may editor scans 01 americaTwo months ago while writing about Richard Powers’ Orfeo I mentioned that I had neglected to add Steve Reich’s Proverb to my record collection when it came out on Nonesuch in 1996 featuring Paul Hillier’s Theatre of Voices with Steve Reich and Musicians. Although that recording is now a collector’s item (but still available for download), I am pleased to note that there is a new recording which features this lush work for three soprano and two tenor voices, two vibraphones and two synthesizers (sounding vaguely like small baroque organs,) performed by the SWR Vokalensemble, Stuttgart under the direction of Marcus Creed. America (Hänssler Classic CD 93.306) also includes choral works by Aaron Copland (Four Motets), John Cage (Five), Morton Feldman (Rothko Chapel), Leonard Bernstein (Missa Brevis) and Samuel Barber (A Stopwatch and an Ordnance Map). It is an eclectic mix of mostly religious works spanning much of the 20th century. Copland’s motets date from his student days in Paris and they evidently so impressed his teacher, Nadia Boulanger, that she used them as examples for several decades. Copland himself we are told in the liner notes was less fond, declaring them “schoolboy works exhibiting some influence of Mussorgsky, whom I greatly admired back then. They may in a certain sense satisfy curiosity – people may perhaps like to know what I did as a student – but it is not really my style.” That being said, they do provide a warm and welcoming opening to the disc, albeit with occasional moments of close harmonies and dissonance, in the alternating movements of entreaty to and praise of God.

Rather than a biblical text, Reich’s Proverb draws on a sentence from the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein – “How small a thought it takes, to fill a whole life” – and treats it in a number of ways over the course of 14 minutes. At times reminiscent of Reich’s 1981 Tehillim, although much more subdued, it is also evocative of the organa which Perotin introduced c.1200. This is followed by a fairly late work by John Cage, Five, composed in 1988 as one of the 52 Number Pieces which occupied much of the last six years of his life. As with many of Cage’s “compositions” there is a set of instructions rather than a score per se, with many of the creative decisions left to the performers. In this case each of five actors is simply given five pitches to sing within prescribed “time brackets” and left to decide when to actually begin and end. As such the result will be different in each performance. I found this rendition mildly akin to a streamlined version of Ligeti’s Lux Aeterna made so familiar in the soundtrack of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Morton Feldman’s piece was composed in 1971 for performance in the non-denominational of the same name in Houston, Texas designed as a place of quiet meditation, which houses 14 site-specific paintings by Mark Rothko. The music, nearly half an hour in length, scored for soprano, alto and mixed choir with one percussion (timpani, vibraphone), celesta and viola, is indeed very meditative. The singers’ ethereal vocalise can at times be mistaken for electronic textures and the instruments, especially the viola, enjoy long solo passages that are at least as important as the voices in this quiet masterpiece.

Like Cage’s Five, Bernstein’s Missa Brevis dates from 1988 and is a late work in the composer’s oeuvre. This mostly a cappella setting of the Catholic mass was written for an adaptation of Jean Anouilh’s play The Lark. Once again the voices are accompanied (intermittently) by percussion (timpani, tambourine and bells). Samuel Barber is represented by a relatively early work (1940) which is quite modern, at least in the context of this relatively conservative composer. Once again the choir is complemented by timpani – I found the preponderance of kettle drums on this choral disc to be quite striking (if you’ll excuse the pun) – and is otherwise unaccompanied. The text, lamenting the death of a soldier of the Spanish Civil War (and by extension war itself) is by Stephen Spender. I was unfamiliar with this setting and find it unlike those wonderful lyrical works by Barber with which we are normally presented. One might have expected to hear yet another rendition of Barber’s Agnus Dei (a vocal setting based on his famous Adagio) in this context, so I am particularly pleased to be presented with an atypical work rather than the expected.

