Laura Metcalf, First Day, with Matei Varga

Laura Metcalf appears before us in all her cello warmth and virtuosity on the recent album First Day (Sono Luminus 92201). It is a unified program of vivid short works, most from the 20th century with a couple from the present-day, and a baroque perennial. They give her and pianist collaborator Matei Vargas plenty of expressive and lively music.

Ms. Metcalf has a beautiful tone, a projecting sense of line and an extroverted joie de vivre that matches the repertoire very nicely. The lesser known contemporary works--Jose Bragato's "Gracia y Buenos Aires," Caleb Burhans' "Phantasie" and Dan Visconti's bluesy "Hard-knock Stomp" blend right in with the more familiar fare. All give Laura a chance to soar rhapsodically with a goodly amount of that exotic minor flavor we associate with Eastern European and Spanish/Spanish-Latin American music.

So Ms. Metcalf seems just right for Martinu's "Variations on a Slovakian Theme," Ginastera's "Pampeana No. 2, Op. 21," Enescu's "Sonata in F Minor," Poulenc's "Les chemins de l'amour" (where we get a taste of her lovely voice as well), and an especially soaring version of Marin Marais (1656-1728) and his beautiful "Variations on 'La Folia'."

Laura Metcalf brings us a sense of assuredness and a projectively dramatic way that is forwarded wonderfully by Matei Varga. It is a most beautiful recital that proclaims Laura's arrival as a major present-day cellist.

It is something to revel in, surely. Molto bravo!

Network, Puts / Britten / Mahler / Bryant, The Ohio State University Wind Symphony, Russel C. Mikkelson

Wind band. Anybody who participated in such ensembles in high school and/or college may right now be recalling one or more of the annual spring concerts. My high school was blessed with gifted music teachers and we had a good band, considering we were novices. The spring concert was a chance to be ambitious and play some things that were sophisticated and called for all our concentration. As rewarding as it all was, we never came within a continent to the Ohio State University Wind Symphony, who under director Russel C. Mikkelson give us some superlative performances of 20th and 21st century works on Network (Naxos 8.573446). They not only sound great, they have chosen a program that keeps you energized and interested.

Four varied but somehow mutually reinforcing works flow smoothly on the program. The sequence is bookended by two cutting-edge 21st century works, in between which we get to hear some nicely done classics by no means common to wind band repertoire. One is a wind band arrangement of one of Mahler's Ruckert Songs, Um Mitternacht (At Midnight), with mezzo-soprano Katherine Rohrer nicely prevailing. Along with this we get a  suite from Benjamin Britten's rather rare incidental music "The Sword in the Stone" (1939), which was performed as part of the BBC radio play dramatization of T. H. White's story broadcast on the "Children's Hour." It shows us the somewhat playful, beautifully descriptive side of the composer we get so nicely in Britten's opera scores as well.

The beginning of the program concentrates on the title work "Network," a dramatic opus by the Pulitzer Prize winning Keven Puts. It was composed in 1997 and revised in 2003. It is all based on a "frantic eight-voice canon," that in various full or partial forms repeats itself throughout the work. The addition of sharps and flats at various points becomes a way to vary the music in color and sound, and the composer uses these changes to let the music evolve and shift like clouds on a windy day. It is bracing music, played brilliantly.

Steven Bryant's ambitious "Concerto for Wind Ensemble" (2007-2010) concludes the program with an involved, 35 minute work with multiple shifting moods and modes. The composer's overall intention was to "depict virtuosity" and that he certainly does, with a myriad of heroically inspired passages in vivid orchestration, embodying both difficulty and transcendance.

So that's the story with this release. It comprises some brilliant performances of works beautiful to hear in the wind band context, music that holds its own with anything out there, covering a vast span of time from the late romantic to the post-modern, and doing so with a non-compromising accessibility that should appeal to music lovers of all stripes.

An impressive outing. Very recommended.

