Russell Hartenberger – Arlington
Ryan Scott; Russell Hartenberger; Various percussionists
Nexus Records 11053 (russellhartenberger.bandcamp.com/album/arlington)

Despite Ionisation (1931), that great work for percussion by Edgard Varèse, and many other fine works by the great Michael Colgrass, David Saperstein, Henry Cowell and Charles Wuorinen (to name but a few), literature written specifically for percussion remains relatively rare. One reason could be that outside of contemporary blues and rock ensembles with prominently featured drum sets, in classical music, string instruments are often called upon to play pizzicato and col legno battuto to simulate percussion.

But the paucity of literature is not the reason why we must praise Russell Hartenberger’s disc Arlington; for it is a disc where melody, harmony and certainly rhythm are all celebrated in abundance. Hartenberger is a composer and a virtuoso percussionist as well. A founding member of Nexus, he is also what you may call a musical anthropologist who has mined the art and sculppure of percussion of drummers from West Africa and Europe and Indigenous drummers from the Near and Far East to North and South America.

However, it is not simply uncommon scholarship that informs the two large works for percussion on this disc. Hartenberger’s works seem not simply designed to show off the instruments that play them but also to illuminate the music itself: Arlington rises above being a funerary tattoo to celebrate the spectral spirits dancing in the rarefied air above every tombstone. The symphonic Red River is a large-scale musical metaphor that gushes with exuberance celebrating earthly life in all its protean variety.

Heino Eller – Works for Violin and Piano
Andres Kaljuste; Sophia Rahman
First Hand Records FHR149 (firsthandrecords.com)

Estonian composer/teacher Heino Eller (1887-1970) is considered the founding father of Estonian professional instrumental music. He primarily composed small form instrumental works but did compose some larger canvasses including three symphonies. This release is the first to feature only Eller’s violin works, including ten premiere recordings. Violinist/violist/teacher Andres Kaljuste has a diverse career in Europe and champions music by fellow Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, with whom he and his duo pianist Sophia Rahman have a long working association. Heino Eller was Pärt’s composition teacher!

Three divisions of musical style may be made.  Eller’s early works written 1907-1920 are simpler.  Canzonetta (1912) is a fun, easy to listen to, slightly upbeat duet with unexpected extremely high violin pitches. Emotional Moment musical (Muusikaline moment) (1912) is rubato in feel with late Romantic tonalities. 

Eller tried to combine modern sounds with his personal aesthetics in mid-career works1920-1940.  Fantasy for Solo Violin (1931) is the first Estonian work for violin alone. Kaljuste shines creating a symphonic sound blending contrasting lines from lower dark to higher rhythmic ones with exciting fast descending lines. Pines (Männid) (1929) is an Estonian chamber repertoire favourite. Eller combines folk intonation and inflections in lyrical music about Estonian nature. 

Late career works (1940-1970) include Cross-stick Dance (Ristpulkade tants) (1953) with Estonian folk-like rhythmic melodies in conversations and accented notes breaking up the phrases.  

My Estonian parents introduced me to Eller’s Pines. Here I have heard more of his music as Kaljuste and Rahman perform with an amazing understanding of Eller’s artistry. 

they/beast
Pat Posey
Avie AV2638 (avie-records.com)

The Belgian inventor and musician Adolphe Sax is responsible for the saxophone being one of the few instruments to have a clear patent date (June 28,1846). He built different sizes of saxophones but the most familiar are the soprano, alto, tenor and baritone models. The bass saxophone is much rarer and, although the contrabass exists, its size and structure made it almost unplayable. The Tubax is a new version of the contrabass created by the German instrument maker Benedikt Eppelsheim in 1999 and is smaller with a much better fingering mechanism. 

Pat Posey’s solo album they/beast displays the Tubax›s incredible sound with a wide variety of materials, from Bach cello suites to Philip Glass› Melodies for Saxophone. If listening to Paul Desmond’s alto sax is like sipping a fine white wine, Posey’s Tubax is like drinking a delicious porter. Its lows are glorious and Posey dexterously wrestles ithrough some very complex material. they/beast is a unique and sonically adventurous treat. 

