AMERICAN CLASSICS FOR VETERANS DAY

Winner of a Pulitzer Prize and a Grammy® Award, Christopher Rouse is one of America’s most prominent composers of orchestral music, creating a body of work perhaps unequaled in its emotional intensity. Conceived from the start as differing from a traditional piano concerto, Seeing brings together seemingly disparate elements to explore the notion of ‘sanity’ through the music of Robert Schumann and Skip Spence, swinging between extremes of consonance and dissonance, stability and instability, to create a disorientating and hallucinatory work seen through the lens of mental illness. Kabir Padavali or ‘Kabir Songbook’ presents a range of the great Indian poet’s religious concerns, from extraordinarily beautiful ecstasy to impishly humorous allegories.

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Review:

Trevigne is nothing less than sensational. She is assured in her presentation, and possesses a warm and, yes, voluptuous soprano that is perfectly matched to this material. Her performance shows a level of commitment to the composer’s intentions that only the best singers of contemporary music can command.

– Fanfare

Philip Glass’ Fifth String Quartet is the most substantial of his five quartets and the most traditional, using formal structures and expressive contrasts that go far beyond minimalism. While maintaining Glass’ unmistakable personal style, this is a quartet that delivers both driving energy and an unforgettable, threnody-like tenderness. Glass chose a string quartet for his score to the film Dracula to ‘evoke the feeling of the world of the 19th c.’, the music underpinning the film’s visual drama while avoiding obvious ‘horror’ effects. The String Sextet is an arrangement of Glass’s Third Symphony, combining symphonic scale with the intimacy synonymous with the chamber music genre.

REVIEWS:

The Carducci’s performance is imbued with a grainy, almost greyscale patina. In ‘Excellent Mr Renfield’ and ‘Women in White’, moments of eerie anticipation are punctuated by dramatic outbursts. The quartet is joined by Cian O’Dúill (viola) and Gemma Rosefield (cello) for the string sextet arrangement of Glass’s Symphony No 3. Written originally for a 19-piece string orchestra, the Third lends itself well to a chamber setting. There are a few moments when the lines split to one-to-part, but what is lost in weight and depth is more than made up in clarity, focus and forward momentum.

-- Gramophone

…here, at last, is what I’ve awaited. [Carduccis’] performance of the sextet is, hands down, much better than the one with the Glass Chamber Players on Orange Mountain; in fact, I can’t imagine one that could be better. As I think this is one of Glass’s best later compositions, this release warrants immediate purchase. To this there are also just as luminous performances of the Fifth Quartet and a suite from the Dracula score—the latter, again, infinitely more vibrant and passionate than [previous recordings].

-- American Record Guide

Louis Moreau Gottschalk was the first important American composer to fuse European classical piano music with American cultural influences, including folk music, the music of slaves, and Latin American dances. Although still revered for his anticipation of elements of Ragtime and Harlem Stride Piano, he owed his greatest musical debt to Chopin. On this recording we hear memorable and catchy tunes as well as considerable harmonic ingenuity. It includes some of his finest pieces, such as the deliciously Gallic Pasquinade, the wonderfully expressive Le Banjo and Steven Mayer’s solo piano arrangement of La Nuit des Tropiques.

REVIEWS:

Mr. Mayer brings dazzling virtuosity and playfulness to jaunty pieces like “Le Banjo: Fantaisie grotesque” and “Pasquinade: Caprice.” He also gives elegant accounts of several dreamy, refined and harmonically rich, less-heard works like "The Last Hope," a religious meditation, and the gorgeous “Reflets du passé,” a reverie.

-- New York Times

…Mayer’s transcription [is] a breathtakingly beautiful work, and in his hands a sweeping panorama of pianistic pulchritude reminiscent of the golden age of Romantic piano works by Alkan, Liszt, and Thalberg…

…[His] expert playing lends the music such charm and genuine appeal that my appetite is now whetted to hear more of it, much more, and preferably by Mayer, whose belief in Gottschalk feels absolutely sincere and is both convincing and persuasive. Very strongly recommended.

-- Fanfare

The generation of composers that proved so influential in mid-20th c. America included Roger Sessions, Howard Hanson, Roy Harris and Quincy Porter. Porter's much-admired orchestral music is marked by originality in it's absorption of neo-classicism, but his series of nine string quartets also represents an important contribution to the genre. Quartets Nos. 5 to 8 are the works of a composer who had been a professional string player in the 1920s and are marked by rhythmic sophistication and melodic tension. Inspired by the unique temperament of composer Charles Ives, the Ives Quartet is acclaimed for reveling in the unfamiliar and championing an eclectic repertoire, mixing established masterworks with neglected compositions of early-20th c. America, and commissioned new pieces. 'A very enjoyable disc which whets one's appetite for the remaining five quartets.' - Penguin Guide on Volume 1 (8.559305).

