Trade Winds
Tiresias Duo (Mark Takeshi McGregor; Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa)
Redshift Records TK428 (redshiftmusic.org)

Having reviewed Mark Takeshi McGregor’s CD of flute ensemble music, Different Stones back in November 2009, and now his most recent 2CD set, Trade Winds, I can say with conviction that I think he is a national treasure! It is not only that he is a great flutist and a truly engaging performer. I heard his recital at the Canadian Flute Association convention in June – it was truly memorable, not only because of his rapport with contemporary repertoire but also because he has a nose for that je ne sais quoi that makes a work a good piece of music. His choice of repertoire, and there is a lot of it – close to two hours – is unerringly good. The fact that the field was narrowed by limiting it to composers with some sort of connection with Japan makes his accomplishment even more remarkable.

There are discoveries here such as Kara Gibbs, whose Untitled Scenes covers the gamut from playful to meditative and serene; the flute sonata by Vancouver composer, Christopher Kovarik, reveals a unique compositional voice, forged through the study of Bach, Prokofiev and Shostakovich; and I was taken completely by surprise by the three works for solo flute by Paul Douglas, a flutist as well as a composer, and McGregor’s teacher at UBC. Elliot Weisgarber was another Canadian composer I had never heard of. A clarinetist in the late 1960s, he spent three years in Japan, where he learned to play the shakuhachi. His Miyako Sketches, to me anyway, reveals a thorough absorption of the Japanese musical tradition convincingly transferred to the western tradition.

I would be remiss not to mention Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa, whose superb ease and sensitivity as McGregor’s collaborator on the piano contribute substantially to the project. Canadian flutists, get this CD and then get the music performed on it and make it part of your repertoire! Everyone else, get it and start marvelling at the quality of the music of our composers.

Jörg Widmann – Violin Concerto; Antiphon; Insel der Sirenen
Christian Tetzlaff; Swedish RSO; Daniel Harding
Ondine ODE 1215-2

Orchestral works by contemporary German composer Jörg Widmann (b. 1973) receive fine readings here. Widmann is a virtuoso clarinetist who understands the orchestra’s newer sonic resources and has a performer’s sense of the dramatic. The title of Christoph Schlüren’s liner notes, Hedonism of Danger, indicates another aspect of this composer’s voice.

The one-movement Violin Concerto (2007) has roots from the later 20th century German neo-Expressionists back to Alban Berg. Overall the work is the antithesis of “cool” – the violin writing is intense with broad lyrical gestures and sharp contrasts. Tetzlaff’s tone is rich in the lower registers; harmonics are ethereal and intonation reliable. Harding’s orchestra stays sonorous in extreme registers, never submerging the soloist’s voice in its natural soundscape.

I particularly like Insel der Sirenen (Island of the Sirens) of 1997 for violin and 19 strings. It re-imagines the episode in Homer’s Odyssey as experienced on a rickety boat in the harsh seascape, with periodic squeaks, honks and rustling over tremolando waves. The solo violin “siren’s” vibrato is wide and glissandi wider; other sirens are high-pitched and the atmosphere is menacing.

Antiphon (2007-08) for full orchestra is the most hard-edged and dissonant work. Abrupt, aggressive gestures such as sharp attacks and crescendi suggest a post-industrial world where things are battered and torn at. In both this and the preceding work, innovations of Schafer, Penderecki and Ligeti are excitingly transformed by and for a new generation in a new millennium.

Concert Note: Widmann is featured as composer, conductor and clarinetist when New Music Concerts presents ”A Portrait of Jörg Widmann” on April 18 at the Betty Oliphant Theatre.

Rosenthal – L’intégrale pour piano
Stéphane Lemelin
ATMA ACD2 2587

While Manuel Rosenthal earned his greatest success as a conductor over the span of his long lifetime (he died in 2003 a few weeks short of his 99th birthday) he was also a composer of considerable merit, writing in an affable, neo-classical style. For whatever reason, his output for solo piano is comparatively small, all of it written between 1924 and 1934, and it is presented in its entirety on this ATMA release featuring pianist Stéphane Lemelin.

