FELDMAN Clarinet and String Quartet. BABBITT Clarinet Quintet • Mark Lieb (cl); Phoenix Ensemble • INNOVA 746 (62:35)


By reputation, such ideologically distinct composers would seem to be an awkward pairing as discmates—Morton Feldman’s abstract expressionist-influenced, intuitive, repetitively detailed formal design versus Milton Babbitt’s mathematically abstracted, reason-induced, labyrinthine methodology—and yet the individual virtues of each seem to emphasize and illuminate the dramatic character of the other. The contrast between these two works is both revealing and satisfying.


Feldman’s Clarinet and String Quartet (1983) is constructed around repeated, subtly altered, and juxtaposed melodic and textural patterns; the music’s progress is like a stationary view of a single shape (the combined colors and often divided attacks of the clarinet and strings) until it is replaced by a new shape, so there is continual forward motion, but not conventional rhythmic momentum. The effect is not passive, but intently active—the melodic outline expands and contracts, as natural as breathing—circumscribing an emotional voice that is muted, but nevertheless capable of suggesting moments of sadness, inquisitiveness, mystery, and fascination.


Though linked together seamlessly, the patterns of Feldman’s compositional design are on display continuously, so the structure is transparently audible. On the other hand, Babbitt’s Quintet for Clarinet and String Quartet (1996) is swept along on an animated elaboration of melody, and the internal complexity of its form is of no concern. Details drive the music forward—twisting clarinet contours, contrapuntal string maneuvers, an unexpected sequence of pizzicato, sudden dynamic displacements, impulsive bursts of energy. The quintet’s extended linear development is in some ways reminiscent of Babbitt’s teacher, Roger Sessions, and what Sessions derived from Schoenberg, but given added oomph by the verve and scintillation of Babbitt’s wit.


Clarinetist Mark Lieb and his cohorts do a brilliant job in capturing the specific character of such radically different pieces of music. The Babbitt, by the way, receives its premiere recording—one wonders why such an exhilarating piece was neglected for so long. Highly recommended.


FANFARE: Art Lange


Those familiar with Morton Feldman’s music will know what to expect from his Clarinet Quintet: austere minimalist textures, rigorous logical structuring, detached but sonorous consonant chords, repeating but continually set off-kilter by asymmetric time signatures. They might be more surprised by the fact that there is room on the CD for another work, and that the work in question is by Milton Babbitt, a composer at the maximalist end of the American new music spectrum.
 
In fact, the pairing works very well. The Feldman work is far from ambient and requires the same kind of focused attention that listeners would expect to pay to Babbitt. The Feldman is process music to a degree, yet the processes are regularly subjected to human intervention. Motifs are introduced by, for example, scoring a bar of 5/4 as an accumulating chord, one instrument starting the bar, the next entering on the second beat, and so on until the final note is a chord made up of the motif. It’s a neat way of marrying harmony and melody, and it is far from the only textural device in the work, but all the others are of a similar level of simplicity. The clarinet stands out from the strings although less than you might expect: more of a guiding voice through the textures than a true soloist. Mark Lieb stresses the simplicity of the line in his clarinet playing. His stamina and evenness of tone are remarkable assets here. The work is currently available on two other commercial recordings, one in the Feldman Edition on the Mode label (Mode 119) with clarinettist Carol Robinson, the other on Metier with Roger Heaton (MSV 92082). This recording has the edge over both, thanks to the performance and the sound. Much of the music is at a very low dynamic, and the precision of the recording allows each of the detached, attenuated sounds to appear with the utmost clarity, and from a crystalline silence. Similarly, the disciplined precision of the string quartet is fully attuned to Feldman’s stern aesthetic. The few articulations that he indicates are never exaggerated to the point of disturbing his uneasy, but ultimately unbroken, continuum.
 
Milton Babbitt’s Quintet for Clarinet and String Quartet is another extended single span of music: a paradoxical combination of expansive form and minutely detailed construction. But much about Milton Babbitt is paradoxical, not least the fact that his career at the cutting edge of serialist Modernism grew out of jazzy and folky roots. According to the liner-notes - and this was news to me - jazz and popular song have always been a part of the composer’s musical psyche. In his early days, he even wrote a Broadway musical entitled Fabulous Voyage. Less surprisingly, Broadway wasn’t interested. The Quintet dates from 1995-6, the far end of the composer’s career, but the jazzy rhythms on the clarinet are an important part of its musical identity. Alex Ross wrote of the work when he heard its premiere that it was ‘a delight to the senses, a fast flow of lovely chords and spry rhythms, a thing of sweetness and light.’ I’m not prepared to go quite that far, but the combination of lively rhythms and widely-spaced chordal textures gives the work a feeling of openness that is often absent from the composer’s more mathematical constructions. The counterpoint is very much in the serialist mould, with spaces in the texture appearing through the seemingly arbitrary and coincidental absences of notes in the individual parts.
 
If I were to describe the work as an indicator of the composer mellowing with age, it would be with the proviso that even Babbitt’s take on mellowness will seem violently aggressive to most listeners. But it is a rewarding listen, the composer’s ear for timbral and harmonic - or at least vertical - detail shines through in every bar. And there are surprises along the way, continually nudging the listener out of any sense of complacency at having fully digested a texture or contrapuntal construction. As with the Feldman, the formidable difficulties are expertly handled by the ensemble, which is fully attuned to Babbitt’s musical methods, and whose performance here is apparently endorsed by the composer. This is the first commercial recording of the work, and should serve as an excellent benchmark for future performers.
 