Joan Tower creates music which is bold, colorful and communicative, her list of commissions and awards providing ample evidence of her ability to engage performers and audiences alike. Emotional intensity characterizes Stroke, which vividly conveys a stroke victim’s dramatic turmoil while also offering a vision of hope. The Violin Concerto, selected for the final round of the Pulitzer Prize in Music, is both a virtuoso showcase and a lyrical vehicle for the soloist, its conversational cadenzas representing a poignant exchange between the living and the departed. The deceptively titled Chamber Dance alternates huge blocks of sound with intimate solos and duets in an ever-evolving riot of colors.

Review:

In the Violin Concerto the ear is caught by the constantly changing colours of the soloists interaction with different orchestral players. Violinist Cho-Liang Lin is lyrical and muscular as required, and his slender tone is well balanced with the excellent Nashville Symphony. The orchestra impresses also in two more recent pieces by Tower, and bears further witness to Tower's imaginative handling of instrumental coloring.

– BBC Music Magazine

Semper Fi!: The Best of the United States Marine Band

The late 19th century witnessed unprecedented musical growth in the United States, and it is impossible to imagine a Copland, an Ives or even a Gershwin without the pioneering groundwork of the ‘Boston Six’, of whom John Knowles Paine was the senior member. Favorite among his own works, Paine’s Second Symphony was described on its New York première as “a serious, important and totally beautiful work.” His Prelude to the tragic play Oedipus Tyrannus was an immediate hit, while An Ocean Fantasy was his last orchestral piece.

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The second CD of a two-volume set of the orchestral music of the late-Romantic American composer John Knowles Paine, this 2015 Naxos release presents the Prelude to the play Oedipus Tyrannus, a premiere recording of the tone poem Poseidon and Amphitrite - An Ocean Fantasy, and the Symphony No. 2 in A major, "In the Spring." Paine was a respected music professor at Harvard University and the most prominent member of the group of composers called the Boston Six, so his influence on the development of American symphonic music was significant. However, the flavor of Paine's music is actually less American than German, as befitted his European training and the music that dominated concert halls at mid-century. In Paine, one can hear traces of Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Brahms, so a measure of the musical taste can be taken in his music, particularly in the Second Symphony, which was a popular success and Paine's favorite among his works. JoAnn Falletta conducts the Ulster Orchestra in these performances, and the playing is robust and solid, if not especially vibrant. Because Paine's music is quite conservative and lacking in dramatic effects, the orchestral palette is not especially colorful, so the musicians have less distinctive sonorities in Paine's rather homogenous scoring. This is a respectable presentation, if not a revelation, and anyone interested in the beginnings of the American symphonic tradition should hear this album.

– Blair Sanderson, All Music Guide

Alan Hovhaness’ Symphony No. 48 is subtitled “Vision of Andromeda”, and anyone who has seen the Hubble photos of our neighboring galaxy knows just how gorgeous that must be. For years I used one of those magnificent vistas as my computer’s screen saver. This four-movement symphony, lasting just under half an hour, is typical Hovhaness. There are lovely, modal fugues in the second movement and finale; evocative, vaguely oriental melodies all over the place; luscious string chorales, and interludes for bells and tam-tam. Check out the opening of the finale. Fabulous, isn’t it? Does it do justice to Hovhaness’ “vision”? It’s plausible.

The truth is, Hovhaness always has had his detractors. Bernstein rather maliciously called his First Symphony “ghetto music” (which would be a compliment today), and his 67 symphonies and other works can sound rather the same–but then, so does a lot of Bach. For me anyway, there’s something disarming about his childlike joy in consonant harmony, in the fluidity of his fugal writing, and his utter unconsciousness of the fact that his melodies often tread dangerously close to kitsch. Say what you will, his music is unfailingly honest. It is what it is.

There are also moments where it achieves an astonishing, passionate intensity. The Prelude and Quadruple Fugue is, in its way, a masterpiece in considering the means by which it accumulates energy as each distinctively-wrought fugue subject enters and gets combined with its predecessors. It’s so clear, so easy to follow, and so much fun that you entirely forget the sophisticated contrapuntal mind at work behind the scenes. And that is as it should be.

