Michala Petri, American Recorder Concertos, Music of Roberto Sierra, Steven Stucky, Anthony Newman, Sean Hickey

The recorder saw a peak popularity in the Classical music world with the advent of the Baroque period. The Modern era by contrast has not found the instrument entering the repertoire much at all. But if Michala Petri and the composers represented on American Recorder Concertos (OUR Recordings 8.226912) have their way that could be changing.

Our current phase of Modernity does not have the same attitude about tonality and the lack that the Dodecaphonic composers may have had, not to mention the latter's stylistic need to unveil chromatic non-continuity that in some ways is not inherently idiomatic to a recorder. What that means is that the recorder's ordinarily contiguous diatonicism is no longer necessarily a drawback to the contemporary idiom, provided that composer and player situate the possibilities of the instrument in an adventurous and imaginative use of sequencing and create anew a virtuosity fitting to our times. That means something,

Happily one hears such things on the music of this program. As one gets to know these pieces one does not feel that there has been undue compromise either on the composer's freedom or the player's musicality. The four works we hear in fact sound very much of our time yet too sound very idiomatic to the beauty of the instrument in timbre, intervallic grace, and lyrical earthiness.

Recorder virtuoso Michala Petri has everything to do with the existence of these four works for she specially commissioned them, happily, to redress the general scarcity of recorders on the Modern American compositional scene, especially as full-blown concerted statements.

And so between 2000 and 2016 the four works featured on the program came to being. And now with this release we get to hear all of them in near-ideal conditions with well prepared ensembles and Michala Petri's considerable artistry.

What strikes me about it at first consideration is just how contemporary it all sounds, yet too how each composer has gone forward with each a distinctively original step ahead.

For example harpsichord virtuoso Anthony Newman's "Concerto for recorder, harpsichord and strings" for Michala, Newman on harpsichord and the Nordic String Quartet has a more Neo-Baroque element in play but in no case would you confuse this music with that of the earlier period. It is a delightful romp with some rather incredible recorder pyrotechnics and a Baroque brightness coupled with a Modern freshness.

Roberto Sierra's "Prelude, Habanera and Perpetual Motion" gives Michala and the Tivoli Copenhagen Phil under Alexander Shelley a widely expansive Latin feel as it is a refiguring of a work Sierra originally scored for recorder and guitar. We feel the presence of the initial instrumentation yet also a pronounced color palette coming out of the new timbral possibilities.

Steven Stucky's "Etudes," a concerto for recorder and orchestra, started this series of works in 2000 and grounds our sensibilities in a series of interplays between Michala and the Danish National Symphony Orchestra (under Lan Shui) that show a masterful compositional hand and help spell out for us a new sensibility for the recorder in our contemporary world.

Finally we have at nearly 30 minutes the longest and perhaps most ambitious of the four works in Sean Hickey's "A Pacifying Weapon" for recorder, winds, brass, percussion and harp, this time Michala Petri joining forces with the eminently capable Royal Danish Academy of Music Concert Band under Jean Thorel. It is a tour de force with twistingly, fiendishly difficult recorder heroics
against a firebranded windband backdrop contrasted by meditatively ponderous reflective moments.

The promise of the recorder concerto for today has in this way presented itself to us and we find in all ways a virtuoso heroism coupled by a discerning contemporary stance on what constitutes a concerto. Perhaps the most remarkable thing is the unforced outflowing of this music as a natural give-and-take between the instrument, its widened capabilities in the hands of a master performer and the considerable forward leaning imaginations of the four composers and their memorable art on display for us in this program.

I am happy to recommend this album for anyone interested in the instrument and so also in the contemporary concerto as it is evolving in our times. Kudos to all involved.

Edition Musikfabrik 15, STURM, Steffen Schleiermacher, Kaija Saariano, Michael Wertmuller

The Wergo label continues to bring us releases of some most interesting new music with High Modernist boldness and broad relief. The latest stands out. It reminds us that forward thinking is by no means solely a product of some past that is behind us. Today we have Edition Musikfabrik 15, which is called STURM (Wergo 6868 2). And true-to-form it gusts directly through our musical consciousnesses and sweeps away any old accretions decisively.

