Elliott Carter, Late Works, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Oliver Knussen

During his long life span (1908-2012)  US composer Elliot Carter established himself as a major voice in New Music, one of the brightest lights of the later 20th century. Once he found his own very original niche he refined and honed his music to thrilling levels of complexity and High Modern expression. The String Quartets are as fine as anyone's from the Modern period but then there is an additional wealth of music in chamber and orchestral realms that we need to absorb and appreciate.

Today it is time to consider a program of some of his final works, written between 2003 and the year of his death, 2012. There are a good number of recorded premiers to be had on this CD and in any event all the works are well performed by the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and the BBC Symphony under Oliver Knussen, plus Pierre-Laurent Almard on piano, Colin Currie on percussion, Isabelle Faust on violin and Jean-Guihen Queyras on cello.

The album is aptly titled Late Works (Ondine 1296-2). On a Monday morning this seems a fitting description and alerts us as to what we will hear. The final decade shows Carter much in the same vein he had been in for some time, a kind of post-Darmstadt expanded atonality, a remarkably worked over musical geometry of great detail and exploratory zeal, a music very aware of each instrument's idiomatic qualities and a vision of how they can be amassed and apportioned. The complex rhythms had been developed to an advanced point where the absolute precision required of each player results in a timeless quality that bubbles and boils forward to an ultra-architectonic uber-chaos of exactitude? Something like that. It is sublime music indeed. Like fractals the great complexity of the whole may at first blush seem chaotic, yet underneath there is form subtly co-existing with an exploded. expanded music world. Perhaps it is interesting to contrast this kind of complexity with the Cagean one--there the composer allows chaos to enter his front door, so to speak, yet in the end we hear order and structure after all if we listen closely, repeatedly, intelligently.

We hear in all some seven works. In order of year of completion there is in sum the 2003 "Dialogues" for piano and chamber orchestra, the 2005 "Soundings" for orchestra, the 2007 "Interventions" for piano and orchestra, the 2010 "Dialogues II" for piano and chamber orchestra, the 2011 "Two Controversies and a Conversation" for piano, percussion and chamber orchestra, the 2012 "Instances" for chamber orchestra, and the 2012 "Epigrams" for piano trio.

It is a great deal of unfamiliar music and it does require close listens and perhaps several hearings for a full appreciation. That said however, there is no mistaking this music for something merely, generically "avant" so to speak. It is the profound set of final musical utterances by a master after more than 85 years of composing!

Anyone wishing to be exposed to High Modern masterpieces from the very decade we are currently within (give or take) should not hesitate about this one. Carter was undoubtedly among the greatest of the last really brilliant Serial/Post-Serial composers of our time. I suspect his music will be heard and loved by music appreciators for many centuries hence.

Chopin, 17 Waltzes, Peter Schaaf

Chopin wrote 17 Waltzes (Schaaf Records 103). Peter Schaaf performs them with an honest candor and a partisan's zeal on a recent album of the same name. It continues the waltz mood he established so convincingly on his previous 44 Waltzes (type that in the search box, above left, to read my review).

Chopin wrote and published eight of the waltzes during his lifetime; nine more were unpublished at his death out of which five were assigned opus numbers; four more were never "opused." I do not need to tell you of the virtues of Chopin's piano works. The Waltzes are vibrantly melodic and sensitively evocative. Chopin opened up a realm of piano expression that was as extraordinary as it was innovative, and too so naturally singing forth.

This is marvelous music and Peter Schaaf disarms us with an extraordinarily unpretentious reading of it all. You feel care and spontaneity in equal measure . Some of this music is of course as familiar as any piano music can be for those who have lived in the present-day musical culture for any length of time (e.g. with the "Minute Waltz"). So to make it all seem fresh is a challenge for any artist today who would wish to play them. Peter succeeds because he enters into the mood of each as if it were HIS mood, and so in fact it becomes so in his hands.

So if you do not know this music or if you do and would like to put a fresh reading in front of your ears, this one is a good thing, a very good thing! Recommended. To find out more about Peter Schaaf and his music and to order go to schaafrecords.com.

