Wild Horses/Rock Steady (Cti Records 40T)

Classical Music

In 1967, New York Impresario Sol Hurok presented Mstislav Rostropovich in 8 monumental evenings in Carnegie Hall from Feb. 23 to March 12, 1967. Rostropovich performed 30 cello concertos - offering standard concerto repertoire and new works, several of which were written for him and two were world premieres. From these, a selection of 22 concertos from the actual 1967 performances are presented in this set. This marathon program features works from Elgar, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Respighi, Hindemith, Honegger, Britten, Khrennikov, and more.

The revival of interest in the music of Robin Milford (1903–59) has largely bypassed his exquisite chamber music, an omission this recording seeks to redress. It presents some of his most attractive chamber works, showing his very personal – and very English – combination of melodic freshness, elegiac lyricism and echoes of folksong. The clarinetist Robert Plane has been described as the ‘current occupier of the shoes of the late Thea King in his championship of British clarinet music’. Other notable performers include violinist Lucy Gould, violist David Adams and cellist Alice Neary.

While still in his twenties, Cyril Scott was perceived as one of the pre-eminent avant-garde musicians of his generation. He was championed by such luminaries as Henry Wood and Thomas Beecham and his advocacy of the latest techniques briefly gave him a wide acquaintance with some of the leading musicians of the day, including Ravel and Debussy. He became known as one of the 'Frankfurt Gang', that group of young composers who studied at the Hoch'sche Konservatorium and included such contemporaries as Roger Quilter, Norman O'Neill and Percy Grainger. After the First World War, however, he found himself increasingly at odds with the prevailing idioms of the day and became persona non grata with the musical establishment, which contributed to his lack of recognition as a serious composer in subsequent decades. Scott wrote more than two dozen substantial chamber works and although some of his early chamber music has been revived from time to time, with the exception of the Clarinet Quintet this selection receives its premiere recording. The earliest work on the programme is Piano Trio No. 1 of 1920, but the disc significantly celebrates the chamber music composed after the Second World War, exemplifying Scott's late style. The second Piano Trio dates from 1951 as does the one-movement Clarinet Quintet, inspired by the playing of Gervase de Payer who gave its first performance. The largest work, the Trio for Clarinet, Cello and Piano, is in three movements including a beautiful Intermezzo labelled Adagio espressivo. The Gould Piano Trio is joined by Mia Cooper and David Adams, and by the clarinettist Robert Plane, recognised for his 'outstanding musicianship' (The Musical Times).

Classical Music

Contents of Blu-ray Discs

High Definition Concert Recordings: Harmonielehre, Short Ride in a Fast Machine, City Noir, Lollapalooza, Scheherazade.2, The Wound-Dresser, and The Gospel According to the Other Mary.
Bonus: John Adams in Conversation with Sarah Willis and John Adams in Conversation with Peter Sellars
Documentary: A Portrait of John Adams as the Berliner Philharmoniker's "Composer in Residence"
John Adams is considered the musical voice of America. His tonal language is at once unmistakable and of infinite variety. Minimalism mixes with imaginative orchestration and a jazz-inflected spirit to create a cosmos full of energy and colour that constantly reveals new facets. In a unique transatlantic partnership, John Adams has accompanied the Berliner Philharmoniker for a whole season as composer in residence. The orchestra performed a wide variety of his works, from the oratorio “The Gospel According to the Other Mary” and the famous “Harmonielehre” to more unfamiliar treasures. The concerts were conducted by chief conductor Sir Simon Rattle and outstanding guests: Gustavo Dudamel, Alan Gilbert and Kirill Petrenko. In the course of this partnership, John Adams himself also made his debut as conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker.

Quartet No. 7 was written in 2000 and first performed within weeks after the World Trade Center attacks. It is subtitled Angels, and includes the organ along with the quartet, the only work I know of for that combination. The Quartet No. 2 (1972), the briefest, least ambitious work here, opens as a canon, each instrument eventually entering with the same material. The theme, though, is so remarkably heterogeneous in it's glissandi, trills, tonal and atonal phrases that the canonic effect is not immediately apparent. The Quartet No. 8 (2001-2002) was written as a memorial to the victims of 11th September, and moves through three movements from complete instability to a kind of hypnotic serenity. The opening movement, On wings of sound, is entirely in glissandi, with no fixed reference point anywhere; it is a palindrome canon, a fact that can hardly influence one's perception of it's eerie writhing. A field of uninterrupted glissandos also marks the opening of the Quartet No.4, from 1976-77. Here, though, an accelerative process is in motion, the lines moving faster and faster up to an unexpectedly serene close. The Quartet No.3 from 1975 is similar to the Fourth in it's use of ostinato, but comes closer than any of Coates' other quartets to the idea of theatrically contrasting the personalities of the different instruments, as in Charles Ives's Second Quartet or those of Elliott Carter. The final movement is a Prayer couched in stately chords of parallel fifths - you might notice it's repeated eight-note tune coming back in retrograde. The entire quartet takes a sense of unease from the viola and cello being tuned a quarter-tone off from the violins.

