Schubert – Architect
Mathieu Gaudet
Analekta An 2 9188 (analekta.com/en)

Schubert’s Piano Sonata in C Minor D858 was one of three he composed in 1828 during the last months of his life. For whatever reason, it wasn’t published for another ten years, and it lay neglected for most of the 19th century. Today, the piece is recognized as a prime example of his mature style – closely aligned in spirit to Beethoven who Schubert revered – and it’s one of two sonatas presented on Mathieu Gaudet’s Architect, the eighth in the series of Schubert’s complete sonatas.

The piece is formidable in length – roughly 36 minutes in total – and like the majority of Schubert’s sonatas, is a skillful essay in attractive melodies and carefully constructed details right from the dramatic opening movement. As seen in the previous recordings of the series, Gaudet approaches the score with an understated virtuosity, very much letting the music speak for itself. The frenetic and spirited finale is a true tour de force – not dissimilar in mood to the lied Erlkönig – and Gaudet easily handles the technical challenges, effectively tying all four movements of this lengthy work into a cohesive whole.

Coupled with this work is the Sonata No.9 D575 in the curious key of B Major completed in 1817. In contrast to the dramatic intensity of D858, this piece is all joviality. Gaudet’s highly expressive performance is solidly assured, perfectly conveying a joyous spirit throughout. An added bonus is the inclusion of the Two Scherzos D593 which are a light diversion between the two larger works, helping round out a most satisfying program.

Sheng Cai plays Rachmaninoff
Sheng Cai
ATMA ACD2 2861 (atmaclassique.com/en)

Representing a third disc with ATMA Classique, pianist Sheng Cai offers an all-Rachmaninoff essay of might and undeniable virtuosity. Cai’s natural affinity for the Romantic piano repertory brings a distinct brand of competent verve to this music.

The album includes oft-recorded “hits” from the Russian composer, such as the ever-celebrated Sonata No.2 in B-flat Minor, Op.36, and the crowd-pleaser, Moments Musicaux, Op.16 (a cycle that Rachmaninoff revised in 1940 along with a handful of other works). Cai approaches these well-worn pieces with expertise and appreciation for Rachmaninoff’s own performance practice. Such sensitivity is refreshing; it aids Cai as he carves his pathway through familiar musical woods. These interpretations tend towards a personalized, even intimate concept, considered and sincere. Pianistically speaking, the damper pedal should be used judiciously but Cai employs it all too sparingly here. While some might welcome such an absence of sound, this listener yearned for more resonance: yet more red-hot reverb to tug at the Russian heartstrings.

The less familiar half of this record is comprised of novel Rachmaninoff: an attractive transcription from the opera Aleko, (penned by Sheng Cai himself), and a curious polka by German composer Franz Behr. This piece was beloved by Rachmaninoff’s father, Vassili (“Wassily,” in German transliteration). In homage, Rachmaninoff made this arrangement in 1911, “to W.R.” 

Cai’s knack for transcribing is notable here, demonstrating how compelled Rachmaninoff devotees truly are to synthesize such non-piano works for the public at large.

Femmes de Légende
Élisabeth Pion
ATMA ACD2 2890 (atmaclassique.com/en)

Québécoise Élisabeth Pion’s debut CD offers an unusual but rewarding program of mostly-French, mostly miniature piano pieces.

Over a 15-year span, French composer Mélanie Bonis (1858-1937) depicted seven women from myth and literature. Though not conceived as a set, they were grouped as Femmes de légende by a clever publisher. Clever, too, are Bonis’ musical portraits: Mélisande (sensuous), Desdémona (wistful), Ophélie (perturbed, despairing), Viviane (charming), Phoebé (delicate, elusive), Salomé (wildly unstable) and Omphale (mysteriously dramatic).

The six pieces of Henri Dutilleux’s Au gré des ondes are early works, still influenced by impressionism and neoclassicism. The three up-tempo pieces – Claquettes, Mouvement perpétuel and Étude – are rollicking, rambunctiously jocular – sheer fun!

