01 ŽibuoklėODE1386 2Saudade is the name of a new album of orchestral works by Lithuanian-American composer Žibuoklė Martinaitytė, and of the most recent composition included on the disc (Ondine ODE 1386-2 naxosdirect.com/search/ode+1386-2). According to Martinaitytė, the Portuguese word saudade means “a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing […] sad and happy feelings together […]. For the last decade this thread of longing has been woven into my life, colouring all experiences.” It is a sentiment which I’m sure most of us have been feeling during the past year of lockdown and isolation, so it is interesting that the four works presented were all written in the half dozen years before COVID reared its ugly head. Although evoking stark landscapes, there is a wonderful lushness to the music, which seems to grow inherently out of initial quiet in vast arcs of sustained tones and tremolos, occasionally erupting like bubbles exploding from some primordial soup. The music builds and recedes in many-textured layers with no melodies per se, just shifting colours that draw us in with a sense of yearning. Of particular note is the Chiaroscuro Trilogy (2017) for piano and orchestra that holds us enthralled throughout its three movements played without pause – Tunnel, Meteors and Darkness of Light. Gabrielius Alekna is the soloist with the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra. The other works are performed by the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra, Giedrė Šlekytė conducting throughout.

02 Mirror Lysander TrioMartinaitytė mentions that one of the works on her disc was inspired by the films Cloud Atlas and The Hours (both based on books) as well as Italo Calvino’s postmodernist novel If on a winter’s night a traveller. I would not normally mention a CD that we have previously reviewed, but I found myself intrigued last month by Adam Sherkin’s review of the Lysander Trio disc mirrors (First Hand Records FHR11 lysandertrio.com). Specifically it was Reinaldo Moya’s Ghostwritten Variations that caught my attention, featuring “reimagined” music of fictional composers from four novels: Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus; David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas mentioned above; Richard Powers’ Orfeo; and Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Memory of Whiteness, only the last of which I hadn’t read. With time on my hands I decided to explore this 1985 novel set in a distant future of interplanetary travel and habitation, where the universe is controlled by an enormous synthetic orchestra and its master. Although I found Ghostwritten Variations less than convincing as a depiction of music by these invented composers, it was an interesting premise and a well-crafted result. I actually found the 2010 trio, An den Wassern zu Babel by William David Cooper with its retro-expressionist sensibility, perhaps a more convincing example of what Mann’s character Adrian Leverkühn, loosely based on Arnold Schoenberg, might have written. That being said, I was happy to spend time with this well-performed survey of recent piano trios by contemporary American composers. 

03 Star Makers FragmentsMusic again led me to literature in the next instance, Taylor Brook’s Star Maker Fragments, commissioned and performed by the TAK Ensemble (takensemble.bandcamp.com/album/star-maker-fragments). I had not previously read Olaf Stapleton’s 1937 speculative fiction novel involving transcendental interstellar and time travel, and the melding of the narrator’s mind with other sentient beings (of all shapes and sizes) from other planets and other galaxies, in a story that encompassed the entire history of the universe. It’s also about galactic consciousness(es) and the creator – Star Maker – told from the perspective of a pacifist philosophy from a time when Europe was headed, seemingly inevitably, toward global conflict. Brook has excerpted fragments of the book for his text, which is narrated by the group’s soprano, Charlotte Mundy, accompanied by flute, bass clarinet, violin and percussion, with electronics by the composer. The piece was written explicitly for recording, making extensive use of multi-tracking, processing, sound synthesis and field recordings, but may also be performed in concert with ensemble and live electronics once COVID is a thing of the past. It is a very convincing encapsulation of the striking landmark book, lasting about 45 minutes and followed by an instrumental postlude. If you’re not familiar with Star Maker, this provides an intriguing introduction to the SF classic, whose more famous admirers include H.G. Wells, Virginia Woolf, Brian Aldiss, Doris Lessing, Stanisław Lem and Jorge Luis Borges, who called it “a prodigious novel.” Recommended.

Listen to 'Taylor Brook’s Star Maker Fragments' Now in the Listening Room

04 Michael Peter Olsen Yearning FlowI sometimes multi-task, listening to music while reading. Pretty much anything with lyrics, especially narration, is off limits, because I cannot deal with words in my ears and words on the page at the same time. This meant not listening to Star Maker Fragments while reading the book, but I did find some music that seemed a perfect match to those interstellar wanderings, Toronto composer Michael Peter Olsen’s Yearning Flow (handdrawndracula.com/artists/michael-peter-olsen). Olsen plays electric and acoustic cello with electronics throughout, and is joined by guests on four of the six tracks: Chris Evans, synth guitar on MoonMist; Todor Kobakov, modular synth on 7 Days; Brandon Lim, bass guitar on Ours; and Merival, in a beautiful vocalese duet with cello, on Cloud Parade. In addition to providing a marvellous soundtrack for the transcendental journeying mentioned above, Yearning Flow ​is evocative and visual, “a sonically deep album that layers ambient textures with tension and release,” that also rewards concentrated listening. Perfect music for sitting in the dark and letting your mind go. 

