Great Wall of China
Canadian Brass
Opening Day ODR 7433

Having listened to recordings of the Canadian Brass for many years, I was sure that this CD would be in the same style as previous recordings. Not so. While it has all of the performance polish that is the hallmark of this group, there is a big difference. None of the music is familiar. All 18 tracks are adaptations of Chinese music. First time through I simply sat back and listened from beginning to end. In a few words: It is delightfully listenable.

Since there are no program notes, I was at a bit of a loss as to where to start to obtain information on the selections. Taking the bull by the horns, I called both Howard Cable (who wrote nine of the eighteen adaptations) and Chuck Daellenbach, the founder and tubist of the group. The selections are called “adaptations” because the original material was received as recordings on original Chinese instruments which were then adapted for performance in the brass quintet.

As Daellenbach pointed out, just as the day-to-day life in China has evolved due to Western influence, so has Chinese music. From soft melodies like The Moon Represents My Heart which features the trombone in a jazz style and a very melodic tuba passage to Catching Butterflies While Picking Tea with its definite Chinese flavour and amazing ending, or the lullaby-like sensitivity of Colourful Clouds Chasing the Moon, it’s a new musical experience. In particular, Daellenbach’s sensitive melodic tuba is a joy rarely heard. This CD should be added to the listening material for the classes of instrumental music teachers to show students the range of subtleties and colours achievable with brass instruments in the right hands.

Pampa Blues
Tango Boreal
ATMA ACD2 2706

Bandoneonist/composer Denis Plante cunningly equates the music of Pampa Blues with an aural musical journey of a horse travelling north to south across the Americas. Plante’s tongue-in-cheek wit catches one’s attention with his opening liner notes sentence “Tango is dead.” Start to listen, and Tango Boreal begins to prove the statement wrong. Plante’s compositions are rooted in the tango tradition with touches of different styles abounding. His performances with double bassist Ian Simpson and guitarist David Jacques gallop into an exciting treat of tight ensemble playing, strong writing and heartwarming lyricism.

 The tracks are grounded in themes. Highlights are the great car-beeping-sound performance of Ciudad (City), an extract from Piazzolla’s Noche de Tango, while two of Plante’s own stylistically similar exciting works pay homage to the Argentinian great. In contrast, Plante’s four works dedicated to his family members are introspective and stirring. The trio plays with sensitivity to nuance resulting in breathtaking musicality. I love Plante’s idea of writing the world’s longest phrase for the bandoneon in his Tango Romance. The long phrase with no bellow change is executed with agility and surprising tonal control at the end of the line for both the beautiful melody and the completely extended bellows!

 The musicianship is superb. The tonal expertise of Plante’s bandoneon is unmatched. Simpson drives the bass rhythm with colour and bounce. Jacques is equally great in both guitar lead melody and supporting roles. Together they are keeping more than just tango alive!

Delicate Paths – Music for Shō
Sarah Peebles; with Evan Parker, Nilan Perera, Suba Sankaran
unsounds 42U (unsounds.com)

For some quarter century the Toronto-based American composer, improviser and installation artist Sarah Peebles has conducted a musical love affair with the shō, the Japanese mouth organ. Ever since studying its foundational repertoire embedded in the music of the antique gagaku, performed by the orchestra of the Japanese court, she has sought to explore the shō’s sonic strengths. She has particularly identified with its ability to produce microtonal and psychoacoustic effects reifying sound, often unfolding leisurely over time.

There is yet another key element on this album. Bees. Peebles’ installation art practice explores the lives of wild bees, pollination ecology and biodiversity, a branch of BioArt. This concern not only explains some of the titles of the works here – i.e. Resinous Fold – but it is also reflected in the synergistic relationships between mouth organs and the resinous production of bees. Tropical stingless bees secrete a resin which has been gathered from wild nests for millennia and applied to many human artifacts, including mouth organs. The shō is no exception. You can view a number of fascinating photos, of both bee habitats and the delicate shō reeds for which their products are an essential ingredient, on the web page for Delicate Paths hosted by the “unsounds” label.

Peebles’ music employs both improvisation and composition, embracing acoustic as well as digitally processed performance. While shō is clearly featured, the album invites other musicians into the music making. On Delicate Paths she has included three star improvisers: a familiar reed instrument, a string, and a voice. Free jazz-rooted saxophonist Evan Parker, prepared electric guitarist Nilan Perera and multi-genre vocalist Suba Sankaran join Peebles. They are canny choices. Each effectively supports, contests and offsets her shō’s melodic long tones and clusters, providing welcome musical tensions, cultural reframings, as well as textural and timbral richness.

Slipping the CD out of its handsome black trifold case I was delighted by its striking, subtly translucent honey-coloured appearance. Repeated listening revealed music of refinement, occasionally graced with a gentle aural sweetness, which in my imagination at least, resonates with a key component of the shō’s inner workings.

The idea for Music from Armenia for Cello and Piano, a Divine Art CD (divineartrecords.com) featuring Newfoundland cellist Heather Tuach and the Armenian-Canadian pianist Patil Harboyan, began with a 2012 recital by the duo in Newfoundland that included Alexander Arutiunian’s Impromptu, the short work that opens this disc. The enthusiastic audience reaction to the piece encouraged the performers to search the Armenian cello and piano repertoire for music that would make for an appealing and informative CD. They certainly succeeded.

Armenia was under Soviet Russian rule from 1920 to 1991, and the music here is essentially what you would expect from that background (Arno Babajanian’s Vocalise, for example, is very similar to Rachmaninov’s), but the significant aspect of the CD is its recognition of the importance of the documentation and preservation of Armenian folk music.

The crucial figure in this respect was Gomidas, described in the excellent booklet notes as the founder of Armenian classical music and ethnomusicology, working in much the same manner as his direct contemporary Béla Bartók in Hungary. Most of his ten short folk songs here are arrangements by cellist Geronty Talalyan of the string quartet versions by Sergei Aslamazian, and they’re highly entertaining.

The one major work on the CD is the Sonata for Cello and Piano Op.35 by Haro Stepanian, who graduated from the Leningrad Conservatory and also collected Armenian melodies from his homeland; the influences of both his Russian training and his Armenian folk music research are evident in a very attractive and effective work.

The whole CD is a fascinating portrait of a musical heritage perhaps most widely represented for most people by the music of Aram Khachaturian, who openly acknowledged his – and Armenian music’s – debt to Gomidas. The performances are rich and full of nuance, and the balance and recorded sound are ideal.

Chamber Works is a quite exceptional new CD featuring members of Camerata Pacifica playing music by the American composer John Harbison, who turns 76 later this month (harmonia mundi usa HMU 907619). Violinist Amy Schwartz Moretti, violist Richard O’Neill and cellist Ani Aznavoorian combine for the six-movement String Trio from 2013, a striking work of strength and depth.

Paul Huang is outstanding in the Four Songs of Solitude for solo violin, written for Harbison’s violinist wife. Technically challenging, these are lyrical pieces (“songs, not sonatas or fugues,” stresses the composer) with a definite edge.

Songs America Loves to Sing, a set of ten popular American melodies for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano, rounds out a marvelous CD. The final track, Anniversary Song, ends with a wheezy harmonica contribution in Happy Birthday To You. It’s simply terrific stuff!

One of the real benefits of reviewing CDs is the exposure to composers – especially contemporary ones – who are new to you. Seven Deadly Sins, the new Naxos American Classics CD (9.70204) of music for violin and piano by Paul Reale, who turned 71 this year, leaves me wondering why I haven’t encountered his music before. I’ve obviously been missing something. The terrific Jessica Mathaes (another name new to me) is the violinist here on her second CD, and Colette Valentine the equally impressive pianist.

The Seven Deadly Sins suite was written in 2009 for Mathaes especially for this recording (made in 2012) and offers humorous observations of their effect on the human condition. Composers’ Reminiscences is a suite for solo violin written in 2000, but substantially revised for this recording. The seven short but challenging pieces are described as “impressions” (and not imitations) of the styles of Bartók, Puccini, Paganini, Webern, Corelli, Ives and Haydn, but to be honest it’s difficult to differentiate between the two approaches. The Sonata for Violin and Piano, “Celtic Wedding” is another work that has been extensively revised, this time from the 1991 original, for its publication in 2007.

The CD ends with the all-too-brief Holiday Suite, three very short pieces celebrating Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s; the latter features Auld Lang Syne mixed with the soul of Dave Brubeck’s Take Five. “This is good-time music,” says Reale, “melody driven, and devoid of pretension.”

