Thomas Juneau, Visions Eternal

Every collection of compositions has a trajectory, a way of proceeding. It certainly is true of the disk up for today, Visions Eternal (Ravello 7913), a set of four choral compositions by the American composer-conductor Thomas Juneau.

These are sacred works in a tonal-modern realm, looking backward to early music practices as it all gets rejuvinated in a contemporary framework. It features the Summit Chorale, the Juneau Vocal Alliance, and ranges from a capella to harp or organ accompaniment, with in the end-piece compositions adding the Scarlet Knight Brass and Percussion Ensemble. Juneau conducts.

The music is exalting or alternately contemplative. "Gaudette" is based on the text from a 16th-century Christmas Carol and has an infectious odd-meter quality; "Te Deum," "Five Latin Motets" and "Magnum Mysterium" are based on Latin liturgical or otherwise sacred texts of earlier times.

All of the music is has ethereal elements, atmospherically choral in its sure treatment of voices, and movingly composed. The performances are quite respectable and generally well done.

Juneau is a fine craftsman with an inspired way with massed vocalists. It is a compendium that feels right for this holiday season and the wintertime in general.

Anyone who enjoys angelic choirs and vocal ensembles that channel the sacred music traditions in modern ways will find this much to their liking. Recommended.

Stathis Skandalidis Plays Gilbert Isbin

The lute goes back to the Middle Ages, as most everyone knows, with a body of compositions that spans through to the Baroque era. After that the number of compositions diminishes considerably and the guitar takes over as the primary vehicle.

The scarcity of contemporary compositions for lute is belied by the recent album Stathis Skandalidis Plays Gilbert Isbin (Tern 007). Happily, Isbin arranges 3 Old Flemish Songs and then furnishes Skandalidis with 20 brief new compositions.

Isbin straddles ancient and modern worlds in these lively pieces. They retain something of the intricacies and multi-part articulations of early music, but there is an inventive contemporary stance that clearly identifies the pieces as of the modern era.

Skandalidis hails from Greece and enjoys a busy schedule of concertizing on lute and guitar throughout Europe. Isbin himself is a Belgian lutenist and guitarist with more than 200 compositions for lute or guitar and ensemble to his credit. Of his numerous recordings this is the latest.

The combination of Skandalides' exceptional abilities and Isbin's old-in-new modernist creativity makes for a joy of a listen. Together they extend the lute's possibilities while giving us very idiomatic music that takes full advantage of the body of technical approaches from the tradition yet speaks to our contemporary sensibilities.

This is music that grows with every listen--sophisticated yet extraordinarily accessible and attractive in every way.

Highly recommended!

December Celebration, New Carols by Seven American Composers

Classical music listeners who want more than the standard holiday music fare don't always find a great deal to chose from. Of course there is Handel, Bach, early music, Pavarotti and other famed singers in holiday programs, various cantatas and Gregorian Chant, Liszt, Saint-Saens, but of contemporary modern compositions (and arrangements), there isn't much. Britten. Menotti. Cannot think of a whole lot else. This year there is something truly new in that realm, however, that is worth your time: December Celebration, New Carols by Seven American Composers (Pentatone 5186 537).

It features soprano Lisa Delan and baritone Lester Lynch along with the Volti Chorus, Musicians of the New Century Chamber Orchestra and Steven Bailey, organ and piano, all under the direction of Dawn Harms.

We get some very familiar carols scattered among modern-contemporary ones. So there is a nice arrangement of "Silent Night" (Gordon Getty) and some other chestnuts like "Good King Merrily on High" (aka Ding Dong...) but mostly new music from Mark Adams, Jake Heggie, Joan Morris & William Bolcom, David Garner, Luna Pearl Woolf, Gordon Getty and John Corigliano.

Delan's vibrato takes a little getting used to but after a bit that melds into the overall performances, which are very respectable and spirited.

This (of course) is not avant contemporary but tonal and carol-centric with a little nutmeg for your egg nog. It is a Christmas album that needs close listening at first, because after all the music is mostly very new. But after a couple of listenings it opens up and you find much to appreciate.

Doubtless this will not garner the performers a Grammy. but it is very well done and in the end gives you blessed relief from the continually recycling standards. There is much to like. A balm for jaded ears, this is. Recommended for good ears grown weary on the usual.

Peter Garland, After the Wars, Sarah Cahill

Piano music in a radical tonality mode is what comes through nicely on Peter Garland's 20-minute, specially priced EP After the Wars (Cold Blue 0044). The program consists of four brief interrelated, visceral, poetic tone sounding works for solo piano, played characteristically and with elan by Sarah Cahill.

The titles of the works give some idea of where the music is coming from: "Spring View: The nation is ruined, but the mountains and rivers remain (after Tu Fu)," "Summer grass/all that remains/of young warriors' dreams (after Basho)," "Occasional Poem on an Autumn's Day: When I am at peace, I let everything go (After Ch'eng Hao)," and "A snowy morning/and smoke from the kitchen roof--it is good (after Buson)."

A local world, then, after the wars have ended, all is still. That is the feeling one gets from the music. It takes sheer pleasure in the combination of tones, yet the expression goes beyond a pure sounding to evoke moments of peace through all the four seasons, peace and loss, then transcendence.