05a Self Portrait with Russian PianoBrought to my attention by WholeNote reader and old high-school chum Doug Walker, Self Portrait with Russian Piano by Wolf Wondratschek is a compelling story of the narrator’s friendship with a fictional Soviet pianist Suvorin, and Suvorin’s own friendship with real-life cellist Heinrich Schiff (even including Schiff’s recipe for caramelizing onions!). I find it interesting that a book about a pianist speaks of piano repertoire in only general terms, but when it comes to Schiff and the cello it gets specific, mentioning Beethoven’s cellos sonatas and Triple Concerto. This led me to search out Schiff’s performance of the Cello Sonata in A Major Op.69 on YouTube – his recordings of the five sonatas seemingly having fallen out of the catalogue – and to a brand new CD with the Beethoven Triple Concerto in C Major Op.56 featuring Isabelle Faust, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Alexander Melnikov and the Freiburger Barockorchester, conducted by Pablo Heras-Casado (Harmonia Mundi HMM902419 store.harmoniamundi.com).

05b Beethoven TripleIt had been several decades since I last listened to the “Triple” and it was a real treat to have occasion to revisit it, especially played by such amazing performers. The balance between the soloists and period orchestra (presumably supplemented from its Baroque size to the forces Beethoven would have had available at the time) is perfect, and the simpatico communion between violin, cello and piano is palpable. The album also includes a surprisingly full-bodied rendering of Beethoven’s piano trio arrangement of the Symphony No.2 in D Major, Op.36. Quite a feast for the ears! 

06 Schoenberg TrioPiano trios seem to be a recurring theme this month and next on the agenda is a new recording of Eduard Steuermann’s 1932 arrangement of Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht Op.4 with Trio Karénine on La Nuit Transfiguré (Mirare MIR554 mirare.fr/catalogue). Originally composed for string sextet in 1899, Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) is considered Schoenberg’s first important work, and incidentally it was Pierre Boulez’s Domaine Musical recording of the original version that provided my introduction to the music of this icon of the 20th century. Predating his development of the 12-tone system, this piece is a dense example of Expressionist art with the dramatic, and sometimes lugubrious, string textures full of Romantic angst. Although a purely instrumental work, it explores – verse by verse – a poem by Richard Dehmel in which a woman is walking with her lover, but is pregnant by another man. She is worried about the ramifications, but ultimately the beauty of the evening and the intensity of their love triumph. This tone poem departs from the tradition established by Liszt and later perfected by Richard Strauss, in that it is for chamber forces, not full orchestra. Trio Karénine’s performance is intense and convincing, with the “orchestral” piano part conceived by Steuermann ably filling in for the missing strings. The CD also includes Tristia, Liszt’s 1880 trio arrangement of the solo piano work, Vallée d’Obermann S. 723c, and Schumann’s Six Studies in Canonic Form for pedal piano, Op.56 as transcribed by Theodor Kirchner.

07 Verklarte NachtSteuermann’s is not the only arrangement of Transfigured Night; Schoenberg himself expanded it for string orchestra including contrabass (adding to the abovementioned lugubriousness) in 1917, and again for similar forces in 1943, by which time the Austrian composer had moved to America. Verklärte Nacht, a new album from Chandos featuring the BBC Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Edward Gardner (CHSA 5243 naxosdirect.com/search/chsa+5243), includes this last arrangement, plus German orchestral songs by Franz Lehár, Oskar Fried and Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Lehár’s Fieber (Fever) is the dramatic story of a young officer in hospital after suffering wounds on the battlefield early in WWI, as was the case of the composer’s younger brother Anton. It is markedly different from the music of The Merry Widow and other operettas for which Lehár is renowned, although momentary hints of the waltz composer peek through. Fried’s 1901 Verklärte Nacht is based on the same text that inspired Schoenberg, in this instance using Dehmel’s words, sung by mezzo-soprano (Christine Rice) and tenor (Stuart Skelton). It is a quasi-operatic scene in post-Wagnerian style, of which Fried said in later years: “I myself find it too beautiful; I am drowning in this music.” Korngold composed his four Lieder des Abschieds (Songs of Farewell) in 1920- 21, soon after his opera Die tote Stadt, when he was still in Vienna. It is the most tonal work on offer here (Fried’s self-assessment notwithstanding), gorgeously sung by Skelton, whose full heldentenor is impressive throughout the vocal works on the disc, well matched by Rice in the Fried. 

