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Blackford: Sagrada Familia Symphony; Babel / Hill, Ikon Singers, BBC NO Wales
Lyrita · Mar 2024CD$20.99 -
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Adams: Doctor Atomic / Finley, Rivera, Renes
ADAMS Doctor Atomic & • Lawrence Renes, cond; Gerald Finley ( Oppenheimer ); Jessica Rivera ( Kitty ); Eric Owens ( General Groves ); Richard Paul Fink ( Teller ); James Maddalena ( Hubbard ); Thomas Glenn ( Wilson ); Ellen Rabiner ( Pasqualita ); Netherlands PO & Op Ch • BBC/OPUS ARTE 998 (2 DVDs: 168:09)
& Illustrated synopsis; documentaries on opera, cast, composer, and director; interview with director
John Adams has already analyzed Nixon as he visited China and scrutinized terrorists and cruise ship passengers in extremis. Now, Doctor Atomic focuses on the final days of the Manhattan Project as J. Robert Oppenheimer and his colleagues struggle to produce the first atomic bomb. The moral dilemmas presented by that weapon drive the conflict, but though the effects of its future use are made starkly obvious and are central to the purpose of the creators, no conclusion is imposed. Rather, Doctor Atomic is an exploration of the extraordinarily gifted people who, for the cause of good, created a diabolical device that irrevocably changed them and the world that summer of 1945.
Long-time Adams collaborator Peter Sellars fashioned the libretto. Using historical sources throughout, he gives the work a strongly documentary flavor, allowing the viewer to piece together the events, personalities, and conflicts. However, it is Sellars’s use of poetry that is the most striking. Oppenheimer makes love to his wife Kitty with Baudelaire’s sensual verse, and quotes him again as the final countdown stretches time agonizingly. Kitty voices Muriel Rukeyser’s vision of peace in a world facing inescapable death. Pasqualita sings evocative Native American verse as a lullaby; and the atomic blast is anticipated with quotes from the Bhagavad Gita . In the finale to act I—a stunning piece of theater—Oppenheimer cries out his personal agony in the words of John Donne’s sonnet “Batter my heart,” as the enemy, the “Gadget,” hangs shrouded Ark-like behind him. That many of these poems and poets were significant to Oppenheimer—the Donne sonnet inspired the project’s code name “Trinity,” and he learned Sanskrit in order to read the Bhagavad Gita —adds yet another layer to this strikingly profound work.
The role of the intense and driven Oppenheimer was created by Gerald Finley, a singer who inhabits every part with his superb acting and his tightly focused, richly expressive baritone. Other excellent artists from the San Francisco Opera premiere include sonorous bass Richard Paul Fink, a Mephistophelian Edward Teller, cynical and provocative; lyric tenor Thomas Glenn, whose sensitively performed Robert Wilson is uneasy but likeable; baritone Eric Owens, a physically and vocally imposing General Leslie Groves, the no-nonsense military commander of the project; and baritone James Maddalena—Nixon in Adams’s earlier opera—a long-suffering meteorologist Jack Hubbard. New to this production are mezzo-soprano Jessica Rivera and contralto Ellen Rabiner. Rivera’s Cassandra-like Kitty Oppenheimer, the conscience of the work, is vocally vivid, though some of the acting seems posed. Pasqualita, the Oppenheimer’s Tewa Indian housekeeper, is the only fictional character. Rabiner sings her role with a rich, if not always steady, voice, balancing Kitty’s intensity with quiet compassion. The fine Netherlands Opera Chorus, playing scientists and project personnel, serves as Greek chorus, intoning the opening scientific credo, chanting the targets, crying out in fright at the vision of Vishnu and staring into the blast in stunned silence at the culminating moment.
Edgard Varèse and 1950s science-fiction movie scores are John Adams’s acknowledged inspirations, and the combination is winning. The ostinatos of traditional minimalism are used sparingly and are often disjointed and irregular, creating an undercurrent of disequilibrium. More often, Adams employs extended chords, late Romantic in their chromatic richness, punctuated with bells, shrieks of brass, snatches of melody, and electronic roars and rumbles. Above this, Adams’s lyrical vocal lines wheel, often fraught with tension. This compelling score is by far the richest and most complex Adams has created.
