This release brings together ALL of Morton Feldman’s compositions for cello and piano, including unpublished works and a first recording.

Together, these works tell the story of Feldman’s music. They span 35 years — over half his lifetime — from when he was searching for his voice as a student to when he was opening new doors in the last years of his life.

The album is bookended by two realizations of the graphic score “Durations 2” (1960), giving an opportunity to hear what the flexibility of graphic notation can bring.

The “Sonatina” (1946) is the earliest work here, and a first recording. Displaying the influence of Béla Bartók, Feldman wrote for the cello sound he loved without fully understanding the realities of playing the instrument. The resulting solo part is naively virtuosic and often even impossible to play. For this recording, Stephen Marotto keeps as close as possible to the written score, aiming to fulfill what Feldman heard in his mind’s ear.

By 1948, Feldman had been studying privately with the composer Stefan Wolpe for several years. The unpublished “Two Pieces,” from that year is a fluctuating music held together not by logic, but through its carefully poised gestures — what Wolpe called “shape.” While the emotional drama of this and other early works would soon disappear from Feldman’s music, it was above all the idea of “shape” that remained with him for the rest of his life.

In 1950, Feldman met John Cage, who shepherded him into the world of the New York avant-garde. The unpublished, compact “Composition for cello and piano” (1951) is a sudden breakthrough, yet it already contains the DNA of his very last works in its minimal material and blurred memories of sounds.

“For Stockhausen, Cage, Stravinsky, and Mary Sprinson” (1972) is an ephemeral, unpublished piece, a shard of music broken off from the main body of work Feldman was producing at the time. It consists of just two musical moments separated by silence — the same chord expressed in two different ways.

At almost 1 hour and 29 minutes, “Patterns in a Chromatic Field” (1981) is one of Feldman’s late, long-duration works, and it is perhaps the best known of the works recorded here.

Liner notes by Samuel Clay Birmaher.

This release gathers two electroacoustic works by Gerard Pape. Dedicated to the late composer Ana-Maria Avram, Vers la lumière II (2017) is an electroacoustic meditation on the afterlife as a kind of continually evolving sonic universe within which the spirit floats freely, carried along in the arms of the sound itself. Pape weaves a slowly evolving lullaby made of complex and ethereal timbral utterances. Each cry seems to stretch out into eternity, the extremely long release of each sound seems to reach toward a future that never arrives. The sound material is derived entirely from samples of a Waterphone, a remarkable instrument invented in the 1960s by american artist Richard Waters. The instrument functions on the principle of a steel resonator containing a small amount of water which is surrounded by a series of various sized bronze rods which can be struck or bowed, creating an arrangement of overtones.

Commissioned to mark the occasion of the total solar eclipse on 29 March 2006, Héliophonie follows a strict temporal structure that is inspired by studies in astrophysies describing the various stages of the evolution of the sun. The first section describes the phase of the birth of the sun, through the formation of cold gas clouds via the accumulation and fusion of particles dispersed in space and the energy released via this process. Pape’s soundworld evokes the internal movement and arresting energy of this atomic accumulation while at the same time constructing the distance and profound depth of the immense void by highlighting the continuum between sound and silence. Dispersed particles of sound fuse like ruptures in the fabric of space, bursting into brilliant and searing clouds of hot gas. The transition to the second section is introduced by the sudden superposition of vibrato-like variations and oscillating temporal layers that evoke the magnetic fields of sun spots. This quickly gives way to a much more rhythmic gestural movement that is suggestive of the abrupt surges of a flame-thrower.

The third section, describing the distant future of the sun, where clouds of sound seem to expand the space and dematerialize the previous more gestural images. Here the sound seems to move in all directions at once and the listener is immerged in a dense atmosphere of highly frictional sensations. Swept away in a storm of hot winds, all sense of time and space seems to evaporate, giving way to a certain consciousness of the endless expanse of the universe. A profound and repetitive cry seems to emanate from the center of the chaos and the piece takes on an intensely meditative aspect. The slow death of the sun is depicted in the fourth section by a decomposition of the previous materials, a contraction and dissolution of the sound itself. The multiple layers of rhythmic pulsations become more and more unstable, and the very sonic material seems to come apart from within, creating a sort of temporal vacuum. Time loses its significance as we fall into the abyss that is the universe of Pape’s musical language.

Both works are first recordings.