08 Fremb bin ich EingezogenSpeaking of arrangements, or in this case adaptations, regular readers will know that I am enamoured of Schubert’s Winterreise in just about any shape or form. Other than Bach’s Goldberg Variations I don’t know of any work that has been interpreted in so many ways, for so many instruments. Perhaps the most unusual version I had encountered until now was Philippe Sly and Le Chimera Project’s Klezmer/Roma rendition recorded for Analekta and later performed live for Toronto audiences at Koerner Hall in 2020, shortly before the lockdown. This has now been surpassed by a new disc from the Asambura-Ensemble, founded in Hannover in 2013 to interpret classical music in dialogue with non-European perspectives. Fremd bin ich Eingezogen (Decurio DEC-004 decur.io) is subtitled Winterreise interkulturell and it connects Schubert with Persian poems and music in an intriguing mélange that provides a multicultural gloss on the original text and accompaniment. The vocal soloists are Yannick Spanier (German) and Mehdi Saie (Persian), and the orchestration is a mix of Western and Eastern instruments: piano; violin; viola; cello; contrabass; flutes; clarinets; guitar; santoor; oud; tar; marimba; djembe; riq and dumbek. The title translates to “I arrived a stranger,” the opening line of Gute Nacht, the first song of the Winterreise cycle, and it embodies the spirit of the project as stated in the booklet, “…in view of the homelessness of so many refugees.” It is a haunting and evocative reinterpretation of a timeless classic, firmly rooting it in the troubled 21st century. A stunning addition to my Winterreise collection. 

09a akikos piano coverTwo Japanese piano concertos complete this month’s column, Dai Fujikura’s Piano Concerto No.4 “Akiko’s Piano” (daifujikura.com/#shop) and Toshio Hosokawa’s Lotus under the moonlight on Hosokawa / Mozart (ECM New Series 2624 ecmrecords.com/shop)

Fujikura tells us that his ”special piano concerto was written for and dedicated to the Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra’s Peace and Music Ambassador, Martha Argerich. […] In Hiroshima, there is a piano that survived the atomic bomb, the smashed glass window from the blast is still stuck to the piano’s body. This piano belonged to a 19-year-old girl, Akiko […] who was working as a mobilized student, when the atomic bomb was dropped. She walked and swam, as the bridge had been destroyed, to her home where her parents were that day. Then, the next day, she died [of radiation poisoning] in her parents’ arms.” In this recoding, two pianos are used; a grand piano for the body of the work, and then the cadenza at the end of the concerto is played on Akiko’s Piano, the piano that survived the bombing. Fujikura says “To express such a universal theme of ‘music for peace’ the piece should portray that most personal, smallest point of view. I think that is the most powerful way, and only music can achieve this.” I think he has done so admirably. The soloist is Mami Hagiwara and the Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra is conducted by Tatsuya Shimono.

09b Hosokawa MozartHosokawa’s concerto was commissioned by the Nordeutscher Rundfunk for the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth. The composer was asked to select a favourite Mozart concerto and write a work for the same instrumentation. He chose the Concerto in A Major K488, and used the “beautiful slow movement” in F-sharp Minor as his point of departure. Hosokawa says “Of all flowers, the lotus blossom is the most highly valued in Buddhism. Many statues of the Buddha show him standing on a lotus blossom. […] In my concerto, the piano symbolizes the lotus flower (human) and the orchestra the surrounding water and universe. […] The work does not depict the lotus flower quietly but rather tries to express the mysterious energy of the universe that flows into the blossoming of the flower.” For this purpose, Hosokawa has supplemented the orchestra with percussion instruments; dramatic bass drum explosions and the gentle tinkling of bells and chimes. He dedicated the work to Momo Kodama who premiered it in Hamburg in 2006. Her performance here is from the Japanese premiere, recorded later that same year, with Seiji Ozawa conducting his Mito Chamber Orchestra. As at the premiere, the recording pairs Lotus under the moonlight with Kodama’s performance of the Mozart Piano Concerto in A Major that inspired it. 

We invite submissions. CDs, DVDs and comments should be sent to: DISCoveries, WholeNote Media Inc., The Centre for Social Innovation, 503 – 720 Bathurst St. Toronto ON M5S 2R4.

David Olds, DISCoveries Editor
discoveries@thewholenote.com

In the two months since the last issue so much, and yet so little, has happened that it’s hard to know where to begin. One true highlight was spending a week savouring Welsh writer and musicologist Paul Griffiths’ latest novel Mr. Beethoven. I received an inscribed copy of the small press UK edition sent just before Christmas by the author, but I’ll wait to write about that, and the music it led me to, until later this year when the book is released in North America. 