That’s also a pretty good description of the entire CD. This is immediately accessible music written with craft, bite, intelligence and humour, and given outstanding performances. Surprisingly, only the Celtic Wedding is available in sheet music form. It’s a pity; this is music that cries out for – and would be greatly appreciated by – a much wider audience.

There was a time, after the 1964 Isaac Stern and Leonard Bernstein Columbia LP was deleted from the catalogue, when you would have been hard pushed to find a recording of Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto, but things have certainly changed: it’s now probably the most popular violin concerto of the 20th century, and is currently available on at least two dozen CDs.

The American violinist Anne Akiko Meyers opens her latest CD, The American Masters (eOne EOM-CD-7791), with her second recorded performance of the Barber; the concerto was featured on her debut CD in 1988. It’s really difficult to find an unsatisfactory performance of this work, and there’s certainly no danger of that here. I haven’t been able to compare this recording with the 1988 performance, but I suspect that this one is perhaps more introspective and nuanced, reflecting the quarter of a century that Meyers has spent with the work. It may be somewhat less passionate and intense than some recordings, especially in the haunting slow movement, but it’s an intelligent and committed performance.

There is clearly intelligence in the programming of this CD, too, with John Corigliano’s Lullaby for Natalie, a short piece written for Meyers in 2010 and named for her baby daughter, forming the central point between the Barber concerto and the Violin Concerto by Mason Bates, a work commissioned by Meyers. Corigliano was mentored by Barber in a relationship that developed into a close friendship, and Bates has enjoyed an identical relationship with Corigliano.

The Bates concerto, written in 2012, is an interesting work that promises to become more effective on closer acquaintance. The soloist, in the composer’s own words, is treated as a hybrid musical creature, based on the Archaeopteryx, the first dinosaur/bird hybrid; the three movement titles – Archaeopteryx, Lakebed memories and The rise of the birds – reflect the continuous unfolding of the music.

Leonard Slatkin conducts the London Symphony Orchestra, and is clearly in his element with the music: Corigliano notes that as well as being a close friend of his, Slatkin has also championed all three composers on the disc. Meyers, incidentally, is now playing the 1741 ex-Vieuxtemps Guarneri del Gesu violin, bought by an anonymous buyer in 2013 and awarded to Meyers for her lifetime use; the price was reported as being in excess of 16 million dollars. Needless to say, the sound throughout the CD is sumptuous!

Cellist Julian Lloyd Webber is joined by his cellist wife Jiaxin Lloyd Webber and the European Union Chamber Orchestra directed by violinist Hans-Peter Hofmann in a CD of Vivaldi Concertos for Two Cellos (Naxos 8.573374). Only one of the six concertos here – the G minor, RV531 – is a Vivaldi two-cello original, the others being arrangements by Lloyd Webber of concertos for two mandolins (in G major, RV532), cello and bassoon (in E minor, RV409), oboe and bassoon (in G major, RV545), two horns (in F major, RV539) and the recently discovered Concerto in G minor, RV812 for violin and cello.

It was, of course, normal practice in the time of Bach and Vivaldi for composers to transcribe their own works for different instruments, so there’s nothing radical happening here. These three-movement concertos are all very short, however (only three exceed ten minutes, and none reaches the 12-minute mark), and while there are variations in the content it does tend to bring to mind the old line about Vivaldi having written not 500 different concertos, but the same concerto 500 times.

Most of the time it does tend to sound as if there is only one solo cello, or perhaps more accurately a solo cello with a cello continuo underneath, but there’s a light-hearted feel to the performances and the recordings, and excellent playing by all concerned. It sounds like it must have been great fun to do; it’s certainly great fun to listen to.

The final track on the CD, somewhat puzzlingly, is Lloyd Webber’s attractive arrangement for two cellos of the Milonga from Astor Piazzolla’s Concerto for Bandoneon and Guitar. The two cellos are clearly independent and intertwining voices here. All works other than the Vivaldi original concerto are world premiere recordings of these arrangements.

Formed at Yale University and based in New York City since 2007, the Ensō String Quartet has been active for 15 years now, and has built a formidable reputation in the process including winning the Banff International String Quartet Competition in 2004. String Quartets, their seventh album – and fifth for Naxos – features the complete string quartet music by three composers known primarily for their operas: Richard Strauss, Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini (Naxos 8.573108).

From the opening bars of the early Strauss String Quartet in A Major, written when the composer was 17, it is clear why the ensemble has been garnering rave reviews for their CD releases; it’s beautifully rich, full-blooded and warm playing from the outset, and just perfect for the late Romantic nature of the music. Puccini’s Crisantemi, reportedly written in a single evening in 1890 in memory of the composer’s friend the Duke of Aosta, is a short piece named for chrysanthemums, the Italian flower of mourning, and is well known in both its original form and in a string orchestra setting. Rarely heard, however, are his charming Three Minuets in A Major, written when the composer was 25.

Most people, when they find they have some unexpected free time on their hands, just relax; the 60-year-old Verdi, when the Naples premiere of his opera Aida in 1873 had to be postponed for a few days due to the lead soprano’s illness, chose to sit down and write a string quartet. The String Quartet in E Minor is his only work in the genre, and attempted to marry the Italian vocal tradition with the German classical quartet form. Critical opinion differed on its success, but it’s a solid and finely crafted work, perhaps less purely melodic than you would expect, and with a strong formal structure. It can tend to sound somewhat ponderous and serious in the wrong hands, but the performance here strikes exactly the right balance.

The recording was made in the glorious acoustics of St. Anne’s Anglican Church in Toronto, with the ever-reliable team of Norbert Kraft and Bonnie Silver in charge. The quality of the recorded sound, not surprisingly, is superb.

I was somewhat nonplussed by Nigel Armstrong, the eponymous debut CD by the young American violinist on Yarlung Records, a label which specialises in producing debut discs by rising young artists (Yarlung Records 65007). Two unaccompanied works, the Bartók Sonata for Solo Violin and the Bach Sonata No.3 in C Major are both given accomplished performances, but Armstrong’s vibrato seems a bit narrow and thin, giving the recordings a slightly strained air at times. He’s up against major competition in such works, of course, and while there is much to admire here – especially the smooth melodic line in the contrapuntal Bach sections – neither performance is likely to unseat whichever favourite you have in your collection.

Then comes a live performance of the Korngold Violin Concerto, recorded with the Colburn Orchestra (Armstrong spent four years at the Colburn School in Los Angeles) under Sir Neville Marriner, and we’re in a different world. The vibrato is bigger and warmer, the tone rich and full, and the soaring, expansive performance quite outstanding, although again Armstrong is up against stiff competition in the market. If there’s one aspect that’s a bit disappointing, it’s the recording quality: there is a fair bit of audience and extraneous noise, and the acoustics in the concert hall seem very dry. The movement tracks are also cut off very quickly to exclude any audience reaction.

I did what I normally do with performers who are new to me, and looked Armstrong up online; I was astonished at what I found. There’s a brief but interesting clip on YouTube in which Bob Attiyeh, the producer of the CD, explains how they went about it (look for Nigel Armstrong The Debut Recording) but the real gems were the associated links. There are clips from Armstrong’s performances at a violin competition in Buenos Aires in 2010, one a gorgeous Piazzolla work with string bass and bandoneon and the other a terrific Paganini Caprice, and two clips from the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, one of the end section of the Bach D minor Chaconne, and the other a simply astonishing performance of John Corigliano’s Stomp for solo violin, a fiddle-based work that includes Armstrong playing the instrument behind his back.

The CD booklet notes spend a fair amount of time in a navel-gazing discussion of the choices and challenges facing an international concert soloist – Armstrong spent some time studying at a Zen monastery in upstate New York, and has spent summers working on an organic farm in Germany. Attiyeh says that he looks forward to Armstrong’s next Los Angeles concert, “or to the taste of a new Armstrong organic carrot, whichever comes first.” I’m not sure that he’s joking.

It will certainly be interesting to see where this young man’s career leads him. One thing is clear: he’s an astonishing talent, and I’m not sure this debut CD really does him justice.

As the availability of music on different media continues to proliferate, the focus of the durable box set has become equally diverse. No longer does a multi-disc collection have to be definitive or far-ranging. As a matter of fact some of the best, like the ones discussed here, concentrate on certain sequences in an artist’s career.

