Ensemble Galilei, From Whence We Came

All avid listeners to "serious" music find there are times when deep, perhaps intense music needs to be balanced by something less heavy, as a refresher and to recreate a mood of glad expectation. I have a perfect antidote today, the Ensemble Galilei and their album From Whence We Came (Sono Luminus 92194).

They have been around since 1990. I reviewed their Surrounded By Angels here a while back. See the index search box. On this album as on previous ones, they give us a virtuoso chamber version of the Celtic sound. They do this by a lively program of traditional music of Ireland, Scotland and Europe, early music rearranged for the ensemble and originals. They do this with a hybrid eclectic instrumentation. Isaac Alderson plays uilleann pipes, Irish flute and whistles; Ryan McKasson plays fiddle; Kathryn Montoya plays recorders and whistles; Jackie Moran is on percussion and banjo; Sue Richards plays the Celtic harp; and Carolyn Surrick is on viola da gamba.

Whether it be an arrangement of Marin Marais's "Minuet and Caprice" or the "Largo" from a Georg Phillipp Teleman viola de gamba sonata, Irish or mainland folk music from historic collections, or an old Swedish hymn, or an original by Catherine Surrick, the ensemble gives us an ever-evocative, timeless archaic musicality that brings us in direct connection with earlier ways of sounding and hearing.

These are first-rate musicians with a sense of borderless possibilities and a beautiful sound. They give you a respite from the modern intensities of our world with music of breadth and content. This is indeed an exceptional experience!

As with many Sono Luminus releases, it comes in a two disc set--one a CD with standard stereo mixdowns and then a Blu-Ray disk with 9.1 and 5.1 surround sound.

Highly recommended!

Dutilleux, Tout un Monde Lontain, Emmanuel Bertrand, Luzerner Sinfonieorchester and James Gaffigan

We mark Henri Dutilleux's 100th birthday this coming January 16th. Tout un Monde Lontain (Harmonia Mundi 902209) is a disk celebrating the composer with the remarkable cellist Emmanuelle Bertrand playing the principal role on three works that fit well together. The first to consider is the "Sonata for Cello and Piano," Claude Debussy's final work which roughly coincides with Dutilleux's birth. The Dutilleux works on the program also feature the cello prominently, namely his "Trois Strophes sur le nom de Sacher pour violoncelle solo" from 1982 and the cello concerto "Tout un monde lontain" completed in 1970 on commission from the celebrated Msitislav Rostropovich.

Pianist Pascal Amoyel joins Ms. Bertrand for the Debussy; the Luzerner Sinfonieorchester under James Gaffigan does the honors for the concerto. Emmanuelle's technical and expressive abundance makes of the music all we might hope for. She is a formidable cellist, a gift of our times, and the music on the program brings out her remarkable brilliance fully.

The putative affiliation of Debussy and Dutilleux is made palpable with the inclusion of Claude's sonata, played with all the depth one might expect from the potent pairing of Bertrand and Amoyel. I've posted on them both, together and separately, on here before--so there are some other wonderful releases covered. Look them up.

The solo cello work is filled with plenty of substance and grit.

But it is the "Tout un monde lontain" that forms the center attraction here. Dutilleux was inspired by Baudelaire's "Flowers of Evil" and the mood of mystical passion pervades the work.

This album is a significant treat for all who appreciate Dutilleux but surely also for anyone who responds to marvelous cello artistry in a modern tonal world. It is an exceptionally rewarding performance and very beautiful music at that.

Totally recommended.

Christos Hatzis, Going Home Star, Truth and Reconciliation

Today a most unusual ballet score, Going Home Star, Truth and Reconciliation (Centrediscs 22015, 2-CDs), composed by Christos Hatzis for the Canada's Royal Winnepeg Ballet 75th Anniversary production choreographed by Mark Godden, script by Joseph Boyden. It centers around the development of the Indian reservation schools in the area.

Using traditional Indian music by the Northern Cree Singers, Tanya Tagaq singing traditional Inuit game songs, sound effects, electronic alterations, and the Winnepeg Symphony Orchestra under Tadeusz Biernacki, along with the recitation of Native American texts describing some native lifeway details set against the dysfunctional and often cruel treatment by the Missionary schoolmasters, we experience a disheartening story that ultimately ends in "recognition, truth and reconciliation."

The music is a dramatic pastiche of Indian song, Inuit game vocals, hymn tunes, a snippet from the "Rites of Spring" and an otherwise vibrantly moving and eclectic orchestral melange in a sort of postmodern vein.