Hindemith, Complete Sonatas for Viola Solo, Luca Ranieri

In the course of following my classical music muse, I have found there are certain composers I tend to welcome consistently into my hearing zone like a familiar friend who is up to something new (though perhaps not having lived on this earth for quite some time, even centuries by now). Others I might be happy to hear more of, but do not always know what exactly I might come to think of it all as a whole. Then there are those for whom I can always be convinced about, but for now I have not made up my mind. And finally of course the unknown artists I am just discovering.

Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) belongs in my mind to the first category. He was principally a viola player as a musical artist (though he played other instruments well, too).  So we might expect what he wrote for the viola was potentially something special, something he well might play in public himself. That is certainly true of the four works that appear on the CD at hand today, on the album Complete Sonatas for Viola Solo (Brilliant 95413). We hear all four solo viola works played with dedication and I might say nearly self-effacing devotion by Luca Ranieri.

Hindemith turned to solo string works I would assert as one of those who had in mind how singular were the Bach works for solo violin and solo cello. Do not forget that Bach's unaccompanied works were entering the concert repertoire during Hindemith's lifetime, after years of being relegated to what the string players viewed as pedagogical studies of great value but not seriously considered "concert music." That all changed in the last century  Fellow composers Max Reger and Bela Bartok, to name a few of his roughly contemporary colleagues, also devoted some attention to the unaccompanied world of solo stringed instruments. Both wrote notable examples still being performed today. For Hindemith this sort of "Extreme Chamber" milieu was an important realm that to him expressed something timeless yet too something very Classical-Modern.

On this CD we linger awhile with all four works, the "Sonata Op. 31, No. 4," the "Sonata 1937," the "Sonata Op. 11 No. 5," and the "Sonata Op. 25 No. 1."  All are of course "serious" fare in ways that marked Hindemith as much or more than any contemporary composer of his time. This was viola music for the classical sake of it, ever expressive in a somewhat stoic and even slightly severe manner. There was a very powerful thrust forward, with an aim not to realize beauty per se but, as Nielsen  asserted for his own music, to gain a kind of characteristic note-upon-and-after-note eloquence. Hindemith composed with a certain rigor no less central than those who in earlier times applied their own visions of note weaving in contrapuntal practice.

In the later '60s and early '70s when I first started listening to Hindemith there was a rigidly defined stylistic set of camps that existed between those that might favor Hindemith and those that were enthusiastic partisans of Webern and those that followed in his direct wake, the Serialist Dodecaphonic folks typified by the Darmstadt School. From the retrospective illumination of the present, when you listen to these rather fully abstract works you hear of course that Hindemith was constructive of his musical sequences in a more seminally tonal-structural world than Darmstadt yet his music and the Darmstadt High Modernists both favored an absolute musical-abstract stance that the experience of was and is not as far apart as one then imagined in the heyday of such controversies. In that way the largest, most general aesthetic aims of the Neo-Classicists and the High Modernists did in important ways converge. In contrast one might assert that these camps (in their earlier stages anyway) seemingly diverged more sharply than not from the Cage-and-followers US contingent.

When I say above that Luca Ranieri is nearly self-effacing in his performance of these works, I do not mean to suggest that his playing is not ultra-schooled and precise, very musically profound even. I only mean that his devotion to making the music sound as it was intended does not result in the sort of overtly performative showmanship one might possibly find in solo string realizations that call attention to the interpretive mannerisms of the artist. There is none of that to speak of here, yet in the end it is a pretty brilliant reading we experience of the music.

And in the end we are able to immerse ourselves in every turn of phrase on this program. We get the full Hindemith prescription undiluted and exactingly spelled out.

With the very low Brilliant retail price we can have this music for a song. I very much recommend that you spring for this one. It is Hindemith the way he saw himself, undoubtedly. And that is a very good thing!

Bearthoven, Scott Wollschleger, American Dream

The contemporary world of New Music keeps on. Nothing stays the same because music is a living thing and we humans interject ourselves into the mix at all points. If robots composed and performed the music, it is possible things would eventually enter a steady-state of absolute stasis, but since we are all slightly different every day and different people come onto the scene every year we can look forward to new things always.

