Olivier Greif, Sonata de Requiem, Bertrand, Amoyel, Weithaas

Olivier Greif (1950-2000)? Why is it I have never heard his music until now? Part of that has to do with his non-adherence to Darmstadt modernism and his subsequent non-involvement in post-modernism. His parentage was Polish-Jewish, but Paris was where he grew up and lived his life. His early death translates to his physical absence in the new millennium, when in some ways all stylistic bets have been off and an idiosyncratic stance is neither rejected out of hand nor defined as an entryway to school-foundations. In other words the time is ripe for his music to be more widely appreciated but of course he cannot be here to enjoy the fruits of his labor. Put all of these factors together and you do have some answers as to why his music did not offer itself to me in my previous years of listening and appreciation.

The CD on tap this morning is one that does full justice to Olivier Greif. It is a program of two of his works, the Sonata da Requiem (Harmonia Mundi 901900) (re-released this year in the Gold series HMG 501900) for cello and piano, and the "Trio" for violin, cello and piano. The performers help make this program stand out in a spectacular way. They are Emmanuelle Bertrand on cello, whose unaccompanied CD I have reviewed recently here and who is eminently well suited for this music. Then there is Pascal Amoyel on piano, Emmanuelle's partner in music and life, someone we've covered here as well and a very sympathetic exponent of Greif on this recording. Finally there is violinist Antje Weithaas, who joins the two for the trio and sounds perfect for this music as well. The performances are rather stunning.

The "Sonata de Requiem" is Greif's four-movement meditation on death. Written between 1973-1993, it blossoms in its very personal juxtaposition of quasi-romantic expression, dirge melodies in minor that to me reflect a Semitic musical influence, and the interjection of beautifully crafted modern non-tonal, extra-tonal passages, sometimes articulated simultaneously with minor-tonality expressiveness, sometimes in their own right.

There are similarities to be heard with the early-middle period music of Messiaen, in the way the two (or three) stylistic strains weave together in ways that people like Boulez have eschewed. In that there is also something akin to Charles Ives in his welding of disparate strands. But Greif sounds like neither. What he puts together and how he does it makes for a very personal approach. He is a tabula rasa in some ways and all the more interesting for it.

The Trio (1998) goes well with the Sonata, again in a poly- multi-stylistic way. Bertrand, Amoyel and Weithaas convince totally with the dramatic, dynamic readings of the two works. They soar with passion, they make the dissonant modernist parts seem inevitable and right, not a stitched-together patchwork quilt of sorts, a language of fluency, of singular totality.

This is music of genuine contrasting interest, even perhaps of genius, performed with brilliance. Although it came out a few years ago it is as vital today as it was then. Superb and uncategorizable!

Jim Fox, The City the Wind Swept Away

Jim Fox, founder of Cold Blue Records and one of the most fertile, intriguing composers in "radical tonality" today, turns in a fine work with a single in the series, The City the Wind Swept Away (Cold Blue 0015).

It is a slow moving, somewhat mysterious, supremely atmospheric work for two trombones, two bass trombones, piano, two violins, viola and cello. The ensemble creates a kind of blue-green haze to depict a city that has vanished, the emptiness palpable and audible in no uncertain terms. And the performance is all you could wish for.

At the center are slowly moving piano patterns, broken arpeggiated chords swinging like a slow pendulum, sometimes breaking free, only to return to another ostinato pattern. The strings and trombones come upon us as variable translucent blocks, like mists rising over a flat, empty expanse, then dissipating, to be replaced gradually by other chordal blocks of heightened tonal colors.

It's music of beauty and wonder, something that goes well with a sunset or sunup in an otherwise silent room. This is strongly engaging associative music that unfolds in a sonic panorama with great calmness and grace.

It will give you pause, make you drift someplace good. Excellent.

Ensemble Galilei, Surrounded by Angels, A Christmas Celebration

The holidays, Christmas, things that make children glow. If you as an adult have an increasing aversion to the cheap tinsel, Black Friday insanities, the impossible expectations that both Madison Avenue and some of the more over-the-top secular carols have made on your feeling of good times, there are remedies. One is in the music you might wish to play during those times. I personally gravitate to the very old music, because much of it is really stunning, and the schlock sorts of things can get on my nerves very quickly.

There is a new album of music out by Ensemble Galilei, a group that straddles a line between quasi-early music style and quasi-folk from Irish to Americana. The album is called Surrounded by Angels (Sono Luminus 92173) and comes in a two-disk set--a regular CD with stereo mixes and a Blue-ray disk with 5:1 surround.

