Modern and Contemporary

George Perle – Solos & Duos
Various Artists
Bridge Records 9546A/B (bridgerecords.com)

George Perle (1915-2009) might be compared to Hindemith as a composer concerned with tonal as well as motivic manipulation, highly developed, recognizable structures and just plain beauty. Where Hindemith stayed with more consonant tonalities and clearly defined melodic structure, in a word, a classicist, Perle follows a more Romantic path, in the sense of his rhythmic and metric freedom, as well as a much more challenging tonal language.

This two-disc collection, Solos & Duos, features works for a range of instruments, another echo of Hindemith. Perle, like Hindemith, produced effective music to exploit the instruments he wrote for. Solo works for piano, bassoon, violin, cello, contrabass and clarinet are interspersed on the discs with several works for piano with cello and one with clarinet and piano. Solo works are perhaps an acquired taste, but I find Perle’s explorations via Monody II (1962), the double bass work played with tremendous verve by Edwin Parker, a complete treat to hear. Ditto Bassoon Music (2004) in an equally compelling presentation by Steven Dibner.  

Every decade from the 1940s until the ‘aughts is represented. Clarinetist Charles Neidich plays the Three Sonatas for Solo Clarinet (1943, the earliest works) as well as Sonata quasi una fantasia (1972), together with Michael Brown on piano. Both are performed with considerable flair. Pianists Leon Fleisher, Richard Goode and Horacio Gutiérrez, perform works written for each. Musical Offerings from 1988, references obliquely Fleisher’s unpleasant departure from his directorship of the Tanglewood Music Festival. Ballade, written for Goode in 1981, allows him to explore Romanticism through a modern lens. Nine Bagatelles (1999) (average length/bagatelle under one minute) are wittily conveyed by Gutiérrez. 

But the star among stars on this twin pack, apart from Perle himself, is cellist Jay Campbell. What a glorious rich cello voice, and what terrific agility from the bass string right up into thumb position! His selections cover the most ground on the recording, in number of works played (four), as well as total length (close to 40 minutes of the two-hour total). Perle clearly loved the instrument and Campbell seems to enjoy playing his work.

Conversations with Myself
Alicia Lee
New Focus Recordings FCR302 (newfocusrecordings.com/catalogue) 

I’m willing to bet the two years just past have seen a noticeable increase in the number of released CDs of solo instrumental works, prepared in the isolation of one’s practise studio. Conversations With Myself is a selection of solos for clarinet and bass clarinet, some from the years between 1983 and 2007, bookended by works composed in 2020, during the new normal. Alicia Lee writes that the pieces present her “in dialogue with myself… where I was delivering advice to anyone who cared to listen.” 

Dai Fujikura’s Contour for Bass Clarinet opens the disc. Freely melodic and ranging over the low to mid-high range of the instrument, it offers Lee room to show off musicality more than flashy technique. More demanding is Dialogue de l’Ombre Double (the only work for B-flat clarinet) by Pierre Boulez. Two characters emerge from Lee’s confident and affecting performance: the first, in the right channel, is a compulsive repeating motif that then gives way to a mercurial trilling countersubject heard on the left-hand side of the “stage.” At nearly-20-minutes’ length, this is a substantial undertaking, through which Lee’s sound remains clean and assured. In live performance, one of the “shadows” is pre-recorded. Here the effect of “live” versus electronic is overlaid through some highly effective spatial trickery; when in isolation, why not find ways to simulate social engagement? 

If Monolog for Bass Clarinet (1983) by Isang Yun offers advice, I’m not sure what it might be. I love the sounds Lee produces on her grumpy big brother clarinet. Unsuk Chin’s Advice for a Caterpillar (from Alice in Wonderland, 2007) possibly advises poor life choices, in a seductive opium-infused siren song. Hideaki Aomori’s sweetly brief Split, brings the conversations to a close.

Listen to 'Conversations with Myself' Now in the Listening Room

Karl Fiorini – In the Midst of Things
Charlene Farrugia; Dimitri Ashkenazy; Rebecca Raimondi; Stefan Kropfitsch
Grand Piano GP880 (naxosdirect.com/search/gp880) 

Malta, smack dab in the middle of the Mediterranean, has absorbed influences from the many varied cultures that, over millennia, have settled there. Maltese composer Karl Fiorini (b.1979) is similarly ecumenical.

In Trio Lamina for clarinet, violin and piano (2002), quirky, perky neoclassicism – Poulenc crossed with Stravinsky – surrounds a slow, moody, almost jazzy nocturnal interlude. Piano Trio for violin, cello and piano (2005) mixes serialism, North African folk music and mathematical ratios to create intriguing night music – eerie gloom, helter-skelter jumpiness, squeaks, groans, slowly dripping water and a hectic escape.

There’s more perturbed darkness in Two Piano Études (2007-2008), composed using Fibonacci sequences, but then, writes Fiorini, after “heartlessly abiding to purely intellectual procedures… I felt I had to revisit tonality.” Jump to 2017 – the gripping Piano Sonata encompasses powerful, discordant percussiveness, a slow, quiet, tentatively tender ambulation and a motoric rush to the finish.

At 16 minutes, In the Midst of Things for clarinet, violin, cello and piano (2019) is the longest work on this CD. Its four movements juxtapose brooding melancholy with suspenseful agitation and, like all this CD’s music, it’s an engrossing wordless narrative, stylistically accessible yet elusively mysterious.

Maltese pianist Charlene Farrugia, New York-born clarinetist Dimitri Ashkenazy (Vladimir’s son), Italian violinist Rebecca Raimondi and Austrian cellist Stefan Kropfitsch made these world-premiere recordings in 2019 and 2020 with Fiorini present. Undoubtedly, he was justifiably pleased with what he heard. So was I.

Eric Nathan – Missing Words
Various Artists
New Focus Recordings FCR314 (newfocusrecordings.com) 

“The false sense of movement when, looking out from a stationary train, you see another train depart.” There’s now a word for it – “Eisenbahnscheinbewegung” (Railway-Illusion-Motion) – one of 120 German compound words invented by Ben Schott for his 2013 English-language book Schottenfreude, furnishing whimsical one-word terms for assorted common, disorienting experiences.

Eisenbahnscheinbewegung is also the title of the first of 23 mini-tone poems in six sets of Missing Words, spanning 84 minutes on two CDs. In them, multi-award-winning American composer Eric Nathan (b.1983) employs onomatopoetic sound effects, abruptly punctuated, irregular rhythms and wildly varied instrumentation to depict many of Schott’s disconcerting, often uncomfortable, psychological states.

Some examples: Eisenbahnscheinbewegung combines railroad noises with glissandi and shifting pulses to evoke that familiar unsettled feeling; lurching glissandi illustrate Leertretung (Void-Stepping) – “Stepping down heavily on a stair that isn’t there;” fanfares in Brillenbrillanz (Spectacles-Luminosity) herald “The sudden, innervating clarity afforded by new glasses;” Beethoven’s hastily scribbled drafts for his Ninth Symphony inspire the aggressive, motorized grumblings of Ludwigssyndrom (Ludwig’s-Syndrome) – “Discovering an indecipherable note in your own handwriting;” halting, quiet rumination in the concluding Rolleirückblende (Rollei-Flashback) reflects “The flood of memory released when looking at old photos.”  

Performing Missing Words I to VI are, respectively, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, American Brass Quintet, cello-piano duo Parry and Christopher Karp, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Neave Trio and Hub New Music. I’m sure they all had fun playing these very imaginative pieces, all fun to listen to as well.