Three contrasting works are given to us on the program. Stefen Schleiermacher's Das Tosen des Staunenden Echos begins things with a flourish. Then comes Kaija Saariano's absorbing The Tempest Songbook and the freely jazzed chamber work Antagonisme Controle by Michael Wertmuller.

The performances leave nothing to be desired. Ensemble Musikfabrik under conductors Jean Deroyer,  Emilio Pomarico and Christian Eggen, respectively, form a very good tandem for the program.

Schleiermacher's Das Tosen des Staunenden Echos combines caustically exciting piano insistencies with some breathtaking ensemble forays for a fantastic whirlwind of sound.

The Tempest Songbook features vocalists Olivia Vermeulen and Peter Schone with the Ensemble for a typically stunning Saariaho essay in color and substance.

Free Jazz dynamo tenor sax-soprano-clarinetist Peter Brotzmann unleashes a torrent of energy with his co-soloists Dick Rorhbrust and Marino Plinkas. All team up beautifully with the Ensemble for one of the most exhilaratingly effective Free Improv-New Music meldings of the last decade.

The program in the end comes through with a nicely freshening breeze of the Contemporary chamber orchestra world at its very best. Ensemble Musikfabrik show themselves to be one of the most engaging and accomplished chamber ensembles active today.

My highest recommendations for this one if you seek the very new, the state-of-the-art on the scene right now. Bravo!

Manuel de Falla, El amor brujo (1915 Original Version), El retable de Maese Pedro, Fernandez, Garcia, Zetland, Garza, Perspectives Ensemble, Angel Gil-Ordonez

Anyone who finds the "Spanish tinge" to their liking and appreciates how that can combine in a kind of very lyrical Modernism would take readily to a new performance of El Amor Brujo (1915 Original Version) and El retablo de Maese Pedro (Naxos 8.573890) by some excellent vocalists and the Perspectives Ensemble conducted by Angel Gil-Ordonez.

These are two by the wonderful composer Manuel de Falla (1876-1946), two of his very best. You might well know some sections of El amor brujo that are often enough performed, especially the "Ritual Fire Dance," in its orchestral excerpt. But the full version of El amor brujo, that is so much more, and it is especially nice to hear it in this original version from 1915. The slightly later El retablo de Maese Pedro (1923) is not heard nearly as often as it deserves as well. Put the two together with these performances and we have something.

If there ever was a Spanish Stravinsky, without being some obvious borrow, it is in de Falla, in these works as much as anywhere? I do not suppose it is necessary to pick up on that to love the music, and it is more in a Petrushka-meets-L'Histoire than the Rites-meets-Renard? It is all music of the highest Neo-Classical and Modern folkishness at any rate.

What makes this particular coupling, these particular performances compelling is the presence of the 1915 version of Brujo and the painstakingly vibrant folk quality of the reading of both scores. The Perspectives Ensemble sounds just right under conductor Angel Gil-Ordonez and Music Director-Flautist Sato Moughalian. Cantaora Esperanza Fernandez is fabulously earthy and folksy in Brujo, as good as one might possibly imagine. But then soprano Jennifer Zetlan, baritone Alfredo Garcia, and tenor Jorge Garza are excellent as well in Pedro.

Combine all this with the nice Naxos price and that spells G-O-O-D  D-E-A-L! I would not hesitate. It is a great listen.

Maurice Ravel, Complete Works for Solo Piano, Hakon Austbo

If you are reading this I suspect you already know that Ravel's Complete Works for Solo Piano is one of the extraordinary treasures of the Twentieth Century. In the hands of pianist Hakon Austbo (SIMAX Classics PSC 1366 2-CDs) vibrant new life gets a fresh breath into things, which matters a great deal for those who have heard a good many versions of this music. But then too anyone who is a novice would gain an excellent introduction with this as well.

It has struck me for a long while how the music itself is as a whole nearly infinitely malleable and so subject to a pretty broad spectrum of readings. My first set of Ravel piano was on three LPs. It was remarkably straightforward though I had no idea if it was or not. My mother was so enthralled by it all that she played the records a nearly infinite number of times. So it is in her honor today that I return to this wonderful music. It is a supreme test of the music's excellence that she could have played the music so many times in my presence and yet I still retain a great love for it all.

