Haydn; Schubert; Brahms
Stéphane Tétrault; Marie-Ève Scarfone
Analekta AN 2 9994

This cello disc comprises three significant works by Viennese masters. Haydn’s delighful Divertimento in D Major was arranged for cello and piano by Gregor Piatigorsky from the original, composed for the viol-related baryton, viola and cello. Cellist Stéphane Tétreault is heartfelt in the opening Adagio’s melodies, still achieving classical poise with pianist Marie-Ève Scarfone. They convey the Menuet’s classicism and match the finale’s brightness and geniality. For me the disc’s highlight is Schubert’s Sonata in A Minor for the six-stringed, bowed arpeggione (1824), now usually played on the cello. The duo’s reading is impassioned, its expression tasteful. Dramatic arpeggios and leaps suggest agitation and crying. The Adagio’s emotional opening cello melody carries forward into a well-shaped long line. There is plenty of colour in Tétreault’s playing, with flexibility of tempo and perfect ensemble by the duo.

Lucie Renaud’s fine program notes point out nostalgic and historical elements in Brahms’ Sonata in E Minor (1871) – for example the second movement’s minuet and third movement’s fugato – and connections to the disc’s previous works. After the Schubert, I was struck by this piece’s analogous leaping cello cries in the first movement’s opening theme. And Brahms-like Schubert is a master at mixing major- and minor-key inflections that evoke shifting moods. The performers are neither routine nor precious in their expressive reading of the Menuetto. And Scarfone comes to the fore in the finale, playing its contrapuntal passages with fire and conviction. 

Schumann – Piano Concerto in A minor; Piano Trio No.2
Alexander Melnikov; Isabelle Faust; Jean-Guihen Queyras; Freiburger Barockorchester; Pablo Heras-Casado
harmonia mundi HMC 902198

This is the second installment of Schumann’s three trios and concertos. The first (HMC 902196) contained the violin concerto and the third trio Op.110 in performances that were game changing with a soft attack and sensitive textures.

This orchestra as we know by now, with their aesthetic firmly based, seeks to recreate the sound of early music in its time. The open mesh to their sound illuminates this middle-romantic deployment of pre-modern instruments. With valveless horns and trumpets, woodier woodwinds, sinewy gut strings and taut percussion, this must be the sound the composer knew wherein no instrument is buried. Schumann in his concertos sought to harmonize the sound of soloist and orchestra rather than throw them against each other as Brahms did later. The pianoforte employed in this concert performance, recorded in the Berlin Philharmonie, is an 1837 Érard. The enthusiastic performance is a revelation, driven by Spanish conductor Heras-Casado’s well-paced tempi, always attentive to the felicities of Schumann’s score. All aspects considered, this is decidedly a benchmark account.

Exactly as I noted in my May 2015 WholeNote review of their performance of the Third Trio, “Faust and her colleagues radiate ardor and optimism, performing with sensitivity, sincere musicality and flawless ensemble that hold the listener’s attention.” Their choice of instruments is interesting: Melnikov’s pianoforte is again the Streicher (1847 Vienna), Faust’s violin the 1704 Strad and Queras’ cello the 1696 Gioffredo Cappa.

Mahler – Symphony No.5
Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra; Myung-Whun Chung
Deutsche Grammophon 481 154-0

Mahler – Symphony No.10
Orchestre Metropolitain; Yannick Nézet-Séguin
ATMA ACD2 2711

Two very different recordings pose the question: how “live” is a live performance? The Korean conductor Myung-Whun Chung has brought the Seoul Philharmonic to the world’s attention thanks to his recording contract with the venerable yellow label and the orchestra certainly sounds fabulous in this latest DG recording of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. Though it is difficult to say precisely whether the credit lies entirely with the conductor or the German Tonmeister team, the results are sonically exceptional. It is, after all, quite unusual to detect the grainy sound of contrabassoon doublings so distinctly in the concert hall or to apprehend orchestral balances this clearly in real life live performances. In any case, Chung proves himself a master of this familiar work, conducted from memory and sensitively interpreted with a convincing Viennese lilt in the lengthy third movement Scherzo and a moving yet not maudlin performance of the celebrated Adagietto. The challenge of the Rondo finale is adroitly solved by taking a middle-ground tempo that binds together the ever-shifting tempi of the disparate sections.

