Modern and Contemporary

You Haven’t Been; Me to We; The Current Agenda; Love in 6 Stages
Frank Horvat
Iam who Iam Records LTLP05 - LTLP08 (frankhorvat.com)

Frank Horvat is one of the most inventive songwriters to come out of the contemporary scene in Canada. Although not a full-blooded minimalist, his music is frequently spare-sounding, unmistakable, with its repetitions of cell-like phrases, often built on brightly coloured piano sounds, sometimes enhanced by bright horns and mallet percussion, soothing strings and vocals. Best of all, Horvat’s work is exquisitely eventful and almost insidiously effective. Horvat has also recently found another way in which music can be organized: around rhythmic ideas instead of around structure, where rhythm forms the structural basis of the music instead of merely being a necessary ornament. Moreover, Horvat’s ideas are suspended in a kind of bohemian dynamic and come alive in their thrilling combinations of trademark repetitions and overlappings with an almost ceremonial theatrical grandeur.

His recent work comprises You Haven’t Been, music for solo piano; Me to We, which is music written for duo and trio settings, The Current Agenda, which is a dark record of music featuring solo, duo, trio and quartet music, intensely socialist in nature, and Love in 6 Stages, a work where minimalism meets art song and where the two milieus collide in the visceral physicality and psychology of love. Clearly it appears time for Frank Horvat to take the gloves off musically and declare that he is free to roam as he pleases, wherever the music beckons. In return for such dramatic freedom, he returns the favour by recording the events of this long and difficult expedition in deeply personal and profoundly beautiful music.

Of the four recordings recently released, Me to We and You Haven’t Been are so deeply personal that listening to the music on each requires an intrusive mindset. In the former recording the probing duos appear to tear through the composer’s innards not simply to discover his heart, but to gather its myriad pieces and bind them back together again. This is done, at Horvat’s urging, through dark, warm sounds that evoke healing, through music that is mysterious and exotic as well as long-limbed and almost aria-like without the vocals.

On The Current Agenda Horvat focuses his outward vision and glares at the world in all its nakedness. What he sees results in music filled with anger, a mesmeric and hypnotic visual account of a world gone mad. Portentous piano and deep, chanting voices meld with floating, reflective moments (as in the solo piano of Lac-Mégantic), which return eventually into haunting music, tumbling to earth once again. Love in 6 Stages is the most elevating of the four recordings. Between Horvat’s piano (and its soporific arpeggios) and Laura Swankey’s rich, peachy vocals, the six aspects of love turn into something superbly aerodynamic.

Tomorrow’s Air – Contemporary Works for Orchestra & Large Ensemble
Various Artists
Navona Records NV6108
(navonarecords.com)

Here is a go-to music release for anyone in love with dramatic, expressive orchestral music with lyrical string melodies and dense harmonies, as six composers take a compositional approach to what the future may bring.

Each work is a unique personal musical exposé. Hilary Tann’s Anecdote is inspired by Wallace Stevens’ poem Anecdote of the Jar. Lush orchestral harmonies support the mournful yet positive solo cello lines, which span a wide pitch range with glorious low tones. Hans Bakker’s Cantus is equally expressive, with a driving rhythm pitted against an uplifting happy string melody. Inspired by William Blake’s poetic ode, Daniel Perttu’s To Spring – An Overture is another majestic lyrical work, with an especially gratifying, almost chromatic melody in the middle section. My highlight is Canadian composer Jan Järvlepp’s moving In Memoriam in memory of his late brother. Drawing on more original atonal harmonies, his grief is aurally depicted by high and low strings in the emotional conversational contrapuntal sections, and the heart-wrenching final repeated notes. The lush strings, clarinet and piano of Pierre Schroeder’s Late Harvest create a film-score-reminiscent sound that swells with simultaneous sadness and hope. Flute and piccolo perform lyrical and tricky melodic lines against energetic percussion in Paul Osterfield’s Silver Fantasy. Love the playful, almost marching band section at the end.

Excellent performances drive the music, especially the four works with the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra. Tomorrow should be perfect if the music here is any indication!

Derek Charke – In Sonorous Falling Tones
Wired Ensemble; Mark Hopkins
Centrediscs CMCCD 23917 (musiccentre.ca)

This CD is unique in that all the music performed on it is by one composer, Derek Charke, who is also the flute soloist in three of the four works and a member of the ensemble in the fourth.

As a composer, Charke understands that building music around arresting melodic/rhythmic patterns which lead to/are followed by contrasting arresting melodic/rhythmic patterns produces results which are interesting and engaging. He seems to have access to an innumerable variety of patterns, from the driving pulsating opening of In Circles, the opening movement of In Sonorous Falling Tones, to the lyrical melody in Warning! Gustnadoes Ahead, the last track on the album – and lots more in between.

As a flutist his versatility is remarkable. Equally at home on the piccolo, the “regular” flute and the bass flute, he seamlessly blends conventional and extended techniques. Best of all, he puts his “pyro-technique” completely at the service of the artistic ends of the music, as in Lachrymose, where singing while producing multiphonics on the piccolo brings this elegiac work to a stirring climax.

The WIRED! Ensemble, which plays with Charke as soloist, in In Sonorous Falling Tones and Warning! Gustnadoes Ahead, and in which Charke plays as a member of the ensemble in What do the Birds Think?, is perfect, matching Charke’s energy and intensity at every step.

Bravissimo! This is contemporary music-making at its best. Good things are happening in Wolfville, Nova Scotia.

Jocelyn Morlock – Halcyon
Various Artists
Centrediscs CMCCD 23817 (musiccentre.ca)

With Halcyon, JUNO-nominated Canadian composer Jocelyn Morlock explores her compositional voice over seven substantial works from voice accompanied by piano to orchestra. Let’s give a listen.

Halcyon, warmly performed by cellist Ariel Barnes with Corey Hamm on piano, is a slow tonal elegy. It takes as its extra-musical theme the mythic tale of the kingfisher Halcyon. The composer tells us in the liner notes that the next work Vulpine, brought to life by violinist Nicholas Wright and Hamm, plays on the many characteristics associated with the fox.

With Shade, the cello is back, this time supported by Vern Griffiths on vibraphone. Morlock enigmatically remarks on the multiple meanings of shade, and “Hades, a disembodied spirit” in her liners.

Two song cycles follow. The three Involuntary Love Songs are sung by contemporary music specialist soprano Robyn Driedger-Klassen, the six Perruqueries by Driedger-Klassen and baritone Tyler Duncan, plus the stand-alone song Somewhere Along the Line by Driedger-Klassen. Erika Switzer provides the muscular piano framework throughout. The amusing lyrics for the Perruqueries set – about wigs and the people who love them – were provided by the Canadian author Bill Richardson. After hearing Morlock’s offerings here, I’ll pay closer attention to the recent reemergence of Canadian art song.

The album wraps with Aeromancy, an airy, loose-limbed two-movement laconic – at times mysterious – double concerto. Ariel Barnes and Joseph Elworthy spin emotive cello melodies, while the Vancouver Academy of Music Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leslie Dala, provides pastel colours over a firm harmonic base.