Rutter: Mass Of The Children / Brown, Clare College Choir
Naxos
CD
$19.99Apr 18, 2006
John Rutter's Mass of the Children was recorded by the composer and his Cambridge Singers shortly after the work's premiere in 2003. That version, for soprano and baritone soloists, children's choir, adult choir, and orchestra, appeared on Collegium Records and was strongly recommended here; for the review, which includes a discussion of the Mass itself, type Q6863 in Search Reviews. The version recorded here by the Clare College Choir (Rutter's former choir) and Timothy Brown (for whom Rutter wrote the Wedding Canticle that concludes the disc) replaces the orchestra with chamber ensemble and organ with no loss of the original's exuberant spirit or essential texture and color. These choirs are every bit as competent and confident as Rutter's own forces, but with a decided edge going to Rutter's more appealing soloists, whose voices are warmer and more technically solid.
Hearing this work again, I was struck by little reminders of other composers and works, such as Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms (Gloria), Fauré's Requiem (Sanctus), and even in the baritone/soprano duet in the Kyrie, a bit of (gurk!) Andrew Lloyd Webber. But these are tiny, endearing moments in a grand and often enchanting work that contains some very clever, catchy, and masterfully written sections for adult and children's choir. Rutter's setting of Blake's poem The Lamb (appropriately part of the Agnus Dei) could stand alone as a concert piece. I also love how Rutter works the tune of Tallis' famous "Canon", sung to Thomas Ken's "Glory to thee, my God, this night", into the closing Dona nobis pacem.
I found it difficult, however, to warm up to Rutter's song cycle Shadows, for baritone and guitar. It has its moments of artful melodic writing and interesting guitar figures, but it often seems as if the two parts are at odds, not comfortable in each other's company. And Jeremy Huw Williams isn't the best advocate: his wide vibrato often obscures pitch, and his phrasing can be inelegant and doesn't always coincide with the musical line. The Wedding Canticle, for the unusual combination of choir, flute, and guitar, is a gentle, lovely piece that has all the marks of Rutter's most beloved style--flowing, inviting melody and a natural rhythmic feel that ideally captures the sense and structure of the text. [4/27/2006] --David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com
Glass, Rutter, Francaix: Harpsichord Concertos / Christopher Lewis
Naxos
CD
$19.99Sep 24, 2013
What a great disc this is: three delightful contemporary works for harpsichord and orchestra, easy on the ear, but clever and consistently interesting. John Rutter’s Suite Antique might be English Poulenc. The tunes are captivating, and the “antique” element needs to be taken with a large grain of salt (the “waltz” is subtitled “A Jazz Waltz”). The writing for flute and strings is immaculate, graceful, and sounds like great fun to play, while the keyboard solo takes excellent advantage of the instrument’s sparkling timbres and ability to delineate rhythmic patterns with gentle persistence. The performance is also terrific, as fine as the composer’s own, with John McMurtery an excellent flute soloist with a firm, round tone.
Glass’ Harpsichord Concerto also has plenty of arresting harmonies and a wide range of textures. The outer movements chug along with unquenchable vitality, and even touches of humor in the finale, while the central slowish movement makes imaginative play with a variety of melodic shapes. It’s extremely visual: you can almost see the music as it unfolds. Glass takes full advantage of the harpsichord’s natural ability to act both as soloist and accompaniment, with the result that the music’s shifting layers consistently entertain through, and not despite, the usual abundance of repetition.
As for the Françaix, the Concerto begins with two contrasting toccatas, followed by a songful andantino, minuet, and finale. It’s a zesty romp that brings the disc to a wholly winning close. Christopher D. Lewis plays a bright, sweet-toned harpsichord with minimal mechanical clatter. His digital dexterity proves very satisfying, and he’s excellently balanced against the extremely capable West Side Chamber Orchestra under Kevin Mallon. This is one of those discs that you might overlook, but you’d be missing a real treat. I’ve already played it several times just for pleasure, and so will you.
