Larry Polansky, These are the Generations

It is sometimes easy to forget but every composer's oeuvre in an avid listener's cycle came to present itself to her/him more or less one or two works at a time. Each piece of one's avid listening is a kind of praxis that maintains itself by the experience of hearing and re-hearing. So with Larry Polansky (b. 1954) for me. If you type his name in the blog search box above you will see I have previously heard and reviewed two volumes of his music on these pages. I liked them much. They were post-Minimal works in a Radical Tonality vein, well done.

I am happy to report a new volume just out, These are the Generations (New World 80819-2), a furtherance of the Polansky opus with six works that span the period 1985 (initial version of two works) through to 2019. Not all, but many are mainly diatonic and they also occupy a sort of post-ambient space, too.

The title work "Eleh Tol'd'ot (These are the generations..)" (985/2017) is one of the more remarkable of all the works here. It is a most pleasingly elaborate sonance for four marimbas.

My personal favorite, "22 Sounds" for percussion quartet is a wonderfully contrapuntal carpet for tuned drums, metallic instruments, etc. It gives us endlessly engaged, continual event making and I am happy to put it on often right now.

The "five songs for kate and vanessa" (2019) is a lyrical foray of a touching tonal ritual essence for Kate Stenberg on violin, Vanessa Ruorolo on cello and for two of the five movements, Amy Beal on piano. Each movement occupies its own space--either somewhat startlingly (with "corner cows" and its folk lyric) or as slowly and painfully beautiful (as in "courante"). The finale, a timeless folkish "jig" gives us something to reflect upon as the concluding movement.

I will forgo any more of the blow-by-blow descriptions of every work because they each form wholes that have a specially personal quality--and they are of course best experienced as music. I've given you an idea so you might know what to expect and that I hope is sufficient.

Polansky refuses to be pigeonholed in this program. Every work follows its own muse. The sum total makes for a fine listening experience indeed. I recommend this by all means.

Gyorgi Ligeti, Desordre, Etudes Pour Piano, Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano, Eric Huebner

Desordre is the title given to pianist Eric Huebner's  album of Ligeti works (New Focus Recordings FCR 269). So then, "disorder."  It's all about several multi-part works that mark Ligeti's early '80s change in stylistic focus. The liner notes to the current album describe how Ligeti had tried to return to Hungary from exile and establish himself as a composer rooted in Hungarian identity.

When that did not take he changed his aims decidedly with the 1982 "Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano,"  which went in a sort of deliberate multi-directionality that included a re-thinking of Romanticism to suit Ligeti's intentional  diffuseness, suggested at first blush with the 19th century poet Eichendorff and the sounding of a natural horn from a mysterious fairytale of forest and storybook expression. It related to Ligeti's experience of hearing the alpenhorn in the mountains of his childhood. It captured a feeling of homesickness, suggest the liners,  more so than one of national pride or feeling for the homeland, instead a feeling more of displacement, perhaps.

The chronologically following two books of "Etudes Pour Piano" in turn were inspired by the piano works of Chopin, Scarlatti, Schumann and Debussy. It was from the pianistic and virtuoso qualities of their concepts of playing that Ligeti found new inspiration, something that these magnificent Etudes reformulate in their own very original way.

And so we have in this program very poetic and pristinely clear performances of some extraordinarily complex and widely influenced works. The liners mention in addition to what I've brought up above the additional influences of Eastern European folk, plus Jazz harmonic and piano stylistic aspects from Bill Evans and Thelonious Monk. Finally we feel the weight of sensory-motor mechanics as a nexus of piano and pianist with compositional inerventions that heighten drama and create a marvelous sense of motility that has its own original kind oi virtuosity and still sounds completely Modern in the capital /M/ way.

Pianist Eric Huebner and his associates for the trio--Yuki Numata Resnick on violin and Adam Unsworth on horn--all furnish the realization of this extraordinary music with a sure sense of meaningful phrasing, of a gestalt wholeness that makes perfect sense of the totality of expression.

Very recommended.

Quinsin Nachoff, Pivotal Arc, Nathalie Bonin, Molinari String Quartet

Musical creativity when going right is like a liquid that flows outward and downward from a starting point, filling in where there is space for it. So that is the case for the music of Quinsin Nachoff on his recent album Pivotal Arc (Whirlwind Recordings WR4761). It features three compositions that dwell nicely in the interstices between Progressive Jazz and New Music.Classical. What makes it especially worthwhile is the easy-going compatibility between the two forms, mediated by a kind of folk-world melodic flow and a creative immediacy that marks it as something new.

