Temps Nouveau
Michèle Losier; Olivier Godin
ATMA ACD2 2720

Aida Garifullina
Aida Garifullina; ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien; Cornelius Meister
Decca 478 8305

Saverio Mercadante – Francesca da Rimini (Pier Luigi Pizzi, direction; Gheorghe Iancu, choreography)
Soloists; Orchestra Internazionale d’Italia; Fabio Luisi
Dynamic 37753

Saverio Mercadante composed some 60 operas, but unlike his contemporaries Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini, he’s completely unrepresented in today’s active repertoire. Francesca da Rimini wasn’t even performed until this world-premiere production at the 2016 Valle d’Itria Festival.

The ill-fated 13th-century adulterous lovers, Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta, have been depicted in Dante’s Inferno and many operas, notably by Zandonai and Rachmaninoff. Historically, Lanciotto Malatesta killed his wife and brother upon discovering them in flagrante. In Mercadante’s version, Lanciotto instead sentences them to death. Francesca’s father, Guido, rescues them but when Lanciotto tracks them down, they commit suicide.

There’s some lovely music here, particularly Francesca’s Act One aria recalling past pleasures, and her love duet with Paolo, both episodes enhanced by prominent harp arpeggios. Soprano Leonor Bonilla (Francesca), mezzo Aya Wazikono (Paolo) and tenor Merto Süngü (Lanciotto) are dramatically convincing while negotiating the score’s coloratura demands. Bass Antonio Di Matteo adds forceful stature as Guido.

A grey architectural backdrop serves as a wall of the palace, the dungeon and the convent where the lovers die. Wind-blown, flowing robes, gowns and curtains create incessant stage movement. Conductor Luisi keeps the music moving as well, but Francesca still takes over three hours to unfold. What the booklet notes call “Mercadante’s propensity to a slower theatrical pace” likely contributed to posterity’s neglect of his operas. There’s enough good music, though, to make Francesca worth watching and pique curiosity about Mercadante’s many other forgotten works.

Andrea Andermann presents 3 Live Films: Rigoletto in Mantua; La Traviata in Paris; Tosca in Rome
Various Artists; Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale RAI; Zubin Mehta
Rada Film Production 2.110374-77

Firstly a large marquee credit must go to Andrea Andermann who produced these three made-for-television films of Verdi’s Rigoletto and La Traviata, and Puccini’s Tosca. Dreaming big with an uncompromising attention to detail Andermann brought together the finest production team, found classic locales and a stellar cast featuring Placido Domingo, Julia Novikova, Eteri Gvazava, Catherine Malfitano, and of course, the great Zubin Mehta to conduct and a legend, Vittorio Storaro to film it all. Still, one must also confess to wondering how on earth the producer, and directors Marco Bellocchio (Rigoletto) and G.P. Griffi (Traviata and Tosca) were going to make the grandeur of design and scale work for the small screen. More than anything the solution came in the form and miracle of Storaro for it is the cinematographer who made the grandeur of locations look equally grand for television – and therefore DVD as well. His use of lighting to bring lifelike proportion to characters on screen was no less extraordinary as was his ability to make long shots and big close-ups leap out at you.

You absolutely cannot go wrong with perfect scores and librettos in the hands of Mehta, who brought all of this to life aided and abetted by superb (film) direction, casting and the creation of atmosphere so transcendent that it felt as if you had been teleported to the Italy of a time long gone by. And then there was the conjuring of Verdi in the Mantua of Rigoletto, and the Paris of the real Marie Duplessis, the fallen woman Violetta Valery of La Traviata.

In both cases the intense melodrama of Verdi’s works becomes the very epitome of the word “operatic” as he addresses themes of love, betrayal, violence, power and death. Above all there is his genius for matching unforgettable melodies to moments of high drama that sustains his name even today. Of course there seems no one better suited than Domingo to play Rigoletto despite having to sing well below his preferred tenor range, for Verdi cast his principal character here as a baritone. Domingo pulls it off with aplomb. Still he is almost completely upstaged by the pristine soprano of Novikova. A more perfect Gilda there will not be in this lifetime nor is there likely to be a La donna è mobile as devastatingly wonderful as Vittorio Grigolo’s Duke of Mantua.

