Miroirs: Dutilleux; Liszt
Jonas Vitaud
NoMadMusic NMM028 (nomadmusic.fr)

Miroirs is a solo piano album of Romantic and 20th-century repertoire by French pianist Jonas Vitaud that stems, in part, from his work with Henri Dutilleux (1916-2013) at the Cordes-sur-Ciel festival in 2004.

The CD immediately transports us into harmonically adventurous worlds with Liszt’s Angelus, Klavierstück, Valse oubliée, Nuages gris and Dutilleux’s three Preludes: D’ombre et de silence, Sur un même accord, Le jeu des contraires (1973-1988). However, Vitaud has changed the order of the pieces and interjects a Dutilleux prelude between each of Liszt’s four late compositions. His rationale is to show parallels between the works written by these two very different composers, with Vitaud describing Liszt as a prolific virtuoso and Dutilleux as “a composer of the night.” The reordering may be confusing for a listener who is not following along with the liner notes, however Vitaud consistently conveys an acute awareness of harmonic colour and masterfully presents works that are not performed as often as they should be.

The album gradually leads to Liszt’s virtuoso Mephisto Waltz before closing with Dutilleux’s musically and technically complex Piano Sonata Op.1 (1948). Dutilleux consciously defied classification and rejected a number of 20th-century compositional idioms while expanding elements of the Impressionist tradition. Many of his compositions are refined and deeply moving, such as the Choral et variations, the final movement in the piano sonata, which Vitaud delivers superbly. Particularly impressive is Vitaud’s ability to convey strength without harshness even in the most technically difficult passages, resulting in an innovative and beautifully performed CD, released to coincide with Dutilleux’s centenary.

Woodwinds
Woodwinds of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
RCO Live LC-14237

This varied, attractive program of 20th-century woodwind chamber music presented by Concertgebouw wind players is a credit to all concerned. For me the highlights are Poulenc’s Sextet (1932/39) and Jánaček’s Mládí (1924). The well-known Poulenc is played with sensitivity, and Jeroen Bal’s handling of the piano part is particularly subtle. Fine recordings of this work are numerous: the recent Berlin Counterpoint on Genuin is more energetic and virtuosic; while the London Conchord Ensemble on Champs Hill has a more reverberant acoustic. But to me, the shifting senses of nonchalance, dreaminess and high spirits in the composition are most stylishly captured in this reading.

Jánaček’s late and wonderful Mládí evokes his memories of childhood in Moravia, with instrumental suggestions of speech, song, dance and play. The group projects frequent changes of activity and emotional tone confidently. Intonation is unfailingly accurate and Lucas Navarro’s oboe playing is particularly expressive.

Martinů’s Sextet for Piano and Wind Instruments (1929) avoids consistent style and instrumentation. The Scherzo is to me the best movement; flutist Emily Beynon’s virtuosity and tone make it shine. Gershwin-jazzy passages burst in on several movements, and the Concertgebouw winds turn the whole into a witty, enjoyable experience. The early Sonatina for Oboe, Clarinet and Bassoon (1931) by Sándor Veress (1907-1992) features intriguing dissonance, attractive lyricism and vital rhythm in turn, all conveyed convincingly by the reed trio who seem throroughly at home with the work’s Hungarian folk idioms.

Prokofiev – Piano Concertos 2 & 5
Vadym Kholodenko; Fort Worth Symphony; Miguel Harth-Bedoya
Harmonia Mundi USA – HMU 807631

Among the plethora of emerging piano virtuosos a name to watch is Vadym Kholodenko, the Ukrainian winner of the 2013 Van Cliburn competition. Of special interest is his partnership with the Fort Worth Symphony including the recording of all five Prokofiev piano concertos. Kholodenko’s stylistic and technical rapport with conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya and orchestra shows in fine ensemble playing. I come to this Prokofiev Concerto No.2 (1913) with memories: Yefim Bronfman’s blazing performance with the Toronto Symphony; also novelist Philip Roth’s astounded account of Bronfman’s Prokofiev Two in The Human Stain. Khodolenko’s technique is fully sufficient yet he emphasizes expressive, lyrical aspects more, starting with the expansive opening melody. He even manages to make the cadenza’s romantic ballast sound meaningful. The perpetual motion Scherzo and heavy tramping Intermezzo have fewer expressive opportunities. The Finale does however, amid much virtuosic bravado that Kholodenko also navigates successfully.