James Wood, Cloud-Polyphonies, Tongues of Fire

So, James Wood? Yes. A very much living composer who gives us his compositions Cloud-Polyphonies and Tongues of Fire in a recent recording (NMC Recordings D223). Judging from the provenance of  the NMC label he is British born, and so the liner biography all but affirms. He began his career as conductor of the Schola Cantorum of Oxford, then founded the New London Chamber Choir whose new music affiliations began under his directorship.  1982 to 1984 found him as director of percussion studies in the Internationale Ferienkurse in Darmstadt. He founded the Center for Microtonal Music and its ensemble Critical Band in the 1990s. In 2007 he migrated permanently to Germany where he composes and conducts on a freelance basis.

The two works have dramatic clout.

"Tongues of Fire" features the MDR Leipzig Radio Choir and the Ear Massage Percussion Quartet under the composer's tutelage for some primal choral music that has the kind of pre-AD feel of later Carl Orff, a ritualized, quasi-primitive dynamic that goes its own way with considerable impact.

"Cloud-Polyphonies" gets intensive and effective treatment by the Yale Percussion Group under Robert Van Sice. It lives up to its name with masses of mallet instruments in varying combinations creating ambient clusters of non-periodic, sensual swarms of sound. Piano and non-pitched percussion have contrasting moments with their own cloud formations. The drumming aspect of the ensemble emerges nicely with some bracing pulsations. This is vibrant, vital music that reminds us of the legacy of Xenakis in thinking of percussion ensembles as sound color densities and timbral tapestries. Yet there is much Wood originality to discern in this work. He has a personal approach and a notable dedication to artfully designed masses of sounds. The piece is landmark for its long-form excitement and mood matrices.

Anyone with a sense of modern new music adventure will no doubt respond to this compendium of Wood works. It is gratifying and stimulating fare, performed with a dramatic sense of detail sculpting. Here is a vital new music figure well worth hearing.

Sebastiano Meloni, Moods and Sketches, 12 Improvisations for Piano

Improvisation on the keyboard was very much expected of the leading classical musical minds in earlier years. And what came about was framed by the compositional practices of the time. So Johann Sebastian Bach might improvise elaborate fugues based on a particular theme; Mozart was known to create brilliant variations spontaneously on a theme given to him at the spur-of-the-moment. Fantasias were possible and were another, more free option, but of course what came out was something the composer might have more carefully worked over in a formal composition. There were definite resonances between the improvised and the composed.

Today's new music pianists may be called upon to improvise, and again, what comes out has some relation to what they might sit down and compose. It is interesting to compare the avant jazz composers and their improvisations with what the avant classical players might invent. The basic language may be different, though there are intersections with what a Keith Jarrett might do freely and what a classicist tends towards. In the pure realm of jazz, Charlie Parker's compositions were closely related to what he improvised, for example.

All this serves to introduce pianist-composer Sebastiano Meloni and his album Moods and Sketches: 12 Improvisations for Piano (Big Round 8945). Maestro Meloni sets about to give us a series of intriguing and stimulating spontaneities. As stated in the liners, he "often decide[s] which forms, sounds, timbres or registers [he is] going to explore ahead of time. [His] purpose is to make atonal improvisations a compositional language, which means strict rules and attention to form."  And so you tend to hear in his musical musings something a bit more structured than what a jazz player would do when playing "totally free." But in the end someone like a Cecil Taylor or a Connie Crothers plays freely in structured ways as well, only the language is somewhat different. There is a lineage that differs and so the music generally differs as well.

In a general way this may be somewhat moot when experiencing Meloni's album. For the music that results is fascinating and beautiful, not meant to be listened to analytically so much as appreciated for the flow and expressiveness of the various segments. Yet the symbiosis still holds.

And so also whether you listen to this album from the perspective of the jazz or the classical camps, or both, you find yourself reveling in the sheer inventive brilliance of the music. Meloni has a rich musical mind that can and does find fertile territory wherever he turns. It is modern in result, but richly lyrical and impressionistic at the same time.

An excellent performance. I do very much recommend you listen.

Larry Polansky, Four-Voice Canons

Today I catch up with a Cold Blue release from several years ago (CB0011) that retains my interest and shows no sign of aging. It is a disk by composer Larry Polansky called Four-Voice Canons. The album  features performances by various personages, some of them taking the form of collaborations, others functioning more in the composer vs. performer realm. All are canons by virtue of having counterpoint from four distinct voices, whether that be human voices talking, reciting or singing, natural and electronically altered sounds and/or conventional instruments. There is an imitative element oftimes, sometimes in ways not readily clear at first, others more overt. Still others have more pointillistic entries and exits by the various voices so that the canon idea is expanded into less traditionally classic interactive ways.

