Cult Figures (Electroacoustic Music from Canada)

Air & Danses is an album of original compositions by Canadian composer and saxophonist Victor Herbiet. The album features Herbiet himself playing alto and soprano saxophone as a solo instrument and in diverse chamber ensembles. Joining him are pianist Jean Desmarais, violinist Marc Djokic, cellist Julian Armour and fellow saxophonist Jean-François Guay. The title refers not only to the eponymous piece, but also to the album as a whole, where we can hear a variety of dances from around the world including a tango, waltzes and a balletic pas de deux. The melodic and upbeat works found on the album draw from various influences such as French impressionism, Canadian folk, American jazz and Latin music. Music lovers and connoisseurs alike are sure to enjoy the variety of sounds this album has to offer.

Magister Ludi

Nicole Lizée: Bookburners

Glass Houses, Vol. 2

SOUTHAM Returnings. Returnings II: A Meditation. In Retrospect. Qualities of Consonance • Eve Egoyan (pn) • CENTREDISCS CMCCD 17211 (61:06)


Alex Ross, writing in The New Yorker , may have started an Ann Southam boomlet two years ago when he listed Eve Egoyan’s recording of Southam’s piano work Simple Lines of Enquiry among his 10 Exceptional Recordings of 2009. I know my interest was piqued, and so I purchased a copy. I don’t think I was as rapturous as Ross, but it is good music to chew upon, and I was pleased to make the composer’s acquaintance.


Alert readers will realize that I have reviewed two other discs of Southam’s piano works in these pages, both of them played by Christina Petrowska Quilico, who also has been closely associated with Southam’s music. It is interesting that Petrowska Quilico has gravitated toward Southam’s finger-busting works, while Egoyan seems to be drawn to the more introspective compositions. (Looking at Egoyan’s recorded repertory, I would say that this is a pattern.) In fact, Southam wrote the works on this CD, and Simple Lines of Enquiry , with Egoyan in mind. Returnings and Returnings II , both from 2010, are some of the last works Southam composed, as she died of cancer later that year.


I don’t know if it’s because I may not be a very astute listener, but I did not realize that these two works were “process music,” in a sense, until I read it in the booklet notes. Both are built upon a 12-tone row, which “gradually unfolds between two stable tonal lines (a drone in the bass; chords in the upper voice).” I guess a less specific way to describe this music is that it is slow-moving, quiet, and pointillistic, somewhat in the matter of late Morton Feldman. It has a subtle rocking motion, something between a lullaby and a gondola song, but it would be a strange mother who sang this music to her baby, and an unlikely gondolier who poled along the Venetian canals to either of these Returnings . The music is quietly inquiet, if you will.


In Retrospect , from 2004, seems not to be driven by a process, but it creates much the same mood in the listener. Its contours are even flatter than those of the Returnings works. The music hangs suspended in midair, always moving forward, but never coming closer to any traditional endpoint. Southam toys with dissonance in this work, but the wide separations between the notes (both temporally and in terms of pitch) cause what the booklet note writer aptly calls “musical ambiguities.”


Qualities of Consonance (1998) is the earliest and longest work here. It also is the one that is the most varied in terms of textures and emotional states. In it, Southam’s quiet Minimalism brushes up against brief, dramatic gestures. This work’s relative eventfulness probably makes it the best place to start for those unfamiliar with Southam’s work.


There’s no question in my mind that Egoyan gets everything she can get out of these four works. One has to approach this music in much the same way as one would approach Ravel’s “Le Gibet” (from Gaspard de la nuit )—that is, with real sensitivity for quiet, and for infinite gradations of tone at the gray end of the spectrum. Egoyan is a true believer, and if you listen responsibly, she will try to convert you as well.


FANFARE: Raymond Tuttle

The Okanagan Symphony Orchestra celebrates the creativity of it's national composers by programming and performing works by both emerging and established Canadian voices. Showcasing three of these voices in recorded live performances has been a uniquely rewarding experience. Focusing on the iconic form of the concerto also allows the orchestra to shine a spotlight on three of Canada's most exciting performers, capturing their virtuosity and musical expression. R. Murray Schafer was one of Canada's most internationally celebrated composers and worked closely with the OSO as they prepared and performed The Falcon's Trumpet. Imant Raminsh and Ernst Schneider make their home in the beautiful Okanagan Valley. They have each contributed to a rich orchestral musical legacy in Canada and are widely renowned. Conductor Rosemary Thomson and the Okanagan Symphony Orchestra have the pleasure of performing with soloists Guy Few, Carmen Harris, Melissa Williams, Eeva-Maria Kopp, and Jaeden Izik-Dzurko.