With his affinity for French music, it seems appropriate that Lemelin should be the one to unearth this relatively obscure repertoire. He studied with Karl Ulrich Schnabel and Leon Fleisher and since 2001 has been on faculty at the University of Ottawa.

From the gentle opening chords of the Huit Bagatelles from 1924, it’s clear that Lemelin is very much at home with this music. His playing is refined and elegant, ably capturing the ever-contrasting moods of these musical miniatures. And it’s this sense of kaleidoscopic variety that makes these pieces so engaging. The brief Valse des pêcheurs à la ligne (The Angler’s Waltz) is all pastoral tranquility, while the suite Les Petits Métiers from 1934 is a musical description of various occupations, ranging from the striking chords of the “Le Maréchal-ferrant” (The Blacksmith), to the staccato frenzy of “La Petit Télégraphiste” (The Telegraph Operator). Do I hear echoes of François Couperin? Lemelin handles it all with great panache.

While Rosenthal’s piano output might not be deemed “great music,” it nevertheless has a charm all its own, often combining elements of French salon style with the more progressive tendencies of Ravel and Milhaud. Lemelin is to be commended for bringing to light some intriguing 20th-century repertoire that might have been undeservedly forgotten.

Ligeti – Violin Concerto; Lontano; Atmosphères; San Francisco Polyphony
Benjamin Schmid; Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra; Hannu Lintu
Ondine ODE 1213-2

It’s not just the terrific performances on this disc that make it so appealing. The programming of four iconic works by Hungarian composer György Ligeti offers a handy overview of the orchestral music of one of the most imaginative, idiosyncratic, influential and enjoyable composers of the past century. Ligeti was a loner, but his music was embraced by leading avant-garde composers and featured in popular films like 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The big draw here is violinist Benjamin Schmid’s energized performance of the majestic Violin Concerto, a late work from 1993. There are plenty of thrills, especially in the virtuosic cadenza. But what makes this performance so memorable is the way Schmid and conductor Hannu Lintu find the ideal balance between Ligeti’s angular modernism and his heartfelt lyricism.

The earliest work here, Atmosphères, from 1961, still fascinates – that such an apparently static work can be so gripping. The surface is all glassy smoothness. But Lintu takes us deep into the colours and textures swirling underneath as they emerge and recede.

By the time Ligeti wrote San Francisco Polyphony, in 1974, he was working with recognizable melodies, layering them in new and exciting ways. In his delightfully idiosyncratic booklet notes Lintu admits that “successfully executing the trickiest sequences in San Francisco Polyphony requires not only skill but a generous helping of good luck, too.” It sounds like everyone involved in this marvellous disc had plenty of both good luck and skill.

Concert note: Hannu Lintu conducts the Toronto Symphony Orchestra at Roy Thomson Hall on March 20 and 22 in Solen by Matthew Whittall, Symphony No.5 by Sibelius and Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.5, with Angela Hewitt as soloist.

Nebula – solo piano music of Heather Schmidt
Heather Schmidt
Centrediscs CMCCD 19613

Throughout musical history, the term “pianist-composer” is one that has been used all too liberally – usually it’s a case of either-or. So when someone such as Heather Schmidt comes along, we tend to sit up and take notice, for she truly excels on both levels. Her newest disc, Nebula, on the CMC label, is the first opportunity for the public to enjoy her pianistic talents at performing her own solo music, while demonstrating just how well the description pianist-composer applies to this Calgary-born artist.

Schmidt studied piano and composition at the Juilliard School and later at Indiana University, where she was the youngest student to earn a doctorate degree. Since then, she’s been the recipient of numerous honours, including three consecutive BMI awards and two from SOCAN.  Most recently, a move to Los Angeles with a focus on the creation of film and television scores has revealed yet another side of her talents.

In creating Nebula, she explained that it was her aim to capture the special connection between composer, performer and audience and as a result she deliberately included works with a wide range of styles. Indeed, contrast is a big part of this disc, and her music demonstrates a myriad of influences. Pieces such as Silver Tides and Serenity are nocturnal and atmospheric while the “Fugue” from Twelve for Ten is a robust contemporary interpretation of a baroque form. In contrast, Shimmer owes something to the French Impressionists, while the technically-demanding Nebula is bold and impassioned. Throughout, her flawless technique goes hand-in-hand with a deeply-rooted sensitivity.