Each of the 15 examples included here is unique in itself. The range of sound sources and corresponding  atmospherics can vary widely. So we get solo marimba, a gamelan instrument, fretless electric guitar, the voice-patter of a child or a group of adolescents saying specific words to form a contrapuntal tapestry via electronic alteration, a chamber choral number by New York Voices,  and so forth.

Some utilize noise or unpitched sounds, others are in a sort of radical tonality mode, still others utilize extra-diatonic tones. All are situated within a spectrum of a postmodern-meets-classical-modernist diversity.

There is much that piques your ears via sheer inventive imagination. Many of the canons grow in stature as you listen repeatedly. Some form interludic segmentation as a part of the whole, and perhaps have something less than iconic interest in themselves after many hearings.

Polansky and his collaborators/participants manage to redefine how we think of canonical form and in the process give us a lively potpourri of brief pieces that encapsule a diverse array of possibilities and keep the ears interested.

It may not be a landmark offering of the new century but it grabs you and sends you over a vast terrain of sound landscapes with a consistently imaginative approach. It is at all times an interesting and provocative listen.

Danish String Quartet, Thomas Ades, Per Norgard, Hans Abrahamsen

An excellent string quartet graces our presence today with three lesser-known yet blockbuster modern works. It is the Danish String Quartet playing Thomas Ades, Per Norgard, Hans Abrahamsen (ECM New Series 2453). Each of the works was written when the respective composer was still relatively young, in his 20s. Each shows a vibrant sonarity and a strong sense of form; each shares a kind of modern, youthful expressive quality that the Danish String Quartet brings out with lyrical care and fine detail.

Thomas Ades' "Arcadiana for string quartet, op. 12" (1994), Per Norgard's "Quartetto Breve, String Quartet No. 1" (1952), and Hans Abrahamsen's "10 Preludes, String Quartet No. 1" (1973), span a fairly vast period of time and yet share a basically tonal but modern coloristic palette, a sense of the lyrically dramatic, a singing quality and a modern choice of widely varying harmonic possibilities.

The Danish String Quartet shows us masterfully coherent readings of the works, a syntactical flowering born of strict attention to the dynamic and coloristic demands of each composer and the quartet's own artistic togetherness of purpose.

It is a tribute to the outstanding artistry of the Danish String Quartet. The performances help us experience directly the subtleties of these works. Very recommended.

Ensemble Reconsil, Exploring the World, Roland Freisitzer

Today's offering may not be for everybody. Probably NOTHING is that. It is a 14-volume CD box set that was recording during a series of concerts by the talented and dedicated large chamber Ensemble Reconsil, Roland Freisitzer conducting. Exploring the World (Orlando Records 0014) devotes a CD each to 14 countries. Every disk gives us five or so chamber works in a high modern/postmodern vein, featuring three mostly very recent compositions (this decade) by composers from that country, plus a couple of works by new Austrian composers, as Ensemble Reconcil has their home base there. The composers are of the younger generation in the main. A wealth of compositional approaches and sonic results are on display, all of definite interest.

One disk each represents the US, Australia, South Africa, Spain, the United Kingdom, Japan, Argentina, New Zealand, Singapore, Sweden, Hong Kong, Brazil, South Korea and Japan.

Everything from post-minimalism to post-Darmstadt to new expressionism can be found in this veritable cornucopia of contemporary modernism. The performances are very good to smashing and in the end you get an incredibly diverse and inclusive set of programs. It was a labor of love for all concerned, clearly.

It would take many pages to give a run down of all the composers and works involved. Suffice to say that we get a milestone survey of the newest of new music from around the globe, a host of composers and works, most of which the vast majority of us will be unfamiliar with. All the more reason to value what the ensemble has done. It is a tribute to the nearly selfless dedication of Freisitzer and Ensemble Reconsil. To seek out and give us world-class performances of such a global abundance of new music is a remarkable achievement.

It is a monumental release that will give avant new music aficionados a huge boost on understanding something of where we are today across the globe. I plan to devote much time to re-exploring it in the months ahead! Molto bravo! Get this if you can!