-- Gavin Dixon, MusicWeb International
 

Born of an international broadcast for Public Radio International, and inspired by a commissioned premiere on a familiar Christmas tune, Christmas Daybreak captures the honest clarity and thoughtful artistry of The Crossing. In the world premiere recording of James MacMillan's dramatic motet 'Alpha and Omega,' the choir soars and celebrates, while in the contemplative works of Andrew Gant, Edwin Fissinger, and Gabriel Jackson (featured on four tracks) the hallmark warmth and care of their singing is heard. Premiere recordings of two works featuring beloved tunes in creative contemporary arrangements center this collection: Benjamin C.S. Boyle's the Carols for Wintertide (featuring Lo, how a rose) and Zachary Wadsworth's Gabriel's Message (on the familiar Basque tune) - both feature Scott Dettra at the colorful organ of St. Paul's Church, Chestnut Hill, whose choir joins The Crossing for Wadsorth's new opus.

A DUE • Kari Krikku (cl, 1 b cl 2 ); Anssi Karttunen (vc) • ONDINE 1102 (72:13)


TIENSUU Plus II. 1 KORTEKANGAS Iscrizione. 1 SAARIAHO Oi kuu. 2 M. LINDBERG Steamboat Bill, Jr. 1 MERILÄINEN Unes. 1 JOKINEN Pros. 1 BERGMAN Karanssi. 1,2 LÄNSIÖ A Due. 2 HEININEN Short I. 1 HAKOLA Capriole 2


Recorded over a 13-year time span (1992–2005), this is a remarkable disc. On first glance, it screams “specialist.” A whole hour-plus of music by territory-specific composers for clarinet or bass clarinet and cello may send many prospective purchasers heading in the opposite direction. But they would be forgetting the innate musicality of the Finns.


The partnership of Krikku and Karttunen has resulted in a small library of commissions. Jukka Tiensuu (b. 1948) has been writing a series of works sharing the title Plus for some years now, for differing combinations of instruments. Plus II dates from 1992 (there is also a version for bass clarinet called Plus IIb ). There is more than a hint of music theater in the way the soloists shadow each other (sometimes microtonally). This shadowing generates tremendous energy. The (wonderful) recording is, appropriately for the intimacy of this disc, close and involving, although without being claustrophobic. The playing is simply stunning, true chamber music in a late 20th-century context.


Suddenly the sky darkens for Iscrizione (1990) by Olli Kortekangas (b. 1955). The piece is ultra-compact (it lasts just a touch over three minutes) yet makes a lasting impression, not least in the depth of utterance of its deep initial gesture.


The name of Kaija Saariaho (b. 1952) is well known internationally. IRCAM-trained, she boasts prestigious commissions from around the world, plus a discography that is graced by the names of Gidon Kremer, Sir Simon Rattle, and Esa-Pekka Salonen. The piece Oi Kuu (“O Moon”) explores multiphonics and timbral points of contact between the two instruments. Sonically, the piece sounds as if it is frozen. Expression in the traditional sense only sporadically breaks through (notably around the 2:40 mark); for the rest of the time, this is a stuck, almost painful moment in time.


Magnus Lindberg (b. 1958) is another well-known contributor here. Steamboat Bill, Jr. , premiered in 1990 in Warsaw, was inspired both by a performance of Stravinsky’s Italian Suite (by Heifetz and Piatigorsky) and by the film Steamboat Bill, Jr. of 1928 (starring Buster Keaton). Lindberg refers to his “kaleidoscopic way of writing,” including spectralism and minimalism. The result is a canvas of much beauty, especially the glacial stasis of around five or six minutes in, while the silent-film accompaniment element to the final pages is good, simple fun.


Usko Merilaïnen is one of only two composers on this disc that is no longer with us (he died in 2004; Erik Bergman died in 2006). The accompanying notes would have us believe this is a work in which all is not what it seems. What it seems to this commentator to be is a stream of consciousness where ambiguity is all. Erkki Jokinen (b. 1941) includes wit and charm in his Pros of 1990. His compositional hand is a sure and steady one, one so sure of itself that it can comfortably ensure that serialism and minimalism can coexist in a relatively short timespan.


The only multimovement work in this recital is Erik Bergman’s Karanssi (the title shunts together the first names of the two soloists on this recording!). Grunts and key noises are used to maximum effect to create an atmosphere of exquisite tension; the more rarified moments tend to enhance rather than dissipate this sense of strain. Tapani Länsiö (b. 1953) is the one who wrote the piece that gives this disc its name. A Due dates from 1991 and is scored for bass clarinet and cello. During the piece, as the composer puts it, “the instruments do not really want to meet but cannot avoid it.”


For those who love brevity of explanation from their composers, Paavo Heininen (b. 1938) must be a dream. Of Short I , he merely wrote, “ Short is a short piece. Savonlinna 1990 is history. I no longer explain.” Period. (The Savonlinna reference refers to the controversial performance of his opera The Knife at the Savonlinna Opera Festival in 1990.) The two lines sometimes interact, sometimes pursue independent lines of thought.


