Franck & Strauss – Violin Sonatas
Augustin Dumay; Louis Lortie
Onyx 4096

César Franck’s passionate and romantic Violin Sonata has been regarded as one of the greatest in the repertoire. Thanks to this disc however, I have fallen in love with Richard Strauss’s Violin Sonata Op.18, a work of his early years. It is lyrical and lush with all the hallmarks of his later style. It was written in 1887 and Strauss had studied both violin and piano from a very early age. He had already composed a violin concerto in 1882 so it is not surprising to hear superb writing for both instruments. This sonata is expansive in the grand manner using idiomatic writing for virtuoso performers but it is also melodic, tender and intimate. There are references to Brahms in several moments of the music and in the last few bars the piano part quotes from the Adagio of Beethoven’s “Pathétique” Sonata. This is vigorous and adventurous music, full of bravura. The middle section seems to be invaded by the Erlking. However, the lyrical moments melt your heart as do the performances.

César Franck’s only violin sonata was written in 1886 as a wedding present for the virtuoso violinist Eugène Ysaÿe. It is a staple of all violinists. Both violinist and pianist get to flex their muscles in this unabashedly emotional and radiant work. The second movement is the most fiery music Franck ever wrote and lets the pianist display his virtuosic technique. However, the dolcissimo and rhapsodic, improvisatory nature of the Recitativo-Fantasia shows Franck at his most expressive with an intense but serene melodic line. No wonder this piece became a standard-bearer for French chamber music. These performances are poised, refined and exquisite. They match in their touch and in the pacing of the music. Both Dumay and Lortie sing the melodic line on their instruments in intense and sensitive unison. The two artists have chosen to highlight the music instead of their own technique and it is a journey well worth listening to. A highly recommended CD for lovers of French chamber music.

The dutch cellist Pieter Wispelwey has lived with the Bach Cello Suites for virtually his entire professional career, having explored them and played them in recital close to an astonishing 1,000 times. He has already recorded them twice, 14 and 21 years ago, but decided to celebrate his 50th birthday last September by recording them for a third time; the new 2-CD plus DVD set on Evil Penguin Records Classic (EPRC 012) is the result. Given Wispelwey’s ongoing relationship with the pieces, however, he readily admits that this won’t be the end of the road. “Six suites, six recordings,” he says in the DVD; “Why not?” Wispelwey also took this opportunity to “take the plunge,” in his own words, and do something he had done in private but had never dared to do in concert: tune his cellos down from the standard 415 baroque pitch to 392, the contemporary pitch in Cöthen, where Bach wrote the suites around 1720. This dropped the tuning a semi-tone; it gave him, he says, “the sensation of entering rooms that I hadn’t been in before or didn’t know existed.”

Wispelwey plays a 1710 Pieter Rombouts baroque cello for the first five suites, and an anonymous 18th-century five-string violoncello piccolo for the sixth. His familiarity with this music is obvious from the free-flowing opening bars of the Suite No.1 in G Major; there’s a great sense of flow and structure here, and a confidence and assurance in the playing that doesn’t preclude a sense of joyful exploration; it’s as if we are fortunate enough to be joining Wispelwey on yet another of his journeys through these wonderful works, and are witness to his new discoveries.

The DVD, entitled 392, Pieter Wispelwey and the Bach Cello Suites, is an entertaining 52-minute documentary filmed during Wispelwey’s dress rehearsal for the recording, a concert performance of all six suites at the Holywell Concert Room in Oxford in May of last year; excerpts from the recital are interspersed with discussions and observations about Bach and contemporary performance issues — particularly for the dance movements — with Bach scholars Laurence Dreyfus of Oxford University and Glasgow University’s John Butt. Fascinating booklet notes and an attractive presentation box format help to make this a set to treasure.

The Six Cello Suites also turn up in transcriptions on two naïve CDs from American lutenist Hopkinson Smith, Bach Suites Nos.1, 2, 3 (E 8937) being performed on theorbo, and Bach Suites Nos.4, 5, 6 (E 8938) on lute. Despite the consecutive numbers, the two CDs are not issued as a set; the first is in an attractive cardboard Digipak, while the second is in a traditional plastic jewel case. There’s a quite different feel to the suites in these performances — they’re softer and gentler, for a start, with Suites 1 to 3 transposed up a fourth and Suite 4 up a fifth — but the music doesn’t seem to suffer; indeed, the opportunity for fuller accompaniment and added bass lines serves to clarify and expand the harmonies implicit in the solo cello writing. And again, there’s that sense of journeying and exploring, of participating with an interpreter in an intimate personal experience that underlines yet again just how much depth these works have. Detailed booklet notes explain the choice of instruments, tunings and transpositions.

It would be hard to imagine a more suitable pair of performers for the Bach 6 Sonatas for Harpsichord and Violin BWV 1014–1019 than Catherine Manson and Ton Koopman, or a better performance than they give on a new Challenge Classics 2-CD set (CC72560). The Dutch Baroque specialist Koopman, now nearly 70, founded the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra in 1979; Manson became its leader in 2006.

As the excellent and detailed booklet notes by Christoph Wolff point out, this set of innovative sonatas forms a pivotal link between the baroque trio sonata and the classical duo sonata of the late 18th century. There is true partnership in the writing, as there is in these outstanding performances. Koopman’s harpsichord sound is strong, deep and warm; Manson’s violin sound is the perfect companion and counterpart: light, but never lacking in depth.

Beautifully recorded, this is intelligent playing full of sensitivity, energy and drive.

Paul Hindemith was a world-class viola player, so it’s not surprising that there is a significant amount of music for viola in his chamber output, nor is it surprising that it brilliantly exploits the instrument’s full range and character.

Two of his three sonatas for viola and piano and the second of his four sonatas for solo viola are presented on Paul Hindemith Retrospective: Viola Sonatas, in outstanding performances by Yuri Gandelsman and pianist Ralph Votapek (Blue Griffin BGR277). The duo works are theSonata Op.11 No.4 from 1919, the year that Hindemith decided to change to viola from violin, which until then had been his primary instrument, and the final sonata of the three, dating from 1939. The solo sonata is the Op.25 No.1 from 1922. A short Capriccio, arranged by Gandelsman from Hindemith’s Op.8 No.1 work of the same title for cello and piano, concludes a marvellous CD.

