Danny Elfman, Violin Concerto "Eleven Eleven," Piano Quartet, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, John Mauceri, Sandy Cameron, Philharmonic Piano Quartet Berlin

Virtually every day brings us the new. Nothing stands still, much as we will it or do not will it nothing is in frozen time. It all will not stand motionless and why resist the human creative outpouring, even if life can otherwise become less thrilling than advertised? No doubt. So today I am happy to be back with something new and notable. It is the music of Danny Elfman, mostly known out there as a composer for film. He is fond, so I read, of the number eleven. And now there is a nicely done recording out of his Violin Concerto "Eleven Eleven," (Sony Classics 19075869752) which also includes his Piano Quartet. 

Credit must be given to the performers on this CD for they are very good, very appropriate to the music at hand. Sandy Cameron is the solo violinist and she is lucid and clear, a real voice in all she must execute--it is not an easy part and it too has much rhapsodic detail that requires true spirit and virtuosity. She is remarkable. The Royal Scottish National Orchestra under John Mauceri has the dramatic torque so necessary to this work and they captivate. The Philharmonic Piano Quartet Berlin give us the corresponding "Piano Quartet" with fine musicianship and flair.

So we are in very good hands for this music. If the Concerto reminds me a little bit of Prokofiev only in its own original way, so much the better--I can't think of modern violin concertos I like more than the two by Prokofiev, though there are others I like as well. Elfman keeps the motoric and expressive feeling one gets from the Prokofiev works and makes that his own. All that means that this music is tonal and on that edge between the ultra-Modern and the Late Romantic if you look for a characterizing set of labels.

What matters is not the category set as does the very moving musicality of it all. Faced with the invitation to write a Violin Concerto for Sandy Cameron, Elfman immersed himself in a heavy pile of concerto listening items and ended up with the wish to take the sort of post-Romantic elements he so loved in the music of the later Russians, that is Prokofiev and Shostakovitch, and go somewhere with that idea. So there was going to be a lyric melodic element, a modernist harmonic and rhythmic advancement and... to satisfy the needs and proclivities of Sandy Cameron, the work was going to be demanding to her both technically and emotionally. Elfman had always been intrigued with the number eleven and when Sandy suggested they count the number of measures in the finished work, it came to 1111, or Eleven Eleven! And so it was a good thought for the title.

The music Elfman hoped also satisfied his wish to bring together his already considerable audience for his film scores with the modern classical listening audience. And so he does to my mind.

The "Piano Quartet" that fills out the program has a depth and memorability that makes it a wonderful way to end the program. Between it and the Concerto we have a nice presentation of original lyricism that is not meant to be cutting edge so much as memorable and uplifting. The orchestration is good and the solo part thrilling enough to get your attention and keep it!

Danny Elfman has talent, plenty of it. You should hear this!

Josh Modney, Engage, New Chamber Music for Violin

With the world of New Music on the Modern scene today there is of course music of a more virtuoso nature than some of what we have been talking about lately. We would be remiss to leave it out of our discussions. Cue Josh Modney, an extraordinarily adept violinist who recently gave us a wide-ranging, adventurous three-CD set entitled Engage (New Focus FCR211). Modney has been a key member of the Wet Ink Ensemble, ICE, and a former member of the Mivos Quartet. I've discussed some Wet Ink Ensemble gems lately, and now I am glad to talk about this ambitious set.

Trumpet master Nate Wooley in the liners wonders whether we have gone beyond Modernism. Is it a tautology? Is it simply a term that describes whatever it is that is happening now? It does in many ways, sure. Yet like "Ars Nova" it tends to stick to a certain grouping that started with the dubbing of music with the term "Modernism" early last century or so. Nate asserts that the music in the current set by Modney is new, put to us in the moment as a product of the Wet Ink collaborative efforts. And good for that. It is new New, surely, with plenty of forward motion in extended techniques, expressive mountain peaking, a bold step into the now, for certain.

It is complex, neither overly concerned with tonality nor determined to eschew it altogether. It neither insists on repetition nor rejects it. It looks to all accepted and some new ways to sound instruments and to put forth a musical voice consistent with a future pointing.

The music on the three disks covers much ground and happily so. Eric Wubbles's 2012 "the children of fire come looking for fire" with the composer on piano and Josh on violin is probably a good place to start, as it neither rejects previous Modernisms nor does it enshrine them. The prepared piano and wide-travelling extended violin techniques band and blend together in very attention-grabbing phraseologies that make us feel we have entered new musical practice and perhaps also Musical Praxis, or a doing as a becoming.