Bravo, Ms. Schmidt, you’ve proven that you are indeed a rara avis, a fine pianist who also happens to excel at composition, and Nebula is an example of some fine solo contemporary musicmaking on many levels.

A Sweeter Music
Sarah Cahill
Other Minds Records OM 1022-2

This CD has an admirable concept, which packs a powerful message in today’s society. The title comes from a quote by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. from his Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1964: “We must see that peace represents a sweeter music, a cosmic melody, that is far superior to the discords of war.”

The repertoire chosen for this CD reflects a myriad of responses from the selected composers. Terry Riley’s Be Kind to One Another (2008/2010) is a rag, which began as his late-night improvisatory noodling. This was not what I expected for a first piece on this themed CD. You would think an Arvo Pärt spiritual work would reflect the CD’s concept. However, I enjoyed the retro-sounding work and let myself really live in the musical moment and anticipated being surprised by the rest of the CD. Meredith Monk’s Steppe Music (excerpts) (1997) explores colour, texture, resonance and gesture. Frederic Rzewski’s Peace Dances (2007/2008) were written for Sarah Cahill. The brevity and unique sound for each of the seven pieces remind me of Henry Cowell’s Six Ings. These works are a wonderful addition to the contemporary piano repertoire. Kyle Gann’s War is Just a Racket (2008) has the pianist making a speech given by General Smedley in 1933. Although Cahill did an admirable job in her oration I would have preferred a low baritone to represent the general’s voice. Carl Stone’s Sonamu (2010) with electronics created ghostly apparitions of sound and Phil Kline’s 2009 The Long Winter (“Crash” and “Embers”) is recommended for the lovely tonal quality of “Embers.” Toning (2008) by Yoko Ono sounded like someone tuning the piano and although I understand the musical concept I felt this was the weak link in the CD. The Residents: drum no fife (2008) with text and narration by the Residents was a fitting end to this intriguing and worthwhile CD.

The program notes, most written by the composers, were excellent and informative. Cahill played with a sweet and sensitive tone and touch. Her technique was impeccable and I recommend this CD highly.

Returning Minimalism (In Deung – vibration of the spirit (getaran jiwa); In Dang – teruna’s dream (mimpi teruna))
Gamelan Semara Ratih of Bali
Sargasso scd28074 (sargasso.com)

This musically intriguing and culturally complex release uses American composer Terry Riley’s genre-defining 1964 minimalist work In C as a working model for exploration and improvisation by the renowned group Gamelan Semara Ratih (GSR) from southern Bali, Indonesia. It’s the brainchild of the Italian gamelan recording producer and composer John Noise Manis who has since the 1990s nurtured the notion of bringing together two of his musical passions: minimalism, and Javanese and Balinese forms of gamelan music. This ambitious album is the third in the series titled “Returning Minimalism.” In each, the creative challenge posed by Noise Manis to indigenous performers: find your inner, culturally appropriate In C.

He’s certainly not been the first to employ cross-cultural approaches to exploring music he loves. As the musicologist Kyle Gann has written, “minimalism [can be seen as] an irruption of non-Western influences into the Western tradition – even, American music’s attempt to connect with the rest of the world.” More pointedly however: did gamelan music somehow exert a substantive influence on early minimalism? There’s no evidence for this. To the contrary in 2011 Terry Riley stated that in the early 1960s when he created his early minimalist works, “the fact is that I didn’t know about gamelan.”

Regardless of shifting perceived patterns of cross-cultural influence the ongoing Returning Minimalism project argues for the important work of contesting stereotypical Western exoticist readings of culture. In this album the project has put a seminal musical composition, which at its birth shook up norms of classical Western music, into the hands of Balinese composers and musicians.

