07 Mustonen SymphoniesOlli Mustonen – Symphonies 2 & 3
Ian Bostridge; Turku Philharmonic; Olli Mustonen
Ondine ODE 1422-2 (ondine.net)

As a pianist, Olli Mustonen performed several times with the Toronto Symphony under Jukka-Pekka Saraste, always bringing a fresh and creative approach (I remember a particularly bracing version of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto). On this disc, he displays his impressive abilities as a composer and conductor. After beginning his composition studies with Einojuhani Rautavaara at the age of eight, he has developed a style that is eclectic but quite conventional and expressive: think of a blend, perhaps, of Jean Sibelius and Benjamin Britten. It’s the sort of music that performers can really sink their teeth into and when his works are championed by the likes of Steven Isserlis and Ian Bostridge, one can rest assured that he knows what he is doing. 

The disc opens with Symphony No.3, written in 2020 featuring the lustrous and sensitive voice of Bostridge. It portrays a legend, Taivaanvalot (“Heavenly Lights”) from the epic Finnish folk tale Kalevala and is sung in English except for a brief passage in the last movement. Symphony No.2, written in 2013, is subtitled “Johannes Angelos” and is based on the 1952 novel of that name by Mika Waltari which depicts the fall of Constantinople. Both works are compact in length (about 30 minutes) and both are full of picturesque and expressive  music. Orchestrations are expert, the recording quality is superb and the players of the Turku Philharmonic are clearly enjoying themselves.

08 Violeta DinescuVioleta Dinescu – Solo Violin Works
Irina Muresanu
Metier mex 77106 (divineartrecords.com)

Romanian composer Violeta Dinescu’s works for solo violin are one of the biggest discoveries for me in terms of contemporary repertoire for this instrument. Her music is deeply meaningful and closely connected to literary works and philosophical concepts. It is precisely how Dinescu experiences, translates and depicts the inner musings that makes her music so captivating. The performer is seen as a storyteller and directs the flow of the pieces much like a storyteller would do – by making choices that enhance a particular phrase, action or emotion. 

Violinist Irina Muresanu shares a special rapport with Dinescu’s music, one that is perhaps based on the fact that they share a Romanian heritage and understand the musical language that is strongly tied to their homeland. Dinescu’s music, influenced by folkloric melodies, particularly the melos of traditional Gypsy music, also includes contemporary violin techniques and an array of unorthodox sounds. The space between the notes is of particular importance to both composer and performer. 

Muresanu seduces, mesmerizes and probes with her violin. Her deep, sonorous sound never lets the intensity lessen and never gives way to the technical challenges. That is particularly obvious in the opening piece Aretusa. In this composition, Arethusa, a nymph from Greek mythology (as described in Ovid’s Metamorphosis) is chased by the river God Alpheus. There is an ethereal beauty to this piece, the transcendent emerging amidst the passion, which becomes a signature mark of Muresanu’s performance on this album.

09 Wake up the DeadChris Fisher-Lochhead – Wake Up the Dead
JACK Quartet; Quince Ensemble; Ben Roidl-Ward
New Focus Recordings FRC 385 (newfocusrecordings.com)

Vermont-based composer/performer Chris Fisher-Lochhead’s album Wake Up the Dead assembles six pieces of wide variety and instrumentation, including two works each for string quartet and female vocal quartet, one for mixed instrumental ensemble, and one extended work for solo bassoon.  

The album opens with stutter-step the concept, a commission by the Ensemble Dal Niente in 2016. This is a meaty introduction to Lochhead’s style of composition, and the ensemble interprets the score with commanding familiarity. An overall multi-phonic richness leaves space for irregular string solos, false harmonics and rich lower string resonances that are distributed evenly throughout the instrumentation giving a cohesiveness that sets up the rest of the album. The track Precarity Songs is a gorgeous piece for four high vocals performed by the Quince Ensemble, who also return on track five with Four Until L8, a more humourous piece with text. Track three, titled Funktionslust is performed by the JACK Quartet, and is a tightly wound collection of long tones, pizzicatos and expressive outbursts often layered simultaneously and at times stretched apart and then reduced again. The quartet takes the work in stride and makes the difficult score sound easy. 