Gandelsman’s tone is full and rich across the complete range of the instrument – hardly surprising, given that he plays a 1748 Paolo Testore viola – and what a range it is in Hindemith’s hands! Add faultless technique and a lovely range of dynamics from both players and you have a real winner. The CD was recorded thanks to a grant from Michigan State University, where Gandelsman is professor of viola at the College of Music. The sound quality is absolutely top notch.

The ever-reliable harmonia mundi label has added another winner to its catalogue with the Sonatas for Piano & Violin and the Piano Quartet ofCarl Maria von Weber (HMC 902108). Violinist Isabelle Faust andAlexander Melnikov, playing an original ca.1815 fortepiano, are in great form in the sonatas and are joined by violist Boris Faust and cellist Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt for the piano quartet.

Weber (1786-1826) is mostly known for his early German Romantic operas and a few clarinet pieces, but he composed over 300 works during his short life. The Six Violin Sonatas Op.10 were written in 1810 on a commission from the publisher André, who had asked for pieces of only moderate difficulty suitable for performance in a domestic setting. Restricted by this limitation, Weber experienced a great deal of trouble with the composition and was clearly annoyed when André rejected the sonatas for being too good. The works were eventually published by Simrock under the title Progressive sonatas for fortepiano with obbligato violin, composed for and dedicated to amateur musicians. They certainly get off to a dazzling start, and it’s clear from the brilliant opening of this CD that these sonatas are quite something, even if there’s not necessarily a great emotional depth to them. And don’t be fooled by the statement in the booklet notes that “the technical demands on the performers, especially the violin, (my italics) are fairly modest…,” although they do acknowledge that the real musical difficulty lies in having to interpret the constantly changing array of styles; the sonatas aren’t in the virtuoso league by any means, but the keyboard part in particular is clearly challenging. I’d be surprised if many amateur players could handle these charming pieces at all, let alone as brilliantly as Faust and Melnikov.

The Piano Quartet Op.8 is from the previous year, although the Adagio was apparently written in 1806. The work fully deserves the description “unjustly neglected,” even if there are clearly echoes of Beethoven throughout.

The Argentinean cellist Sol Gabetta has two new CD releases, both of them of very high quality.

On Shostakovich Rachmaninov (Sony 88725435752) she is supported by the Münchener Philharmoniker under Lorin Maazel in a live concert performance of Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No.1 – well, live in so far as its having been recorded over three concert dates in Munich in September 2011. There’s a complete absence of any audience sound or ambience, but the recording certainly has the electricity of a live performance. The Rachmaninov work is a regular studio recording of his Cello Sonata in G Minor Op.19, in which Olga Kern is the pianist; again, it’s a first-class performance in all respects.

On Duo, Gabetta makes a guest appearance on the Deutsche Grammophon label for a recital with pianist Hélène Grimaud (479 0090).The two met at the Menuhin Festival in Gstaad in 2011 and formed an immediate bond; the program on this CD, the first specific duo recording for either artist, is apparently the recital program they performed in Gstaad.

Schumann’s Drei Fantasiestücke Op.73 opens the disc, followed by three cello sonatas: Brahms’ No.1, Op.38; the Debussy; and the ShostakovichOp.40. The jewel case blurb quotes a review of the original concert, noting “Magical intensity and intimacy,” and it’s an extremely accurate description of the CD recital as well. From the interview conversation in the booklet notes it’s quite clear that these two performers share a very special musical relationship; the mutual understanding and the sharing of nuances is evident throughout an outstanding CD.

The exceptional violinist Tianwa Yang has been featured in this column several times over the past few years in reviews of her two separate Naxosseries of the complete works of Pablo Sarasate for violin and piano and violin and orchestra; both series are due for completion this year. Yang is the soloist on two recent unrelated Naxos releases.

The most recent is her recording of the Mendelssohn Violin Concertos, coupled with the Violin Sonata in F minor (8.572662); Patrick Gallois leads the Sinfonia Finlandia Jyväskylä, and Romain Descharmesis the pianist in the sonata. There are so many recordings of the Mendelssohn E minor concerto that it seems as if there can’t possibly be anything new to say with it, and yet it remains almost a rite of passage for all soloists. It’s not too difficult to come up with reasons: this is, after all, the most perfect of violin concertos, and a true test of technique, tone, sensitivity, artistry and musicianship. Yang certainly displays ample technique and musical intelligence in this work, as she does throughout the CD, although her tone can tend to be somewhat nasal in the middle and lower registers. The D minor concerto is a work from Mendelssohn’s youth, written in 1822 when he was only 13; Yehudi Menuhin obtained a manuscript copy in 1951, and was essentially responsible for its revival and publication. Scored for violin and string orchestra, it contains flashes of the mature Mendelssohn, but is generally closer in style to the works of Mendelssohn’s older contemporaries Kreutzer and Rode.

The violin sonata is another early work, from 1823, but the music, from the violin’s plaintive unaccompanied solo beginning, through an affecting slow movement to a quite Beethovenian Allegro Agitato finale, belies the composer’s age.

Yang’s other recent Naxos release is the Complete Works for Violin and Piano by the contemporary German composer Wolfgang Rihm, with pianist Nicholas Rimmer (8.572730).

Despite his prolific output, I don’t recall ever hearing any of Rihm’s music. I’m sure the fault is all mine, but it may also possibly be because his music doesn’t seem to lend itself to standard radio or recital programming; it’s not always an easy listening experience, not strong on melody and with a good deal of stop/start passages in some of the pieces, and with some odd effects at the extremes of the violin’s physical range and also in the piano writing. Rihm is very highly regarded though, particularly in Europe, and although the jewel case is typically over-effusive in describing Rihm’s style as “…almost unique in today’s music in marrying contemporary technique with emotionally powerful resonances” this is obviously a very strong voice with a distinct character. Yang and Rimmer are clearly very much at home in these pieces, and give strong, assured performances throughout the CD. The five works span Rihm’s career, from Hekton (1972) and Eine Violinsonate (1971/75) through two pieces from the early 1990s, Antlitz and Phantom und Eskapade, to the world premiere recording of Über die Linie VII for solo violin, from 2006. I found the latter to be the most accessible and effective work of the five, although Phantom und Eskapade has some beautiful moments.