Not all is perfect. Well as it recreates the anxiety of the night of the test, with its portentous storm, the second act occasionally makes repetitious dramatic points and is in need of some tightening. More troubling, there are a number of visual distractions, especially the rather silly choreography, expressing heaven knows what, and the frenzied video editing with its constant cutting, panning, and zooming, and continual, often shaky, tight close-ups. The editing seems to highlight the mechanics of vocal production as much as the acting and often leaves one with no sense of what is happening on the stage as a whole. Peter Sellars was both stage and video director, so I have to assume these were important parts of his conception. There is much to admire in that vision, but sometimes less is more.
By this time, many interested readers will either have seen the Metropolitan Opera broadcast of this work in the movie theater or heard it on the radio. Despite the similarities in casting and the typically small audience for modern operas, I hope it appears on DVD. This powerful opera deserves the documentation of both directorial visions. This Netherlands Opera production, in any case, should not be overlooked. It presents Sellars’s original concept, more abstract than the Met’s, well sung, conducted, and played, and with several fine performances not reprised in the Met production. Give it a try.
FANFARE: Ronald E. Grames
CAST:
J. Robert Oppenheimer – Gerald Finley
Kitty Oppenheimer – Jessica Rivera
General Leslie Groves – Eric Owens
Edward Teller – Richard Paul Fink
Jack Hubbard – James Maddalena
Robert Wilson – Thomas Glenn
Captain James Nolan – Jay Hunter Morris
Pasqualita – Ellen Rabiner
Bonus:
- Interview with Peter Sellars
- Illustrated synopsis and cast gallery
Picture format: NTSC 16:9 anamorphic
Sound format: Dolby Digital 2.0 / DTS 5.1
Region code: 0 (All Regions)
Menu language: English
Subtitles: English, German, French, Spanish, Dutch
Running time: 228 mins
Number of DVDs: 2
MOMENT OF TRUTH: ELLA AT THE COLISEUM
Music for 5 Winds / Atea Quintet
BEST OF BILL BRUFORD: THE WINTERFOLD & SUMMERFOLD
Two X Four / Jennifer Koh, Laredo
Jennifer Koh and Jamie Laredo feature in this recital of works written for two violins. Includes two world-premiere recordings in addition to works by J.S. Bach and Philip Glass. Vinay Parameswaran leads the Curtis 20/21 Ensemble, to which composer David Ludwig (b. 1974) serves as Director. Anna Clyne's (b. 1980) dramatic and inventive works have been championed by musicians from around the world.
REVIEW:
Jennifer Koh’s collaboration with her erstwhile mentor at the Curtis Institute, Jaime Laredo, has resulted in a program of works for two violins played by both of them: Bach’s Double Violin Concerto and three new pieces, all accompanied by Vinay Parameswaran conducting the Curtis 20/21 Ensemble. In Bach’s and David Ludwig’s works, Laredo plays first violin, while in Anna Clyne’s and Philip Glass’s, Koh does. The recordings of Clyne’s and Ludwig’s works purport to be the first.
The duo adopts quick but not precipitous tempos in the first movement of Bach’s Concerto. Both soloists produce a modern sound that blends well their soloistic counterpart and with the ensemble. They engage in no mannerisms, presenting the music straightforwardly, as they do in the slow movement, though their beauty of tone there provides a focus of interest, rendering their interweaving tonally ingratiating, quite aside from the musical compatibility it evinces. Should their individualities be expressed more obviously? Would the soloists in Bach’s time be clearly distinguishable in such a chamber setting? Quite aside from these more philosophical quibbles, their playing sounds equally homogeneous, as well as highly energetic, in the finale.
