Modern and Contemporary

Ligeti – Violin Concerto; Lontano; Atmosphères; San Francisco Polyphony

Ligeti – Violin Concerto; Lontano; Atmosphères; San Francisco Polyphony
Benjamin Schmid; Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra; Hannu Lintu
Ondine ODE 1213-2

It’s not just the terrific performances on this disc that make it so appealing. The programming of four iconic works by Hungarian composer György Ligeti offers a handy overview of the orchestral music of one of the most imaginative, idiosyncratic, influential and enjoyable composers of the past century. Ligeti was a loner, but his music was embraced by leading avant-garde composers and featured in popular films like 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The big draw here is violinist Benjamin Schmid’s energized performance of the majestic Violin Concerto, a late work from 1993. There are plenty of thrills, especially in the virtuosic cadenza. But what makes this performance so memorable is the way Schmid and conductor Hannu Lintu find the ideal balance between Ligeti’s angular modernism and his heartfelt lyricism.

The earliest work here, Atmosphères, from 1961, still fascinates – that such an apparently static work can be so gripping. The surface is all glassy smoothness. But Lintu takes us deep into the colours and textures swirling underneath as they emerge and recede.

By the time Ligeti wrote San Francisco Polyphony, in 1974, he was working with recognizable melodies, layering them in new and exciting ways. In his delightfully idiosyncratic booklet notes Lintu admits that “successfully executing the trickiest sequences in San Francisco Polyphony requires not only skill but a generous helping of good luck, too.” It sounds like everyone involved in this marvellous disc had plenty of both good luck and skill.

Concert note: Hannu Lintu conducts the Toronto Symphony Orchestra at Roy Thomson Hall on March 20 and 22 in Solen by Matthew Whittall, Symphony No.5 by Sibelius and Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.5, with Angela Hewitt as soloist.

Nebula – solo piano music of Heather Schmidt Heather Schmidt

Nebula – solo piano music of Heather Schmidt
Heather Schmidt
Centrediscs CMCCD 19613

Throughout musical history, the term “pianist-composer” is one that has been used all too liberally – usually it’s a case of either-or. So when someone such as Heather Schmidt comes along, we tend to sit up and take notice, for she truly excels on both levels. Her newest disc, Nebula, on the CMC label, is the first opportunity for the public to enjoy her pianistic talents at performing her own solo music, while demonstrating just how well the description pianist-composer applies to this Calgary-born artist.

Schmidt studied piano and composition at the Juilliard School and later at Indiana University, where she was the youngest student to earn a doctorate degree. Since then, she’s been the recipient of numerous honours, including three consecutive BMI awards and two from SOCAN. Most recently, a move to Los Angeles with a focus on the creation of film and television scores has revealed yet another side of her talents.

In creating Nebula, she explained that it was her aim to capture the special connection between composer, performer and audience and as a result she deliberately included works with a wide range of styles. Indeed, contrast is a big part of this disc, and her music demonstrates a myriad of influences. Pieces such as Silver Tides and Serenity are nocturnal and atmospheric while the “Fugue” from Twelve for Ten is a robust contemporary interpretation of a baroque form. In contrast, Shimmer owes something to the French Impressionists, while the technically-demanding Nebula is bold and impassioned. Throughout, her flawless technique goes hand-in-hand with a deeply-rooted sensitivity.

Bravo, Ms. Schmidt, you’ve proven that you are indeed a rara avis, a fine pianist who also happens to excel at composition, and Nebula is an example of some fine solo contemporary musicmaking on many levels.

A Sweeter Music - Sarah Cahill

A Sweeter Music
Sarah Cahill
Other Minds Records OM 1022-2

This CD has an admirable concept, which packs a powerful message in today’s society. The title comes from a quote by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. from his Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1964: “We must see that peace represents a sweeter music, a cosmic melody, that is far superior to the discords of war.”