Case in point is Discography (Jazz Werksttatt JW 150 jazzwerkstatt.eu), a four-CD collection of sessions from the 1980s and 1990s by German bassist Peter Kowald (1944-2002). Someone who began his career in the 1960s ground zero for European Free Jazz, over the years Kowald interacted with those playing mainstream and contemporary jazz as well as making forays into cross-cultural improv with non-Western players. His recorded career, with disc cover pictures and personnel, is outlined in the 210-page booklet included with the set. Still the focus of Discography is Kowald’s Free Jazz achievements. Right off the bat, Solo Improvisation Music on CD1 is a 35-minute tour-de-force from 1981 that captures his unvarnished inventiveness. Showcasing equal facility with fingers or bow, he moves seamlessly from strident smacks and slashing strums to a collection of spiccato rubs and rasps producing aviary-like shrills as well as mellow continuum. Discography also highlights the talents of Greek clarinetist/saxophonist Floros Floridis, a frequent Kowald playing partner. Compare how the two reacted without prevarication in different settings. A 1989 Athens session, for instance, emphasizes the music’s bop and blues roots, due to the inimitable time-keeping of American drum master Andrew Cyrille. At the same time as Kowald’s doubled strokes steady the beat alongside Cyrille, jocular intensity on tunes such as Nice Ending Folks! and Points Slashes Etc. is expressed by Floridis’ fluid clarinet flutters and vocalized blats from German trombonist Conny Bauer. Six tracks from the next year are more expansive since Kowald’s and Floridis’ partners are American French hornist Vincent Chancy and South African drummer Louis Moholo. Kowald’s careful note placement gives the proceedings a lighter feel as the four prove themselves on both spirited and sorrowful tunes. The Spell is one of the latter as Chancy’s facility emphasizes not only melancholic cries, but animates the tune through steady pacing. With verbal interjections from Moholo Mongezi is another standout since tough vibrations from the horn and Floridis’ saxophone reed bites work up to freneticism as pulsating power from the bass and percussion keep the narrative snappy. Even better is CD4 from 1997 where Floridis on alto and soprano saxophones, clarinet and bass clarinet, Kowald and German percussionist Günter Baby Sommer – featured with the bassist on a long improvisation on CD1 – turn out 26 brief “Aphorisms.” Ranging from less than one minute to almost two and a half, the concise motifs express everything that others would need greater length to do. A track like Aphorismus III for instance features Kowald strumming what sounds like telephone-wire thick strings, Sommer pinging gamelan-like bells and Floridis’ smooth soprano sax surmounting both. Aphorismus XI is pure jazz with mountaineering thumps from the drummer, spiccato bass strokes and reed bites; while Aphorismus VI parallels clarinet tongue-slaps with bagpipe-like tremolos from the bass. Floridis’ alto saxophone tone can be as sharp as any bopper’s as it is on Aphorismus XVII; while percussion clip-clops are sophisticatedly smoothed into a connective exposition on Aphorismus XIX. The program ends with Sommer affectionately mocking Kowald’s chamber music-like sweeps and Floridis’ delicate clarinet lines with obtrusive Jew’s harp twangs.

More chronologically limited, but even more spectacular in probing the boundaries of a jazz formation is Die Kunst des Trio 1-5 (BMC Records BMC CD 196 bmcrecords.hu). During the course of five CDs and a bonus DVD, Cologne-based pianist Hans Lüdemann works through programs involving five unique bass and drum teams. Able to express high-energy complexity and florid impressionism with the same finesse, Lüdemann’s trios showcase original compositions plus Hanns Eisler ballads from the latter’s Hollywood period. All 36 tracks, recorded at the same location, are performed acoustically aside from the sets with electric bass and percussion. Sophisticated in mining perceptive emotions with both acoustic and electronic keyboards, Rhythm Magic is Lüdemann’s weakest program. That’s because bass guitar sluices, percussion patter and staccato key flourishes excite only the tapping foot rather than the thinking brain. Conversely, Chiffre, featuring bassist/cellist Henning Sieverts plus percussionist Eric Shaefer, confirms the adage that the best is often left for last. Able to make the virtual piano as sensitive to cerebral explorations as the real McCoy, Lüdemann creatively exposes the tunes’ reflective innards on CD5. Slow paced Doux for example unites keyboard cascades with piercing multi-string actions that could come from a viola da gamba. Meanwhile the climatic minutes of Verioren that result from the pianist’s near-boogie-woogie patterning are cannily set up with bell peals and impressionistic multi-string vibrations at the top. This is the most impressive trio music, but there’s also much to be said for the pianist’s interaction with bassist Robert Landfermann and drummer Jonas Burgwinkel plus bassist Sébastien Boisseau and drummer Dejan Terzic. The first mixes kinetic piano lines, drum pumps and quirky bass voicing to extend the classic piano trio to include European tropes such as suggestions of baroque stylings plus electronic add-ons. Even better is the Boisseau-Terzic meeting. Dramatic and cerebral, sturdy bass lines and clattering drums aid the pianist’s careful pacing of particular themes. Paradoxically this strategy is impressive on Über den Selbstmord/Das ist gefährlich where Lüdemann sutures harmonic swing onto the Eisler song which starts the track. This type of transformative alchemy is extended throughout the nine tunes that make up Eisler’s Exile. Seconded by bassist Dieter Manderscheid and percussionist Christian Thomé, the pianist never neglects the romantic yearnings which inhabit the German composer’s original intent. At the same time he invests each track with sinewy swing.

In a technological age a boxed set takes on many meanings. For instancecornetist Taylor Ho Bynum 7-tette’s Navigation [Possibility Abstracts XII & XIII] (Firehouse 12 Records FH-12-04-01-019 firehouse12.com) is available as two CDs of a studio session and on a double LP as a live date. Different variations on Bynum’s Navigation composition, each package includes complimentary download codes to access digital copies of the other format. Using graphic and conventional methods to guide the improvisation, Bynum calls on tropes encompassing tremolo theme repetition and stop-time climaxes, plus intersection and interpolation of riffs and sudden narrative punctuation from a band that includes trombonist Bill Lowe, alto saxophonist Jim Hobbs, guitarist Mary Halvorson and bassist Ken Filiano with Tomas Fujiwara and Chad Taylor on drums and vibraphones. Comparing versions of March from the CD set demonstrates the group’s versatility. While it’s undisputedly the same tune, solo emphasis gives it novel allure in each instance. Introducing the second CD, March features sharp saxophone lines in violin register that quickly give way to scene-setting trombone slurs. From that point until the finale, the sequence takes on a New Orleans-like cast as two-beat drumming backs clanking guitar runs and taut cornet expositions. When March ends the first CD though, the quasi-Dixieland emphasis is downplayed for sophisticated solos. Hobbs’ wide glissandi limn the theme atop cohesive brass vamps, until a Halvorson-Bynum duo that simultaneously manages to suggest the power of early Louis Armstrong’s small groups while slyly interpolating bop modernism.

Taking this download concept one step further, the 15-piece Belgian jazz-rock-experimental big band the Flat Earth Society (FES) has come up with FESXLS (Igloo IGL 257 fes.be/indexEN.html). The three-CD package includes two discs celebrating the Flemish orchestra’s – and guests’ – recent projects; a single CD, featuring tracks from the more rock-oriented X-Legged Sally band that evolved into Flat Earth Society; plus 12 (!) download codes allowing the listener to get digital copies of additional albums. Even without the digital discs, the physical package is fascinating. Over the course of 19 tracks on X-Legged Sally 1988-1997, the listener can track how the shifting personnel of the group, always led by multi-instrumentalist/composer Peter Vermeersch, gradually shifted from a defiant vocal and instrumental combo, influenced by Frank Zappa and other avant-rockers, into a high-energy instrumental group whose staccato expositions melded jazz-influenced soloing, rock energy and instrumental chops. Mutating into the FES, the contemporary CDs, Boot & Berg and Call Sheets, Riders & Chicken Mushroom are even more striking. Although its Flemish libretto may be difficult for those who don’t know the language, the sheer musicianship of the FES matched with soprano Rolande Van der Paal shines through the language barrier on Boot & Berg. A multimedia retelling of the Titanic tragedy on the 100th anniversary of that disaster, Vermeersch’s music introduces motifs from nautical melodies, hard rock, Count Basie-like-swing and so-called classical counterpoint which scene-set, then integrate Van der Paal’s lyric soprano within the exposition. Particularly expressive during an intermezzo where cracked instrumental tones shade the vocalist’s sophisticated cabaret-style declarations, booming and whistling textures from the band emphasize the emotions involved as much as Van der Paal’s bel canto delivery. A different matter Call Sheets, Riders & Chicken Mushroom is 15 FES live tracks, with featured spots for guest improvisers such as American pianist Uri Caine, Dutch cellist Ernst Reijseger and Belgium’s most famous jazzer, harmonica player Toots Thielemans. While the quiet-jazz setting of Hilton’s Heaven, Thielemans’ first outing, is all smooth harmonica reeds cushioned by muted horns and vibes, Zonk puts him in a novel setting. Like what a Basie band standard would sound like if played by a heavy metal band, the tune finds the harmonica master expanding on cues from the jagged vamps until the piece is taken out with a graceful trumpet solo. The Caine track is even weirder since during Fes 9 the urbane keyboardist takes a solo that mixes bop with Little Richard-like excess and ends with some pseudo-ragtime, as plunger trombone smears and swelling organ riffs explode around him. At the same time this CD confirms that FES can easily be appreciated on its own. In Between Rivers for instance is a standout ballad that manages to shoehorn accordion tremors into an Ellington Jungle Band-style arrangement as reed flutters and warm brass slurs keep the narrative comfortable.