For that, and a number of other reasons, this is a very strong disc, with committed performances of some rarely heard repertoire. It is interesting that it is a German choir presenting it. But that brings me to my one reservation about this release. I mentioned that this is a disc of mostly religious works, but I found the emphasis on four of the composers’ Jewish heritage in the liner notes a bit strange. Even creepy, considering that of the four, only Copland’s texts from the Old Testament can be considered Jewish. As mentioned, Reich’s is a secular philosophical quotation, Feldman’s wordless setting is meant for a non-denominational chapel and Bernstein’s is from the Catholic Church. So of what relevance is it that Copland was born “the son of Lithuanian-Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn,” Reich “born to German-Jewish parents in New York City,” Feldman “the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn” or that Bernstein was “the son of Ukrainian-Jewish immigrants in Massachusetts” – especially when all we are told of Cage is that his father was an inventor and that Barber was born in Pennsylvania? At first I imagined a possible anti-(or pro)-Semitic agenda, but after discussions with a number of colleagues I have decided that it is actually just a case of lazy scholarship. I have found that if you check the Wikipedia entries for all six composers, the biographical section commences with exactly the information offered here. So unless Wikipedia is part of a larger conspiracy, I think we can accept the seeming emphasis on Jewish heritage which marred my enjoyment of this otherwise excellent disc, to be inadvertent and an editorial misjudgment.

may editor scans 02 berio   ruoItalian composer Luciano Berio (1925-2003) is probably best known for his Sinfonia for orchestral forces and vocal octet with its texts by Samuel Beckett and Claude Lévi-Strauss and musical quotations from Mahler, Ravel, Stravinsky, Ives and others, and for his series of 14 Sequenzas for solo instruments. Toronto audiences had the rare opportunity to hear all 14 of these (and one of the six alternate versions as well) in January 2013 at the University of Toronto in a marathon performance organized by Joseph Petric and David Hetherington featuring some of this city’s finest musicians. The series spans Berio’s creative output from Sequenza I for flute composed in 1958 to Sequenza XIV for cello written a year before his death. About midway through, in 1976, Berio wrote his homage to the violin, an instrument of which he had “tortuous” memories as a result of his own studies as a teenager. This Sequenza VIII is based around the dissonance of the major second interval between the notes A and B and culminates in an extended ten-second long double-stopped A-B which in the words of violinist Carolin Widmann who wrote the program note for Universal Edition, which is quoted in the CD booklet, are “ten seconds of A-B which are an eternity.” Five years later Berio returned to the material of Sequenza VIII and expanded it into Corale for solo violin, two horns and strings. For this performance on the Oberlin Music label (Luciano Berio – Huang Ruo OC 14-01) violinist David Bowlin is joined by the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble under the direction of Timothy Weiss in a rare opportunity to hear the two versions back to back. It is quite an exhilarating experience.

American-based Huang Ruo, whose website defines him as composer, conductor, pianist and folk singer, was born in China in 1976, the year the Chinese Cultural Revolution ended and, incidentally, the year Berio composed his violin Sequenza. After winning the Henry Mancini Award at the International Film and Music Festival in Switzerland in 1995, Huang moved to the USA where he did his undergraduate studies at Oberlin Conservatory and then completed masters and doctoral degrees in composition at Juilliard. We are presented with two works here, again one for violin alone and one for solo violin and large ensemble, but in this instance the composition process was reverse to that of Berio in that the Four Fragments for solo violin were extrapolated from the existing Violin Concerto No.1 “Omnipresence.” Although we are told that Huang’s music takes equal inspiration from Chinese ancient and folk music, as well as Western avant-garde, rock and jazz, I find these particular pieces to be firmly grounded in the modernist Western Art Music tradition with only occasional melodic suggestions of his homeland in the solo lines. The result is extremely effective, with none of the downfalls often associated with “hybrid” art. Soloist David Bowlin is in fine form in all of the offerings and has obviously made this repertoire his own. My only qualm about this release is the three-paneled cardboard packaging, which is simply too tight to be able to remove the disc without gripping it with fingers on the playing surface of the CD.