The music of La Traviata cannot be faulted although it flopped at its Venice premiere on March 6, 1853. And yet the opera – based on the life of Marie Duplessis, written by Alexander Dumas fils in La Dame aux Camélias (1852), grew to become one of the world’s favourite operas. Griffi’s film is just as lyrical and dramatic as the arias, including opera’s most famous brindisi, Libiamo ne’ lieti calici, sung here by José Cura (Alfredo Germont), Violetta’s lover. The extended duet between Violetta and Giorgio Germont and Violetta’s swooning last testament are perfectly nailed by Rolando Panerai and Eteri Gvazava.

Another casting coup appears in the form of Catherine Malfitano who plays the lead in Puccini’s memorable opera and appears to be as inspirational to Griffi in the role of Tosca as Sarah Bernhardt was said to have been for Puccini himself. Her fiery temperament that powers Act II as Tosca confronts Il Barone Scarpia (Ruggero Raimondi) as each uses sex as a weapon until Scarpia dies at her feet is the high point of the opera. Keeping pace with the action, Puccini’s orchestration is at its stormiest forever after as passion is substituted for poetry.

Wagner – Das Liebesverbot
Soloists; Chorus & Orchestra of the Teatro Real; Ivor Bolton
Opus Arte OA 1191 D

Finding a decent position as Kapellmeister with a provincial opera house, 20-year-old Wagner took Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure as a source to write an opera, his second, where a tyrant tried to reform society by banning all fun and lovemaking, but ended up made a fool by a clever, beautiful woman. Das Liebesverbot (Forbidden Love) did get performed in Magdeburg and predictably failed disastrously and was buried for some 150 years, but now rediscovered comes to us from Spain’s Teatro Real, Madrid, in this immensely entertaining, creative and gorgeously colourful show you’ll love. Failure aside, the action is quick-moving, full of surprises and humour, the music full of Italian charm and melody, lively rhythms and all very un-Wagner. We with 20/20 hindsight will be amazed at the young fellow’s uncanny feel for theatre, his writing for voices and ensembles, his orchestrating skill and occasional outcroppings of genius.

Brilliantly directed by Kaspar Holten with an ingenious multilevel set lit with neon lights, stairs, hidden corridors and cavernous spaces that can become a noisy bar in one moment and a nunnery or a prison the next, a young, wholesome, talented cast propelled by conductor Ivor Bolton who, like an energized bunny, moves the whole rip-roaring show like a steamroller. I am gratified by seeing leading lady Manuela Uhl again with her gorgeous and powerful high soprano towering above the cast, but Christopher Maltman as Friedrich the hypocritical tyrant, principal baritone (Cardiff’s Singer of the Year), is a worthy foil. Even the lesser roles are all excellent: Peter Lodahl, Ilker Arcayürek – two strong and sensitive tenors who end up winning the girls – plus the hilarious police constable Ante Jerkunica pining after the luscious subretta Maria Hinojosa.

Vaughan Williams – Riders to the Sea; Holst – At the Boar’s Head
Soloists; Warsaw Chamber Opera Sinfonietta; Lukasz Borowicz
Dux DUX 1307-1308

This fine CD set is an innovative collaboration between Warsaw’s 2016 Easter Ludwig van Beethoven Festival and the Yale Opera Program directed by Doris Yarick-Cross. Riders to the Sea is convincing and gets even better towards the end. The libretto is an abridgement of the celebrated play (1903) by John Millington Synge who, staying in the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland, saw a body wash up on shore. Synge was well-versed in local speech and customs and knew the threat of tremendous storms to fishermen. Vaughan Williams’ chamber opera reflects the story’s pathos and resignation in melancholy, restless parallel chords underpinning the idiomatic rhythm and line of the singers’ dramatic recitative. Compared to the play though, folklore and overall Irishness are much reduced with no Celtic music or Irish accents; the music is early modernist with considerable dissonance. The orchestra is less than classical-sized, but directed by Łucasz Borowicz, the Warsaw Chamber Opera Sinfonietta strings are precise and full-bodied. Woodwinds provide evocative solos and added ocean-wave sounds are effective.

