Markus Reuter, String Quartet No. 1 "Heartland," Matangi Quartet

The career trajectory of composer and stick guitarist Markus Reuter follows not the typical one for a classical composer nowadays, that is unless you put him with such rock-cum-classical icons as Frank Zappa. Markus started as an important member of later editions of King Crimson and then went on his own. Currently he enjoys a fertile group interaction with the all-star Prog lineup called Stickmen.

I have valued for a long while his Prog music but it was only several years ago that I and others came to appreciate his classical composing via a video and then an official, definitive recording of his orchestra blockbuster Todmorten 513. I liked that one so well I named it one of my top picks of the year when it came out. I still love to hear it.
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Look it up if you want to know more about how it moved me.

Amd now we have a follow-up in a fine recording of his String Quartet No. 1, "Heartland" (Solaire 8), as performed with precision and verve by the Matangi Quartet. The sound of the recording itself is pristine and detailed, as is the performance.

There is a very attractive kind of homespun quality at times to the music, which is  affirmed by the Heartland designation. Perhaps the sounds depict a wide-open land where the staples of life come to us, the basics, the essentials. So the music is essential, combining a kind of earthiness with a lyrical Modernity and an element that is pure Reuter in whatever sense I get from listening so much to his music. Call it Reutarian? Sure, maybe. It is his alone anyway.

There are eight dramatically varied movements that show a depictive arc and an arco poetics. He shows himself at this point very knowing of the string sounds he is after. The varied attacks and timbral subtleties are like the detailed outdoor life of ripening grain perhaps, complex yet direct. There is everyday life-tumble represented and also the quietness of yearning. The moods change nicely and we follow happily.

The Matangi Quartet sound fully immersed and subtly inspired for a heartful and smart reading of this wonderful music.

We have a winner! The music is strongly processual as well as lyric. The more you listen, the better it seems to me. That is a good sign, always.

Strongly recommended as an up-to-the-minute view of what Modern Art Music can sound like. Reuter is brilliant and innovative. Do not miss this!

Tibet: Ritual Traditions of the Bompos

Traditional Tibetan Buddhist chant is a many colored wonder and can be heard in a fair number of recordings, some out of print. There were several on Nonesuch Explorer that were pretty amazing. Now we get another perspective with a new CD entitled Tibet: Ritual Traditions of the Bompos (OCORA).

It is a regional variant that is perhaps more chamber-music-like comparatively speaking, fewer chanters, one cymbal and a drum and a single horn and so somewhat more elemental but no less supercharged and intensely focused than the variants we have heard on records or CDs.

And that makes it all a valuable addition. OCORA remains one of the first Ethno-World Music labels out there, hands down.

I recommend this heartily for anyone who a) is an acolyte of Tibetan music and/or b) wants to hear a precursor to New Music in its spaciousness and atmospherics. Grab this one!

Eliane Radigue, Occam Ocean 2

There are bagpipe or Indian Music drones, there is the droning of early choral music and then there are hyper-Modern drone-oriented pieces, whether acoustic, electric or both. Eliane Radigue is a master of the latter genre (in either "instrumentation") and has been for many years. A latest release finds her in great form, namely Occam Ocean 2 for orchestra (2015), a full-length work that slowly evolves in the most complexly interesting timbral, rather legato and somewhat seamless ways.

She was asked to write the work for the ONCEIM Orchestra, by Frederic Blondy, the Director-Conductor. (They perform it in this recording.) She eventually agreed when she thought of the work as a kind of solo for the conductor avec musicians. Listening to the work it sounds like a continuously floating and changing mass of sustain, like an ocean, with Occam's Razor there perhaps to trim down any excess though it is deeply resonant as a sound world, fascinating and exhilarating to hear.

Radigue comments in the notes that in some ways all her earlier electronic works were compromises compared to the rich expressive possibilities of the acoustic orchestra. And in this way Occam Ocean 2 finally gives us her potent and uncloaked advanced drone world in its full acousticity? Yes, it does, sure.

The emphasis is on the massive sustain on top of a key centered pedal that continually shifts timbre, range and instrumentation, not so much drone as elemental continuousness. That distinction matters as you listen because it is not at all fatiguing as a simple drone might be all by itself, at least to me. She piles great complexes of poetic sound and lets then shift and shimmer with time like the sun on blue-green tidal flows.