The Concerto for Soprano Saxophone and Strings also sounds vividly tuneful and unfailingly attractive. When Hovhaness calls the finale, perhaps naively, Let The Living and The Celestial Sing, it’s easy to scoff, but the music is just so bloody pretty. Greg Banaszak plays the solo part with the suave timbre that the work requires, especially in the Adagio espressivo at the start of the second movement, while Hovhaness specialist Gerard Schwarz does his usual fine job with all three works, galvanizing the players of the Eastern Music Festival Orchestra to a welcome degree of corporate integrity. It helps, of course, that Hovhaness’ music is as straightforward to play as it is to hear. Beautiful.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Jack Gallagher continues his association with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by JoAnn Falletta with Symphony No. 2 ‘Ascendant,’ a robust, colorful work of dramatic contrasts and expansive architecture that seeks to express the aspirations and strivings of the human spirit. Quiet Reflections is a calm, serenely lyrical meditation which evokes a sense of longing for past tranquility. Gallagher’s previous Naxos release Orchestral Music (8.559652) with the LSO conducted by JoAnn Falletta was awarded five stars by BBC Music Magazine and hailed as “fresh and exuberant” and for “its explosions of sound and colour” by Gramophone.

The United States Navy Band is the premiere ensemble of the Navy, and is known as “The World’s Finest.” The band supports our troops and government officials through concerts, tours, ceremonies, and recordings, and has been doing so since its creation in 1925. Through its musical mission, the members of this historic group have served to inspire patriotism in its audiences, and to preserve American musical heritage. Designed to emulate a Navy Band concert program, this album contains a balance of patriotic music, marches, and concert band standards, all of which represent the very best recordings of this historic ensemble. Enjoy this exclusive production of the best of the Navy Band.

Frederic Rzewski is most celebrated for his virtuosic variations for piano, The People United Will Never Be Defeated! (8.559360). The Four Pieces began as a sequel to that breath-taking work, but whilst sharing certain similarities – Andean dance rhythms and tremendous drama – it occupies its own very distinct sound world, offering a compound of intense lyricism, shattering darkness, and hints of revolutionary fervor. The Housewife’s Lament is a set of variations on an anon. 19th c. tune with strong influences of Beethoven. The punning title Hard Cuts refers to cuts both budgetary and musical, and Rzewski’s signature elements appear throughout: folk rhythms, pointillist clarity, minimalism, and unique craftsmanship.

Composer Kenneth Fuchs and conductor JoAnn Falletta completed their fourth recording with the London Symphony Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios, August 30–September 1, 2013. The recording features baritone and Naxos artist Roderick Williams and is produced by Grammy Award-winner Tim Handley. The repertoire includes Falling Man (for baritone voice and orchestra); Movie House (seven poems by John Updike for baritone voice and chamber ensemble); and Songs of Innocence and of Experience (four poems by William Blake for baritone voice and chamber ensemble). Fuchs’ music continues to find its visual counterpart in the work of Abstract Expressionist artist Helen Frankenthaler, whose art adorns the cover of this disc.

Award-winning composer and pianist Carter Pann is a genuine “musician’s musician”, writing for and working with internationally acclaimed orchestras and ensembles. Composed especially for Joel Hastings, The Piano’s 12 Sides is a remarkable cycle that takes us through song-like introspection, fearless virtuosity, timeless impressions of cosmic realms and dances both ebullient and macabre. The Bills owes its ragtime influence to Scott Joplin while acknowledging two great exponents of the genre. The composer describes The Cheese Grater as “an adrenaline driven, mean two-step”. Evocative of a smoky jazz club, Your Touch is the laid-back solo movement from Carter Pann’s GRAMMY®-nominated Piano Concerto (Naxos 8.559043).

Famed for his operatic music, Jake Heggie has always been a devoted and prolific songwriter. Three early song cycles for soprano and piano feature in this release, each cycle exploring the many varied facets of the three women depicted, who include Ophelia and Eve. Each was written for a specific singer and they all reflect Heggie’s very personal and exciting lexicon of musical influences, which range from folk and jazz to art song and music theatre.

The centerpiece of this program is the first ever recording of the Hiawatha Melodrama, a concert work for narrator and orchestra designed to show the kinship between Dvořák's New World Symphony and Longfellow’s poem The Song of Hiawatha, which Dvořák said had inspired him in the symphony. It takes music from the symphony, as well as passages from the American Suite and Violin Sonatina, and fuses them with the poem, which is recited by a bass-baritone. Also included is music by Arthur Farwell, who was influenced by Dvořák, and was a proponent of Native American music. This recording thus celebrates the crosscurrent of influences between the Czech composer and American music and culture.

•Two compelling American Piano Sonatas.