And so today I have an example of a newness that is upon us and good for it, certainly. I speak of the chamber trio Bearthoven, the composer Scott Wollschleger, and their album American Dream (Cantaloupe 21146). The group consists of Karl Larson on piano Pat Svoboda on double bass and Matt Evans on percussion and vibraphone.

The music is appropriately dream-stoked, a closely knit alternatingly single (Karl alone) double (Karl and Matt) and triple-tiered interaction (Karl, Matt, Pat). The compositions call for a rather wonderful interplay of the instrumental voices in syncopated, complex coordination at a level rarely encountered.

The music is oft times in a sort of Minimalist zone that nods overtly or otherwise to what later Morton Feldman was doing and also at times the music of Mayuzumi. By that I mean that the patterns repeat and are constructed of something different from the interlocking lines of a Riley or a Reich. Lines are constructed more pointillistically or more specifically in a rapid hocket-wise fashion. And the way the patterns lay out are at times like a Persian Rug--the musical cells sequenced but too separated and contrasted in ways more like a sprawling rug design than a babbling brook. There is not a trance feeling so much as a sort of open mystery of different pattern-objects passing by our ears like an ethereal parade. Now all that is not simply that Wollschleger is some clone of things. Not at all. He contributes a great deal to the pattern op-art that has been put our way in years past. It is a furtherance, not a rehash.

And at the performance level the Bearthoven trio is extraordinarily focused on the Zen of the interactions so that magic is in the air always.

The music is a happy outcome, something very much Modern in one of the new ways that can be so today. I must say I love what is happening here and I recommend it very much. The path leads us out of thickets and we take it with some relief! And lots of pleasure.

Kate Dillingham. Dvorak, Cello Concerto and Other Works, Brno Philharmonic, Anthony Armore

Anton Dvorak was in my youth one of the first of the composers I found myself listening to. My inaugural listens were of "From the New World," then a little later the Cello Concerto in a budget release I found, a live recording with no less than Rostropovich in the solo role. I lived happily with that version for very many years, and then because of a life disruption my vinyl had partly to go and now it is gone. I find often enough that if you have become used to a particular version over a long period of time all versions heard subsequently refer back to that version.

And so that is not always so bad a thing. I recently had a chance to hear and review another version and I am glad I said "yes" to the opportunity. It is a new release of cellist Kate Dillingham doing Dvorak's Cello Concerto and Other Works (Affetto 1806).

The Dvorak I most love is a kind of a folk music classicist. That of course is obvious in his New World but there is it seems to me often enough a kind of homespun Bohemian folk naivety in his melodies. The singing quality of the melodic content of the Cello Concerto is to me a good example of how Dvorak shapes melodic subject matter in his own way. consistent with the rootedness in the music of the land that surrounded him.

Ms. Dillingham chooses for the "other works" on this program two pieces for cello and orchestra that bring out that singing melodic trait in the composer. The "Silent Woods for Cello and Orchestra" Op. 68/5 and his "Rondo in G minor" Op 94 fit very much in this happy place.

And so too the way Kate Dillingham, the Brno Philharmonic and conductor Anthony Armore approach the Concerto is very much in a kind of homespun way. Tempos are relaxed, there is no hurry and no one seems bent on creating a spectacular impression of great Promethean superhumanity (as of course a Rostropovich was after in thrilling ways) so much it is as if they are walking leisurely down a rustic path in the Bohemian forest, in no hurry to get to a destination, lingering now here, now there and savoring every bar of music, as it were.

This is a Dvorak that is not so much after-Beethoven (though everyone was at that point in some ways) as a with-himself. The concerto and the rustic preamble pieces hang together in ways that clearly come out of a deep understanding and love for the music itself. Ms. Dillingham in many ways makes her cello sing beautifully more than exclaim dramatically. And that seems after a few listens how I would like to hear the concerto right now. So kudos! Bravo for this Brown Study of a reading.

Christoph Maria Wagner, RemiX

On remiX (Deutschlandfunk Coviello Contemporary  91728) composer Christoph Maria Wagner takes the Pop-HipHop-Dance Music idea of the remix and applies in to a compositional view of things. In other words the remix practice of taking the original content of a recording and re-arranging and/or reemphasizing the original elements is applied directly to written musical content. So we experience a re-situating of Beethoven on the "remiX-Suite fur Klavier," of German folksongs on "remiX IV," Scriabin on "remiX V."