Quinsin plays a very limber and lively tenor sax which we hear most winningly on the title work. That piece also gives productive solo time to bassist Mark Helias and drummer Satoshi Takeishi, and so also vibraphonist Michael Davidson. All this is set against some very adventuresome writing for a big band/chamber orchestra of winds and strings conducted by JC Sanford.

The big band gets into a folk dance, Piazzola-like idiom and also a sort of advanced straight post-funk in a Dave Holland or M-Based related furtherance that allows violinist Nathalie Bonin to shine forth in a nicely wrought solo part. Beautiful stuff! The middle movement is a lovely landscape that the composer notes rightly is "where Berg meets Ellington!"

Finally we get an edgy String Quartet played with precision and enthusiasm by the Molinari String Quartet.

What startles then pleases is the breadth of absorption of multi-stylistic strands into a convincing series of wholes. There is a fully "authentic" and uncompromising nexus of both styles and performances are top notch. And the end results are fully original and well worth repeated hearings.

It is one of the best examples of what used to be called "Third Stream" that I've heard in a long while. Kudos to all involved!

Ian Venables, Requiem, Gloucester Cathedral Choir, Jonathan Hope, Adrian Partington

Living composer Ian Venables composed his Requiem (Somm Recordings 0618) in several stages between 2017 and 2018, initially at the request of his friends Bryce and Cynthia Somerville to commemorate their late mother Doreen. It was performed by the Choir of Gloucester Cathedral under Music Director Adrian Partington. The world premiere recording that we consider here features the same choir and director in a nicely recorded and moving performance.

The work shows a natural sympathy towards the satb sound possibilities and a general diatonic, lyrical manner which is well constructed and appealing. Organist Jonathan Hope realizes the instrumental part with subtlety and warmth  This is music that revels in consonance and concordance--yet it does not strike one as particularly backward looking.

As a bonus there are four additional short sacred choral works that supplement the program and further our ear pleasure--compositions by John Sanders (1933-2003), John Joubert (1927-2019), Ivor Gurney (1890-1937) (edited by Venables) and a final Venables capstone work that springs forward rhythmically and sends us off in happy ways..

This is a beautifully performed program. Kudos to the soloists and choir, kudos to the director, to the organist, to all involved. It is not a program of ultra-Modern things. Nor is it a deliberate stepping back. It is the very successful determination to craft a straightforward lyrical consonance that stands on its own feet and can take us on flights to musically memorable and uplifting heights.

Edward Smaldone, Once and Again

New Focus Recordings continues its vital series of Contemporary Modern  music with a volume of the music of Edward Smaldone, Once and Again (New Focus FCR258). The program focuses on five configurations in five compositions written between 1986 and 2014, all distinctively High Modern and showing great craftsmanship and consistent inventive knack. There is a twofold impetus behind this music as the press sheet that came with my copy discusses--that is, an aesthetic balance between "'classical' values of motivic and formal cohesion and development" as contrasted with "'modernist' values of capturing an improvisatory sensibility, asymmetry, and irregularity." A highly chromatic vocabulary, and irregular rhythmic-melodic articulation contrast with the sometimes use of dance rhythms and germinal motivic unfolding for a refreshing vivacity in-the-moment.

Two multi-movement vocal cycles grace the program and provide some key signposts to the musical direction. The declamatorily dramatic "Cantare di Amore" (2009) gives soprano Tony Arnold a chance to shine and gets memorable instrumental underpinning from harp and flute. The narrative flow of the five-part "Letters from Home" (2000/2007/2014) allows soprano Susan Narucki detailed expressive possibilities and gets very appealing instrumental underscoring for flute, clarinet and piano.

"Duke/Monk" (2011) pays tribute to two cornerstone Jazz brilliances with two very lively and expressive spaces for clarinet and piano. They melodically encompass a wide range of chromatic possibilities yet have a hovercraft steadiness around key centers that combine with a sort of soulful exuberance--which in turn works out and maintains a steady-state original expressivity.

The "Double Duo" (1987/2006) expands and extends a complex articulation of chromatic Modernist elevations for flute, clarinet, violin and cello--with eight minutes of complex and well weathered singularity..

