Modern and Contemporary

Scelsi Volume 1 - The Piano Works 1 Louise Bessette, piano Mode 92

Scelsi Volume 2 - The Orchestral Works 1 The Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic & Concert Choir; Juan Pablo Izquierdo, Mode 95

Scelsi Volume 3 - Music For High Winds Carol Robinson; Clara Novakova; Cathy Milliken Mode 102

Scelsi Volume 4 - The Piano Works 2 Stephen Clarke, piano Mode 143

 
Referring to Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988) as Italy’s Charles Ives is both on and off the mark. Like Ives, Scelsi’s brilliantly radical and idiosyncratic music only gained recognition at a late stage in the composer’s life. Both were ultimate inner-driven composers. In other respects they are polar opposites. New England’s solidly bourgeois Ives studied music at Yale and became an insurance executive. Scelsi was an independently wealthy Count who trained in a very eighteenth-century way via private mentoring. After thriving as a virtuoso pianist, composer, poet and essayist in interwar Paris, Scelsi turned intensely private. While Ives drew inspiration from American vernacular music, Scelsi learned music and religion in India. He then created a deep hybrid of Asian and European musical structures.
 
Three of the four phases of Scelsi’s compositional path, plus one shining selection from the final period, are represented to date in Mode’s important series of Scelsi recordings. Phase one (1930-43) involved Scriabin, futurism, atonality, and dodecaphony. The Piano Suite 2 (1930) on Volume 4 already presents an attention to overtones that would inspire Scelsi’s microtonal, “three-dimensional” music.
 
Phase two begins with an extended nervous breakdown and Scelsi’s creation of a new musical system as a vehicle for self-healing. He focused on complex nuances that could be generated from a single note.
 
Scelsi’s practice of Buddhist meditation and Yoga was integral to the attentiveness that attuned him to microtonal consequences of individual sounds. Beyond pitch and duration, this was music’s third dimension.
 
Through 1956, Scelsi composed mainly for piano. Real-time composition was part and parcel of his new musical system. In the late 1940’s, Scelsi tape-recorded piano improvisations. His ample wealth permitted paying assistants to transcribe recordings. Once Scelsi supervised revisions, however, there was little intended room for performers to interpret works. Then the half-tone limits of piano keys moved him towards woodwinds, strings, human voice and electronic keyboards as vehicles for realizing micro-tonality. By 1959, Scelsi arrived at his mature musical system. The third phase of the 1960’s extended this system to orchestras, choruses, and a variety of chamber ensembles. This was the decade when Darmstadt recognized that a great composer had been quietly at work.
 
Among Mode’s discs, the best entry point is “Music for High Winds”.
 
Clarinetist Carol Robins worked intensively with Scelsi during the 1980’s. Her impressive disc gives us the Scelsi parallel of Pears singing Britten. Then I would turn to Toronto pianist Stephen Clarke’s performance of Action Music (1955), a piece that synthesizes what Scelsi achieved for the piano. “Orchestral Works” stretches, literally, what can be done with power of the big instrumental beast that we’ve inherited from the nineteenth century Romantic tradition. It also includes striking samplings of Scelsi’s writing for voice. The solo clarinet version of Three Latin Prayers (1970) on “High Winds” announces phase four of Scelsi’s compositions, reworking tonality into his three-dimensional system. The clarinet sounds classically gorgeous and yet unfamiliar, as does the stately but varying tempo.
 
Given the exemplary performances of Scelsi’s music in the four Mode discs at hand, let’s hope for future volumes dedicated to the composer’s final endeavours.
 
Phil Ehrensaft

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Reich - You Are (Variations) Los Angeles Master Chorale; Grant Gershon Nonesuch 79891-2

Reich - Different Trains Quatuor Bozzini DAME collectionCQB CQB0502

Reich - Different Trains The Smith Quartet signum records SIGCD064

Live 1977 Steve Reich and Musicians Orange Mountain Music OMM0018

 
Steve Reich’s most recent large-scale work You Are (Variations) offers an extravaganza of pianos, percussion, winds, strings and voices. A spirit of affirmation colours the glistening contrapuntal textures, swinging rhythms and gentle dissonances. His four texts are short and punchy. A quote from the 18th century Jewish mystic Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, ‘You are whatever your thoughts are’, the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, ‘Explanations come to an end somewhere’, the Psalms and the Talmud, suggest open-ended interpretations. The Los Angeles Master Chorale under Grant Gershon, who gave the world premiere in 2004, captures the celebratory mood. Cello Counterpoint, from 2004, provides an alluring companion piece, with cellist Maya Beiser interacting with seven pre-recorded cello tracks.
 