By 1932 when he wrote Concerto No.5 Prokofiev was seeking stylistic simplicity, no doubt under increasing pressure from the Soviet regime. Many passages show that he still had the ability to be both musically childlike and inventive. For example, the second movement’s clock-ticking motion becomes interesting with lightning quick scales and staccatos that pianist and orchestra make sound crystalline. In the fourth movement, the piano weaves beautifully around lyrical winds; later on, the performers achieve the required solemnity. I look forward to the other three concertos from this team.

Bartók; Ligeti
Ensemble InterContemporain; Matthias Pintscher
Alpha 217

Though György Ligeti’s early large-scale works brought him fame, his name was largely absent from North American orchestra programs in the 1980s. As a result, for many, he is associated with bagatelles and études instead of megaliths like Atmosphères. This Ensemble InterContemporain recording, better than merely reminding us of his orchestral roots, reaffirms his genius in both styles.

This is especially true of the Piano Concerto, featuring Hidéki Nagano, which feels at times like orchestral Ligeti and intimate Ligeti happening simultaneously, the sound streams occasionally lining up in a happy coincidence akin to those moments when a car’s turn signal blinks in time with the radio. This mechanical analogy is particularly apt, as the perpetual motion piano part also conjures up Conlon Nancarrow’s player piano works. The second movement showcases Ligeti’s trademark cosmic orchestral writing; here he weaves slide whistles and ocarinas into the fabric of a soundscape reminiscent of his Lontano for orchestra, delicately toeing the line between the apocalyptic and the mawkish in a way only Ligeti can.

Also featured are Ligeti’s concertos for violin and cello. Ligeti described his piano concerto as “music as frozen time, as an object in an imaginary space,” but these words might be yet better suited to his Cello Concerto, performed here by Pierre Strauch. The above are joined by two Bartók pieces, Contrasts and the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, and appropriately enough – for no two composers offer a more compelling solution to the problems posed by a world where both trite tonality and humourless avant-gardism are equally exhausted.

Concert Note: Matthias Pintscher makes his Toronto Symphony Orchestra debut conducting Mahler’s Symphony No.1, Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.24 (with Inon Barnatan) and his own Towards Osiris on April 28 and April 30.

Samuel Andreyev – Moving
ensemble proton bern; Matthias Kuhn
Klarthe K014 klarthe.com

Paris-based Canadian composer Samuel Andreyev is deeply influenced by the plastic arts; he describes the first work on this disc, the Marcel Duchamp-inspired La Pendule de Profil, in terms of cubism, and his pieces tend toward an object-like quality. A good analog for the entire decade of work represented here, however, might be abstract impressionism. The impressionists placed the immediacy of perception above all else, carefully modulating light and colour to reproduce the experience of motion and time. The abstract impressionists took it further, distilling the object until only motion and colour remained. Andreyev, too, reduces musical perception to its elementary components, exploiting attack and especially timbre for their visceral, immediate impressions.

Where the abstract impressionism analogy fails, however, is in Andreyev’s meticulous structural clarity. An abstract impressionist painting overwhelms with its chaotic density. Andreyev’s music, although saturated with chromaticism, is not spatially dense, and as a result the listener perceives the music as both weighty but translucent, ordered but atemporal.

The miracle material that enables this remarkable paradox is ensemble proton bern itself; the symbiosis between composer and the musicians is palpable throughout. As rare instrument specialists, the Swiss ensemble gives free rein to Andreyev’s timbral explorations. The best examples are PLP, which features the Lupophon, a bass oboe with a fibrous, tenor saxophone-like sound, and Bern Trio, an ethereal gossamer fog for quartertone-tuned harp, viola, and oboe d’amore. A moving disc in both senses of the word.

Simon Martin – Hommage à Leduc, Borduas, et Riopelle
Quatuor Bozzini; Quasar quatuor de saxophones; Trio de guitares contemporain
Ambiances Magnétiques Collection QB CQB 1616 (quatuorbozzini.ca)

The young composer Simon Martin has created three separate works here with highly distinct instrumentation in homage to a trinity of closely linked Québécois painters central to the history of Canadian art. The first piece L’heure mauve, inspired by the Ozias Leduc painting and the last of these works to be composed (2009), is performed by a trio of classical guitarists. Historically, Martin has arrived at the earliest of these painters last and he’s matched Leduc’s symbolist landscape with an extraordinary minimalism, organizing a piece that matches periods of silence with complex rhythmic patterns created on strummed flurries or plucked notes on open strings.

Projections libérantes (2007), named for a text by Paul-Émile Borduas, was composed for Quasar saxophone quartet. The piece uses saxophone multiphonics created by alternate fingerings and shifting embouchures to mine the instruments’ sonic resources, drawing, for example, simultaneous low-frequency blasts and whistling highs from the baritone.