Rachmaninov; Haydn; Ravel
Alain Lefèvre
Analekta AN 2 9296

Ever since winning first prize in piano and chamber music at the Paris Conservatoire followed by first prize at the Alfred Cortot International Piano Competition, Alain Lefèvre has earned a reputation as an artist of the first rank. His performances have won him rave reviews in the press and he has appeared on concert stages as far reaching as New York, Berlin, London and Shanghai. Although born in Poitiers, France, Canada has long claimed him as a native citizen, owing to his long period in this country beginning with his first lessons at the Collège Marguerite-Bourgeoys in Montreal.

His newest disc on the Analekta label features an eclectic program of music by Rachmaninov, Haydn and Ravel. From the opening descending arpeggio of the Rachmaninov Sonata No. 2 in B-flat Minor, the listener is made keenly aware that Lefèvre is in full command of this most challenging repertoire. Like Chopin’s sonata of the same key, this work is a study in contrasting movements. Lefèvre approaches the technical demands of the first and third with apparent ease, capturing the dark and dramatic spirit with much bravado, while the quietly introspective second movement is treated with much sensitivity. In total contrast is the Haydn Sonata No.38 in F Major, dating from 1773. Lefèvre’s interpretation is elegant and precise, demonstrating a particular clarity of phrasing as befits this music, clearly rooted in the classical tradition.

Ravel’s La Valse from 1918 has always been regarded as a tour de force. In this version for piano, Lefèvre adroitly captures the waltz’s kaleidoscopic moods, from the opening references to a gracious Second Empire ballroom to its final frenzy – a true musical depiction of a “harsh new world” brought on by the immense political and social changes of the early 20th century. Bravo, M. Lefèvre – once again you have proven yourself most worthy of the accolades bestowed by critics and audiences alike.

Prokofiev – Cinderella
Mariinsky Ballet & Orchestra; Valery Gergiev
Mariinsky MAR0555

Of late, with its ongoing confrontation in Ukraine, European trade sanctions and a worrisome intervention in the Syrian war, Russia is again starting to look like a frozen-in-time empire of the Cold War. There is no such freeze in the artistic life of the country however. Case in point: new, exciting choreography for Cinderella. This staple of traditional ballet, rendered beautifully by many artists, from Margot Fonteyn to Maya Plisetskaya, was a stylish piece, to be sure, but it has been in dire need of a makeover. The new Cinderella is simply brilliant. Contemporary and energetic, with smart costumes by Elena Markovskaya, it plays, as it should, as a modern parable of the triumph of good over evil. The sheer nervous energy of the performance highlights the beauty of the score. In typical Prokofiev fashion, the music reveals itself to be even more ahead of its time than we suspected.

The physically demanding new choreography illustrates perfectly the tension of the score and highlights Prokofiev’s uncanny ability to express movement through music. Filmed in the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, the work truly belongs in Mariinsky II, designed by the Canadian starchitect Jack Diamond. Fresh, exciting and triumphant, this recording leaves us hoping that Putin’s Russia is nothing but a phase in the history of a great artistic nation.

