Roger Smalley (1943–2015) made his mark, first in his native Britain and then in Australia, as composer, pianist, conductor, writer, academic and teacher. Although as performer and commentator he was at the forefront of musical modernism, he was also very fond of nineteenth-century Romanticism, and much of his music bridges the gap between old and new, retaining its roots in the past while reflecting the concerns of his own time, as the works on this album demonstrate.

Piano music forms a large part of the output of the Romanian composer Livia Teodorescu-Ciocanea (b. 1959), as you would expect of someone who has been playing the instrument since she was four. This first album of her music reveals a latter-day Impressionist, sensitive to half-light and petal-delicate tonal color – but she can also generate powerful surges of energy, and her musical portrait of Charlie Chaplin testifies to an impish sense of humor. Teodorescu’s music explores spectralism, neoimpressionism and postmodernism with a powerful lyric and dramatic effect (Oxford music online). She is Professor of composition at the National University of Music Bucharest and Adjunct Associate Professor at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. She introduced a new musical poetics called hypertimbralism pursuing intertextuality based on timbre. Teodorescu has lectured at Illinois Urbana Champaign, Oslo, Monash and Huddersfield Universities. She has written over 60 works.

The American composer Richard Moriarty (born in Boston in 1946) spent his professional life as a pathologist, taking up composition upon his retirement as a student of Adolphus Hailstork and Richard Danielpour. His deeply felt orchestral song-cycle We That Wait, using poems from the American Civil War written by women, and the expansive, exuberant Missa Adsum! Celebrating Women, are both grand statements in a proud American tradition of Neo-Romanticism, accessible, direct and sincere. Of the premiere performance, one reviewer wrote: “Adsum-Celebrating Women was a tour de force, whose title comes from the Roman rite of ordination when candidates are called by name and answer “Adsum- Present!” It was sung with passion and beauty…” (M.D. Ridge)

Mexican composer Manuel Maria Ponce is best known for a handful of popular songs and guitar pieces, and yet he left a huge legacy of some 500 works- orchestral, chamber, and piano music, art songs, and folksong arrangements. These works together form the foundation of the Mexican national repertoire, and yet they are as good as unknown. The works recorded here- some for the first time- reveal a composer with a surefooted command of the orchestra: his early impressionism is infused with echoes of Mexican indigenous culture in textures of unsuspected richness. Jose Miramontes Zapata graduated from the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatoire in Leningrad. He has worked as pianist, choir director, and cultural manager. In 2000 he founded the Orquesta Sinfonica de San Luis Potosi and as artistic director and principal conductor he has promoted many choral and orchestral activities with local young musicians, developing a constant cultural growth in San Luis Potosi with more than 80 concerts per year. The San Luis Potosi Symphony Orchestra occupies an important role in the diffusion of Mexican symphonic music, with concerts in some of the major halls in Mexico, China, and Europe. Further releases of major Mexican symphonic works are in preparation with Toccata Classics.

This recording of music by Ernest Krenek follows on from Toccata Classics’ wildly successful recording, in two albums, of his complete piano concertos. It covers almost half a century of his compositions, and shows the sheer range of his creativity. There are early piano fugues written for his teacher, Franz Schreker, via elegant fin de siècle Viennese lyricism to a relaxed application of Schoenberg’s dodecaphonic technique- often enlivened with a surprising degree of charm and a knowing sense of humor. The Ernst Krenek Ensemble is joined here by three of the finest lieder singers currently active, Laura Aikin, Bernarda Fink, and Florian Boesch. The Ernst Krenek Ensemble has set itself the task of introducing Ernst Krenek’s important and extensive chamber music oeuvre to the programmes of international concert halls, although its repertoire also includes works by composers such as Schubert and Beethoven, who provided Krenek with important stimulus. Its musicians delve with special curiosity into Krenek’s less familiar works and reveal the many colorful facets of his substantial output. Concerts have taken the ensemble throughout Europe and the USA.

The musical language of the New York-based Arnold Rosner (1945–2013) had its roots in the modal harmony and rhythm of pre-Baroque polyphony and evolved in an array of unusual directions, producing a style that is instantly recognizable and immediately appealing – as can be heard in the three works on this recording. Rosner’s Nocturne suggests the immensity – and the implacable violence – of outer space, whereas his overture Tempus Perfectum has its starting point in Renaissance dance. The monumental Sixth Symphony opens with music of volcanic ferocity and vehemence; the central Adagio then provides an island of troubled calm before the dignified opening of the finale presages a symphonic Allegro of wild, freewheeling energy; only when its immense force is spent does this powerful masterpiece sink to an uneasy close.

REVIEWS:

I first came across Arnold Rosner’s music on a 1990 Harmonia Mundi Modern Masters CD of tonal American 20th Century music, reviewed here and here (in a later reissue), and now available only as a download or second-hand. The work recorded there, the Responses, Hosanna and Fugue, was so evidently influenced by Vaughan Williams’s Tallis Fantasia that I was intrigued, to say the least.