That sonic creativity is matched by Martin’s handling of the string quartet in Icebergs et Soleil de minuit — Quatuor en blanc, which takes its inspiration from Jean-Paul Riopelle’s series of black and white paintings. It’s a series of brief vignettes, sometimes highly gestural, in which Quatuor Bozzini explores different textures often employing harmonics to create a kind of richly nuanced transparency, a contradictory dense thinness of sound resembling the texture of a painted surface, as clusters can gradually reduce to single attenuated pitches.

What ties these works together is Martin’s fascination with the physical matter engaged by these painters and the power of brush or spatula strokes in their work, qualities transferred to his own dramatic exploration of individual instrumental timbres and subtly evolving sounds. The ultimate effect resembles the dynamic stillness and material transformation that links his three subjects’ work. It’s music of power, beauty and originality, worthy of its subjects.

Mohammed Fairouz – No Orpheus
Kate Lindsey; Kiera Duffy; Christopher Burchett
Naxos 8.559783

Elena Langer – Landscape with Three People
Anna Dennis; William Towers; Nicholas Daniel
harmonia mundi HMU 907669

Elena Langer, a Russian-born composer who studied in London, writes in an idiom that recalls Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition as orchestrated by Ravel; she combines a Russian folk sensibility with modern orchestral colours and a deep understanding of the resonances between text and music.

This is especially true of the title piece, a work for soprano, countertenor, oboe, harpsichord and trio of strings. Here Langer casts the poetry of Lee Harwood, a 20th-century English poet best known for being John Ashbery’s lover during the 1960s, in a baroque-inspired musical mould. There is an uneasiness in the configuration, though – the poems, dealing as they do with urban love, threaten to struggle free from the old-fashioned harmonic conventions that constrain them. Langer, delighting in this tension, exploits it to very wry effect. This is especially true of the oboe part, which, ostensibly representing the third figure in a love triangle with the soprano and countertenor, frequently seems to make stage-whispered asides to the audience, offering commentary on the action in the way only wickedly good gossip can. “This is my first love scene,” sing the soprano and countertenor, but the oboe’s acidic obbligato implies mockingly that this is neither their first nor their last “first love scene” at all. Ultimately, the oboe is subsumed by the affair, and the three figures are left to swirl in the purgatorial ambiguity of their similar tessiture. Such nuances pervade the works of this vital composer.

Abeng
Rich Brown
Independent RDB03 (rinsethealgorithm.bandcamp.com/album/abeng)

Fulfillment
Michael Blake
Songlines SGL1615-2 (songlines.com)

Michael Blake is among New York’s most esteemed saxophonists, but he frequently returns to Vancouver where he works with some key members of the city’s jazz community. Fulfillment is a very special Vancouver project that uses up to ten musicians in an extended suite devoted to a dark episode in the city’s history: in 1914 several hundred Sikh immigrants on board the Komagata Maru were refused entry to Canada by means of laws designed specifically to exclude Asians. In subsequent events, advocates for the passengers were murdered in Vancouver and 19 were killed in an altercation with British officials on their return to India.

Blake’s suite abounds in complex emotions and original textures, gradually developing a cumulative impact. The theme of the opening Sea Shanty intertwines his soprano saxophone with Emma Postl’s voice to create an effect that’s at once dissonant and ethereal; there’s a coiling improvised duet between Blake’s soprano and Chris Gestrin’s synthesizer on Perimeters in which the two instruments are almost indistinguishable; a series of duets among the string players on Arrivals is highlighted by the unlikely combination of Peggy Lee’s cello and Ron Samworth’s banjo. Exaltation is an extended jam that adds Neelamjit Dhillon’s tabla drums to the densely textured rhythms created by drummer Dylan van der Schyff, bassist André Lachance and the rest of the group.

At the core of Blake’s music there’s the consistent legacy of modern jazz, from the extended use of blues structure and compositional inspirations from Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus and Oliver Nelson to the overarching expressive power of his tenor saxophone, best embodied here on the evocative Battle at Baj Baj, directly inspired by John Coltrane’s elegiac Alabama.

Songs and Dances from The Muted Note
The Disguises
Ambiences Magnetiques AM 227 (actuellecd.com)

Trombonist/composer Scott Thomson crafted this series of song settings for poems by the late British Columbian poet P.K. Page in 2012-2013, first recording them in a series of spare and artful duets with the singer Susanna Hood (The Muted Note, & Records, ET20). The project later expanded to include Hood’s choreography for four dancers and a quintet called The Disguises, adding alto saxophonist Yves Charuest, bassist Nicolas Caloia and drummer Pierre Tanguay to the original duo. The result is remarkable, sacrificing some intimacy but gaining greater resilience and highlighting the strength of Thomson’s melodies, like the vibrant Picking Daffodils.

