Weinberg, Piano Quintet, Cello Sonata No. 2, Piano Sonatine

When it comes to discovering composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg (1919-1996), it seems that each new release reveals more and more of his musical personality. That is certainly so with a new program of his chamber works, Piano Quintet, Cello Sonata No. 2, Piano Sonatine (Steinway & Sons 30072).

The three works cover something of the early years of his Russian exile from his native Poland and drop into his musical mind in several succeeding years, 1944, 1951, 1958.

The "Piano Quintet, Op. 18" (1944) has a molto expressivo demeanor that contrasts vividly in each movement, from the strangely hushed opening movement with its mysterious theme stated in the piano in octaves, we find ourselves in a sort of sarcastic waltz environment and then on in the final movement to an almost brutal thematic tattoo that quickly gives way to a complicated ethnically bursting forward dance motif and even an illusion to my ears to a boogie woogie pattern. It is characteristic of the very unexpected charms of the music's unfolding.

These were turbulent times for Weinberg and the music reflects anxiety, restlessness and onward momentum in ways very Modern and idiomatically Weinbergian. It is characteristic of Weinberg's Modernism that he not allow his opening theme to show much in repetition but instead to flow through without an obvious resting point. That never-resting quality in a way models the manic ever-active state of the modern megalopolis, or we certainly can experience it that way now even if he might have intended something else when he wrote it.

On the other hand the Piano Sonatine (1951) has a deceptive lightness that in paradoxical Weinbergian fashion turns out to be not "easy" but somewhat recalcitrant? It contrasts well with the Quintet and reminds us that Weinberg was not monolithic in any sense.

Finally the 1958 Cello Sonata No. 2 seems very much in line with the Russian Modernism in the air via Weinberg's friend and mentor Shostakovich yet also shows a subtle Jewish element and an additional Weinbergian element that sets it apart. The symbiotic relationship of Weinberg and Shostakovich was not necessarily all in the direction of the latter to the former, as we can read of in some of Shostakovich's later statements on the relationship.

As far as the performing artists involved, pianist Jeanne Golan sounds poised and committed as does the Attacca Quartet and cellist Andrew Vee. The scores call for a thorough grasp of Weinberg's highly individual window on music. Happily all five do very much get it and get into it.

For all these reasons this is a most attractive volume that will by its content get open up new territory for anyone interested in Weinberg's overall opus. It also could serve as a perfectly revealing introduction to the composer. So I do not hesitate to recommend.

Leo Brouwer, The Book of Signs, Paulo Bellinati, Concerto Caboclo, Brasil Guitar Duo, Delaware Symphony Orchestra, David Amado

Here we have today a set of World Premiere Recordings by the Brasil Guitar Duo and the Delaware Symphony Orchestra under David Amado. It is one of those programs that hits one immediately and then continues to grow in stature for its most memorable lyric content and brilliant two-guitar passagework. Someone who has listened to as much music as I have over a lifetime might rightfully be expected to have become somewhat blase over the years about the possibility of engaging lyricism. In fact I have never lost the capacity for more and yet more of it.

And so the music today meets a very willing and enthusiastic recipient. What is it? It is two concerti for two guitars and orchestra, both written in the present century. The most remarkable is Leo Brouwer's "The Book of Signs for two guitars and string orchestra" (2003). It runs some 45 minutes and begins most notably and notefully with a long movement entitled "The Signs of Memory," a theme and variations that haunts and delights. The theme sounds a little like the famous  Francois Couperin theme in "Les Folies Francoises" which also made an appearance with Frescobaldi and others. The Brouwer is a kind of harmonically parallel ghosting and the variations are  extraordinarily inventive. Oh, but I find on reading the liners that the theme is in fact from Beethoven's "32 Variations in G minor," which in part explains why it seems so familiar to me, and yet too Beethoven then hearkens back too to the "Les Folies" theme, interestingly enough. From there comes the second movement "Variaciones sobre un tema sentimental" a ravishing theme that nearly compares with Rodrigo's "Aranjuez" for sheer tunefulness and grace. It has that suspended mystery like the Rodrigo movement and gets flawless execution and poignant variations by the two guitars and strings. The third movement does not let down and has some of the most fetching two guitar passages I can remember hearing. Well it is not surprising since Brouwer is probably the most important composer for the guitar in our lifetime. And this is one of his most remarkable and accessible works. So happy us, then? Me, anyway.