Finally, Capriole (1993) by Kimmo Hakola (b. 1958). Antti Häyrynen’s booklet notes speak of the interruption of the hectic moto perpetuo by quasi-Mongolian folk music (Mongolian folk music is my most recent musical discovery, by the way, via the 2003 film The Story of the Weeping Camel and also a folk music festival this Summer in ?ervený Kostelec in the Czech Republic: some of the most powerfully moving music I have ever heard). The sound of Mongolia is unmistakable, its whining, slithery nostalgia unforgettable, and Hakola uses this expressivity to unforgettable effect. This alone makes the purchase of this disc worthwhile.


A fantastically stimulating disc, performed by two consummate virtuosos clearly dedicated to their task.


FANFARE: Colin Clarke

Classical Music

Stockhausen calls his piano pieces his "drawings", the pieces in which he sketches out ideas without the added color complexity of instrumental timbres. More significantly, in these early pieces you can hear a composer grappling with the challenge of electronic sound, looking for "envelope curves" that will allow the old medium to compete with the new. As played by David Tudor in this historic recording, the piano gives its answer to the synthesizer. David Tudor is without question one of the premier figures in the performance of new music since the middle of this century. As a pianist, Tudor gave highly acclaimed first performances of works by contemporary composers Pierre Boulez, Earle Brown, Sylvano Bussotti, John Cage, Morton Feldman, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Christian Wolff, Stephan Wolpe, and La Monte Young, among others. As a composer, Tudor chose specific electronic components and their interconnections to define both composition and performance drawing upon resources that were both flexible and complex.

...the conservative musical language rather brings Verdi to mind, and in a very real sense this cycle is a twentieth century equivalent to the latter’s Requiem: both are symphonic in construction and operatic in idiom, composed from spiritual rather than religious standpoints...

Listening to these two works by Aulis Sallinen is a bit like looking at two different photographs of the composer: the face is undeniably the same but not the perspective. Songs of Life and Death (1993-4) arose, rather by mischance, from a failed effort to compose a Requiem on verses by Lassi Nummi. Although title and outward form suggest Mahlerian associations, the conservative musical language rather brings Verdi to mind, and in a very real sense this cycle is a twentieth century equivalent to the latter’s Requiem: both are symphonic in construction and operatic in idiom, composed from spiritual rather than religious standpoints, and make use of secular elements. There are differences of course, not the least in scale and conception, which serve to underline a similarity of purpose and stature relative to their epochs. And while Sallinen's songs are very much songs of life, death is not here perceived as a grim or tragic end, and this imparts to the whole a peculiarly late twentieth-century aspect. Here at last is the choral-and-orchestral masterpiece Sibelius should have written, Finnish to the core yet international in appeal. It is, I believe, one of the very finest compositions Sallinen has yet produced...Very strongly recommended.

- Gramophone, 12/1995

The passing away of Einojuhani Rautavaara (1928–2016), one of the most performed Finnish composers after Sibelius, left a deep void in the field of Finnish contemporary music. This new album by cellist Tanja Tetzlaff and pianist Gunilla Süssmann includes Rautavaara’s rarely heard works written for cello and piano. The cornerstone of Rautavaara’s cello chamber music are the three sonatas. The earliest of the sonatas was written in 1969 and contains Baroque influences. Prior to this, the composer had already written Two Preludes and Fugues for cello and piano in 1955 firmly rooted in the Neo-Classical tradition as a young student. Soon after completing his solo cello sonata, the composer started writing his Neo-Romantic Sonata for Cello and Piano No. 1. However, the work was left unfinished and completed almost 30 years later, in 2001. Cello Sonata No. 2, completed in 1991, is much different in style, more modern and edgy, but based on a work written for a cello music competition in 1975. Polska (1977) for two cellos and piano is based on a folk tune from Rantasalmi. The origin of this work is connected to the genesis of Rautavaara’s first published opus, Fiddlers (Pelimannit) from the early 1950s. Song of My Heart (Sydämeni laulu) is the composer’s transcription from an aria included in his opera Aleksis Kivi (1995–96). In 2000, Rautavaara arranged the piece for cello, and fittingly for this funereal piece dedicated it to the memory of Estonian composer Lepo Sumera.

REVIEW:

As a mind-blowing display of technical accomplishment, I can only offer my congratulations to Tanja Tetzlaff who has a gorgeous Guadagnini cello of 1776 and an outstanding long-term piano partner in Gunilla Sussmann. Very good recorded quality and most highly recommended.

– David's Review Corner (David Denton)

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.


This is a stunning disc. Rautavaara continues to operate at the peak of his form, despite suffering a serious heart attack in mid-composition of Book of Visions that kept him hospitalized for six months. It's a remarkable work in four movements (or "tales") lasting some 40 minutes. Each tale has a tantalizing title (Night, Fire, Love, and Fate) vague enough to leave the specifics to the listener's imagination, but full of musical possibilities that Rautavaara seizes with relish. You might call this new work a "Four Lemminkäinen Legends" for the new millennium, since as always that indefinable Finnish sensibility is quite audibly present but is always expressed in the composer's own personal idiom. The music is gorgeous: evocative, mysterious, luminously scored, and extremely well-crafted--and it practically goes without saying that dedicatee Mikko Franck does a spectacular job conducting this premiere. This is a major statement, make no mistake.

