Editor's Corner

In the last issue, due to my misreading of a liner note on Daniel Lipel’s ADJACENCE, I mistakenly said that Tyshawn Sorey’s Ode to Gust Burns was a memorial tribute. It has come to my attention that Mr. Burns is alive and well in Seattle. I would like to express my sincere apologies to both Burns and Sorey for my error and any annoyance it caused. I would also welcome you to check out Ode to Gust Burns for yourself at youtube.com/watch?v=xefu3QupKEs.

Pianist Stewart Goodyear was the Royal Conservatory’s inaugural artist-in-residence at Koerner Hall, where in 2022 (after numerous delays due to COVID) he and the Penderecki String Quartet gave the world premiere of his Piano Quintet “Homage” which the quartet had commissioned several years earlier. At that time the piece comprised three movements, but since then Goodyear has added two interludes and a cadenza, resulting in a dazzling 22-minute work that was recorded at Wilfrid Laurier University last Spring by Chestnut Hall Music and is available on all major streaming platforms. 

The quintet is primarily inspired by the works of Beethoven, with which Goodyear is intimately familiar having frequently performed, and also recorded all 32 piano sonatas and the five piano concertos. Goodyear says the first movement is “a passacaglia on the almost atonal 11-note sequence from the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.” 

There are myriad other works by the master referenced throughout the piece – one of my favourites is a nod to the Grosse Fugue in the finale – often infused by other diverse styles. Goodyear tells us the fourth movement is “a ländler fused with gestures of rhythm and blues and calypso,” while the last movement is “a fast toccata, sampling themes of Beethoven similarly to a hip-hop track.” You can watch a performance on YouTube (youtube.com/watch?v=WjVeWgAmYfY).

Speaking of Beethoven, it is mostly thanks to him that the name of Count Andrey Razumovsky is still known to music lovers today some two centuries after his passing – through the set of three “Razumovsky” quartets, opus 59,  commissioned in 1806. 

Razumovsky was a Ukrainian-born Russian ambassador and amateur musician based in Vienna, where he established a house quartet which included Polish violist Franz Weiss. Weiss was an accomplished composer who also wrote quartets for the count, and it is thanks to the Eybler Quartet that the Two String Quartets Op.8 “Razumovsky” have come to my attention (Gallery Players of Niagara GPN 24001 eyblerquartet.com/discography). I find both of these works delightful, and it is a mystery to me why they are not better known and part of the standard repertory. They are virtuosic, alternately lyrical and playful with some extended developmental sections. 

The Toronto-based Eybler Quartet was established in late 2004 to explore the first century and a half of the string quartet, with special attention to lesser-known voices such as their namesake Joseph Leopold Edler von Eybler. Since that time, they have released eight compact discs, first with Analekta (Eybler; Backofen & Mozart; Haydn) and later on the Gallery Players of Niagara label (Vanhal; Asplmayr; Weiss) as well as two discs for CORO Connections of Beethoven’s six Op.18 quartets. 

Current membership includes violinists Julia Wedman and Patricia Ahern (who replaced founder Aisslinn Nosky in 2022) and violist Patrick G. Jordan, all of whom are members of Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, with Margaret Gay, renowned in both period and modern performance, on cello. Together their approach to this little-known repertoire is committed and consummate, with nuanced dynamics and balanced performances that really shine. Kudos to the Eybler for bringing these fine works to light. 

Montreal’s Quatuor Cobalt was founded in 2017 for the purpose of exploring early music on period instruments and at the same time championing contemporary repertoire with modern bows, instruments and strings. Their breadth of vision is amply displayed on this debut disc Reflets du Temps (GFN Productions gfnproductions.ca/albums/reflets-du-temps). Touted as “a vibrant tribute to three female composers” – Maddalena Laura Lombardini Sirmen (1745-1818), Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel (1805-1847) and Alicia Terzian (b.1934) – it certainly lives up to that. 