This disc begins with the Nocturne Op.68, in which Rosner sought to suggest the movement of planetary bodies in the vastness of space. He tried to do this by initially evoking a mysterious swirling atmosphere that is occasionally interrupted by violent outbursts. Melodic fragments gradually coalesce into a melody for strings, which is further developed and intensified by the inclusion of the rest of the orchestra. Like many such ‘descriptive’ pieces composed over the last 150 years, one would never guess at the underlying creative stimulus, but that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable.

It is followed by Tempus Perfectum: A Concert Overture. Its archaic title reflects Rosner’s modern adaptation of a medieval form in 98 metre. Rosner was interested in early music and here he uses a type of canzona notable for its markedly rhythmic material and separation into distinct sections. The effect is of triads superimposed on the main theme at various points, and the work, which sounds markedly antique, gradually achieves a much more modern climax on (predominantly) strings and trumpets, before dying away.

The most impressive work on this superlatively recorded and performed CD, is Rosner’s 6th Symphony. Its first movement is one of extreme emotional turbulence, represented by ferociously explosive rather angular music that lasts for its ten-minute duration. I am strongly reminded of the first movement of the Vaughan Williams Fourth Symphony, although Rosner is not quite so dour.

I don’t think there can be much doubt that throughout the Symphony this influence persists, and the Sinfonia Antartica informs the second, slow movement. In fact, I am indelibly reminded of the ‘Landscape’ movement of the RVW work. Having said that, Rosner doesn’t quite manage to conjure up the stupefying power so evident in the Antartica, despite a slightly more colorful orchestral palette and a willingness to use the tam-tam almost to abandon. RVW brings an organ to the shattering climax of his symphony, but an organ is one instrument not employed by Rosner. The movement begins in a hushed atmosphere, with a slightly oriental sounding theme. This is developed towards the emotional centre of the movement where the composer’s use of strings (to emphasize the melody) is gradually superseded by the appearance of woodwind, brass and percussion to great effect.

His gift of writing impactive and indeed, memorable music, is very noticeable throughout the work, but particularly so in this movement and in the last, where RVW in ‘galumphing’ mode makes an appearance early on. A reliance on the cymbals and later, the tam-tam disturbs me a little – this is a trait that is very evident in the works of some contemporary American tonal composers, perhaps influenced, however subconsciously, by film music. Notwithstanding, since I love the sound of cymbals and tam-tam in a sumptuous orchestral panoply, I will remain only very slightly disturbed and revel in the sheer orchestral splendour of the whole thing. The final five minutes or so of the last movement begin with an ethereal woodwind solo, which appears repeatedly, sometimes on the brass, only to be interrupted by cataclysmic eruptions. The movement fades into silence with quiet recollections of earlier themes.

Throughout this CD the recording is truly splendiferous and the playing of the LPO is virtuosic beyond praise. It must be wonderful to hear these pieces performed live by this top-notch orchestra under the baton of a committed conductor, such as we have here in Nick Palmer. The booklet is detailed and informative in both biographical and musical detail. Toccata Classics are to be congratulated and praised for this release, consisting as it does entirely of first recordings. I look forward to others in the series.

-- MusicWeb International (Jim Westhead)

The case of the composer Hans Winterberg (1901–91) is a strange one. A survivor of the Terezín concentration camp, where he had been interned as a Czech Jew, after the War he settled in Munich as a German citizen, and his music enjoyed a number of broadcasts – but after his death, his estate disappeared into the vaults of the Sudeten German Music Institute, where it was placed under embargo, emerging only in 2015. This first album of his music reveals an unusual and individual voice, an idiosyncratic blend of Stravinsky, Janácek and Hindemith, with touches of Poulenc, often expressed with brittle humor and rhythmic verve. The Arizona Wind Quintet is the faculty ensemble-in-residence at the University of Arizona Fred Fox School of Music in Tucson. Formed in 1977, the AWQ has cultivated a tradition of excellence in both performance and teaching. The other instrumentalists on this recording are distinguished musicians active in the Tucson area, several of them teaching at the Fred Fox School of Music, although they appear in concert and at festivals all over North America.

This recording pairs music for violin and piano by two young British composers who found themselves marooned in American exile by World War II: Richard Arnell (1817-2009) and Stanley Bate (1911-59). Both composers established respectable careers for themselves in the New World before returning to Britain, Arnell in 1947 and Bate in 1949. Arnell’s music can be warmly lyrical and fiercely dramatic by turn, rather like its volatile and energetic composer. Bate’s First Violin Sonata has echoes of two of his teachers- Vaughan Williams and Hindemith. Plymouth-born violinist Patrick Wastnage attended Dartington College of Arts from the age of sixteen. He went on to the Guildhall School of Music, where he studied with Yfrah Neaman, Erich Gruenberg, David Takeno and later with Sandor Vegh. Joining the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1986, he has led a parallel career as soloist and chamber-music player. Elizabeth Dunn studied the piano at the Guildhall School of Music with Geraldine Peppin. Since then she has performed extensively as soloist, accompanist, and in chamber groups.