Rautavaara's First Symphony has often been revised, from a four-movement original, down to two movements, and back up to the present three, which, as the composer notes, provides a more balanced sequence than previously. It was written when Prokofiev and Shostakovich were major influences, but with the passing of time the lyricism of the first movement now seems fully characteristic of Rautavaara. Adagio Celeste is yet another example (there are many in Rautavaara) of how music based on a 12-note theme can still be very beautiful and approachable. In this regard he recalls Swiss composer Frank Martin. It's a lovely work scored for small orchestra (the "string orchestra" designation on the tray card is incorrect). Once again the performances of this work and the symphony are all that anyone could ask, and the sonics, whether in stereo or multichannel formats, are fully up to the quality of the interpretations. A knockout, not to be missed!

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Kaija Saariaho (b. 1952) is among the most prominent names in contemporary music scene today. This new album by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hannu Lintu includes world première recordings of three works by Saariaho featuring bass-baritone Gerald Finley and harpist Xavier de Maistre as soloists. True Fire is a six-movement song cycle that was written to a commission from the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the NDR Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestre National de France, for baritone Gerald Finley with an original idea to explore the scope of the baritone voice. The texts conclusively determined what the vocal expression would be like and how the details in the musical material would shape up. The disparate texts chosen by Saariaho in fact have a common underlying theme: the status of humankind surrounded by nature, our observations of it and our belonging to it. Saariaho’s orchestral triptych Orion (2002) is one of her most performed works. Orion as a celestial phenomenon is showcased in the middle movement, Winter Sky. In 2013, Saariaho rescored this movement for a smaller orchestra, and to distinguish it from the original she gave it a title in French with the same meaning, Ciel d’hiver. It joins the series of works by Saariaho that are in one way or another inspired by things in sky and space. Trans for harp and orchestra is the composer’s latest addition to a series of concertos. It was written to a joint commission from the Suntory Foundation for Arts, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Tonhalle Orchestra in Zurich, Radio France and the Hessen Radio Orchestra. The premiere was given by Xavier de Maistre in Tokyo in August 2016.

This solo album by cellist Wilhelmina Smith features works for solo cello by Esa-Pekka Salonen and Kaija Saariaho. Both composers belong to a generation of modernist Finnish composers whose work has gained broad acceptance in musical culture throughout the world. While each composer has a clear individual artistic persona, as a group they are known for pushing sonic boundaries. In writing for strings and, in particular on this recording, the cello, Salonen and Saariaho exploit the outer reaches of the technical possibilities for both the instrument and the performer. Wilhelmina Smith is an artist of intense commitment, poetic insight and dazzling versatility. As a soloist and recitalist as well as a collaborative musician and festival director, Smith has consistently advocated for composers with whom she has developed vital relationships, to have their music creatively positioned within an intellectually engaging context and performed with the utmost passion and technical assurance.

Aulis Sallinen and his slightly older contemporary Einojuhani Rautavaara (b. 1928) are currently the grand old men of Finnish music and have been taking turns in the limelight for some time. Sallinen had an opera performed at Covent Garden in the 1980s, while Rautavaara’s breakthrough work, his seventh symphony, Angel of Light, came in 1994. They have each written eight symphonies – and it is as important for a Nordic composer to get beyond seven, because Sibelius didn’t, as it is for one in the German tradition to reach nine, because Beethoven did. A box of Rautavaara’s symphonies came out in 2009 (review) and one of Sallinen’s in 2011. Sallinen has a wide stylistic range, with dance music and jazz at one end and hard-edged modernism at the other. His music is predominantly tonal: he can write lyrically and rhythmically. Sometimes his idiom seems like a slightly more astringent version of Benjamin Britten, and there are occasional reminiscences of other composers. But he has his own flavour, which you learn to recognize.

Now we have a complete set of Sallinen’s Chamber Music series. These are not actually works of chamber music but works for chamber orchestra, all but the first for one or more solo instruments with a string orchestra. They are therefore direct successors to Hindemith’s Kammermusik series, though unlike those works these were written over a period of over thirty years. A more distant ancestor would be Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos. The solo parts mostly eschew virtuosity. The works are mostly in a single movement, though often in several sections and they are of moderate length, so the whole set – assuming Sallinen does not intend to add to it – fits onto two CDs. Although some of them have been recorded before this is the first complete set.

Chamber Music I begins in a haze from which fragments emerge leading to a melody which climbs out of clinging textures. It achieves some rhythmic definition featuring Scotch snaps before withdrawing into the mist. There is a serene coda with a beautiful tune. This is the nearest to modernism of the whole set.

Chamber Music II features an alto flute as soloist, which immediately leads one to ask why this lovely instrument is not used more often as a concerto soloist. After an exploratory opening this becomes a gentle dance. A middle section has an extended solo, not really a cadenza, and a slow polonaise. There is a short, quick finale. Of all these works this reminded me most of Britten: it could almost be the flute concerto he did not get round to writing.