Brundibár – Music by composers
in Theresienstadt (1941–1945)
The Nash Ensemble
Hyperion CDA67973

The outstanding Nash Ensemble presents a compelling tribute to four Jewish composers based in Czechoslovakia and held in the Theresienstadt ghetto for prisoners often Auschwitz-bound. Hearing these works we mourn the untimely deaths of Holocaust victims Hans Krása, Victor Ullman, Gideon Klein and Pavel Haas.

The concise String Quartet No.3 by Ullman (1898–1944) is particularly accomplished. Expressiveness akin to Alban Berg’s pervades the opening movement. The colourful finale opens march-like and in canon, then takes off with many grainy sul ponticello effects and pizzicato chords. All is handled expertly by the Nash’s strings: Stephanie Gonley and Laura Samuel, violins; Lawrence Power, viola; and Paul Watkins, cello.

Their performances of the String Quartet No.2 “From the Monkey Mountains” by Haas (1899–1944) and the String Trio by Klein (1919–1945) also deserve accolades. In the Haas quartet’s opening movement, “Landscape,” intonation of violinists Samuel and Gonley is superb in high, difficult figures reminiscent of Haas’ teacher Janáček. In the hilarious “Coach, Coachman and Horse,” all players provide suitably grotesque glissandi to portray the sliding cart!

The young Klein’s trio includes deft and imaginative variations on a Moravian folksong. Finally, the full Nash Ensemble including winds, piano and percussion gives an energetic reading of a suite from the children’s opera Brundibár by Krása (1899–1944). It is a delightful work with witty allusions to popular styles. Brundibár stands as a brilliant testimony to the resilience of cultural life in Theresienstadt.

Britten – Les Illuminations; Variations; Serenade; Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal
Barbara Hannigan; James Gilchrist;
Jasper de Waal; Amsterdam Sinfonietta; Candida Thompson
Channel Classics CCS SA 32213

It’s centennial season again and it’s Benjamin Britten’s well-deserved turn to hog the limelight. This new disc from the Amsterdam Sinfonietta brings us two familiar song cycles and an early work for string orchestra. A knockout performance of Les Illuminations, ten sophisticated settings of the poetry of Artur Rimbaud from 1939, opens the disc. Soprano Barbara Hannigan is in fine fettle here, singing very beautifully in excellent French while the virtuoso string orchestra blooms luxuriantly in the warm acoustics of Haarlem’s Philharmonie Hall. Hannigan, renowned for her expertise in contemporary music, is one of Canada’s most celebrated vocalists and though that information figures quite prominently on her personal website, the liner notes ruthlessly delete any reference to her nationality!

An eclectic parody of myriad musical styles for string orchestra follows, the 1937 Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge, dedicated to Britten’s first composition teacher and “musical father.” Bridge was an outlier in the parochial British music scene and one of the very few who appreciated the progressive music of continental Europe, knowledge he passed down to his eager teenage pupil. The recording cleaves quite closely to the timings and interpretation of Britten’s own 1966 recording though the modern sound, recorded in the Stadsgehoorzaal in Leiden, is excessively reverberant and over-modulated, though I suppose this might be considered a virtue for SACD fanatics.

Superior microphone placement makes this less of a problem in the closing item, the Serenade for tenor, horn and strings from 1943. It features James Gilchrist, a fine singer with more heft to his voice and less affectations than most English tenors, partnered with the assured playing of the principal horn of the Concertgebouw Orchestra, Jasper de Waal.

David Tanner; Jose Elizondo –
Of Birds and Lemons
Moravian Philharmonic; Vit Micka,
Petr Vronsky; Millennium Symphony; Robert Ian Winstin
Navona Records 96931
www.navonarecords.com

For those who have always tended to shy away from contemporary music for fear it’s too “avant-garde,” this disc titled Of Birds and Lemons featuring music by two composers may be just the thing. The two in question — David Tanner (born in 1950) and José Elizondo (born in 1972) both write in a style that may rightly be described as “contemporary conservative.” Indeed, there isn’t a tone cluster or a trace of electronica to be heard anywhere on this CD.

Born in the UK, Tanner came to Canada as a child, and while in his 20s, earned fame as a member of the rock group Lighthouse. He is also known as a fine saxophonist and has taught the instrument at the University of Toronto and the Royal Conservatory of Music. Tanner’s approach — that music should be enjoyed by performers and audiences alike — is very much reflected in the pieces included on this disc — Pocket Symphony, Tango of the Lemons, I’ll Come to Thee by Moonlight and Tyger — performed by the Moravian Philharmonic and the Millennium Symphony. Together, they embody a buoyant and optimistic spirit, perfect for the community groups for which many of them were intended.

Mexican-born José Elizondo shares a similar outlook. In addition to his musical studies, Elizondo also studied electrical engineering at MIT and Harvard. He too, writes in an affable, contemporary style which he claims might be “too simple” for certain tastes. But his pieces Estampas Mexicanas, Leyenda del Quetzal y la Serpiente and Danzas Latinoamericanas — clearly reflecting his roots — are joyful and engaging and the two orchestras conducted by Petr Vronsky, Vit Micka and Robert Ian Winstin perform with great bravado.

This is definitely “music with a smile on its face” — and who’s to say we don’t need more of that these days?

A Little Knight Music – Selected works
by General Sir Maurice Grove Taylor
Joan Harrison; Elaine Keillor; Brigit Knecht
Independent

The Ottawa-based cellist Joan Harrison has produced a fascinating and delightful CD on her own label, The Enterprising Rabbit, featuring the music of the amateur English composer General Sir Maurice Grove Taylor(1881–1961) cleverly titled A Little Knight Music. Taylor was a career soldier in the British army, but his abiding passion was music. Despite being a distinguished and highly regarded piano professor at the Royal College of Music, his father Franklin Taylor refused to teach his son, who was consequently entirely self-taught.

Composed essentially for fun, and primarily for private performance, Taylor’s music exists only in manuscript form. On the evidence of this CD it’s interesting, competent and attractive writing, albeit with little sense of any real development.

Harrison is joined by pianist Elaine Keillor for the Sonata for Cello and Piano; violinist Brigit Knecht is the third member in the Trio for Violin, Violoncello and Piano, which has a simple but very effective slow movement. Both works needed a few touches from Keillor to finish the incomplete finales.

