Verona Quartet, Diffusion, Janacek, Szymanowski, Ravel Quartets

 

So much music keeps coming to us, the listeners. Yet dig we must for the buried treasures? Today like most days I have one that has gotten through to my ears and deserves attention. It is the recorded debut of the Verona Quartet in a program entitled Diffusion (Azica ACD-71339).

It is perhaps a truism that some works gain in comprehensibility after a certain amount of time, so that for example Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" after a certain point became more comprehensible to great conductors and great orchestras, and so too to audiences, so that at least some performances in time made greater sense, had mastered the musical language of the work and thereby played out the whole with a fluid lucidity not previously heard.

Hold that thought for a minute while we cover the preliminaries of today's album. The Verona Quartet steps forth in a thematic way here. Diffusion plays upon the quartet's diverse cultural origins--Singapore, Canada, US, UK--and presents a program that in essence assumes, benefits from and encompasses the foursome's local folk roots and gives us a kind of cohesive picture of how they diffuse their own backgrounds and come to understand the corresponding elements in each of the three quartets featured in the program, namely Leos Janacek's String Quartet No. 2 "Intimate Letters," Karol Szymanowski's String Quartet No. 2 and Maurice Ravel's String Quartet in F Major.

I am not so familiar with the Szymanowski but it is a nice version and good to hear, very worthwhile in itself. The Janacek and the Ravel are both favorites of mine, melodic harmonic wholes made up of disparate parts, striking motifs that gather together in brilliant juxtapositions. 

What seems remarkable to me on these performances is the detailed finessing of all the motifs and their seamless juxtaposition of all with all perhaps like never quite heard in this way. Hence my thought at the beginning of this article about how as time passes artists who are further on in the evolution of the modern classical world can express a whole with increasing sympathy and understanding. 

In short the Verona Quartet's personal diffusion has made it possible for rather ideally ravishing readings of these most inventive Modern-vernacular exceptionalities. The time has come for the Verona Quartet and with their superb musicianship and interpretive brilliance I hope we can look forward to many years of greatness from them. Kudos and congratulations on such a fine debut! Listen to this one without fail if you can. Do not miss it.

Haskell Small, Johann Sebastian Bach, Keyboard Partitas 1, 4 & 5, Bach and the Piano

 

Live a virtual lifetime of music appreciation and one can look back and trace a progression of gradual coming-to-know enlightenment. So for example when I moved to Hyde Park in Chicago in 1981 I knew the Bach Partitas as part of an old Vox Box, performed on harpsichord with period faithfulness, not spectacular but lovely for the music of course.

My neighborhood in Chi-town had a great used record store and one day I found there a very old Remington LP of Jorge Demus doing several of the Partitas on piano. The darned record skipped but it was a revelation. Demus really convinced in his ultra-pianistic reading. Here was a music that translated especially well to a creative piano outlook. But that became clear to me only when I heard a real world-class pianist interpret it.

A bit later and I in time came to appreciate Glenn Gould's readings of the Partitas, but the Demus dynamic and slight rubato, the variations in touch and expression lived on as a model I found quite compelling, as much as the Gould had its very own sublimities. Both are good to know.

Years have gone by, I eventually found a skip-free copy of the Demus, but then just now I received a new CD in the mail of one Haskell Small playing on piano the Keyboard Partitas 1, 4 & 5 (MSR Classics MS 1717(). The name vaguely rang a bell. In fact I checked and realized that I had covered him playing nicely a modern set of piano compositions--in a review posting of. October 24, 2016. That is I posted happily on his Book of Hours album then.

Of course one can handle adroitly and thrive at performing Contemporary Modern piano music and it does not mean one could do quite the same with Bach. But Haskell Small's new CD shows us he has a wonderful feel for the Partitas, a sure pianistic sense of the ways to translate Bach's brilliance to piano performance practice. So he can take a long contrapuntal passage and vary the articulation of each note in sequence, vary the tempo just enough that it does not sound robotic but not so much that he sounds "clever." He trills just enough to remind us of the lineage. He expresses the tenderness of the music when called for, not so much sounding Romantic as letting show a somewhat tempered feelingfulness, just right, not to interrupt the flow so much as to add to it another dimension that of course the piano in the right hands does so well.