This release brings together two works by Alvin Lucier centered on the pipe organ, a perfect instrument for Lucier’s compositional practice. Both are first recordings. “Swing Bridge” was commissioned by this record’s ensemble, the Australian Art Orchestra, for the Melbourne Town Hall Grand Organ. The score requires that specific pipes be removed from the organ and run into three specially constructed offset chests, each accommodating two pipes (six pitches total). These pipes are manipulated by three or more performers, known as ‘pipe wavers.’ This music explores the phenomenon of the organ making its operation performative and visceral. We hear the way the energy produced by the organ ‘sounds’ the space in which the music was performed and recorded, and, for those who witnessed the performance, we experienced the physicality of air moving through pipes as the wavers shifted the tuning of each pipe microtonally with their hands. This is conceptual work of the highest order but it is also sensual, beautiful, and engrossing, with the textures of the ensemble woven into the pulsations produced by the organ and the resonances of the room. For “Sizzles” the composer writes: “Drums of various sizes are randomly placed throughout the performance space. Fine materials such as lentils, chickpeas, and candy hearts are sprinkled on the drumheads. As low organ tones are sounded, the skins of the drums vibrate sympathetically, causing the drums to sound and the material to move. Each drum is individually amplified with a contact or air microphone and a separate amplifier.”

Includes six world premiere recordings of the Irish composer's work!

Review:

"How music engenders a sense of speed remains notoriously elusive, with theories of musical time sometimes putting forward the idea of an ongoing motion which underlies perceived processes of change. Drawing upon the suggestion that a number of such processes can be understood without reference to this sense of movement, the current discussion proposes that the concept of ‘quickness’, as formulated by Italo Calvino, forms a useful interpretative lever through which to approach a number of compositions by Irish composer, Gerald Barry. Examinations of Bob, 1998 and In the Asylum suggest ways in which Barry’s approach to musical material plays with perceptions of speed and slowness, and how his work represents a number of different solutions to the problem of creating convincing musical forms." --Contemporary Music Review (Daniel March)

On April 6, 1327, a 22-year-old Italian poet named Francesco Petrarca caught a glimpse of a young woman, Laura, in a church in Avignon. He later reported that “living sparks issued from two lovely eyes”. Those sparks enflamed Petrarch such that he spent the rest of his illustrious career coming to terms with them. In the 16th century, madrigals were developed by Adrian Willaert and Cipriano de Rore, which took Petrarch’s agonized images as justification for violating the rules that had guided musicians since before the beginnings of notated music. Those living sparks have leapt ahead seven more centuries to inspire Katharina Rosenberger.

Rosenberger's tempi agitati embeds Petrarch’s texts (especially fragments from his “Ascent of Mount Ventoso”) and settings of sonnets by Willaert and Rore within her own responses to those materials. In live performance, Rosenberger works together with stage-director Ludger Engels to distribute members of the ensemble, Neue Vocalsolisten, around the sound space; they dart around throughout the site, thereby embodying Petrarch’s “vive faville.” While a sound recording lacks the visual dimension crucial to Rosenberger’s concept, it allows the listener to attend much more closely to her rich tapestry of sonorities as she puts Petrarch’s 14th-century poetry and 16th-century madrigals into dialogue with her extended vocal techniques. Sometimes the singers coalesce into whole polyphonic samples before returning to the extended vocal techniques from which they had emerged. Sometimes, finally, the madrigal itself appears, now intact. Rosenberger thereby simulates Petrarch’s struggle to put into coherent form his reactions to Laura’s glance. Those living sparks have indeed inflamed thousands: Laura’s glance goaded Petrarch to the heights of formal perfection in his sonnets, and it led the madrigalists to imagine tonal worlds far beyond the stylistic precepts they had inherited.

For this recording project, the fearless French musical collective ensemble 0 (pronounced “zero”) began a new kind of collaboration with the Swiss percussion ensemble Eklekto and Gamelan Oksitan- this last the traditional Javanese ensemble of gongs and metallophones based in France. Their transcultural bridge has foundations that go back to Claude Debussy’s fascination with the radiant tones of gamelan music that he heard at the 1889 Paris Exposition. Yet neither Debussy nor many other sympathetic composers who followed actually composed for those instruments. They faced challenges of different tuning systems, intricacies of unfamiliar instruments, the weight of another classical tradition, but perhaps no obstacle greater than the cultural gulf of that colonial era. It was not until the 1970s that non-Indonesian composers began to bridge that divide, none more committed than the American composer Lou Harrison. Compositions by Harrison are paired here with works by Larry Polansky, Petar Klanac, Billy Martin, and Roland Dahinden. The diversity of approaches represented on this collection provides a glimpse towards a vibrant future, a future that Lou Harrison helped create.