The other four works on the CD — the Llyn Maelog Suite, Fair Winds, Brave Wind and Sunset — were originally for violin and piano (Taylor’s wife was a fine violinist) and were transcribed for cello by Harrison.

This isn’t music that will change the world, but it does prove yet again that the exploration of the byways of music can yield such satisfying results. The playing throughout is exemplary, and it’s beautifully recorded too.

Harrison, who discovered this music through a chance encounter with one of the composer’s grandsons, plans to make the music for the recorded works available on her websites, joanharrisonmusic.com and enterprisingrabbit.com, where the CD will also be available for purchase. The sheet music should be available for download this month.

My Funny Valentine –
The Chet Baker Songbook
Matt Dusk
Eone Music ROY-CD-5626
mattdusk.com

Toronto-based singer Matt Dusk has just released My Funny Valentine: The Chet Baker Songbook. Given the title, one might think the album would bear some resemblance to the late singer and trumpet player’s work. While many of the songs on the disc were signatures for Baker, he was not a songwriter and these are standards that have been covered by many, many performers over the years. Additionally, Dusk — a self-described crooner — has a very different singing style than Baker, who had a quiet and vulnerable approach to song delivery. To their credit, neither Dusk nor guest trumpeters Arturo Sandoval and Guido Basso attempt to imitate Baker’s sound. All are fine musicians in their own right and take their own approach.

So if it’s not really about Chet Baker then what is it? Dusk and team (co-producers Terry Sawchuk and Shelly Berger) set out to “recreate a nostalgic musical experience” by producing a substantial album with a musical narrative intended to take the listener on a journey. In that they have succeeded utterly. The beautiful artwork and photographs — mostly of Dusk in various suits and settings — evoke years gone by. And the music, complete with horns and sweeping orchestral arrangements, has style and heft. Baker was a poster boy for the spare, laid back West Coast/cool jazz sound and his most popular music was performed with just a quartet. So, certainly enjoy Dusk’s album on its own merits, but listen to the original for a sense of what Baker was all about.

FluiDensity
Brian Groder; Tonino Miano
Latham Records/Impressus Records impressusrecords.com

Here is a recording of free improvisation that channels the players’ multiple sources to combine American jazz and European art music. Related to the tradition of “free jazz” founded by Cecil Taylor at the end of the 1950s, this way of making music requires prodigious rhythmic assurance and close attention to moment-to-moment events. Recording it is the exacting art of the single take: no editing, no overdubs, nowhere to hide.

The players are engaged in a kind of collective creation that balances the strong individualism of each against the duo’s ability to meld their ideas. In this, Groder and Miano happily avoid standard improvisational techniques of simple imitation or “default” roles such as soloist and accompanist.

Miano’s virtuosity is all over the piano. He is most often the “dense” to Groder’s “fluid” in this equation. He never lacks for textural and gestural ideas that contribute a sense of designed space to the improvisations, his harmonies ranging from modal to atonal.

Groder’s sound is the more deeply “jazz,” especially in the way a jazz wind player accesses quasi-vocal lyricism. His phrasing, articulation, pitch modulations and Miles Davis-like staccato identify him as the American in this European-American pairing. The lonely, elegiac solo trumpet is an iconic 20th century American sound that here avoids cliché by virtue of its sincerity.

Recall
Gilbert Isbin; Scott Walton
pfMENTUM CD073
pfmentum.com

Very little contemporary music has been written for the lute. While the guitar has been featured prominently throughout the 20th century, the lute can often feel like it belongs to another era entirely. Gilbert Isbin seeks to remedy this with his latest disc. Recorded in October of 2011, Recall features Isbin on lute and Scott Walton on bass.

The disc contains a series of short compositions and improvisations. Although much of the material is thematically linked, each piece begins to feel like its own short story. Interplay is emphasized here with both performers skilfully manoeuvring between composed sections and more freely improvised passages. This is evident on the track Pensive, with Isbin laying down a harmonic foundation for Walton’s extended bowing techniques. The result is akin to a short piece by Morton Feldman. Timbre is important throughout the set and delicate unison passages can often give way to more turbulent textures. Flutter is a good example of this, with the duo settling into a groove before evolving naturally into a section of free improvisation. This configuration allows for a great deal of space in the music that each performer seems comfortable exploring. Overall, this is a very engaging set from two creative musicians.

Have a Little Fun
Alex Pangman; Bucky Pizzarelli
Justin Time JTR 8578-2

It’s difficult not to greet a new Alex Pangman record with a smile and sense of gratitude. The Toronto-based singer has suffered for years with cystic fibrosis and a few years ago, her health had deteriorated to the point where she didn’t have the strength to stand up to sing. Then she received an organ donation and underwent a successful double lung transplant. For anyone, that is a major gift, but for a singer, it’s nothing short of a miracle to be able to perform again.

Pangman has been going strong ever since and her latest CD Have a Little Fun is aptly named. Continuing in the style she has for years — covering music from the 20s, 30s and 40s — this CD has the added bonus of the éminence grise Bucky Pizzarelli. The American guitarist has played with many legendary musicians including Les Paul, Stéphane Grapelli and Benny Goodman, and his calm, collected rhythm playing is a steady presence throughout the record. Although the songs are mostly medium and up tempo and have a veneer of fun, the lyrics run the gamut of the human condition describing loss, yearning and regret along with happiness and good times. Along with standards like Stardust and I’m Confessin’ are a few of Pangman’s own compositions and one, It Felt So Good To Be So Bad, is a standout. And, really, who among us can’t relate to that sentiment?

Jazz is sufficiently diverse, divisive and sometimes just plain obscure so that plenty of people who like some facet of it might never knowingly recognize others as anything like jazz. Trio Derome Guilbeault Tanguay is somehow different, a group of avant-gardists whose wildly eclectic performance might make any listener respond at some point with a shock of recognition. Their latest CD, Wow! (Ambiances Magnétiques AM 209), takes its name from a composition by the great experimenter Lennie Tristano, but when it appears it’s a segue from You Can Depend on Me by Earl Hines, a pianist whom Tristano idolized and emulated. Similarly, when saxophonist Jean Derome sings a barroom version of The Best Things in Life Are Free or takes on The Baron, Eric Dolphy’s musical portrait of Charles Mingus, he and bassist Normand Guilbeault and drummer Pierre Tanguay are calling up the whole of the jazz past in a kind of feast that anyone with empathy for the music might pick up on. It’s one of Canada’s essential bands, whatever your sub-genre of choice.