As much as I love the Partitas I must say Small's readings of 1, 4 & 5 give me the more to love by a real pianistic sympathy born not out of a spectacular approach, rather a subtle one You do not come away from the recording being impressed in the obvious sense with astonishment, with the velocity or other showmanship one might come to expect after Gould's readings. Instead there is a total musicality about it all, a deep dedication to making this wonderful music sound. And sure, there is nevertheless no lack of technique, velocity, melodic contour, etc., all in service to Small's vision of each movement, which is foremost. In the process Small gives us a kind of lyricization of the music, a making poignant, which the piano of course can do and Small knows how to realize it.

In the end Maestro Small adds to our appreciation with a command performance. If you have a little Demus, a little Gould, fine. But even if you do not this is a wonderful version that you should seriously consider if you love Bach and love too the piano! Hoorah! The is another volume out that I suspect deserves our attention as well.

Sonidos Cubanos 2, New Music from the Cuban Diaspora

 

When I think of Cuba I think of great music and some great baseball players among other things. Oh, yes and great food! One of those three things came in the mail to me recently and I am very happy for it. It is an anthology of New Music by Cuban composers, entitled Sonidos Cubanos 2 (Neuma 133), Each of the composers featured in this second volume is a recipient of the Cintas Foundation Fellowship for composers of Cuban descent. Each currently holds sway somewhere in the Cuban Diaspora.

What is remarkable, one of the things that is remarkable about this anthology is not so much the Modern conceptual rigor of it all so much as that the music all sounds wonderfully well. Each work excels in its own melodic-harmonic-timbral ingeniousness. It is something one of course generally hopes for in New Music but cannot of course always get.

There is a wide variety of expressive possibilities and musical grouping in this five work set.

Flores Chaviano opens the program with an orchestra work that pays homage to the victims of a 1995 mining disaster in Spain. The music has a gradual build up to searing sadness in a tone poem that rings out with clangorous impact and brilliance.

From there we go to heartbreak and a sad beauty in Ivette Herryman Rodriguez's setting of Christina Rossetti's "When I am Dead, My Dearest." Soprano, cello and piano express a tender despair. Kudus especially to Lindsay Kesselman and her wondrous soprano reading.

Odeline de la Martinez extends the mood with a deeply reflective chamber work about the composer's Cuban childhood in "Litanies." It is haunting and just plain beautiful. If there was nothing else but this work it would be enough, at least as far as inspired fare goes. Happily all of these works are worthy and as a whole make for an experience that will ring in your head for a very long time once you get situated to the sequence.

Sabrina Pena Young follows with the five song except from the "Libertorio Song Cycle." It too calls out to us musically in special ways. The final movement-song features some impressive additions of metal guitar and bass. It works wonderfully well!

Finally there is Eduardo Morales-Caso's "Evolving Spheres" for bass clarinet and piano. It is called a "fantasy" and indeed it does have a open kind of narrative impact musically.

Taken altogether this is a program of valuable, memorable music. It does not attempt to knock over the boundaries of the Modern but instead follows the personal muse of each composer for an awesome sonic sensibility and brilliance. High recommended for all who seek something new and of course something good. It is all that, very much so.

Matt Haimovitz, Mari Kodama, MON AMI, Mon amour, Early Modern French Music for Cello and Piano

 

I have been playing catch up a little lately with releases that are worthwhile that I have meant to cover. So today there is an effervescent program of French Early Modern-Post-Romantic music for cello and piano. It features the magnificent cello of Matt Haimovitz and the compellingly complementary piano of Mari Kodama. It is fittingly titled MON AMI, Mon amour (Pentatone PTC 5186 816).

One thing this music reminds us of happily and memorably is that the early Modern French chamber style so nicely represented here was Post-Romantic in its general Impressionism, Romantically expressive in a different way than 19th century styles--in other words rather more luminescent, harmonically sophisticated and decidedly atmospheric.