Clyne’s 2012 piece, Prince of Clouds, shimmeringly atmospheric and harmonically accessible in its opening, grows texturally chunkier as it progresses, recalling stylistically Benjamin Britten’s keen ear for string textures and resonances—and not only between the soloists but within the ensemble, too. Glass’s Echorus, perhaps even more atmospheric and just as firmly tonal in its harmonic underpinnings, trades on shifting melodic patterns, as do so many of his other works (recalling clouds subtly shifting shapes as they roll, although the two soloists emerge only tentatively from the textures), and rivets listeners’ attention to its hypnotic musical argument. The four movements of Ludwig’s 2012 Seasons Lost represent the four seasons in order but beginning (rather than ending) with “Winter.” The composer suggests that these recall a time before climate change merged the seasons. As do the other two recent works on the program, this one creates atmospheres; and, as does Clyne’s work, it also shows how sharply the composer’s ear discriminates among string sonorities. The composer likens the interweaving violin parts of “Spring” with that of the season’s luxuriantly sprouting greenery, while Summer suggests to him warm nights and bonfires: dark and mysterious and allusive, like the performances. “Fall” brings blowing winds in perhaps the most graphic of the movements, with shriller, almost Stravinskian sonorities and harmonies.
The program evinces a sort of continuity more integral even than the close interaction of the two soloists and the unifying string sonorities: A sort of downy blanket covers all of it, generating lots of warmth without inducing somnolence. Can this, rather than deterministic or aleatory blips and bangs, be the future of music? Has the tonal system really been played out, and did the experiments now almost a century old really come about as a result of historic inevitability? Many listeners could perhaps accept this program as a sort of gentle answer. In any case, the recital should appeal broadly for its performances and for its program (to say nothing of its clear recorded sound). It doesn’t jettison the past so much as it establishes a sort of healing continuity. Strongly recommended.
FANFARE: Robert Maxham
American Classics - Anderson: Orchestral Music Vol 3 / Slatkin, BBC
This, at least for me, is possibly the ‘best’ of the three Naxos CDs of Leroy Anderson’s music released to date. But that is simply because it has my favourite Anderson piece on it – the Serenata. Here is a miniature that conjures up the summer sunshine in Majorca or the Costa del Sol. But not just sunshine – there is quite definitely a beautiful senorita with smouldering eyes, blatantly portrayed by the ‘major’ key part of this piece ... But there are other reasons why this CD is ‘top of the pops.’ For example, it would be a stern person indeed who did not laugh out loud at the antics of the ‘band’ in the 1947 arrangement of Old MacDonald had a Farm – complete with a battery of animal noises, Surely a piece like this would bring the Albert Hall down on the ‘Last Night’?
The CD opens with a rather fun pre-war work - the Harvard Sketches which supposedly describes the antics of the students. The number opens quite innocuously with an impression of the Lowell House Bells, yet soon there is a change of mood when a clarinet strikes up a jaunty tune in Harvard Square. As it is a ‘freshman,’ I guess he does not realise this is ‘not appropriate music’ for the old Alma Mater. There are lots of ‘wrong’ notes! The silence of the Widener Reading Room is presented in a quiet reflective mood – only to be interrupted by strange noises representing chattering and of course the librarian ‘rapping the desk for silence.’ Harvard Sketches ends with a Confetti Dance. Surely the listener cannot help but be reminded of Charles Ives in this piece.
Melody on Two Notes is quite simply lovely. The tune is, based on the notes G and D but is presented in such a way that interest is never lost. However, it is the harmonies and the orchestration that bring character to this work. Alas, it is painfully short.
Mother’s Whistler, from 1940 and the Penny Whistle Song written eleven years later are typical Anderson numbers. The former was lost to the world until it was discovered in the Boston Pops library – this is its first recording. Apparently the composer was not happy with the piece. Look out for the barking dog! The Penny Whistle Song is really a quiet piece with a catchy tune; it is well-described as ‘happy go lucky.’