The "Suite for Klavier" makes use of the idea of layering and bifurcation to assemble a complex multi-stranded pianism, to re-present some familiar Beethoven (the first theme from his Fifth). The results are a massive "making new,"  a de-sequencing and re-situating of the musical elements in complex ways.

"remiX IV" makes excellent use of the large chamber ensemble E-MEX and soprano Ruth Weber in the re-presentation of eleven German folk songs. I find this work especially invigorating. It is no mean feat to create a kind of High Modernism expanse out of on the surface of things rather earthy fare, from what one might think of as contra-Modern fare. That Wagner succeeds in creating an "other" is a tribute, surely, to his vision and musical acumen. And it is first-rate Contemporary music at that.

The other principal piece on the program in the "remiX V" combines piano (the composer), live electronics (Carter Williams) and pre-recorded loops to deconstruct and reconstruct some Scriabin source material.

All told this CD program gives us a deeply complex and expansive universe of very Modern sounds that allow us to open to an alternate perspective of what it is to do New Music today. I recommend this one surely for anyone interested in the advanced nether realms of the very contemporary right now.

Romuald Twardowski, Violin Concerto and Other works, Kinga Augustyn, Torun Symphony Orchestra, Mariusz Smolij

What I do not know about Romuald Twardowski (b. 1930) could fill many volumes. Until the release at hand, in fact, I knew nothing at all of him. Yet with this music in my head after several listens I must say I am very glad to know of him now. We have at hand a worthy program of works he composed between 1979 and 2006, concerted works for violin and orchestra, all save one, which is  for string orchestra alone. Central to the presentation is the 2006 Violin Concerto (Naxos 8.579031). The whole of it is beautifully given to us with violinist Kinga Augustyn holding forth as needed with a sturdy yet impassioned robustness that always seems just right for the tenor of this music. Mariusz Smolij conducts the Torun Symphony Orchestra with a sure hand and a complete conception of how the music should sound. The orchestra responds nicely.

The music is not all that Modern with a capital /m/, yet it is not stuck in any kind of automatic replay of the past either. He puts forth a music of genuine integrity and original conviction. It is perhaps more Neo-Classic than Neo-Romantic. There is a definite lyrical side that we hear throughout, yet nothing is sentimental so much as singing and ringing forth. The "Violin Concerto" is the linchpin work as far as providing a soaringly singular voice for the solo violin that Augustyn responds to with angelic charm. All the concerted pieces serve to extend Twardowski's vision of the violin's role today in such things. Score and performance nicely conjoin in happy confluence.

Each work has a pronounced flavor, definite character, from the rhapsodous plainspokenness and then impish sprightliness of the "Violin Concerto" to the pronouncedly Jewish melodiousness of the "Niggunim 'Melodies of the Hasidim,'" the Gershwinian tang and tinge of "Capriccio in Blue," the lively and convivial Spanish tinge of the "Spanish Fantasia," it is all good. Then  the string-orchestra-only "Serenade" gives us a more direct hearing of his pronounced ease over the falling of the melodic contours on the natural string-ly idiom, his capriciousness as it were. And there is a kind of gritty torque Smolij gets from the strings on "Serenade" that we then listen for all the more readily in the other works. And we then hear it all the more readily.

If you are a lover of strings you will appreciate what is done with them by Twardowski and the performers here. This is the student of Nadia Boulanger, another one who came away with a deft sense of possibilities, whose Lithuanian heritage comes through in his music without necessarily calling attention to itself. The music has Modernity without necessarily following the typical models of how that might come into play and harmonic-melodic strains are not so edgy as they are folk-like in some fundamental sense. There is a natural brilliance to his idea of what sorts of things the block of orchestral strings and the solo violin can do.

It all works wonderfully well and after a good number of listens I hear the full musical personality of this heretofore unknown composer and it seems like a very good thing. If you have the mental-aural space to add more music to your living experience this volume is a very pleasant surprise and well worth your time. And a big bravo to violinist Kinga Augustyn!