Guided by the seasoned American gamelan musician Ken Worthy, in their adaptive explorations of In C the 23 musicians of GSR are heard in two works on this ear-opening album. They form an attractive unforced-sounding hybrid reflecting both their Balinese and minimalist sources with clarity while not compromising either. On track one, In Deung – Vibration of the Spirit, melodic cells from In C are transposed into the seven-tone tuning of the GSR gamelan evoking an introspective mood representing “the spirit centred in the self.” By way of contrast the more lively In Dang – Teruna’s Dream reworks In C motifs and skilfully weaves into the fabric occasional quotations from Teruna Jaya (Victorious Youth), the influential early 20th-century North Balinese masterwork.

This marvellous music helps us deepen our understanding and enjoyment of such masterfully made multiple redirections in the flow of trans-cultural influences.

Gamelan Cage – John Cage’s prepared piano pieces on Balinese Gamelan
Sanggar Ceraken of Bali
Sargasso scd28075 (sargasso.com)

This album is another example of Italian gamelan recording producer John Noise Manis’ passion: the reinterpretation of 20th century modernist Western music by various kinds of gamelan groups. Here nine Cage prepared piano works from 1940 to 1948 were arranged by American ethnomusicologist Andrew Clay McGraw for Ceraken, an ensemble of dedicated young Balinese musicians led by composer I Made Subandi. They were then recorded in the idyllic rural setting of an “open-air pavilion overlooking the terraced rice fields of Batuan village” in southern Bali.

In his well-researched liner notes McGraw wonders whether Cage’s 1940s invention of the prepared piano was influenced by gamelan music. There is no evidence for such a causal relationship. Cage’s unexpected sole work scored for gamelan came late in his life when Toronto’s Evergreen Club Gamelan commissioned Haikai (1986). Interested readers can find my account in “John Cage, Master of Silence” in The WholeNote, September 2012.

McGraw argues that rather than gamelan, “more important for Cage’s prepared piano phase was the interwar flowering of percussion and percussive music.” On the other hand Cage’s piano preparations, “almost always transform the string from an harmonic to an inharmonic vibrating body.” This key observation links the sounds of the prepared piano to the bronze gongs and keys of the gamelan which are designed to produce inharmonic overtones. It is because of this sonic family resemblance that many listeners “think of the gamelan (and sometimes assume a direct line of influence) when hearing the inharmonic, noisy, but definitely pitched sounds of Cage’s prepared piano.”

McGraw worked intensely for weeks through the Cage scores with the Ceraken musicians, learning them by heart. They produced striking transformations, rendering them with a fresh percussive sonic palette as well as with Balinese-mediated choices of tempo, expression and ensemble performance practice. Moreover the creative team chose their instrumentation from seven very different gamelans. Lending complexity to the arrangements: none of the sets were “tuned to the other and there were very few coinciding tones between them.”

The musical results range from experimental and exploratory sounding, as in the “microtonal” sections of Daughters of the Lonesome Isle, to the musically substantial Bacchanale. The latter, stocked with 16th note hemiolas characteristic of Balinese kotekan, was a favourite among many of the musicians. Sounding just as convincing in an arrangement for Balinese gamelan as it does on its original instrument, it’s my favourite too.

John Adams –Harmonielehre, Doctor Atomic Symphony, Short Ride in a Fast Machine
Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Peter Oundjian
Chandos CHSA 5129

When over 30 years ago John Adams introduced his brand of minimalism to the listening audiences, nobody could have predicted the staying power of the young composer. With the consecutive successes of Shaker Loops, Grand Pianola Music, The Chairman Dances, Nixon in China, The Wound-dresser, Death of Klinghoffer, the Pulitzer-prize winning On Transmigration of Souls and triumphant premiere of Doctor Atomic in 2005, Adams now is a part of the standard repertoire for orchestras worldwide. Enter RSNO, under the artistic direction of Oundjian. Doctor Atomic Symphony, a 25 minute extract of themes from the opera, belongs firmly to the “later” output of Adams. Less minimalistic, with no bare-bone structure and easily identifiable tempi laid out in a score, it presents a challenge. As Anthony Tommasini wrote in December, 2007 for the New York Times: “the tremulous surface of the orchestral music is deceptively calm, allowing the vocal lines to dominate. Just below, though, the orchestra teems with fractured meters, intertwining contrapuntal elements, fitful bursts and Mr. Adams’s most tartly dissonant, boldly unmoored harmonies.”