What especially attracts me to this program is the wide swatch of composers covered, just about a definitive sample of the leading lights for expressive inventiveness back then. So we have two pieces by Gabriel Faure, and one apiece by the likes of Francois Poulenc, Darius Milhaud,  Lili Boulanger, Nadia Boulanger, Maurice Ravel, and Claude Debussy.

The music has real substance. Matt and Mari take pains to give each a detailed regardful mood and a dynamic reading, nothing less than what one might come to expect from such a talented pairing. The result is an album all Francophiles should revel in and listen to repeatedly with increasing pleasure. Strongly recommended.

Inna Faliks, Reimagine: Beethoven and Ravel, Nine World Premieres

 

One of the ways the legacy of Classical composer titans lives on is through works written later as a homage to the master, so to speak, either in a general sense, or less often as deliberately modelling and extending a specific work. Pianist Inna Faliks gives us a volume of piano music devoted to later day Modern compositions each responding to an earlier piano work. The title gives us the plan--Reimagine: Beethoven and Ravel (Navona NV6352).

On this absorbing and deeply pianoforte-centered program we have some nine world premiere compositions specifically written for Ms. Faliks. 

For the Beethoven segment there are some six original works, each modelled after one of Beethoven's six Bagatelles, opus 126. Quite sensibly and fascinatingly, each new work is presented followed by the Beethoven Bagatelle in question. So we hear in this way pieces expressly responding to a Bagatelle, one apiece by Richard Danielpour,  Peter Golub, Tamir Hendelman, David Lefkowitz, Mark Carlson, and Ian Krause.

Following on the heels of this lovely coupling are three works responding to a separate movement each from Ravel's "Gaspard de la Nuit"--by Paola Prestini, Timo Andres and Billy Childs.

All the homages extend the legacy, bring it into a piano-centered present day and thereby give pianist Faliks a lengthy set of tone poems and active excitement that shows off her beautiful interpretive skills and brings us to the edge of our seats--or perhaps rather our piano benches! Inna Faliks gives us a substantial program that shows her spectacular touch and immaculate phrasing. The music remains in the mind even after just a few listens for its haunting luminescence.

This album should please a wide range of listeners, including of course those New Music enthusiasts who are up for a Modernity that responds to the Classical legacy as it steps forward into the future. Molto bravo!

Philip Blackburn, Justinian Intonations, Electroacoustic Music with Ryland Angel, Vocals

 

Since I began writing these reviews years ago I have come to know Philip Blackburn as an articulate, erudite and very capable head of the Innova New Music label and now in the same capacity for Neuma Records. He is a fine fellow and knows his stuff. I've also come to appreciate him as a composer of sonically and inventively innovative New Music. If you type his name in the search box above you will see a number of very positive review articles I've penned on his music.

And now there is a new one, a very worthy one entitled Justinian Intonations (Neuma 127). This one is an hour of sonically fascinating drone-sustain.

Now as I have been exposed to such things, there are a number of ways to go with a drone-sustain mode of composition. One is a glitchy, almost art brut primal quality. Neither the drone nor what goes with it is in this scenario deliberately sonically well-painted so much as it is elemental--not necessarily precisely so but vaguely like the old US land line telephone dial tone. My childhood growing up with that was my first and main exposure to everyday life drone sustain experience, though there were similar aural equivalents with electric fans and tv off-the-air test patterns. The same might be said of the old nuclear attack Emergency Alert civil defense multitone signal on TV and radio in the old days, sometimes even now. So in some ways hearing a piece in that glitchy primal mode may resonate for people of a certain age with the feeling on hearing those elemental signals growing up. Similarly Varese's "revolutionary" use of sirens in his percussion classic  "Ionization" sounded potentially a similar ominous feeling in the contemporary listener.

Another important sort of drone sustain zone can be first heard in the Fripp and Eno (and then later  just Fripp) works utilizing sustain psychedelic guitar long tones with or without additional electronics and featuring sophisticated employment of digital delay.