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Beverly Johnston is internationally recognized for her virtuosic and dynamic performances on a wide range of percussion instruments. She is a leader in commissioning and premiering new works for percussion. Her performances and recordings have been broadcast on radio worldwide.

Sophie-Carmen Eckhardt-Gramatté (1899-1974) was a violinist, pianist, and prolific composer who left behind a catalog of more than 175 symphonic, chamber, violin, and piano works. A foundation in Eckhardt-Gramatté's name was established in Winnipeg (where she composed and taught for the last 21 years of her life) to promote her work, including the six piano sonatas recorded by Marc-André Hamelin for Altarus in 1990. Happily, the Canadian Music Centre has reissued these long-out-of-print recordings.

The music abounds with energy, restless counterpoint, unbridled harmonic activity, and orchestral textures in the form of big chords and stamina-testing octaves. The early First sonata (1923) finds the young composer at a curiously appealing stylistic juncture where baroque counterpoint and Spanish Romanticism meet. The more harmonically complex Second sonata evokes Rachmaninov's whirling passion and Busoni's thick-textured polytonality. The Russian/Spanish fusion comes to full flower in the Third (1924-25) and Fourth (1927-31) sonatas, notably in the Third's second-movement Rondo, where a scintillating right-hand perpetuum mobile over a pounding left-hand ostinato brackets a gorgeous, lyrical chordal section.

The Fourth's third movement is a large-scale toccata in F-sharp minor for the left hand alone, although the right hand comes to the rescue in the final measures. By contrast, the Fifth (1950) in three continuous movements incorporates twelve-tone composing techniques, and is terser, craggier, and more compressed in form and expression. The Sixth (1928/1951/1952) is a hybrid of sorts. It opens with the aforementioned Fourth sonata left-hand Toccata, but with a rewritten ending. Fast forward 23 years later to a relatively atonal second-movement fantasia for right hand alone, followed by a third and final movement that freely combines the previous movements, ingeniously weaving their disparate styles into a surprisingly organic and fluid patchwork.

It goes without saying that the young Marc-André Hamelin's staggering mastery, control, and poise made the best possible case and set reference interpretive standards for this fascinating repertoire. Highly recommended to Hamelin fans and for those who enjoy traveling the virtuoso piano repertoire's obscure yet worthy scenic routes.

--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

When Louis Riel received its premiere by the Canadian Opera Company in 1967, it was amid the cultural orgy of national celebration that was Canada’s Centennial. Much was made of the “universalism” of the opera; this was perhaps either a deliberate or an unconscious effort to bolster a deep, collective desire to demonstrate both the international success of a potential operatic export and the relevance of the musical-dramatic content to American and European audiences. Glowing reviews of the 1975 remounting of Louis Riel at Washington’s John F. Kennedy Center certainly strengthened the claim of Canadian opera boosters that this work could speak to an international audience. The test, however, of how relevant any form of cultural expression might be lies not in how well it translates beyond one’s borders, but how deeply it resonates within. Over four decades have passed since Bernard Turgeon first appeared on the stage of Toronto’s O’Keefe Centre in the iconic role of the controversial nineteenth-century Métis leader from Manitoba, and the central themes and tensions within the opera still speak to contemporary Canadian audiences.

This groundbreaking two-disc CD set presents world-famous Canadian composer and philsopher R. Murray Schafer's complete works for harp. From historic recordings to never-before-released works, harpist Judy Loman presents this collection for the first time, many pieces commissioned by or written for her. - Recognized as one of the world's foremost harp virtuosos, Judy Loman graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music where she studied with the celebrated harpist Carlos Salzedo. She became principal harpist with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in 1960. As a soloist, Judy Loman has won the admiration of audiences and critics alike across Canada, the United States, Europe and Japan. In 2016 Judy Loman was made a member of the Order of Canada for her contribution to the Arts in Canada.

Jalsaghar

This new Centrediscs release by two of Canada's finest soloists - Toronto Symphony concertmaster Jacques Israelievitch and pianist Christina Petrowska - is a collection of contrasts: the lyrical, contemporary classicism of Oskar Morawetz's Duo, the quirky, minimalist jazziness of James Rolfe's Drop, and the juxtaposing primal rhythms and tonal colors of Raymond Luedeke's monumental Fancies and Interludes VI. Gary Kulesha's seductive and passionate... and dark time flowed by her like a river... also features complex rhythmic structures, along with virtuoso parts for both instruments.

Chatman: Choir Practice