There’s evidently sufficient saxophone talent in Canada now that we export it with some regularity. Three émigré reed players have recently released CDs of interest.

Toronto-born Andrew Rathbun has spent the past decade playing and studying in New York City, recently joining the Jazz Studies department at Western Michigan University. On Numbers & Letters (Steeplechase SCCD 31781 steeplechase.dk), Rathbun is an adroit stylist on tenor and soprano, composing memorably playful lines (the compositions here are inspired by his two young children) and developing them with fleet, sometimes abstracted, sometimes effervescent lines. The interval leaps of Etude can suggest the influence of the late Kenny Wheeler with whom Rathbun has recorded, and there is a similar lyricism and facility in developing complex, ambiguous moods. Rathbun has put together a superb band for the recording, building upward from the mobile, shifting drumming of Bill Stewart and the bass of Jay Anderson to virtuosic pianist Phil Markowitz, the three creating ongoing stimulation for Rathbun’s forays.

Anna Webber is a young composer, flutist and saxophonist who has already become a presence in forward-looking circles in Brooklyn and Berlin. Her latest recording, Simple (Skirl 027 skirlrecords.com), was composed during solitary days on Bowen Island off the coast of her native British Columbia. While the music sounds inspired, you’ll listen in vain for mimetic sea sounds and easy tranquility: Webber’s music is complex, angular and sometimes downright spiky; her inspirations funneled through her own edgy sensibility and the creative processes of her playing partners here, pianist Matt Mitchell and percussionist John Hollenbeck. The results are episodic pieces that are never less than structurally sound and loaded with sudden turns, whether composed or improvised. Webber’s tenor saxophone twists with compound emotion through the taut 1994, while her flute weaves through Simplify, Simplify with scintillating precision.

Saxophonist Peter Van Huffel has followed a similar path from Kingston, Ontario to New York and on to Berlin. On Bite My Blues (Clean Feed CF302CD cleanfeed-records.com), he leads his Berlin-based band Gorilla Mask in performances at Toronto venues Emmett Ray and Tranzac, recorded during a 2013 Canadian tour. While Van Huffel often works in chamber-like textures, Gorilla Mask is a visceral band driven by pounding, industrial polyrhythms and electronics provided by Roland Fidezius on electric bass and effects and Rudi Fischerlehner on drums. Van Huffel uses the dense undergrowth and his truncated, machine-gun themes to propel furious alto saxophone improvisations, spiralling across registers with blistering intensity, creating varied, complex lines. Within this assault, some fascinating changes of pace that reveal Van Huffel’s specific roots: on the lyrical Broken Flower, his keening saxophone wail invokes Albert Ayler’s ballad performances, while Fast and Furious shows roots in Ornette Coleman.

That saxophone emphasis continues with two new releases on Toronto’s Addo Records. Alto and soprano saxophonist Tara Davidson’s Duets (AJR026 addorecords.com) explores what may be the most challenging of improvising formats with six different collaborators. There are two pieces with each partner, one a Davidson composition, the other her collaborator’s. Davidson combines forethought with an ability to work keenly in the moment. What’s surprising is both the variety of approaches and the sustained creativity. Interests in unusual modes link cellist/bassist Andrew Downing’s Kontrbas Semaisi to pianist David Braid’s two-part Lele’s Tune, while Davidson’s duets with tenor saxophonists Mike Murley (her first saxophone teacher) and Trevor Hogg possess subtleties of harmony, timbre and line that suggest affinities with the fertile saxophone partnership of Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh. Turning from her usual alto, Davidson’s most lyrical moments come on soprano saxophone, including the exchange of glassy, wispy sounds with guitarist David Occhipinti on his Silver Skates and the melodic effusion of For Glenda with pianist Laila Biali.

Eli Bennett is a 25-year-old Vancouver-raised tenor saxophonist who has been piling up awards for several years while attending Toronto’s Humber College jazz program. He arrives with the endorsement of numerous senior saxophonists, including Chris Potter, Cory Weeds and the producer of his debut CD, Kirk MacDonald. The enthusiasm is understandable given the general level of Breakthrough (Addo Records AJR024). His key influence is apparently John Coltrane, evident in the beautiful metallic tone and gauzy highs of the reflective Forever as well as a run-through of Coltrane’s Giant Steps. It’s tempered by Bennett’s enthusiasm for R&B-flavoured soul jazz, bringing a quotient of funky licks and sonic grit to originals like Let’s Roll and the highlight of the CD, the majestic and earthy title track, where all of his virtues come together. He’s ably accompanied by an excellent Toronto rhythm section of D’Arcy Myronuk on piano and Fender Rhodes, bassist Jon Maharaj and drummer Fabio Ragnelli.

Carol McCartney has been a vocalist to seek out since her 2007 debut A Night in Tunisia, declaring with its title a devotion to jazz more demanding than many singers will risk, stretching from standards and ballads to the demands of bop. The breadth of her repertoire and the quality of her soaring alto voice are evident on her latest CD, Be Cool (Moxy 014, carolmccartney.com) where she stretches from the Joni Mitchell-composed title track to Duke Ellington’s Tulip or Turnip and Wes Montgomery’s West Coast Blues. She’s joined by stellar musicians, including guitarist Lorne Lofsky, drummer Terry Clarke, bassist Kieran Overs and tenor saxophonist Chris Robinson, with pianist Brian Dickinson and Rick Wilkins providing arrangements. McCartney’s scatting on Almost Twelve makes the bossa nova a standout. 

In 2000 Testament issued four CDs of orchestral music by Richard Strauss, recorded by Decca in the Grosser Saal of the Musikverein by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Clemens Krauss. My excited review of them at the time found these uniquely inspired performances to be incomparable in every respect. Decca has gathered them all together in a compact 5-CD set, Clemens Krauss – Richard Strauss The Complete Decca Recordings (4786493), together with the still talked about 1954 recording of Salome with Christel Goltz, Julius Patzak, Anton Dermota et.al. The Vienna-born Krauss, although he worked through the Nazi era, was not a Nazi. These Strauss performances, writes Nigel Simeone, reveal an interpreter “who understood the importance of transparent orchestral textures, intelligent pacing, a natural sense of line, a fine ear for detail and a clear sense of trajectory.” These qualities are abundant in each of all nine works; Don Juan, Ein Heldenleben, Zarathustra, Don Quixote, Sinfonia Domestica, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme Suite, Aus Italien, Till Eulenspiegel and Salome.

Early in the 1950s when these recordings were made, English Decca’s FFRR LPs had already achieved a level of recording excellence unsurpassed by the other companies, thriving in the new, world-wide enthusiasm for classical music, an enthusiasm well supported by the press and dedicated periodicals. People no longer had a record player… they had a hi-fi. Victor Olof, Decca’s head recording producer led the team that documented these Strauss recordings that awed and delighted the music lovers of the day. The inspired and inspiring recordings now find their ultimate realization in this dynamic little set that is the icing on the cake honouring this 150th anniversary year of Strauss’ birth.

With Karajan 1980s, DG completes its decade by decade re-issue program of their entire library of Herbert von Karajan’s orchestral recordings (4793448, 78 CDs). In that decade Karajan became separated from his orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic and returned to the Vienna Philharmonic to conduct and make recordings, both audio and video. Which was Karajan’s best decade? The 1960s (DG 47900559, 82 CDs) the 1970s (DG47915775, 81 CDs) or the 80s? The 1960s box witnessed the emergence of Karajan the Superstar and contents include a vast repertoire of Beethoven including his now legendary second complete Beethoven symphonies cycle, a Brahms symphony cycle, Haydn symphonies ... let’s forget the Pachelbel Canon and the Albinoni Adagio. The 70s box had new repertoire and also another Beethoven cycle, a Tchaikovsky cycle, another Brahms cycle, a Second Viennese School collection and some fine Mahler. This new big box of recordings from the 80s contains some daring excursions into new repertoire together with tried and true Beethoven, Brahms, Haydn and the usual suspects. Here we may judge performances of some of these 154 works against Karajan’s own acclaimed versions and I must say that they face some formidable standards. I am informed that the entire production of this limited edition has shipped and is in the hands of dealers around the world. Full details at
deutschegrammophon.com/en/cat/4793448.