This is the second of two volumes celebrating “Roger Reynolds at 85,”and marks the first recording of his Piano Etudes, in two Books. Book I was written between 2010 and 2011, Book II in 2016–2017. Reynolds’ Etudes allows the performer to not only choose the number of Etudes to be presented (even repeating them, if desired) as well as their order. In this way, the performer becomes a co-creator with the composer. All 12 Etudes are presented in this recording by Eric Huebner. Each etude inhabits a world distinctly its own. Reynolds dares a remarkable leap from the first to the second book. Rather than merely continue the premises and promises established by the first six etudes, the second six constitute a difference in kind rather than an extension. Their complexity is intensified, their investigations more extreme, even though they make comparable technical demands. The Etudes carry subtle quotations from Reynolds’ own, earlier piano works as well as the traditional literature of piano etudes. The lineup Reynolds has chosen includes Chopin, Mendelssohn, Liszt, Debussy, and Ligeti. Yet these allusions are not mere homages, and these quotations range from fleeting to obsessive. Reynolds collaborated with Huebner on the 2009 Mode release, Epigram and Evolution (mode 212/13), an anthology of Reynolds’ piano works to that date. This led the composer to value Huebner’s extraordinary capacity to combine virtuoso technique with Zen-like concentration. Their artistic bond inspired Reynolds to contemplate writing his own brand of etudes.

REVIEW:

This is the second of two volumes celebrating “Roger Reynolds at 85” (see 11W050 for the first), and marks the first recording of his Piano Etudes, in two Books. Book I was written between 2010 and 2011, Book II in 2016–2017. Reynolds’ Etudes allows the performer to not only choose the number of Etudes to be presented (even repeating them, if desired) as well as their order. In this way, the performer becomes a co-creator with the composer. Each etude inhabits a world distinctly its own. Reynolds dares a remarkable leap from the first to the second book. Rather than merely continue the premises and promises established by the first six etudes, the second six constitute a difference in kind rather than an extension. Their complexity is intensified, their investigations more extreme, even though they make comparable technical demands. The Etudes carry subtle quotations from Reynolds’ own, earlier piano works as well as the traditional literature of piano etudes. The lineup Reynolds has chosen includes Chopin, Mendelssohn, Liszt, Debussy, and Ligeti. Yet these allusions are not mere homages, and these quotations range from fleeting to obsessive.

-- Records International

Bernard Parmegiani (1927–2013), the grand old man of French electroacoustic music, did not write much music for tape with live performers. Among them is “Stries” for the unusual combination of three live synthesizer players and tape. Until recently, “Stries” had not been played live for some 30 years. This is the first complete recording, only part of it had been previously released on LP on the INA/GRM label. “Stries” was written for the three synthesizer players of the Paris-based electroacoustic trio TM+, Yann Geslin, Laurent Cuniot and Denis Dufour, founded at the INA/GRM. Over the span of the ensemble’s lifetime, TM+ used a range of different instruments — analog synthesizers in the late 1970s and early digital synthesizers in the mid-1980s — and amassed a repertoire of about 40 compositions written especially for them. Fortunately, Yann Geslin, of the INA/GRM, archived the original score by Parmegiani, as well as the parts for the instrumentalists. Also in GRM’s archives was the original analog reel-to-reel tape for the piece, as well as the analog 8-track recordings from the recording session. Armed with this material, the electronic music trio of Colette Broeckaert, Martin Lorenz and Sebastian Berweck, together with Yann Geslin, recreated the piece with the aim of bringing it back to the stage as well as producing generic scores that could help get the piece into the repertoire of many instrumentalists. Their work is realized on this release.