Presented here are all the solo piano works completed by Lili Boulanger before her tragically early death, Debussy’s imprint evident throughout. The austere Prelude in D-flat Major is redolent of church bells and incense. Trois morceaux includes two garden strolls – the overcast, nostalgic D’un vieux jardin and the sunny D’un jardin clair; the cheerful Cortège ends the set. At nine minutes, by far the CD’s longest work, Boulanger’s Theme and Variations in C Minor recalls Debussy’s La cathédrale engloutie, with weighty, powerfully tolling chords.

Debussy himself is represented by a scintillating performance of L’isle joyeuse. Rounding things out are the grotesque, un-lullaby-like Berceuse by Thomas Adès (one of Pion’s teachers), arranged by Adès from his opera The Exterminating Angel, and Pion’s own Balcony on a Wednesday Night – slow, sentimental and almost jazzy.

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Saint-Saëns Volume Four – Duos for Harmonium & Piano
Milos Milivojevic; Simon Callaghan
Nimbus Records NI 8111 (chandos.net/products/catalogue/N%208111)  

The harmonium, for which the works here were originally written and/or arranged, was developed and refined in France in the second half of the 19th century. Its subsequent popularity resulted in many compositions for solo harmonium, duets with piano and larger ensembles, as well as arrangements of other works. The modern classical accordion easily replaces the harmonium as it creates a similar sound in almost the same way, by pressing the buttons/keys and moving the bellows to push air over vibrating metal reeds. Both instruments’ singing reed sounds perfectly match the vibrating, at times more percussive, sound of the piano strings.

Playing the harmonium part on classical accordion is the renowned Miloš Milivojević, and playing piano is Simon Callaghan. Both also arrange here. Camille Saint-Saens’ Six Duos Op. 8 for Harmonium and Piano (1858) is beautiful. The Scherzo fast piano part features Callaghan’s amazing playing of the repeated notes within its melodic lines, accompanied by lush accordion chordal transitions. Chorale opens with a very Romantic piano part showing off Callaghan’s amazing ability to create dramatic balance between hands. The alternating accordion lines are breathtaking, especially when both instruments play together, leading to a softer closing extended cadence. A calming Cavatina has slow piano chords under Milivojević’s superb bellows-controlled lush held note “singing” accordion melody, from high held notes to lower contrasting ones. Three other Duos, and works by Guilmant and Franck are also included.

The Milivojević and Callaghan duo performances are tight, balanced and expressive.

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The Water Cycle & Tango Inoxidable
Organum Vulgarum
Independent (amichaibenshalev.bandcamp.com/album/the-water-cycle-tango-inoxidable)

Canadian-born musician/teacher/composer Amichai Ben Shalev was raised in Israel and lived in Buenos Aires from 2005 to 2020 where he graduated in 2012 from the Manuel de Falla Conservatory specializing as a bandoneon soloist under the tutelage of Rodolfo Daluisio. His career there included collaborations with contemporary tango composers and international appearances. In 2020 Amichai moved to Montreal and in 2022 founded the contemporary music ensemble Organum Vulgarum for bandoneon and string quartet/quintet to explore this instrumentation’s sonorities.

Amichai’s seven-movement contemporary composition The Water Cycle, is inspired by the continuous movement of water on earth and in the atmosphere. Heat opens with ascending string intervals moving to higher bandoneon held notes, with faster lines as the water gets warmer, to an amazing closing with a held high note and a slightly rippling ending. Evaporation has lower pitched held notes, fades and swells creating musical evaporation. Chill has sharp “freezing” bandoneon accents contrasting with longer lower “puddle” strings. Precipitation features pizzicato string raindrops, low held note thunder blasts, and bandoneon bellows shakes increasing the storm effect. Brilliant tight ensemble playing and interpretation of Amichai’s reflective “watery” music reminiscent of summers at the lakeside.

Amichai expresses two common tango aspects, “Desolado” (solitary and sad) and “Reo” (rough) throughout his Tango Inoxidable. His virtuosic playing is featured here as bandoneon bellows create a wave effect, followed by dramatic string lines and bandoneon rhythms. Quieter remorseful bandoneon lines lead to intricate musical conversations with the strings.

