Gerald Finzi, Cello Concerto, Eclogue, New Year Music, etc., Sir Andrew Davis, BBC Symphony Orchestra

I've found some of the music of Gerald Finzi (1901-1956) to be quite interesting in the past. And now there is a new one by Sir Andrew Davis and the BBC Symphony Orchestra (Chandos 5214) that widens the window on the composer with some major works I have not heard before myself and perhaps you have not either. The Cello Concerto, Op. 40 (1951-52, 1954-55) is the centerpiece of the program, taking some nearly 40 minutes and featuring Paul Watkins nicely on the cello.

Following the concerto are three worthy pieces lasting each around ten minutes, the Eclogue for Piano and String Orchestra (late 1920s, revised 1952), the Nocturne (New Years Music) (1926, revised 1940s, 1950) and the Grand Fantasia and Toccata, Op. 38 for Piano and Orchestra (Fantasia 1928, revised 1947, 1953, Toccata 1953).

Finzi at least in my lifetime has been a somewhat lesser known of the 20th century English Renaissance composers. Since I do not know much about him I took a peek at Wikopedia. It tells me he is most known as a choral composer. He first studied with Farrar (who studied with Stanford), lost three brothers in WWI, had a rather bleak outlook in part because of that, and on from there. Vaughan Williams secured him a teaching post at the Royal Academy of Music (1930-33) and in the '20s Finzi made his first splash in London with his Thomas Hardy settings and an orchestral piece "A Severn Rhapsody." And so on... His major recognition and his very best works followed from the mid-'30s until his death.

The music on the current program is in a kind of English Late-Romantic zone. I find the "Grand Fantasia and Toccata" to be the most engaging, for its harmonic tang and distinguished, adventuresome thematics.

The Cello Concerto is a very ambitious work, surely. It follows a rhapsodic track in the first movement and gives much space for emotive cello pyrotechnical virtuosity. Wikipedia says this movement in part may reflect his diagnosis as he wrote the work that he had Hodgkin's disease and only 10 years left to live. It is certainly a bit gloomy. The second movement has a tender lyrical side that sounds nicely English pastoral. Towards the end of the movement a theme of real expressive beauty emerges full blown and we welcome it. Movement three is a true relief with a jaunty theme and a purposefulness that redeems the whole work and makes it graspable and worthwhile somehow. Nice.

"Eclogue" for Piano and Orchestra starts right out with some lovely piano passages, some English sunshine and lyricism to contrast with some of the despair of the opening concerto. There is a diatonic kind of almost-folk art naivety to this music that engages nicely.

"Nocturne (New Year Music)" is triumphantly rhapsodic and even a bit noisy. It is not my favorite here, though I like it far better when it is more quiet and reflective.

So on this one we get a well-performed look at a somewhat mixed bag of music. The brilliant moments are worthwhile, and the rest will help the Anglophile with evaluate Finzi and his place in the English 20th century. It is good to hear. Some of it is rather wonderful.

Czerny, Piano Trios, Sun-Young Shin, Benjamin Hayek, Samuel Gingher

Anyone who took piano lessons long enough, at least from a classically oriented teacher no doubt faced one or more piano technique exercise books by Carl Czerny (1791-1857). I did. And at the time I did not know that he was an extremely accomplished and prolific composer in his day, more well-know for that than the pedagogy I guess then. Or he should have been if he wasn't!

I later chanced upon some of his piano music and was pleased with it. And so I have had a look out ever since for more of his music. Today I happily bring to you a fine recent example in a new release of a couple sets of his Piano Trios (Naxos 8.573848). They are played quite nicely by Sun-Young Shin (violin), Benjamin Hayek (cello) and Samuel Gingher (piano).

This is music that sparkles with some brilliance, a step beyond Mozart for emotive expanse and virtuoso bubble, parallel to Beethoven in terms of  furtherance but rather nicely original with its very own bravura melodics and rhythmic drive.

Carl early on studied piano with his father, who had him concentrate on Bach, Handel, Mozart and
Clementi. He got off to a great start and then became a star pupil of Beethoven, who gave him a thorough grounding via the piano music of CPE Bach. And so he was off to a real career though his family was poor and it was up to him to make good. He of course did.

The combination of a near-ideal reading of these works and the sweetly lyrical content make this an outstanding introduction to Czerny if you are not familiar, or if you are this remains a very nice one to add to your appreciation. These are World Premiere recordings too, so it is new in all senses for us. We get the  Op. 211 "Deux Trios brilliants" and the Op. 104 "Trois Sonatines faciles et brillantes". In all there are two works here in three movements, and three works in two movements.