It is that ambiguity that trips up Oundjian, as the score seems to get away from him until the quasi-vocal lines of Huw Morgan’s trumpet lead the Oppenheimer aria Batter My Heart to its thundering conclusion. The earlier works are somewhat easier to conquer and fare much better – especially Short Ride which delivers on its Honegger-esque (Pacific 231) perpetuum mobile idiom. A worthy recording of important contemporary music.

Bright Angel – American Works for Clarinet and Piano
Kimberly Cole Luevano; Midori Koga; Lindsay Kesselman
Fleur de Son Classics FDS 58019

Kimberly Cole Luevano has placed a document before us that celebrates the strength of American composition for clarinet, and in particular, by happenstance apparently, the no-longer remarkable presence of women in the ranks. The remark is made only because there is and continues to be an under-representative ratio of recordings of women composers to men. Bright Angel reflects that the status quo is shifting, for the better. All the composers presented, and all the performers as well, are women.

American composition is an impossibly broad category, and yet there is probably a future doctoral thesis accounting for the unifying elements. In one category at least, there is the mythologized western frontier, viewed through the contemporary lens. The title composition, by Roshanne Etezady, is a musical reflection of the architecture of Mary Jane Colter, who in the early 20th century, according to the liner notes, “often faced hostility in the ‘man’s world’ of architecture,” and who helped develop a “quintessentially American” style. The music references some of her structures built in the Grand Canyon and in the music you hear that American-made sound of openness and grandeur.

Joan Tower’s Fantasy and Libby Larsen’s Licorice Stick bookend the collection, sandwiching the real heart of the matter: Nattsanger, by Abbie Betinis. A beautiful song cycle in Norwegian (alas, translations only available online at the composer’s website), there is fascinating and mysterious loveliness here, especially in the fearless voice of soprano Lindsay Kesselman. Toronto-based Midori Koga exercises her powerful new-music chops in support of her collaborators, and the performances are rich and assured. Cole Luevano certainly has a consistent controlled sound to hinge her flawless technique. Preference in tone quality is a personal matter for us all, and mine is for less edge than I hear on this recording. I don’t think it was a wise choice to open the disc with the Etezady, where this quality dominates from the outset.

Max Christie

American Piano Concertos
Xiayin Wang; Royal Scottish National Orchestra; Peter Oundjian
Chandos CHAN 5128

Over the years, American composers have contributed to the piano concerto genre as significantly as their European counterparts; this Chandos recording with concertos by Barber, Copland and Gershwin featuring pianist Xiayin Wang with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Peter Oundjian is a fine cross-section of American music spanning a 35-year period. Wang studied at the Shanghai Conservatory and later at the Manhattan School of Music, where she earned her bachelor’s, master’s, and professional studies degrees. A winner of numerous prizes, she’s since earned an international reputation as a recitalist, chamber musician and orchestral soloist.

Samuel Barber has long been regarded as one of the most romantic of American composers. His Pulitzer Prize-winning concerto from 1962 is a true study in contrasts, with more than a stylistic nod to Bartók and Prokofiev. Wang’s formidable technique is clearly evident in the frenetic first and third movements, but the lyrical “Canzone” demonstrates a particular sensitivity with just the right degree of tempo rubato.

While Barber’s work is music by a veteran composer, the piano concerto by Aaron Copland was the creation of a youthful 26-year-old, and is very much a product of the jazz age with its bluesy themes and jazzy rhythms. As in the other two works, Oundjian and the RSNO produce a lush and confident sound, very much at home with this 20th century repertoire.

If Copland’s concerto was somewhat influenced by the music of the 1920s, Gershwin’s was even more so. This concerto is clearly stamped “Broadway, 1925.” Wang has a particular affinity for this music, already having recorded Earl Wild’s Gershwin transcriptions, and here she embraces the syncopated rhythms and lyrical melodies with great panache.

An Asian soloist with a Scottish orchestra led by a Canadian-born conductor performing American music may seem an unlikely combination, but the result is some wonderful music making. Samuel, Aaron and George would all be proud!