Blackford: Violin Concerto - Clarinet Quintet - The Better A
Nimbus
CD
$20.99Apr 07, 2017
I am a comparative latecomer to writing isntrumental music, having devoted most of my creative life to choral and vocal composition. The works on this album are all written over the last decade, with the exception of my Violin Concerto which plunders material from an incomplete Violin Sonata written when I was eighteen. As well as the Violin Concerto this album includes: my darkly chromatic Clarinet Quintet," The Better Angels of Our Nature," a short concerto for oboe and strings; and "Goodfellow," for flute, oboe and piano. They are presented chronologically and I hope the listener will detect a logical sequence in their development. (Richard Blackford, August 2016)
•David Lang's, "love fail" is a meditation on love's timelessness, weaving together details from the Tristan and Isolde story with more modern sources. • The recording also spotlights the vocal quartet Anonymous 4, whose commitment to medieval music and historical scholarship has been acclaimed worldwide. • In a NYTimes review of the BAM performance, Anthony Tommasini wrote: "It was Mr. Lang's music, and the ethereal, pure-toned singing of Anonymous 4, that claimed me in the first section of the piece
Percussionist Steve Schick [an origianl member of the Bang on a Can All-Stars] releases his first full-length CD on Cantaloupe Music in conjunction with his first book - which promises to be the definitive volume about percussion in the 20th-21st Century. A former percussionist himself, John Luther Adams finds music from the earth and brings it to life in composition - expect an unadulterated ambient soundscape that takes a journey through different sonic textures and environments, aided by a beautiful production and Schick's breathtaking performance.
The sensible and sophisticated pianist Rossella Spinosa faces the arduous task of performing the music of Giacinto Scelsi, a very special composer that grew within the Parisian scene influenced by Debussy, the generation of the Eighties, the Dodecafonia of the German school, and the esotericism of Skriabin, reaching (after traveling to the east in India and Tibet) his very personal idea of global spherical sound. So Scelsi became the interpreter of a new concept of sound that transcends the formal architecture almost renouncing to making music, becoming a link between the earthly world and cosmic forces. The result is music demanding great sensitivity and particular mood by both the performer and the listener, to whom is requested a total and religious immersion in the sound and vibrations of the world of Giacinto Scelsi. Rossella Spinosa holds degrees in piano, harpsichord, composition, and law. She also graduated with highest marks in Musicology. She is a winner of numerous national and international piano competitions, and has performed in the most prestigious halls in Italy and abroad.
Toru Takemitsu is widely regarded as the greatest Japanese composer of the 20th century. After the appearance of Folios in 1974 he was acknowledged as a formidable master of writing for the guitar, bringing to the instrument a sensibility and imaginative flair which have seldom been equalled. In the Woods was his final composition. Shin-ichi Fukada and Leo Brouwer were both close friends of Takemitsu, and this programme includes Brouwer’s two heartfelt homages in his memory.
'María de Buenos Aires brought me inner peace, a partial serenity that has changed my way of approaching music. I reached the zenith of my musical life at the time. (Astor Piazzolla) Piazzolla himself equated María to the tango and it's historical ups and downs; and this is probably also the primary aid to understanding the reception of the contents of the piece. Next to that, there is also a musical diction that is entirely unique in the second half of the 20th century, indeed in the New Music scene as a whole. 'I learnt something: to be patient, to be self-critical, to co-ordinate reflection with passion. Now I am told: 'That is a different Piazzolla', but that is not the case. I am the same man, but I have reached a synthesis'. (Astor Piazzolla)
John Luther Adams: The Light That Fills The World, Etc
Cold Blue Music
CD
$18.99Nov 01, 2002
This CD contains four of Adam's beautifully shimmering, texturally rich compositions for various combinations of one or two pianos and various percussion instruments. Features performances by noted pianist/conductor/new music champion Stephen Drury, who is on the faculty of the New England Conservatory and has recorded for Tzadik, New Albion, Mode and more.
This collection of classical favorites of Penderecki's work serves as a compilation of his famous works made available by Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra and the Warsaw Philharmonic Choir. Also featured are renowned classical conductor Antoni Wit and other classic artist.