may editor scans 03 shostakovich finleyI would have thought with the 40th anniversary of Shostakovich’s death just over the horizon (2015) that there would be no unearthed treasures left in his catalogue. It was therefore a pleasant surprise to receive Shostakovich – Six Romances; Scottish Ballad; Michelangelo Suite in what purported to be world premiere recordings featuring Canadian baritone Gerald Finley and the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra under Thomas Sanderling’s direction (Ondine ODE 1235-2). It turns out that in the case of the Six Romances on Verses by English Poets it is the version for large orchestra which had disappeared after the premiere in the 1940s that has not been recorded before. It also uses the original English texts for which Shostakovich had used Russian translations, so this is new on two counts (although conductor Sanderling had recorded the English version before using Shostakovich’s chamber orchestration). The composition dates from the same period as the Eighth Symphony and bears some resemblance to that mammoth work. To my ear it is also reminiscent of the oratorio The Song of the Forests which Shostakovich wrote in 1949. Annie Laurie, A Scottish Ballad is Shostakovich’s 1944 orchestration of an 1835 setting by Lady John Scott (Alicia Ann Spottiswoode) of William Douglas’ lament on unrequited love.

Shostakovich wrote the Suite on Poems by Michelangelo Buonarroti for bass and piano using Russian translations in 1974, the 500th anniversary of the birth of the great Renaissance artist. Orchestrating it the following year was one of his very last projects. The orchestral version was premiered several months after his death conducted by his son Maxim. This recording uses Michelangelo’s original Italian texts and there is an extended essay by Finley in the booklet which discusses the intricate process of Setting Michelangelo to Shostakovich. Finley was obviously very involved and dedicated to this project and his fine bass-baritone voice makes the music shine. All in all, these are welcome additions to the canon.

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

David Olds, DISCoveries Editor

discoveries@thewholenote.com

01 editor 01 brandenburg freiburgQuite a few years ago, frankly almost half a century if I care to do the math, I built my classical record collection by scouring the bargain bins on Yonge St. at Sam the Record Man and A&A Records. At the time it was possible to find some superb recordings for 99 cents to $1.99, including as I recall, my first exposure to Schubert lieder as sung by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Boulez conducting the Domaine Musical Ensemble in works of Gilbert Amy and Anton Webern, Honegger symphonies performed by Ansermet and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and the Bartok Quartets with the Fine Arts Quartet (well, that 3-LP set may have been $3.99) to name just a few highlights. What takes me back to those memories is a new recording of the Bach Brandenburg Concertos featuring the Freiburger Barockorchester (Harmonia Mundi HMC 902176.77). My first recording of these iconic works came from those same bargain bins and inadvertently introduced me to the world of period performance practice in, as far as I know, one of its earliest incarnations. Featuring the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis on two Heliodor LPs this was an ear-opening, if not quite life-changing, event for me. I’d never heard anything like it before and I was hooked, although it would be a good many years before I figured out what it was that made it so special. Of course period performance is almost de rigueur these days, thanks in large part to the influence of the Schola which Paul Sacher founded in Basel in 1933, but back in the 70s it was quite a new idea to most of the musical world. Since that time as I say, historically informed performances abound and Toronto’s own Tafelmusik has played a major role in establishing this as the norm. Their own 1995 Juno award-winning recording of the Brandenburgs, recently re-released on their own Tafelmusik Media label (TMK1004CD2), is itself a benchmark against which others are to be measured. I’m glad to have the luxury of not having to choose between an embarrassment of riches and am simply able to enjoy them all. I’m happy to have had an excuse to revisit my favourite recordings – including the thrilling modern-instrument performance featuring the CBC Vancouver Orchestra under Mario Bernardi with soloists including Robert Aitken – thanks to this new release from Freiburg, which incidentally is just across the border from Basel. I particularly enjoyed the crisp attacks and well-balanced recording throughout the two discs, the wonderful (and wondrously in tune!) natural horns in the First Concerto and of special note, the harpsichord cadenza by Sebastian Wienand in the Fifth. This is a welcome addition to my collection.