01 Francis Dhomont 20167 IMEDI suppose the best place to start is with old friends. During my tenure as host and producer of Transfigured Night (1984-1991) at CKLN-FM, I became interested in the field of electronic music, to the extent of becoming a founding member of the Canadian Electroacoustic Community (CEC). On a trip to Montreal in 1986, for a conference that led to the establishment of that national organization, I met and became friends with a number of movers and shakers in that rarified field, including Jean-François Denis, who went on to found the internationally renowned empreintes DIGITALes (electrocd.com). At time of writing, the Montreal-based label has 171 releases featuring the most distinguished practitioners of electroacoustics, acousmatics and musique concrète from around the world. While at CKLN, I commissioned radiophonic works from a dozen composers, one of the most successful of which was Figures de la nuit/Faces of the Night by Francis Dhomont. Since the late 1940s working with magnetic wire recorders in Paris – one of the first exponents of what Pierre Henry would later call musique concrète – Dhomont has been a pioneer of electroacoustic composition, and has worked exclusively in fixed media (i.e. magnetic tape and its digital progeny) since the 1970s. From 1978 until 2004, Dhomont split his time between France and Quebec, where he taught for 16 years at the Université de Montréal. I am pleased to see, as witnessed by the recent CD Images nomades (IMED 20167), that at the age of 94 Dhomont is still active in his studio in Avignon, France. This release includes three recent works – a particular favourite is Perpetuum mobile (Pluies fantômes) – plus a cycle of 15 shorter tributes to friends and colleagues such as composers Bernard Parmegiani and Jonty Harrison he calls Ami-versaires  – composed between 2002 and 2020. This and the dozen or so discs of Dhomont’s music available from empreintes DIGITALes confirm him not only as a pioneer in the field, but also as a master of his craft. 

02 Molinari PendereckiA new ATMA release – Krzysztof Penderecki featuring Quatuor Molinari (ACD2 2736 atmaclassique.com/en) – also feels like an old friend. Although I did meet Penderecki on several occasions, I did not have the opportunity to get to know him. But I have met founding violinist Olga Ranzenhofer and through her the quartet’s namesake, the late painter Guido Molinari, both of whom I would consider friends. This latest disc in the Molinari’s extensive catalogue includes Penderecki’s two early avant-garde string quartets from 1960 and 1968 with their graphic scores and extended techniques, and the much later, more conservative String Quartet No.3 “Leaves from an Unwritten Diary” from 2008, a kind of autobiographical reminiscence replete with references to earlier works. Being familiar with these from a number of recordings, particularly those of Kitchener-Waterloo’s Penderecki String Quartet, of more interest to me are the in-between works included here, that give a kind of context to the transition from angry young man of the 60s to the successful gentleman of his later years. They include the brief movement for string quartet, The Broken Thought (1988), the String Trio (1990) and a Quartet for Clarinet and String Trio (1993). The trio opens aggressively but gradually subsides into variations on Penderecki’s signature descending-note motif. The clarinet piece begins gently, and even in its more strident moments is playful and melodic. Clarinetist André Moisan proves to be the perfect foil for the members of the Molinari, whose playing, as always, is exemplary in its expressivity. A fitting tribute to Penderecki, who died in late March, 2020 after a long illness (not related to the coronavirus). He was 86.

Listen to 'Krzysztof Penderecki – String Quartets' Now in the Listening Room

03 Tigran MansurianMy first exposure to Penderecki’s clarinet quartet was on a Sony recording from the 1993 Penderecki Gala celebrating the composer’s 60th birthday. That performance featured, among others, the exceptional American violist Kim Kashkashian, who is a key player on one of two recent ECM releases that I’ve spent a lot of time with over the past two months (ecmrecords.com/shop). Kashkashian is joined by eight other A-list musicians, who mostly share her Armenian heritage, on Con Anima (ECM New Series 2687), devoted to the chamber music of Tigran Mansurian, an Armenian composer born in 1939. Again the highlights include a String Trio and a clarinet quartet, Agnus Dei. The clarinet is accompanied by violin, cello and piano in this instance and this is the only work on which Kashkashian does not appear. The earliest piece on the disc is String Quartet No.3, dating from 1993, which Kashkashian performs with violinists Movses Pogossian, Varty Manouelian and cellist Michael Kaufman. Two recent works from 2015 and 2016 are duos: Die Tänzerin where Kashkashian is joined by Manouelian and Sonata da Chiesa with pianist Tatevik Mokatsian. Mansurian’s music is characterized by restrained pointillism, subtle rhythms and delicate impressionistic beauty. Most of his works begin and end quietly, as in the opening Agnus Dei, dedicated to the memory of violinist Oleg Kagan, which sets the tone for the entire disc. Contrary to expectation, the title work Con anima (in a spirited manner), is no exception. Completed in 2007, this string sextet, which adds former TSO principal violist Teng Li and cellist Karen Ouzounian to the string players noted above, is a gloss on Shostakovich’s String Quartet No.13 in which the viola dominates. That role is given here to first violist Kashkashian, whose gorgeous dark tone leads the others on a transformative journey. A brilliant, subdued and contemplative disc, perfect for our troubled times. 