“Memory in Motion: Percussion in Surround” was a research project developed to examine how percussionists memorize musical actions within ensembles. As part of this research, director Aiyun Huang commissioned new works to compliment selected existing repertoire. Zihua Tan wrote “Sorites” to compliment Iannis Xenakis’ “Persephassa” and alcides lanza wrote “mnais mnemes” to compliment his own earlier composition “sensor VI.” In both cases, the composers were asked to use the identical setup and notational system as that of the existing works. By sharing this common DNA, these unique compositions synergistically flow together to form an unusually powerful listening experience. “Persephassa” is a classic of the percussion repertoire for 6 spatialized percussionists surrounding the audience. This, along with Tan’s “Sorites” make for extraordinary listening in surround, with the listener placed in the center of the circular ensemble as acoustic sounds often ricochet or spin around the listener. The recording on this Mode release accurately places each percussionist in the soundstage (in the stereo version as well as the surround). Mâche’s “Aera” is also for 6 percussionists. Using tuned gongs, vibraphones, marimbas, tubular bells, and timpani as the main colors in this 20-minute work, Mâche directs our ears to hear the inner resonance of these instruments and how the timbres and harmonies mingle and evolve when combinations of instruments shift. Lanza’s two works are scored for percussion quartet. “sensor VI” was inspired by the first moon-landing by the Apollo astronauts in 1969. Lanza chose to reference the devices that sensed and transmitted the astronauts’ life-signs through space to technicians on the ground, and the relation these instruments have to the body's sense organs. His “mnais mnemes” draws formal and textural inspiration from freely-derived characteristics of the mnais mneme, a unique dragonfly found in China — its very elongated cylindrical body contrasts strongly with its large head and enormous glassy spherical eyes.

CAGE – SA TIE – FELDMAN – TAKAHASHI sums up the focus of this album. All of these works by Cage are influenced by Satie. Cage’s friend and colleague Morton Feldman made an arrangement of Cage’s solo piano “Cheap Imitation” for a trio of piano, flutes/piccolo and glockenspiel. Feldman’s admiration for the pianist Aki Takahashi caused him to gift this arrangement to her. And, full circle, we have the repertoire of this album. The major discovery is Feldman’s arrangement of Cheap Imitation for this very Feldmanesque instrumental ensemble. It is unknown why Feldman made this arrangement in 1980. Knowing of Takahashi’s reputation as a pianist specializing in new music, Feldman had invited her to be an artist in residence at the university where he taught. When she was leaving, Feldman gave a musical score to Takahashi as a gift. It was a copy of John Cage’s solo piano piece Cheap Imitation with annotations by Feldman. He told her that this was an instrumental version of this piece: flute, piano, and glockenspiel.

This release documents Roger Reynolds’ most recent string quartets in composer supervised first recordings by the acclaimed JACK Quartet. “FLiGHT”, commissioned by JACK Quartet, arose from a collaborative process lasting almost five years. Its four movements reflect upon the stages of humanity’s aspirations for flight: IMAGINING, PREPARING, EXPERIENCING, and PERSPECTIVE. Of “not forgotten” Reynolds writes: “As the years pass, one notices that certain elements in one’s days have unusual persistence in the mind. Such elements may involve individuals encountered, sometimes places experienced, or momentary intersections that are unexpectedly luminous. The point is that they not only don’t go away, they play roles as one’s own life evolves. … Three composers with whom I had extensive and formative interactions were Elliott Carter, Toru Takemitsu and Iannis Xenakis. Geographic parallels include Ryoanji in Kyoto, Monet’s sumptuous Giverny gardens, and the glitteringly patterned surface of the Aegean.” These experiences form the movements to “not forgotten.” The outer movements, “Giverny” and “Now,” are fixed, while the inner movements may be played in whatever order the quartet chooses. Each movement begins with a solo by one of the quartet’s members. The unique liner notes take the form of a communication between the composer and members of the JACK Quartet. This is the first of a projected two volume set celebrating Reynolds’ 85th birthday and his recent music, to be released on Mode.

For Bunita Marcus opens with a clear call to our attention. With these first six notes, we step over the threshold and into the journey of the piece. We know that we are in this for the long haul: Morton Feldman’s late works are notorious for being marathons. He composed For Bunita Marcus in 1985, immediately after his four-hour For Philip Guston, and two years after his six-hour String Quartet (II). These earlier works make an hour-long solo piano piece seem short. Still, it is a long time to sustain a single movement, a single journey, and we inevitably have this in mind as we take the first step: so this is how it starts.