Different Trains, from 1988, remains Reich’s most moving work to date. Reich recorded the voices of a Pullman porter who worked the NY – LA line that Reich traveled to visit his mother when he was a child, the governess who accompanied him, three Holocaust survivors, and train sounds. Each quartet pre-recorded three separate tracks to accompany it in performance. The Quatuor Bozzini, based at Concordia University in Montreal, has produced a vivid, gutsy recording. Closely miked, it clearly differentiates the prerecorded tracks from what’s being performed live in the studio. When a taped voice says ‘Black crows invaded our county’ the solo cello responds with hair-raising effect. But the cute cover art and unwieldy packaging don’t appeal to me, and much as I object to choosing a disc for its playing time, 27 minutes seems stingy - as does the lack of information about the piece. At least they give the texts correctly (though without punctuation). The booklet for the Smith Quartet’s new recording transcribes ‘completely’ instead of ‘concretely’ in the text, even though it is clear in the score. But the British group’s performance is refined and passionate, and the CD includes two lyrical works by Reich, the expressive Triple Quartet and the tenderly conversational Duet.
 
Steve Reich and Musicians, Live 1977 documents four concerts of Reich’s music dating from his earliest days as an experimental maverick. From the influential Violin Phase to the now-classic Drumming (just the final part is included here), these pieces still work magic. But to fully appreciate Pendulum Music, scored for microphone feedback, you surely had to be there. My cat’s response made me think of Michael Tilson Thomas’s story about conducting Reich’s Four Organs (a piece I actually love), when an audience member ran up and banged her head on  the front of the stage, screaming ‘Stop, stop, I confess’. This disc features two members of Toronto’s stellar percussion ensemble Nexus, Bob Becker and Russell Hartenberger. They remain part of Reich’s own group, Steve Reich and Musicians, which performs on these recently discovered, now-historic recordings.
 
Pam Margles

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Array Live Arraymusic Artifact Music ART 035

 
Array Live is the 6th CD of this Toronto-based new music group, now in its 34th year of activity. That makes it one of the oldest groups in the country commissioning, performing, recording and generally championing the concert music and composers of the moment. On this CD, they make a convincing case for the music of five mature composers, Walter Zimmermann, Linda C. Smith, James Tenney, Christian Wolff and Jo Kondo, each of whom has already established their own individual voice. I couldn’t help thinking however, that the unspoken influence of the iconoclastic American composer John Cage was not that far off.
 
If you’re looking for a taste of the zeitgeist of U.S.-Euro-Canadian instrumental art music circa 1991-5, then the repertoire on this CD will deliver. The playing by the Arraymusic ensemble is refined and musical throughout, made even more remarkable when one realizes that it was recorded at a live concert at Glenn Gould Studio, Toronto, with probably nary an edit. The sound is clear and instrumental balances natural.
 
 The only composer residing in Canada on the CD is Toronto’s Linda Catlin Smith, the recipient of the prestigious 2005 Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music. Her contribution to this CD is Diagonal Forms, which sparkles with pointillist vibraphone, glockenspiel and piano ascending and descending melodic passages, contrasted against sustained broken chords by the winds and double bass. Then at other places, the tables are turned, the winds providing the ‘diagonal’ movement. Much of the time the music is thin and delicate in texture and unpredictable in form. Diagonal Forms repays repeated listening.  
 
“Array Live” is not by any means ‘easy listening’, but music which demands attention and thoughtful and even detailed listening. Try it some evening with your best headphones on and a bountiful glass of your best red wine.
 