04 Erkki Sven TuurThe other ECM release, Lost Prayers (ECM New Series 2666), features chamber works by Estonian composer Erkki-Sven Tüür. I had the pleasure of meeting Tüür several times, when he was in Toronto for the Border Crossings Festival in 1990, and again in 2010 when he was featured on a Soundstreams concert. This disc is bookended by two piano trios effectively performed by Harry Traksmann (violin), Leho Karin (cello) and Marrit Geritz-Traksmann (piano) which are the earliest and latest works presented. The dramatic Fata Morgana (2002) is a quasi moto perpetuo whereas Lichttürme (2017) is relatively introspective.  Although rollicking string ostinati echoes of the former work emerge from time to time, the latter begins and ends with a sense of calm. The same can be said of Synergie (2011) featuring violinist Florian Donderer and cellist Tanja Tetzlaff. Written the following year, String Quartet No.2 “Lost Prayers,” performed here by the Signum Quartet, is atypical of Tüür’s output, at least thematically. His focus is more often identified by “rational-systematic designations” as in his series of Architectonics pieces (the fourth of which was commissioned by Toronto’s Sound Pressure and premiered here in 1990). In the quartet, Tüür says, “I tried to imagine a cloud of cries for help – from believers, non-believers, people of different traditions, of different periods of history. Are these cries lost? The music is dealing with the energetic field of the accumulation of these spontaneous outcries.” Fitting music for these distressing times, hauntingly performed. With ECM founder Manfred Eichmann’s characteristic concern for pristine sound, the disc was recorded in Bremen’s acoustically responsive Sendesaal, a venue that gained international attention in audiophile circles in 1973 when ECM released Keith Jarrett’s Solo Concerts: Bremen/Lausanne.

05 Olivier GreifVery different from the quiet and meditative offerings from ECM is a new release from the Centre International Albert Roussel in Bavinchove, France. Olivier Greif – A Tale of the World (CC 002 ciar@free.fr) is a 48 minute piano quintet performed by Quintette Syntonia. It is a truly remarkable work integrating texts in Sanskrit, Elizabethan and modern English, Italian, French and German, meant to be spoken, sung and chanted by the musicians, all while playing their instruments with virtuosity. Greif (1950 -2000) began his studies at the Paris Conservatoire and continued them at the Juilliard School in New York. His first creative period (in the sense of Western art music) lasted from 1961 through 1981 when he became a disciple of the Indian spiritual master Sri Chinmoy. During the next decade, the bulk of his creativity went to composing devotional songs on Chinmoy’s texts and writing small piano pieces dedicated to friends. In 1991 he returned to “classical” composition and in 1994 was commissioned to write this remarkable quintet by a festival in Kuhmo, Finland. Originally scheduled for premiere that year, the first performance was postponed for health reasons and A Tale of the World was not heard until 1996 when performed by Jean-François Heisser and the Sibelius Quartet. The Syntonia Quintet was founded in 1999 and had the opportunity to work briefly with Greif before his death the following year. The meeting had a profound effect on the young musicians who were then studying at the Paris Conservatoire. They have gone on to become champions of contemporary music and have recorded a number of Greif’s works, including String Quartet No.2 with voice “On Three Sonnets by Shakespeare” and the Ulysses Quartet which they premiered. In 2020, after years of preparation, they felt ready to record A Tale of the World, with its “wall of sound” textures sometimes reminiscent of the Ramayana Monkey Chant from Bali juxtaposed with moments of extreme delicacy and beauty; they realized this goal in late February just before COVID-19 overtook the world. A stunning achievement.

06 Iceland SO OccurenceSono Luminus has just completed its project with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra under Daníel BjarnasonVolume Three: Occurrence (sonoluminus.com) includes Bjarnason’s own Violin Concerto, the atmospheric Lendh by young Canadian expatriate Veronique Vaka and works by Haukur Tómasson, Þuríður Jónsdóttir and Magnús Blöndal Jóhannsson. Bjarnason’s concerto opens eerily with the soloist whistling high-pitched tones accompanied by sparse pizzicato notes before the violin melody begins in earnest. Later in the piece the quiet whistling returns, effectively trading off of “whistle tones” produced with harmonics high up the neck of the solo instrument. The effective cadenza was composed by the soloist Pekka Kuusisto. Vaka’s body of work “intends to create a poetic context between what she sees, hears and feels in the unspoiled nature” and this is obvious from the dramatic opening low chords of double basses and percussion in Lendh, reminiscent of calving icebergs. After its premiere during the Dark Music Days festival in January 2019, it went on to receive nominations for Composition of the Year in the Icelandic Music Awards and the Nordic Council Music Prize. Whistle tones, mentioned above, are more often created on the flute than on string instruments, and we hear these and other extended flute techniques, along with an insect-like electronic soundtrack, interacting with the orchestra in Jónsdóttir’s Flutter with soloist Mario Caroli. The disc ends with its most traditional piece, the breathtakingly beautiful Adagio for strings, celesta and percussion by Jóhannsson, a work that marked his return to composition in 1980 after a troubled decade following the death of his wife. Its quiet grandeur evokes in me visions of a still Arctic landscape during an endless night, and brings this orchestral tribute to the music of Iceland to a fitting close. 