Sirmen, an Italian contemporary of Haydn, was one of the first women to achieve significant success as both a violinist and composer in Europe. Her String Quartet No.2 in B-flat Major, Op.3 begins with a lyrical Andantino and concludes with a sprightly Allegro at times suggestive of a Mozart overture. Hensel’s String Quartet in E-flat Major, known to me through several other recordings (including that of Victoria’s Lafayette String Quartet for CBC Records), is a delight from its stately Andante opening through its caccia-like Allegretto and somewhat sombre Romanza, to the rollicking Allegro Molto Vivace, to my ear somewhat reminiscent of lighter moments in brother Felix’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. And Argentinian Terzian is represented by an early work, Tres piezas for String Quartet Op.5, dating from 1954. According to the press release it has rarely been recorded in the quartet version, most recently in 1968. It’s difficult to understand why. Based on traditional Armenian music, it is lyrical and tonal in its opening movements, ending in a lively and percussive Danza Rústica. 

Whatever the repertoire, which spans more than a century and a half, these Montrealers rise to every challenge in sparkling performances. 

Terzian’s Danza Rústica leads me to American Ketty Nez’s recording through the light (Albany Records TROY1991 albanyrecords.com/catalog/troy1991). This disc features two works that draw on the composer’s family heritage, using folk traditions of Central Europe and Turkey, and more specifically the groundbreaking recordings Bela Bartók made in peasant villages in the early 20th century documenting the music of soon to disappear cultures. 

Through the light for string quartet references three Anatolian folk songs Bartók transcribed in 1936, a Romanian violin tune recorded in 1908 and the “ojkanje” style of singing found in Croatia. The first movement is abrasive, percussive, wild and uninhibited. The second movement is more relaxed, taking the form of a duet between two of the songs from the first movement, the cello (bachelor’s song) being juxtaposed with high voices (gazing out the window at one’s beloved) in the violins. The last movement features gentle keening representing the Croatian women singing in sustained dissonant intervals with the use of elaborate trills. The players (violinists Gabriela Diaz and Lilit Hartunian, violist Samuel Kelder and cellist David Russell) capture all the rustic cragginess and charm with enthusiasm.

5 Fragments in 3 are musical “reflections” of Romanian violin and flute tunes recorded in the 1910s by Bartók, scored for piano (Nez), viola (Daniel Doña) and soprano saxophone (Jennifer Bill). The saxophone part can also be played on clarinet, but I find the distinctive timbre of the saxophone especially appealing. The movement titles are descriptive and apt: “in the rain, an introduction,” “organum, and a dance,” “calling lost sheep,” “dance steps” and finally “postlude, a horn call” at the end of which the saxophone gently floats above the pizzicato viola and tinkling piano. A very effective performance.

It was perhaps a coincidence, but a happy one, that as I was preparing this article a new recording, Bela Bartók – Viola Concerto; 44 Duos featuring Paul Neubauer and the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by David Atherton, arrived on my desk (First Hand Records FHR175 firsthandrecords.com/products-page/upcoming/bartok-viola-concerto-1995-revised-version-44-duos-for-two-violins-arr-viola-viola-and-viola-cello). 

When approached by music publisher Erich Doflein, Bartók embraced the idea of writing a graduated pedagogical series in which “students would play works which contained the natural simplicity of the music of the people, as well as its melodic and rhythmic peculiarities.” His 44 Duos for two violins could have been mere didactic exercises with little inherent musicality, but a plethora of recordings by professional musicians belie this. 

Peter Bartók arranged many of his father’s violin duos for two violas. I wondered why not all of the duos were included but managed to find the following on the publisher’s website: “Most of the pieces have been transposed down by a fifth interval, so that all open strings would correspond to those of the original instruments. Where lowering of the key seemed undesirable and the original key a bit too high for violas, the piece was not included in the album for violas” (P. Bartók). He also arranged some of the duos for viola and cello, saying “Only 23 of the duos were deemed suitable for this kind of arrangement.” In all, 39 of the duos are included here. Neubauer is joined alternately by violist Cynthia Phelps and cellist Ronald Thomas in very fine performances, giving these “didactic” works renewed life. 