From there you might explore Modney's just intonation version of Bach's unaccompanied "Ciaccona," which considerably radicalizes our perception of tonality and shakes our foundations a bit, always a healthy thing.

Yet we should not neglect the first disk and its wealth of provocative music, played with real fire and zeal. Solo violin and ring modulation take the sounds into a wonder-world with Sam Pluta's opening "Jem Altieri with a Ring Modulator Circuit." Taylor Brooks' 2007 "Vocalise" blends drone and violin for a contemporary hurdy gurdying. Kate Soper's fabulously inimitable vocal-instrumental synergies come nicely together on her "Cipher." Then Anthony Braxton reminds us why he is at the forefront of New Music practices with his "Composition 222." A bracing disk, certainly.

And we conclude with the third disk, which in some ways decisively takes the avant cork forever out of the genie's bottle--if that makes any sense. It is an entire disk of Josh Modney's "Violin Solos" (2017), five sequences that define "new" as a lively plummeting forth into the extended technique center and then still further into the outer realms of possibility. The violin becomes a sound-force considerably more varied than what we typically have thought about it in the past. And so it is indeed an exciting improv-like jettisoning of a staid before in favor of a full-throttle thrust into a cosmic future. Pitch, timbre and intensity move together variably to map out a possible violin world we have not heard quite like this before.

This is a seminal offering that shows Modney at the edge of forward movement for the violin today and so too the music he chooses to play is similarly situated. Put the two together and you have a guide to some of the tomorrow Nate Wooley speaks of in the notes to this fine set. Highly recommended for any serious futurist out there.

Nirmali Fenn, The Clash of Icicles, Chamber Music, Hong Kong New Music Ensemble

Nirmali Fenn? Born 1979, right while I was at New York University. So an auspicious date, as NYU was good to me and I look back to it as an age of personal miracles, though like any age it had down sides too. But really, Nirmali in addition to and irrespective of her earth-entry year comes to us with a volume of chamber music and a good thing it is. The Clash of Icicles (Kairos 0015055KAI) is the very intriguing title. I have been listening. The music is spacious, Modern and rather dramatically Eastern, and what does that mean? Well she resides in Singapore right now so maybe I am reading into things? Yes, no, maybe.  So there is gestural space and silence that strikes me as being at least partly "Non-Western." That is on the works represented on this program.

We hear six in all. The two with accordion ("The Clash of Icicles Against the Stars" for accordion, flute and Chinese sheng, and "Through a Glass Darkly" for clarinet, accordion and trumpet) sound at points somewhat ethnic. Now I mean that as in "folk-like." Perhaps it is true in part even of the others here, "A Highwire Act" for violin, cello and piano, "Scratches of the Wind" for solo alto flute, "The Ground of Being" for flute and alto flute, and "A Reaction in Force" for solo oboe. On the other hand there is a definite New Music Modernism to be heard, more narrative Crumb-like than wholly abstracted Webernism. There is music that seems to want to mean as much as sound, not just fill the air but leave behind a musically enshrined tale, a little bit of a story that we can think about, not in some obvious way but there somehow, beyond words.

And true also that it sounds like feelings and moods are part of the musical world. Not in obvious ways, yet one feels like things have a telling to them, not just a sounding. So with ancient Chinese music that may be a sound description of, say, an "ambush" for example. Only this is not so obviously literal.

The composer tells us specifically what the "meaning" musical expressions are about in the liners. These 2008-2014 works are addressed to the physical spaces she occupied and their human and natural foundations. So living high up in a high rise in Hong Kong overlooking the sea form parameters for the Clash of Icicles against the Stars. Dramatic thunderstorms in Singapore also figure in some of the music. You should read the liners to this album of course as part of understand the music. I will not try and reproduce it all here.

This music can be quite tonal and sometimes less so. If it is more about the sounding and spacing than the notes in themselves that is perhaps something we have today, a trait for a new Modernism that is timbral and spatio-temporal, or a sort of spacetime thematic resonance? Nirmali Fenn gives us a musical poetics of such things and it sounds convincing and honestly expressive in ever successful ways. The performances are detailed and committed.

I would love to hear her larger ensemble music now at some point. And I feel like the chamber end is the good place to begin, assuming there are bodies of orchestral things as well. I feel a real humanity breathing through this music and it is by no means unwelcome. Very recommended is this, if you want a different angle on New Music possibilities today.