Andrew Timar

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For There and Then Evergreen Club Contemporary Gamelan Artifact Music ART 034

 
Following two CDs (in 2002 and 2004) of more traditional music from the Sunda region of West Java, the Evergreen Club has once again returned to its more familiar, original territory of contemporary Western compositions for gamelan, bolstered by the addition of occasional non-gamelan instruments for added variety and textural enrichment.
 
“For There and Then” comprises five pieces from the last fifteen years or so by Canadian composers, including two, Kissed and the title track For There and Then by Evergreen Club member Bill Parsons. Unfortunately the otherwise very informative liner notes give us little insight into the ideas behind these two pieces. The latter features the composer on electric guitar, an interesting sonic contrast to the gamelan instruments in the thick of repetitive and insistent additive rhythms driving the piece along. Rain Cycles by Ronald Bruce Smith also includes two guitars (nylon stringed) and on Main Road by Daniel Janke, the composer plays the kora, a West African harp-lute.
 
For this reviewer, the highlight of the CD is The Eleusinian Mysteries by Andrew P. MacDonald, with Erica Goodman on harp. It feels something like a harp concerto, with two louder percussive outer movements cushioning a gentler, mysterious middle section. The creative use of the harp, its glissandi, plucked chords, and melodic lines that weave in and out of the gamelan’s pentatonic scale make for an engaging and full musical texture. One can certainly imagine the harpist as mystic high priest of the ancient Greek ritual on which this piece is based.
 
As always, the Evergreen Club gamelan gives marvelous performances in all the music on this CD.
 
Annette Sanger

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Chatman - Vancouver Visions Various artists Centrediscs CMCCD 11105

 
This recording is a retrospective of Stephen Chatman’s chamber music and a document of his collegial relationships at the University of British Columbia, where he is the head of the composition department. The earliest composition on the disc was written in 1971 – the playful Wild Cat for solo flute – and the most recent is the Varley Suite for Solo Violin, commissioned last year for the farewell recital of Andrew Dawes.
 
The Black and White Fantasy (1981) is played with great gusto by pianist Jane Coop. Five settings of Miriam Waddington’s poems (1995) are well written but given an underwhelming performance by soprano Robyn Diedger-Klassen and pianist Karen Lee-Morlang. The Lawren Harris Suite for Piano Quintet (2003) is a strong, well-crafted piece, wonderfully performed by Sara Davis-Buechner and the Borealis String Quartet.
 
A highlight of the disc is In Memoriam Harry Adaskin, a short one-movement piece for violin and gamelan-like prepared piano. Evocative, searching motives in the violin are accompanied by repetitive fragments in the piano, all of which lead smoothly but unexpectedly to a brief quotation from the slow movement of Beethoven’s A major violin and piano sonata, op. 30. As the quotation fades into the ether, like a distant memory, the seemingly random violin and piano fragments take up where they left off. Violinist Andrew Dawes and pianist Jane Coop give an understated, but stunning performance.
 
The only slight disappointment is a complicated, uninspired set of variations on “Home on the Range” for string quartet that goes on and on. The program note suggests the piece is heavily influenced by Chatman’s composition teacher William Bolcom, which may be the case, but here Chatman needed to be reminded that brevity is the soul of wit.
 
Larry Beckwith

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Davies - The Big Top Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra; Earl Stafford Water Lily Records WLCD 5905

 
If you had a chance to catch The Big Top on television or saw the ballet on that 1988 Canadian tour, this CD will please you immensely. And for those of you hearing this music for the first time, a treat is in store.
 
Victor Davies is one man who has demonstrably devoted his life to music, in a variety of idioms, and we expect much from the creator of the Mennonite Piano Concerto and Anerca. Here he shows himself master of the score, from first to last. The CD presents the ballet to us over 16 tracks. Perhaps, back in the days of vinyl, they might have made a segue of several of the episodes. Throughout, the large instrumental ensemble performs to perfection. The Pranksters/Lion and The Great Ravi are particularly effective as orchestral pieces, and the Winnipeg wind section deserves special praise.
 
Recorded quality is excellent, and studio creativity with instrumental spread is tastefully done. You even get two endings, the Finale proper on track 15, plus a reprise that would have been prepared for curtain calls, later adaptable for television credits as they rolled. The booklet consists of a simple single fold with a colour photo (from the original Winnipeg production?) on the cover. The interior notes are easy on the eyes, in French and English. Recommended.
 