In her book On and Off the Record, a memoir of her late husband Walter Legge, Elizabeth Schwarzkopf relates an example of conductor Otto Klemperer’s perverse sense of humour. In the autumn of 1958 Klemperer was too ill to conduct a Beethoven Ninth in London. Against his better judgment, Legge took Klemperer’s earnest pleading to heart and engaged Hindemith as replacement. The performance was a disaster. Legge: “It’s your fault; you insisted that I engage him. I’ll never take your advice about artists again.” Klemperer: “You have been in the music business long enough to know that gloating over the misfortunes of colleagues is the only joy left in life.” Months before that London performance, on June 24, Paul Hindemith had conducted a vital performance of the Bruckner Symphony No.7 with the Stuttgart Radio Symphony in Saxony. Remastered from the original SWR tapes, Hänssler has issued an immaculate recording of that event which clearly demonstrates that Hindemith was more than at home with Bruckner (CD 94.222). It is gratifying to hear that Hindemith had well-defined views and a sense of overriding control of arguably Bruckner’s most beautiful symphony. His reading is at least comparable with any of the strong performances from the 50s including Furtwängler and Jochum, although his sober control is closer to Jochum even though in places where we expect a pause, there is none. The long lines are beautifully spun out and never overindulged. Indeed, the final coda which is usually handled as a blazing apotheosis is achieved in subdued manner so the moment of arrival is realized with a great sense of serenity. The performance is lean which better reveals the structure and sinew of the symphony without sounding at all undernourished.

The late highly esteemed conductor, Carlos Kleiber’s sole performance of any Mahler work took place on June 7, 1967 in the Konzerthaus in Vienna. On the Vienna Symphony Orchestra program was the Mozart Symphony No.33 followed by Das Lied von der Erde with alto Christa Ludwig and tenor Waldemar Kmentt. The orchestra now has its own label on which they have released this Das Lied in quite good mono sound (WS007). We can only bewail that Kleiber’s recorded legacy is so very small due to his famously temperamental approach. He was easily offended and capable of scrapping a well-rehearsed and consummately prepared production in a fit of pique. So it is all the more valuable to have this salvaged and restored archival tape from this source. He brings his vaunted objectivity and clarity of approach to this final word of Mahler’s. It is not usual to describe a performance of this work as refreshing but this is what it is, while doing full justice to the unsparing subject matter.

“And now for something completely different.” After listening to an endless stream of basic and not-so-basic repertoire, a new disc from Doremi had me sitting up and paying fresh attention to some really stimulating off-beat repertoire played by the legendary pianist Sviatoslav Richter (Volume 23 DHR-8037). The music of Szymanowski is by no means a simple affair. His scores are complex and rich in unique post-Romantic originality which may seem initially foreign to many ears and yet here we have music that is full of surprises and unexpected turns. From our point of view this exciting excursion into new repertoire is actually very rewarding. Heard complete is a recital in Warsaw on November 26, 1982 to commemorate the centenary of the composer’s birth where Richter played the Second and Third piano sonatas and was joined by the great violinist Oleg Kagan playing the exquisite three Mythes Op.30. The stereo sound is of studio quality. I am eager to know these pieces better. 

The latest release in the Naxos Canadian Classics line is an important addition to our recorded legacy. Jacques Hétu – Complete Chamber Music for Strings (8.573395) with the New Orford String Quartet and guests features significant works spanning the career of the late Quebec composer who died in 2010 at the age of 71. The Adagio and Rondo, his first work in the string quartet medium, dates from 1960 at the time of his graduation from the Montreal Conservatory and is really a foreshadowing of things to come; as pointed out in the program notes, “motivic and thematic elements from this work can be seen in all of his subsequent chamber works for strings.” For this reason I wish that it had been placed first on the disc to give context to the overall program. Instead, the recording begins with the first of his two named quartets, String Quartet No.1, Op.19 from 1972, which “combines 20th-century techniques with neo-romantic harmonic language” – a combination that would be Hétu’s signature throughout his distinguished career. A conservative voice that some would consider anachronistic, his music is expressive and extremely well-crafted. While the first quartet is in the traditional four movement form – fast, slow, slow/fast and fast (although it ends in a peaceful calm) – String Quartet No.2, Op.50 (1991) consists of a Vivace somewhat reminiscent of Bartók’s “night music” writing framed by two slow movements. The Andante finale is particularly lush in its Romantic sensibility and the members of the New Orford capture the sense of wistful longing with acuity as the music fades in a quiet cello solo.

Written the following year, and placed directly after the second quartet, the Scherzo Op.54 with its re-use of the solo cello theme at first appears to act as an upbeat afterthought to the foregoing work, but this sense is dispelled with the inclusion of a quotation from, and later a pizzicato reworking of, a fragment from Bach’s Goldberg Variations. For the Sérénade Op.45 (1988) the members of the quartet – violinists Jonathan Crow and Andrew Wan, violist Eric Nowlin and cellist Brian Manker, themselves principals of the Toronto and Montreal Symphony Orchestras – are joined by MSO principal flutist Timothy Hutchins. Written on commission as an anniversary gift, the work was inspired by Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. After a gentle Prélude a lyrical, if somewhat melancholy, Nocturne is followed by a boisterous Danse bringing the charming bonbon to a close.

The disc ends with Hétu’s final work for strings, the Sextet, Op.71 written in 2004, for which the quartet is joined by former TSO principal violist Steven Dann and cellist Colin Carr. After an upbeat opening the work once again slips into Hétu’s familiar sombre lyricism, this time with the texture darkened by the doubled lower strings. This is followed by some playful cat-and-mouse activity with unison voices that alternates with slow, thoughtful passages until finishing in a flurry some 12 minutes later.

The New Orford String Quartet, like its namesake half a century earlier, was founded at the Orford Arts Centre in Quebec in 2009, 18 years after the original quartet disbanded following a distinguished international career that spanned nearly three decades. Despite the fact that their only previous release included Schubert and Beethoven (on Bridge Records, a label otherwise known for contemporary recordings), according to its Naxos bio “the New Orford String Quartet is dedicated to promoting Canadian works, both new commissions and works from the past 100 years.” With the quality of their playing – amply showcased here – this is good news indeed for Canadian composers. I look forward to future recordings of repertoire from the current century.

In August the distinguished Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe died at the age of 85. Named a National Living Treasure in 1997 by the National Trust of Australia, Sculthorpe stated that in his music he sought to “find the spirit of the land and the landscape – the sacred, if you like – in nature.” A true exponent of the Pacific Rim, he was influenced by Japanese and Balinese culture, but more significantly by the Aboriginal music of his homeland. This is heard throughout his often brooding works; of specific note are the libretto to his 1974 opera Rites of Passage, which is partly in the Aranda dialect of Northern Australia, the orchestral work Earth Cry (1985), Requiem (2004) and four of his late string quartets which include a prominent role for didjeridu.

Sculthorpe – The Complete String Quartets with Didjeridu (Sono Luminus DSL-92181) features Stephen Kent and the Del Sol Quartet. The 2-CD set (with additional Blu-ray audio disc) is prefaced by an extended quote from the composer: “I began to lose interest in the comforting vistas that surrounded me in Tasmania. I found myself drawn, more and more, to the harsher landscapes that I’d left behind in mainland Australia. I was drawn to desert and wilderness places that I’d not then visited. Eventually, the Australian landscapes became one of the major concerns of my music. I set out to give life to the landscape through the sun, and a human dimension to it through loneliness, resignation and death.”

Sculthorpe composed extensively for the string quartet medium, his output exceeding even that of Beethoven, Shostakovich and, closer to home, Schafer. String Quartets Nos.12, 14, 16 and 18 all include the didjeridu, a wooden drone instrument indigenous to the far north of Australia. Made out of termite-hollowed branches of large eucalyptus trees, it is thought to have been in use by native cultures for some 1,000 years. The natural drone effect is varied by overblowing which produces a broad spectrum of haunting, growling sounds.