Shattered Expectations
Acclarion
Acclarion Records ACC3000 (acclarion.ca)

Leo Ornstein – Piano Quintet; String Quartet No.2
Marc-André Hamelin; Pacifica Quartet
Hyperion CMA68084

Why has there been a revival of music by composer/ pianist Leo Ornstein (1893-2002)? From early groundbreaking piano pieces onward, his was an extraordinary (and extraordinarily long!) musical life. In 1906 his family emigrated from Russia to the United States where he trained as a piano virtuoso, but after an amazing start he gave up concertizing. His father was a cantor and Ornstein’s Russian-Jewish musical heritage came to the fore. In a modernist context it permeates the Piano Quintet (1927), which I think ranks in quality with the Shostakovitch and Bloch quintets for piano and string quartet. The tempestuous opening movement typifies Ornstein’s rhapsodic process of linking varied phrases and sections that suggest frenzied dances, song-like laments, marches and much more. I particularly liked the slow movement, especially a passage with high violin, mysterious piano repeated notes and chords, and uneasy supporting strings. The Quintet reflects Ornstein’s piano virtuosity; Marc-André Hamelin, who has recorded a notable Ornstein solo disc on Hyperion, is ideal, while the outstanding Pacifica Quartet partners him with confidence, colour and clarity.

Ornstein’s String Quartet No.2 (c.1929) is a more orderly affair. Strings are treated more independently than in the Quintet,and the lower instruments are given solos. The Pacifica Quartet emphasizes the work’s lyrical beauty with well-shaped melodic gestures and sensitive playing of accompanying parts, which through Ornstein’s variety of chord spacings, registers and rhythmic patterns become just as interesting as his melodies.

Spin – like a ragged flock
James Harley; Ellen Waterman
Independent ADAPPS 15001(jamesharleymusic.com)

Morton Feldmann - For Bunita Marcus 1985 
Ivan Ilic
Paraty 135305 (ivancdg.com)

American avant-garde composer Morton Feldman, the pioneer of “indeterminate music,” began (like Varèse) with the orchestra making weird sound effects as tonal paintings and later simplified it to white noise like his famous Rothko Chapel where people could sit for hours in isolation, meditate and chill out. For further simplification he turned to the piano with long works lasting over an hour, like this one that sounds like soft notes moving slowly and undisturbed around the middle of the keyboard, always quiet, no crescendo and never reaching forte. Sometimes shrill and percussive very high notes interrupt in a different rhythm like a bird chirping, then a sudden blob of a broken chord in the lower register like a drop of water into a still pond ….

Listen to it lying down and soon you’ll drift and float, no longer awake but not asleep either, and when it’s suddenly over you feel as if you have been asleep and perhaps missed something. Wagner wrote such subliminal music like the ancient, atavistic shepherd pipe tune meandering in and out of the consciousness of the mortally wounded Tristan that miraculously breaks through his coma and returns him to life.

Feldman’s music operates on this level, but it is also a set of 22 very loose variations with changes so imperceptible, like things that happen in real life. When you expect it, it usually won’t happen but if you don’t, it might. You’ll notice the difference between each variation when you quickly sample the tracks. The whole thing is actually composed and written down, but then it has to be played to sound totally improvised or haphazard, completely unstructured. With his soft and wonderful touch pianiste extraordinaire Ivan Ilić’s mind is so dedicated and attuned to Feldman’s that he can do this like no one else can. It’s spellbinding. (You can get a taste of it along with commentary by Ilić at youtube.com/watch?v=V1B9uX4v1H0.)

On the Street of Dreams
Morgan Childs
Independent (morganchildsmusic.com)

Morgan Childs is, as a composer, a drummer, an accompanist and a soloist, deeply rooted in tradition, well-informed, incredibly proficient and bubbling with unmistakable personality. All of this and more is on display in his newest release, On the Street of Dreams, a live album which, over the course of around 70 minutes, presents a compelling argument for going to see Childs play live.

Street of Dreams is a compilation of recordings made by Childs’ quartet during two 2013 gigs, cut together as one cohesive set. Included are excellent, underplayed selections from the standard repertoire such as The Man That Got Away and It’s All Right With Me, as well as some original Childs compositions.

Such tunes are often tributes to eras past, such as Theodore, a playful tune with a Caribbean vibe that evokes St. Thomas, and Parting of the Rocks, a composition of barely contained righteous anger, reminiscent of jazz protest songs by black composers of the 1960s. That title is an English translation of Attawapiskat; Childs wrote it as “a response to the lack of response by the Harper government to the crisis at Attawapiskat.” In both the composition and the group’s approach, John Coltrane’s classic quartet comes to mind.