Maurya is the mother of five sons lost to the sea. The tragedy becomes unbearable when Kathleen Reveille sings eloquently of the sixth and last, “Bartley will be lost now,” in her rich, haunting mezzo-soprano backed by the wailing women’s chorus. Soprano Nicole Percifield and mezzo-soprano Evanna Chiew as her daughters, and baritone Gary Griffiths as doomed Bartley, emerge as distinct personalities with clear diction and emotional depth.

Gustav Holst’s At the Boar’s Head (1924; the Boar’s Head is a pub) arose from the idea of fitting scenes from Shakespeare’s Henry IV involving the character Sir John Falstaff to English folk-song tunes. To appreciate this one-act comic opera, with material familiar to English audiences then but less so to us now, one must read the libretto beforehand and check out Elizabethan English vocabulary (sometimes bawdy or sexist). Fortunately, Shakespeare’s dialogue and rhetoric are outstanding and with coaching by Yarick-Cross, this cast’s projection and tone are impeccable. As the opera progresses events become more and more tangled as does the music, for example when Falstaff and Doll Tearsheet sing a ballad while young Prince Hal (the future Henry V) delivers an aria with the text of Shakespeare’s sonnet “Devouring time, blunt thou the lion’s paws.” Excitement mounts as Falstaff’s enemies start to appear; I won’t reveal the ending.

Bass-baritone Jonathan Lemalu is spirited and sounds wonderful as Falstaff. Tenor Eric Barry is smooth and pure-voiced as Prince Hal, especially in the sonnets which also include When I do count the clock that tells the time. I would have liked to hear more of Hal’s nasty side in his singing. As in the Vaughan Williams, Nicole Percifield as Doll and Kathleen Reveille as the Hostess are convincing dramatically and musically. With roles for bass Pawel Kołodziej and three baritones the production becomes a feast of low male voices, recommended for those interested in Shakespeare and English song.

Bernard Rands – Vincent
Soloists; Indiana University Philharmonic Orchestra and Opera Chorus; Arthur Fagen
Naxos 8.669037-38

Not every artist’s life can be called operatic. Yet the life of Vincent van Gogh certainly fits the bill. Born into a family dominated by an Old-Testament-God-like father, Theodorus, a preacher, Vincent was destined to fail at everything he tried.

He fails as an art gallery director in Paris. His feverish religiosity first garners him a position as a rural preacher, only to have that zeal undermine the position. His attempts at relationships are pathetic: he tries to marry and “save” a prostitute, only to have his noble intentions rejected. His friendship with Gauguin collapses, leads to (or according to some scholars, not at all) the famous ear-cutting episode. The only constant in van Gogh’s life is the love and support of his younger brother Theo, the source of money, paints and canvasses. Alas, progressive epilepsy and beginnings of mental illness (perhaps with a touch of lead poisoning) defeat Vincent. The final irony is of course the sale of his first paining shortly after his death and then posthumous fame.

This is an epic life, condensed here into two acts of beautifully representative music. The only flaw is the lack of an overture. This element, so brilliantly deployed not so long ago by Bernstein in Candide, is increasingly eschewed by contemporary composers, here to a fine work’s detriment.