01 editor 02 morlock cobaltThe Canadian Music Centre’s Centrediscs label is busier than ever it seems, and this month has three new releases featured in these pages. The one I have chosen for myself, Cobalt (CMCCD 20014), is an eclectic offering featuring mostly large-scale music by the chameleon-like Jocelyn Morlock performed by five different orchestras. The exception is a dark and brooding piano trio written for Duo Concertante (Nancy Dahn, violin and Timothy Steeves, piano) with guest cellist Vernon Regehr, Asylum, a tribute to and meditation on Schumann’s life and music. The opening track, Music of the Romantic Era, written for and performed by the Windsor Symphony, is a pastiche whose inspiration was the concern that classical music is disappearing from our lives. It would be fun to hold a contest to see how many sources of the familiar and almost-familiar phrases found therein can be identified. The title track is a sort of concerto grosso for two violins and orchestra, a lyrical reflection on the luminous cobalt blue of the night sky, the properties of cobalt the element (poisonous, magnetic and radioactive), and kobold, the mischievous goblin that inspired its name. Jonathan Crow and Karl Stobbe are the soloists with the National Arts Centre Orchestra under Alain Trudel. Disquiet is a short homage to Shostakovich which explores “a sense of oppression and urgency, such that I imagine would have been the perpetual emotional state of Shostakovich and his contemporaries.” The haunting work is performed by the CBC Symphony Orchestra, again under Trudel’s direction. Bramwell Tovey leads the Vancouver Symphony in the nature-inspired Oiseaux bleus et sauvages, a nod to Messiaen with some moments reminiscent of John Adams.

Perhaps the most curious work on the disc is Golden, written in memory of Morlock’s teacher Nikolai Korndorf and performed by the Pacific Baroque Orchestra and oboist Philippe Magnan. The piece starts with quiet percussive sounds and disjointed whispered phrases and gradually grows into dirge-like, quasi-medieval textures in the strings and solo oboe. The final piece Solace also found it’s inspiration in early music, Josquin’s Missa L’homme armé. The orchestra, the strings of the Vancouver Symphony, is divided into subgroups: an “early music” ensemble playing music based on Josquin’s mass; a group of “ethereal” violins playing long harmonies over top the tutti; and a concertante violin and cello. It is the soloists that are most prominent and while the background is based in medieval music, the soaring melody of the violin, echoed effectively by the cello, is to my ear quite reminiscent of Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending in its quiet grandeur. All in all this is a wonderfully lyrical disc and a great reminder that we do have an important body of orchestral work in this country. Now, if we could just get our orchestras to play it more often… (I know I always say that, but that doesn’t make it any less true!)

01 editor 03 petits nouveauxAnother disc that took me back to the early days of building my record collection, specifically the discovery of Django Reinhardt, Stéphane Grappelli and the Quintet of the Hot Club of France, is a delightful eponymous disc by Les Petits Nouveaux (lespetitsnouveaux.bandcamp.com). There’s not much information included with the self-produced CD but surfing the web I have gleaned that this gypsy jazz group was formed in 2009 when Swedish guitarist Mikko Hildén was studying the manouche stylings of Django Reinhardt under the tutelage of Drew Jurecka at Humber College. Les Petits Nouveaux is currently a trio with another original member, Montreal violinist Aline Homzy and, since 2011, Toronto guitarist Andy Mac. The disc is mix of gypsy jazz standards (including Reinhardt’s gently swinging Douce Ambiance on which the group is joined by mentor Jurecka on bass clarinet) and original compositions, one from each member: Hildén’s El Cafecito, Homzy’s Siva Macka and Mac’s particularly idiomatic Ville Belle. At just a half an hour in length this disc falls somewhere between EP and full-length offering (and is priced online accordingly at just $7), but it serves as a satisfying introduction to the group, and to the idiom if you’re not familiar with it. A very effective treatment of Gene de Paul’s classic I’ll Remember April brings this little gem to a close.