So how can one top that? One cannot really but then Paulo Bellinati does not try so much as he encapsulates and reworks the music of his Sao Paulo homeland with an intriguing "Concerto Caboclo for two guitars and orchestra" (2011). It is contentful and a treasure of beautiful guitar sounds with and without orchestra. It has some of that Brazilian saudade. And really it has its own lyrical strengths too, so it is very well suited as the companion piece to the Brouwer. It is quite worthwhile in its own right. If you love Villa-Lobos' take on the folk-Brazilian mode, and/or Milhaud's work in this vein, here is something more and not at all inferior, either.

In the end I find myself very happy indeed with this program and its execution. It is hard to imagine a more dedicated and capable two-guitar team for this coupling. The Brasil Guitar Duo have all the technique and all the sweeping lyrical sense to make their parts soar. And the Delaware Symphony under Amado do what they should and do it with spirit and beauty.

So I think anyone who wants to be conversant with Modern concerted guitar works would do very well with this brilliant offering. Even if you don't. This is a real beauty! Ravishing music that could become a soundtrack for your life right now. So I do tell you as a friend. Just get it.

Scott L. Miller, RABA, Daniel Lippel, Laura Cocks, Ensemble U:

I have increasingly found Scott L. Miller to be his own musical voice in the realm of Electronic and New Music. Going through various blog indexes I find this to be in fact the third CD of his that I have reviewed on these pages and the pages of Gapplegate Music Review. He shows no sign of flagging on RABA (New Focus Recording FCR 198). In fact this well may be his most important offering to date.

What started out for Miller as a kind of mini-retrospective of his 20-year cycle of creation rather quickly became a kind of reworking of past efforts into new effusions and novel collaborations. It is a collection of some seven works created over a significant time span (one from 1998, the others completed in their present form in 2016-7). Each occupies a particular niche in the ambient zone. There are some three for "fixed media electronic sound" alone: "Autumn Etude" (1998), "Hilltop at Montalvo" (2017), and "Solstice Orrery" (2016); one for Ensemble U: (alto flute, clarinet, violin, cellos, tam tam, piano) and electronic sound, "Raba" (2015/2017); two for Daniel Lippel on electric guitar and electronic sound or interactive electronic sound, "Admiration" (2008/2017), "Meditation" (2016); and one for electronic sound, Daniel on guitar plus Laura Cocks on flute and electronic sound, "The Frost Performs Its Secret Ministry" (2016).

The most striking thing perhaps in these compositions as a whole and in general is the acute sense of a vibrant sonority-timbre design that puts each work in a special place and creates memorable ambiances that feel rather organic, naturally growing and permuting. The works that interface conventional instruments and electronics have close overlaps in timbre between the two classes of sounds so that a sort of orchestral luminosity in furthered. And what completes it all is the sort of musico-logic of the sequence of each work. There is not quite a feeling of inevitability so much as there is a kind of "rightness" to the unfolding in time. The liner notes mention his tendency towards something called "granular synthesis," or in other words the breaking up of a sonic signal into grains of sound that each contain some of the audio modeling of the original. One might profitably trace some of the feeling of audio-logic to this process.

One might quibble as to whether Scott L. Miller's music belongs in the New Music category. To me such quibbles are plainly wrong-headed. An electric guitar, for example, is a contemporary instrument like, say, the pianoforte was during its first advent. It is transcendent by now of stylistic pigeonholes. And if ambiance can be found across a spectrum of various stylistic avenues, it is not to say that it does not belong as one of the characteristic modes  available to New Music artists today.

What especially matters is that Scott L. Miller excels as an artist in this mode. He is one of the very best active today and one of the most original and consistently satisfying. The program is in many ways a bellwether of New Music-Electronic Music right now. I enthusiastically recommend it to you.

Axel Borup-Jorgensen, Marin, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Thomas Sondergard

I have gone into the music of Danish composer Axel Borup-Jorgensen (1924-2012) at some length on these pages. (See articles from February 23, 2017, February 3, 2014 and September 7, 2016.) However I have not previously discussed his orchestral works. This morning I get the opportunity for that with a deluxe DVD-SACD set of Marin (Our Recordings 2.110426). The DVD contains two films that utilize Borup-Jorgensen's music, "Marin, An Animated Fantasy," and "Axel, A Portrait Film." The SACD contains the full nearly 20-minute performance of the orchestra work "Marin" plus a number of chamber works from the film of the same name.

I have no way of commenting on the DVD because every one of my players or disk drives has failed in the last several years.

On the SACD I have happily spent a good deal of time. Its nearly 80 minute length allows a good number of relevant compositions from the film(s) to be explored. The orchestral opus "Marin" gets a fully fleshed, vibrantly sonic reading from Thomas Sondergard conducting the Danish National Symphony Orchestra. Written at various stages between 1963-1970, it has a High Modernist soundscaped sonority and a good deal of dimensional depth. I would not hesitate to number this as among Borup-Jorgensen's most profound and effective works.