The viola concerto, which was left unfinished at the time of Bartók’s death in 1945 and later completed from his sketches by Tibor Serly, appears here in a version revised in 1995 by Nelson Dellamaggiore and the composer’s son Peter. It is one of my favourites of Bartók’s orchestral works, and of 20th century concertos of any kind. While this version differs somewhat from the Serly completion I have been familiar with for nearly half a century, I have to agree with Neubauer, who edited the solo part, when he says “that the revised version […] is a more effective and stronger work than the original version of the concerto and no doubt closer to Bartók’s intent.” It’s a stunning achievement. 

Another of my favourite 20th century concertos is featured on the new release Kabalevsky 2nd & Schumann CELLO CONCERTOS (Our Recordings 8.226926 ourrecordings.com/albums/cello-concertos) with Theodor Lyngstad and the Copenhagen Phil under Eva Ollinkainen. I first heard Dmitri Kabalevsky’s Cello Concerto No.2 in C Minor, Op.77 on a 1968 Angel LP release of a Melodiya recording of the premiere, featuring dedicatee Daniel Shafran and the Leningrad Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra under the direction of the composer. 

I mentioned above how much I enjoyed the timbre of the saxophone in the classical context and I believe that this recording was my first exposure to this phenomenon. The alto sax plays a pivotal role in this concerto, trading lines with the solo cello in a way that makes them almost indistinguishable. I was floored when I first heard it. This new recording, which features the young principal cellist of the Copenhagen Phil (just 25 when appointed in 2019) is just as engaging, and I hear even more of the sax in the orchestral textures later in the work. 

Kabalevsky was a somewhat controversial composer, often berated in the west for adherence to “socialist realist” doctrines and toadying to the powers that be of the Soviet Union. But this work seems removed from that. As Lyngstad points out “there is a darkness and nostalgic feel to the music. It is undeniably inspired by his professor Myaskovsky’s cello concerto in the same key, a composer that became an accused ‘formalist’ by the Soviet regime. Myaskovsky was dead by the time Kabalevsky wrote this concerto, but it could easily be seen as a tribute to him, and perhaps even a subtle criticism or defiance of the Soviet regime.”

Lyngstad has chosen to pair the Kabalevsky with the more familiar Cello Concerto in A Minor, Op.129 by Schumann. He says “I find them bound together in an introspective and somewhat defiant spirit. They are similar in form, with three continuous movements, written out cadenzas and the overall development of minor to major. But even more interestingly I see a strong link in the personality and psychology of the pieces […] Neither are written for the soloist to show off. To me they are equal conversations between the soloist and orchestra, where the music tells us something rather intimate, honest and true. With melodic styles they show a tension between minor and major, darkness and light, hope and despair.” In his intimate interactions with the orchestra Lyngstad brings all this and more to fore. It’s a very satisfying recording; one I will treasure. 

I began with a piano quintet, and I shall close with another quartet “plus one” project. In this case it was initiated by flutist/composer Allison Loggins-Hull in collaboration with the string quartet ETHEL. 

In my years of working with flutist extraordinaire Robert Aitken at New Music Concerts, one of his ongoing laments was that ever since Mozart wrote his quartets for flute, violin, viola and cello, that formation has become the norm. Aitken’s disappointment stemmed from the fact that when he is invited to perform with string quartets, one of the violinists inevitably must sit out. To rectify that Aitken sought out the few existing works that combined flute with full quartet and commissioned new works by Diego Luzuriaga, Alex Pauk and Roger Reynolds among others. 

I assume that Loggins-Hull experienced the same frustration as a flutist. In Persist (Sono Luminus DSL-92281 sonoluminus.com/sonoluminus/persist?rq=persist) we are presented with post-lockdown new works by Loggins-Hull, Xavier Muzik, Migiwa “Miggy” Miyajima, Sam Wu and Leilehua Lanzilotti. 