The musical selection is great. They go for some of the arcane classics and a few indispensable less old but no less evocative carols. So you do get "Silent Night," but you also get "What Child is This (Greensleeves)", an old Irish favorite of mine, the "Wexford Carol", and things associated with folk strains, like "Brightest and Best" and "I Wonder as I Wander".

The song choice is refreshing and the ensemble does them a real favor with early/folk arrangements that use a harp, a pennywhistle or a recorder, violin-fiddle, even a banjo for one or two.

The arrangements and performances are enchanting. There are jigs, there is plainsong done instrumentally, there are no vocals and so you can revel in the sound of the arrangements and the wonderful carols without having to worry about just what it all exactly means. I find the disk a true delight.

Here's a way to rid yourself of the commercial blues and experience some kind of more down-to-earth hookup with the old traditional music. It's surely going to get you feeling well around Christmastime and the holidays, I would think. It's good enough that I have listened a bunch of times early in the season now and I never got that "no, please, not again, not this early" feeling. It's that good.

Jean-Guihen Queyras, BBC Symphony Orchestra and Jiri Belohlavek, Elgar: Cello Concerto Op. 85 , Tchaikovsky: Variations on a Rococo Theme Op. 33

The Puritans and then the Victorians tended to be suspicious of music. Anything that involved a public expression of feelings (especially for the Puritans and other fundamentalists, expressions of feelings outside the religious sphere) was not encouraged. Perhaps because of this for a time England produced no composers of lasting merit. Edward Elgar in the past has sometimes been labelled a stuffy Victorian. In reality he was the father of a new English Renaissance in musical composition, a liberator, the man who broke through from the waning Victorian world to produce a worthy body of music which on the whole was anything but stuffy.

And today we have a new recording of his Cello Concerto, op 85 (Harmonia Mundi 902148) along with Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme, op 33 and Dvorak's Klid (Silent Woods), op 68/5. Jean-Guihen Queyras is the center of the program, a cellist who seems very right for these works. Jirí Belohlávek ably conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestral with a flowing interpretation of the orchestral parts.

These are works of late romantic passion. But what do they have in common? The cellist sees "a fascinating mirror effect," on the works taken as a whole, with each composer "playing on contrasts to elucidate his intentions".

I find that response fascinating, though I must say it will take another listen with that in mind to understand how that works out in the scores. Be that as it may the three works together form a wonderful platform for Queyras the master cellist. They are each wonderfully expressive and he brings out the respective musical arcs of each work with a good deal of poise and artistry.

Both the Dvorak and Tchaikovsky act as counters to the psychological introspective-elegiac aspects of Elgar's work. They put the forward motion in the program; Elgar's work looks backward regretfully with a relish of remembrance. In purely musical terms it makes of the cello part the narrator of the nonverbal tale of an inexpressible loss, the orchestra a kind of Greek chorus that reacts in sympathetic ways.

It is surely one of Elgar's masterpieces. When coupled with the Dvorak and Tchaikovsky it is a very attractive, beautifully detailed set of performances that work together well. Queyras, Belohlávek and the BBC Symphony come through nicely with well-balanced, meticulous yet impassioned interpretations. Recommended.

Leos Janacek, The Piano, Cathy Krier

Some composers fit readily in some sequential chronology. Leos Janacek does not. He was neither exactly a romantic, a modernist in some consistently forward looking way or a nationalist. That he partook of all three stylistic tendencies yet belonged to none is part of what makes him stand out in retrospect. He went his own way and created a body of music like none other, really.

He wrote some wonderful music for the piano. Cathy Krier, a rather young (b 1985) Luxembourgian pianist has recorded most of it, and we can hear her interpretations in the two-CD set Leos Janacek, The Piano (Avi-Music 8553290).

Two things strike me about her versions. One is that she approaches the more dynamic, hammer-like forcefulness of some of his passages with less of a Gyorgy Sandor sort of near-violent attack than some versions I have heard. Now that's not a bad thing. She's just a bit more gentle in her concept of it all and perhaps all the more musical for it. Is it a gender thing? I don't think necessarily so. But it does define how Ms. Krier approaches it all. It makes for a less histrionic, perhaps a less romantic interpretation than the way the 20th century performer generally approached his music, also perhaps less idiomatically Eastern European? But then this is a more intimate Janacek, less a concerted set of applause-inducing fireworks, which was certainly not what Janacek intended in any event. This is just me giving you an impression. And it's a defining nicety of it all to me.

The second thing that hit me was the sometimes more jagged, asymmetrical, less flowingly smooth nature of some of her rubatos. Again, this perhaps comes out of her less romantic, more singular vision of what the music should sound like. It sounds right for Janacek. It sounds contemporary.