Hindemith – Complete Piano Concertos
Idil Biret; Yale Symphony Orchestra; Toshiyuki Shimada
Naxos 8.573201-02

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the death of Paul Hindemith (1895–1963) Naxos has released a double-disc anthology of his works for piano and orchestra in performances by the Turkish-born pianist and frequent Naxos collaborator Idil Biret and the student ensembles of Yale University under the direction of Professor Toshiyuki Shimada. It is a logical pairing as Hindemith taught from 1940 to 1953 at the prestigious Ivy League school and had previously served in the 1930s as a consultant to the Turkish government, helping to establish the national standards and infrastructure for classical music education.

The earliest work represented here (from 1923), Piano Music with Orchestra (for Piano Left Hand), was commissioned by the affluent Viennese one-armed pianist Paul Wittgenstein. Unfortunately the pianist greatly disliked it and refused to perform it, though by contract he retained the exclusive rights to do so (the same impasse occurred with a work he commissioned from Prokofiev). The score was considered lost until the year 2001, when a copy was discovered in the Wittgenstein family archives. The ever-prolific Hindemith was likely none too concerned, for the lavish $1,000 fee in US dollars he received at the height of the German hyperinflation crisis (equivalent to 30 million marks at the time) enabled him to renovate and move into his dream home, a four-story 14th-century tower in Frankfurt.

The Kammermusik No.2 for piano, string quartet and brass (1924) is a much stronger work, brimming with the saucy inventiveness and powerful brass writing typical of the brilliant Kammermusik series of concertante works for diverse instruments. The same can be said of the innovative instrumentation of the intriguing Concert Music for Piano, Op.49 for two harps and brass (1930). The Yale brass section takes to this music like ducks to water, though all three performances suffer from sloppy co-ordination between the instrumental groups. Whether this is the fault of poor communication between the conductor and pianist or some quirk of the acoustics of the cramped Woolsey Hall stage I cannot say.

The Four Temperaments for piano and strings (1940) began life as a ballet score and is the most often performed of all the works here. Here again an underpowered string orchestra (6.5.4.3.2 in instrumental shorthand, as observed in a YouTube video posted by Ms. Biret) playing in a 3,000 seat convocation hall fails to provide the sonic weight Hindemith routinely demands, though the performers themselves are quite capable. The album closes with the mechanistic Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1945), the finest moment of which occurs in the surprising final pages with an arrangement of the lively old medieval melody “Tre Fontane.” Perhaps we could consider this retreat into the past as a coded reference to his gothic ivory tower in Frankfurt, now bombed and incinerated.

While the dispirited Bartók and embittered Schoenberg struggled to survive in America, Hindemith’s influence in the United States was profound and his music was widely performed there. By the time of his death however the larger world of composition had turned its back on him. Perhaps it is time to once again grant this grand old lion his due and acknowledge the power, nobility and impeccable craftsmanship of his music; this anthology would be a good place to start.

Sound Dreaming – Oracle Songs from Ancient Ritual Spaces
Wendalyn
CD and 5.1 DVD audio format discs wendalyn.ca

Toronto-based Wendalyn is a composer, vocal performer and sound energy practitioner. In this thought-provoking release, her improvised vocalizations recorded in ancient temples in Malta and Crete provide the initial soundscapes to which she has later added environmental, instrumental and vocal layers.

Wendalyn provides clear and succinct liner notes which describe her personal emotional and subsequent musical responses to her temple journeys. These greatly aid in understanding the composer/performer’s esthetic and provide the listener a welcome tool to listening and appreciating the six tracks. Chant-like in nature, her music has an extremely calming effect. Her voice is clear, her pitch is exact and production quality is high. The initial track “Stone Mysteries” features long syllabic tones (such as ooohs) and subtle static changes of pitch and quivering vibrations. There is a welcome addition of water-like sounds of the Egyptian Rebaba (played by Randy Raine-Reusch) and melody- driven changes in the second track “Sirens of the Deep.” “Serpentine Dance” has the opening vocal breath rhythms juxtaposed against tambourines and a cicada chorus. This sets up the most interesting track of the set, in both its spontaneous response to the Crete temple, and compositional expertise.