Loggins-Hull’s title work features percussive, often driving, strings and soaring flute lines “inspired by concepts of perseverance, motivation and positive outlook […] the efforts of my relatives, and ancestors and what they went through so that I could be who I am today.” Muzik’s Pillow Talk begins ethereally with flute providing a “once upon a time” opening setting the stage for a “surreal journey that illustrates the nebulous emotions we feel when the sun is low as we bask in the morning glow with our partners…” 

Miyajima’s The Reconciliation Suite is in four movements, three depicting various traumatic episodes from the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 of which the composer was a survivor, and the Pandemic a decade later. The final movement celebrates renewal. It “vividly depicts the city coming to life with the sound of blooming flowers.” Sam Wu’s gentle Terraria explores the myriad ways of terrarium building and Lanzilotti’s we began this quilt there is a colourful tribute to Queen Liliuokalani, the only queen regnant and the last sovereign monarch of the Hawaiian Kingdom. It features some extended techniques and breath sounds from the flute. 

All in all, Persist is an intriguing album and a major and welcome contribution to the flute quintet repertoire. 

We invite submissions. CDs and DVDs should be sent to: DISCoveries, The WholeNote c/o Music Alive, The Centre for Social Innovation, 720 Bathurst St. Toronto ON M5S 2R4. Comments and digital releases are welcome at discoveries@thewholenote.com.

Bruce Surtees

I’m writing this the day after saying a fond farewell to a beloved colleague in the company of his family and a large cohort of friends from the music community. Bruce Surtees, best known in these pages for his contributions over two decades in the form of his column Old Wine in New Bottles, died peacefully on December 28 surrounded by family at Humber River Hospital after a brief illness. 

Bruce’s legacy began in 1961 when he and his wife Vivienne opened The Book Cellar in the basement of a music store on Yonge Street, a shop that would become a mainstay of Toronto’s literary industry for the next three decades. The store moved several times, eventually to its flagship location (there were several subsidiaries) across from the Four Seasons Hotel in Yorkville. With the bookstore thriving, Bruce branched out to embrace his first love, music, opening The Classical Record Shop, as the first tenant and cornerstone of the tony Hazelton Lanes complex. 

Bruce and I first crossed paths during my tenure at CJRT-FM in the mid-1990s where he was the co-host of Records in Review, first with the station’s music director, conductor Paul Robinson, and later with Toronto Star music critic William Littler. But it was not until I invited him to become part of the review team here that I really got to know Bruce. In July 2001, for the inauguration of the DISCoveries section, he wrote his first review for us under the banner “Worth Repeating: Older Recordings Worthy of Note,” writing about one of his favourite pieces, Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder, in an EMI reissue with the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Janos Ferencsik. Some 75 stand-alone reviews followed over the next four years. April 2005 marked the beginning of a new chapter, when his Old Wine column became a monthly feature in the magazine. By the time of his final column in October 2023 Bruce had brought more than a dozen historic performances of Gurrelieder to our attention, along with countless opera sets, symphonic cycles and lieder recitals—nigh on 1,000 reviews, in many cases involving multiple discs. 

I don’t know how he found the time to listen to it all, but listen he did. 

Over the course of the last two decades, Bruce and his family became very special friends to my wife Sharon and me, as they attended chamber recitals by amateur groups I played cello in, under the auspices of University Settlement Music and Arts School, and joined us for musical gatherings in our backyard. One treasured memory is learning Taylor Swift’s Safe and Sound on my guitar in order to accompany Bruce’s granddaughter Alexis, but there are so many memories of Bruce and “his girls” that I will cherish forever. Especially the visits to Baycrest where his caregivers took such good care of Bruce over the past year (thank you Christine and Kristine!) making him comfortable and making us feel welcome. Bruce my friend, we miss you so.

Ives at 151

2024 marked both the sesquicentennial of the birth of Charles Ives in 1874, and 70 years since his death at the age of 80. I’ve spent the last month immersed in a set that would in happier days have fallen into the purview of Bruce Surtees’ Old Wine in New Bottles – although in this particular case perhaps Old Wine in Old Bottles would be more apt.