At the Naxos price you really cannot go wrong if you want something finely wrought, and beautifully expressed by this fine trio. Highly recommended.

Andrew Rosciszewski, Sonic Real Estate

Every day starts with the sun. And for me virtually every weekday starts with a new program of music to consider. For that to happen much of my week is spent in listening and relistening. It is worth it for the joy of following what is new. Today we have something slightly unexpected in the music of Andrew Rosciszewski, specifically a CD called Sonic Real Estate (self released CD).   He recorded and mastered this album up in Bayonne, NJ, so he is perhaps one of my home boys.

And the music? It is a rather nicely unusual kind of Post-Minimalism, a Radical Tonality kind of Modern. Not especially repeat-oriented, but poetic and expressive.

We get a great start with his four-movement "Trio No. 1 for Violin, Cello and Piano." There is a good deal of contrast between the movements. The 3rd section, "Doloroso" stands out as a cycle of chorale-like phrasings. The second movement comes out very brio and lively. The first and fourth movements have the kind of dramatic impact that warrants their positions as opener and closer. The somewhat grotesque waltz motif that opens the final movement gives way to contrapuntality and then a expansion of a kind of goblinesque romp well suited for this time of year, Halloween. The movement returns to the slow clock chime motif of the opening and leaves us in a state of wonder, nicely so.

A brief "Piesn Wdowy" for cello and piano follows. It is solemn and reflective, lyrical and expressive. And in the end lively.

"Music for Three Instruments:"  clarinet, flute, and cello for the recording. There is some relation to Avant Improv in the level and manner of expression and also a High Modern aspect in terms of the harmonic-melodic panorama it gives to our ears.`.

A fairly brief "Impromptu" for piano sounds a bit more rhapsodic than the rest of this. It is in a genre surely yet not entirely predictable.

And then finally we get the title work, a Fusion-Prog sojourn for electric and acoustic instruments with a nice feeling of contrapuntal movement and a fine sense of syntactical dramatics. It is the surprise of the program but then you can see how it comes out of Rosciszewski's sense of melodic-harmonic form. It is in seven and it excels as a Prog compositional showcase. It is worth the price of admission alone if you are so inclined in such stylistic directions.

In the end the music holds its own and makes a dent surely in the sort of tonal melodic worlds possible today. Nice work!

Harriet Stubbs, Heaven & Hell: The Doors of Perception, Piano Music Modern and Less Modern

If I did not think Classical Music, Modern or Ancient, is fun I would not write about it. Why inflict pain on others? There is joy when you connect with a work and/or a performance. And it is not like some other joy once you get the spirit of listening well. It is a tabula rasa.

What is a joy may not be known until you jump into it. For example the joy of exploring the solo piano repertoire did not occur to me until I was music hunting at a record store around 1969, in the Classical Section and came upon one of the Vox Boxes  that caught my eye. The boxes contained three LPs for $3.99, which was a remarkable bargain then. The one I looked at was an edition of Chabrier's "Piano Works." And I checked it out. Nicely played, good music! So that was the beginning of the solo piano excursion of listening for me, a step beyond sitting down and learning a piece by hand, which in retrospect I might have done more!

That process continues now, some nearly 50 years later. Today I contemplate an anthology of piano music sorted and presented more-or-less by theme. It is pianist Harriet Stubbs' new Heaven & Hell: The Doors of Perception (Suite 2B Records 018). The album has a concept behind it, and all the well for that since it may draw in folks who might not get exposed to this music otherwise.

Suffice for now to say that the concept relates to poet William Blake's vision of heaven and hell and a journey from innocence (youth) to experience (maturity). The whole thing kicks off with John Adams and his somewhat cosmic Pomo piano venture "Phrygian Gates" and its accompanying reading of a Blake-derived passage as tellingly and intelligently recited by one of our primary embodiments of the passage from innocence to experience, the ever-worthwhile Marianne Faithful (who is now many experiential miles away from her innocent song "As Tears Go By" of yesteryear).

It sets the mood for what follows. I myself read the liners but think it is best for you to do that yourself when you get the album, assuming you do. Some of these works are about innocence, some experience, but of course none of that would matter if the selections did not make an impression both in themselves and together, which they do. Nor would it matter if the performances were in any way below par, which also is not a problem.

Ms. Stubbs has a poetic musical sense and her performances go for expression above all, and perhaps less for absolute precision. Perhaps only those who know some of these works intimately would notice. And in the end it is not out of a sloppiness as it is an expressive passion. So too if one sits down to a Sloppy Joe repast one should abandon the idea of counting the lumps of ground beef or then gauge the ratio of meat to sauce. But in this case one is sitting down to a plate of "Passion Joe" so to speak! Here it is an expressive whole that comes across to us with heartfelt sincerity and it is served up in ways that transcend some absolute measure of utter faithfulness, right? So too, the idea of "sounding right" is ultimately one that leaves a poetic impression and here Ms. Stubbs resounds with a rather profound poetic concentration.