Sofia Gubaidulina has found a soulfulness and freedom in the guitar which speaks to her musical language of expressive mood and often mysterious but precise sonorities. In both Repentance and Sotto Voce she combines guitars with lower stringed instruments, creating a virtuosic, multi-dimensional and deeply poetic role for each voice. Fascinating new sounds from the guitar are produced from the most eloquent chorales to remarkable effects using a drinking glass. The earlier Serenade is ‘music for pleasure’, while this première recording of the Toccata reveals a work with a driving momentum that hardly stops.
PIAZZOLLA La muerte del ángel. Melodía en la menor. Tango en la menor. Milonga sin palabras. María de Buenos Aires: Fuga y misterio; Yo soy María1. Ave María. Oblivion.1 Aire de la zamba niña. Le Grand Tango. Libertango • Tomas Cotik, 1Glenn Basham (vn); Tao Lin (pn) • NAXOS 8.573166 (59:35)
Ástor Pantaleón Piazzolla (1921–1992) was an Argentine bandoneon player and composer who revolutionized tango music. He brought it from its beginnings as a 19th- and early 20th-century dance to its zenith as modern music for the concert hall. His concept of nuevo tango combined it with elements of jazz and classical music. Fanfare readers already know violinist Thomas Cotik and pianist Tao Lin for their Centaur recording of Schubert. Of course, they take in a completely different approach to the tangos on Naxos. Whereas their Schubert was smooth and silky, their Piazzolla is edgy, sexy, and raw. Cotik and Lin take us from Piazzolla’s Tanguano of 1951 to his 1986 description of a girl performing the Zamba, a native Argentine dance. In between, they document some of the myriad changes in the composer’s musical palette. His fast and rhythmic The Death of the Angel was incidental music for a 1962 play that ended with the angel dying after his fight with a devil. In 1965 a new muse, Norma, tempted the composer who was in the process of divorcing. He thinks of Norma in his smooth Melody in A Minor, but refers to her as poison. The operetta Maria de Buenos Aires is one of Piazzolla’s best-known works. It was performed at Long Beach Opera in California in 2012. The two pieces played here accompany Maria’s wandering through the city of Buenos Aires, first as a streetwalker and later as a ghost. It is during the second stroll that we hear some of the composer’s most evocative music, played by the two violins and piano that accompany her. Glenn Basham of the University of Miami’s Frost Institute plays the second fiddle with a singing tone. Libertango is Piazzolla’s example of the new music of the 1970s. He intertwined rock and jazz influences with melodic tango and came up with a new and most viable form of concert music. By this time, the tango that had once been a dance from the wrong side of town had matured into modern classical music that would soon be played by symphony orchestras all over the world. Tango’s relative, the milonga, has come along with it, adding a bit of spice to the confection from Argentina.
In 1982, Piazzolla wrote his elegant Grand Tango and sent it to the great Russian cellist, Mstislav Rostropovich. The cellist did not recognize his name and set it aside. When he did eventually look at it, he was astonished at the composer’s talent, but it was not until eight years later that he premiered the work. Sofia Gubaidulina arranged the version heard here. The instrumental Ave Maria and the pleasant milonga Oblivion are pieces that Piazzolla wrote for the 1984 Italian film Henry V. The next year he began to write pieces detailing the history of tango from bordello dance music to international concert specialty. He follows its rise to the café, the nightclub, and the 1980s concert hall. Some of the music is sultry while other works are fast, rhythmic, and ornamented to show the exquisite virtuosity of Cotik and Lin. They finish with a rousing dance called Libertango. It is a perfect finale for this CD of catchy, toe-tapping music. Many other artists have recorded Piazzolla’s works, but not with violin and piano. The sound on this disc is clear and the performances precise. I think that lovers of tango music will definitely want this fascinating disc.
Sciarrino: La navigazione notturna / Vidolin, Ex Novo Ensemble
Stradivarius
SACD
$26.99Jan 04, 2019
La navigazione notturna is the “first fragment of a broader cosmology,” composed in Città di Castello in 1985, for the Sagra and the Tempio Malatestiani of Rimini. At the last moment that performance did not take place. The score was stopped at bar 85, but from that point onwards the work was planned in detail on graphic plots which indicated two parallel dimensions: one for the transformations of the sound elements (fast and complex agglomerates) with the other controlling the articulation of the physical acoustic space through the switching of sound agglomerates among instruments. Thus a four-part dialogue began to take shape. The part of the fragment that was not yet in the score has now been transcribed from those plots. The project envisaged the four instruments placed in a cross and the listening area in the center of the acoustic space. Due to the nature of this composition, it has not yet been recorded, making this the world premiere. Three other works by Sciarrino are featured as well: Due Arie marine, Il giardino di Sara, and Altre notti.