I say that because Charles Ives: The RCA and Columbia Album Anthology – Recordings for the Analog Era 1945-76 (Sony Classical 19658885962 amazon.ca/Charles-Ives-Columbia-Album-Anthology/dp/B0DBP3VXTH) is a 22-CD boxed set that consists of reissues of more than 30 vinyl records packaged in miniature reproductions of the original LP jackets. Although the booklet includes recording details and release dates for all the pieces and has a five-page introductory essay by Kevin Sherwin, the only actual program notes are those printed on those original LP covers which are reduced to a size nearly impossible to read even with a strong magnifying glass. And in cases where a CD contains material from more than one LP, only one cover is included, leaving some works with no notes at all. So, there’s my quibble out of the way right from the start. Other than that, I find it a marvellous collection. It spans three decades of recordings during which time Ives went from being perceived as an esoteric crackpot with his integration of marching band themes, popular tunes and hymns into his erstwhile “classical” compositions, to being a revered visionary, the epitome of the American composer.

I wrote last month about Ives’ Piano Sonata No.2 “Concord, Mass. 1840-1860” and its first champion John Kirkpatrick. Disc One contains Kirkpatrick’s historic 1948 recording of the sonata (made 11 years after he had given its first public performance), along with a brief movement from the first sonata. Disc Two features William Masselos’ 1951 78rpm recording of Piano Sonata No.1 which appeared on LP in 1953 (reissued in 1961). For comparison of the approaches and developments in understanding these extremely complicated works by the two performers over the period of two decades, Disc 8 presents Masselos’ 1967 revisiting of the first sonata and Disc 13 gives Kirkpatrick’s 1968 second recording of the “Concord.” Masselos’ 1951 recording is accompanied by Patricia Travers, and the disc also includes Otto Herz’s 10” recording of the Sonata for Violin and Piano No.2 from the same year. I’ll mention that this is the only one of Ives’ four violin sonatas included in this mostly comprehensive collection (Tone Roads No.1 is also conspicuous by its absence). 

That being said, there is a CD (Disc 16) of chamber music that includes a piano trio, A Set of Three Short Pieces for string quartet, four diverse pieces for piano quintet, his Largo for Violin, Clarinet and Piano, and another largo for violin and piano. The two numbered string quartets appear on Disc 10 performed by the Juilliard Quartet (1967), with the second of the two reappearing on the final collection’s final CD, performed by the Cleveland Quartet (1976), paired with Samuel Barber’s String Quartet in B Minor with its iconic molto adagio second movement. 

Ives’ vocal music is amply represented with a CD of songs (Disc 17) sung by soprano Evelyn Lear and baritone Thomas Stewart, and Disc 7 features choral works performed by the Gregg Smith Singers and the Columbia Chamber Orchestra, among others; a highlight of the disc for me is General William Booth Enters into Heaven featuring the gorgeous bass voice of Archie Drake. There is also a disc (18) of “Old Songs Deranged” which comprises familiar tunes refashioned for theatre orchestra with Ives’ usual cryptic wit. There are four recordings of Variations on “America” (same tune as God Save the King), one in the organ version with E. Power Biggs, and William Schuman’s arrangement for orchestra conducted by Morton Gould (1966), Eugene Ormandy (1969) and André Kostelanetz (1976). 

The bulk of the set, though, is devoted to Ives’ original music for orchestra. Ives wrote four numbered symphonies and another entitled A Symphony: New England Holidays. He also wrote three orchestral “sets” (the first of which is subtitled Three Places in New England), the surprisingly boisterous Robert Browning Overture, the mostly subdued and at times ghostly Central Park in the Dark, and The Unanswered Question, as well as a number of smaller works. Some of these orchestral works also include choral movements (Symphony No.4, Orchestral Set No.2, A Symphony: New England Holidays) and most of the pieces appear in multiple performances. Most notable among these are the Symphony No.4 in a 1968 performance under the baton of Leopold Stokowski with assistants José Serebrier and David Katz (because Stokowski felt it too difficult for one conductor to realize) and one from 1974 with Serebrier alone at the podium. Also notable: Symphony No.2 conducted by Leonard Bernstein in 1960 and Eugene Ormandy in 1974. The Bernstein recording is supplemented with a lecture by the maestro extolling the virtues (and difficulties) of Ives’ music.