Sigmund Romberg – The Student Prince
Petersen; Wortig; Blees; Ezenarro; WDR Radio Choir and Orchestra; John Mauceri
CPO 555 058-2

I presume that those of us who enjoy operetta, and others, are familiar with the many deservedly popular songs from The Student Prince, if only from the movie version featuring the singing voice of Mario Lanza shown again recently on TCM. Sigmund Romberg was born in Hungary, studied in Vienna, emigrated to the USA in 1909 and in 1914 became a US citizen. The Student Prince with lyrics by Dorothy Donnelly opened on Broadway in December of 1924 and ran for an astonishing 608 performances, a record number that stood through the 1920s and 1930s. It even outpaced Jerome Kern’s Show Boat that played for 572 performances. The many memorable songs include the Serenade (Overhead the Moon Is Beaming), Deep in My Heart, Golden Days and, of course, the rousing Drinking Song.

The cast of classically trained singers under John Mauceri, who is at home in all genres of music from symphony hall to Broadway, are well-chosen for their roles. There are nine soloists, the leading roles sung and spoken by Dominik Wortig as Karl-Franz, Anja Petersen as Kathie, Frank Blees as Dr. Engel, Arantza Ezenarro as Gretchen and Vincent Schirrmacher as Graf Hugo-Detlef. This winning, naturally balanced recording of the complete score includes some dialogue and the entr’acte music and opening ballet for Act Three.

Chamber Works of Henri Marteau & Alexander Zemlinsky
Mark Lieb; Phoenix Ensemble
Navona Records NV6076

Admiration for excellence of execution blends poorly with even mild disappointment in the material presented. Still, one must applaud the playing on this new release on the Navona label. In it, the Phoenix Ensemble presents chamber works of Henri Marteau, a little-known French composer, and Alexander Zemlinsky, a well-known Viennese one. The playing is clean and true, articulations are matched scrupulously, intonation is carefully maintained, all in service of pleasant if somewhat banal material.

Zemlinsky’s Trio in D Minor Op.3, for clarinet, cello and piano, is almost a retelling of his mentor Brahms’ late chamber work (Op.114) for the same grouping. Zemlinsky became, with Arnold Schoenberg, a major influence on European modern music, but in this piece we hear the emergent student demonstrating his ease with an idiom already becoming dated when it was published (with help from J.B., who recommended it to Simrock, the elder’s publisher). Full of wild passionate gestures and chromatically lush harmonies, the trio is high art conceived by a relative tyro, celebrating the grandness of fin-de-siècle Vienna. Mark Lieb on clarinet, Alice Yoo on cello and pianist Wayne Weng match one another flawlessly in service of this charming work.

Henri Marteau’s Quintet for Clarinet and String Quartet Op.13 opens with a kind of call and response between solo clarinet and ensemble, leading through a saccharine Andante into an aimless Moderato. And on and on. Marteau seemed to possess the means to say a great deal, yet have only platitudes to speak. I wondered if I was missing a cryptically concealed form, but my attention kept reverting to the question: what is going on here? The remainder of the disc is a woodwind Serenade by Marteau. Listen for anything beyond diverting and deft bits of fun if you will. I stand in admiration of any chamber group that puts flutes beside clarinets and makes it work.

Starlight
Kayla Wong
Luminous Vine Records (kaylawong.net)

Music from the golden age of Hollywood is the premise behind Kayla Wong’s suitably named second disc Starlight. Was it really more than two years ago that she released her exemplary debut recording Allure? Since completing her studies at UCLA, this Saskatchewan-born artist continues to enjoy a notable career as a soloist and chamber musician, including recitals at Carnegie Hall and Hong Kong’s Cultural Centre.

The disc opens with a set of six pieces by Ernesto Lecuona. Clearly, Wong has an unmistakable affinity for Spanish-inspired repertoire, in this case, by the “Cuban Gershwin.” Her performance of these contrasting musical miniatures is polished and elegant – from the rhythmic Cordoba to the sensuous and lyrical Preludio en la Noche. While these pieces may have been recorded not far from the rumbling of TTC streetcars, they are firmly stamped “España.”