Think of these two traits as what makes Cathy Krier distinctive. After hearing this set a number of times I came to appreciate her versions all the more. And of course there is much more to the music and her performances than these two aspects. She can bring out the sensitively pianissimo aspects of Janacek as well or better than anyone. And the music has a lyrical yet forceful charge in her hands that makes it all speak.

There is a great deal of fantastic music to be heard here. The Sonata, "On an Overgrown Path," "In the Mists,"--and some of the more obscure works are fascinating, too, such as the "Miniatures (1877-1927)."

So all-in-all I must say that this set is wonderful to have both for the solid blast of pianistic Janacek it contains and Ms. Krier's very own way with it. A pianist of original and ultra-musical stature, a composer of genius. That's a potent combination!

Jory Vinikour, Toccatas: Modern American Music for Harpsichord

If there are trends lately in the world of modern classical, surely one of them is "the old in the new." Anybody reading this blog regularly will note the releases that somehow have brought earlier styles into conjunction with new music. And I cover older styles, too, at any rate because they do not remain static in the performance arena and they are part of the rootedness of where we are today.

So the release up for scrutiny happens to fit in with all this nicely, and yet is rather unusual in that it is something you don't see that much. I refer to the recording of modern American harpsichord music as performed by Jory Vinikour (who also was on the Jose Lemos recording reviewed the other day) entitled Toccatas (Sono Luminus 92174).

The works fill a rather wide period between 1953 and 2012. They all share in common a modernist harmonic-melodic sensibility along with a referential backward look at the music composed for the harpsichord in the instrument's heyday, namely the baroque. We have represented on this anthology well-known modernist composers who came into notice especially in the '50s and '60s or even earlier: Mel Powell, Samuel Adler, Henry Cowell; and then practitioners who are getting recognition now but perhaps are not as well known: Robert Muczynski, Thomas Benjamin, Robert Moevs, Stephen Blumberg, Patricia Morehead, Harold Meltzer.

We get an hour of music that represents the musical outlook of today but respects the harpsichord toccata tradition with fugal, contrapuntal and rhythmic patterns that reflect the past, along with the sort of virtuoso, expressive, sometimes rubato, semi-improvised feelings one often gets in a traditional toccata from the earlier period.

Jory Vinikour plays it all well, with sensitive attention to how the old and new conjoin in each case.

As with many Sono Luminus releases this one comes with the standard stereo mix on a CD and a 5:1 surround sound mix on Blue-ray disk.

The results are fascinating and endlessly listenable. This is unusual fare but it will bring to you music you will probably not hear otherwise, things to stimulate your auditory channels in the best way. And Jory Vinikour performs them all with real panache.

Noah Creshevsky, The Four Seasons

Anyone who listens to music of almost any stripe today knows (if they have some historic breadth in their background) how radically transformed recorded music can be thanks to the digital platform. It has especially been a fortunate development in the "serious" electronic and electro-acoustic music genres. The technology behind the present-day creation, sampling and juxtaposition of sounds allows combinations that once were virtually impossible or so daunting that they were not often attempted on any complex level.

Just because the means have become available in a more readily manipulated way, of course, does not mean that everything folks attempt is that much more advanced and intrinsically valuable from a musical point of view. But if the composer's imaginative, creative, whole-picture sense is vivid, the results can be pretty amazing.

That is true of Noah Creshevsky, especially in his recently released opus, The Four Seasons (Tzadik 8097). Here we have a major full-lengthed electro-acoustic/electronic work that he conceived of as a sort of retrospective to what he's been doing from 1992 on. The idea is that through sampling and digital reconstruction of all manner of instruments and singers, in the most global sense, he can create a work of sometimes neo-orchestral density in music of a fascinating super-organic nature. This is music that sounds live but puts together contrasts and physically impossible playing situations. It's a music of a virtual large ensemble of supermen (and superwomen), doing things that no real-time situation could ever allow.

In some ways there are roots in the electro-acoustic music of Frank Zappa and Pierre Boulez. Or to be more precise, The Four Seasons shares similar musical objectives/traits with some of the works of these forebears and brings things even further along. Hyper-complex counterpoint and an ultra-pointillistically utilized palette of diverse and radically conjoined note making or speech uttering (in the case of some of the vocal sounds)--all form the raw material for his ambitious compositional vision.

Creshevsky often thinks in terms of style clusters, as with sections constructed of moments of what sound like traditional Japanese, klezmer or modern concert music, or for that matter, any combinations that suit him for that particular moment in the work. They are pieced together with considerable creative musical insight to meld an ultra-modern supermusic.

It works because Creshevsky is the real musical deal, a visionary of the new possibilities in digital collage, if you will. The Four Seasons is Creshevsky triumphant, one of the most captivating examples of electronic/electro-acoustic music you can hear today--exhilarating and absorbing, almost incredibly so.