I must say that listening to 25 hours of the quirky music of Ives is daunting and not for the faint of heart. To paraphrase the sometimes-cantankerous composer you need to be able to “stand up and take your dissonance like a man.” An invaluable tool I found for approaching the task is a book that was published in 2021, Listening to Charles Ives: Variations on his America by past president of the Charles Ives Society J. Peter Burkholder (Amadeus Press charlesives.org/listening-charles-ives-variations-his-america). It’s a marvellous resource, especially when read in conjunction with the listening tools on the Charles Ives Society website (charlesives.org). My only frustration came when I could find neither Piano Sonata No.1 nor Symphony No.4 in the detailed discussion of Ives’ works.

The same year that Burkholder published his book, the current president of the Ives Society Donald Berman published Charles E. Ives: Piano Studies - Shorter Works for Piano, Volume 2 - Ives Society Critical Edition (Peermusic Classical), and in 2024 Berman released what may be, thus far, the definitive recording of the “Concord” Sonata, Charles Ives - Sonata No.2; The St. Gaudens (Avie Records AV2678 avie-records.com/releases/ives-piano-sonata-no-2-concord-mass-1940-1860-•-the-st-gaudens-black-march).

I say”thus far” because it is likely there will never be such a thing as definitive where Concord is concerned. As I said in last month’s column, Ives continued to revise the work until 1947 when he published a supposedly definitive second edition after a decade of collaboration with John Kirkpatrick who had given the first public performance of the complete sonata in 1937 and would go on to record it in 1948. But the evolution of the sonata did not stop there, with scholars like Kirkpatrick and later Jay Gottlieb continuing to make “improvements” based on Ives’ innumerable sketches and notebooks. With the resources of the Charles Ives Society at his disposal, Berman has been able to draw on most of a century’s scholarship to foster his understanding of the iconic work and the result is stunning. He has chosen to pair the sonata with The St. Gaudens which is subtitled “Black March.” The music depicts marching soldiers of the Massachusetts 54th, one of the first Union armies of African Americans during the Civil War and one that suffered heavy casualties. In an annotation to the score Ives pays tribute to the regiment and says “Your country was made from you – images of a divine law carved in the shadow of a saddened heart.” Berman offers it as a prelude to the Concord, and it is an effective set-up for an outstanding disc. 

And these just in

In September 2007 I reviewed composer/pianist Frank Horvat’s first CD and said his “compositions are diverse enough that it’s hard to describe exactly what the disc is about. Sometimes bordering on the improvisations of Keith Jarrett (but without the audible humming), at moments reminiscent of boogie-woogie, at others dark ballad-like musings and occasional fugal passages, this is truly an eclectic mix.” Over almost two decades since then, with 22 releases in his discography (16 of which have been reviewed in DISCoveries), Horvat has persisted in his eclecticism and is still hard to pin down.

His latest release, More Rivers (navonarecords.com/catalog/nv6689), explores yet another side of his creativity in a tribute to Ann Southam inspired by her ebullient and rollicking series Rivers. Southam’s frequent collaborator Christina Petrowska Quilico is the pianist here, as she was so often for Southam’s pieces. Her discography, which numbers more than six dozen releases, includes Southam’s Rivers, Pond Life, Glass Houses, Glass Houses Revisited and Soundspinning, a collection of early works including my introduction to Southam’s music, Three in Blue, which was included in the Royal Conservatory of Music syllabus when I was studying piano more than half a century ago.

Horvat says that although “Southam’s work in the area of minimalist composition has been a big influence on my life […] More Rivers is not intended to be a sequel or continuation of Rivers, but my hope is that my own unique musical minimalist voice will be a tribute to this body of work that has impacted me so profoundly.” The set comprises seven pieces constructed with overlapping looping textures evoking water; murmuring, babbling, racing or gently flowing. A number of the movements are calm and meditative, reflecting in the composer’s words “a spiritual sentiment,” but there are also dynamic and forceful moments reminding us of the power of water. Petrowska Quilico rises to all the challenges, making even the most intricate passages sound effortless and natural.