Ispilu – Works for Quarter-Tone Accordion
Lore Amenabar Larrañaga
Metier mex 77108 (divineartrecords.com)

Talented accordionist Lore Amenabar Larrañaga researched and self-designed her microtonal quarter-tone accordion. The sounds are produced in both left and right hand manuals, with the range and timbres expanded by 15 right hand and 7 left hand registers. Custom built by Bugari Armando, this is her first recording playing it. She commissioned eight composers to write collaborative solo compositions to explore her organ’s capabilities between 2020 and 2022, during her PhD studies at the Royal Academy of Music.

Fleeting Puddles by Claudia Molitor is an accessible minimalist work. The sounds below water are created with fast repeated notes like ripples or waves while slower chords, subtle atonal held notes with added melodies and intriguing low-pitched notes create water stillness. My Time Is Your Time by Donald Bousted has fast, ringing high notes, detached lower chords, meditative held-notes, descending lines and held clusters separated by welcome reflective silences. Lore’s held-notes bellow control at different volumes is amazing. Feast by Mioko Yokoyama features percussive accordion hits mixed with pitched and quarter tone accented chords, glisses and lower notes. Der Stimme der Stadt composer Christopher Fox writes his work grew out of a series of bell resonances exemplified by extended rippling atonal/quarter-tone chords, repeated intervals, then slower calming held-chords with slight tonal changes and melody. Compositions by David Gorton, Electra Perivolaris, Michael Finnissy and Veli Kujala are also performed.  

Lore’s musical virtuosic performances make this a must-listen release for all.

Linda Catlin Smith – Dark Flower
Thin Edge New Music Collective
Redshift Records TK543 (redshiftmusicsociety.bandcamp.com)

Toronto composer Linda Catlin Smith has enjoyed a long professional career attracting important commissions from soloists, ensembles, orchestras and choirs. Her strongly flavoured music has attracted increased international attention in recent years.

Founded in 2011, Thin Edge New Music Collective is dedicated to commissioning concert music and presenting the work on Toronto and international concert stages.

Dark Flower, TENMC’s freshman six-track CD, is a portrait album of Smith’s works, impeccably produced by contemporary music industry veteran David Jaeger. Seven outstanding Toronto musicians are featured: Cheryl Duvall (piano), Anthony Thompson, (clarinet), Nathan Petitpas (percussion), Ilana Waniuk (violin), Aysel Taghi-Zada (viola) and cellists Amahl Arulanandam and Dobrochna Zubek.

In a recent interview Smith reflected on her compositional process. “I often feel that the work emerges like the development of a photograph. Dark Flower [for piano, violin, viola, cello] for instance: I started with the idea of rolled low register piano arpeggiations in a bed of string chords – that was the starting point, just that one image. And that’s enough for me ….”

At 26 minutes, Dark Flower (2020) is the album’s largest work. Its contained emotion, often expressed through restrained, soft melodies, harmonies, textures and silence, achieves a delicate balance between the old – I hear Renaissance and 20th-century music echoes – and our age’s complexity. TENMC’s dedicated ensemble playing maintains an admirable equilibrium between the various musical threads throughout this masterful work’s substantial arc. 

Remarkably, the entire album sustains a sensuous, intimate mood which sometimes shades into an iciness. That may seem contradictory, yet it’s where Smith’s music ultimately flourishes.

Portrait
Cheng² Duo (cello; piano)
Centrediscs CMCCD 33223 (cmccanada.org/product-category/recordings/centrediscs)

The internationally acclaimed Canadian siblings, cellist Bryan Cheng and pianist Silvie Cheng – the Cheng² Duo – having thrillingly recorded French, Spanish and Russian repertoire, here revisit their Chinese and Canadian roots, including commissions from four composers of Asian ancestry, three of them Canadian Juno-winners and nominees.