After this gentle work, Chamber Music III is a riot. The title is suggestive but there is no formal programme. It is a dialogue between solo cello – enchantingly played by Arto Noras – and string orchestra in which the soloist tries to teach the orchestra some jolly dance tunes – Sallinen played in a dance band in his youth. The orchestra is at first uncomprehending but gets the knack of it but by then the soloist has moved on. I particularly enjoyed the tango section. Later, an accompanied cadenza leads to a moto perpetuo which is repeatedly interrupted before suddenly fading out.

In contrast, Chamber Music IV is a rather sombre and questioning piano concerto in four short movements. It goes back via an earlier version to a solo cello work which was the original Elegy for Sebastian Knight. The Real Life of Sebastian Knight is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov which apparently inspired Sallinen, but not having read it I can’t explore how. The idiom here struck me as rather like Hindemith but with sudden and disconcerting pauses. I liked this work a lot: it is limpid and lyrical and with a strange wondering beauty. The piano part is not virtuosic and indeed is often in single notes.

Chamber Music V is also a piano concerto, this time based on an earlier version in which the solo instrument was an accordion, and also related to another work titled Barabbas Dialogues. This is a melancholy work with an opening featuring trills which reminded me of Scriabin’s tenth piano sonata. Indeed, something of the flickering texture of that work appears here, and builds up an atmosphere of great anxiety with repeated notes and rhythms. There are momentary reminiscences of works as disparate as Scriabin’s last two sonatas, Bach, and the Spanish music of Albeniz and Granados. In a slow middle section there is a suggestion of jazz. The final section starts as a toccata but ends in doubt and uncertainty. It is a strange and haunting work.

Chamber Music VI is for solo string quartet and string orchestra, the same combination which Elgar used in his Introduction and Allegro and also Schoenberg in one of his reworkings of a baroque concerto. Sallinen’s piece is not like either. It is titled 3 invitations au voyage but the implied reference to Baudelaire’s poem or Duparc’s setting thereof is not borne out by anything I can hear. Imagine the string writing of Sibelius tinged with Bartók, though this cannot really convey the character of this music, which also has a yearning chromaticism which is all Sallinen’s own. Towards the end the mood lifts but the sense of tension remains. It is an eloquent, poignant work.

Chamber Music VII features a solo wind quintet, here, as in the previous work, played by an established group. It is a cheerful work, rather in the French tradition of Poulenc and his contemporaries. Each wind instrument gets a chance to shine. I particularly enjoyed the oboe of Nahoko Kinoshita and the clarinet of Gocho Prakov. There are some quiet, contemplative passage but these are graceful rather than poignant. It is an attractive work though perhaps too episodic to be wholly coherent.

Chamber Music VIII is another cello concerto. It is a much more serious work than Chamber Music III. It is subtitled The Trees, All Their Green, which was the title of a volume of poems by Paavo Haavikko, who also wrote the plays on which two of Sallinen’s operas were based. He died just as Sallinen was beginning work on this piece. The solo cello is the protagonist throughout and weaves a lyrical but anguished and intense line. Arto Noras is as superbly expressive here as he was witty and playful in Chamber music III.

I hope I have given a sense of the expressive range and variety of these eight works. I had already started exploring Sallinen’s symphonies, thanks to the complete set I mentioned, and have been very glad to get to know this series as well. The performances under both Ville Matvejeff and Ralf Gothóni are accomplished and the soloists play with great commitment and style. The recording is clear and unobtrusive, and there is a helpful sleeve-note, in English and Finnish only. We owe a debt to the Finnish Music Foundation which sponsored these recordings.

– MusicWeb International (Stephen Barber)

Sallinen, A.: String Quartets No. 1-5

Classical Music

Includes work(s) for piano by Luciano Berio. Soloist: Andrea Lucchesini.

XENAKIS Phlegra. Anaktoria. Dhipli Zyla. Waarg. VARÈSE Octandre. ROMITELLI Mediterraneo I & II • Stefan Asbury, cond; Asko Ens; Marieke Koster (mez) • STRADIVARIUS 33871 (72:34) Live: Milan 11/6/2005


GERVASONI Meta della ripa. MANZONI Ode. Sembianti. WEBERN Passacaglia • Lothar Koenigs, cond; RAI Natl SO • STRADIVARIUS 33872 (69:16) Live: Milan 11/4/2006


Thanks to the cost-cutting and absence of commercial considerations that occur as more orchestras, ensembles, artists, and in this case festivals issue their own recordings or find new outlets for them, audiences now have an increased opportunity to experience more unusual repertory, especially contemporary music. The Milan Music Festival has specialized in the latter since 1991, and these two concert recordings—Volume 2 featuring the Xenakis, Volume 3 the Gervasoni, et al.—show how they are frequently able to establish helpful thematic, stylistic, or conceptual connections between familiar and lesser-known works in their programming.