Another essential on the disc is his "Coast of Sirens, Op. 100" (1983-85) for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, guitar, piano, percussion and multivoice tape. The female voices ethereally evoke the seductive clarion call while the chamber ensemble wraps itself in and around the vocals with luminous elements of very modern atmospheric articulations.

The two works form a crucial set of bookends for five more sparsely configured works. There are two pieces for solo recorders, very characteristic of Borup-Jorgensen's angular contemporary treatment of the instrument. The 1955-56 "Music for Percussion + Viola" has a heightened sonic sense, a rhythmic drive and a pronounced trajectory more-or-less characteristic of the best New Music of that period. The Percurama Percussion Ensemble and Tim Frederiksen on viola contrast and commune together in ways that make for worthy listening. The 1989 "Fur Cembalo und Orgel" dramatically explores sound colors and wave-like swells while one of the 1959 "Winter Pieces" for piano gives us a gentle and chilly weathered rumination.

In all the SACD provides the modernist aficionado with the most freewheeling and variously instrumented introduction of Borep-Jorgensen's music I have yet to hear. No doubt the DVD film sequence adds to our appreciation as well. For that I do recommend you check out this offering. It is something of a milestone among Scandinavian New Music offerings in recent years.

Michael Daugherty, Dreamachine, Trail of Tears, Reflections on the Mississippi, David Alan Miller, Albany Symphony

Orchestral works by Michael Daugherty seem effortless. That is he seems such a natural for orchestration and orchestral writing that the music gives off the illusion that it practically writes itself. Of course that cannot be true. There is enormous facility, a directly communicative narrative and a sort of hard-edged perfection that tends not to show the scumbling of hard work and revision upon revision.

We get the chance to experience some very vibrant Daugherty in this light on a new recording by the Albany Symphony under David Alan Miller. Three concerted works grace the program, each a world unto itself. The soloists for the works are near ideal exponents; the orchestra very well situated and fully rehearsed to give a precise, impassioned and nuanced reading of the music.

All of the works were written in this decade. Two of the three enjoy World Premiere recordings.

The program starts off quite evocatively with "Trail of Tears" (2010) for flute and chamber orchestra. It has some beautifully complicated, limber and agile flute parts that Amy Porter handles with aplomb. The government mandated, forced movement of Indian people in 1838 forms the thematic core of the music. It is understandably a serious work that ennobles the dignity and resolve of the victims.

"Dreamachine" is a somewhat quixotic work that pays tribute to the imagination of the inventor humanity and what they have given us. Percussion virtuoso Dame Evelyn Glennie is put through a demanding and rewarding set of multi-percussion challenges. The interaction of solo and orchestra is perhaps a kind of translation into sound of the mutually of inventor and invention as against the teaming social whole in which they flourish? Just a thought. It is mysterious and concretely palpable in very interesting ways.

Finally there is "Reflections on the Mississippi" (2013) for tuba and orchestra. It stands out for its melodically communicative character. The tuba part handled so well by Carol Jantsch is a kind of master narrator, telling of the land, the river and the long history of human-water-land interactions and the meditative essence of it all. The sections that move along like a living current excite. The more becalmed moments allow reflection. At least that is how I hear it. It is moving music.

After having listened closely to many Daugherty works, the impression of a grand synthesizer of music in our time rises. Does Daugherty have a special style? And if so how do we characterize it? The answer to the first question is yes, plainly. I always seem to be taken in immediately by the sheer visceral pleasure of each previously unheard work. I at once find myself aswim in the delightful sonic currents and must then stand back for a time in order to come to some meta-understanding and a commentary on it. He has his own way, surely, and it comes to us via a very thoroughgoing and hearty incorporation of what musical advances the last hundred or so years of seriously achieving local musics have given to us. There is something of that totality in most all his works. And in the process of assimilation there is a fundamental Daugherty quality to the result. His music is genuinely descriptive and outward pointed rather than forged out of inner necessity, so to speak. He perhaps is the opposite of a Bruckner or Messiaen. It is the world outside him that Daugherty takes on and shapes into his own personal images. And the Americana in his music is well integrated so that we sense it more that point to it.

This is important music excellently performed. I would not hesitate to point it out as highly representative of Daugherty at his best, and so essential listening for anyone who wants to swim with the current of some of the excellence of what is happening now. Highly recommended!

