MASON: Piano Music

Art Tatum-Improvisations is a clever and completely appropriate bit of artist and repertoire marketing. Art Tatum (1909-1956) possessed perhaps the most complete and thorough knowledge of the Great American Songbook (and traditional classical music) and the most commanding piano technique of any American jazz artist. Anecdotal stories of his near-supernatural playing abound. With Art Tatum-Improvisations, the focus is not on the artist's original compositions, but his interpretations of other's compositions. This approach correctly casts improvisation as composition in real time, giving improvisation equal billing with composition.

• A wide-ranging release of chamber music works from Richard Festinger, one of the leading composer/musicians of the San Francisco Bay Area.

WUORINEN: String Sextet / String Quartet No. 2 / Piano Quint

The songs of the American composer Charles Ives (1874 - 1954) have been well-served on CD, but they have never before been recorded in their entirety on a budget-priced label or arranged, for recording purposes, in alphabetical order. The American Classics series of the budget Naxos label is in the midst of doing both. This CD is the third of a complete recording of the Ives songs arranged, quixotically, in alphabetical order. The performers are a group of young musicians affiliated with the Yale University School of Music. They offer readings of Ives as varied, idiosyncratic, and unpredictable as the songs themselves. In 1922, Ives gathered 114 of his songs, arranged them in reverse chronological order, added comments, and self-published them in a book called simply "114 songs". All told, Ives composed about 200 songs. The songs dating from his early years frequently draw heavily upon German lieder, parlor music, or hymns. The songs of Ives's maturity are deeply complex, varied, and musically adventurous. Throughout his life, Ives freely shifted musical material between his songs and his other compositions. From the beginning to the end of his career as a composer, Ives drew heavily on other music, incorporating many quotations from both classical and popular sources.

When, in 1922, Charles Ives published a volume entitled 114 Songs, he was indirectly drawing attention to the fact that the genre had played a central part in his output. 85 years on and, for all that his wider reputation may now rest on his orchestral, chamber and piano music, songs represent the heart of his creative thinking. Nor was that initial volume comprehensive; Ives having written almost 200 songs, of which this present edition includes all those he completed. The expressive variety encountered is accordingly vast: indeed, the gradual evolution of Ives's songwriting, from those drawing overtly on the Austro-German Lieder and English parlor-song traditions to ones that evince anarchic humor as keenly as others do a profound vision, is analogous to the evolution of American music over the last quarter of the nineteenth and the first quarter of the twentieth centuries. Although it would be possible to collate Ives's songs according to type, the alphabetic approach adopted by this edition ensures each volume (of which this is the sixth and last) contains a representative cross section of his achievement. A wide range of poets is set (Ives could be highly interventionist when it suited his purpose), including (mainly early) German settings as well as forays into French and Italian writers. Moreover, the temporal distance (1887-1926) traversed by the songs is as little compared to their stylistic diversity or their emotional range. The extent to which Ives reworked songs throughout his career is considerable, whether substituting a text or reworking the actual music. To this end, songs with a musical or textual connection are cross linked accordingly (i.e. in brackets at the end of the relevant paragraph). The setting of Rudyard Kipling's Tarrant Moss (1902) uses just two verses, treated in a peremptory fashion as if to suggest that the text was merely the nearest one to hand (see also Volume 5, track 27, Naxos 8.559273). Set to an anonymous text, There is a Certain Garden (1897) has a tripping and irregular piano part against which the vocal line unfolds a little awkwardly, though the charm of the song is undoubted. A revision of an earlier German song, now to Ives's own text, There is a Lane (1902) is a brief but winsome setting; the fond nostalgia of it's vocal line underscored by the piano (see also below, track 27). A late addition to his song canon, They are There! (1942) was Ives's contribution to the American war effort; setting his own (updated) text with a conviction aptly summed up by the subtitle 'Fighting for the People's New Free World'. It can be performed (as here) by unison voices, and with a lively ad lib instrumental part. Ives left a memorable, breathlessly enthusiastic recording.

The music of distinguished American composer Charles Wuorinen is notable for it's compositional wit, dynamic virtuosity and intellectual rigor.

When, in 1922, Charles Ives published a volume entitled 114 Songs, he was indirectly drawing attention to the fact that the genre played a central part in his output. 85 years on and, for all that his wider reputation may rest on orchestral, chamber and piano music, songs represent the heart of his creative thinking. Nor was that initial volume comprehensive; Ives having written nearly 200 songs, of which this edition includes all those he completed. The expressive variety is vast: indeed, the gradual evolution of Ives's songwriting, from those drawing on Austro-German Lieder and English parlor-song traditions to ones that evince anarchic humor as keenly as others do profound vision, is analogous to the evolution of American music over the last quarter of the nineteenth and first quarter of the twentieth centuries. Although it would be possible to collate Ives's songs according to type, the alphabetic approach adopted by this edition ensures each volume (of which this disc is the fifth) contains a representative cross-section of his achievement. A wide range of poets is set, including a number of (mainly early) German settings as well as forays into French and Italian writers. The temporal distance (1887-1926) traversed by these songs is as little compared to their stylistic diversity or their emotional range.