The fourth track in the collection, Grandfather, a work for solo bassoon written for contemporary specialist Ben Roidl-Ward, is a commanding piece of extended technique bringing up the phrase New Complexity. It was illuminating to find the score online; it helped to appreciate the writing, the incredible execution of the overtones, key clicks, and vocal outburst as well as the creative and detailed notation. The final track After Bessie Smith returns with the JACK Quartet, to close the collection with an extension of Fisher-Lochhead’s signature stretching and reducing of thematic material. A very interesting album for new music and deep dissonance lovers.

10 Yvonne LamWatch Over Us – Works for solo violin and electronics
Yvonne Lam
Blue Griffin BGR647 (bluegriffin.com)

The music on this album plays as if it is written by the cool composers on the block. Add to that a notion of electronic tapes as an equal musical partner and we get an album that is beaming with fresh ideas, concepts and expressions that have an edge of contemporary life. 

Missy Mazzoli, Katherine Balch, Nathalie Joachim, Anna Clyne, Eve Beglarian and Kate Moore bring a certain sort of energy and vigour to this album, one that is perhaps best described as creative confluence. These composers do not rely on traditional structure, preferring instead to forge their own, but certainly pay homage to masters of the past in various ways. Violinist Yvonne Lam is a thread that connects them all with the spirit of her performance. Lam is attuned to the intricacies of each compositional language and her interpretations have a mixture of sensibility and boldness that is rare. Above all, she brings forward the sonorousness that envelops and nurtures all the compositions.

From Rest These Hands (Clyne) that is beyond gorgeous in its sonority and melodies to Synaesthesia Suite (Moore), a concerto with a sci-fi edge for violin and synthesized violin, to Watch Over Us (Joachim), a piece that explores physical and symbolic aspects of water, the compositions here are innovative, edgy and immediate.

11 Yotam HaberYotam Haber – Bloodsnow
Talea Ensemble; Taylor Ward; Don-Paul Kahl; American Wild Ensemble
Sideband Records 11 (sidebandrecords.com)

The music of Yotam Haber impresses and shows that he is an innovative composer who seems to inhabit a space where notation meets, then crosses over into, improvisation. The music of Bloodsnow indicates that Haber is not one to shy away from subject matter that can be rather visceral in nature, such as that which is contained in two poems – one by Tahel Frosh, the other by Dorit Weisman. That may be just as well as Haber’s supple philosophical distinction between music and noise enables him to superbly articulate the sentiments and emotions of both poems that he sets to music. 

Frosh’s Oh My Bank is a polemical broadside against capitalism and Haber uses instrumentation cleverly to accentuate dramatic tensions: winds against strings with Taylor Ward’s baritone top delivering the broadside. Through it all Haber harvests mint-fresh timbres to convey the sense of the anger of Frosh’s fiery work. 

Haber’s music can also be charming in the face of tragedy as is the case with his music for. Weisman’s poem, They Say You Are My Disaster. In describing the character’s descent into the horrors of cancer he uses a wide range of sonorities to create music – both to mirror her stoicism as well as the face of raw tragedy. Bloodsnow – the song – is a modernist masterpiece. 

And while the album suggests Haber excels in music of adversity, he also shows that he is a master of songfulness.

12 Beyond the WallBeyond the Wall
AkMi Duo
Avie AV2641 (avie-records.com)

Beyond the Wall is exquisitely presented and performed. The CD case has a beautiful orange/pink colour scheme extending to the stylish suits worn by Akvilè Šileikaitè (piano) and Valentine Michaud (saxophone); included is a booklet of extensive liner notes outlining the background of each composition and how it fits into the album›s concept. 

Beyond the Wall presents four sonatas: Paul Hindemith, Sonata Op.11 No.4 (1919); Erwin Schulhoff, Hot-Sonate (1930), Edison Denisov, Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano (1970) and William Albright, Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano (1984). It is both an auditory and intellectual treat to get this mini-history of 20th-century saxophone music that Šileikaitè and Michaud perform sensitively and impassioned. 

The liner notes do an excellent job of discussing the tonal and cultural differences amongst these composers and works but ultimately it is the brilliant performances that stand out. I found the Albright work to be a revelation: it contains throughout a gorgeous intertwining of saxophone and piano lines; Michaud’s dramatic mastery of the saxophone, including the altissimo range, is an emotional highlight. 

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