The Organum Vulgarum instrumentalists’ performances meld together memorably, at times amazingly, almost sounding like one instrument. Amichai’s sonority explorations are unforgettable.

Montréal Musica
Marc Bourdeau
Centrediscs CMCCD 32023 (cmccanada.org/product-category/recordings/centrediscs)

Like so many things in life, the inverted U-shaped curve best represents the ideal balance of exposure and mystery within a solo recording. Too much unveiling leaves nothing to the imagination in its fulsome exposition. Conversely, an unwillingness to unmask and musically disclose (the so-called “warts and all”), can come across as coy and not revelatory enough to strike a personal connection between artist and listener. But, when the forces align and an appropriate balance is struck, there is often magic contained within the performance that follows. Such is the case with Montréal Musica, a fine new recording by respected pianist, chamber musician and pedagogue Marc Bourdeau on Centrediscs, the record label of the Canadian Music Centre.

Spanning nearly a century of Canadian composition linked together not by style, genre or epoch, but rather uniformly tethered to the island of Montréal where Bourdeau calls home, this excellent 2023 release is notable for both its beautiful fidelity and acoustic capture of the instrument, as well Bourdeau’s bold decision to be stylistically agnostic and take on a mixed bag of intriguing repertoire whose only point of connection is the geographic origin of the composers. Although on the surface there may be little that unifies the music of Claude Champagne and Oscar Peterson, in the skilled hands of Bourdeau, the angles are found despite the stylistic discrepancies, and repertoire and artistry coalesce nicely to form a compelling and unified musical statement. Other composers represented include François Morel, André Mathieu, Jacques Hétu, John Rea, Denis Gougeon, Rachel Laurin and Marc-André Hamelin.

Colin Eatock – Choral and Orchestral Music
Sinfonia Toronto; Soundstreams’ Choir 21
Centrediscs CMCCD31023 (cmccanada.org/product-category/recordings/centrediscs)

Following up on the Canadian Music Centre’s release of Colin Eatock: Chamber Music in 2012 (CMCCD 17812) this second volume features Eatock’s orchestral and choral works in performances by Sinfonia Toronto conducted by Nurhan Arman and the Soundstreams’ Choir 21 under the direction of David Fallis.

A baker’s dozen of Eatock’s choral works are on offer here. A number of them are based on sacred texts: The Lord Is Risen!, Three Psalms and Benedictus es: Alleluia are straightforward, major key settings in a largely syllabic and homophonic style, conventionally adorned with fleeting imitative passages, serene modulations and an abundance of sighing suspensions. Cast in a similar vein, the secular selections exhibit a somewhat darker tone and feature settings of texts by well-known authors Walt Whitman, Amy Lowell, Christina Rossetti and the exceedingly obscure 16th-century poet Francis Kindlemarsh. 

The extended opening track, a setting of Whitman’s Ashes of Soldiers, is an expansion of a work that also appeared in Eatock’s previous chamber music disc, heard here in a setting for string orchestra and harp with an extended instrumental introduction featuring a beautifully played introspective clarinet solo by Kornel Wolak followed by soprano Lynn Anoush Isnar’s sensitive interpretation of the text. Only the final selection of the disc is purely instrumental, a delightfully quirky Sinfonietta for chamber orchestra in three concise movements that are by turns bumptious, plangent and just plain silly, all tied together by a chromatic four-note garland seemingly based on transpositions of the B-A-C-H motive of yore (and perhaps the analogous D-S-C-H motive as well in light of the galloping Shostakovich-style rhythms of the finale!). 

All performances were expertly recorded at Toronto’s sonically legendary Humbercrest United Church by Robert DiVito. The clarity of diction is superb throughout.

Paul Frehner – Sometimes the Devil Plays Fate
Mary Beth Nelson; Dominic Desautels; Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra; Gemma New
Centrediscs CMCCD 31423 (cmccanada.org/product-category/recordings/centrediscs)

This release features a fine ensemble of musicians from the Hamilton Philharmonic under the superb leadership of Gemma New, with mezzo-soprano May Beth Nelson singing the title track. The chamber ensemble comprises string and woodwind quintets, plus trumpet, trombone, percussion, keyboards and harp. The undertaking was accomplished in the impossibly short timeframe of two days last September, a fact all the more astonishing given that New was rehearsing Saint-Saëns’ Organ Symphony with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra during the same week.