She also asked that she meet each one of the orchestra members in her own apartment space, to get to know them in order to write the more effectively each part.

The final work as performed here is a glorious thing of many shifting parts, an ocean of sound with  tides flowing and ever entailing and prevailing.

I find this music to be enriching and satisfying. It is New Music High Avant and the "orchestration" is incredibly full and unprecedented in some ways--they all blend so thoroughly it sounds like Electronic Music only more timbrally alive. Wow! Strongly recommended as what is happening right now. Now is now!

 

James Brawn, A Beethoven Odyssey, Volume 6, Sonatas 4, 11, 12

You can live with the Beethoven Piano Sonatas a lifetime and still hear new things in it all, from recordings, live performances, self-playing, wherever the tradition is kept alive, even if but in your earphones or in the living room. And we have today another volume in the complete sonata opus by James Brawn, A Beethoven Odyssey, Volume 6 (MSR Classics MS 1470). Nothing stands still and Maestro Brawn gives us his own movement to the musical life-stream. This is a carefully expressive series of versions, in this case of Sonatas 4, 11 and 12.

There is plenty of technique but it does not dominate so much as allow Brawn to bring out the full Beethoven depth-of-field, to focus on the whole. Listen to his rendition of the beautifully lyrical  Largo from the 4th or the opening Andante from the 12th, or the gorgeously moving Minuetto from no. 11, and you get a sampling of these poetic but tempered set of readings, lovely and at the same time natural, unforced, heartful without being mawkish, not at all grandstanding. The music does not call attention to itself as a virtuoso vehicle so much as pure energy and melodic-harmonic brilliance. You listen, you are reminded just how central this music is now and was then, how breathtakingly innovative and expressive the Beethoven opus was and still remains.

We are invited to swim in the refreshing currents of an interpreter that digs deeply into the Beethovenian substratum, rings out and sings out the glorious sense of movement this music instills in you at its best. You literally hear Beethoven forge his signature revolution bit-by-bit if you listen to them all in sequence. But in this case we have a ways to go. No matter, for at least my self I am very glad to hear the Brawn exegesis.

Recommended for those who want a straightforward composer-oriented reading of the sonatas. Volume 6 does not disappoint and will make you want to hear the others. It is a worthwhile use of your time and listening energies. Brawn is a poet laureate of the ivories, indeed. Bravo.

Dai Fujikura, Zawazawa

The state of the Modern Avant Garde in New Music today? It is thriving, though of course these days not the only game in town, so to speak. There are competing styles that complement the scene if you think of the Avant as the High Modern stance. No matter. All the better for listeners to have more choices. Today we have one from the current high Modern World and a fine thing that. I speak of composer Dai Fujikura and his album Zawazawa (Minabel Records MIN108).

On it we get to hear ten varied and variable works by Maestro Fujikura. On one side there are the choral works. There are three here along with a mini-piece for solo soprano--"Ki i ite" for soprano, and for choir there is "Zawazawa," "Sawasawa" (A pt. 2 of "Zawazawa") for choir and marimba, and "The New House" for choir alone.

The instrumental works show innovative outlooks and a careful attention to sonarity--for the tuba (Tuba Concerto for tuba and wind orchestra), clarinet ("Go, Movement Five" for the solo clarinet), double bass ("BIS" and "ES" for solo double bass), horn ("Harahara," "Yurayura," for solo horn, and for horn and string quartet, respectively).

Both the choral and instrumental works show a great sensitivity to the potentials and capabilities of the players and singers. Whether a matter of the mellow richness of timbre and/or expanded sounding qualities of the tuba and horn, the incisively limber sharpness of the clarinet, or the widely varied punct-al qualities of the pizzicato double bass as influenced by Jazz, it is all a place to contemplate sound per se and its meanings, after all, for we musical animals.

There is a sensory motor aspect to Fujikura's sound, a kind of tautological circularity more internal than minimal, but it is not more than a part of his extensive High Modern syntax, beyond serial and more ritualized if that is possible? It is a very personal way the composer has that is best heard right now than described fleetingly. There is almost a Martial Arts sound to the singing and playing--though I hope I am not projecting here? There is a "snapping to," a musical locking in that seems more Asian than Western, perhaps. And all that is only to say that the music stands by itself, the playing or singing is a kind of discipline, nothing casual, and after all that it still belongs squarely to the Avant realm, to New Music language as spoken today.