The Disguises represent some of Montreal’s finest improvisers and Thomson has achieved a fine balance in the writing, creating arrangements that frame and expand Page’s luminous language without drowning it out, sometimes employing understated dissonance to suggest ambiguity. Thomson has studied with the veteran trombonist Roswell Rudd, and at times The Disguises strongly suggests the clarity and interplay of the New York Art Quartet, the brilliant band that Rudd co-led in the mid-60s: Charuest’s solo on The Understatement consists of brief elliptical phrases with shifting timbres, recalling the subtle work of NYAQ saxophonist John Tchicai.

While it’s the wedding of poem and sound that unites these works, moments of spontaneous musical creation abound, like the energy and precision that Caloia and Tanguay bring to The Disguises/The Masks, or the dovetailing lines of Hood and Charuest on Star-Gazer. Thomson’s accompaniment to Hood’s voice on The Metal and the Flower flirts with silence to suggest birds and tiny woodland creatures, while the brashly vocal, plunger-muted solo of The Mole conveys generations of jazz trombone playing.

The World Is Alright
Aimée Butcher
Independent (aimeebutcher.com)

This debut album by singer/songwriter Aimée Butcher, recorded when she was only 22, demonstrates clearly her ability to compose, and deliver beautifully, melodies which are both substantially interesting and satisfyingly – almost frustratingly – catchy.

The band, a quintet featuring Butcher’s voice, Chris Pruden on piano and keyboards, Brandon Wall on guitar, Jeff Deegan on bass and Robin Claxton on drums, all of whom are recent graduates of U of T’s hailed music program, has several feet planted firmly in the contrasting, sometimes feuding, worlds of jazz and pop. Songs like Stay or Drive and The World Is Alright are where Butcher’s hooks really shine: these are on the one hand pop songs, melodies that would feel at home in the mouths of singers like Alanis Morisette or Michael Bublé; and on the other hand recordings that highlight delicious, distinctly jazzy improvisations, including a simple, brief scat solo by Butcher. Especially notable is Pruden’s piano solo on the title track. It builds and develops perfectly, organized yet exciting; I always find myself saying “yeah” at the end.

Butcher’s band also re-imagines songs by Joni Mitchell, Radiohead, and, delightfully, Jann Arden; the haunting duo of Butcher accompanied by Wall’s guitar on Arden’s It Looks Like Rain might be my favourite track. With a pulse only lightly suggested, on an ethereal bed of swelling chords, Butcher delivers Arden’s song as though it was her own.

OUTgoing
François Carrier; Steve Beresford; John Edwards; Michel Lambert
FMR Records FMRCD400 (francoiscarrier.com)

As much as this performance is entirely improvised the musicians also offer finely gauged and beautifully regulated music. The benefits are immediately apparent in OUTgoing, which is not only audaciously spelled, but contains music that is also unflinchingly dynamic. The players – saxophonist François Carrier, pianist Steve Beresford, bassist John Edwards and drummer Michel Lambert – offer music that is impetuous, inventive and laced with paprika. In one episode after another on this empirically existential recording the players make music that is technically challenging and impeccably pointed. There is a miraculous balance between simplicity, depth and virtuosity, all in the service of expression.

Steve Beresford’s piano playing has an impish wit which, when pursued by the saxophone of Carrier, is pushed to address the saxophonist with an effect that borders on an almost “three-handed” playing, achieved by huge scales that sweep from top to bottom of the keyboard. Carrier’s own playing on saxophone as well as the exotic Chinese oboe, is informed by themes decorated with abandon, while Beresford passes the harmonics between himself and Carrier (especially on Kingsland Road) decorated with swirling arpeggios to once again give the illusion of there being three hands playing. The piece ends with passages of interlocking lines between saxophone and piano entwined with some impressive arco playing by bassist John Edwards. This is a sparkling disc which combines the talent of four astonishingly versatile musicians to create iridescent showers of notes cascading with echoing, scintillating exuberance.