Poems by Dane Swan provide text for Sometimes the Devil Plays Fate (which is a line from one of the two: Epitaph 8; Eclipse), along with an excerpt of a poem by Charles Mingus (also called Eclipse). Frehner shows a subtle appreciation for the themes expressed, repeating sections and giving them different musical treatments. The ensemble provides a commentary behind the incantation, sometimes syllabic, sometimes lyric. Nelson’s mezzo colour is perfectly suited to the dark material. Sometimes the balance is off, to the detriment of depth of sonic field. Recording this complex music under these time constraints might be to blame. Regardless, Frehner is a skilled orchestrator and knows exactly how to set players and voice in complementing strengths.  

Voluptuous Panic is the intriguing title of the work filling the final two tracks: Escape Velocity and Saltarello – Proxima Centauri; Frehner captures vertiginous sensation, often employing a “circus band” aesthetic. The middle cut is a piece I know and love: Cloak; Concerto for Clarinet and Ensemble (2016, revised 2022). Soloist Dominic Desautels gives a hyper-dramatic reading of the piece. The revisions work well, making me want another shot at it myself.*  

Editor’s note: Max Christie was the soloist in the premiere of Cloak with the New Music Concerts ensemble under Robert Aitken at Betty Oliphant Theatre in December, 2017.

Robert Lemay – Lignum et Spiritus
Stephen Tam; Anthony Thompson; Ron Cohen Mann; Kevin Harris; Yoko Hirota
Centrediscs CMCCT 12323 (cmccanada.org/shop/cmcct-12323/)

Composer Robert Lemay has, in a recording he calls Lignum et Spiritus, attempted to fuse four kinds of woodwinds instruments with the piano and enlisted pianist Yoko Hirota to facilitate this fusion with four instrumentalists. The performing artists include Stephen Tam (flute), Anthony Thompson (clarinet), Ron Cohen Mann (oboe) and Kevin Harris (bassoon) respectively for works titled Point d’équilibre, Shared Visions, Play Off and Au courde-à-courde.

Lemay’s intention to “fuse” two musical instruments suggests an attempt – albeit both scientific and intellectual – not so much to inextricably bind, but to allow the two fused entities to create something new. The attempt, he says is non-pedagogical. He means for the music to organically redirect the physical nature of each of the individual instruments – wood or Lignum – by exerting a spectral force, which suggests breathing a new spirit into the sonic nature of the instruments, hence the Spiritus in the title.

Each pair of instruments produces alternating timbres that magically create new organic-sounding variations. Lemay’s imaginative creations and Hirota’s inspirational pianism preside over duets which are mystical Schoenbergian odysseys that create new musical space transformed by vertical (pitch) and horizontal (rhythm and permutation) forces.

Transformation – Interactive works for piano
Megumi Masaki
Centrediscs CMCDVD 29322 (cmccanada.org/product-category/recordings/centrediscs)

Japanese-Canadian Megumi Masaki is an internationally renowned pianist, multimedia performing artist, educator and curator who was recently appointed Director of Music at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. The DVD Transformation features her performing three interactive Canadian compositions for piano and new technology, each composed in collaboration with Masaki. A project documentary follows.

Orpheus (1) by T. Patrick Carrabré (composer, live electronics) and Margaret Atwood (poetry), for piano, toy piano, synthesizer and voice, challenges the Orpheus myth as a love story. Electronic sound washes open, then Masaki’s musically played simple lines and white snowflake-like specks on the blue backdrop. Faster accessible music, keyboard lines, spoken poetry, electronic rumbles/washes and backdrop scenes add excitement.

Piano Games by Keith Hamel (composer, software designer, live computer operator) for piano, hand tracking and live interactive video which responds to the piano sounds and hand positions, making each performance different. Backdrop lightning-like flashes and swirls match Masaki’s outfit colours. Hostile loud sounds and exploding lights to calming softer sounds and slower swirls to the pianist’s physical gestures, this is gaming chamber music!