Earl Wild’s three Virtuoso Études (from a set of seven) based on popular songs by George Gershwin are virtuosic show-stoppers. The lyricism and charm of the originals are ever present, yet these pieces also require a formidable technique and Wong approaches the challenges with great panache.

In keeping with the Hollywood theme are six pieces by the New York songwriter Dana Suesse. With their syncopated rhythms, and bluesy harmonies, tracks such as Jazz Nocturne and Serenade to a Skyscraper are indeed worthy tributes to Hollywood’s golden age.

Starlight is a delightful respite from our less-than-perfect world of 2017 – highly recommended.

Mademoiselle: Premiere Audience – Unknown Music of Nadia Boulanger
Various Artists
Delos DE 3496 (delosmusic.com)

In her own time, Nadia Boulanger was truly a legend. A pianist, organist and conductor, as well as composer, she was a renowned educator who taught well over a thousand students during her long career. From Canada alone over 70 young musicians sought her out, including Jean Papineau-Couture, John Beckwith (who managed to get to Paris on a hockey scholarship to study with her) and Peter Paul Koprowski.

Today, almost 40 years after her death, her legendary stature remains undiminished. But her compositions are largely overlooked – unjustifiably, as this fascinating 2-disc set shows. Of the 37 pieces here, almost half are being recorded for the first time.

By all accounts – including memoirs from former students like Beckwith, Elliott Carter, Leonard Bernstein, Philip Glass and the producer of this set, Carol Rosenberger (who includes a touching booklet note) – Boulanger insisted her students build a solid technical foundation. She had little interest in experimentation. Simple textures and clear voicings were what she encouraged, though she valued a personal style. And these qualities are what you hear in her own music. It’s polished – overly, at times – warm, witty, disarmingly tender and unexpectedly charismatic.

The 26 songs prove worthy of being in every recitalist’s repertoire, especially as performed by these fine singers – the thrillingly expressive soprano Nicole Cabell, the robust yet nuanced baritone Edwin Crossley-Mercer and the versatile, characterful tenor Alek Shrader.

The Trois pièces for cello and piano are Boulanger’s most frequently performed works. Amit Peled’s impassioned cello and Lucy Mauro’s elegant, sensitive piano provide the most engaging interpretation I’ve heard.

But it’s organist François-Henri Houbart’s dramatic yet delicate performances of the Trois improvisations which I found most thrilling. Fittingly, he recorded on the Cavaillé-Coll organ in the Madeleine Church in Paris, which is the very one Boulanger used to play (a photo of this magnificent instrument is included in the booklet).

 After her beloved younger sister and fellow composer, Lili Boulanger, died in 1922, Boulanger stopped composing. This set contains most of the music she wrote. By offering the fine performances these pieces deserve, it provides a convincing argument for making her music heard more often.

Tango under the Stars
Los Angeles Philharmonic; Gustavo Dudamel
Cmajor 739608

There is so much toe-tapping enthusiastically performed music in this DVD of Gustavo Dudamel conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic live at the Hollywood Bowl on August 2, 2016. From the opening dramatic distance shot of the stage, orchestra and audience, to the final closing stage close-ups of rhythmic boisterous playing and swirling tango dancing, every visual complements the composers, conductor, musicians, soloists and dancers.

Three great Argentinian composers are performed. Lalo Schifrin is best known for his film scores (especially Mission: Impossible). His Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra No.2 “Concierto de la Amistad” is a salute to his friend, guitar virtuoso Angel Romera, who performs his lyrical lines, faster strumming sections and closing guitar taps masterfully with the orchestra. Alberto Ginastera’s Four Dances from Estancia tells the story of life on the farm. The lyrical second movement aurally represents wheat swaying in the wind while the closing fourth movement is a fast alternating 3/4 and 6/8 time work.