Shirantha Beddage, originally from North Bay, Ontario, has gone from studies at Toronto’s Humber College to a doctorate from the Eastman School of Music and back to Humber, where he’s currently head of theory and harmony. There are also plenty of fine saxophone teachers in Beddage’s past, including Toronto tenors Pat LaBarbera and Alex Dean and New York baritone saxophonist supreme Gary Smulyan. Based on the evidence of Identity (Addo AJR012 www.addorecords­.com), Beddage has a well-developed identity on the demanding baritone, playing with real power and focusing on the instrument’s middle and upper register, working in tenor saxophone territory with the baritone’s added grit. His style is essentially hard bop, with infusions of blues and gospel, but he’s also compelling on ballads like The Wanderer. Trumpeter Nathan Eklund, pianist Dave Restivo, bassist Mike Downes and drummers Mark Kelso or Larnell Lewis provide able assistance.

As heard on Live at Joe Mama’s, the Toronto band Organic (organic-jazz.com) is set in the classic mould of the organ quartet, those bands that first flourished in U.S. inner cities in the 1950s, when the Hammond B3 organ migrated from storefront churches to bars and mixed gospel chords and rhythm ‘n’ blues, transposing the riffing style of bands like Count Basie’s to the amplified power of a Hammond organ joined by drums, electric guitar and/or tenor sax. Veteran pianist Bernie Senensky has adapted handily to the organ, playing with the rhythmic verve the style demands and adding plenty of harmonic subtlety to the mix. Drummer Morgan Childs and guitarist Nathan Hiltz maintain strong grooves, while tenor saxophonist Ryan Oliver channels the particularly tight vibrato and upper register split-tones of the great Stanley Turrentine. Everyone sounds inspired on Amsterdamage.

Another veteran, bassist Henry Heillig, leads a new version of his Heillig Manoeuvre on ’Toons (RM 6013 www.heilligman.com). It’s relaxed, entertaining music with Heillig’s cartoon-inspired compositions eliciting good performances all around, whatever the tempo or mood, from the bluesy Meet the Sprintphones to the rapid-fire Moose and Squirrel. The surprising thing is that the cartoon inspirations often lead to deeply felt music. The highlight is the elusive, dreamlike Nanaimo Crossing, with Alison Young’s tenor saxophone and Stacie McGregor’s electric piano floating over the lightest of Latin beats from Heillig and drummer Charlie Cooley.

Toronto native Quinsin Nachoff has been based in New York for a few years now, establishing himself solidly in a city with no shortage of distinct and inventive saxophonists. Nachoff is heard to fine effect on French drummer Bruno Tocanne’s In a Suggestive Way (Instant Musics IMR 007 instantmusics.com), dedicated to the late drummer Paul Motian whose subtle dynamic play and sense of freedom have clearly influenced Tocanne. The instrumentation is a little unusual, a quartet completed by the virtuoso New York pianist Russ Lossing who played and recorded with Motian on many occasions and French trumpeter Rémi Gaudillat, but the results are a particularly lucid reflection. Nachoff’s theme statement of Bruno Rubato is limpidly beautiful against Lossing’s crystalline piano, while there’s crackling intensity in the splintering horn solos on Gaudillat’s Ornette and Don.

David Virelles, who first came to attention in Toronto as the brilliant protégé of Jane Bunnett and who won the Oscar Peterson prize at Humber College, continues with his brilliant career as one of New York’s most notable younger pianists with appearances on two ECM releases that will vie for spots on international top ten lists. Virelles is now a member of Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko’s New York Quartet along with bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Gerald Cleaver. The group debuts on Wisława (ECM 2304/05). The music often explores Stanko’s darkly moody ballads and dirges, pensive music that glows with an inner light; at other points the group develops explosive free improvisations with an empathy so developed that ideas pass at will among the members of the quartet.

Virelles also turns up on Chris Potter’s The Sirens (ECM 2258), a suite based on The Odyssey in which Potter develops rich and varied textures using two pianists, Craig Taborn on a regular grand and Virelles on prepared piano, celeste and harmonium. The two musicians develop a subtle dialogue around interlocking ostinatos on Wayfinder, while Potter’s brilliant Coltrane-inspired invocation on the title track summons up all the hypnotic powers that music might possess. 

Having arguably reached its zenith of popularity in the 1960s with the legendary Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans combos, the piano, bass and drums trio continues to be the sine qua non for countless improvisers. But with any jazz trio performance weighted with the configuration’s illustrious history, it’s up to contemporary players to create a distinct musical personality.

Usually this is done subtly, as New York-based drummer Jeff Davis demonstrates on Leaf House (Fresh Sound New Talent FSNW407 freshsoundrecords.com). A frequent associate of Canadian-in-Brooklyn bassist Michael Bates, the drummer knows the value of a sophisticated timekeeper and has found one in Norwegian-born Eivind Opsvik. More crucially with Russ Lossing at the piano, the leader’s eight compositions are interpreted in a fashion which suggests an alternate piano trio history. Rather than the influence of either Peterson or Evans looming large — as it does for too many of their followers — Lossing operates at the edge of atonality while never abandoning the legato. Throughout, his mixture of perceptive pacing, with forays into the instrument’s highest and lowest portals, plus a touch that ranges from intermittent key dusting to rock-ribbed staccato power, suggests a lineage that takes in Herbie Nichols, Lowell Davidson and Paul Bley, but just skirts Cecil Taylor’s revolutionary keyboard transformations. With such an arsenal of effects literally at his fingertips, the pianist can bring forth whatever is needed to illustrate individual Davis tunes. For instance the connections and variations that define Catbird’s conclusions are very Bley-like, especially when the bassist restates the motif with which he began the piece, the better to again bond with the feather-light and gently chromatic melody he and the pianist first played. On the other hand the kineticism that marks tunes like the title track and the loping Faded relate back to Nichols, as Lossing elasticizes lines without breaking the chromatic thrust, while the drummer’s cuffs and clips or poised rim shots meet walking or bowed bass with sympathetic pacing. William Jacob may be the CD’s highpoint though. Moving from a lyrical exposition to a tremolo finale, the pianist craftily strengthens his touch and doubles his attack as the piece evolves, dovetailing into power chords from Opsvik and aggregated ruffs and rebounds from Davis before the conclusion.

