Hindemith, Nobilissima Visione, First Recording of Complete Ballet, Seattle Symphony, Gerard Schwarz

Sometimes Hindemith has gotten a bad rap--mostly because at the end of his life he did not adopt serial composing techniques. These days that matters not at all. Perhaps it even shows gumption. Hindemith was a composer who was thoroughly a modern part of his times but preferred to follow his own muse. And so much the better for us, his present-day listeners.

I've covered a fair amount of his music on these pages, but today there is something a little special, that is the first recording (by Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony) of the entire ballet Nobilissima Visione (Naxos 8.572763). I still have a scratchy old Angel LP of Hindemith conducting "Symphonic Dances", an orchestral suite excerpted from the full ballet score. This version is the one that has been available on recordings thus far. Though it is fine music it is about half the length of the full ballet, which runs at about 44 minutes.

And that long version is what we get here. There is nothing superfluous to be heard. It all works together and sounds whole and organic.

The ballet has something of a complicated genesis. Hindemith had the idea of a ballet based on the life of St. Francis of Assisi after he and Leonide Massine met in Florence to discuss a possible ballet collaboration--this was in May of 1937. Hindemith was inspired by Giotto's frescoes on the life of St. Francis that he saw while there visiting the church of Santa Croce. The images were so moving he decided to address something of the saint's life through dance. In its final, complete form it was premiered in London in December 1938. At the last minute on publication the title of the ballet was changed from "St. Francis" to "Nobilissima Visione".

That is the basic story. The score is remarkable in its interweaving of early music folk-art song into the score, made into Hindemithian material by virtue of the composer's special stylistic synthesis which by then of course was fully mature. The incorporation is so subtle it is not obvious to the ordinary listener without score in hand. But nonetheless there is a lyrical element present at times which alternates with passages of tutti orchestral power and therein the pre-coached listener can find restatements of the themes involved.

Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony do us a real service with their excellent performance of the entire work. They give it the full treatment, dazzlingly spectacular and tender at turns.

As a nice bonus the disk gives us Hindemith's 1927 "Five Pieces for String Orchestra" which was a work designed for performance by young or amateur players to get an experience of playing music that was relatively easy to perform (all parts written in the first position) yet rather complex and chromatically modern. The "Five Pieces" are the final works in the series. With the first-class Seattle string section they totally convince as music that goes far beyond pedagogy. They stand on their own as serious music and typically early Hindemith at his best.

So here we have a major event, a great recording of artistically and historically important Hindemith. Needless to say this is an essential Naxos release that nobody who follows the modern path can afford to miss.

Gary Gray, Shades of Gray, Music for Clarinet

With the advent of the art form known as jazz from the early 20th century on, composers of varying backgrounds responded in the modern classical realm with works influenced by the music, with greater or lesser success. Scott Joplin was in ragtime a part of the music itself but also did more classically oriented works such as the opera Treemonisha. James P. Johnson experimented in the classical realm, though he was primarily a jazz original of great importance. Then there was George Gershwin, and a host of others, including Milhaud, Stravinsky and on.

Because the clarinet in the first half of the century was one of the primary instruments in the music, many works called for clarinet soloing of a virtuoso nature, solo roles that encapsulated some of the jazz feelings of improvisers yet were firmly planted into the soil of the particular composer's personal vision of a hybrid sort of music.

Clarinetist Gary Gray has drawn upon such music, both early and later, as a springboard for his solo album Shades of Gray (Centaur 3251). It is not 100% a jazz-themed album, but the influence on various composers is never far.

We get some of the staples of the repertoire, such as Gershwin's "Three Preludes" (1927) which is adapted for clarinet and piano. Similarly Gary and Bill Cunliff do a clarinet-piano adaptation of "Rhapsody in Blue" (1926). From there we get a pleasing potpourri of works, some rearranged classics like Billy Strayhorn's "Lush Life" (but the Hartman/Coltrane version was so definitive it seems less critical to recite the lyrics here), Jobim's "Wave" and such. There is also Kenny Burrell's "Blue Muse", which fares well.

And then there is greater-or-lesser inflected jazz-meets-contemporary-classic works by Gernor Wolfgang, Mark Carlson, Charles Harold Bernstein, and Bill Cunliffe.

Gary Gray's clarinet is exemplary, the program is filled with good things, all in all, and time goes by swiftly when you are under the spell of the music. As long as one keeps in mind that this is jazz seen from a modern tonal classicist's side of things (and Gray has an excellent feel for this end of the hybrid) you will find much to appreciate and like. This is classical modern music with jazz influences; it is not exactly jazz per se! And so what? It gives you a nice selection of such music, played well.

Good sounds.

Jos Zwaanenburg, Grist, New Music for Flute and Electronics

The avant garde world keeps turning. It doesn't stop. Flautist Jos Zwaanenburg reminds us of this via his new anthology of music for flute and electronics, Grist (Metier 28542).