This program documents almost four decades of Ernst Toch’s artistic development. His romantic First Violin Sonata marks the end of the composer’s early period. The Divertimento and Cello Sonata were written during his most productive period, the 1920s, while the String Trio is the work of an exile determined not to compromise a style declared ‘asphalt music’ by the Nazis. The Adagio elegiaco commemorates the many relatives and friends Toch lost to the Holocaust.

Founded in 1969, the 18-member United States Navy Band, Commodores, have been performing big band jazz for the Navy and the nation for over 40 years. They're held in high regard nationwide by concert patrons and critics alike, and have compiled an impressive roster of jazz artists who've guested with them (James Moody, Branford Marsalis, Chris Potter, and many more). This album includes an array of great jazz tunes, including “Caravan”, “Waltz For Debby” and “Lester Left Town”

• Two startlingly original works from one of the most influential figures in contemporary music. De Profundis has been described as a 'melodramatic oratorio' for speaking pianist.

The world-premiere recording of Richard Danielpour's Toward a Season of Peace offers a dynamic performance that impresses with its immense forces and energetic playing and compels an emotional response with its pacifist sentiments and beautiful lyricism. Danielpour's style is instantly accessible by virtue of its rich tonality and poignant melodies, and the flow of the music gives his oratorio a traditional appeal, with the right balance of dramatic tension and comforting release. The setting of excerpts from the Masoretic text of the Bible, the Persian verses of Rumi (in an English translation), and an Arabic poem by Al Mutanabbi brings languages into a convergence somewhat reminiscent of Leonard Bernstein's mixing of Latin, English, and Hebrew in his Mass (1971), and the ecumenical nature of Toward a Season of Peace also brings that theater piece to mind. Unlike Bernstein, and to Danielpour's credit, he doesn't mingle elements of popular music with his neo-Romantic choruses, and he avoids the trendiness that dates Mass, aiming instead for a more universal and timeless prayer for peace. At many points, the mystical choruses of Vaughan Williams and Holst spring to mind, and feel stronger than any modern influence. Perhaps this oratorio is more inspirational than motivational, and it may join other works earnestly dedicated to world peace that have fallen by the wayside, but the performers aren't to blame if that happens. Soprano Hila Plitmann, the Pacific Chorale, and the Pacific Symphony, conducted by Carl St. Clair, give a lovely and reverent performance that is gorgeous in its harmonies and textures, and ultimately moving because of its simplicity and directness.

-- All Music Guide

Peter Boyer is one of the most frequently performed American orchestral composers of his generation, widely admired not least for his GRAMMY®-nominated Ellis Island: The Dream of America (Naxos 8.559246). The composer writes, “The five works included on this recording represent a cross-section of my orchestral music. Three Olympians reflects my interest in mythology and history. Often I have received invitations to compose music for celebratory concerts, and three of the works included here – Silver Fanfare, Festivities and Celebration Overture – were created for such occasions.” Symphony No. 1 is a lyrical and rhythmically charged work, dedicated to the memory of Leonard Bernstein.

MCTEE Circuits. 1 Symphony No. 1 “Ballet for Orchestra 2.” Einstein’s Dream 1. Double Play 3 • Leonard Slatkin, cond; Detroit SO • NAXOS 8.559765 (66:43) Live: Detroit 1 2/9–11/2012; 2 5/17–19/2012; 3 6/1–4/2010

My first contact with Cindy McTee’s music was a recording of the wind ensemble transcription of Circuits by the Cincinnati College-Conservatory Wind Symphony. In fact, all previous experience with McTee’s music has been in the wind ensemble medium, including three movements of the Symphony No. 1 under the title Ballet for Band . There is a wind ensemble recording of Double Play , as well, which I had not heard until now. It says a lot about the difficulties of getting new music recorded by orchestras that McTee’s larger ensemble music, almost always written for the orchestra first, has been much more available to collectors in wind band arrangements. Of course, it didn’t hurt that she was, from 1984 to 2011, on the music faculty of the University of North Texas at Denton, the current academic home of band music-recording phenomenon Eugene Migliaro Corporon. He must have found her technically challenging, elegantly crafted, imaginative, often playful, and always vibrant music irresistible. (She claims, incidentally, to have acquired the compositional playfulness from Krzysztof Penderecki during the year she studied with him at the Cracow Academy of Music. That is as surprising a piece of information as I can remember picking up from an artist biography.)