This Hakon Austbo reading has superlative interpretive acumen oozing from its musical pores, if you will pardon my wordy exuberance. It may always feel like spring with this music, but in the hands of Hakon's it is a most lovely spring morning and all is right with the world.

Hakon with the opening "Gaspard de la Nuit" shows us part of what he is about. By sometimes resorting to a contemplative rubato he brings ever more to us the Modernist abstract element at play. Then too always Ravel is the supreme colorist in his piano music and Austbo lets us feel it with a splash and dash of the utmost poetic taste I suppose you might say?

The technique is wholly there. Yet it never calls attention to itself so much as it is harnessed, it is used to coax the maximum of poetry from the keys. The "Miroirs" gets a kind of crystalline prismatic chiming such as we who already know the beauty of the work especially appreciate. And for something that demands a sort of regularly paced reading, the "Pavane Pour une Infante Defunte" shimmers and shines within its rhythmic "case" in ravishing ways.

I must say there is a consistent sensitivity of touch and a flourish of artful phrasing throughout the whole of this program, from the "Sonatine" and its expressive thrust to the deeply flowing "Le Tombeau de Couperin." This is one of the finest Ravel sets I have yet to hear and I do very much recommend it as a supplement, a ready addition of excellence in readings for those who have heard a great deal of the Ravel interpretive wash over the years. Or for that matter it is a fine start for those that know next to nothing about these things. Either way you are getting some wonderful piano mastery in a very well produced audio presentation.

I suggest you check this one out if you find yourself attracted to the idea of it all! I doubt you'll be disappointed. I am myself very glad to have this on hand to return to.

Morton Feldman, For Bunita Marcus, Aki Takahashi, Piano

Morton Feldman (1926-1987) was a composer like no other before or since. He quietly made his way through the musical stratosphere in the USA beginning in the '50s and went through several productive phases. The very last one is especially dramatic, featuring sprawling works that repeat and vary in the most contemplative ways, with no formulaic or mechanical unfoldings, rather with inspired intuitions, ever.

The 1985 work for piano, For Bunita Marcus (Mode 314) brings to us 75 minutes of concentrated meditations, as played here by pianist Aki Takahashi. One would expect a masterful performance because of Aki's involvement historically with the Feldman oeuvre. And she in fact was the very pianist who introduced the work to the world in the premier. Importantly after she premiered Triadic Memories Feldman was so moved by the performance that thereafter every piano work he composed was with her in mind. This corresponded with the final Feldman compositional burst where each work was tailored to a particular performer or set of performers, and so the music was conceived as following a kind of logic coming out of the composer's envisioning the performance as the performer would see fit to accomplish it.

The 96/24-bit "hi-resolution" recording made in 2007 sounds every bit as good as you would hope and the performance has the ever-consistent concentration and even-handedness that allows the music to roll off of the recording like an endless carpet, with the patterning there to experience and a kind of smoothness of delivery so that you sense no abrupt changes as you listen. All melds together as one single processual whole as the later Feldman approach demands.

As James Pritchard so aptly states in this album's liner notes, "like all late Feldman works [for Bunita Marcus] is an adventure that takes a relatively long time to play out, but is remarkably lacking in heaviness." We may expect an epic, he goes on, "but what we get is the present moment, in all its beauty, over and over again."  It is all about the facinating chance for the listener to follow the next and then the next next. That in Pritchard's view constitutes the beautiful unrolling of the work. Indeed to me that unpredictability and always "to handedness" or ever-potentially ever makes later Feldman a kind of endless roadshow of Zen "suchness."

It is music to enter into with a promise of self-transformation. If you take to the music you hear all music a little differently afterwards. Or at least that is a real possibility. Aki gives us the optimum performance. Huge kudos to her and Mode records for bringing this to us. Very recommended.

Johann Sebastian Bach, Magna Sequentia I, Sonia Rubinsky

The Bach album up for review has the significant subtitle A Grand Suite of Dances Compiled and Performed by Sonia Rubinsky, Piano. That tells us much about the main title, Magna Sequentia I (Naxos 8.574026). The title refers to this special arrangement of 19 mostly dance segments in a sequence selected by pianist Rubinsky in an interconnected way, with a sequential logic that makes of them a rather vast suite. They are selected especially from his French Suites and Partitas.