We get five provocative, sometimes noisy, cutting-edge works, each defining the new terrain in its own way. Efthymios Chatzigiannis presents "Broken Mirrors"; Paul Whitty gives us two compositions, "Does the body rule the mind or does the mind rule the body" and "Has the world changed or have I changed?"; Stephen Cornford chimes in with "Flute Feed", and Paul Dibley gives us "Organ Grinder".

Some works are more obviously flute-full, some more overtly electronic. "Broken Mirrors" combines flute improvisations with a program that in turn responds to those passages. "Flute Feed" makes use of aleatoric elements in the interaction of flute, resonating piano and digital feedback. "Organ Grinder" uses live flute, sampling, live electronics and computer generated sound. Paul Whitty's two works are densely thick, noisy electronic montages that create a thicket of original sound that is not to be denied, yet fascinates thoroughly in any event.

These are all works that bear study and close listening. Jos Zwaanenburg has an integral role to play here and he does it with a kind of selfless devotion to the compositional demands of the moment. He shines forth when called for in ways we can admire and at other times he gives the impetus for the evolving shape of a work with creativity and sensitivity.

This is not so much a flute tour de force as a set of interactions of Zwaanenburg and electronics. It bears repeated listens. State-of-the-art live and interactive electronics are the order of the day. Well worth hearing.

Robin Hayward, Nouveau Saxhorn Nouveau Basse, Elegy to a Failed Instrument

One composer's drone is another composer's melodic center. It depends on context. Music which uses long continuous tones and hearkens back in some way to classical Indian music tends to use the long tones as an anchor to something that either does or is expected to occur overtop, even if that "something" never quite comes to bear on the music. On the other hand Robin Hayward's Nouveau Saxhorn Nouveau Basse (Pogus 21077-2) uses long tones in a different way.

The album at hand today contains three pieces. Each uses long tones on the microtonal tuba, an instrument Robin Hayward conceived of using six valves, allowing for standard plus microtonal soundings. He plays the instrument on all three works.

"Plateau Square" utilizes the instrument with a four-speaker sound system. Each speaker reproduces sound aspects in an individual plateau of pitch relationships. I wont attempt to explain it; indeed I am not entirely clear what is meant in the liner notes. Suffice to say that long tones correlated in pitch to a particular plateau are the basis for the work.

"Travel Stain" combines long tones on the microtonal tuba plus a guitar part realized by Seth Josel. The guitar notes, mostly plucked harmonics, accentuate the long tones. There is an elaborate hexagonal notation with tone sequences that the instrumentalists explore one-by-one.

"Nouveau Saxhorn Nouveau Basse" returns to solo microtonal tuba. Subtitled "Elegy for a Failed Instrument", it centers around a horn invented by Adolpho Sax, with six valves that were configured to avoid the need for the instrumentalist to combine multiple valve stops. All tones were produced by depressing one valve at a time. It never caught on. Hayward combines his microtonal tuba (which also uses six valves but in different ways, including combinations) with a seven-speaker sound system. To honor the memory of the instrument Hayward conceives of a tuning-note sequence that utilizes long notes produced by only one valve at a time, with six speakers each devoted to the notes played by depressing a particular valve. The seventh speaker is located backstage and represents the bell of the saxhorn. What counts is the sound of the notes and their overtone development as the tones interact with the aural playing space. The piece creates eerie harmonies via a system of multiple trackings that gives the work an acoustic-electric ambiance and fullness.

All told this is music that creates its own space. And you do not need to understand fully or even partly the theoretical underpinnings that went into the works to appreciate the sonorities that are produced.

In the end there is an aural poetics at play. Hayward has his own kind of rigor which we can appreciate for its existence--and then set aside and appreciate the music in its full utterance. It's haunting and moving music!

Lewis Spratlan, Apollo and Daphne Variations

Some music, every time you hear it you notice new things. That was and is true of Markus Reuter's Todmorten 513, reviewed here last month. And no wonder. The work is almost like a musical Rorschach test--you hear what's there but your mind selects from all of it each time, beautifully so.

Lewis Spratlan's three works on Apollo and Daphne Variations (BMOP Sound 1035) have been that way lately. But maybe it's me. I've been writing 13 blog reviews a week for years, and every week I get calls saying "we're gonna take your house unless you fill out all this paperwork", or, "You owe $14,000; would you like to pay by check?" and I am dead broke, trying to pay attention to the music for the batch of reviews coming up. Or, hey, no money for the electric bill, what are you gonna do? Must look for and apply for 20 jobs per week! And on and on! Not to whine. That I've managed to say something about the music regardless of the worst kind of life for this long is a minor miracle. But I digress and nobody really wants to hear that their reviewer is experiencing dire straits! I don't get paid to do anything, I have no income, but that's my problem. How much longer I can keep churning out reviews like this is anybody's guess. But sometimes I may take a few more listens in the middle of all the crises to get the music in my head. And not all music is self-evident! Nor should it be...