J. L. ADAMS Inuksuit & • Thad Anderson, Noam Bierstone, Omar Camenartes, Michael Compitello, Nathan Davis, Christopher Demetriou, Rob Esler, Matt Evans, Diego Espinosa, Tim Feeney, Benjamin Fraley, Amy Garapic, Russell Greenberg, Nathaniel Hartman, Phil Hermans, Ayano Kataoka, Kelli Kathman, Danny Lichtenfeld, Ryan Maguire, Shard Mamoun, Krystina Marcoux, Murray Mast, Annie Laurie Mauhs-Pugh, Carson Moody, Benjamin Reimer, Jessica Schmitz, Jeff Stern, Bill Solomon, Christopher Swist, Lisa Tolentino, Alessandro Valiante, Owen Weaver (perc) • CANTALOUPE 21096 (CD: 59: 54, DVD 1:23:00)


& Strange and Sacred Noise video directed by Len Kamerling


This is an event. Inuksuit was written in 2009, and has become John Luther Adams’s signature piece. It is designed to be performed in an open, outdoor space, with a range of performers from nine to 99 (this recording uses 32). It is loose in its construction, with a flow of events that is similar from one performance to another, but whose details and ensemble will vary, depending on choices made in performance, and the characteristics of the environment chosen. Its title comes from the abstract stone structures made across Alaska by the Inuit over the centuries. It uses mostly unpitched percussion (or more precisely instruments of relative pitch) such as drums, cymbals, and gongs, but it also uses harmonic “whirly tubes,” conches, sirens, and glockenspiels and piccolos near the end. But Adams’s primary focus on less pitched, more “noisy” sound sources is a savvy one, as it allows great density and complexity of texture without all the additional harmonic complications that would result from using traditional orchestral instruments (for the record, lessons he’s learned from Inuksuit are being applied in a new work for outdoor wind ensembles).


I heard the piece a couple of years ago in New York at the Park Avenue Armory, a performance whose very venue of course contradicted the original premises of the piece, but was nonetheless magnificently executed. But this recording, made in the forest abutting Vermont’s Guilford Sound, captures better the sense of how the piece interacts with the natural environment (especially its birds, who seem quite unintimidated by all the racket). It also gives us a sense of the space that the piece creates and occupies.


The aspect of the work that impresses me the most is its pacing. Sounds are given their natural time to assert themselves before they are overlapped with others that naturally grow from the earlier ones’ timbres and envelopes. Thus “whirly tubes” eventually transform to conches, and are interrupted by drums whose seemingly random attacks become increasingly dense and patterned, which are joined by cymbals and then gongs, with sirens emerging out of the shimmering soup of upper partials, while the drums grow higher in register and more patterned … until it all crests like a tsunami and we are left with the twittering of birds, both musical and real.


The piece lasts roughly an hour (though the literature on it suggests a longer span, c.75–90 minutes), but with each repeat listening I never find it long. Rather, it is like the weather; one sees a storm front approaching and is mesmerized by the growing darkness, the rising wind, the smell of coming rain. It’s a tribute to Adams’s instinctive feel for the natural that he can pull this off; that it feels so open and spacious, and resists judgment.


The headnote may be a little confusing, but this release is the sort of hybrid to which we’re becoming more used today, and yet it also is presented a little confusingly. There is a standard CD of the piece. But there is also a DVD, which includes 1) the same recording, but with multi-track surround sound ( as well as straight DVD stereo) and a video of a different piece, Strange and Sacred Noise (1997). This work is a sort of prelude to Inuksuit , for percussion quartet in several different monotimbral scorings, and using many of the same process-driven techniques (you can read my review of the Mode 53 release in Fanfare 29:5). It’s led by the amazing Steven Schick, and Adams provides succinct commentaries between each of the eight movements. I particularly love the long third one, inspired by the overlapping accelerandos and decelerandos of Nancarrow and Adams’s contemporary Peter Garland. The performance is filmed in the Alaskan tundra, and is stark and dramatic in the juxtaposition of the players with the vast landscape.


I can’t fully review the surround-sound version because I do not have that configuration. But I can certainly testify that the DVD recording is more detailed, and has more presence and depth. (You also get about a dozen nice slides of the stone sentinels and the Alaskan landscape, that cycle endlessly through the piece.) But the CD sound is just dandy as well.