The choice and sequencing of the musical selections themselves go a long ways towards defining this program as special. Each has a vibrancy of spirit and the sequence (perhaps influenced by producer Russ Titelman's uncanny sense?) has after a few listens (so to me) given out with a fine kind of inevitable suchness, and so a satisfaction.

From the Adams at the top and the Ligeti at the conclusion we get contemporaneity and here-nowness. In between it is a happy journey through sublimity, with Mozart's haunting "Rondo in A Major," five Shostakovitch "Preludes," Stravinsky's "Tango," Busoni's piano arrangement of the Bach Chaconne from the solo Partita No. 2 for Violin, Prokofiev's biting "Suggestion Diabolique," two movements from Scriabin's Second Sonata, a beautiful Brahms Intermezzo and on to the Ligeti to close.

These are examples rather glorious, all. And I am glad to hear how Ms. Stubbs strings them together like a popcorn necklace for the Holiday Tree. I will admit that I do not especially care how closely the selections hew to the thematic Blakean concept. It is enough to state the firm poetic thought at the beginning and then to set the music loose. Harriet Stubbs is most certainly the right kind of poetic pianomeister for this ambitious program. She turns the Ligeti 5th Prelude into the most heavenly of heavens. It is all angel's food cake there, and the juxtaposition with a brace of Devil Dogs (devil's food cake snacks mainly available locally in NY Metro) only serves to heighten the experience of experience and the naivete possibilities we can still sense though we are long beyond it experientially  I suppose.

So after a bunch of listens over here in the former servant's quarters of an ancient Cape May farmhouse I can say easily and with a surety that this music is something very worth your time and concentration. It is a happy thing. Harriet Stubbs brings out the poetry imprisoned in the piano as few around today can do. Recommended.

Miguel Kertsman, Three Concertos, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Dennis Russell Davies

What we never hear we can never truly know. That thought keeps me ever at the listening station here. And happily it turns out there still is a great deal worth hearing coming out every day. One such a thing is Miguel Kertsman's Three Concertos (Naxos 8.573987), brought very nicely to us courtesy of the London Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of the distinguished Dennis Russell Davies.

Kertsman as of this writing is in his early fifties. The music in this program was written between 2005 and 2015. It sounds Modern surely, tonal and extremely well wrought. The four works on the program are each very much something with a special identity, and so the hearing is an opening onto a number of fascinating worlds.

The concertos are very alive and vibrant in sound. "Concerto Brasileiro for Flute, Strings and Percussion" (2005) features an agile and mesmerizing flute part and the sort of Brazilian spirit that moves us happily forward.

The contrasting "Concerto for Violin, Horn, Shofar and Orchestra" (2013) has a very mysterious and atmospheric demeanor. It is masterful writing and orchestration with a kind of sonic presence that gradually lifts itself into strongly memorable places the more you listen. If there is one work you might first turn to to get an idea of Kertsman's sonic depth and aurally inventive imagination, this would be my choice. It is rather unforgettable after several run-throughs.

One could listen to this program solely with the idea of identifying and tracing the various musical influences Kertsman adeptly utilizes for his own musical vision. If we followed that string of hearing  we would encounter rock, folk, pop, local and other diverse strands that all get assimilated and transformed by the composer's masterful ways.

So the "Journey for Bassoon and Orchestra" of 2013 has some very engaging and moving music. I especially like the jazz influences but then too a very new kind of rhapsodic, songy Modernism and a wash of majestic lyricism.

The latest (2015) work and a fitting finale to the program comes to us as the "Chamber Symphony No. 2 'New York of 50 Doors.'" This one has a pretty stunning jazz-rock heft to it that neither sounds condescending nor does it seem gratuitous as it can sometimes be in the hands of lesser and less committed composers.

There we have it. This is a beautifully performed program of absolutely  worthy sounds. Kertsman manages to be completely Modern and yet so too lyrical and melodically enchanting. Four works, four worlds all different and a very satisfying listen to anyone who welcomes the NEW in New Music. I recommend this one strongly to you.

Gene Pritsker, Eclectic Music Extravaganza

Perhaps a rather simple proposition? That is, that New Music does not always have to be foreboding, so serious as to be hard work to hear? I am dedicated to the proposition that all New Music is and should be fun to hear. Every work an adventure. Every possibility potentially there to hear at any moment. Every sky a rainbow? Well not every sky. But I do believe that New Music is as fun as anything! Maybe as much fun as a barrel full of monkeys? Composer Gene Pritsker knows what I mean. Because he never writes a work that intends to be deliberately arcane or difficult. And mind you, I like arcane and difficult things! I like the opposite too.