The Phantom Regiment is supposed to ‘depict a nameless body of soldiers marching into and then trotting across the scene – before marching away.’ It is interesting balance of military march and up tempo quick step. I guess that Plink, Plank, Plunk needs little introduction save to say that it has an infectious tune that stays in my brain for days after hearing it! It was written as a ‘sequel’ to the equally memorable Jazz Pizzicato. Anderson composed Promenade whilst he was still in the Army – and this is certainly obvious in the military atmosphere of this tune. It is no amble in ‘Central Park before Dark’ but is much more West Point on a passing-out parade day. The Sandpaper Ballet is one of those pieces that every one knows but can never quite put their finger on. I guess it is the rubbing of the various grades of sandpaper replicating the old ‘soft shoe shuffle’ that gives the game away – but just try to recall the title the next time you hear this piece! The Saraband is my least favourite number in this collection – however I know that Anderson’s ‘take’ on the baroque dance –for example, suddenly doubling the speed of the music - is popular in many quarters.
Of Sleigh Ride I need say little – save it is one of the most Christmassy pieces I know of. It makes me dream of the deep snow that we had way back in 1963! Other well-known tunes include The Typewriter with its ‘Oh, so obvious’ sound effect – yet it still makes people smile when they hear it for the umpteenth time. And then there is the Trumpeter’s Lullaby which was composed as a ‘show piece’ for the Boston Pops lead trumpet player – Roger Voisin. The Syncopated Clock was used as a theme tune for the CBS-TVs ‘The Late Show’ and became a ‘household’ jingle. It does not need a listener to be a genius to deduce that Anderson will make the clock ‘tick’ both on and off beat! This is a great tune to wrap up the CD.
However there are two other works that deserve mention. In fact, the Suite of Carols for Brass Choir is the longest work on this disc. Of course, it is the wrong time of year for listening to this kind of music - as it is for the Sleigh Ride - but it was well worth hearing. Leroy Anderson wrote three ‘carol’ suites for a special ‘Holiday’ season album – one for strings, one for winds and the present Suite. Rarely for the composer, this music is almost entirely devoid of the usual ‘fingerprints.’ They are actually well-written, neo-classical arrangements and should be listened to as such. The carols selected include:- In Dulci Jubilo: Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming: I Saw Three Ships: From Heaven High I Come to You; We Three Kings of Orient are and March of the Kings.
And last, but not least, is the arrangement of George Gershwin’s Wintergreen for President. This is a number from the show Of thee I sing which is set in the White House! This is one of the composer’s earliest pieces – but certainly deserves our attention with its ‘bustling manner’.
It is self-evident that Leonard Slatkin and the ‘band’ enjoy themselves playing this music. There is, I guess, an ever-present danger that players could be condescending to Anderson’s music when they have perhaps been wrestling with Mahler, Boulez or Pärt. However, in this recording, every note is taken seriously and every bar is chock-full of ‘pizzazz’.
A great disc – and I am looking forward to what I imagine will be the fourth and final CD?
-- John France, MusicWeb International
Also available - Leroy Anderson: Orchestral Music Vol 1 
Jeffrey Biegel's rendition of the terrific Piano Concerto is the best yet. The playing by the BBC Concert Orchestra is relaxed and charming. Under Slatkin's baton the melodies flow effortlessly, and clearly a good time was had by all. -- ClassicsToday.com
Also available - Leroy Anderson: Orchestral Music Vol 2 If you enjoyed Vol. 1 in this ongoing series of Leroy Anderson's warm and beautifully crafted orchestral works, then you'll surely want this release as well. The performances are just as fine, and once again we get several important premieres. Anderson's brand of melodious charm is timeless. -- ClassicsToday.com
Blackford: Sagrada Familia Symphony; Babel / Hill, Ikon Singers, BBC NO Wales
Antoni Gaudí’s monumental temple La Sagrada Familia is a universe within a building. Its mass of stone and metal is bathed in coloured light diffused from dazzling stained glass windows. The colossal structure is supported by great pillars inspired by the shapes of tree trunks that re-inforce the impression of a spiritual forest. Around the main access points to the basilica are three great facades; Nativity, Passion and Glory. Each is a visual world unto itself, stylistically apart yet united by Gaudí’s grandiose vision. These three facades are the inspiration of my three-movement La Sagrada Familia Symphony. The visual journey, from the representational to the abstract, is something I also tried to mirror in the music. When I visited La Sagrada Familia in October 2019 there was still scaffolding to support the work on the remaining towers. Whereas my symphony