The Netherlands’s Asko Ensemble, featured in Vol. 2, has a long history of exceptional performances of 20th- and 21st-century works (see its large and impressive catalog of recordings at askoschoenberg.nl), and by anchoring its concert with Edgard Varèse’s Octandre , it focuses the listener’s attention on the variety of ways in which kindred composers Iannis Xenakis and Fausto Romitelli construct surprising tonal environments out of sometimes subtle, sometimes extravagant timbral and textural resources. The four Xenakis selections wisely reflect different periods, and thus distinct characteristics, from his career. Dhipli Zyla (1952), the earliest, is a contrapuntal dance for violin and cello, showing Bartók’s influence on the composer’s use of Greek folk material, while Phlegra (1975), for 11 instruments, suggests a Stravinsky-like rhythmic lilt and an almost slapstick humor to the ever-more-insistent harmonic disorientation. The harsh juxtaposition of colors swells and recedes in Anaktoria (1969), while the separate layers of activity in Waarg (1988), like isolated lines drawn in the air, twist and blend in the wind. Heard together, they are good preparation for Romitelli’s Mediterraneo (1992). Divided into two parts, the first sets contrasting qualities in instrumental groups against each other—sliding strings, resonating chimes, sustained wind tones—as if the sounds were reaching out from a common nucleus; the second part, including mezzo-soprano Marieke Koster’s intonation of an elliptical text by the French poet Paul Valéry, is equally dense but more compact, implying a nevertheless vague tonal center toward which the pitches are now drawn.


Though placed at the end of Vol. 3, Anton Webern’s richly textured, lyrically abstracted Passacaglia (1909) conceptually sets the stage for the music of Stefano Gervasoni and Giacomo Manzoni, whose works imaginatively reorganize the orchestra into patterns of colors rather than instrumental sections. The shimmering motives and static but evocative sonorities in Gervasoni’s Meta della ripa (2002–03) may seem reminiscent of some spectral strategies, but the fluctuating events, alternately chilly and heated, form a cohesive, gradually emerging drama. Likewise, Manzoni’s two compositions are full of shifting textures and dynamics creating dramatic tension, but obtained through unpredictable, partially indeterminate, devices. In Ode (1982), the orchestral material is divided into five “tracks” that progress horizontally in and out of sync with each other, although the blend of sounds is altogether natural and convincing. Sembianti (2003) is a kind of Enigma Variations , with parts of the composition dedicated to friends, using pitch motives derived from their names, mixing in solos from all sections of the orchestra, and inserting free rhythmic episodes—less of a storytelling enigma, however, à la Elgar, than a structural one.


Both the Asko Ensemble and the RAI National Orchestra make a strong case for the new music as well as the more familiar items they are presenting. Recommended to adventurous listeners.


FANFARE: Art Lange

Clinically speaking, Mark Applebaum does not suffer from any mental disorders. It's not for want of trying though! On this his 9th Innova release, he attempts to illustrate psychological disorders in sound. Asylum takes the form of a bipolar octet, an obsessive-compulsive trio, a narcoleptic quartet, an attention-deficit hyperactive quintet, a paranoid flutist, a catatonic horn player, an anti-social guitarist, a narcissistic contrabassist, a dependent violist and a Tourette's octet.

Classical Music

This album was nominated for the 2007 Grammy Award for "Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance (with Orchestra)."

Classical Music

The music of this contemporary composer hits many of the right buttons for me. It is well crafted, it has a discernible shape, and it is expressed in a confident and original voice. Because of the sleek appeal of the music, it was not surprising to read that Wojciech Kilar is primarily known as a film composer, with over 100 scores to his credit, mostly in the Polish film industry, but also for such well-known Western movies as Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Roman Polanski’s Death and the Maiden, and Jane Campion’s Portrait of a Lady. His style in those scores, as well as the music on this CD, is essentially post-Romantic, with strong doses of minimalism and Eastern liturgical music (think Górecki and Pärt).

At the heart of this program is the 1997 Piano Concerto. The work is in three movements, but it is otherwise unconventionally constructed, beginning with a dreamy Andante that is large in scope but gentle in impact. With its metrical regularity and repeated melodic patterns, this is the most overtly minimalist music on the CD. The middle movement is slower still, and shares a Brahmsian melodic quality with the juggernaut-like final movement. Malicki has a firm control over the deceptively simple sounding solo part. The opening work, Bogurodzica, is the most harmonically advanced, with dissonant outbursts of choral writing for this setting of an ancient Polish hymn. It opens and closes with the beating of drums, alluding to a martial atmosphere. The work shares the composer’s predilection for extreme dynamic contrasts with the other two works on the program, and opens so quietly that you might be tempted to crank up the volume, which will put you at the risk of ear damage a few moments later.

Siwa Mgla (“Grey Mist”) and Koscielec are both tone poems, and are the pieces most like “movie music” on the program. Neither work is without merit and even beauty. Siwa Mgla is most compelling when the solo baritone enters, due in no small part to the richly expressive voice of Wieslaw Ochman. In Koscielec (named for a mountain in the Tatra range of Southern Poland), however, the bombast finally overwhelms any subtlety, in a score that would probably work well for a mass-market sci-fi flick.

I have long admired the work of Antoni Wit and the Warsaw Philharmonic. This is a great Eastern European orchestra, showing off an impressive combination of virtuosity and passion. Both orchestra and conductor contribute immensely to the appeal of Kilar’s music, to which they sound intensely committed.

FANFARE: Peter Burwasser

Recently Composer-in-Residence with the New York Philharmonic, Magnus Lindberg has created works that deeply impress listeners. Acclaimed violinist Pekka Kuusisto performs the Violin Concerto as the composer conducts.