Originally requested to write a work for string quartet and didjeridu by the Kronos Quartet as early as 1991, it was not until Sculthorpe began working closely with the young indigenous musician William Barton ten years later that he accepted the idea. Barton, now widely recognised as one of Australia’s finest traditional didjeridu masters and a leading player in the classical world, gave the first performance of a revised version of String Quartet No.12 “From Ubirr” in 2001. The quartet, which was essentially a reworking of the aforementioned Earth Cry, was arranged for strings alone in 1994. First conceived as “quick and joyous music,” while working on the piece Sculthorpe came to the conclusion that it would be “dishonest of me to write music that is altogether quick and joyous. The lack of common cause and the self-interest of many have drained Australians of much of our energy. […] Perhaps we need now to attune ourselves to this continent, to listen to the cry of the earth, as its Indigenous inhabitants have done for many thousands of years.” Sculthorpe continued to incorporate awareness and concern for Australia’s natives in much of his later work. String Quartet No.14 “Quamby” or “Help Me” in the local language, refers to the slaughter which colonial troops inflicted on Aboriginals at a place later named Quamby Bluff. It was composed in 1998 with didjeridu added in 2004.

Although in the preceding works the didjeridu is well integrated with the strings it was not until 2005 with String Quartet No.16 that the indigenous instrument was an integral part of the score from the outset. The opening movement Loneliness combines drones and animal-like cries with plaintiff string melodies and seagull-like harmonic effects. The subsequent movements – Anger, Yearning, Trauma and Freedom – are fairly self-explanatory. String Quartet No.18 (2010), Sculthorpe’s last, is also in five movements – Prelude, A Land Singing, A Dying Land, A Lost Land and Postlude. In this instance the work is intended as “a heartfelt expression of my concern about climate change, about the future of our fragile planet.” He uses Australia as a metaphor for the whole planet and includes his characteristic bird and animal sounds and didjeridu effects, both in that instrument itself and in the strings.

The San Francisco-based Del Sol String Quartet got its start at the Banff Centre in 1992, but if the convincing performances recorded here are any indication, they seem to feel quite at home in the desolate (musical) landscapes of Australia. British-born Stephen Kent trained as a French horn player but while working in Australia as music director of Circus Oz he developed a profound interest in Aboriginal culture and immersed himself in the didjeridu. He states, “The didjeridu is played with the greatest respect for the Aboriginal Peoples of Australia and the struggle for rights in their homeland.”

At the time of recording Peter Sculthorpe was still alive. I can’t help but feel that this posthumous release is an appropriate monument to a man who let his art speak for his conscience, with no compromise to either. An important example to us all.

Toward the end of his life and already sick with cancer, Claude Debussy (1862-1918) conceived the project of composing “six sonatas for diverse instruments” of which he completed only three; the first for cello and piano, the third for violin and piano and a second which spawned a whole new genre, for flute, viola and harp. Two recent releases explore the repertoire created for this unusual combination of instruments.

Tre Voci is an ensemble created at the Marlboro Music Festival in 2010 consisting of Canadian-born flutist Marina Piccinini (an internationally renowned soloist now teaching at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore and at the Hochschule in Hannover, Germany), American violist Kim Kashkashian and Israeli harpist Sivan Magen. Their inaugural recording Takemitsu / Debussy / Gubaidulina (ECM 2345) features Debussy’s seminal work from 1915 which began it all, and two works which take poetry as their point of departure. The disc opens with And then I knew ‘twas Wind by Toru Takemitsu (1930-1996) which takes its inspiration, or at least its title, from a poem by Emily Dickinson. It is a single-movement work composed in 1992 which, like much of Takemitsu’s last work, is quite reminiscent of Debussy albeit within the Japanese composer’s own quiet and lush sensibility. Following the three-movement Debussy sonata – Pastorale, Interlude, Final: Allegro – the disc concludes with the mostly contemplative The Garden of Joys and Sorrows, by Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina (b.1931) dating from 1980 which is replete with rich flute tones, “bent” harp notes and Gubaidulina’s characteristic overtone-series harmonics from the viola. The work ends with an ad libitum recitation of a poem by Moscow poet Iv Oganov: “When is it truly over? When is the true end? […] Tomorrow we will play another game.”

The sound on this disc is as pristine and warmly clear as we have come to expect from ECM under Manfred Eicher’s careful supervision, and the performance leaves nothing to be desired. I was a bit surprised however, to find that the 28-page booklet included six photographs of the musicians (and one each of the composers) but no biographical information at all about the performers and only cursory bits about the composers in the otherwise impressive liner notes (in German and English, including the texts of the poems). If it weren’t for the press release sent with the recording (which didn’t mention Piccinini’s Canadian upbringing other than her success in the CBC Young Performers Competition) I would have been left Googling to find out about the players. It seems a surprising oversight, especially considering Kashkashian has been an ECM artist since 1985. The booklet does however credit the abstract cover photo (which I take to be a very stunning cloudscape) to Kashkashian, revealing another side of this accomplished artist.

Canadian Trio Verlaine (Lorna McGhee, flute; David Harding, viola; Heidi Krutzen, harp) released their first CD Fin de Siècle – Music of Debussy and Ravel back in 2008 (reviewed in these pages by John Keillor in May of that year). Although now based in different cities (Krutzen is principal harp of the Victoria Opera, McGhee and Harding now live in Pittsburgh working as principal flute of the Pittsburgh Symphony and professor at Carnegie Mellon University respectively) they continue to perform and record together. Six Departures (Ravello Records RR7895 trioverlaine.com) explores repertoire created on the Debussy model with music by Sir Arnold Bax, Jeffrey Cotton, R. Murray Schafer and André Jolivet.

In addition to Bax’s Elegiac Trio and Jolivet’s Petite Suite, both staples of the repertoire, the disc includes two world premiere recordings of works written for Trio Verlaine: the title track by Cotton, an American composer who died last year at the age of 55, commissioned by the Seattle Chamber Music Society, and Schafer’s Trio for Flute, Viola and Harp, co-commissioned by Michael Koerner, the Ottawa Chamber Music Festival and Music on Main. The first is based on the baroque suite, a set of six dances beginning with a prelude and including two Passacaglia movements. Cotton’s lyrical tonal language reflects “the deceptively sunny Los Angeles of his childhood filtered through the haunted German expressionism he encountered as a student of Hans Werner Henze.” Schafer’s trio sounds particularly French to my ear, perhaps referencing the origins of this instrumental combination. The three movements – Freely flowing; Slowly, calmly; and Rhythmic – are again lyrically tonal in their language with no shortage of Schafer’s characteristic playfulness.

Recorded earlier this year, the performances are committed and commendable, the crisp attacks and seamless ensemble playing captured admirably in the warm acoustic of St. Mark’s Anglican Church in Vancouver.

We welcome your feedback and invite submissions. CDs and comments should be sent to: DISCoveries, WholeNote Media Inc., The Centre for Social Innovation, 503 – 720 Bathurst St. Toronto ON M5S 2R4. We also encourage you to visit our website thewholenote.com where you can find added features including direct links to performers, composers and record labels and additional, expanded and archival reviews.

David Olds, DISCoveries Editor
discoveries@thewholenote.com

Mozart – Requiem
Soloists; Accentus; Insula Orchestra; Laurence Equilbey
naïve V 5370

There are many recordings of Mozart’s Requiem. My own favourite is the live recording made in 2001 by Les Violons du Roy and La Chapelle de Québec, conducted by Bernard Labadie, with Karina Gauvin, Marie-Nicole Lemieux, John Tessier and Nathan Berg as soloists, and with a brilliant cameo part by the trombonist Alain Trudel (on Dorian; at present only available as an MP3).

The Requiem was unfinished when Mozart died and was subsequently completed by his student, Franz Xaver Süssmayr, with some input by Jakob Freystädtler and Joseph Eybler. It is likely that they based their work on sketches by Mozart himself but, since these sketches no longer exist, we cannot be certain about that. Most performances adopt the Süssmayr completion: it may not be all Mozart but it is the closest we can get to Mozart’s conception of the work. The Labadie performance, however, uses a revision and completion by Robert D. Levin.

The version on the present recording is more traditional. It features a new period ensemble, the Insula Orchestra, and a very fine choir, Accentus, which has been in existence for 20 years. The soloists are Sandrine Piau, soprano, Sara Mingardo, contralto, Werner Güra, tenor, and Christopher Purves, bass-baritone. They are also very good. The booklet that comes with the CD has a useful chart outlining what Mozart completed and what was completed by others. I could, however, do without passages like: “And so he laid down his pen after the first eight bars of the ‘Lacrymosa’ ... For he was not God, but a man, and could bear no more.”

Although my allegiance is still to the Labadie performance, I liked the new one and recommend it.