is inspired by that monumental building, I hope that my musical structure can stand alone as an homage to Gaudí in its own right. The two parts of the cantata begin similarly, presenting first the children of Seth - then in the second part, the children of Noah. Realizing that the aftermath of the destruction of the Tower of Babel could be anti-climactic, I left part of the Noah story unfinished at the end of Part I, and concluded it as an Epilogue. I wanted God’s promise to be the note on which the work should end, a message of hope that the divinity would protect His creation throughout the seasons: “While earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night shall never cease.” These beautiful words are taken up by the choir and soloists contrapuntally and lead directly to the hymn: Praise My Soul The King Of Heaven, whose melody was woven into the closing section of Part One. Following Britten’s inspiration in Noye’s Fludde and St Nicholas, I invite the audience to join in the hymn, celebrating creation and the world that has been entrusted to us. Babel uses the chorus extensively to narrate both stories, as well as to evoke the terror of the flood and the exuberance of the construction of the tower. In addition to set pieces, such as the Nimrod baritone aria, and the soprano aria, “Do not fear the largeness of the showers,” the three soloists often sing together in close harmony as the other-worldly voice of God. The instrumental forces are relatively modest, with the piano duet supported by the sustaining power of the organ, backed by two percussionists. This sound world is redolent of those Britten masterpieces for amateur choirs, ensembles and audiences, which have inspired many composers since, and to which I too am gratefully indebted.
NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL AN ERA: ALBUMS 1980-1984
Best of Black Umfolosi: Summertime
NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL AN ERA: ALBUMS 1980-1984
COMPLETE SINGLES & ALBUMS 1957-62
SERENATA A NAPOLI
Takahashi & Nishimura: Piano Music / Huisman
Two major contemporary Japanese composers, writing for the piano with vivid imagery and brightly piercing harmony. Born in Osaka in 1953, Akira Nishimura is one of Japan’s most distinguished living composers, extensively performed and recorded, though many of those albums are unavailable internationally. He has contributed to all the major classical genres including opera. There is a slow but irresistible momentum to the pull of his harmony in most of his orchestral works which is shared by the trio of pieces recorded by Lucas Huisman.
Nishimura’s Mirror of Star (1992) is a musical picture of the night sky which imbues the melody line with subtle echo effects, like a halo of reverberation: ‘calm on the surface but obsessional anxiety deeper down,’ according to the composer. Two years later, he completed a set of three Visions for piano, titled of Aqua, Flame, and Invoker. Flame uses only the bottom ten notes of the piano, glowing with overtones like Mirror of Star. Aqua is inspired by the river Ganges and the rituals of burial which take place on its waters, while Invoker is a prayer using the technique of heterophony which overlays subtly different versions of the same melody. Finally, from 1987, Carillons of Ekstasis also makes extensive use of the piano’s lower register as well as the top octave to evoke the starry heavens and the gap between them and us.
Born in 1986, Keitaro Takahashi has studied and worked in both his native Japan and in Europe (especially Switzerland), and his music fulfils an ambition to integrate those disparate cultures by employing instrumental, electronic, or environmental sounds according to East Asian philosophies and concepts. Furin evokes a traditional Japanese wind chime made of glass or pottery in a sound portrait of a Japanese summer which is gently distanced by preparing the piano with rubber tuning mutes. From 2014, Ryouka also uses a prepared piano in a tone portrait of the towering mountain ridges of the Tateyama range and in particular a painting of them by the Hiroshima-born artist Genso Okuda. Shikkun (2018, rev 2022) is scored for piano four hands; like Ryouka, the title is a neologism coined by Takahashi to describe a state of simultaneous motion and stillness which he came up with on a mountain bike-ride in Japan
Contemporary piano music by two leading Japanese composers: Keitaro Takahashi and Akira Nishimura, a fascinating journey of unheard sounds, harmonies, colours and timbres. Keitaro Takahashi born 1986 in Tokyo, is a Japanese composer, media artist, and programmer. He currently is a research fellow at CeReNeM (Center for Research in New Music) at the University of Huddersfield in the UK. With his artistic background established both in Japan and Switzerland, his artistic interests as a composer mainly focus on creating musical gestures and acoustic associations under the concept of the morphology of sound textures and the mixture of various compositional techniques such as Heterophony, Micropolyphony, and Micro montage music.