PENDERECKI Hymne an den heiligen Adalbert1. Song of the Cherubim2. Canticum Canticorum Salomonis3. Kosmogonia4. Strophen5 • Antoni Wit, cond; 4,5Olga Pasichnyk (sop); 4Rafa? Bartmi?ski (ten); 4Tomasz Konieczny (bs); 5Jerzy Artysz (spkr); 1,3-5Warsaw PO; 1-4Warsaw P Ch • NAXOS 8.572481 (57:18)
Naxos’s Penderecki releases have been of very good quality, but have tended to jumble together music in wildly different styles. The present release is no exception, going backwards chronologically from the Hymne an den heiligen Adalbert (1997) to Strophen (1959), which was composed when Penderecki was in his mid-20s. One would be forgiven for guessing that at least two different composers, perhaps more, were at work here. In the 1970s, thanks in large part to Hollywood, I was turned on to “old” Penderecki, and had a difficult time accepting the changes his style underwent from that point onward. Now that I am gaining maturity (ha!), I’ve become more open-minded, and if “new” Penderecki is not as innovative and striking as “old” Penderecki, the level of workmanship remains very high, and a distinctive voice remains, albeit a different one.
Having said that, I think this disc is most welcome for the presence of the last two, and oldest, works listed in the headnote, because they have been elusive on CD—in fact, I am not sure they have appeared on CD until now. The first (and only?) recording of the creepily beautiful Kosmogonia (1970) appeared on the Polskie Nagranie/Muza and then the Philips labels. The conductor was Andrzej Markowski, and the soloists were Stefania Woytowicz, Kazimierz Pustelak, and Bernard ?adysz. That recording, if you can find it, remains attractive, as it has a warmth and an emotional quality not quite matched by Wit’s, which seems a little clinical. As I recall, like Naxos, it does not print the work’s texts (which are “in copyright”), but I think the texts dealt with the creation of the universe and ended with . . . was it a quotation from Neil Armstrong? Maybe someone will help me out here. I have Strophen on a Polskie Nagranie/Muza LP (with Canticum Canticorum Salomonis) and I am glad to replace it with this new version, even though I prefer Stefania Woytowicz to Olga Pasichnyk. The texts are taken from Menander, Sophocles, the Books of Isaiah and Jeremiah, and Omar Khayyam, and if their stagey narration makes Strophen seem a little dated, one has to appreciate the work’s daring, if nothing else.
Canticum Canticorum Salomonis (1973) slightly predates Penderecki’s Magnificat, and listeners will appreciate their stylistic proximity, particularly in the aggressive choral writing. Song of the Cherubim (1986) is much more reined in, with little to remind one of the composer’s avant-garde experimentation 15 years earlier. It is, nevertheless, a fine work, whose stern spirituality speaks for itself. Hymne an der heiligen Adalbert references a bishop who was martyred, in the 10th century. The stark but impressive brass and choral writing play off each other to good effect. This is much closer to Górecki than “old” Penderecki; it’s even (gasp) tonal. Still, it’s tough and demanding in its own way, and I don’t think anyone could reasonably suggest that Penderecki lost his nerve as he passed through middle age—he simply became more appreciative of tradition.
The Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir, whether they are conducted by Wit or someone else, can be depended upon to bring authenticity and fire to Penderecki’s music. Despite my preference for Markowski’s Kosmogonia, I really have no reservations about these performances. In fact, this Canticum Canticorum Salomonis is the most impressive I’ve heard, eclipsing the composer’s own recording on EMI. (Wit’s slower tempos emphasize the music’s sensuality.) Texts, with the exception of Kosmogonia, are available online. I am looking forward to hearing what Wit does with the Magnificat.