The program ends with the chamber string orchestra work "Sinfonia." It is a delightfully thickened, ever varying multi-strand presentation of lasting interest and a great way to conclude.

To live with this music for a week or so is to increasingly open oneself to a series of musical dialogues that sound more and more articulate as one rehears, sound more and more right. Happily recommended.

Tarik O'Regan, All Thing Common, Robert Istad Conducts Pacific Chorale and Salastina

The choral music of Tarik O'Regan has something timeless about it, obliquely reaching back into sacred Western traditions as reference points yet making a joyfully contemporary noise of it all, not sounding like an Arvo Part so much as sharing an old-in-new synthetic view in its own way original and lyrical, Occident to quasi-Orient? West to East?

From the opening strains of the title work "All Things Common" (2017) we hear a rooted euphonious outreaching both highly lyrical and ultimately at key moments redolent with a spinning circularity and modality that marks it all as of our current time without sacrificing the linearity of sacred vocal tradition from the Gregorian period onward.

Seven works in all grace the program (Yarlung Records YAR02592), the centerpiece being the world premier recording of the specially commissioned "Facing West." All show how the Pacific Chorale and (as needed) the string quintet Salastina under conductor Robert Istad seem temperamentally suited in a near ideal way to the subtle lyric expression of the music.

The old-in-new aspect of O'Regan is especially prominent in the mass-chant evolution of "Magnificat & Nunc Dimitis: Variations for Choir" of 2001. From there the compositions move directionally away from such things to a tonal-rituality that is originally contentful  "The Ecstacies Above" (2006) has dramatic push and pull and works itself out intricately between choral and string voices. The musical syntax follows a motival sequence with variations around and upon it.

"I Listen to the Stillness of You" (2016) is a portion of "Mass Observation. " It sends us off with a beautifully melodic caress of lyrical sound.

The sum total of this inclusive O'Regan program is a significant mix of choral gems spanning the millennium to now. Each work stands out on its own and ultimately Istad and the Pacific Chorale paint a beautifully full picture of the composer and his lucid beauty of idea and form. I've listened countless times and each hearing opens out new vistas, so I have no doubt on this one. Enthusiastically recommended.

Harold Shapero, Orchestral Works, Vivian Choi, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Gil Rose

Our musical categories in the end are only a shorthand indicator of what a particular piece of music might sound like. So to say that Harold Shapero (1920-2013) was a Neo-Classical exponent it only indicates loosely that he had a formal affinity with the structural aspects of Mozart and Beethoven but that his Modernist slant to it was all his own. We hear that most productively on a new program, a mini-retrospective of his Orchestral Works (BMOP Sound 1072), as performed quite ably and effectively by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project under Gil Rose, with Vivian Choi handling the solo piano parts in a masterly fashion.

He developed a closeness to Leonard Bernstein while attending Harvard, and also studied with an impressive cast of greats--Piston, Hindemith, Copland and Stravinsky, He especially emphasized later in life how important to him was the influence and inspiration of the great Nadia Boulanger.

And so we get an excellent sampling of some five Shapero works in all. There is a very stately, majestic quality to the "Sinfonia in D Minor" (1948), the "Credo for Orchestra" (1959) and a similar framework as a launching pad for the multi-movement "Partita in C for Piano and Small Orchestra" (1960). The Partita covers a good deal of ground in ways distinctive and un-derivative. The musical syntax has a logic and elegance that carries the listening self over a great span of related possibilities and intrinsically fascinating terrain. In the process there are vivid orchestrational shades that blend well together and keep the ears focused and interested.

The Jazz-situated "On Green Mountain for Jazz Ensemble" (1957) is a breath of fresh air, a memorably upbeat paean that holds together well no matter how many listens.

The concluding "Serenade in D for String Orchestra" (1945) has lyrical strength and playful inventiveness with something of a folk-like expressiveness that gives us a heartening send-off. Shapero manages to create a serenade that convincingly updates a singing Mozartian earthiness while belonging thoroughly to the contemporary world he most definitely participated in.

In the end this is a valuable exploration of a composer we need to recognize and rehear. Rose and BMOP give us ideal readings of these five worthy pieces. I highly recommend this one for anyone interested in 20th century US Modern orchestral. It is a delight!