Arvo Part, The Symphonies, NFM Wroclaw Philharmonic, Tonu Kaljuste

Nobody with an interest in the latest Modern Classical music can afford to ignore Arvo Part. And indeed why on earth would one want to, since his music has a sometimes stark grandeur, echoes of more ancient forms and a marvelously narrative demeanor that sets him completely apart among his peers? As time goes by we can more readily synthesize what he has done. A perfectly sensible and summed up offering out now is all four of his symphonic creations on a single CD entitled The Symphonies (ECM New Series 2600).

So we get to hear all four in sequence, the Symphony No. 1 (Polyphonic) (1964), the Symphony No. 2 (1966), Symphony No. 3 (1971) and finally Symphony No. 4 "Los Angeles" (2008).

Conductor Tonu Kaljuste and the NFM Wroclaw Philharmonic give us beautifully alive, heartfelt but measured readings of the complete output. We feel celebratory as we hear all four new readings and compare the works side-by-side. As the sequence proceeds we do feel a movement forward from a sort of attachment to "New Music" presentation gradually into the timeless eerie world of a present haunted by the memories of the past that is so much Part's special way with listeners.

The conductor approaches the recording-performance as if it were one grand symphony and indeed listening we do feel a continuity and a movement more and more toward an iconically singular voice. Yet none of it sounds tentative in the least. Each phase is a confident and eloquent assertion with its own stylistic assumptions. The First in a neo-classical avant way, the Second an adept, very adventuresome collage, the Third with a turn to his special allusions to early music, the Fourth with a timeless spiritual meditation and some of his celebrated tintinnabuli form along with slowly unfolding sonic planes endlessly stretching forward. It is a sublime journey. 

Anyone who loves Part will find it all indispensable. Those who do not know Part would do well to start here. It is one of those releases that marks out the year as special. Can I be more plain? It is wonderful.

Einojuhani Rautavaara, Works for Cello and Piano

In the world of 21st century music, there are or were those whose principal years were last century and those whose main thrust has been in the new millenium. It can matter for roots and origins in complicated ways. And in the end we can think profitably in terms of generations, and then one might find alignments, or perhaps not. Everything in the stylistic creative zone since the beginning of last century has been in a delicious state of flux and generalizations may not always hold true as readily as one might like.

For now we might put all of the generalizations aside and turn to a single composer and his music. Where that music fits in will no doubt take shape as we go along in time. I am not going to try and force an easy typological judgement on the music today, though. Classification is critical for the internet yet in the end it can be too simple-minded to force something on a complex musical personality. Einojuhani Rautavaara (1928-2016) is our focus. His is a complex intersection of possibilities. He of course did a great deal of composing before the turn of this century and his musical personality stretches back to an early classic-modern period influence though his music has always tended to go its own way.

Today, most happily, we have a fine recording of Works for Cello and Piano (Ondine 1310-2), as performed with focus and rooted passion by Tanja Tetzlaff on cello and Gunilla Sussmann on piano.

The program covers nicely the extended period between 1955 when Rautavaara was in his twenties through to 2000 when he had reached his 70s.

The works keep a specially original style intact throughout, yet there is a great deal of growth to be sensed in that long gestatory period.

Kimmo Korhonen in the insightful liners to the CD sets up a sort of dichotomy of ways to create a lifetime body of works as a composer. On one extreme end, there are those that rather early-on create a particular stylistic universe and essentially work within it throughout their career, so that in some ways each  composition is a variation of each other composition, that the composer writes the "same" work over and over. On the other hand at the opposite end of the spectrum there are those who seek to create themselves anew at every moment, that realize a new possibility of music every time they write  a new work. On that end perhaps we might think of Stockhausen. On the other end there is Vivaldi?

Korhonen argues, to my mind rightly, that we most fruitfully can place Rautavaara in the middle of the spectrum. There is a neo-classical/neo-expressionist continuity to be heard in these cello-piano works for example, and yet each takes on its own special character within the continuum.

And in part the variable can be the degree of Modernity, so to speak? Some veer closer to the tonal end of chromaticism, others let go a bit more on the strength of a tonal center. Either way there is a a musical voice that calls out its individuality at all times.

So we can gain much from the form seeking yet mystically mysterious worlds of his Sonatas for Cello and Piano (No. 1 1973-73/2001 and No. 2 1991) We can hear the wonderful boldness of his 1955 "Two Preludes and Fugues." And there is the deceptively austere expressions of the Sonata for Cello Solo (1969). It fleshes out in your mind the more you listen.

There is no simple characterization of the music on this program. It is lyrical in its deep structure yet does not often wear that lyricism on its sleeve, so to speak. It is music that bears repeated listens by revealing a bit more of itself at each pass. It is a feeling person's music. But it is also a thinking person's music.

Very recommended for where we have been recently in our Modernity and its endless permutations. Highly recommended.