So, Lewis Spratlan. His music on the Boston Modern Orchestra Project album is packed with so much detail, there is so much there, that you keep noticing more to like as you go. The three works are multiplex stylistically but they hang together well in various ways.

There is "A Summer's Day" (2008), which fits well with what we in this hemisphere are experiencing right now, myself included. Each movement is descriptive of summer and its experiential moments, culminating in "Serene Evening, Soft Breezes, Crickets, a Distant Storm" (movement seven) and "A Starry Night" (movement eight). Beautifully descriptive orchestral writing and very copiously elegant event periodicity are very much what we get. Ives in thickness at times. Other times, something else altogether. But always contentful.

The "Concerto for Saxophone and Orchestra" (2006) features Eliot Gattegno on soprano and tenor sax, well-played. It too has a periodic feel, with jazz inflections, rhapsodicity and modernity rubbing three hands together in fascinating episodic ways.

The title work, Apollo and Daphne Variations (1987) comes out of a disarmingly, deceptively simple waltz tune Spratlan put together in the context of discussing Schumann's alphabet motifs in a composition class. It grew into a full-blown and vary varied set of variations.

It's all good. Gil Rose conducts the Boston Modern Orchestra Project with verve and understanding and the orchestra responds accordingly, idiomatically.

You'll find a wealth of musical modernity and a lyrical tunefulness in these works. They stand out by taking form gradually and then implanting themselves in your musical memory, bit by bit. Emphatically.

I love the music! You may feel the same after some listens, even if you are having those 21st century traumas that beset many of us today. A sure antidote is at hand on the Apollo and Daphne Variations disk.

Peter Batchelor, Kaleidoscope

Not every modern electro-acoustic/electronic composition jumps out at you like a jack-in-the-box. Some works say what they want to say in slowly unwinding narratives, so you have to open up and concentrate over time to get what the composer intended.

That's how Peter Batchelor's series of works collectively known as Kaleidoscope (Pogus 21073-2) plays out--slowly. There are five segments in all, four in the "Kaleidoscope: Cycle" and one in "Kaleidoscope: Arcade". They were composed for eight-channel playback and the set comes with a DVD that allows for that (or for that matter 5:1). The CD gives you a two-channel version.

The various sections were composed between 2004 and 2013. It is a music of silence and sound, the sound being mainly unpitched event fragments with some recognizable but electronically transformed pitched elements entering into the segments at seemingly critical junctures.

It is music for the long-haul, long-formed unfoldings of abstract sound, some of it rather quiet, all of it less performative than discursive, a thoughtful conversation of sound between aurally transformed sound materials.

The multi-speaker DVD version brings out the discursive give-and-take of the music more dramatically, but the two-channel CD version brings it together in ways that remain comprehensible.

I won't say that this is my favorite electronic work this year. It is a work that I need to hear more. There is a particular complexity that does not readily avail itself to you without study, close listening in an undistracted environment.

Give Kaleidoscope that attention and you will begin to feel its importance. That is saying something. Whether this is "great" or only extraordinarily interesting (which is enough) I have not decided. Time is necessary! Give a listen and decide for yourself.

Patricia Morehead, Brass Rail Blues

On March 16, 2012 I reviewed favorably Patricia Morehead's Good News Falls Gently on these pages. Today we have her second album, a collection of mostly songs entitled Brass Rail Blues (Navona 5953). It is music of a gestural modernism that works within an advanced harmonic palette that approaches atonality but generally stays within key centers one way or another.

The works for voice and instruments are situated within a chamber setting. "Alaskan Songs" features mezzo-soprano Julia Bentley plus clarinet and piano, "Three French Songs" has Bentley again with piano accompaniment, "Sempre un Giorno Nuovo" spotlights soprano Alicia Berneche with piano, "Two Movements from Tryptich" gives us Susanna Phillips in the soprano role plus string quartet, and "The Wonderful Musician" encores Julia Bentley with the CUBE Chamber Orchestra. The latter is a work of real modernist power. The pieces in song form have an edgy quality and well-conceived phrasing sequences that convey the emotive impact of the texts.

Interspersed throughout the program are several instrumental works: "The Edible Flute" for flute and piano, and "Just Before the Rain" for mandolin, cello and clarinet. The latter I particularly like for its lively sound color contrasts between the instruments.

These are works of substance. Patricia Morehead has a sure sense of instrumentation, a flair for vocal writing and text setting, and a modern expressionism that wears well with repetitive auditions.

"Brass Rail Blues" from Tryptich has an Americana favor, bluesy yet straying nicely into modern harmonic territory.

There is much to like in this program. Patricia Morehead gives us more reasons why she is a composer of today, someone to follow with interest. Recommended.