And what is tango music without Astor Piazzolla? His Tangazo opens with low strings leading to more rhythmic sections and flute, oboe and strings counterpoint. To close the show, a “Best of Astor Piazzolla,” four Tango Nuevo pieces are given rousing orchestral performances with master bandoneonist Seth Asarnow and the energetic spicy dancers from Tango Buenos Aires.

Dudamel conducts with passion and precision. Sound quality is superb. Three bonus interviews are included. Listen, watch, dance and enjoy!

Canadian Composers Series
(anothertimbre.com) at105 - at109

Linda Catlin Smith – Drifter
Apartment House; Bozzini Quartet

Martin Arnold – The Spit Veleta
Philip Thomas; Mira Benjamin

Isaiah Ceccarelli – Bow
Various Artists

Chiyoko Szlavnics – During a Lifetime
Konus Quartet; Apartment House

Marc Sabat – Harmony
Jack Quartet

Tradition is a wonderful reality, but not understanding that the inner dynamic of tradition is to always innovate is a prison. This is eminently true in the case of music produced by the Canadian artists on the imprint Another Timbre. Beginning with Linda Catlin Smith, every one of the group under review has chiselled uniquely beautiful, but defiantly provocative works from out of the bedrock of contemporaneity. And although familiar forms such as the Piano Quintet (from Linda Catlin Smith) pop up in these performances, the music flies in the face of all conventions.

Indeed, these artists force listeners to reconsider what tradition is. For example, Marc Sabat, on Euler Lattice Spirals Scenery, positions himself in creative conflict with age-old protocols about how a string quartet ought to work. Likewise with Chiyoko Szlavnics, whose Reservoir sends strings rippling against flute, accordion and percussion. It becomes clear, then, that having actively thrown overboard melodic, structural and harmonic hooks that have been expressively blunted through misuse, these artists seem to build from what might– or mightn’t-be left.

Just as Frank Zappa once famously asked, “Does humour belong in music?” one feels compelled to also pose the question: “Does mathematics belong with art?” The answer in the architectural geometry of Smith’s Drifter is a most emphatic “Yes.” Its resident geometry, however, seems to have been informed by French curves rather than by set squares. As a result her spacy Piano Quintet seems to defy definitions of beauty, which although essential to Smith’s credo, is bereft of perfumed listener-ingratiating beauty and resplendent in the natural sounds of tuned percussion, bowed strings and plucked guitars.

The emerging members of Apartment House and the Bozzini Quartet float effortlessly over Gondola and Far from Shore seemingly tracing their fingers delicately over the contours and hachures of the map of a priceless treasure without compromising the location of its secret world. In all of this and other music on the double disc Smith makes use of time and space as well as championing the cause of her singularly poetic approach to the all-important beauty of the melodic line.

Meanwhile Martin Arnold’s music for Points and Waltzes, Slip Minuet and the title work of his album The Spit Veleta comes alive in the silvery tonal purity and exquisite subtlety of phrasing by its interpreters who bring fresh ears to these radiant gems. Similarly, Isaiah Ceccarelli’s seven pieces on Bow are designed to extract the maximum tonal depth from strings, reed organ, organetto and percussion; as does Chiyoko Szlavnics from strings and reeds and woodwinds, and the Jack Quartet with violin, viola and cello on the exquisite narratives on Marc Sabat’s Harmony.

It all bodes rather well for the future of this Canadian Composers Series and for Sheffield, UK-based Another Timbre, a label whose presence in contemporary music is doing yeoman work to shine a brighter spotlight on new music that is being beamed by across the world.

Worlds Apart
Christina Petrowska Quilico
Centrediscs CMCCD 23717

Canadian pianist Christina Petrowska Quilico unleashes the eight works here with such immediacy that she creates a special kind of pianistic excitement. Her technique is brilliant, and her imagination boundless. But it’s not just the thrill of the keyboard that drives her – above all you feel the fierce conviction that underlies her vision of each composer’s score.