At times the chants and musical ideas drag on for too long, and her inspirational musings seem too farfetched to be believed. But this is an interesting aural foray into the world of an inquisitive and honest artist searching for and finding her own inner sound.

Magnus Lindberg – EXPO;
Piano Concerto No.2; Al largo
Yefim Bronfman; New York Philharmonic; Alan Gilbert
Dacapo 8.226076

Magnus Lindberg was the Marie-Josée Kravis composer-in-residence at the New York Philharmonic from 2009 to 2012 and this CD was recorded live with the New York Philharmonic under the leadership of music director Alan Gilbert. You couldn’t ask for a better orchestra or performances. The New York Philharmonic and Israeli/American pianist Yefim Bronfman are both incredible virtuosos who can play anything and make it sound effortless.

EXPO (2009) is a dynamic piece using contrasting fast and slow tempi. Friction is created when the pulse is calm and the quicker-paced music begins to agitate nervously, merging the various layers of flowing music in a kind of perpetuum mobile. This is a stunning opener for the CD and it is no surprise that EXPO has received numerous performances.

The Piano Concerto No.2 (2012), a veritable cornucopia of styles, begins with the solo piano in a slow, hesitating quasi-improvisatory cadenza which is most appealing. Except for a few more quiet moments the concerto continues in a classic dialogue between piano and orchestra in a menu of flashy pianistic tricks requiring a virtuoso technique and stamina from the soloist. Yefim Bronfman does not disappoint. He has the skill and energy to make scales, arpeggios and fast repeated notes sing and flow. Only chords could have been played with more voicing and colour. But this is a live recording and the excitement that was prevalent is intoxicating. There are many references to the Ravel piano concerti and I could hear Prokofiev, Stravinsky and Rachmaninoff as well. The movements are played without interruption but I would have liked a few more sections of repose and tranquility to break up the continual technical display. However, I applaud the work and performance. This should become a standard in piano concerto repertoire.

The Al largo (2010) is almost symphonic at about 24 minutes. The New York Philharmonic and Alan Gilbert showcase the horns in the opening fanfares with energy but also highlight the lyrical strings with their lush intensity. It is an extraordinary mix of fresh chamber music and Mahler-like symphonic grandeur. These are excellent performances from all the musicians and conductor.

Françaix – Music for String Orchestra
Sir Georg Solti Chamber Orchestra, Budapest; Kerry Stratton
Toccata Classics TOCC 0162

Sometimes all it takes is a letter to provide further impetus for a new disc. At least, that was the case with Canadian conductor Kerry Stratton who, upon searching for some fresh material, contacted Jacques Françaix, son of the eminent composer Jean Françaix, asking if there was any music by his father that had never been recorded. Yes, came the reply, the score for the ballet Die Kamelien and the Ode on Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. Two years later, both pieces are to be found on this fine CD of music for strings on the Toccata Classics label featuring the Sir Georg Solti Chamber Orchestra.

2012 marked the centenary of Françaix’s birth — he lived until 1997 — and over the course of his lifetime, he quietly carved out a niche as a gifted and prolific composer, completing more than 200 pieces in numerous genres. The disc opens with the Symphony for Strings, written in 1948. Containing more than just a touch of French insouciance, this is elegant music, elegantly played, with the GSCO’s strongly assured performance further enhanced by a warm and resonant sound. Less well known is the ballet music Françaix wrote for Die Kamelien (The Camellias), loosely based on the 1848 play by Alexandre Dumas, which premiered at New York City Centre in 1951. The score is a study in contrasts, from the eerie opening to the highly spirited fifth movement, Im Spielsaal. Also receiving its premiere on CD is the brief Ode on Botticelli’s Birth of Venus from 1961, a haunting and evocative homage to the Renaissance Italian painter. Here, the delicately shaped phrasing goes hand in hand with a wonderful sense of transparency.

Kudos to Kerry Stratton and the GSCO, not only for some fine music-making, but for uncovering some unknown treasures that might otherwise have been overlooked.