01 editor 04 song of grassesThe final disc that has been in rotation on my system this month is a meditative project which is based in the song of Chassidic niggunim and Sephardic Jewish traditions. Song of the Grasses features Siach HaSadeh, a clarinet and double bass duo (Yoni Kaston and Joel Kerr) complemented with violin (Daniel Fuchs), cello (Gaël Huard), harmonica (Jason Rosenblatt) and oud (Ishmail Fencioglu) as the repertoire requires. The quiet flowing clarinet over the subtle supportive bass lines is a constant delight throughout the 15 tracks, but for my ears it is the percussive melodies plucked on the oudand the extremely lyrical harmonica playing (it’s hard to imagine this as the same instrument known as the “blues harp” in Rosenblatt’s hands – the iconic Toots Thielemans comes to mind) that really makes this music special. In the program notes (only available on the website siachhasadeh.com), it states that “the songs […] were created as vehicles to reach the depths of spiritual space. Many of them have passed through fire and water to reach us, and are not known outside of the communities where they are still sung. While they are distinctly Jewish, they express something deeply universal, something that can only be expressed in wordless melody, and that could be obscured by text. Here, they become platforms for improvisation and musical conversations.” The spirituality is achieved without any New Age trappings and the resulting contemplative journey is one well worth undertaking. It has given me a much appreciated sense of calm and some quiet stimulation over that past few weeks.

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

David Olds, DISCoveries Editor
discoveries@thewholenote.com

If there’s one thing I like as much as sitting in my easy chair with my feet up listening to music, it’s sitting in that chair reading a great book. There was a time when my very favourite thing was doing both at once but I must confess that as my 60th birthday rapidly approaches it’s getting harder and harder to multi-task in that way. So what is now a special treat is settling into the Lazy Boy and curling up with a book that takes me on a musical adventure.

Books: I first encountered the novels of Richard Powers in 1991 when my successor at CKLN-FM, local choral director and Georgian vocal specialist Alan Gasser, gifted me with The Gold Bug Variations, a spectacular tour-de-force interweaving themes of Bach’s counterpoint and Poe’s fiction with strands of molecular biology. It is a multi-layered masterpiece that juxtaposes two love stories, one set in the present and one in 1950s academe where the search for the DNA genome was in full swing. The eminence grise, always present but never mentioned by name, is a certain Canadian pianist whose youthful 1955 recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations stood the music world on its ear. If you haven’t read it I urge you to do yourself a favour and pick up a copy at your earliest convenience.

Since that time I have read and re-read all ten of Powers’ outstanding novels which, beginning in 1985 with Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, have appeared every two or three years to much critical acclaim (and to my delight). Some years ago in this column I raved about Powers’ The Time of Our Singing (2003) in which, among other things, the development of the historically informed performance practices of the period-instrument movement was juxtaposed with just about every significant political happening of the 20th century through the eyes of a very special family whose members always seemed to be present, at least on the periphery, at these events. Again I would urge you to check it out.

01 editor 01 richard powers orfeoPowers’ subject matter is extreme in its diversity, from medical research and psychological disorders, to nuclear physics, environmental concerns, advanced technology, forced confinement and terrorism. Music is present in one way or another in most of his books, but for me it is those in which music is central to the plot that are the most satisfying. It was therefore a real pleasure to find that, after a publishing hiatus of nearly five years, his 11th book – Orfeo (HarperCollins ISBN 978-1-44342-290-1) – returns to the double theme of musical composition and genetic engineering. The main character is a composer, Peter Els, who comes of age in the 1950s and 60s, a tumultuous time when the post-war generation took Western art music to the very brink. I won’t go into much detail of the plot, but will say that we follow Els on a protracted journey from his adolescent vision of composition as divine inspiration, through academic struggles with serial constraints and avant-garde freedoms, to minimalist structures and neo-Romantic regression, with many stops and side trips along the way. Ultimately Els is at a loss as to how to take music itself any further and he eventually returns to the scientific interests of his youth. In the decades that have passed genetic engineering has blossomed and the internet has made it possible for anyone with access to a computer to build a sophisticated home laboratory. In the end the aging composer decides that writing genetic code is the future of composition and sets about writing a work for the ages using DNA itself. Through a comedy of errors this leads to his being taken for a bio-terrorist and the chase (and fun) begins.