This is the latest release in Petrowska Quilico’s ongoing recording project covering works from the Canadian piano repertoire. It’s as though she’s out to singlehandedly show just how rich it is. These works were written during a period of just over 20 years, from 1969 to 1992. They all, more or less directly, invoke historical sources – musical, literary or visual.

Peter Paul Koprowski’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Brahms and Steven Gellman’s Fantasia on a Theme of Robert Schumann take full advantage of Petrowska Quilico’s virtuosity. Koprowski gives the elements of Brahms’ Lullaby a Chopinesque treatment, only gradually revealing the familiar theme, while Gellman introduces his theme, from the slow movement of Schumann’s Piano Quintet, then lavishes embellishments.

In Las Meninas, John Rea follows the structure of his source, Schumann’s Scenes from Childhood. But he filters it through his viewing of Velázquez’s iconic, complex painting, Las Meninas by recasting Schumann’s 13 movements in various composers’ styles – Romanticism, impressionism, minimalism, jazz, and so on. Petrowska Quilico has a field day.

Her energy infuses Patrick Cardy’s mythologically based The Masks of Astarte with narrative force. In contrast, her incisive control allows a sense of space to envelop Micheline Coulombe Saint-Marcoux’s lyrical yet monumental Assemblages like a multidimensional sculpture (I thought of Anthony Caro’s works currently on display at the AGO).

In Quivi Sospiri by David Jaeger (who produced this set, and whose writings appear in this magazine), Petrowska Quilico is joined by computer-generated sounds. The rhapsodic yearnings of the piano confront the ominous electronics, then blend in a moving evocation of the sounds that swirl around the hopeless souls condemned to darkness in Dante’s Inferno.

Diana McIntosh’s atmospheric Worlds Apart, which gives this collection its title, weaves a shimmering fabric of intricate patterns. But it’s Geste by Michel-Georges Brégent, Petrowska Quilico’s first husband, who died in 1993, that forms the spiritual heart of this set – especially in the way he invites the performer’s interventions in shaping what happens and when. Brégent’s own description likens his score, mounted on a scroll, to a Calder mobile. In PQ’s hands the sense of urgency never lets up, even in the contemplative passages.

This set certainly showcases Petrowska Quilico’s talents, including her talent as a painter. The painting by her on the booklet cover, called Other Worlds – Light and Dark, beautifully sets the tone for this terrific collection.

Golijov – Azul
Yo-Yo Ma; The Knights; Eric Jacobsen
Warner Classics O190295875213 (theknightsnyc.com)

The Knights is a collective of younger generation New York-area musicians specializing in programs that encompass received classics of Western music as well as embracing vernacular and world-music genres. The orchestra is led by artistic directors and brothers, Colin and Eric Jacobsen.

This CD begins with Ascending Bird, a reimagining of a Persian instrumental folk tune by Iranian musician Siamak Aghaei and The Knights’ principal violinist Colin Jacobsen. Jacobsen’s initial solo evocatively imitates the Persian kamancheh’s ornaments and melodic gestures in a languid rubato before the drum section kicks in. The second half of Ascending Bird is marked by straightforward harmonic changes elaborated by swooping melodic fragments and highly saturated orchestration.

The title track of the CD is Osvaldo Golijov’s Concerto for Cello “Azul” (2006), composed for and performed by master cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Partly inspired by a poem by Pablo Neruda, it’s a major statement extending over four movements lasting over 26 minutes. The first movement Paz Sulfúrica evolves from a falling minor second interval in the strings, elaborated by Ma’s beautifully rendered sustained cantabile tonal cello melody, flecked with instrumental birdsong.

The work’s last movement Yrushalem, initially recaps the first movement, but eventually explodes in two brass-heavy climaxes, twin codas titled Pulsar and Shooting Stars. The second coda is perhaps the most cosmic-sounding and impressive moment of the work, in which the eerie denatured music very slowly disappears into the sonic ether.