Dōshite? どうして? by Bob Pritchard (composer, SHRUG designer, live computer operator) for piano, voice and movement honours the over 21,000 Japanese Canadians sent to internment camps in 1942 during WWII. Use of spoken text from Tsukiye Muriel Kitagawa’s book This is My Own (editor Roy Miki’s permission), a film featuring black and white photos from this time and piano music including Japanese song fragments “is offered as a form of apology”. 

Masaki and each composer talk about their musical and technological creative process and working together in the informative Transformation Documentary Film.

The music, visuals and hi-tech interactions on Transformation are indeed unforgettably transforming.

...and the Lord Hath Taken Away
The Holy Gasp
Independent  (theholygasp.bandcamp.com)

If, like me, you had neither heard of, nor listened to, The Holy Gasp before, the mere thought of approaching this album would be to expect something spiritually inclined. After all an ensemble called The Holy Gasp… well, what other kind of music would the ensemble make? Moreover, the album is titled … and the Lord Hath Taken Away, a direct quote from The Book of Job, of the Bible’s Old Testament spoken by the afflicted man himself at the height of his long suffering.

However, as it turns out, the ensemble’s frontman, Toronto-born poet, composer and vocalist of repute, Benjamin Hackman – knowledgeable as he as about scripture – is also a wonderfully free-thinking musician who can wield his impressive tenor voice and move easily between a kind of opera recitative, he’s-a-jolly-good-fellow klezmer, moaning blues-inflected vocals and any other style that his extraordinary music demands.  

Hackman’s multi-faceted skills and this shape-shifting music are eloquently articulated by the musicians in this large ensemble. And it is all held together as if in an enormous musical sculpture by the extraordinary Robert W. Stevenson who conducts it all. To experience a snapshot version simply skip from the darkening of The Merry Man of Uz to Who Framed Moishe Hackman? to the rollicking Everything Where It Should Be. But do that and you will be missing out on 15 other songs, each with its own evocative mystery and musical thrill. 

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Za Klavir: For the Piano
Nina Platiša
Independent (ninaplatisa.com)

Elemental and concise – most under three minutes – the 27 pieces of Za Klavir: (For the Piano), composed between 2018 and 2022, are subtly spiced with piquant sprinkles of Balkan folk idioms. Engagingly varied in tempo, rhythm and mood, they share unadorned melodic lines and sparse accompaniments, often only simple pedal points.

Belgrade-born composer/pianist Nina Platiša, now based in Guelph, came to Canada as a three-year-old in 1994. Responding to my email query, she wrote, “When I was young, my mom taught my sister and me Balkan folk songs… As I began to compose the solo piano pieces that would eventually make up this album, the music to which I felt the closest connection was often the simplest, pieces with simple melodies and harmonies akin to those of Balkan folk music – unpretentious and transparent. They seemed to issue from me naturally.”

Save for the concluding Saputnik (Companion) No.1, the pieces are numbered, not named. In an interview posted online, Platiša described three of them, beginning with the solemn No.7. “I saw an image of it being played at the funeral of my grandfather or great uncle. I pictured my family and friends dancing to No.20 at my family’s slava (saint’s day) and I saw myself playing No.25 for a newborn baby.”

I was particularly enchanted by the delicate, melancholy beauties of Nos.5, 11, 14 and 19, reminiscent of Satie’s haunting Gymnopédies. I found Za Klavir compelling listening throughout; you may, too.

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Emilie Cecilia LeBel – field studies
Jane Berry; Cheryl Duvall; UltraViolet; Ilana Waniuk
Redshift Records TK530 (emilielebel.ca/discography)

Prolific Canadian composer Emilie LeBel has roots in the contemporary concert music scenes in Toronto and Edmonton. Recorded in both cities, field studies features five chamber works composed between 2016 and 2022.

It’s tempting to describe LeBel’s accomplished and mature compositional language as postminimalism. On closer listening however, it’s in turn austere, serene and sonically challenging, but also lush and lyrical. It embraces solitary long tones as well as complex harmonies and microtonal gestures. This complexity questions any neat “minimal” pigeonholing. 