OK, I must briefly carp: While the piece is divided into five tracks for access-convenience (in both audio versions), Cantaloupe nowhere tells you the timings (even on the page for the disc on their web page). It also takes a bit to realize that the video on the DVD is under “extras.” It would have been nice if the contents had been presented just a little less elliptically. This is a minor kvetch; it’s just a little irritating in what feels to me like the label’s slightly cavalier attitude toward the listener.


But I don’t want this to color my overall enthusiasm for this release. This is a visionary work, in the tradition of Ives, Cage, Harrison, and Tenney—all acknowledged ancestor-mentors of the composer. Adams is deeply tuned into the eco-sensibility of the era in a humane, unpretentious, yet grand way. Indeed, I could express it more simply by saying that his art is grand but not grandiose. Want List for the coming year.


FANFARE: Robert Carl

This DVD features a hand drawn pictographic score consisting of 12 panels (totaling 70 feet in length), 2 hanging mobiles, and absolutely no verbal or written instructions. It was commissioned by the Cantor Arts Center Museum at Stanford University.

Herbert Howells' style, immediately recognizable for it's long melodic lines, rhapsodic nature and rich harmonies, defined the sound of English cathedral music in the 20th century. His studies in London imbued his works with sophistication and a French influence, which were intertwined with a nostalgic 'heartache' for the 'real Gloucestershire,' as can be heard in String Quartet No. 3. The charming little character stories in 'Lady Audrey's Suite' tell of countryside and church, while the Piano Quartet in A minor is dedicated "To the Hill at Chosen and Ivor Gurney who knows it," portraying a favorite local vantage point at different seasons as well as poignantly remembering a lost friendship.

Legendary tango performer and composer Astor Piazzolla gained experience of jazz in New York and classical form and technique through studies with Alberto Ginastera. His work lends itself perfectly to arrangement for all kinds of ensemble, and this is the first recording with solo trombone. These popular pieces showcase the stunning playing of multi-award winning soloist Achilles Liarmakopoulos in a variety of moods, including the famous Oblivion, and Le Grand Tango, a virtuoso show-stopper originally written for cellist Mstislav Rostropovich.

'I haven't sat right through a CD of tangos until this one. Greek trombonist Achilles Liarmakopoulos, who plays with Canadian Brass, is an astonishing player, a musician of extraordinary subtlety and understatement. With the sweetest, most seductive tone imaginable, he glides through the Piazzolla classics, including the full Histoire du Tango, all three movements of the beautiful Serie del Angel, Michelangelo, Oblivion and a heart-wrenching, soulful rendition of Soledad. His group, including the great bandoneon player Hector del Curto, is superlative. An outstanding disc.' (Herald Scotland)

Since 2010 the Associazione La Cantoria has dedicated its energies to the rediscovery of unpublished musical compositions from Rome, transcribing, studying and performing these both live and recording them under the Tactus record label. This cd is dedicated to the musician, composer and organist Francesco Giovannini who was chapelmeister at the Church of Santa Maria in Portico in Campitelli in the 18th century, and whose works are conserved in the archives of the Order of the Clerics Regular of the Mother of God in Rome. The best way to understand and appreciate a liturgical musical composition is to savor it the very same context where it was born and for which it was conceived. This is what this cd intends to do.Composer: to allow us to live the sonorous experience of an ancient mass of the Roman rite. These late-Baroque compositions by Francesco Giovannini shine like precious gems set in an antique piece of jewelry made of Gregorian chant, readings, and orations where the organ is heard almost fleetingly in those moments when the sound of the voice and other instruments is superfluous or even prohibited.

Brothers Nicki and Patrick Adams have a natural bond that most musicians can never approximate with their peers. Their common upbringing and interests have also given them the idea to blend the aural tradition of jazz with the more written one of classical, with a unique approach that makes their efforts seem buoyant and natural on their new recording, Lynx. // The two perform together in a number of configurations, leading their own ensembles, and collaborating with bands of many different styles. They also have collaborated with many of jazz's finest, including Francisco Mela, Robin Eubanks, Corey Wilcox and Mike King. // Their debut recording as a duo, Lynx, takes it's name from an Arizona lake that the brothers frequented during their boyhood years, solidifying bonds both fraternal and musical. The project evolved after Nicki began to reinvestigate classical pieces that he had played or listened to before he devoted his attention full time to jazz. Rather than study scores, the pianist relearned the pieces by ear in an aural learning approach more utilized by jazz and folk musicians. Nicki felt that this approach allowed him more insight into the creative choices of the composers.