Many young violinists' debut CDs come and go without making much of a mark, oftentimes less because the performers are untalented as because their repertoire failed to stand out in a crowded field. Another disc of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, or Kreisler has to be truly outstanding to stand out.
Daniel Hope scores on both of these points: he and his collaborators give excellent performances, and he (and, presumably, his teachers, managers, and label executives) chose a program which cannot help but stand out from the pack. The danger in such a program--lesser-known contemporary works--is failing to live up to the technical and interpretive challenges. Hope needn't worry.
A child prodigy, Hope was just 21 when this program was recorded, and he had already had the opportunity to discuss the Schnittke and Takemitsu works with their composers. The performances here are indeed excellent, and Hope has no difficulty distinguishing himself from his peers.
REVIEWS:
International Record Review (3/00, p.77) - "...cannily programmed and thoughtfully executed..."

Duration: c. 29 minutesFormat: 64-page piano / 20-page recorderFor me, as for many children, the first musical instrument was the recorder. My father brought one home for me when I was three. Through playing the recorder, I learned to read music to a decent standard at an early age, which was very helpful. Although I ranged across a multitude a woodwind instruments before going on to become a composer, I never stopped playing the recorder. So, in 2009, when Leanne Nichols of the Hong Kong City Chamber Orchestra asked me to write a concerto for Michala Petri, I was very happy to take on the commission. My only problem was that I was doing a lot of travelling at the time, but I soon found a way around this. I took two recorders with me everywhere. One was a soprano (descant) instrument;the other was a digital recorder. Whenever I was able to find the time, I would try out ideas for the concerto and make recordings, building up an archive that I could refer back to. My favourite location for this strange activity was the church of Furnas on the little island of São Miguel, in the Azores. I was in there for several hours and recorded a lot of new material, all of which eventually found its way into the piece. I met Michala for the first time in Hong Kong about a week before the premiere of Concerto Incantato. I told her that when she arrived on the scene as a child wonder recorder player, in the 1970s, I determined absolutely not go head to head with her in the recorder world. She is a few years younger than me and my mind was almost made up already, but she influenced my choic eof career markedly, nudging me towards composing, rather than performing. I won’t say I’ve never looked back, but when I hear Michala playing, I think I made the right decision.   [Richard Harvey]

Let's start with the "filler", because it's a very interesting one. Rautavaara's The Fiddlers originally was composed as a piano suite, as played here, and later arranged for string orchestra. For this performance, a fine one by Paavali Jumppanen, Pekka Kuusisto offers solo violin versions of the original folk tunes that Rautavaara selected for his suite. The result is fascinating; the tunes are about what you'd expect--robust, folk-fiddle melodies--but Rautavaara extracts a vast amount of variety and emotional nuance from them, using the basic material in often surprising ways. Check out the second tune, Kopsin Jonas, for example, as it enters evocatively in the bass over a swirling treble ostinato. Great stuff!

Rautavaara has composed very little for violin and piano, or (in the case of Variétude) for solo violin. There are mostly occasional works, but they are no less finely crafted for that. The excitingly brief Dithyrambos and Notturno e danza deliver what their titles suggest, while the other pieces are all nostalgic mood-pieces, often very beautiful. The major work here is Lost Landscapes, a four-movement violin sonata in all but name, with each movement offering a portrait of one of the composer's youthful haunts: Tanglewood, Ascona, Rainergasse 11, Vienna, and West 23rd Street, NY.

Kuusisto, as we have every reason to expect, plays very well, with plenty of color in his tone; and as already suggested, Jumppanen also does an excellent job, whether as accompanist or taking over the spotlight. The sonics are generally excellent, well balanced, and perhaps just a bit bright in the violin's upper register. Ondine's Rautavaara recordings really are major additions to the contemporary music scene. This one is no exception.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Augusta Read Thomas : Two Thoughts About the Piano (2017)For solo pianoDuration: c. 5 minutesFormat: 24-page scoreTWO THOUGHTS ABOUT THE PIANO was inspired by - and is a response to - Elliott Carter's Caténaires from his Two Thoughts About the Piano. My work is entirely original and does not quote from or share music in common with Mr. Carter’s work.

SAARIAHO Clarinet Concerto, “D’Om le vrai sens.” Laterna Magica. Leino Songs • Sakari Oramo, cond; Finnish RSO; Kari Kriikku, (cl); Anu Komsi (s) • ONDINE 1173-2 (67:31 Text and Translation)


Over the years my admiration for Kaija Saariaho (b. 1952) has only grown. From early in her career she’s had an identifiable voice, one that comes from the intersection of a certain Nordic directness with a very French taste for refinement of timbre and texture (she’s Finnish, but worked at IRCAM and has lived for decades in Paris). The result is music that pleases on multiple levels: It’s highly lyrical, explores new sonorities with experimental rigor, and is never afraid of sensuality.


The three works on this program (basically hot off the press) all partake of the above-described aesthetic. The Clarinet Concerto (2010) is a suite of six movements inspired by the famous medieval “Unicorn” tapestries at the Cluny Museum in Paris, which in turn represent the senses (the final movement evokes a culminatory “sixth sense”). It’s truly haunting, in that the clarinet often uses noise and multiphonics (though always scrupulously) to suggest a sort of ghost-like keening and shrieking. Saariaho is very much in the spectralist school, which develops its harmonic practice from precise analysis of sounds in their microscopic realm, and from their correspondence to the overtone series. As a result, even her most dissonant sound masses have a spaciousness that always sounds natural and open, and that’s the case throughout this piece.