This quintet was gathered by John Heward to open the Guelph Jazz Festival in September 2014. The recording is from a concert given in Montreal several days before the festival opening. The music is free improvisation: no score, just a resolution to make music. It was a special occasion to have Heward and legendary bassist Barre Philips, both at the age of 80 at the time of the recording, at the core of the quintet. They are joined by a stellar group of long-time Heward collaborators: Lori Freedman, Joe McPhee and Dana Reason. The release of this record is sadly a memorial tribute to John Heward (1934–November 2018). Heward, from Montreal, was an internationally recognized percussionist in free jazz as well as a renowned painter and sculptor. He was an influential figure in the development of abstraction and improvisation in both visual art and music.

This release couples two of Reich’s “sextets” for the first time: the Sextet of 1984 and the Pulitzer Prize winning Double Sextet of 2007, which also makes its first appearance on LP. A striking difference between the two pieces is that the rhythmic world of Sextet mostly consists of a single-meter grooving, while Double Sextet works in the angular, off-kilter shifting meters reminiscent of Reich’s Tehillim (also of Stravinsky). Ekkozone impart a uniquely chamber music feel and color to these works while maintaining their propulsive character. Liner notes by Adam Sliwinski. LP lacquers and mastering by veteran Scott Hull at Masterdisk. Plated and pressed by RTI, California. Danish percussionist and conductor Mathias Reumert lives and breathes contemporary classical music. An in-demand soloist, he explores new percussive territory while remaining a committed interpreter of yesterday’s masterworks. As creator and leader of the acclaimed ensemble Ekkozone, he explores the bounderies between classical, world and experimental music in performances at rock and jazz festivals. Ekkozone is a Danish crossover ensemble that masterfully explores the lines between classical, world and experimental music. Formed by Mathias Reumert in 2013, the ensemble enjoys a special connection with Reich’s music and has performed a large part of his oeuvre, including several performances of Music for 18 Musicians.

REVIEW:

There is more than one way to skin a cat, and there is always more than one way to perform good music. Steve Reich’s Sextet is a long way past being ‘minimalist’, even though there are ostinato elements that recall that particular phase in Western music’s evolution. The first movement and other sections recall Reich’s The Desert Music, while the groovy low piano notes in the final Fast section have something of the finale of New York Counterpoint about them. Multi-layered percussion makes all of this a feast for the ear, and Ekkozone and their hyper-reality studio recording play the piece with a swing and uplifting sense of fun that is very infectious indeed. The bass drums on the second Moderate section are played with musical subtlety but have been balanced in such a way that you’ll enjoy seeing your woofers moving about at reasonable volume. Stereo spread is also a good feature of this recording for all but the piano sound, which is kept very much to the centre channel.

There are numerous recordings of Sextet around. Third Coast Percussion (review) is good, with marginally more measured tempi than Ekkozone and a close-miked balance that reveals superb playing while at the same time being less fun and involving. Steve Reich and Musicians on the Nonesuch label is a classic of course, but uses a rather heavy sounding organ in the opening – this first movement being a little faster than Ekkozone while the remaining movements are as close in timing as makes no difference. The LSO Percussion Ensemble is ok (review), but in this case is too light on the sustained organ notes in the first movement, and there are a couple of moments of imprecision in the ensemble playing elsewhere that dampened my enthusiasm somewhat – understandable for a live performance, but less desirable in repeated listening. Go back to the impact of Ekkozone’s opening after living the LSO for a while and you’ll be hooked straight away.

Double Sextet is also a fine piece, though to my ears not quite the masterpiece that is Sextet. Ekkozone put plenty of dramatic urgency into the first of its three movements, and once again the recording is full of detail and presence. The slow middle movement is soulfully melancholic and atmospheric – a cinematic scene of nocturnal regret, while the finale is even more of a bustling city street than the first.

I greatly enjoyed Ensemble Signal’s recording of the Double Sextet on the Harmonia Mundi label (review). The timings are a little shorter on this version, though not by enough to change the character of the music by a great deal. Ekkozone’s Slow movement has more emotional impact to my ears, their instruments more natural sounding in general, and the vibrato in the string sound adds an extra few ounces of heartstring tug to the cooler sound of Ensemble Signal.

All of these comparative notes are very marginal, and I haven’t come across any recordings of either of these works that are complete duds. As Adam Sliwinski writes in the booklet note for this release, Steve Reich’s music is “like a native language” to percussionists these days, and the chances are that if you walk down the corridor of any decently sized music academy’s percussion department you will hear one or other of his pieces being perfected. Ekkozone’s recordings of both works on this CD are second to none, and should be placed on your wish list forthwith.

-- MusicWeb International