Mozart – Don Giovanni
Soloists; Fondazione Orchestra Regionale delle Marche; Riccardo Frizza
Cmajor 717408

After some 230 years the fascination for Mozart’s greatest opera has never ceased. In fact there seems to be a renaissance these days with new productions all over the world: New York, London, Milan, even Toronto. But we need not go to those glittering, super-expensive centres (at La Scala tickets went for 2,300 euros!) as here we have a DVD from a small town in central Italy, Macerata, which most of you I daresay never heard of, produced on a limited budget; an elegant, rapt and joyful reading that puts those grandiose, star-studded productions to shame.

This success that “will enter the annals of opera” (ForumOpera.com) can be attributed to many things, not least to the work of Italy’s gran maestro of staging and set design Pier Luigi Pizzi’s brilliant and inspired direction. His vision is that of vast amusement yet sympathetic understanding of the foibles of men (and women), a dramma giocoso as Mozart envisioned it. A big, unmade bed is ever present and much of the action takes place in and around it, reminding us constantly what all this fuss is all about. Yet, his taste is impeccable without any vulgarity. The cast is virtually flawless: all young singers, mainly Italian, energetic and attractive with voices that could rival any of the big stars; The women especially, among whom Carmela Remigio (Donna Elvira) is probably the most memorable.

But what delivers the biggest punch is Don Juan himself, Ildebrando d’Arcangelo, whose career I’ve followed in the last ten years from humble bit roles to his major break in Vienna as a very unlikely Henry VIII in Donizetti’s Anna Bolena. Here he is a phenomenon, a life force, the essence of the show no one will likely forget. Another young Italian, conductor Riccardo Frizza’s upbeat tempi, a bit on the fast side, keep everything moving forward with the supreme glory of Mozart always shining through.

Mercadante – I Briganti
Soloists; Camerata Bach Choir, Poznan; Virtuosi Brunensis; Antonino Fogliani
Naxos 8.660343-44

Saverio Mercadante was a prominent early 19th-century Italian composer. He wrote 57 operas. Few people living now will have seen any, although there are now recordings of several, mainly on the Opera Rara label. The present CD was recorded live at the XXIV Rossini in Wildbad Festival in July 2012. The libretto is based on Schiller’s play Die Räuber, as is Verdi’s later opera I Masnadieri. The cast on this recording is cosmopolitan: the tenor is Russian, the soprano Bulgarian, the baritone Italian, the chorus Polish and the orchestra Czech. The soloists are very good and they perform with virtuosity and with gusto.

This world premiere recording uses a new edition based on research by Michael Wittmann, who also contributes an informative note. He argues that Mercadante’s operas represent a movement away from the elaborate decorations of bel canto opera in favour of a greater emphasis on the dramatic aspect. It was left to Verdi, Wittmann suggests, to take this a stage further and to place “veracity of expression above its beauty.” I find the argument convincing but I also think that we should appreciate the opera on its own terms, not just as a missing link between Bellini and Verdi.

Schoenberg – Moses und Aron
Franz Grundheber; Andreas Conrad; SWRSO Baden-Baden und Freiburg; Sylvain Cambreling
Hanssler Classic 93.314

Arnold Schoenberg’s self-authored libretto for his dodecaphonic biblical spectacular Moses und Aron (the latter protagonist is intentionally respelled so that the title contains exactly 12 letters) calls for the on-stage appearance of rape, murder, butchery and camels. (Take that, Verdi!) Though he intended the work to include three acts, the composer completed only the first two from 1930 to 1932. In essence however the work is closer in spirit to an oratorio and is often effectively presented as such. Recordings of Moses have been slow but steady following the composer’s death in 1951, with about a dozen available in various formats. What has kept this opera in the shadows (it was not staged in this hemisphere until the Metropolitan Opera presented it in 1999) has less to do with the lurid scenario than the extensive and hugely demanding choral writing – the most recent staging in Wales saw the chorus rehearsing the work for some 18 months.

I consider the true stars of this new recording to be the members of the elite EuropaChorAkademie who have thoroughly mastered the score with spectacular results. In the lead roles the magisterial Franz Grundheber makes a lasting impression in the half-sung, half-spoken interpretation of the tongue-tied Moses and is effectively paired with the forceful Heldentenor of Andreas Conrad as his eloquent spokesman Aron. The French conductor and new music specialist Sylvain Cambreling leads the SWR radio orchestra (sadly scheduled to be dissolved in 2016) in a finely balanced and lucid account of the score miraculously cobbled together from no less than four different performances in as many venues during a 2012 European tour.

It’s an idea so obvious that you have to wonder why the market isn’t already flooded: a DVD that features a world-class soloist going through a major concerto almost bar by bar, explaining the problems and challenges, and discussing ways of addressing them. DVDs of masterclasses are occasionally issued, but I don’t know of anything quite like the Learning from the Legends series (learningfromthelegends.com), which has recently started its catalogue with two 2-DVD sets featuring Lara St. John playing and dissecting two of the most popular violin concertos in the repertoire: the Bruch G Minor and the Mendelssohn.

The Bruch set came my way recently, and it’s absolutely fascinating and engrossing. DVD1 features St. John playing the concerto with pianist Eduard Laurel, but with the work broken up into short segments, often of only a few bars. The violin music appears at the foot of the screen, and St. John discusses just about everything you can think of before repeating the section: technical challenges and problems; interpretation; performance issues; tips and advice; fingering; bowing; practising and learning the solo part. The first movement dissection takes 45 minutes; the second 33 minutes, and the finale 43 minutes.

DVD2 has the uninterrupted performance of the concerto by St. John and Laurel, a piano-only accompaniment, and a selection of short help sections from St. John: The Importance of Finding a Teacher; Practice Philosophy; and eight short Technical Exercises.

St. John’s relaxed and friendly presentation-style is perfect, and her commentary always apposite and perceptive. The camera work is almost entirely close-up, with every possible angle of fingering and hand position shown clearly.

It’s absolutely indispensable stuff for student violinists, and offers fascinating and revelatory insights for anyone interested in how concert performances are built. Sheet music for St. John’s own edition of the solo part is available for download through the publisher’s website.

Quebec’s Quatuor Fandango was formed six years ago as a student ensemble at the Conservatoire de musique in Gatineau. Uarekena, their debut CD, presents an attractive program of short works and some excellent ensemble playing (ATMA ACD2 2707).

The disc opens with Comme un Tango and closes with Carnaval, two short pieces by Patrick Roux, the quartet’s teacher and mentor in Gatineau. Dušan Bogdanović’s Introduction and Danse was inspired by the music of Eastern Europe and Sérgio Assad’s title track reflects his Brazilian heritage.

Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite is followed by Leo Brouwer’s Paisaje cubano and Jürg Kindle’s Berimbao, the latter named after the African instrument that consists of a steel string struck with a stick. There are some particularly interesting sound effects in the Brouwer and Kindle pieces – and yes, you can play the guitar with a pencil!

The recorded sound is warm and resonant, the balance excellent and the playing terrific. The group rightly points out that the guitar quartet is a relatively recent addition to the list of performing ensembles, and the repertoire continues to grow, both in original compositions and arrangements and transcriptions. This CD is a welcome addition to the quartet discography, and a debut disc to be proud of.

Given that the outstanding Hyperion series The Romantic Violin Concerto has mostly highlighted lesser-known composers, the selection of Max Bruch for Volume 17 (CDA68050) may, at first glance, seem a bit surprising. The huge popularity of the Concerto No.1 in G Minor, however, overshadowed the two later concertos, both in D minor, which Bruch wrote for the instrument.

The Violin Concerto No.3, Op.58 is the main feature here. It’s a long work, with absolutely gorgeous music throughout, and a particularly lovely slow movement. The melodies are perhaps less immediately memorable than those in the G minor concerto, which may help to explain why the work never really established itself, but it’s easy to see why Bruch grew so annoyed and frustrated when violinists always preferred to play the earlier concerto.

If there is a bit of a surprise here, it might be the choice of the Scottish Fantasy, Op.46 as the accompanying work, instead of the even less-heard and perhaps more obvious Violin Concerto No.2; still, it’s such a lovely and familiar work that it’s hard to complain, and it shows, perhaps, the difference that strong melodies that stay with you after just one hearing can make to a work’s impact.

The English violinist Jack Liebeck is in superb form in both works, with Martyn Brabbins and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra providing excellent support.

Joshua Bell joins the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields as soloist and music director in performances of the two solo violin concertos by J. S. Bach on his latest CD, Bach (Sony Classical 88843 08779). The Concerto No.1 in A Minor, BWV 1041 and the Concerto No.2 in E Major, BWV 1042 are both given bright, sympathetic readings with beautiful playing from all the participants. The slow movements are heartfelt without ever being overplayed, and the finales have a genuine dance feel to them.