Interestingly enough, the pared-down approach of Canadian Bley, who often toured Europe, is one of the modes expressed by veteran Italian pianist Claudio Cojaniz, on the dozen instant compositions that make up Dreiländer Trio (Palomar Records 39 www.giovannimaier.it). Someone who often records solo, the pianist also infuses the tunes with large dollops of entrancing romanticism, and as might be expected from an Italian, matter-of-fact lyricism. At the same time, despite his expressive glissandi and busy note collections, neither his dynamics nor his touch are ever over the top. His innate jazz-swing sense ensures that each tune evolves in a linear fashion. Moreover since the band is a cooperative trio, bassist Giovanni Maier from Trieste and Serbian percussionist Zlatko Kaučič,who has worked with the likes of American saxophonist Steve Lacy, are equally as important to this CD’s achievement. An adept colourist, the drummer is so self-effacing that the rhythm is often felt rather than heard. A master of cymbal shimmering, bell-tree shaking plus drum clanking, clipping and paddling, he cedes musical flamboyance to the other two. Maier, who is an experienced duo and trio player, takes full advantage, properly interrupting the pianist’s cascading glissandi on m&M with double stopping and rubber band-like plucks from his strings and bringing a stirring cello-like range to Trieste-Amman. Along with Kaučič’s pinpointed clatters, Maier’s bow swipes add a needed toughness to the tune which otherwise is characterized by Cojaniz repeating note clusters in many keys, barely skirting 19th century impressionism. At the same time the pianist’s command of Evans-styled passing chords and patterns doesn’t stop him on a piece like Izpoved from deconstructing the gospel-like theme, making it more staccato so that it’s no longer European, but not quite American either.

Swiss pianist Gabriela Friedli also adapts the Bley-Evans concept, albeit with a harder touch on Started (Intakt CD 214 www.intaktrec.ch). But her mixture of notated and improvising designs is part of a subtle avant-gardism that hides underneath lyrical narratives. Aided by Daniel Studer’s measured bass plucks and drummer Dieter Ulrich’s smooth pacing, she specializes in contrafacts of other tunes, telegraphing the transformation in song titles. Come Lately relates to Duke Ellington’s Johnny Come Lately; Out of Nothing to Johnny Green’s Out of Nowhere; and no prizes for figuring out the chord origin of I Wrap My Dreams in Troubles. Atop Studer’s chiming beat the last melody is stretched out by Friedli with expansive dynamics. The middle piece becomes a double-time exercise in fleeting cadenzas and string plucks from the pianist, contrasted with sul tasto rubs from the bassist, plus bull’s eye rim shots and cymbal pops from the drummer. As for Come Lately, Studer’s funky bass slaps and Ulrich’s backbeat underline the piece’s basic rhythm and blues feeling. Not content with that, the pianist makes the narrative tougher and more staccato with low frequency cadenzas and note clusters, eventually climaxing as she spins out emphasized glissandi while the drummer’s contrapuntal thumps emphasize wood and metal.

If the preceding groups quietly subvert the piano trio, the most radical reworking of the concept comes from Montreal drummer Michel Lambert. Assisted by pianist Alexandre Grogg and bassist Guillaume Bouchard his Journal Des Épisodes (Rant 1244 www.jazzfromrant.com) is made of 92 [!] brief tracks originally composed for symphony orchestra, re-jigged to fit this format. Although tracks officially clock in at between six seconds and five minutes – with the majority fewer than 30 seconds – the end product sounds like anything but patchwork. Much of the credit has to go to Grogg who manages to maintain the narrative nature of his playing, even if the musical thoughts are interrupted by frequent pauses. Bouchard mostly concentrates on steady rhythmic motions; while Lambert not only exposes every variety of beats from Latin to arrhythmic to near-terpsichorean, but is likely responsible for the sonic add-ons. Besides slide-whistle shrills and alphorn lowing, snippets from a full orchestral usually in romantic mode frequently bisect the performances. Given his head as he has on Sans Commentaire II plus R 59 Liquide or Jour De Célébration the pianist is able to display power voicing matched by Lambert’s ruffs and rolls or showcase moderato fingertip explorations matched by the drumtop strokes and cymbal shakes. When episodes inflate to a whole three minutes on Le Marteau or six [!] on L’homme-Ciseaux the trio comes across with sophistication. Straight-ahead jazz, the former mixes repeated octave jumps and key clipping with press rolls and a thumping bass solo. Even more swing-oriented, the latter is cunningly harmonized with a walking bass line, rolls, drags and ruffs from Lambert and sparkling piano work encompassing tremolo runs and a sprinkling of ringing notes.

Accepting the weight of history, but cunningly or conspicuously moving familiar concepts into new areas, these combos preserve the piano trio for the 21st century. 

As 2013 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901), record companies are issuing new and re-issuing existing recordings. Decca has outdone them all with the ultimate collection! As extensive as their catalogue and archives are, it was necessary for Decca to look beyond its own resources to assemble Verdi – The Complete Works (4784916, 75 CDs plus two 265-page hard-bound, informative books) and truly include everything. The majority of the performances come from Decca’s own archives, some from DG and two operas from EMI plus some oddments from elsewhere. Every opera is here, all 29 of them (30 if you include the 1869 version of the 1862 La Forza del Destino as a different opus), plus the Manzoni Requiem, the string quartet, sacred music, songs, ballet music, sinfonias and a group of “discoveries.” An astonishing achievement at a very low price. The packaging is unique, with each opera in an individual cardboard package listing the full cast. Synopses are included but not the libretto translations which can be found on the website. The musicians involved comprise a virtual who’s who of the last half century. Tebaldi, Pavarotti, Domingo, Caballé, Milnes, Gobbi and a page full of other great voices. Conductors include Karajan, Chailly, Abbado, Giulini, Kleiber, Muti, Solti, Levine et. al. Complete details at Arkivmusic.com.

A curiosity, The Hymn of the Nations played by the Philharmonia Orchestra and chorus and Pavarotti turns out to be a boring, indifferent piece. Compare it elsewhere to Toscanini’s electrifying arrangement and extension filmed by the American Office of War Information in December 1943. Toscanini added both the Internationale (hacked out of all subsequent audio and video reissues shortly after the war) and a heroic Star Spangled Banner.