Powers is a master at describing and giving context to the examples of great music he chooses to include, and his insights are enlightening. Time and again I found myself rushing to my library to dig out a favourite recording and it was refreshing to re-visit the works in question and to hear them with “new ears” as it were. Els’ own epiphany was a recording of Mozart’s “Jupiter” symphony from his father’s collection. I chose to go back to the recording I had grown up with, an LP of Otto Klemperer conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra (now available on CD from EMI Classics). (Realizing that using full-sized 20th century orchestral forces in 18th-century repertoire is no longer politically correct, I asked Bruce Surtees for a recommendation and he suggested Jos van Immerseel conducting the Anima Eterna Orchestra of Bruges on the Zig-Zag label.) As a burgeoning clarinetist Els is introduced to Zemlinsky’s Trio in D Minor, Op.3 by the young cellist who becomes his first love. I was glad to be reminded that I had Amici’s version of this rarely recorded work in my collection and happy to have an excuse to revisit it (Summit Records). For Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder I found that I was not overly satisfied with the recordings in my collection and once again went to an expert for advice. Daniel Foley says: “Among the women, Janet Baker’s 1967 recording with the Hallé Orchestra under Barbirolli (EMI) is unquestionably the most moving interpretation of the dozens I know... My hero Fischer-Dieskau’s recording with Karl Böhm and the Berlin Philharmonic was recorded in 1963 and remastered in 2011 (Deutsche Grammophon).”

For Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps I have many, more than a dozen, recordings to choose from, but once again I chose our local Amici ensemble. The complication was which of their recordings to select. Ultimately I decided to go with their original 1995 performance with violinist Shmuel Ashkenasi (Summit Records) rather than the 1999 recording with Scott St. John (Naxos). It was a tough choice that did not come down to the violinists, but rather cellist David Hetherington’s performance of the fifth movement, marked infiniment lent, extatique, which is fully 15 percent slower (i.e. more infinitely lent) on the earlier disc. Both his performances however are totally convincing as are those of clarinetist Joaquin Valdepeñas and pianist Patricia Parr.

For the Shostakovich Symphony No.5 I turned to a reissue of the set of complete symphonies recorded by West German Radio during the 1990s featuring Rudolf Barshai at the helm of the WDR Sinfonieorchester (Brilliant Classics). When it came to the extended descriptions of the John Cage “Happenings” Musicircus and HPSCHD I was left thinking, despite having an old Nonesuch vinyl record of the latter piece, that you probably had to have been there to really get it. I did turn back to my LP collection however for Harry Partch’s classic Barstow (Columbia Music of Our Time). As far as I can tell this is not available on CD, but you should check it out on YouTube.

I have quite an extensive collection of Steve Reich recordings on vinyl and CD, but I missed Proverb – an extended riff on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s sentence “How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life!” for three sopranos, two tenors, two vibraphones and two electric organs – when it came out in 1996. The disc seems to be out of print at the moment but is available as a digital download from Nonesuch, and again, is available for streaming on YouTube (accompanied by the following comment from Roger Brunyate: “Do read (preferably while simultaneously listening) Richard Powers’ sublime description of this piece on pages 245–254 of his new novel Orfeo.”

There are many other pieces mentioned in more or less detail during the book, including Berg’s Violin Concerto, Strauss’ Four Last Songs, Shostakovich’s String Quartet No.3 and, although not by name, Copland’s Appalachian Spring. One of the most moving moments is the description of Peter Lieberson’s Neruda Songs, written for his wife Lorraine Hunt Lieberson and premiered just a few months before her death, making the lyric “My love, if I die and you don’t” even more poignant. I found that track on YouTube, but the whole cycle of five songs is featured on a Nonesuch recording with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under James Levine’s direction. It was the soprano’s final recording.