Laterna Magica (2008) is a tone poem evoking the life and work of film director Ingmar Bergman, though it never falls into any film-music cliché. It has an interesting dialectic between rich clouds of sound and more rhythmically pulsating textures (film threading through a projector’s sprockets?), and a passage where the orchestral players whisper various words (in German) relating to light is particularly striking. It falls a little more into what feel to me certain standard gestures and sonorities of this style and era, but it remains consistently appealing and mysterious. And the 2007 Leino Songs are four settings from one of Finland’s greatest poets, Eino Leino (1878–1926). This is technically the most conservative work, in that the voice is used for a traditionally beautiful melody; the instruments provide an aura about it that sometimes is more distorted, but never at the expense of the vocal line’s beauty. All this is not a surprise, since the composer has established one of the few successful track records for innovative and beautiful opera.


All these are exceptional performances, but by now would we expect less from anything coming out of Finland, perhaps the world’s most advanced musical culture (at least for what we call “classical”)? If you’ve not heard Saariaho before, this is an excellent introduction.


FANFARE: Robert Carl


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Susanna Välimäki’s booklet notes sum up the music of Kaija Saariaho remarkably succinctly: “Saariaho may be regarded as a philosophical composer of mysteries … her music seems to suggest an invisible yet tangible ‘other world’ that can be sensed in the translucent sonorities, echoes, overtones, harmonics, shadow tones and reflections of her music ... [It] conjures up a sense of infinite space and multimodality.” The colours of the orchestration in a work like the Clarinet Concerto are almost as elusive as the tonalities and harmonic language used, but at the same time the ear is granted access into a world which is infinitely fascinating - subsumed at times with an icy northern chill, but also irrigated by the magnetic shifting patterns of an aurora borealis.

As the subtitle suggests, the Clarinet Concerto “D’OM LE VRAI SENS” refers to the human senses, each inspired by the panels of a medieval tapestry called The Lady and the Unicorn. These physical aspects are suggested with instrumental symbolism and meditations rather than literal descriptive elements easily divined by an audience, but the atmosphere of mystic other-worldliness brings us into a state of wonder which can perhaps be interpreted as comparable with that of the medieval lay person confronted by inexplicable worlds beyond experience, expressed by an almost equally inexplicable miracle of craftsmanship in the tapestries. Kari Kriikku’s remarkable clarinet playing is a real treat in this work, sometimes imitating animal sounds, at times sounding like declamatory speech, and always filled with drama and intensity which equals that conjured by the entire orchestra.

Laterna Magica is titled after the memoirs of film director Ingmar Bergman, and refers to the earliest of image projectors, the magic lantern. This transfers into music in a series of ‘mirages in sound‘, creating spaces into which the imagination can project its own images. This again is more than a merely literal conjuring and teasing of our pictorial senses, and the mystic symbolism of passing time and the universal questions of existence are powerful elements in the score. Machine-like noises and quasi-spoken whisperings express the intangibility of images which seem real, and challenge perceptions of permanency and reality.

The Leino Songs use poems by Eino Leino, considered one of the most important of all Finnish poets. Reading the texts in the booklet, and it is immediately apparent as to why these texts would appeal to Saariaho, as their themes and content can easily be interpreted as expressing the very essence of her compositions. Beautifully sung by Anu Komsi, each song is compact, the words used directly and without distortion of the original poem. Each song creates its own world, reflecting the themes of love and violence, fragrant serenity and death.

This is a superbly produced recording from the Ondine label, which has been championing Saariaho’s music for some time now. Justly celebrated as one of the leading composers of our time, this varied and deeply fascinating programme is as good a place as any to become acquainted with her remarkable universe of expressive sonority and mystical depth. This isn’t Bach or Beethoven of course, but neither is it work which will turn you off with impenetrable intellectual challenges. The deeper you look the more you can reveal, but what you find is more often one or other revelation about yourself as much as an understanding of music which is of its very nature a kind of tuning fork held up to the harmonies and dissonances of existence.

-- Dominy Clements, MusicWeb International

Classical Music

This selection is also included in Bis Twins 3.

Louis Glass (1864-1936) began his career as a pianist, but illness forced his retirement from active concertizing and his focus turned toward composing. His six symphonies clearly occupy the center of his oeuvre. Early influences of Schumann, Gade and Grieg soon yielded to influence from Ce�sar Franck. Glass also displays strong influence emanating from Bruckner, very unusual during this generation and beyond the borders of German-speaking Europe. CPO's new Glass Complete Symphonies, Vol. 1, features his idyllic Forest Symphony No. 3 and the Summer Life orchestral suite.

Augusta read thomas :rainbow bridge to paradise (2016)For Solo ViolaDuration: c. 4½ minutesFormat: 8-page A4 saddle stitched sheet musicAlso available for solo violin (NMP1043) and solo cello (NMP1045)“Rainbow Bridge to Paradise starts at the very bottom note of the cello, in the deep, rich, elegant tones of the instrument and traverses to the very bright, clear, clean, optimistic top register of the instrument. This music’s vibrant, expressive and distinct ‘picture’ is one of an ascent from earth to paradise across a colorful bridge.” Augusta Read Thomas