James Tenney, Changes, 64 Studies for 6 Harps

James Tenney (1934-2006) is an American, specifically a North American composer whose time is perhaps here? If so the current release helps mark that arrival? Why all that on a Monday morning, no less? Because this music is due. Initial avant fame can be gained as apart of a "school." so Darmstadt, Cage and his main followers, the second Viennese school, first-wave "Minimalists," etc. Some do not exactly belong as a lumping together, and James Tenney does not exactly lump well? That explains some of the late recognition, maybe.

The work before us, to give it the full title, Changes: 64 Studies for 6 Harps (1985) for Udo Kasemets (New World 80810-2), comes to us in long form, the 1985 equivalent of script. It fills two CDs properly and nicely and it goes on for some time. It has the torque of a-thematic expansive complexity, of non-folksiness and that enables it to extend its presence for a longer time without becoming at all wearisome (or alternately if you do not have new music ears it ALL is wearisome. but then that means no doubt that the person you are has a problem with "New Music"? No shame. That is how it can be.)

There is a certain very subtle inevitability to this music, brought on in part by what Tenney zeroes in upon, three factors. They are 1.) Deep explorations of harmonic space and not in an elementary harmonic way, 2.) Stochastic process on more than one hierarchy level, and 3.) Parametric profiles in combinatory ways. So as we listen we get a sensibility not obvious to the naked ear but nevertheless leaving in the listener the feeling of landing on the "order" side rather than the "random" one? Perhaps that only after a bit. One's ears nee to adjust first.

So for the parameters of the first study there is for example a medium-to-high dynamic level, a temporary density low-to-medium, and a medium-to-high pitch range. The I Ching helps create heightened variability and so also gives a nod in Cage's direction. A "dissonant counterpoint algorithm" moves the timbral combining along to a qualitative Modernity so to say. We get a heightened sense of pitch throughout and a sheer sensual pleasure from the intertwining of six harps endlessly permutating.

The sense of control as one might gain from the Serialists collides with the open set Cagean possibilities of chance, and so Tenney pledges absolute alliance to no camp save a Modern exploratory one. The performances and recording ambiance are what one would expect, would demand. And the music is fascinating and fertile.

All you confirmed High Modernists take note of this one. And anyone who loves the harp will no doubt be happy to hear all this concentration of stringed particularity! Very strongly recommended.

Joseph Haydn, String Quartets Vol. 10, op. 64 no. 1-2, 6, Leipziger Streichquartett

It is fair to say that Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) did more to give the String Quartet the sublime form we know it in than any other early practitioner. The classically proportioned Leipziger Streichquartett has embarked on a very ambitious endeavor of recording the many such works he penned during his lifetime. I report in on the recent String Quartets Vol. 10 (MDG Gold 307 2093-2 ), which covers Haydn's op. 64 nos. 1, 2, and 6.

The recording gives us spacious, unhurried and focused performances of the three quartets. Haydn after the death of Prince Esterhazy in 1790 was freed of his considerable duties as the court conductor, given a lifetime pension that provided security and freedom, and moved into Vienna's artistic-musical life with a vengeance and intensity denied him during the many years of court service. The op. 64 quartets were a product of this liberation and they bustle with the energy and elation he must have been feeling. They followed in the footsteps of his breakthrough op. 33 quartets, which Haydn rightly considered as milestone forays into a style of quartet writing he had much to do with forging.

The performances on the program have an unpretentious frankness about them. They are four-square and with all the straightforward eloquence one might expect from a Quartet outfit who are clearly and tellingly committed to the Haydn style and outlook. Every movement bristles with an abundance of content and we get a long and significant look of the three works the way Haydn himself would have no doubt been pleased to hear them played.

This is demanding music that pays you back with some brilliantly crafted continuances that are as detailed as a teaming pastoral landscape. It is worth every penny it costs to purchase (not that much) and gives you as much or even more thematic profundity and transformative form as you could ever want in 70 minutes. Haydn was a supernatural musical voice in how much he wrote and how brilliant his music was. Mozart had his living match then. We should never take this music for granted. Get this!