Perhaps the most intriguing description in Orfeo is of Els’ own opera based on the Anabaptist uprising of 1534 in Münster. We are presented with a very detailed précis of this imaginary opus and its premiere which coincided with the strikingly similar events that took place in Waco, Texas in 1993. As always, Powers’ blending of fact and fiction keeps us on the edge of our seats. Orfeo the novel, and by extension its complex musical worlds – real and imagined – provided one of the most satisfying literary adventures I’ve had in a long time. I highly recommend it.

01 editor 02b james ehnes bach01 editor 02a the apartmentAnother book I enjoyed over the recent holidays also led me to my music library. The Apartment (Twelve ISBN978-1-4555-7478-0) by the American author Greg Baxter who now makes his home in Germany, takes place over the period of one day in an unnamed European city. It is a book in which nothing of note happens except in the form of memories of the time the narrator spent in Iraq and of the life he abandoned in the United States. Nevertheless it is a compelling read. The musical interest here is a recital by Japanese violin students where the featured work is the Ciaccona (Chaconne) from Bach’s Partita for Violin No.2. After the recital the narrator strikes up a conversation with Schmetterling, the German violin teacher, who launches into a lecture about how the Ciaccona encompasses “a profundity and intensity heretofore unknown in music. […and which] resulted in the ascension of the violin as the most venerated of all Western instruments.” There are five or six pages devoted to Schmetterling’s appreciation of the work and his claim that “On one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings.” However, he goes on to say “a spiritual sympathy with the piece … [is] … virtually non-existent in violinists under the age of thirty… perhaps forty.” As taken as I was by the elegance and emotion of his speech, this last sounded like a challenge and off I headed to my CD shelves. What I came back with was a favourite of mine, a 2CD set of the Bach Sonatas and Partitas which James Ehnes recorded in 1999 at the tender age of 23 (Analekta FL 2 3147-8). I am quite prepared to accept that his understanding and depth of knowledge of the Ciaccona, and the repertoire in general for that matter, will only increase with time, but I must say that if this early testament is any indication, we can all look forward to a truly awe-inspiring interpretation from Ehnes in the years to come.

Music: Books aside, sometimes it’s enough just to focus on the music…

On the eve of Elliott Carter’s 102nd birthday back in December 2010 Toronto’s New Music Concerts presented an evening of his recent works under the banner “Elliott Carter at 102.” Were it not for last minute health and weather complications it would have been Mr. Carter’s seventh visit to Toronto at the invitation of New Music Concerts. As it was, the concert went on as planned – including the world premiere of the Concertino for bass clarinet and chamber orchestra and the Canadian premiere of the Flute Concerto – and the audience was treated to a taped telephone message from the iconic composer expressing his delight. Carter recovered his health and went on to compose most of a dozen more works in the following year and a half before the final illness that led to his death just a month before his 104th birthday. New Music Concerts continued its practice of celebrating the long and creative life of this gentle man with Toronto premieres of Trije glasbeniki in 2011 and the Double Trio in 2012.

01 editor 03 elliott carterThe New York premieres of these two works took place at the 92nd Street Y on December 8, 2011 as part of Elliott Carter’s 103rd Birthday Concert. That festive occasion included world premieres of four new works ranging from Mnemosyne for solo violin (Rolf Schulte) to A Sunbeam’s Architecture, a cycle of six songs on texts by E.E. Cummings for tenor (Nicholas Phan) and large chamber ensemble. The concert, organized by and under the artistic direction of cellist and long-time Carter associate Fred Sherry, has now been released on the British NMC label (NMC DVD193). Other than the solo harp piece Bariolage from 1992, the 12 works featured all date from Carter’s 11th decade. What a treat it is to see Carter fêted in such a creative way and to see the composer’s pleasure in the performances. Still uncompromising in its rhythmic and harmonic complexity, the music is perhaps a bit more approachable than earlier works because of its vigour and gestural exuberance – an amazing testament to Carter’s longevity and joie de vivre.