In his programme note Horvat implores us to remember “Water is intrinsic to life. As living beings on this planet, it is one of our most important resources that requires our full respect and protection.” Amen to that.

Listen to 'Frank Horvat: More Rivers' Now in the Listening Room

Elsewhere in these pages you will find reviews of guitar-centric discs featuring “classical” composers Graham Flett and Tim Brady, and jazz guitarists Jocelyn Gould and the late Emily Remler. Each of those discs showcases, primarily, one style of music, albeit there is quite a range in each of the presentations. The next disc also focuses on guitar, but in this case it appears in many forms and contexts. ADJACENCE – new chamber works for guitar (new focus recordings FCR 423 danlippelguitar.bandcamp.com/album/adjacence) features the talents of Dan Lippel on traditional and microtonal classical guitars, electric guitar and electric bass in a variety of ensembles and settings.

The 2CD set features the work of a dozen living composers and includes pieces by the late Mario Davidovsky (Cantione Sine Textu for wordless soprano, clarinet/bass clarinet, flutes, guitar and bass) and Charles Wuorinen (Electric Quartet performed by Bodies Electric in which Lippel is joined by electric guitarists Oren Fader, John Chang and William Anderson). There are works for solo guitar, multi-tracked guitars, an unusual string trio comprised of guitar, viola and hammer dulcimer, a variety of duets such as piccolo and guitar and percussion and guitar, and a number of quartets of varied instrumentation.

One of my favourites is Tyshawn Sorey's homage to a Seattle-based pianist/composer. Titled Ode to Gust Burns it is an extended work scored for bassoon, guitar, piano and percussion, with the bassoon adding a particularly expressive note to the tribute. Another is Lippel’s own Utopian Prelude that opens the set, on which he plays both electric guitar and a micro-tonally tuned acoustic instrument. Ken Ueno’s Ghost Flowers is another extended work, composed for the unusual trio mentioned above. It begins with eerie string rubbing sounds from the guitar before droning viola and percussive dulcimer join the mix. The next ten minutes get busier and busier with overlapping textures and rhythms before subsiding gradually into gentle harmonics.

Peter Adriaansz’s Serenades II to IV (No.23) for electric guitar and electric bass ends the first disc, with Lippel playing both parts. Sidney Marquez Boquiren’s Five Prayers of Hope is performed by counter)induction, a quartet consisting of violin, viola, guitar and piano. The haunting opening prayer Beacon is juxtaposed with a variety of moods in the subsequent Bridges, Silence Breakers, Sanctuary and Home. The second disc ends with Dystopian Reprise which Lippel describes as “a fusion-inspired improvisation using the final minutes of Adriaansz’s Serenade IV as a canvas.”  Throughout the more than two hours of Adjacence Lippel and his colleagues kept me enthralled with the breadth and range of an instrument it is all too easy to take for granted.

Listen to 'ADJACENCE: new chamber works for guitar' Now in the Listening Room

In closing I will mention one guilty pleasure of the past month. Although I certainly didn’t need another recording of Olivier Messiaen’s mammoth symphonic work, as it is one of favourites I was pleased to add Messiaen – Turangalîla Symphony (Deutsche Grammophon deutschegrammophon.com/en/catalogue/products/messiaen-turangalla-nelsons-13655) to my collection. Featuring Yuja Wang, Cécile Lartigau and the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Andris Nelsons, the recording offers all the excitement, scintillating effects and dynamic range that this exhilarating work requires. Another one for the ages! 

We invite submissions. CDs and DVDs should be sent to: DISCoveries, The WholeNote c/o Music Alive, The Centre for Social Innovation, 720 Bathurst St. Toronto ON M5S 2R4. Comments and digital releases are welcome at discoveries@thewholenote.com.