Portrait of an Imaginary Sibling, says Dinuk Wijeratne, describes “a young person of precocious and mercurial temperament,” the cello wandering aimlessly before joining the piano in driving rhythmic abandon. Vincent Ho says his music often reflects the Canadian Prairies’ “gusting winds, birds, lakes, even the stillness of winter.” His Horizon Images begins with Prairie Song, the cello lyrically expansive over intermittent piano splashes. In Soleil différé, the cello disturbingly evokes what Ho calls “vocal wails and sighs” over irregular piano punctuations. Windstorm’s aggressive propulsion requires – and receives – extreme rapid virtuosity from both musicians.

Two short pieces by Alexina Louie – Pond Mirrors Bright Sky and Wild Horse Running – feature raucous, abrupt accents, the “horse” bucking continually until finally galloping off. American Paul Wiancko’s 23-minute Cello Sonata No.1 “Shifting Baselines,” by far the CD’s longest work, somewhat outlasts its sparse, repetitive materials.

The CD includes two 20th-century Chinese standards. The Chengs’ arrangement of Hua Yanjun’s lament, Moon’s Reflection upon a Spring, employs bent notes, glissandi and sonorities imitating traditional Chinese instruments, while their breathtaking arrangement of Huang Haihuai’s Racing Horses, replete with headlong hoofbeats and screeching whinnies, should become (if not already) the fabulous duo’s signature encore piece.

Metamorphosis
Saxophilia Saxophone Quartet
Redshift Records TK526 (redshiftrecords.org)

Saxophilia is a Vancouver-based saxophone quartet active since 1996. Metamorphosis is their second album which showcases a diverse selection of works from five Canadian composers. The title piece Metamorphosis (Fred Stride) contains four movements which demonstrate the quartet’s ability to play exciting and complex lines with great clarity and intensity. Violet Archer’s Divertimento, originally written for the Edmonton Saxophone Quartet in 1979, displays the influences of her studies with Bartók and Hindemith. The sonorities are modernist and bracing. Beatrice Ferreira’s five-movement Nightmare Fragments offers quick and delightful trips to the world of dreams. With descriptive titles like Three Witches on My Bedsheets and The Taxidermist’s Hallway, it is not surprising this piece has recently been used as a score for a short film with a burlesque dancer. 

Rodney Sharman’s Homage to Robert Schumann is a meditative piece with long tones and ghosted chord fingerings which uses the first two notes of a Schumann song as an ideé fixe. This piece is an elegant departure from most saxophone quartet works which highlight the players’ dexterity. Finally, David Branter (who plays tenor saxophone in the quartet) wrote Four Stories which conjures up the history of saxophone quartet music and includes quartal harmonies, blues, bebop and microtonal sections.

Folks’ Music
Chamber Choir Ireland; Paul Hillier; Esposito Quartet
Louth Contemporary Music Society (louthcontemporarymusicsociety.bandcamp.com/album/folks-music)

Founded in 2006, the Louth Contemporary Music Society in Dublin is a visionary Irish presenter of contemporary concert music. It’s latest album, Folks’ Music, bookends British composer Laurence Crane’s String Quartet No. 2 with substantial new choral works by Canadian composers Cassandra Miller and Linda Catlin Smith authoritatively performed by the Chamber Choir of Ireland, conducted by Paul Hillier. Then it offers the same works in a binaural mix. 

Crane’s String Quartet, eloquently played by the Esposito Quartet, mostly eschews overt dramatic gesture. Quoting classical-era cadences, he deftly deconstructs them in various ways, not neglecting to add the occasional ironic musical twist. 

In her The City, Full of People Miller uses the concluding Latin refrain from Thomas Tallis’ 16th century choral setting of Lamentations (“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, turn to the Lord your God”) as her sole text, illustrating it with dense sonic textures inspired by Tallis’ score. With the choir positioned around the audience in six groups. the voices appear to swirl around the listener. 