The repertoire chosen for this CD reflects a myriad of responses from the selected composers. Terry Riley’s Be Kind to One Another (2008/2010) is a rag, which began as his late-night improvisatory noodling. This was not what I expected for a first piece on this themed CD. You would think an Arvo Pärt spiritual work would reflect the CD’s concept. However, I enjoyed the retro-sounding work and let myself really live in the musical moment and anticipated being surprised by the rest of the CD. Meredith Monk’s Steppe Music (excerpts) (1997) explores colour, texture, resonance and gesture. Frederic Rzewski’s Peace Dances (2007/2008) were written for Sarah Cahill. The brevity and unique sound for each of the seven pieces remind me of Henry Cowell’s Six Ings. These works are a wonderful addition to the contemporary piano repertoire. Kyle Gann’s War is Just a Racket (2008) has the pianist making a speech given by General Smedley in 1933. Although Cahill did an admirable job in her oration I would have preferred a low baritone to represent the general’s voice. Carl Stone’s Sonamu (2010) with electronics created ghostly apparitions of sound and Phil Kline’s 2009 The Long Winter (“Crash” and “Embers”) is recommended for the lovely tonal quality of “Embers.” Toning (2008) by Yoko Ono sounded like someone tuning the piano and although I understand the musical concept I felt this was the weak link in the CD. The Residents: drum no fife (2008) with text and narration by the Residents was a fitting end to this intriguing and worthwhile CD.

The program notes, most written by the composers, were excellent and informative. Cahill played with a sweet and sensitive tone and touch. Her technique was impeccable and I recommend this CD highly.

Returning Minimalism (In Deung – vibration of the spirit (getaran jiwa); In Dang – teruna’s dream (mimpi teruna))

Returning Minimalism (In Deung – vibration of the spirit (getaran jiwa); In Dang – teruna’s dream (mimpi teruna))
Gamelan Semara Ratih of Bali
Sargasso scd28074 (sargasso.com)

This musically intriguing and culturally complex release uses American composer Terry Riley’s genre-defining 1964 minimalist work In C as a working model for exploration and improvisation by the renowned group Gamelan Semara Ratih (GSR) from southern Bali, Indonesia. It’s the brainchild of the Italian gamelan recording producer and composer John Noise Manis who has since the 1990s nurtured the notion of bringing together two of his musical passions: minimalism, and Javanese and Balinese forms of gamelan music. This ambitious album is the third in the series titled “Returning Minimalism.” In each, the creative challenge posed by Noise Manis to indigenous performers: find your inner, culturally appropriate In C.

He’s certainly not been the first to employ cross-cultural approaches to exploring music he loves. As the musicologist Kyle Gann has written, “minimalism [can be seen as] an irruption of non-Western influences into the Western tradition – even, American music’s attempt to connect with the rest of the world.” More pointedly however: did gamelan music somehow exert a substantive influence on early minimalism? There’s no evidence for this. To the contrary in 2011 Terry Riley stated that in the early 1960s when he created his early minimalist works, “the fact is that I didn’t know about gamelan.”

Regardless of shifting perceived patterns of cross-cultural influence the ongoing Returning Minimalism project argues for the important work of contesting stereotypical Western exoticist readings of culture. In this album the project has put a seminal musical composition, which at its birth shook up norms of classical Western music, into the hands of Balinese composers and musicians.

Guided by the seasoned American gamelan musician Ken Worthy, in their adaptive explorations of In C the 23 musicians of GSR are heard in two works on this ear-opening album. They form an attractive unforced-sounding hybrid reflecting both their Balinese and minimalist sources with clarity while not compromising either. On track one, In Deung – Vibration of the Spirit, melodic cells from In C are transposed into the seven-tone tuning of the GSR gamelan evoking an introspective mood representing “the spirit centred in the self.” By way of contrast the more lively In Dang – Teruna’s Dream reworks In C motifs and skilfully weaves into the fabric occasional quotations from Teruna Jaya (Victorious Youth), the influential early 20th-century North Balinese masterwork.

This marvellous music helps us deepen our understanding and enjoyment of such masterfully made multiple redirections in the flow of trans-cultural influences.