In 1900 Schoenberg began setting to music verses by Danish poet Jens Peter Jacobsen that related the story of the doomed love of the Danish King Waldemar and his beloved mistress Tove, who is murdered by Waldemar’s jealous wife Helvig. Schoenberg worked on the project until 1903 when he laid it aside. In 1910 he applied himself to the task of setting and orchestrating parts two and three and by 1911 Gurrelieder, Songs of Gurre (Waldemar’s Castle) was completed. It is full of good tunes, clearly post-Wagnerian and regarded as Schoenberg’s Tristan and Isolde.

Leopold Stokowski conducted the North American premiere in Philadelphia on April 8, 1932 with repeat performances on April 9 and 11. RCA recorded and issued the final performance on 28 78rpm sides that included Stokowski’s brief discussion of the work. It is readily available on CD and the second performance, given on April 9 and taken from 33 1/3 transcription discs, is available on Pearl (CDS 9066, 2CDs).

There was much excitement when it was announced that Stokowski would conduct the work at the Edinburgh Festival in 1961 and Stoki’s admirers overseas awaited hearing it via the BBC transcription service. Alas no. The story in circulation was that the BBC tapes had been lost between Edinburgh and London. A recording of that historic performance has surfaced and it would be picayune and pointless to critique any of the soloists by comparing them to their counterparts in other recordings. James McCracken is Waldemar, Gré Bouwenstijn is Tove and Nell Rankin is the Wood Dove. Forbes Robinson is Bauer, John Lanigan is Klaus-Narr and Alvar Lidell is the speaker. The London Symphony Orchestra is joined by the Edinburgh Royal Choral Union. The raison d’être for the publication of this performance is Stokowski who really gets what its all about and is completely immersed in the music. Under his baton the score grows organically, culminating in the glorious and overwhelming choral sunrise. The mono recording is not quite as articulate as we now take for granted but it is eminently fulfilling with unrestrained dynamics. I was not in any sense disappointed (Guild GHCD 2388/89, 2 CDs).

Included in this set is Verklärte Nacht that was recorded by Victor in 1952 just months after Schoenberg’s death. The string orchestra was comprised of New York musicians chosen by Stokowski, whose practice it was to telephone each individual and personally engage them. Here is a passionate, heartfelt performance that, while amply dramatic, has no hint whatsoever of bathos. The transfer is exemplary. This is the first of Stokowski’s three recordings of the work. Incidentally, Stokowski is unique in having performed all of Schoenberg’s orchestral works during the composer’s lifetime.

Canada is blessed with a certain number of outstanding classical musicians of international calibre and reputation. Flutist Robert Aitken is one of them, still enjoying an impressive international career spanning more than 50 years. In addition to his engagements as a flutist, he is a composer, conductor and the founding artistic director of Toronto’s New Music Concerts. Aitken also held the position of professor of flute at the Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg, Germany until his retirement in 2004.

With more than 60 recordings over the years, his collaborations have included a host of luminaries, including the late, great harpsichordist Greta Kraus. This disc features Aitken and Kraus in live direct-to-disc recordings from 1979 of J.S. Bach’s Three Sonatas for Flute and Harpsichord BWV1030-1032 and from 1969, the Partita BWV997. Bach composed the partita for lute alone and here Aitken and Kraus play their own transcription.

This new CD amply demonstrates Aitken’s supremacy in his field ... silky tone, breathtaking virtuosity and fluid pyrotechnics. His always immaculate intonation and artistry communicate the best of the composer to his audience. In the familiar C.P.E. Bach Concerto Wq22, with John Eliot Gardiner conducting, Aitken and the Vancouver Chamber Orchestra offer a crisp and enthusiastic performance as fine as any that I’ve heard. Live from 1981, the restored sound is outstanding, as it is on each and every track on this CD (DOREMI DHR-6611). 

What a wealth of material coming out of the Canadian Music Centre these days! Four solo piano discs have been released in the past two months followed almost immediately by three discs of chamber music. The one I have in hand is history is what it is — music of Peter Hatch performed by the Blue Rider Ensemble (Centrediscs, CMCCD 18413). Kitchener-based Hatch founded NUMUS Concerts in 1985 and the Open Ears Festival of Music and Sound in 1998, both of which continue to flourish. He was composer-in-residence with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony from 1999 to 2003, is currently the Arts and Culture Consultant with the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and a Professor at the Faculty of Music at Wilfrid Laurier University. In addition to these administrative and academic pursuits Hatch has managed to compose an impressive body of work over the past three decades. The current collection encompasses works spanning the past dozen years including pieces written for Toronto’s Continuum Contemporary Music, Vancouver’s Standing Wave Ensemble, Montreal pianist Marc Couroux and a collaborative endeavour — a structured improvisation — with K-W’s Blue Rider Ensemble. Hatch often finds inspiration in literature and two of these works reflect that. Five Memos from 2005 draws on essays of Italo Calvino. The memos have evocative titles such as the first, In Which an Image is Formed, with its darkly lyrical cello line gradually taken over by clarinet, flute and violin. The second, In Which Things Happen Quickly, opens with a vibraphone pattern soon joined in unison by strings and eventually giving way to piano and winds while the percussionist moves to unpitched sounds. The following movements provide contrasting moods and textures ending with a whirlwind and wayward quasi-military march led by snare drum and piccolo (fife?) and the frantic scratching of block chords on the fiddle.

Music is a beautiful disease is an extended one-movement work that starts pianissimo with occasional percussive interjections before a ghostly motif reminiscent of a European police siren, but heard at such a distance as to suggest calm rather than emergency. This haunting fragment is given a variety of instrumental treatments throughout the 18-minute work, eventually heard shared by piano and vibraphone. One Says. History Is. for solo piano was written in 2003. It begins tempestuously in moto perpetuo form alternating sustain pedal drones and staccato passages. After this prolonged fast section the music calms and we hear, in the distance, a recitation of texts from Gertrude Stein’s We Came. A History. At the end of the recitation the piano returns to its former frenzied pace over which we hear a very slow wordless melody sung calmly. The relentless repeated notes eventually give way to a pointillistic denouément for the last three minutes of the first movement. This is followed by another calm section in which the recitation comes to the forefront for several minutes until the piano returns to percussive, although more subdued, textures. The final movement of this nearly half-hour long work is an extended meditation using very few notes.