John S. Gray

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Gobeil - Trilogie d’ondes Gilles Gobeil Empreintes Digitales IMED 0576

Normandeau - Puzzles Robert Normandeau Empreintes Digitales IMED 0575

 
Empreintes Digitales here presents the DVD-Audio format debut of two Canadian composers whose electroacoustic works have won awards the world over. Always looking forward, their music is as challenging as it is rewarding.
 
Gilles Gobeil hits the mark with his “Trilogie d’ondes”. The trilogy is made up of three distinct works featuring the ondes Martenot, played by Suzanne Binet-Audet. Voix blanche [White voice] deals with an excruciating slow build-up to a crescendo that really never occurs. This is a piece where the ondes reigns supreme. Its rich timbral qualities, its unmistakable glitchy, percolating sound and its fantastic ability to blend in with the tape are riveting. With its unnerving climax that comes and goes over and over again, this is without a doubt the most unsettling piece in the trilogy. By the time we get to Là où vont les nuages… [Where the Clouds Go…] the mood that is fashioned leaves much guesswork at the forefront of the listener’s mind. Climaxes come in series of bursts and we are left wondering what will Gobeil do next? In the final movement, the longest piece in the trilogy, La Perle et l’oubli [Pearl and Oblivion] the ondes is disguised as the soul in a journey on its way to incarnation and when the shimmering sampling of scream-like voices breaks through, you know the composer has hit a nerve. With perfect precision and undying sense of drama, “Trilogie d’ondes” is a major work in Gobeil’s catalogue of masterpieces.
 
Robert Normandeau has a much denser overall approach to his own work.  His pieces seem to be bathed in a thick soup which is as tasty as it is sometimes difficult to digest. “Puzzles” begins with the title composition, which is made up of various audio elements that fit together like pieces of a puzzle. Do they really fit though? Over the course of about 6 minutes, we’re confronted with various vocal samples, creaking doors, hammer blows. All of these pieces are entrenched with a drilling, mechanical beat.
 
Perfectly suited to the composer’s acousmatic diffusion techniques, the 5.1 Audio Surround mix makes all the difference. Sound percolates from every corner of the room, making your head spin at break-neck speeds. Starting off Eden is a lovely, serene Vietnamese vocal, which then is replaced by loops of music, stretching into eternity. While an angry voice repeats demands on Hamlet Machine with Actors, the piece is further coloured by drill presses, screams of agony and bubbling, gurgled noise formations. Momentous and densely populated with new, brave ideas, “Puzzles” is a journey that should be reserved for only the truly adventurous explorers of new sound worlds.
 
Tom Sekowski

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Still - Piano Music: Africa, Seven Traceries, A Deserted Plantation Mark Boozer Naxos 8.559210

 
The Naxos American Classics 2005 release of piano music by William Grant Still is an important anthology, the pioneering work of this Black American composer. Still’s lifetime spanned over eighty years, his most prolific writing was during and immediately following World War Two. He would have been to the Americans what Nathaniel Dett (the namesake of Toronto’s own, Nathaniel Dett Chorale) was to the Canadians – in fact, these two prolific and courageous musicians were contemporaries, and shared many of the same honorifics for their works.
 
I fell in love with the unpretentious beauty of Still’s more abstract works: Three Visions and Seven Traceries, and even the piano arrangement of Africa by Arvey. Together these works evoke images that travel through time from Africa, the cradle of civilization, through slavery and emancipation, to the heavenly life beyond this world.
 
The Blues – from his ballet work, Lenox Avenue, seems to me like an academic composer trying too hard to sound “hip.” American pianist, identifiably from the African Diaspora himself, Mark Boozer’s interpretation is flawless, and it’s not without a strong emotive edge – I just think Still’s work shines the brightest when he’s not trying to fit into the mould of an established idiom.
 
Heidi McKenzie
 
Concert Note: The Nathaniel Dett Chorale presents a program entitled “Voices of the Diaspora – Verses in Song” as its contribution to Black History Month at the George Weston Recital Hall on February 22.  
 
Editor’s Note: For other “Black History Month-themed discs, see “Discs of the Month”.