Another sonic signature is LeBel’s ingenious use of coloured noise, exploiting the vast spectrum between conventional instrumental tone and white noise. In even if nothing but shapes and light reflected in the glass for alto flute, baritone sax and electronics, “tactile transducers on prepared snare and tom drums” supply the sonic grit. They provide a textural counterpoint to the two wind instruments’ built-in wind sounds as well as to their more typical lyrical voices.

Nor is LeBel afraid of boldly combining inherently contrasting instruments. For example, evaporation, blue is scored for the unlikely paring of piano and harmonica, both played with conviction and delicacy by Toronto pianist Cheryl Duvall.

LeBel’s considerable orchestration chops are aided by her close attention to the strengths and limitations of instruments and voices. Beautifully played by Ilana Waniuk, further migration for solo violin illustrates the former, while drift for voice and chamber ensemble animated by Jane Barry’s relaxed voice, the latter. I wouldn’t be surprised if an opera is in LeBel’s future.

Sources
Louise Campbell
Redshift Records (redshiftmusicsociety.bandcamp.com/album/sources)

Ambient soundscapes can be fascinating. It’s a mystery to me that some can also be as listenable, out of context, as the material on this new disc. That’s a long-winded roundabout compliment to the creator of Sources, multi-disciplinary clarinetist Louise Campbell. Full disclosure: I too am a Campbell, of the Irish variety, so call me biased at an odd angle. 

The clarinet on these four tracks is rarely heard without many layers of electronic manipulation applied. Campbell’s playing is equal to the material she writes without ever being showy. The point is not to highlight the instrument nor the player, but to distill the sounds she generates into evocations. The first track, Songbird, is a psychedelic dawn chorus set in Georgian Bay. Swirl (an elegy to her late father) evokes tiny watery movements at the edge of Le Fleuve St. Laurent. Briefly, Campbell allows her sound to stand unclothed by electronic reverb and echo, a breathtaking moment. Playing Guitar Gear rocks on about Campbell’s hometown of Montreal. It’s the most dynamic piece, and while I don’t get what it’s about, it’s fun. 

 The first three tracks each last around ten minutes, and the fourth, People of the Sea, balances the length almost exactly at 33 minutes. Also a music therapist, Campbell allows one to wander about within the sounds. I found myself hearing it accompanying my thoughts on a range of things (including editing other reviews) and when I checked in it was mostly finished. At some point a single line became several, and a stationary colour became something like a melody. The texture is pebbled, not granular but bumpy, like distressed beach-glass. The final minute or so is an open harmony, a major sixth resolving gradually to an open fifth over an evocation of surf. Amen. Quite beautiful.

Describe Yourself
Christopher Whitley
Redshift Records TK529 (redshiftmusicsociety.bandcamp.com/track/describe-yourself)

Six contemporary pieces for violin by living composers who also happen to be fellow Canadians make an interesting artistic choice. Add to that remarkable Canadian violinist Christopher Whitley performing on the 1700 “Taft” Stradivarius violin and we get an album that is beaming with adventure, potency, depth and ingenuity. Multi-talented Whitley interprets, collaborates, vocalizes, contorts, draws and carries the various extended violin techniques and melodies with the outmost conviction, all the while staying centred in the resonance and beauty of the pure sound. He is a sound magician with a deep understanding of composer’s intentions.

Some of these pieces are oriented toward exploration of the fundamental violin sounds, others more experimental. What they have in common is the array of open spaces left for existential sound. Kara-Lis Coverdale’s Patterns in High Places is successful in creating a continuum of musical pathways that are both soothing and probing. Nicole Lizée’s Don’t Throw Your Head In Your Hands is a pure joy to listen to; a beautiful cinematic canvas underneath violin solos is created through unconventional sound manipulations using old karaoke tapes. The album closes with In Bruniquel Cave by Fjóla Evans, its atmosphere so mysterious and dark that we might feel we entered a secret chamber to hear the time passing.

A violinistic and compositional chamber of curiosities, Describe Yourself makes its mark through a grand execution of imaginative writing.