This second volume of the series features 26 Ives's songs beginning alphabetically with "December" (1913) and concluding with "Grass" (1896). The performers include 14 singers, four pianists, and an organist. The organ appears on chronologically the earliest song on this CD, the hymn- like "Far From My Heav'nly Home" (1893). Ives's early and late, traditional and revolutionary are each represented. The highlight of this CD is Ives's 1914 setting of Vachel Lindsay's "General William Booth Enters into Heaven" a poem in it's character and enthusiasm made for Ives. Lindsay's poem and Ives's song capture the spirit of the founder of the Salvation Army as he ascends into heaven accompanied by the poor, the lost and the damned that Booth has brought to salvation. "Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?" the songs asks. In it's raw liveliness, enthusiasm, changes of mood, and transcendentalism, this song is one of Ives's greatest efforts in the form. The bass David Pittsinger gives a convincing performance accompanied by pianist Douglas Dickson.

Jonathan Berger' music is deeply spiritual and hauntingly evocative. These works for string quartet and solo violin include Eli Eli, an adaptation of a beloved Hebrew melody written in memory of journalist Daniel Pearl.

The American composer William Bolcom (b. 1938) is best-known for his large-scale setting of William Blake's "Songs of Innocence and Experience," which is available on a 3-CD Naxos set. This new collection of Bolcom's songs also on Naxos shows the composers's lifelong fascination with Blake. It includes an early lyrical setting of Blake's poem, "Mary" which deals with a beautiful and intelligent young woman and her rejection by her society. In the several torch and cabaret-style works it includes, the collection also shows Bolcom's attempts to fuse classical with popular styles of music. Bolcom also has done so in his piano music, much of which is heavily influenced by ragtime. The songs on this CD are performed and selected by soprano Carole Farley with Bolcom himself at the piano.

Louise Talma's music shows a keen intellectual mind, but she also engages listeners at a visceral level and entertains them with her originality and quirkiness. She frequently combines motor energy, sometimes associated with Stravinsky, with a beautiful melancholy expression, and often creates moments of extraordinary beauty, such as in the Lullaby in Seven Episodes. She seems to have warmed to the precision of neoclassicism, the discipline of Boulanger's teaching, and French lightness of touch. While there are elements that could be connected to her time in Paris, her language is quite unique. Her output was substantial and covered a wide range of genres. She wrote numerous vocal works, both choral and solo, in which she set a great variety of texts, from the Bible and Shakespeare to Auden, John F. Kennedy and e. e. cummings. Her piano works embrace pieces for children, sonatas and the virtuoso Alleluia in Form of Toccata. Apart from Soundshots, all the works on this disc were written in the 1980s, when Louise Talma was in her late seventies and early eighties. Her maturity gives the music a rare, distilled quality. Her musical thinking has a very focused precision; textures are generally transparent; the atmosphere is at times ironic, strange, even bizarre, at others it has a deeply affecting sadness. The beauty of her slow music is exceptional. The Ambient Air, written in 1983 and scored for flute, violin, cello and piano, is in four movements, Echo Chamber, Driving Rain, Creeping Fog, and Shifting Winds. Much of Talma's music is descriptive, and here we have titles to tell us her thinking. It is appropriately evocative, and she creates striking pictures in sound. While the combination of a flute with a piano trio might suggest something light in effect, she uses the instrumental colors with great originality to paint very atmospheric musical illustrations. The first movement beautifully captures the creepy quality of an echo chamber. While the rain of the second is invigorating and energizing, it performs a sardonic dance in the middle. She captures, in the third, the amorphous and elusive nature of fog. With the unpredictable nature of wind, the fourth movement rocks, sways, blows and buffets.

KIM: Violin Concerto / Dialogues / Cornet

With this recording we are hearing the original version of The Dream Keeper, heretofore known only as a composition for four-part chorus. In fact Dave had originally set Langston Hughes' moving and inspirational text as a duet. In So Lonely, Dave Brubeck begins with a lone vocal line, later joined by the piano and a second voice, ultimately forming a beautifully meandering - almost living - fabric of sound. The flowing, unfolding music of Dave Brubeck, together with the moving Langston Hughes texts, seems to conjure a picture of people moving together through this life toward a common goal. The centre piece of this recording is the unaccompanied Tao, borrowed from The Futility of Contention of the Tao te Ching, the oldest scripture of Buddhist Taoism. Dave Brubeck sent his manuscript to me along with the following handwritten note: 'This has been laying around the house for decades and so I thought I'd send it to you. You could sing it as a duet with your wife, or she can sing it or you can sing it. You can change the key if you want to... another option... throw it in the garbage!' Needless to say, I did not choose his last option. He employs the pentatonic oriental scale as a pedestal for the simple, yet profound words of Lao Tsu. Using the range of but one octave, his unhurried rising and falling vocal line seems to mirror the tenets set forth in the ancient writing. This recording also captures Dave Brubeck at the height of his creative powers as an improvisational pianist. His improvisational accompaniments are so varied that it often seemed like each take was an entirely new composition. During the recording sessions, I frequently became so engrossed in his improvisatory introductions and bridges that I forgot my entrances. Once when this happened, he said with that inimitable twinkle in his eye, 'Don't worry, I'll look at you when it's time for you to come in'.

George Frederick McKay composed Epoch, which has lain forgotten for virtually seventy years, as 'An American Dance Symphony'. This new art form was to express in colourful music, costumes and dance scenes, utilizing the latest techniques in lighting and sound.