our ongoing dialog on the internet and in the course of his tenure managing ESP records. But that is a separate matter from his music, which I would not be posting on did I not find it very interesting and engaging.

The 15 compositions of Holtje are supplemented by two from Black Crystal F_ck Wolf, one by Bruce McKenzie (Peckinpah) and a brief 1930 orchestral work by Levko Revutsky and Vyacheslav Ovchinnikow. The additional pieces do not disrupt the mood of Holtje's music, but serve to enhance it.

Steve has a definite penchant for the atmospherically ambient. There are a number of electroacoustic movements that set a powerfully inner-directed mood and have nicely realized sound color-texture traits. There are solo piano works that add onto Satie's "Gymnopedies" in good ways; there are also pieces that utilize some aetherial organ sounds and one that includes a women's chorus.

Through it all we have some extraordinarily interesting modern/post-modern mood-tone poetry. Holtje proves to be an especially effective sound sculptor in these movement-works. I found myself increasingly gravitating towards the music as I listened more and more.

On the basis of this soundtrack album I do find Steve Holtje to be a composer to watch. This is a very nice introduction to his music and I certainly hope there will be more for us to appreciate in the years to come. He has an adventurous yet also a very engaging way.

Recommended listening!

Alfred Schnittke, Symphony No. 1, USSR Ministry of Culture State Symphony Orchestra, Gennady Rozhdestvensky

The premiere recording of Alfred Schnittke's Symphony No. 1 (Melodiya CD 10 02321) by the USSR Ministry of Culture State Symphony Orchestra under conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky in 1987 was a signal event in evolving glastnost policy as well as a triumph in Russian late-modernism. The recent Melodiya CD reissue has just become available here and it is a remarkable album.

The Symphony is a rather titanic work, filled with dense modern clashes and collages of many different musical strains, from baroque to free jazz, from marches to the blues, all interspersed within a linear fire-breathing avant orchestral setting. In the original liners reproduced for the CD edition Schnittke called what he was doing "polystylistics" and noted his debt to pioneering composers like Ives and Mahler. No doubt the singular Schittke First was and is a landmark venture into a postmodern landscape, albeit a kind of continuation and extension of collage style. Schnittke was most certainly at this phase of his career one of the most important exponents of the new cacophony, the "impure" form of modernism of the last years of the 20th century. This is a extremely important and also extremely engaging work that gives us a window onto the era as seen by a brilliant musical mind.

I missed the original LP issue at the time. It was not widely distributed in the States but I soon heard of the composer and ultimately began exploring his music in some depth based on what became available to me.

This recording marked a real turning point for the composer. He envisioned it as a kind of chronology of the 20th century in musical terms. There are aleatoric elements and huge expanses of orchestral sound that require a very large symphony orchestra, which subsequently produces some of the most remarkable sonic spectacular fireworks you are likely to hear from such an outfit.

A good deal of preparation no doubt was required to get it all right. The performance has nothing of the slapdash to it, though there are extraordinarily chaotic qualities to parts of the work. Rozhdestvensky manages to convey the excitement and turbulence of the music while parsing out each sound event section with some care and attention to the overarching whole.

There is at least one later recording available according to Amazon. I have not heard any but this one. The historic and artistic importance of the Melodiya recording makes it essential, surely. It is indispensable Schnittke and a breakthrough postmodern work that should be studied and appreciated by anyone committed to understanding late modernity in the orchestral sphere. It is also a breathtaking work in definitive performance!

If you want to know how we got to where we are today, this belongs in your library.

Leonardo Balada, Concerto for Piano, Winds and Percussion, Carnegie Mellon Wind Ensemble, Soloists

Spain's most distinguished high-modernist? That likely is Leonardo Balada (b. 1933). Naxos has been releasing a number of fine volumes devoted to his music (look his name up on the search box above for more reviews), the latest of which is Concerto for Piano, Winds and Percussion (Naxos 8.573064). It pairs the Carnegie Mellon Wind Ensemble under various conductors with Enrique Graf, piano, David Premo, cello, and Ashan Pillai, viola, for the concerted numbers.

Balada's output is divided between a first, neo-classical period, characterized by the "Concerto for Cello and Nine Players" (1962, rev. 1967) included here, and his later high-modernist phase, which is represented nicely by four works on this volume, composed between 1971 and 2009-10.

He came to the US years ago, where he graduated from Columbia after studying with Persichetti and Copland. He has been a professor of composition at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh since 1970.

The Carnegie Mellon Wind Ensemble is a first-rate ensemble and seems ideally suited to perform the various compositions on this album.

We get to hear an excellent assortment of works by Balada: "Combres--A Short Symphony for Band" (1971), the "Concerto for Piano, Winds and Percussion" (1973), the aforementioned "Concerto for Cello and Nine Players" (1963), a first recording of his "Viola Concerto" (2009-10) and his "Sonata for Ten Winds" (1979). All are central Balada, showing master craftsmanship and inspiration, a modernist and neo-classic tang, and a contrapuntal complexity that does not so much remind of later Stravinsky as much as parallels him as an equally original voice in the modern lineage.

The music can be ascerbic, it can be stirring; it is consistently dramatic and expressive; it is always substantial.

It forms an excellent introduction to Balada for those not familiar, and also gives those that do a wealth of excellent music to savor. The performances are exemplary as well.

Very recommended!

Ice Performs Anna Thorvaldsdottir, In the Light of Air

In the lineage of today's music, at least in the ambient, radical tonality, sound color realm of works, one might trace a movement from Satie to Morton Feldman to now as one line. That seems very much so to me in the music of Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir, specifically her In the Light of Air (Sono Luminus 92192) as performed by ICE.

The program consists of one longer and one shorter piece, the title track being the former, "Transitions" the latter. The two flow together seamlessly in a sustained mood that begins as a hushed carpet of sounds with emerging motival elements that increasingly come to the forefront as from a mist, only to recede again.

The instrumentation is electronics, viola, cello, harp, piano and percussion, including an installation of metallic ornaments that appear dramatically and percussively in the final "Remembrance" movement of the first work.

"Transitions" was written for the cellist in the ICE ensemble, Michael Nicolas, who alternately personifies "man" and "machine" in the piece, expression and emotion versus maximum precision and accuracy.

ICE, which stands for the International Contemporary Ensemble, is a collective of some 35 musicians, capable of morphing from the smallest chamber ensemble to a rather large chamber orchestra depending upon need. The quintet assembled for In the Light of Air sounds absolutely perfect for the music at hand, which makes sense in that both works were created with them in mind.

That music has considerable magic. There is a sort of sustained ritual tonal wash to the first piece with emerging instrumental segments that stand out as having a discursive logic in the overall scheme and great memorability. The "man and machine" oscillations of "Transitions" embody contrast and color in different ways, displaying the possibilities in a solo cello context, so that there is a sort of inter-resonating totality to it all, a definite stylistic congruity that is strikingly original.

Anna Thorvaldsdottir has given us considerable beauty and great depth in this program. She is a special creative force and one most definitely to watch in the contemporary music world going forward.

As is mostly the case in Sono Luminus releases, the music is on two disks, a standard CD with conventional two-channel playback, and a blueray capable of 5:1 surround sound.

Stunning! Totally recommended!