The story revolves around Native American protagonists Annie, hairdresser and party animal and Gordon, a homeless man and trickster figure. They find each other and in turn we experience a flashback to their harrowing and bewildering childhood first in a traditional setting and then in the hands of the missionary schools. It tells the story of the desperate struggle to realize identity while negotiating their way through the White Man's institutions.

The score is understandingly subordinated to the story line of the ballet but as heard here in the recorded context has dynamic thrust and a combination of modern contemporary (tonal) elements, archaicisms and Native American authenticity, all joined together in various sequential ways.

It most certainly attracts and retains your attention with its shifting and often enough flexibly rhythmic dynamics. It holds its own in the continual juxtapositions that no doubt are ramified by the actions of the dancers in the ballet settings.

The music has a quirky kind of dramatic presence that is both inventive and at times pictorially literal in its audio backdrop to the dance events. There is much to experience in this music that stays in the mind.

In the end it may not be the essential ballet music of this yet-young century. But it is very engaging and original in its widely eclectic approach. Give it your ears.

Max Reger, Complete Organ Works, Various, 16-CDs

We have in composer Max Reger (1873-1916) the missing link between the late romanticism of Mahler and Strauss and the pioneering modernism of the Viennese School (Schoenberg, Webern and Berg). There are a few others like Zemlinsky but no other who created such a gigantic output. Reger managed to combine the rigor of contrapuntal JS Bach with radically chromatic approaches that put him firmly in a new era in ways not quite like anybody else.

The Bach connection is nowhere more strongly felt than in his Complete Organ Works (Naxos 8.501601 16-CDs). The new complete opus recordings have been a labor of love beginning in the '90s through to today with volume after volume coming out bit by bit on various organs and with various players, all world-class.

The sixteen separate CDs cover everything Reger wrote for solo organ. He establishes himself as no doubt the greatest German organ composer since Bach, a clear alternative to the French School of organists which continued to flourish in his day, at times no less symphonic than they in his long form excursions, but then more at times an expansion of the multi-voiced fugal complex creator within the Bachian heritage.

Not everything in this set is a masterpiece, of course. Reger sometimes composed according to functional need, and there are some works designed for the parochial organist of medium accomplishment, arrangements of the many chorales that formed an important part of Lutheran Protestant church music. But then there are also some masterful transformations of chorales as theme and variations, as fugal subjects and the like.

There are some stunning toccata and fugues, preludes and fugues, trio sonatas and a great deal else. It is an abundance of riches with some somewhat more mundane works interspersed through the set. They are made up for by the sustained flashes of brilliance that are here in abundance.

This may be more organ music than some people are ready for, but those that wish to know the significant features of Max Reger's total output will find this very illuminating and genuinely moving. It is here that we encounter Max Reger's genius, here and in the best solo violin and cello works, the orchestral creations, the chamber works most intent on combining chromaticism and counterpoint to varying degrees.

Performances and sonics are uniformly first-rate. This box set gives great illumination to all who appreciate Reger, but also to all who appreciate the concert organ and for those who seek a proto-modernism which is also a glowing tribute and updating of the Bach heritage. If this feels like a part of your musical calling, treat yourself to this abundant fecundity by all means!

R. Nathaniel Dett, My Cup Runneth Over, The Complete Piano Works, Clipper Erickson

Afro-American composers in the US in the early modern period? From the jazz realm we of course have many, Jelly Roll Morton and Duke Ellington come to mind readily and happily. There is of course Scott Joplin . . . and William Grant Still from the classical realm. Now we have the chance to hear the music of another, Robert Nathaniel Dett (1882-1943), his complete solo piano music, on the new two-CD set My Cup Runneth Over (Navona 6013). Clipper Erickson takes on the music as the pianist and brings it all to life for us.

The music in first blush has the tang of impressionism in its harmonic and melodic intricacies, but ultimately there is a depth of originality that comes out as you listen further.

He was a pianist, teacher, choir leader, poet and writer. His book The Emancipation of Negro Music was well received and won him a literary prize at Harvard in 1920. He was the first Afro-American to graduate from Oberlin, concentrating on piano and composition, in 1908, and got his Masters at Eastman in 1931. His career was distinguished, yet somehow his music has fallen by the wayside until now.

His first composition efforts reflected the salon style then current but also incorporated ragtime and dance music elements. But he experienced a kind of awakening when "suddenly it seemed I heard again the frail voice of my long departed grandmother calling across the years; and in a rush of emotion that stirred my spirit to its very center, the meaning of the songs which had given her soul such peace was revealed to me."