The concert concludes with a seemingly spontaneous performance of Happy Birthday and bows from the beaming centenarian. The film continues with moving tributes from leading British composers George Benjamin, Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Alexander Goehr, Oliver Knussen and Colin Matthews. The booklet contains an extensive biography and program notes. This is a wonderful celebration of the artist as an old man for those familiar with the work of Elliott Carter. It would serve as a wonderful point of entry to those who are not.

01 editor 04 guitariasAs someone who has spent much of my adult life (folk) singing and accompanying myself on the guitar it strikes me as a bit strange that such a thing is quite rare in the world of Art Song. Of course not many lieder singers accompany themselves on the piano either and I am willing to accept that in the world of classical music it is a life’s work to master even one medium. So it was with pleasure that I received a new disc from Renaissance man Doug MacNaughton on which he accompanies his own distinctive baritone voice with panache on a beautiful-sounding classical guitar constructed by Edward Klein. Guitarias (DougMacNaughton.com) features original works written for MacNaughton by Canadian composers John Beckwith, Leslie Uyeda and William Beauvais (who it seems has also served as guitar teacher and mentor to the singer).

01 editor 05 joy kills sorrowThe most immediately appealing work on the album, Shadows, is a collection of songs by British composer John Rutter, best known for his lush choral settings. The appeal however turns out to be from familiarity; his settings of 16th-century poetry sound charmingly anachronistic in their mimicking of lute songs of that era. That being said they are lovely and provide a contrast to the more contemporary sounds of the preceding tracks. Which is not to imply that the other works are not lyrical. Beckwith’s settings of Samuel Beckett’s poetic texts are surprising to this auditor who is more familiar with the bleak prose writings of the Nobel laureate whose motto might well have been the final sentences from The Unnamable: “I can’t go on. I”ll go on.” Uyeda’s Flower Arranger is a gently angular setting of a poignant poem from Joy Kogawa’s collection A Garden of Anchors. The most idiomatic writing for the guitar, not surprisingly, comes from Beauvais in his cycle of songs on texts by Native American poet Linda Hogan. There are occasional extended techniques involved in the guitar writing which MacNaughton handles with apparent ease and without becoming distracted from his lyrical delivery of the vocal lines. I bet he could even walk and chew gum at the same time! My only quibble is the amount of reverb on the recording which seems a bit excessive. All in all though, an impressive solo release from a multi-talented artist. We welcome your feedback and invite submissions. CDs and comments should be sent to: The WholeNote, Centre for Social Innovation, 503 – 720 Bathurst St. Toronto ON M5S 2R4. A quick update on “my favourite band” Joy Kills Sorrow. This exceptional “new grass” band with its roots in Boston’s Berklee School of Music and its Canadian Folk Music Award-winning singer Emma Beaton, returned to grace the stage of Hugh’s Room last month. I admit to some trepidation because a year or so ago one of the mainstays of the band, bass player and award-winning songwriter Brigitte Kearney, left to pursue other interests and I wondered if I would be disappointed. I’m pleased to report that my fears were unfounded. Replacement bass player, Toronto native Zoe Guigueno, proved herself well up to the task and has melded seamlessly with the other members. And to my relief, it seems that Kearney has continued to write with/for the band. In their hour-long set opening for local headliners New Country Rehab there was only one tune from their first two CDs and the new material was uniformly strong and exhilarating.

A rarity among string bands, Joy Kills Sorrow does not include a fiddle, but the high-octane picking of guitarist Matthew Arcara, banjo player Wes Corbett and, especially, mandolinist Jacob Jolliff hardly give you time to notice. I also noted that the harmony singing by the back benchers has become stronger and more prominent in the past year or two. The new CD Wide Awake (signaturesounds.com) lives up to its name!

Post Script: As we go to print I have just found out that Joy Kills Sorrow’s performance at Hugh’s Room was part of a farewell tour after which the band has decided - amicably it seems - to go their separate ways. I for one will sorely miss them. Who will kill my sorrow now?

David Olds, DISCoveries Editor

discoveries@thewholenote.com.

 

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