Gamelan Cage – John Cage’s prepared piano pieces on Balinese Gamelan

Gamelan Cage – John Cage’s prepared piano pieces on Balinese Gamelan
Sanggar Ceraken of Bali
Sargasso scd28075 (sargasso.com)

This album is another example of Italian gamelan recording producer John Noise Manis’ passion: the reinterpretation of 20th century modernist Western music by various kinds of gamelan groups. Here nine Cage prepared piano works from 1940 to 1948 were arranged by American ethnomusicologist Andrew Clay McGraw for Ceraken, an ensemble of dedicated young Balinese musicians led by composer I Made Subandi. They were then recorded in the idyllic rural setting of an “open-air pavilion overlooking the terraced rice fields of Batuan village” in southern Bali.

In his well-researched liner notes McGraw wonders whether Cage’s 1940s invention of the prepared piano was influenced by gamelan music. There is no evidence for such a causal relationship. Cage’s unexpected sole work scored for gamelan came late in his life when Toronto’s Evergreen Club Gamelan commissioned Haikai (1986). Interested readers can find my account in “John Cage, Master of Silence” in The WholeNote, September 2012.

McGraw argues that rather than gamelan, “more important for Cage’s prepared piano phase was the interwar flowering of percussion and percussive music.” On the other hand Cage’s piano preparations, “almost always transform the string from an harmonic to an inharmonic vibrating body.” This key observation links the sounds of the prepared piano to the bronze gongs and keys of the gamelan which are designed to produce inharmonic overtones. It is because of this sonic family resemblance that many listeners “think of the gamelan (and sometimes assume a direct line of influence) when hearing the inharmonic, noisy, but definitely pitched sounds of Cage’s prepared piano.”

McGraw worked intensely for weeks through the Cage scores with the Ceraken musicians, learning them by heart. They produced striking transformations, rendering them with a fresh percussive sonic palette as well as with Balinese-mediated choices of tempo, expression and ensemble performance practice. Moreover the creative team chose their instrumentation from seven very different gamelans. Lending complexity to the arrangements: none of the sets were “tuned to the other and there were very few coinciding tones between them.”

The musical results range from experimental and exploratory sounding, as in the “microtonal” sections of Daughters of the Lonesome Isle, to the musically substantial Bacchanale. The latter, stocked with 16th note hemiolas characteristic of Balinese kotekan, was a favourite among many of the musicians. Sounding just as convincing in an arrangement for Balinese gamelan as it does on its original instrument, it’s my favourite too.

John Adams –Harmonielehre, Doctor Atomic Symphony, Short Ride in a Fast Machine

John Adams –Harmonielehre, Doctor Atomic Symphony, Short Ride in a Fast Machine
Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Peter Oundjian
Chandos CHSA 5129

When over 30 years ago John Adams introduced his brand of minimalism to the listening audiences, nobody could have predicted the staying power of the young composer. With the consecutive successes of Shaker Loops, Grand Pianola Music, The Chairman Dances, Nixon in China, The Wound-dresser, Death of Klinghoffer, the Pulitzer-prize winning On Transmigration of Souls and triumphant premiere of Doctor Atomic in 2005, Adams now is a part of the standard repertoire for orchestras worldwide. Enter RSNO, under the artistic direction of Oundjian. Doctor Atomic Symphony, a 25 minute extract of themes from the opera, belongs firmly to the “later” output of Adams. Less minimalistic, with no bare-bone structure and easily identifiable tempi laid out in a score, it presents a challenge. As Anthony Tommasini wrote in December, 2007 for the New York Times: “the tremulous surface of the orchestral music is deceptively calm, allowing the vocal lines to dominate. Just below, though, the orchestra teems with fractured meters, intertwining contrapuntal elements, fitful bursts and Mr. Adams’s most tartly dissonant, boldly unmoored harmonies.”

It is that ambiguity that trips up Oundjian, as the score seems to get away from him until the quasi-vocal lines of Huw Morgan’s trumpet lead the Oppenheimer aria Batter My Heart to its thundering conclusion. The earlier works are somewhat easier to conquer and fare much better – especially Short Ride which delivers on its Honegger-esque (Pacific 231) perpetuum mobile idiom. A worthy recording of important contemporary music.