With today's music program we get something that is more or less pure fun. Here the "eclectic" in the album title is no accident.  For this is an all-Pritsker program of chamber music that while quite serious about itself is nevertheless fearless in what it allows itself to view or to appropriate for the end of the works at hand.

So the listen is a rewarding one on this album. You put it on and get some really worthwhile recompositional reworkings of Bach's theme from the first movement of the "Well Tempered Clavier," for example, and I think of how Satie did something like this on a Clementi Sonatina. If that is eclectic and it no doubt is, it is in the best way. But the eclectic has a horizontal axis too. It is not just one like paired again its like. It is all influences in cross-spectrum. So then too you listen and hear Gene taking on...Death Metal in some really fetching antics for vocal, piano and drum set. Then how about some piano music that unabashedly works within a ragtime Jopliniana mode to contribute a new spin on the rag possibilities?

We get eleven short works or short multi-movement works and they are all good to hear. There is no doubt that "Modernism" is what we have as opposed to post-post variety packs (have to be of a certain age for this aside? As in Post Toasties?) And the eclec-ticity is not so much a shocking thing as a familiar and reassuring sort of familiarity-in-difference. I do recommend you hear this by all means. Gene Pritsker is a force! Bravo.

Wilhelm Stenhammar, Sangen, Reverenza, Gothenburg Symphony, Neeme Jarvi

Years of life can pass for me without thinking about or listening to Wilhelm Stenhammar (1871-1927). And in fact I came to his music fairly late, during my golden age of combing through the stacks of Academy Records and Books in the city (New York) back when I worked nearby at Scientific American Books/W.H. Freeman. But when something new comes along I am ever interested. The new one at hand today renews my appreciation with some very strong music, strongly performed.

Happily we get that on a new release with Neeme Jarvi conducting the Gothenburg Symphony. It is a grouping of Stenhammar works that add to what we may have experienced and the performances convince us that we are in the presence of superior inventive powers and a vivid orchestrational imagination. All this on a program that includes the symphonic cantata Sangen (BIS 2359).

The liners to the album remind us that his breakthrough in the Stockholm music world came with his first Piano Concerto in 1894. He headed up the very same Gothenberg Symphony Orchestra that we hear on this recording  from 1907 to 1922. Under his guidance the orchestra blossomed into a world-class outfit. And when you hear the works on this program, all written during the tenure of his directorship between 1910 and 1922, you feel you are in the hands of a composer that understood from extensive experience the resources of the modern orchestra and put a wide spectrum of sonic options to excellent use.

This is almost an Impressionistic sort of Late Romanticism we hear on this CD, with the lyricism of a Grieg and the power of a Sibelius to summon the sounds into a local set of possibilities. Yet he goes his own way for all that.

The Hilding Rosenberg arranged "Suite from Romeo Och Julia" of 1922 opens the set. It is tender, lyrical and rather effervescent in its five movement presentation. The themes grow inside you as you hear the music repeatedly. And the acoustical outlay of the SACD sound we already detect happily, for this is a recording that sounds especially well.

"Reverenza" (1911-13) follows, which was the original second movement to his "Serenade." It holds its own and features some evocatively stunning string parts and sectional brilliances handled well by all concerned. "Two Sentimental Romances" of 1910 fall close on the heels of the short  "Reverenza" movement and bring out the solo violin rhapsodistic niceties of Sara Troback. The soaring melodic themes are memorable and distinctive. Stenhammar surely was no hack. Far from it.

"Sangen (The Song)," a symphonic cantata of 1921 is the main event in the program, running some 30 minutes with soloists, chorus and full orchestra. This work has more of the rousing ambition of a Nordic Late Romantic huzzah in contrast to its more Impressionist program items. There is a meticulously crafted whole to be savored in listening to this, the final work in the sequence. It is stirring music, and the ghost of Mahler sometimes seems to be lurking quietly and unobtrusively at the back of the stage.

Anyone who already knows and appreciates Stenhammar will take to this one. Those who want to hear another fine voice from the Scandinavian early 20th century flowering will be serviced well by Stenhammar's example and the fine performances to be heard on this program. And in the end it is simply good music, well performed. It is not exactly rabidly Modern, but not everything must be that to deserved our attention, right? Stenhammar is a very musical voice that deserves to remain a part of our sounding into musical air.  We should still hear and appreciate him now and in the future. Recommended.