This is piano music that comes out of Satie, tonal Cage and Feldman, through to its own territory, in a radical tonality vein typical of the Cold Blue label yet very much in its own right.

It is a beautiful evocation that relies not on the typical linear connectedness of standard melody but rather has simultaneity that arises from piano soundings that link with a sort of an abstract disconnect of fragile tonal events which nonetheless have poetic flow when experienced together.

There is beauty, a spacious unraveling in no hurry to get to an end point, yet each movement stays a little while and then is gone.

This is another very entrancing program from Cold Blue. Peter Garland weaves a web of expressive, muted magic and we readily fall under its spell.

Very recommended.

Vierne, 12 Preludes, Solitude, Nocturne, Muza Rubackyte

Luis Vierne (1870-1937) is best known of course as a key figure in the French symphonic organ school that followed in the wake of Franck. But what of his other music? It turns out that around two-thirds of his output is not for organ, but rather come to us as song cycles, orchestral, chamber and piano works. Some of those solo piano pieces are aptly performed on a recent release 12 Preludes, Solitude, Nocturne (Brilliant 95154) by Muza Rubackyte.

I suppose it should come as no surprise that these pieces have a post-Lisztian, pre-Scriabinesque sort of feeling to them. They are sometimes rather demanding technically, fully flourishing late-romantic, pre-modern showcases.

Ms. Rubackyte is well-disposed toward the works and temperamentally right for the rolling arpeggios and melodically expressive nature of them.

These were all composed around the time of WWI.

They are all generally through-composed, fantasia-like works that have structure, a feeling of spontaneity and a fair amount of chromaticism. Once you realize that these are mature-period Vierne works (assuming you know his organ music) it does make some stylistic sense. If he had written these for organ there would be of course less late romantic flourishes typical of the piano in the day and then the structure and harmonic forms taken on would seem typical of Vierne the organ master.

The fact that they are most idiomatically pianistic is fitting, but in other words this is not a radically different Vierne, but rather a consistent one that adapts to pianistic means to express what he has in mind.

The four movements of "Solitude" and the concluding "Nocturne, Op.35, No.3" are the most poetic of the pieces here, at times less virtuoso-oriented, at times the most moodily chromatic, sometimes almost impressionistic. And so I find myself especially attracted to them.

But all-in-all the entire program has music that is far from uninteresting; it is very well played and worthy of your ears. Those who appreciate Vierne's organ music will find these pieces especially interesting. It may not be an essential disc for those not already familiar with Vierne, but it sheds more light on his place in the early modern music world while also providing the listener with some very good piano music.

Westminster Concert Bell Choir, An English Christmas

I love bell sounds, whether it be in the form of carillon, multiple cathedral bells, or handbell-ringer groups. So when I heard the Westminster Concert Bell Orchestra's latest album An English Christmas (Westminster Choir College 1510) I was entranced. The outfit is the largest of its kind, in terms of range of bells anyway, and under the direction of Kathleen Ebling Shaw they sound phenomenal. The group is a part of the Westminster Choir College in Princeton, NJ, USA.

The bell choir for this album selected a nice grouping of old English carols, some quite familiar such as "Ding, Dong, Merrily on High" or "Good King Wencesles," but also some unfamiliar to most US listeners, such as the "Sussex" and "Wexford" Carols. There is occasional organ, choir and solo vocal parts, etc., but the bells are out front continually as one would expect.

The modern arrangements are quite well done and the orchestra sounds great. This is a beautiful record for those with good musical instincts. It is a perfect album for its sonic glow, just the right sort of music for those with jaded ears who need something different and moving for the holiday season. The old carols still have some life in them yet when played like this! Very recommended, especially for those who associate bells with the season. Ring out the old!

Jan Jirasek, Czech and Moravian Christmas Carols, JITRO Czech Children's Chorus, Jiri Skopal

Today's post looks at an unusual volume, at least for those of us who live outside the region this music hails from. I speak of Jan Jirasek's arrangements of Czech and Moravian Christmas Carols (Navona 6010). The performances center around the JITRO Czech Children's Chorus with instrumental accompaniment, directed by Jiri Skopal. They are a spirited and sonorous outfit, well suited to the fare at hand.

These are a fine selection of what I gather are traditional carols from the region, arranged for chorus and chamber orchestra in a folk-early music style. I must say that I do not recognize any of these, which is exactly fine with me, as I am the sort who tires of the standard fare and am happiest when I can appreciate and discover other traditions outside what I am likely to hear involuntarily on television, radio or in the malls here in the US. So I do tend to explore more from the early periods in the US and Europe, or things that are new.

If you are of Czech-Moravian descent you may know at least some of these, and so you will respond for different reasons at least initially. For the rest of us this is a veritable "Festivus" of unfamiliar music, at once folk-like, early-music drenched, filled with the patina of age and archaicisms in the best senses.

The performances have enthusiasm and finesse in equal proportions. Jirasek's arrangements have much to recommended them--and combined with the choir's exacting zeal make for an irresistible program.

If you look for something different for your holiday season, this one most certainly qualifies and does so with a genuine flair. I recommend this strongly for those who seek to rejuvenate the around-home repertoire this year. But then of course it can be portable too!