Smith chose numerous epigrammatic poetic fragments by Emily Dickinson, many scribbled on the backs of envelopes, for her masterful choral work Folio. From Dickinson’s deepest feelings – recorded single-mindedly on paper scraps – Smith constructed a fragmented interior monologue with themes ranging from despair to the peaceful acceptance of the final line, “This has been a beautiful day.”

Underneath the contemporary beauty and compositional complexity of Smith’s choral setting of the text, her music has a forthrightness, order and onward motion. It suits Dickinson’s own complex New England character very well.

Azrieli Music Prizes – New Jewish Music Vol.4
Sharon Azrieli;Sepideh Raissadat; Naomi Sato; Zhongxi Wu; Orchestre Metropolitain; Nicolas Ellis
Analekta AN 2 9264 (outhere-music.com/en/labels/analekta)

Prize-winning compositions by 2022 Azrieli Music Prize laureates are firmly placed within the contemporary classical music realm, yet embrace an array of cultural and musical languages. Compositional excellence and innovation are showcased abundantly here but it is a combination of the abstract and visceral elements coupled with meaningful subjects that makes these pieces stand out. 

Shāhīn-nāmeh, the song cycle by Iranian/Canadian composer Iman Habibi, opens the album in a way that is both lyrical and strong, much like its subject. Written for classical Persian soloist and Western orchestra and based on the astonishing poetry of the 14th-century Judeo-Persian poet Shah Shirazi, the composition depicts the tale of Esther and delves on the themes of love, spiritual struggle and devotion. Soloist Sepideh Raissadat’s performance (voice and setar) is enchanting; her voice laments, dances, yearns, commands and pleads, bringing the heart of humanness into focus.

The winner of the Azrieli Prize for Jewish Music, Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord by Israeli composer and conductor Aharon Harlap, is dramatic in narrative and grand in execution. This large-scale work for orchestra and soprano uses the settings of five psalms, great musical gestures and dramatic phrasing to underscore trueness, reverence and the intensity of one’s faith. Soprano Sharon Azrieli delivers a powerful performance in collaboration with Orchestre Métropolitain and conductor Nicolas Ellis.

Rita Ueda’s Birds calling… from the Canada in You delivers quite different conceptual and musical language. Here we have a primarily atmospheric and textural piece that incorporates clusters of birdsongs of 450 bird species found in Canada. In this uniquely structured concerto for shō (Naomi Sato), suona/sheng (Zhongxi Wu) and Western orchestra, Ueda utilizes contemporary techniques to create a mesmeric environment, one that is quite distinctive and, at times, surprising.

Lutosławski – Concerto for Orchestra; Partita; Novelette
Christian Tetzlaff; Finnish RSO; Nicholas Collon
Ondine ODE 1444-2 (chandos.net/products/catalogue/OD%201444)

Witold Lutosławski is a composer we tend to forget about: not a candidate for the desert island, perhaps, but unquestionably a creator of excellent music. This disc presents three of his works for orchestra: the well-known Concerto for Orchestra from 1954 along with the Partita for Violin and Orchestra (1988) with Christian Tetzlaff as soloist, and the rarely heard Novelette completed in 1979. 

The playing under Nicholas Collon, the first non-Finn to be named music director of the Finnish Radio Symphony, brims with energy and commitment. The sound quality is outstanding: every section of the orchestra is vividly portrayed and the overall sound is balanced and warm without losing the smallest detail. Lutosławski’s mastery of drama is evident throughout, from the gripping opening of the Concerto to its Hitchcock-like finale and even in the lesser-known works on this disc. 

The Partita was written first for violin and piano in 1984 and works very well for orchestra, giving Tetzlaff ample opportunity for virtuosity with many colourful moments for the orchestra. The Novelette is a fascinating series of miniature, highly dramatic episodes placed between brutalist bookends. 

Throughout, Lutosławski shows his gift for inventive combinations and surprising turns of phrase, portrayed in complex language without ever crossing into the incomprehensible. This is dark and serious music, beautifully performed.

Olli 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.

Violeta 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.

Chris 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.

Watch 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.

Yotam 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.