It’s hard to understand now how anyone could ever have felt that any of the Bach solo Sonatas & Partitas needed a piano accompaniment, but in the mid-19th century both Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn did just that, Schumann supplying a piano part for all six works, and Mendelssohn – who was mainly responsible for the revival of Bach’s music in the first place – writing an accompaniment for the great D minor Chaconne. The Chaconne is included here with the Mendelssohn accompaniment, but Bell takes it a step further by using an orchestral arrangement of Mendelssohn’s piano part that he created with the Philharmonia Orchestra violinist Julian Milone. Bell openly admits that the Bach original cannot be improved upon, but appreciates that it does give him another way to experience the work and the opportunity to play it with his friends in the Academy. It’s an interesting experiment, and one that is repeated with the Gavotte en Rondeau from the E major Partita, this time with Schumann’s accompaniment getting the Milone treatment. A lovely reading of the Air from the Orchestral Suite in D Major completes an excellent CD.

The title of violinist Daniel Hope’s new CD, Escape to Paradise: The Hollywood Album (Deutsche Grammophon            4792954), is a bit misleading. Hope’s focus is on composers who escaped from Hitler’s Europe to the warmth of the Hollywood movie scene, but there’s non-Hollywood music here from pre-and post-war Germany – including a Korngold work from 1908 – as well as non-escapee music from second-generation Hollywood composers like John Williams and Ennio Morricone.

Hope and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra under Alexander Shelley display a big Hollywood tone right from the opening notes of Miklós Rózsa’s Love Theme from Ben Hur, and carry the same style into the major work on the disc, Erich Korngold’s Violin Concerto Op.35; the concerto was built around themes from Korngold’s Hollywood movie scores. It’s a fine performance of a lovely work.

The remainder of the CD is given over to 14 short pieces, most of them arrangements; five are for duo or chamber ensemble, including three that feature members of the Deutsches Kammerorchester Berlin. Ex-Police frontman Sting sings his own lyrics (replacing Berthold Brecht’s!) to a song from Hanns Eisler’s Hollywood Liederbuch, and German singer Max Raabe contributes a flat (unfortunately in both meanings of the word) performance of Kurt Weill’s Speak Low.

The best tracks are those for soloist and orchestra, including the themes from Rózsa’s El Cid, Morricone’s Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, Williams’ Schindler’s List and Thomas Newman’s American Beauty. The disc ends with a slow, low-key and really quite odd solo violin arrangement of As Time Goes By.

The CD is a strange mixture in many ways; some moments resonate less than others, and the vocal tracks in particular seem more like intrusions than contributions, but Hope’s playing is stylish and of a very high standard throughout. Editor’s Note: Alexander Shelley succeeds Pinchas Zukerman as conductor of the National Arts Centre Orchestra in September 2015. 

Terra Incognito, featuring the Colombian-born guitarist and composer Arturo Parra, is the debut CD from the new Montreal music and book publishing company La Grenouille Hirsute/Shaggy Frog Productions (LGH1301).

The sub-title of the CD is Seven sound portraits, Parra having spent time with seven men and women from different parts of the Americas before composing seven original pieces “at the request of their subjects” in response to what he had heard. The title, Terra Incognito, refers to the phrase that used to indicate unknown territory on early maps and globes. More on that in a minute.

I didn’t quite know what to expect from this disc. Parra has extensive experience with contemporary mixed media compositions for guitar, and, we are told, “…has to date invented over fifty extended guitar techniques and forms of guitar/vocal expression, and continues to expand the expressive range of his instrument through his sonic explorations.” Not that you would know that from this CD: from reading the promotional material I expected a far more edgy, experimental approach, but it’s mostly riffs and improvisations on standard classical guitar etudes, patterns and techniques, with the occasional extraneous sound – clicks here, a swoosh there – and some fairly standard guitar sound effects – string slides, percussive knocks and the like.

The relevance of the Terra Incognito title is explained by the album’s representing “a vast fresco of a grand journey through unknown lands… a journey that ultimately leads [listeners] back to their home port.” The language throughout the entire package – and particularly in the almost impenetrable booklet notes on the seven track titles – is, to put it mildly, opaque. Here is Parra expounding on his view that every portrait is also, in some way, a portrait of its author: “Each of us is, to another, a two-way mirror watching us watching ourselves while we believe we are watching someone else; a mirror in which we stare into infinity, entranced by our own features, while the mirror stares at itself believing it is staring at us.” Um… OK. “Would I have written the portraits in full knowledge of how naked they would leave me? Don’t know, can’t say.” The entire booklet notes are of a similar nature, either at the far edge of perception or simply pretentious – take your pick – but it doesn’t really matter; the point is that they bear absolutely no relation to the end product and to what you hear.

Don’t get me wrong. Make no mistake: this guy can play. Parra is an extremely talented and proficient guitarist and composer, and the pieces here show an advanced technique and a refined awareness of the instrument’s range and colour palette. There is, however, little sense of the individual pieces being portraits of anything; the whole CD, far from feeling like a journey, feels more like a series of improvisational – albeit high quality and beautifully played – studies.

The recording quality is excellent, and there is a great deal to enjoy on this disc. I just have a big problem believing that it actually does what it claims to do.

Perla Barocca – Early Italian Masterpieces
Rachel Podger; Marcin Swiatkiewicz; Daniele Caminiti
Channel Classics CCS SA 36014

This beautiful disc is a pearl indeed. From the lyrical, improvisatory opening of G.B. Fontana’s Sonata 2 to the final exuberance of Bertali’s Chiacona, Perla Barocca is a delightful exploration of 17th-century Italian violin repertoire, as interpreted by three luminescent players.

Among my personal favourites on this CD are Pandolfi Mealli’s Sonata 6, in which the composer’s theatrical eccentricity and lyricism are effortlessly captured. Isabella Leonarda’s Sonata 12 is simply gorgeous, and the fiery passagework of Marco Uccellini’s Sonata overo Toccata “detta la Laura rilucente,” isn’t just impressive, it’s refreshingly expressive as well. Particularly in Biagio Marini’s Sonata 4, Rachel Podger and her colleagues make use of an extraordinary range of tonal colour and volume, as well as numerous special effects described in writings of the time but rarely heard nowadays in performances of this repertoire. Girolamo Frescobaldi is represented here with the familiar keyboard Toccata 1, in which harpsichordist Marcin Swiatkiewicz displays his interpretive mastery, and another Toccata for “spinettina e violino.” Podger, Camini and Swiatkiewicz give Dario Castello’s Sonata 2 one of the most thoughtful and inventive renditions I’ve ever heard, providing inspiration for a fresh look at this much-recorded piece. Their perfect exploitation of expressive device, creative pacing and snappy virtuosity give the impression that the three of them are actively collaborating with Castello as they go; and so it is with the rest of the music on this CD.

A must-listen.

A Royal Trio – Arias by Handel, Bononcini & Ariosti
Lawrence Zazzo; La Nuova Musica; David Bates
Harmonia Mundi HMU 807590

In 1719, Handel had been told by the newly established Royal Academy of Music in London to recruit a company of singers, of the calibre of the castrato Senesino. Such singers were the mainstay of the Academy, as were Handel and the Milanese cellist and composer Giovanni Bononcini.

Add a third composer Attilio Ariosti of Bologna, and you have an operatic power house in London which, along with Lawrence Zazzo’s genius as a countertenor, is the inspiration for this CD. Indeed, Zazzo’s skills as a countertenor are immediately displayed with his vigorous interpretation of Handel’s “Rompo I lacci” from Flavio. More sedate but no less intense is his performance of “Cosi stanco Pellegrino” from Bononcini’s Crispo.

Handel’s music features in ten of the 18 tracks on this CD, “Va tacito” from Giulio Cesare being an entirely suitable selection, not only due to Zazzo’s enthusiastic performance but because of the spirited accompaniment from the woodwinds and horns of La Nuova Musica. It is a sharp contrast to the thoughtful, sighing setting of “Tanti affani” from Handel’s Ottone, which follows.

Despite Handel’s reputation, one of the most moving recordings on the entire CD is Ariosti’s “Spirate, o iniqui marmi” from Coriolano, conveying Coriolano’s anguish at his wrongful imprisonment. In this case, it is the strings which combine with Zazzo’s voice to create the doleful atmosphere.

In fact, Bononcini and Handel both end the CD with a flourish, the former with “Tigre piagata” from Muzio Sevola and the latter with “Vivi, tiranno” from Rodelinda. Each piece showcases the sheer skill of Lawrence Zazzo and the demands placed on his voice.