In any case, it seems fitting, given the large amount of play her orchestral music has gotten, that the first CD of these works is being conducted by Leonard Slatkin. This is not because he has been her husband since 2011, but because Slatkin, a noted proponent of quality American music with audience appeal, has been an advocate of McTee’s music for so much longer. In fact, he was instrumental in arranging the commission of her Symphony No. 1 for the National Symphony Orchestra in 2002. That work is the central composition in this Detroit Symphony program, and is in several ways emblematic of the McTee style. It is, to begin with, music motivated by dance and movement, driven by an emphasis on rhythms, often motoric, with unexpected disruptions and syncopations to keep it impetuous. Not surprisingly, it keeps the percussion section very busy. It is music of high contrasts: in those rhythms, and in sonorities, and in its use of tonality. And lastly, each of the four named movements—“On with the Dance,” “Till a Silence Fell,” “Light Fantastic,” and “Where Time Plays the Fiddle”—is inspired by characteristics of one or more well-known works by other composers: the opening motif of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, a melody from Penderecki’s Polish Requiem , Barber’s Adagio for Strings, Ravel’s La valse , and Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps . Those who know the Ballet for Band will note the elegiac second movement not included in the band version: an Adagio derived from an earlier Agnus Dei for organ, with which she eulogizes the victims of 9/11. All this, with some occasional jazz references to boot, McTee transforms into a unified, highly original, exceptionally moving 30-minute work.

Double Play (2009–10), the most recent work on this release, is another Slatkin commission, this for the Detroit Symphony. Indeed, this recording is from the premiere performances. “Unquestioned Answer,” the first movement, is a witty rethinking of Ives’s Unanswered Question , using the same device of an initially serene backdrop interrupted by a contrasting repeated theme. Instead of trumpet, the theme is played by various groups of instruments, and unlike Ives’s unvaried theme, McTee’s—derived from Ives’s—is transformed at each repetition. The last variation, for wood blocks and cowbells, leads into the second movement, “Tempus Fugit,” which truly seems to flee at light speed, after the moments of indecision while the ticking clocks get synchronized. Reminding one commentator of big band jazz of the Hermann/Kenton variety and inspired by a theme by Slatkin, it is hugely entertaining.

So is her most popular work, Circuits , written in 1990: a high-energy romp in which the title describes a stimulus not so much electronic as fractal. It is McTee’s closest brush with minimalism on this CD, but there is nothing hypnotic or reflective here. That comes in Einstein’s Dream (2004), which incorporates electronics and brooding introspection in a remarkable collage of wildly contrasting styles. If this can be taken as a conjecture of what it might have been like to be inside the great physicist’s head, then one finds order in the Baroque ensemble, deep intellectual questing in the Romantic violin—based again on Ives’s trumpet theme in The Unanswered Question —and the most marvelous, and sometimes fantastic, images floating among them. The intent is quite serious, of course, as each of the seven continuous sections reflects on some aspect of Einstein’s thoughts and works, art, and science. It is the work to which I returned most often, reveling in its depth and uncommon beauties.

So, this CD is a thoroughly enjoyable experience. The work of orchestra and conductor in these performances is exemplary, something that I have not always felt when hearing recent recordings from this source. The engineering is superb. I can think of no better way to come to know the work of this fascinating composer. Highly recommended.

FANFARE: Ronald E. Grames

John Cage's remarkable magnum opus A Book of Music for two prepared pianos is brought together here with his complete works for toy piano. Intricately structured according to Cage's ideas about Mozart, A Book of Music is an eloquent and virtuoso mosaic of driving and sometimes frenetic rhythms, the exotic sounds of the 'prepared' piano strings transporting the listener into worlds of the strangest imagining. The Suite for Toy Piano is a modest miracle of precise expression and the first ever serious concert music written for this instrument, while Music for Amplified Toy Pianos is composed using chance elements, generating a spacious field of sound filled with surprise.

Musicians ranging from Leonard Bernstein to the Emerson String Quartet have championed award-winning composer Richard Danielpour. Lacrimae Beati owes its origin to Mozart’s Requiem and was conceived after a perilous flight in 2002. Darkness in the Ancient Valley, a symphony in five movements inspired by recent events in Iran, utilizes a wide range of Persian folk-melodies and Sufi rhythms. A Woman’s Life, a cycle of poems by Maya Angelou, charts a moving trajectory from childhood to old age.

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REVIEW:

The program closes with A Woman’s Life (2007), based on a cycle of poems on that topic by Maya Angelou, who read the cycle, apparently unforgettably, to Danielpour and his wife in 2006. These songs are pitch perfect and memorably touching. I was enthralled from the start—a childhood poem of devastating innocence cloaked with an aura usually reserved for the likes of Barber—and if you love his music and American song repertoire in general you must hear this cycle. The finale is unspeakably beautiful. Ms Brown sings with loving understanding. The Nashville players sound great, as is usual these days.

–American Record Guide