07 Anna ClyneLondon-native Anna Clyne (b.1980) has impeccable credentials. She has served as composer-in-residence for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, L’Orchestre national d’Île-de-France and Berkeley Symphony. She is currently the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s Associate Composer and a mentor composer for Orchestra of St Luke’s DeGaetano Composer Institute. 2020 saw the release of a portrait disc Mythologies (Avie AV2434 avierecords.com), featuring five works performed live by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under the direction of four distinguished conductors including Marin Alsop and Andrew Litton. It opens with bombastic drama in the form of Masquerade, commissioned by BBC Radio 3 to open the Last Night of the Proms in 2013, and continues in much the same vein with This Midnight Hour. The centrepiece is an intriguing violin concerto titled The Seamstress. Unusual for Clyne, the work is based on a 12-note row, but more interesting is the whispered, almost inaudible recitation of William Butler Yeats’ stanza, A Coat, late in the work. (“I made my song a coat/Covered with embroideries/Out of old mythologies…”) Jennifer Koh is in stellar form as soloist, with Irene Buckley the speaker. The last two works return to the bombast of the opening with the stormy Night Ferry and the unrelenting <<rewind>>. All in all, an exhilarating introduction to a composer I look forward to hearing more from soon. 

We invite submissions. CDs, DVDs and comments should be sent to: DISCoveries, WholeNote Media Inc., The Centre for Social Innovation, 503 – 720 Bathurst St. Toronto ON M5S 2R4.

David Olds, DISCoveries Editor
discoveries@thewholenote.com

01c Folling Out of Time book webHousebound in these COVID-19 days, I find I’m reading even more than usual. And it’s taking longer than normal because I’m making a point of supplementing my reading by listening to all the music mentioned in the books as I go. Pauline Delabroy-Allard’s Ça raconte Sarah, a tragic story of the love between two young women, included Schubert’s Trout Quintet and the quartet Death and the Maiden, Bartók’s String Quartet No.4 and Mendelssohn’s Octet. Sarah Léon’s Wanderer, a saga of friendship and unrequited love between a child prodigy pianist and a young composer/cellist featured Schubert’s Arpeggione Sonata, his late piano works, Winterreise and other lieder, along with Chopin’s Piano Trio and Brahms’ Alto Rhapsody. Wallace Stegner’s Crossing to Safety, the story of the lifelong friendship of two couples who meet early in their academic careers, led once again to the Trout Quintet, Ferde Grofé’s Grand Canyon Suite and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Most eclectic of all is Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, which I’m only a third of the way through. It has already sent me off to find Brahms’ Fourth Symphony and Piano Concerto No.2, Bill Evans’ Waltz for Debby, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band plus a number of pop classics and, strangely, a whistled version of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Proud Mary. (It took a while to track this last one down, but I was able to find it on Amazon for 99 cents.) 

All this could be considered incidental music to the books, although Death and the Maiden loomed larger than that in Delabroy-Allard’s tale, as did Winterreise in Léon’s, but two discs I want to talk about this month actually take their inspiration and raison d’être from specific works of literature. My interest was sparked for Osvaldo Golijov’s Falling Out of Time when I realized that it was based on a book of the same name by David Grossman, an author whose works I have previously enjoyed. And Kjartan Sveinsson’s Der Klang der Offenbarung des Göttlichen is based on the novel World Light by Icelandic Nobel Prize-winning author Halldór Laxness, another of my favourites. 

01a Falling Out of Time webGolijov’s Falling Out of Time, performed by the Silk Road Ensemble (inacircle-records.com/releases) has another serendipitous connection to my reading life. It seems that Golijov conceived of the project after a meeting with the founder of the Parents Circle, an organization that brings together Palestinian and Israeli parents who have lost children in the ongoing conflict in their homeland(s), in hopes of finding some semblance of healing and some road to eventual peace. I had not been aware of this organization until about a month ago when I read an incredibly moving “novel” called Apeirogon by Colum McCann. I use quotation marks to qualify the definition. Although a work of fiction, McCann’s main characters are actual members of the Parents Circle, a Palestinian whose daughter was shot and killed by an Israeli soldier, and an Israeli whose own daughter was killed by a Palestinian suicide-, or more accurately, murder-bomber, both as innocent bystanders. The book incorporates chapters by both of these real fathers who describe their own states of being and give context to McCann’s fiction (which they condone). A truly magnificent book. 