From ballads to scorchers, this album immaculately captures the energy and sound of the group’s live performances; the rest is up to you. Grab a cold drink and enjoy.

Meltframe
Mary Halvorson
Firehouse 12 FH12-04-01-021 (firehouse12.com)

In her mid-30s, Mary Halvorson has distinguished herself as the most original jazz guitarist of her generation. A veteran of numerous ensembles led by Anthony Braxton and a regular musical partner of Marc Ribot, Halvorson has touched on the radical fringes of folk and rock as well as jazz and has created a remarkable series of CDs leading a trio and quintet. Meltframe is her first solo CD, and it goes very close to the heart of what makes her such a compelling musician, her rare ability both to reach back to jazz traditions and forward to the possibilities while setting everything in an insistent present.

Whether it’s her embrace of Duke Ellington and an absurdly full-size hollowbody archtop guitar, or Ornette Coleman and an effects pedal that carries pitch bending to the stratosphere, Halvorson is at ease with fundamentals, corollaries and contradictions. They’re all here, from the dense electric roar with which she approaches Oliver Nelson’s Cascades to the (lightly amplified) flamenco touch she employs on Annette Peacock’s Blood. McCoy Tyner’s delicate Aisha occasionally surrenders to grunge rock. It’s more for those who like to be surprised than those who hate to be disturbed.

Coleman’s Sadness arrives amongst wildly bending arpeggios, while Ellington’s Solitude is a reverie in artificial reverb that moves at a glacial pace toward microtonal dissolution. Halvorson can create great drama with minimal means, evidenced in her treatment of Carla Bley’s Ida Lupino, which develops a kind of intense inevitability through deceptively simple strumming. Works by Peacock and Carla Bley may suggest their first advocate, pianist Paul Bley, whose stark keyboard lines and manipulations of timbre are paralleled here.

Telling Stories
Sonoluminescence Trio
Art Stew Records ASR 003 2015

A band whose improvising is as enlightening as its name, which refers to light produced as sound waves pass through liquid, this trio combination confirms that fluid musicianship can easily overcome geography and separation. A tale of three cities – baritone saxophonist David Mott lives in Toronto, percussionist Jesse Stewart in Ottawa and bassist William Parker in New York – the Sonoluminescence three don’t play together very often. But when they do, intercommunication is paramount, because exposing unique sonic patterns is more important to all than sporting showy techniques.

Mott and Stewart are particularly cognizant of this. One feels the drummer would sooner lock himself in an airless crypt than shatter this partnership with blasting beats. As opposed to other baritone players who plunder its lower depths like deep-sea divers in the ocean, Mott emphasizes his horn’s moderato facility. He could be playing a tenor, save for some infrequent rhino-like snorts. As for Parker, he’s cognizant that the double bass can be treated as many instruments simultaneously.

This is expressed as early as Echoes of Africa, the CD’s first track, where the patterning from Parker’s strings could come from a berimbau or an ngoni and Stewart’s rhythms from a combination of a wood drum and a conga. Mott’s response isn’t further exoticism however, but comprehensive tongue flutters and expressive peeps. A comparable transformation appears on There’s the Rub, where the sum total of thickened bass string strums, timed percussion clatters and selective reed breaths add up to a New Music-like interlude, with the trio’s storytelling facilities intact. The three are also capable of outputting non-stereotypical rhythmic activity as on the slyly named Rumble for Jackie Chan. But the resulting hard-hitting beat is strained through sardonic 21st-century sensibilities, so that the metrical syncopation is brainy rather than merely brawny.

Mixing speedy rhythms, standard tune references and technical extensions when needed for additional colour and emphasis, the Sonoluminescence Trio does just what is promised in the title. It tells unusual stories energetically, with subtlety, but without artifice or showboating.