Philip Blackburn's Justinian Intonations occupies a somewhat different realm and does so beautifully well.  A hint of what that is about can be gathered from the cover image, a stylized abstraction assembled around a visual image of an old, vastly cavernous cathedral. Those who know the wonderful sustained echo of such places will recognize a hinting at a kind of aesthetic, Early Music element of what sustain-drone music can be today--paralleled with the direct drone-longtone ways of Medieval Organum and Eastern Orthodox chant, both of which of course are built upon a drone foundation.

The beautifully complex color timbral sound of Blackburn's music resonates with those foundations without directly calling them up. Ryland Angel's vocal part, as an added meaning-color has definite chant and Early Music recollections. The wide spectrum of the total sound of the electronic-acoustic-electric totality gives us a kind of New Music analog of those earlier sound modes. There is pronounced timbral coverage and a complexity of tone soundings that rivals the orchestral modes we of course are so familiar with as Classical listeners. It does not in the last instance try to simulate directly  the orchestral possibility though. It remains firmly and "exotically" electroacoustic-electronic.

Time passes in this music like any other, but it is not at all a tedious time. Things change, they are often enough linear and sometimes quite gradual but never does it feel like a loop-de-loop as much as a kind of sacral time, the entire sequence feeling ultimately like a magical ritual, a rite of sound so to speak.

It is a contemporary New Music that unfolds naturally, organically, without some marked self-conscious newness. I've now listened to this program many times and it still seems fresh and naturally, emphatically ethereal, supportive and eventful in a gradualist way.

Bravo! Listen to this one without fail if you like a bit of the Universe in your musical kingdoms! Strongly recommended. Blackburn is a vital force in the music today.

Dave Dunn, Verdant, Long-Form Electronic Music Today

 

In New Music there are times when a good conceptual idea and a careful working out of it are exactly what's needed to carry the day. Such is the experience of listening to the nearly 80 minute Verdant (Neuma 129) a singular Electronic Music work by David Dunn.

The remarable thing about this work first off is that it fills an entire CD with the one continuous work, yet it manages to create a musical landscape one does not tire of. That is at least in part because Dunn deliberately stays in a place that endlessly unfolds without in any way demanding by its musical implications to move on to a part B, a part C, etc.

The central fulcrum point of the work is a contrapuntal. slowly unwinding, mostly diatonic melodic endlessness for multipart electronic tones  that are just random enough never to repeat exactly yet for all that seem vitally, musically authentic. There are also enough non-diatonic, non-stepwise tones in the mix that it expands the possibilities considerably. This central part of the music sounds quite beautiful as you contemplate it.

It is added to by  some ambient natural sounds, little bells, tinkling chimes, bird calls, a kind of feeling of musical daylight. Those sounds are continually, gradually changing, evolving against the continual contrapuntal and harmonic movement-in-stasis.

The composer in the accompanying liner notes helps us further situate the music. He interestingly notes the affinity of the music with "the idyllic and elegaic affect sought by the English Pastoral composers after the violence of World War I." He ties the idea into a "self-therapeutic" intent in response to the dark days of 2020, to create the musical equivalent to a striving after a more hopeful future. Well I concur that the music does indeed come across in such a way.

The composer gives us a detailed view of the overall musical structure of the work by dividing it into four categories. The first three center around the tonal totality. So there are "very slowly changing" sinewave drones, middle duration pitches played by two electric violins, and then arpeggiated sine tone melodies.

The accompanying ambiant backdrop I note above is actually high resolution field recordings of the composer's backyard in Santa Fe on Easter Sunday 2020.

All that makes sense mainly because of course the whole thing sounds very pastoral-positive. It is a joy to hear if you give it time to unfold.

This is perhaps not for somebody who wants continual change in their music. On the other hand it is not Minimalist per se as the composer notes. I do recommend this one strongly if it sounds like something you'll like. It is a healthy kind of music, something to bounce back from things, with things. Listen!