01b Apeirogon book webHow does a person stay alive after losing a child? Grossman’s poetic book tells the stories of a number of people in that situation who, as a result, have fallen out of their own lives into a dreamlike state. It opens with a narration by the Town Chronicler who describes the village at night, much in the way of Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood. We next meet a Man who decides he must go “there” to find his dead son, although his wife assures him “There is no such place. There does not exist.” Nevertheless he departs to wander, muttering, in ever-widening circles in his search. As the book unfolds more and more lost parents join the ghostly parade, each telling of their own loss. For the Walkers, “Poetry is the language of my grief.” Golijov’s stark and wrenching adaptation of the texts, originally in Hebrew but presented in both Hebrew and English translation (included in the booklet), is extremely effective. Wu Tong is especially moving in his heart-wrenching depiction of the Walking Man. Drawing on the resources of the Silk Road Ensemble, Golijov employs a variety of traditional and exotic instruments and some electronics to accompany and extend the voices of the various characters. As Grossman calls his book “a Novel in Voices,” Golijov describes his rendition not as an opera or a song cycle, but “a Tone Poem in Voices.” Grossman says in an introductory note: “In this work by Osvaldo and the wonderful Silk Road Ensemble, I heard the voice of human pain and grief laid bare – the scream of an animal. […] It is true that no one knows what hides behind the impenetrable wall of death. But there is one place, or rather one dimension, where we can feel, if only for an instant, both the absolute nihility of death and the full absence of life. And that dimension is art. It is literature and poetry, music, theatre and cinema, painting and sculpture. When we are in that place we can sense, concurrently, both the everything and the abysmal void. The negation of life and its affirmation. I hope that listening to this creation will provide you, too, with this sensation.” It did for me.

Listen to 'Falling Out of Time' Now in the Listening Room

02a Kjartan Sveinsson webSveinsson, a member of the Icelandic ambient/post-rock band Sigur Rós, has in recent years become a celebrated film composer, including the 2005 Academy Award-nominated short film Síðasti bærinn (The Last Farm) and the 2011 Eldfjal (Volcano). Der Klang der Offenbarung des Göttlichen, The Explosive Sonics of Divinity in English, is performed by Filmorchester Babelsberg and Filmchoir Berlin under Davíð Þór Jónsson
(sonoluminus.com/store/derklang).

Laxness’ four-part novel revolves around Ólafur Kárason, an unloved foster child on a farm in rural Iceland around the turn of the last century, his belief that one day he will be a great poet, and his “incurable longing for beauty and its catastrophic consequences.” Sveinsson’s adaptation uses Kárason’s poems and thoughts from the book, translated into German. Magnus Magunsson’s English translations – he also translated the novel – are provided in the booklet. Sveinsson calls his creation an opera, but the only characters in this unique work are set designs painted by Ragnar Kjartansson. There are no people on the stage, (an opera with no divas says the composer); the orchestra, solo cellist, vocal trio and chorus perform unseen from the pit. The first of its four movements is purely instrumental and is strongly reminiscent to my ear of Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. The sombre mood continues in the following movements where the choral settings are somehow lush and stark at the same time. Kjartansson’s stage sets are said to be rooted in “Germanic romantic clichés” and I assume the striking paintings, which adorn the four panels of the cardboard packaging, are drawn from them. It is an impressive addition to Sono Luminus’ ongoing commitment to bringing Icelandic culture to the world.

02b World Light book webDuring my tenure at CJRT-FM in the 1990s, one of my great pleasures was getting to know and work with Latvian-Canadian composer Tālivaldis Ķeniņš (1919-2008). During one of my years there “Tāli” was the subject of our annual week-long Canadian Composer Retrospective, which involved an extended documentary which I produced, and daily broadcasts of his music, including a concert that featured his Viola Sonata, commissioned for Rivka Golani especially for the occasion. After service in the Second World War, Ķeniņš settled in Paris where he studied with Tony Aubin and Olivier Messiaen at the Conservatoire. After successful completion of his degree, including a first prize in composition for his Cello Sonata, he moved to Canada and became an important fixture in our musical life, teaching for many years at the University of Toronto and serving as the president of the Canadian League of Composers. 2019 marked the centenary of Ķeniņš’ birth and although I’m not aware of any particular fanfare to mark that occasion, it is nice to see that two new recordings of his orchestral music have just become available. 

03 Ondine Kenins webThe first to arrive, Tālivaldis Ķeniņš – Symphony No.1; Two Concertos, features the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra on the Ondine label (naxosdirect.com/search/ode+1350-2). The Concerto di camera No.1 for piano and chamber ensemble (flute, clarinet and strings) was composed in 1981 and first performed during the Latvian Song Festival at U of T on Canada Day that year. Ķeniņš says, “This is not a virtuoso romantic concerto but rather a work held within the baroque and classical framework in a concertante style, where the thematic material is a neverending development and takes shape in the dialogue between the soloist and the other members of the chamber group.” The soloist in this performance is Agnese Egliņa. In the Concerto for Piano from 1990 the accompanying string orchestra is complemented by an extensive obbligato percussion part, performed by Edgars Saksons. Once again the soloist is Egliņa. Both concertos are conducted by Guntis Kuzma. The earliest work, dating from 1959, is the first of eight symphonies that Ķeniņš would pen over his career. The eminent Latvian critic in exile, Jānis Cīrulis, called this work “a mighty symphonic edifice, which rises above our local musical structures.” It was first played at the Indianapolis Latvian Song Festival in 1960 and shortly thereafter in Vancouver and Winnipeg and broadcast by the CBC. This June 2020 performance from Riga’s Great Guild Hall is conducted by Andris Poga.