Wind and Sand
Bruce Lofgren’s Jazz Pirates
Night Bird NB-4 (brucelofgren.com)

A Serpent’s Dream
Michel Godard & Le Miroir du temps
Intuition INT 3440 2 (intuition-music.com)

Michel Godard may be the rarest and best kind of musician, filled with curiosity and energy and without prejudice. A master tuba player and member of the French National Orchestra since 1988, he’s even more distinguished as an explorer. Taking up the tuba’s ancestor, the serpent, he plays jazz on it as well as ancient music. His most distinctive work may be in the unusual hybrids he constructs between jazz and renaissance music, like A Serpent’s Dream with his quartet Le Miroir du Temps.

The band’s sounds are distinctly beautiful, blessed by a dry and ancient clarity in the case of Godard’s serpent and Katharina Bäuml’s shawm, though Bruno Hestroffer’s theorbo (a long-necked lute) sounds lightly amplified (at least with a microphone close to the steel strings) and Godard’s occasional electric bass is by definition. Percussionist Lucas Niggli employs a host of instruments to add colour, but it’s his hand drumming that comes to the fore. There’s nothing of the purist in Godard’s approach: most of the works heard here are his own compositions, and he’s just as happy setting them beside the ancient and anonymous In Splendoribus as Charlie Haden’s Our Spanish Love Song, with its distinctively contemporary – or at least romantic – harmonies.

Godard’s ensemble manages to reveal a subtle sense of order, some of it gleaned from archives and some just coming into being. Presented with the opportunity to play a serpent made in 1830 that is decorated with an ornate, gilded sea monster with scales and tail, Godard elects to play the blues, the traditional, specific and appropriate Old Black Snake Blues. It’s impossible not to be charmed.

Leo Records 35th Anniversary Moscow
Gratkowski; Kruglov; Nabatov; Yudanov
Leo Records CD LR 719 (leorecords.com)

Anniversaries of record companies usually only serve as a reminder of the longevity implicit in cannily peddling particular products. But the commemoration associated with this CD is more profound. Recorded at the initial Moscow concert of a quartet consisting of two Russians – Alexey Kruglov playing alto saxophone and basset horn and percussionist Oleg Yudanov – plus Germans, pianist Simon Nabatov and alto saxophonist/clarinetist Frank Gratkowski, the five tracks pinpoint the cooperative skills of players from both countries. Providing a forum for Russian free improvisers to demonstrate their advanced expertise was one of the reasons London-based Leo Records was founded 35 years ago. That neither the Eastern nor Western players can be distinguished on the basis of talent or sound on this celebratory disc is a tribute to the label’s ideas.

Russian-born and American-educated Nabatov provides the perfect linkage among the band members. The grandeur of his cascading runs on Our Digs for instance, creates emotional underpinning for the reedists’ atmospheric whispering; plus his emphasized wooden key stops provide the climax. At the same time he clatters phrases on the keys and slams the instrument’s frame to amplify the piano’s percussiveness on Homecoming, locking in with Yudanov’s smacks and rolls, never unduly forceful in themselves. Marathon-speed chording also adds to the saxophonists’ expositions that mix harsh Aylerian smears with reed textures as broad as wide-bore scanners. While as indistinguishable as corn stalks in a field, when alto saxophone bites emanate from both players, identifying resonation distinguishes Gratkowski’s bass clarinet and Kruglov’s basset horn on the reed showcase Hitting It Home. Exchanges between the Russian’s warbling yelps and the German’s sonorous hums that could be sourced from an underwater grotto are ornamented by the pianist’s ringing timbres and shaped into a pleasing narrative.

Since outsiders rarely associate Germans or Russians with humour, House Games is particularly instructive, when the woodwind players’ choked yelps and snarling pants make the exposition sound like an aural Punch and Judy show – and just as violent. However this tongue splattering and note spewing is eventually harmonized into a manageable melody by the pianist’s romantic interludes.

Overall, Leo’s more than three-decade-old promise is fulfilled with a connective session such as this one.