I do recommend you at least hear it--then if you like it, support the artist and the label, by all means. New Music needs your support and Fujikura is a worthy example. Kudos!

Platti, Cello Sonatas, Francesco Giulligioni, Members of L'Arte dell'Arco

If Giovanni Benedetti Platti (1697-1763) does not have his name inscribed in the immortal pantheon of luminary composers, in truth I find him nevertheless in his own way a Late Baroque Master quite worthy of our ear time, even if he is no Bach, exactly. Who is save Bach himself? That is another discussion.

My feelings are confirmed with a recent two-CD set of his Cello Sonatas (Brilliant 95763), as performed with zest by cellist Francesco Giulligioni and members of L'Arte dell'Arco. There is a fine sound to savor with a very gritty solo cello, bowing with fire on what sounds to be an instrument and bow from the era, plus a continuo that sometimes includes both harpsichord and organ, and all that sounds fine indeed. The second CD includes sonatas for cello and violone and harpsichord, sometimes the strings alone, sometimes the trio, but all intriguing as much for the sound timbres as for the notes themselves. Giulligioni bows like the devil, not as often like an angel and that is refreshing and vital to my ears. His sound is pretty, but pretty with an tempestuous exuberance that sounds anything but saccharine, or for that matter Romantic. It is not that at all and all the better for it.

There are 12 Sonatas in all, played quite well.

With the bargain Brilliant price this set is an essential for those who seek to understand Modern performance practices with original instrumental techniques as well as for any acolyte of the Italian legacy. Platti is very good and once you hear this program a few times it all comes together, at least that is my experience. Go for it! There is nothing to lose but your ignorance about the composer.

Hanns Eisler, Leipzig Symphony, Funeral Pieces of Motion Picture Scores, Night and Fog, Jurgen Bruns, MDR-Sinfonieorchester Leipzig, Kammersymphony Berlin

If you are from the States and know something of 20th century cultural history, you might know why composer Hanns Eisler has been in many ways surrounded by a shroud here. He was one of the notable composer refugees to America in the Nazi period (a formidable bunch of brilliance), was blacklisted and forced to return to Europe after embarking on a promising film scoring period in Hollywood, a victim of the Fulbright Hearings. It explains the obscurity now but the music has begun to become a most welcome thing over the world in the past quarter century anyway. And I personally find the music quite intriguing. He was a master scorer and inventive soul despite finding himself exposed on the left in a world that had turned to the right.

And now we have another release of note, with Jurgen Bruns conducting alternately the MDR-SInfonieorchester and the Kammersymphonie Berlin in a very intriguing program of a once-lost but happily significant symphony (The Leipzig Symphony) and some intensely interesting music from film scores (Funeral Pieces of Motion Picture Scores and music from Night and Fog) (Capriccio 5368).

The music is rich, deep, quirky-original much of the time and there is a good deal of it. The film scores are very symphonic and so it all is a rather vast treasure of a Modern mindset that nevertheless takes as homage moments that you know are almost a paraphrase of Mahler and Bruckner, and then lyrical sadnesses, grim sarcastic marches that reflect his involvement with Brecht and other contentual anti-Nazi moments as of course you might expect to encounter by Eisler in certain moods and with given semantic aims and etc.

It shows us an Eisler who was fully conversant with the musical era he followed upon as well as funereal sorrows and other film-score oriented moods. The latter and their original function in the various films can remain separate for our listening aims without the least difficulty. This is symphonic music first and foremost now.

He was a composer who gave us perhaps as much or more of the anguish of his era than many others then (Shostakovich and Prokofiev come to mind also) and that dark mood does dominate at times but memorably so.

The performances are first-rate and the music stands out as good and even masterful. Listen and you will find a composer of his time we a universality that can still move us today. Perhaps Eisler is going to take a chair in the 20th century modernist pantheon after all, or at least some of these works will. This program shows a composer worthy of our ears, surely. This one is for all Modernists. Bravo.