Wrong Is Right
Noisy Minority
Intakt Records CD 262

NYC Five
Angelika Niescier; Florian Weber
Intakt Records CD 263

In Motion
Richard Poole; Marilyn Crispell; Gary Peacock
Intakt Records CD 264

At the very end of music’s spectrum, almost like planetary rumblings from outside the Milky Way, free improvisations imbue today’s music with a glorious sheen. Instrumental movements that one is accustomed to hearing are turned on their head enabling us to hear, with unabashed fascination, the explosive whimsy captured by some of the finest musicians alive today. Taking a leaf from Berg and Webern, Stravinsky and Stockhausen as much as from Anthony Braxton and Muhal Richard Abrams, Roscoe Mitchell and Lester Bowie, musicians – some who have been playing pretty conventional swing – have been blazing new trails, birthing, in every sense, a new avant-garde. This trend in Europe is vastly different from the one in America, which is rooted as much in the blues as it is in the music of Europe. Across the pond the “New Thing” dives daringly into triumphantly free improvisation that is almost completely bereft of the blues, although it might sometimes dig into jazz for idiomatic inspiration. Here are three wonderful discs from the Swiss label Intakt (intaktrec.ch) that exemplify everything that is bold and beautiful about European free improvisation.

Wrong Is Right is a performance that provides a burst of acclamation with loud triumphant chords fittingly made by musicians who are the epitome of the triumph of musicianship. Saxophonist Omri Ziegele is also a voice artist and leads the power quartet that includes one of the finest trombonists in the business. Ray Anderson has been celebrated for his brilliant tone colours and impeccable use of timbre, all embodied in the highest form of artistry. The repertoire on this disc has music that is arranged in a suite-like manner. Everything – especially the brilliant Decimal System and Wrong Is Right – celebrates the unexplored nooks and crannies of the instruments’ vast repertoire.

NYC Five is a beautifully constructed album of songs by one of the most extroverted saxophonists in Europe. Angelika Niescier might not be a name many are familiar with but the Cologne-based alto saxophonist inhabits many worlds seemingly at once. The music that is improvised is strikingly majestic and the written work – especially the ballad, Invaded – is likely to tear your heart out for its deep emotion and exquisite showers of notes by the pianist Florian Weber. The ubiquitous American drummer Tyshawn Sorey makes an electrifying appearance wherever he goes and this record is no exception. Watch out for the lightness and bounce of Ralph Alessi’s trumpet – the other American of repute on the album.

“Cats with nine lives” is how tempting it is to describe pianist Marilyn Crispell, drummer Richard Poole and most definitely the monumental bassist, Gary Peacock, on In Motion. These leading exponents of their instruments almost intuitively bring dramatic, fresh tones and textures to notes and chords that you have heard hundreds of times before. The almost vocal styles of Crispell and Peacock have endeared them to generations of free-thinking musicians and here they show why. Their explosive whimsy is captured on Backseat of the Galaxy, In Motion and Isle of Nowhere. The rest of the repertoire is no less wondrous and is full of joyous evocation and revels in the über-virtuosity of all three musicians whose brilliance has no limits.

A New One
Ulrich Gumpert Quartet
Intakt Records 257 (intaktrec.ch)

East Germany’s most prominent jazz composer/pianist, Ulrich Gumpert, 70, shows that he has lost none of his Teutonic-Thelonious acuity in the quarter century since the destruction of the Berlin Wall. With band members several years his junior, including Germans, bassist Jan Roder and drummer Michael Griener, plus Swiss saxophonist Jürg Wickihalder, the quartet moves through 11 mostly Gumpert-composed tunes that could equally impress in a West Berlin club with aficionados familiar with the sounds of Monk and bop, as well as an East Berlin theatre audience more attuned to Socialist Realist anthems and folkloric marches.

One instance of this is Iffie, initially a balladic theme the pianist developed years ago for a performance with a poet, resolved with a snorting Wickihalder solo into 100 percent contemporary jazz. Recitativo Secco, is a plaintive Germanic recitation for full band that too is transformed into a jokey promenade with cymbal sizzles and reed smears. There’s also the Griener-composed Süshotz, a simple rustic tune that balances Mozartian rococo with a charming alto saxophone lead. With Wickihalder playing tenor saxophone, Number Nine and the give-away titled The Bop & The Hard Be are more overtly Monkish, with the pianist replicating Monk’s hesitant yet spiky chording on the second, as Roder walks and the saxophonist channels Johnny Griffin’s bite and speed. Expanding and contracting time as it develops, Number Nine shuffles as much as it swings with Gumpert introducing ragtime and boogie-woogie motifs that lock in with Wickihalder reed outbursts that are as hard and thick as titanium.

Like a pseudo-military march the penultimate Scrollin’ is driven by a tough drum solo, moderated by elegant string reverberations from Roder, ending in a formation that finds each musician hopscotching and circling around the others as he solos. Confirming that sardonic humour wasn’t stifled in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the CD ends with a 55-second reprise of Iffie called Iffie’s Saloon, with appropriate barroom-like plinking from Gumpert and nasal soprano saxophone passages from Wickihalder. In spite of its misdeeds, the GDR allowed talents like Gumpert to flourish; luckily A New One gives us in the West a new way to experience it.