And a fine thing that is. Piano renditions of Bach keyboard (harpsichord) music have a certain Modern tang to them by virtue of the nature of the pianoforte sounding naturally more contemporary than a harpsichord,  of course. Ever since Glenn Gould's wondrous piano Bach we are prepared to bring to the hearing of such excursions a sense of adventure. Sonia Rubinsky does not disappoint. She can take things at a somewhat rapid clip like Gould sometimes did, and then we are wow-ed by some dexterous feats of velocity but like Gould always with musicality, never in some kind of obvious horse-race of fingers.

The back cover blurb to the album suggests more, indeed a good deal more than a simple flurry of the digits. It tells us to bear in mind "her historically informed performance," indeed to consider how "Magna Sequentia I offers fresh insights into Bach performance on a modern grand piano."  We should consider that each dance in a suite, according to the music theorist of the time Mattheson (so the liners tell us), was meant to have a particular affect, so a Gavotte evoked "joy," a Sarabande was "serious" and sometimes even "sad," etc.

Sonia picks each movement in sequence for such considerations, but also for the tonal logic that arises out of the opening strains of the Bach Partita No. 4. She also takes the trouble to ensure that there are a few of each dance movement possibility, for affect and also to give the overall program the maximum of diverse variety as Bach conceived of it. She alternates the ornate French style with the straightforward and at times virtuoso Italian style and then again intersperses a few centerpieces of German fugal approaches for dramatic weight. So she seeks to evoke a sort of cornucopia of shades of musical meaning as Bach himself intended in his suites the way he himself ordered them.

All this matters because in the end the pleasure of hearing the sequence unfold as it does relates to what Ms. Rubinsky has considered in working out the selection and order. So all that makes perfect and happy sense. The fine pianism itself in the end brings the rest of the experience together for us and puts us in a mood of satisfaction, fulfillment, Bach bliss if you are anything like me. Of the extant 19 Bach suites for keyboard, Sonia has chosen well in this first volume of her Magna Sequentia.

Very gladly recommended. This is the Bach Suite connection you might crave. If you do, here it is in a fine performance at a good price! Bravo! The reordering for old-salt listeners freshens things considerably too. Either way this is a genuine pleasure and an adventure for anyone who is ready and willing.

Penderecki Szymanowski Panufnik String Quartets, Atma Quartet

Combine an excellent string quartet with three neglected gems in the Modern Polish repertoire and you really have something. That is what is going on with the auspicious debut of the Atma Quartet and their Penderecki Szymanowski Panufnik String Quartets (Accord ACD 252-2). We hear three very individual works brought to our senses with care, skill and devotion for a very happy result.

We may not think especially of these three composers in terms of the string quartet configuration, and that perhaps accounts for the surprise I at least felt once I recognized in hearing the high musical offerings this program represents. With Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937) we hear his 1927 String Quartet No. 2 Op. 56, for Andrzej Panufnik (1914-1991) we get his String Quartet No. 3 "Paper Cuts." Krzysztof Penderecki (b. 1933) chimes in appropriately with the worthwhile 2008 String Quartet No. 3 "Leaves of an Unwritten Diary."

There is no mistaking the dramatic Modern character and Polish atmospherics of each of these works. The Atma Quartet themselves put it nicely in the liners-- "It is the courage with which bold, compositional concepts are implemented on the one hand, and the enthralling vitality of Polish folklore that lies at the core of our cultural heritage on the other." So indeed do we experience a happy conjoining of the local with the temporally advanced, the new times and their expression combined with deep folkways.

There are strikingly intimate, introspective elements at play throughout as well as a highly engaging extroverted dash to be heard in ways any student of our times might appreciate. Poetic expression and a wealth of string-sounding techniques are key factors at play throughout. The Atma Quartet bring out the beautifully conceived articulation of each movement with a sureness and a telling sympathy that affords us pause, then delight and satisfaction.

Clearly the Atma Quartet give notice on their debut album. The works are essential listening and the quartet members all excel as state-of-the-art practitioners, masters of color and expression. Molto bravo!