Akira Nishimura was born in Osaka in 1953. He studied composition and music theory at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. While studying contemporary Western compositional techniques, he also developed a strong interest in traditional Asian music, religion, aesthetics, cosmology, etc. which led him to develop the concept of heterophony and other forms of music. His works won many prizes, among which the ExxonMobil Music Prize, Queen Elizabeth International Music Composition Competition and the Luigi Dallapiccola Composition Award. Belgian pianist Lukas Huisman is one of the most remarkable and original pianists of his generation. From 2012 to 2016 he worked on an artistic doctoral project relating to contemporary complex solo piano music (Ferneyhough, Finnissy, Xenakis, Sorabji) at the School of Arts Ghent/University Ghent. He premièred Sorabji’s Symphonic Nocturne (PCLD0119) and recorded this monumental piece for solo piano on the Piano Classics label, for which he also recorded the piano music by Takemitsu (PCL10147), which was nominated for the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik. He also recorded Michael Finnissy’s Gershwin Arrangements (PCL10218).
NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL AN ERA: ALBUMS 1980-1984
Porrino: I canti dell'esilio (Songs of Exile)
NIGHT DREAMER DIRECT TO DISC SESSIONS
Copenhagen Coda / Dexter Gordon
Jazz giant and tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon bids Copenhagen farewell on his new album Copenhagen Coda – Live at Montmartre 1983. This album marks DG’s final farewell to friends and fans in the Danish capital, with which he had had a twenty year love affair. He is quoted as having said: “I don’t think they [his fellow American musicians living in Europe] got the love I got in Copenhagen” The concert was part of a TV production by the national Danish Broadcasting Corporation, who have documented this golden era in Danish jazz history.
On this recording, DG is accompanied by the accomplished and versatile pianist Kirk Lightsey, wonderful bass player David Eubanks and the master drummer Eddie Gladden. DG proves that he hasn’t lost a step, as he projects enormous authority on stage, being a fountain of sound and ideas, melodically as well as rhythmically. He generates a stunning energy, taking off on a flight that is able to captivate the audience with his tenacious be-bop, somewhere between Lester Young and Coltrane, with a bold, dry sound.
DG arrived in Copenhagen in 1962, where he settled and became a regular on the jazz scene, most often at the legendary Jazzhus Montmartre. During the years 1964 to 1967, he played Montmartre 6 nights a week during the summer months. One of those evenings, where DG was accompanied by Tete Montoliu, NHØP and Alex Riel, was recorded and subsequently released as the album Montmartre 1964 on Storyville Records. His year-long stint in Copenhagen helped remold and vitalize DG after his lean years. In return, he also helped Montmartre build and maintain its reputation as one of Europe’s premier jazz venues in the 1960’s, attracting many American jazz players, including Ben Webster, Bud Powell, Kenny Drew and many, many more. All of them contributing substantially to the vitality of the Danish jazz scene, but more than anyone, DG is the musician synonymous with folk’s perception of Montmartre.
Copenhagen Coda is a celebration of and a tribute to Dexter Gordon’s legacy in Copenhagen. The audience in the Danish capital loved the sophisticated giant “Copenhagen Slim” immensely, and their love was reciprocated - Copenhagen Coda is a testament to this intense year-long love affair!
MENDELSSOHN: Midsummer Night's Dream (A) (Pacific Northwest
SUMMERTIME