Daniel Szabo, Visionary, New Music for Jazz Trio & Chamber Ensemble

I try and keep my ear to the ground and listen for the noteworthy New Music that comes our way. I must say that Daniel Szabo's album is one of those I am glad I received and listened to, for it is a beautiful surprise. I speak of his album Visionary, which has the telling subtitle New Music for Jazz Trio & Chamber Ensemble (Fuzzy Music PEPCD026). It is a valuable foray into what was at one time called (by Gunther Schuller) "Third Stream Music," or in other words a kind of hybrid form that incorporates Modern Jazz and Modern Classical. Since as we know since the Pre-Socratic philosophers that you "can't step in the same stream twice," it is not the same music that the MJQ, Giuffre, Claire Fisher or Anthony Braxton fashioned for us (and Braxton continues to do, happily).

It is music special to Daniel Szabo. It is well worked out, well arranged (listen to his version of Wayne Shorter's "Infant Eyes") and well composed. The premise is to begin with a core Piano Jazz Trio of Daniel Szabo on the keys,  Edwin Livingstone on bass (with Mike Valerio substituting on "Infant Eyes") and then Peter Erskine on drums.

This is a lively and well heeled trio. Now add to that a chamber ensemble, a sizable small outfit that features string quartet and seven wind players (including tenor sax/flautist Bob Sheppard).

The music shows Szabo to arise deeply out of a Modern changes-oriented Piano Jazz, post-Bill-Evansian, post-Herbie-Hancockian and highly evolved. There are brilliant trio passages that show him to be a first-rate improviser and a brilliant trio leader. But then the chamber parts show a detailed "visionary" feel for how the New Music and the New Jazz can mesh together with perfect equanimity, with a common syntax built up out of an inner need more than some practical project orientation. The music is organic in critical ways so that the synergy of the "fusion" breathes freely and in ways that seem natural to the nexus Szabo forges.

It is impressive music, involving, evolved and ready-to-hand for a challenging and most happy series of listens. Szabo gives us stimulating and exciting fare! Listen.

Cameron Carpenter, Rachmaninoff, Rhapsody, Poulenc, Organ Concerto, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Christoph Eschenbach

I suppose Modern organ music is not necessarily for all who breathe. There was an old Gerd Zacher organ LP that might have sounded positively infernal to the uninitiated. It was meant to. Blame old movies, from The Phantom of the Opera through House on Haunted Hill.

Regardless, organ virtuoso Cameron Carpenter gives you plenty to like on his new recording of Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Poulenc's Organ Concerto and as a bonus the final movement from Vierne's Organ Symphony No. 1 in D minor (SONY Classical 8985390822). The Konzerthausorchester Berlin under Christoph Eschenbach joins with Carpenter on the two main parts of the program to make a joyful noise indeed.

The first thing you notice is the superb recording quality of the CD. It jumps out of the digital world into your space with strength and animation. If anyone cared nowadays to show off their system this would make one heck of a showcase I suspect. All that would be meaningless if the performances were not equal to the reproduction. They are. They are filled with magnetic energy and explosive sonics. Carpenter's International Touring Organ sounds wonderfully well in his hands and the orchestra stays with him as they pivot and twist through the soundscaped stratisphere.

Those who think they know Rachmaninoff's "Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini" will be surprised with the new life Carpenter gives it here in the World Premiere Recording of his version for organ and orchestra. It is ultra dynamic as one might expect, with a generous helping of all the aural cranked power that one might hope for and a very nicely orchestrated whole. It is as impressive as it is endlessly fascinating to hear.

Francis Poulenc's "Concerto for Organ. Strings and Timpani in D minor FP 93" is pretty much my favorite such work and undoubtedly the most captivating of all such configurations in the 20th century to my mind. There is extraordinary thematic profundity to be heard throughout and a near perfect meld between organ and orchestra that this recording brings out like no other version I have heard. It is marvelous and exciting! If you already love the Poulenc you will respond readily I would suspect. And if you do not know it yet this is the perfect way to hear it. It reminds us that Poulenc was never content to be anybody's trend follower. If he longed at times to create deep pools of tonal presence, he was going to do it and to hell with how "Modern" it was, though it was and is in its own way. This is a hell of a noisy row at times. And it is true that it is lovely to FEEL such aural power. This is music that was meant to produce, as Harry Partch said about his Marimba Eroica, "a ripple in the backside!" If your woofer(s) is/are ready for it, let the ripples begin!

The end is glorious with Vierne's short but majestic allegro from his First Organ Symphony.

Carpenter is a real player in the most dramatic and presentational sense. This CD is a wonder of its kind.  Organ music ideally should sound thrilling, and so on CD today one hopes it will. It does here. So get it. If you can. And let it rip.