The disc ends in a beautifully calm mood with the structured improvisation mentioned above, Cantabile, with grace, based, the composer says “on a simple sketch I generated for them.” Throughout the disc the members of the Blue Rider Ensemble — Liselyn Adams, flute; Paul Bendza, clarinet; Jeremy Bell, violin; Paul Pulford, cello; Pamela Reimer, piano and melodica; Beverley Johnston, percussion; Anne-Marie Donovan, voice and melodica — are in fine form.

Like Peter Hatch’s Music is a beautiful disease, Alfred Schnittke’sPiano Quintet has a haunting theme that recurs and is transformed. We hear it piece-meal in the opening movement but it really takes form in the second, a sort of demented waltz. It eventually returns in a ghostly form in the pastoral finale. The work was begun in 1972 shortly after the sudden death of the composer’s mother, but not completed until 1976, a year after the death of his idol Shostakovich. In 1978 he made an orchestral version of this dark work and called it In memoriam. It is the original version which is included on Alfred Schnittke – Chamber Music Volume 2, the latest release by Montreal’s Molinari Quartet (ATMA ACD2 2669). For the quintet and the one-movement Piano Quartet written in 1988 based on sketches by Gustav Mahler, the members of the quartet are joined by Louise Bessette. The much celebrated pianist was awarded two Opus Prizes by the Quebec Arts Council last month for her “30-year career” concert with the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec in March 2012. Incidentally, the Molinari Quartet, whose seventh ATMA recording this is, has also been honoured with Opus Prizes, 14 since its formation in 1997.

While the two Schnittke works with piano have been among my favourites for a good many years, this important addition to the discography also includes a String Trio from 1985 with which I was not previously familiar. This would be reason enough to pick up this excellent CD. My only quibble is that at 60 minutes there was more than sufficient room to include Mahler’s own movement for piano quartet that Schnittke’s was meant to accompany.

My high regard for the Molinari Quartet and its commitment to the art music of our time notwithstanding, a very different sort of string quartet has also captured my attention this month. The Fretless brings together traditional Celtic and Canadian-style folk music in what they call a “Rad Trad” amalgam using the standard formation of a classical string quartet. Three western Canadian fiddle champions, who take turns in the viola chair, are joined by a classically trained New England cellist whose interest in folk idioms came from his father’s Irish and old-time musical interests. After very successful fiddling careers in British Columbia, Victoria’s Ivonne Hernandez and Courtenay’s Trent Freeman went off to Boston to polish their skills at the Berklee School of Music where they met cellist Eric Wright. Add to this mix Saskatoon’s Karrnnel Sawitsky, a four-time Saskatchewan fiddle champion and you have the makings of a very fine ensemble indeed. Waterbound (thefretless.com) presents a lush and invigorating mix of traditional and traditional-sounding original compositions full of jigs and reels and drones. With guest spots by singers Ruth Moody and Norah Rendell in the more balladic title tune (Moody) and Harder to Walk these Days than Run (Rendell) it’s no wonder that this debut recording garnered top honours at both the Western Canadian Music Awards and the Canadian Folk Music Awards.

Another happy discovery this month occurred when I received a letter and a new CD from the iconic Canadian conscience Mendelson Joe. Perhaps best known for his outspoken letters to the editor in national publications, Joe has been adding his voice in the wilderness to the Canadian music scene since the hippie heyday of Yorkville with the blues band McKenna-Mendelson Mainline and sporadic solo acoustic releases over the past four decades. He is also the author of five books and a painter of renown. He uses all of his creative outlets to speak against oppression, injustice and environmental abuse.

Recorded last spring in Huntsville Canuckian (mendelsonjoe.com) is testament to Joe’s unflagging determination to hold societal hypocrisy and political meanness and greed up to the microscope. I Am Canuckian provides an autobiographical insight into the Canadian landscape through the eyes of someone who’s “been everywhere, man” and includes a (somewhat ambiguous, but I have been assured heartfelt) indictment of Jim Keegstra and things Albertan. I’m A Folkie is a lament for “Big, Big Mommy” (Mother Earth) and Deemo Crassy demonizes Steven Harper as “a world-class weenie and a world-class meanie.” If I’m Dreaming is simply a love song, Joe returns to his soapbox in the final track, Dissertatio, a philosophical diatribe on the subjects of truth and greed which includes reference to his mentor “the late angel” June Callwood who said “there are no innocent bystanders.” He concludes with the motto “I exist therefore I Art.” It’s reassuring to know that Joe continues to “stand on guard” for us.

We welcome your feedback and invite submissions. CDs and comments should be sent to: The WholeNote, 503–720 Bathurst St., Toronto ON, M5S 2R4. We also encourage you to visit our website, thewholenote.com, where you can find additional, expanded and archival reviews. 

—David Olds, DISCoveries Editor

discoveries@thewholenote.com

Schumann – Liederkreis
Gerald Finley; Julius Drake
Hyperion CDA67944

Canadian singer Gerald Finley is living proof that being a baritone is not some form of divine punishment. Finley demonstrates his advantage with a rich, resonant ease in a range that basses and tenors can rarely match.

His choice of the Schumann Op.24 and Op.39 song cycles offers him the opportunity to move through a wide range of poetic texts by Eichendorff and Heine. Whether nostalgic, frustrated or purely romantic, Finley captures the spirit of each iteration with a conviction as honest as Schumann’s own must have been. The writing is imbued with the passion and frustration of his romance with Clara Wieck whose father found Schumann an unsuitable match for his daughter and resisted the ever-deepening relationship that would inevitably result in their marriage.

These songs reflect a structural freedom that is neither fully through-composed nor fully strophic. Yet Schumann seems entirely comfortable with his decision to live in an evolving world between accepted forms. His writing offers singers a freedom to exploit the emotional and dramatic potential of each poem, and Finley does this exceptionally well, especially in the more gentle songs.

Finley brings an engaging tenderness to the opening tracks of Op.39, especially “Mondnacht.” Where many singers glide through the text on the merit of Schumann’s melody, Finley uses strategic pauses to heighten the sense of nocturnal mystery. The Op.24 “Berg’ und Burgen” also shows Finley’s superb artistic sensibility. Altogether a very fine performance.