04 LMIC Kenins webThe second disc was produced by the Latvian Music Information Centre. Tālivaldis Ķeniņš – Violin Concerto; Concerto for Five Percussionists and Orchestra; Beatae voces tenebrae (LMIC088 skani.lv) once again features the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Andris Poga in performances from the Great Guild Hall earlier this year. The Violin Concerto dates from 1974 and was commissioned by the CBC for Steven Staryk who gave the first performance with the CBC Vancouver Orchestra. The internationally renowned Canadian soloist and concertmaster – he had been the youngest ever to hold that position with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at the age of 24 – was visiting professor at the University of Victoria at the time. At the premiere, Vancouver Sun critic Lloyd Dykk perceived the Violin Concerto as “an old-fashioned melange of Romantic and Neo-Classical patterns and moods ... prominent in its Milhaudish playfulness.” The soloist in this performance is Eva Bindere, winner of the Latvian Grand Music Award in 2016 for musician of the year. She says: “This concerto was a true surprise. I believe it’s absolutely world-class music, written extremely professionally, with a wonderful technical understanding of the instrument, [...] In the musical sense, the concerto is very saturated; much depends on the soloist’s personal contribution... [but] the whole process brought me joy, and I never felt that this composition needed any sort of subjective ‘assistance.’”
The Concerto for 5 Percussionists and Orchestra (1983) was commissioned by the Faculty of Music, U of T, with support from the Ontario Arts Council, on the occasion of Ķeniņš retirement (although he would stay active as professor emeritus for many more years). Ķeniņš had a close relationship with percussion. In a conversation with Edgars Kariks, he stated: “I appreciate the extensive opportunities that percussion instruments offer. They provide so much colour. They give my music a dynamic profile... something like an independent objective. They serve as the foundation for all of the dramatic elements...”

Beatae voces tenebrae was commissioned by the Composers, Authors and Publishers Association of Canada (CAPAC, now SOCAN). In 1977, in conjunction with the Frankfurter Buchmesse, the world’s largest trade fair for books, CAPAC organized Canadian Music Week in several cities in Germany – eight concerts featuring various compositions and performers from Canada. The premiere of Beatae voces tenebrae was given by the Beethovenhalle Orchestra in Bonn, conducted by Boris Brott. The CBC issued a double LP of works featured during that event which has held a treasured place in my collection over the years. I am delighted by this new recording of one of Ķeniņš’ most moving orchestral works. He did not often provide detailed program notes, but this work is an exception: “This composition coincides with a period of grief in the life of the composer who was mourning the sudden passing of two close friends. These events have influenced the meaning and design of the work and explain the frequent allusions to motivic ideas by classical composers bearing on similar concerns. Through a series of images of serenity and drama, past and present intermingle in sudden flashes of emotion and various dimensions of human anguish...”  The excellent booklet notes detail some of the quotations from Liszt, Bach (and the well-known BACH motif – B flat, A, C, B natural which appears frequently), Beethoven and Fauré, with bar numbers and timings of where to find them in the recording. The composer’s epigraph on the score reads “to those beloved shadows who once were a part of our lives.”

I am honoured to have known Tāli Ķeniņš as a colleague and proud that he considered me a friend. He inscribed my copy of his biography Between Two Worlds (by Ingrida Zemzare, in Latvian, with English summary) “For David Olds, in true friendship.” I will treasure it always.

05 Kenins biography webAnd one final note, speaking of colleagues and friends, while preparing for this article and for David Hetherington’s recent virtual recital “Cello Masterworks” (newmusicconcerts.com), I listened to Hetherington and William Aide’s recording of Ķeniņš’ prize-winning Cello Sonata on a disc that also includes his Piano Quartet No.2 (with Paul Meyer and Steven Dann) and the Concertante for flute and piano with Aide and Robert Aitken (Centrediscs CMCCD5997 cmccanada.org/shop/cd-cmccd-5997). Highly recommended! 

We invite submissions. CDs, DVDs and comments should be sent to: DISCoveries, WholeNote Media Inc., The Centre for Social Innovation, 503 – 720 Bathurst St. Toronto ON M5S 2R4.

David Olds, DISCoveries Editor
discoveries@thewholenote.com

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