From that point on his music often incorporated traditional Afro-American folk elements, from spirituals, which he made great efforts to preserve and promote, and other roots.

There are contrasts to be heard with the deeply involved treatment of such elements in the "Eight Bible Vignettes" of 1941-43 and the more straightforward Joplinesque rag treatment of "After the Cakewalk" from 1900.

We in the end get a composer whose voice, though perhaps stilled for years, seems right for renewed attention and revival. R. Nathaniel Dett in his mature period is a fully individual, fully original composer of his time. The two CDs of My Cup Runneth Over give us a composer of stature. Thanks to Clipper Erickson for providing us with fine performances and resurrecting Dett's music for us to appreciate anew. Perhaps now we can hear Dett's choral compositions?

Very recommended!

Haydn, The Creation, Harry Christophers, Handel and Haydn Society, Soloists

Joseph Haydn had been dead only six years when the Handel and Haydn Society formed (1815) in Boston. They first performed part one of Haydn's monumental oratorio The Creation on Christmas of that year. As part of their Bicentennial season this year Harry Christophers and the Society performed the work live. It is this live version that we happily have on a new two-CD set (CORO 6135).

It is the English version we hear, based on Genesis and Milton's Paradise Lost. Both English and German versions were published under Haydn's supervision in 1800. As Harry Christophers comments in the liner notes, Haydn "excels himself allowing soloists, chorus and period orchestra to revel in vivid word painting both vocal and instrumental." Christophers and the amassed choral and orchestral forces of the Handel and Haydn Society give us an exaltedly expressive performance that is in the period tradition and near ideal in its elated depth of expression.

This is arguably Haydn's finest work for voices and orchestra, inspired by the Handel of the "Messiah" for its grand sweep and melodic genius. Haydn remains himself yet engages the then not-so-old tradition with a Haydn-esque brilliance.

Soloists Sarah Tynan, Jeremy Ovenden and Matthew Brook, the choral and orchestral forces give us superlative performances. The joy of creation comes through with the precision and period perfection we come to expect from Christophers.

This is a disk set that provides us with the balance and musical thrust of the work as Haydn envisioned it. Like the Christopher/Handel Haydn recording of the Messiah last year (see the search box above to find my review) it is in the period tradition, not overblown with too large an orchestra or chorus (which was the practice last century) and more brio than sentimental, just right for our time and Haydn's. It is one of those triumphs that makes it essential listening. Happy 200th to the Handel and Haydn Society!

Monteverdi in Mantua: The Genius of the Vespers, Beal, Christophers & the Sixteen

On February 20, 2015 I reviewed here a striking performance of Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610 by the Sixteen under Harry Christophers. Monteverdi was the Italian early Baroque master who revolutionized the music by new expressive means and masterful brilliance. As one of the music texts I am always reading reminds me, his innovative use of monody and harmonized unified melody lines allowed him to go beyond strict polyphony for a new sonance, though he was also a master of the latter. The Vespers was one of his masterpieces, along with the operas and the madrigals. It exemplifies the very expressive combination of all the styles for a sacred work that no doubt startled the Duke and his retinue with its originality and stunning depth.

The Sixteen's version of the Vespers is a triumph of beauty and authentic period singularity.

Now we have a DVD documentary originally presented on BBC, Monteverdi in Mantua: the Genius of the Vespers (CORO--available as a single DVD or in a deluxe set with the Sixteen's 2-CD recording of the work). It is a moving, hour long exploration into the circumstances of Monteverdi in this period, working under a tyrannical Duke of Mantua.

Simon Russell Beale presents the narrative, the Sixteen and Harry Christopher present musical excerpts from the Vespers and along with Beale give us excellent insight into the music, the challenge of a proper performance and the intention of the composer to create a commanding sacred work in the hopes of finding better employment.

The insights of Christophers and the vocalists/instrumentalists of the Sixteen along with Beale's illuminating narrative and the Mantuan setting lead to an extraordinarily enlightening program. There is an additional bonus segment not a part of the BBC program that documents the recording of the two-CD Vespers release. It is very enlightening as well.

If you already have the Vespers CDs, the DVD is available separately. If you don't, the CDs are nicely packaged with the DVD in a deluxe version.

I found the documentary very moving in its biographical narrative and a treasure on period performance practice in the hands of Christophers and the Sixteen. Anyone serious about early music and Monteverdi will no doubt find all of this indispensable fare!