Modern and Contemporary

Missa Brevis – A Mass for Accordion
Matti Rantanen; Marko Ylonen
Siba Records SACD-1009

Finnish accordionist Matti Rantanen is one of the bedrocks of European “classical” accordion as a teacher at the Sibelius Academy and an international performer. Here he performs mainly solo music with numerous liturgical references.

The transcriptions of Haydn and Mozart are well conceived. Rantanen’s expertise makes each work sound legitimate on the accordion, however a wider dynamic range in the Haydn and more playfulness in the Mozart would have added to the listening experience. Though originally written for cello and piano/organ, Ahti Sonninen’s Hymns of Zion for cello and accordion is a lyrical tone poem duet with cellist Marko Ylonen.

The title track Missa Brevis – A Mass for Accordion is a modern take on the old form. The accordion emulates the qualities of the church organ with its held long tones, florid arpeggios and chunky chords, while the range of dynamics, multi-note glissandos and subtle differentiations on articulation are so very accordion exclusive. Similar sentiments surface in Tapio Nevanlinna’s Hug. Petri Makkonen’s Chorale Prelude is exquisite. A former accordion student of Rantanen, Makkonen’s personal relationship with the instrument must have aided in his balanced writing of a florid right hand against held low tones in the left. Unfortunately, the huge glissando connecting the opening section to the middle lyric melody comes across as a “trick” instead of a bridge. The last two chords are delightful.

Rantanen’s musical personality makes this recording a thoughtful and intriguing expose of fine accordion musicianship and composition.

Celebrating Women! Music for Flute
and Piano by Women Composers
Laurel Swinden; Stephanie Mara
Independent LBSCD2012
www.laurelswinden.com

The flute and piano duo has never had such a powerful and memorable moment as in this collection of music by women composers from past and present. Flutist Laurel Swinden has a sweet and distinct tone which, when combined with pianist Stephanie Mara’s full piano colour, creates a truly beautiful sound. The two musicians are remarkably tight and in sync as an ensemble. In sections of matching rhythms and harmonies, I thought I was hearing a third new instrument in the mix!

The more classical genre works are represented by Mel Bonis, Anna Bon di Venezia, Cécile Chaminade and Lili Boulanger. Though perhaps not household names, each composer’s work stands the test of time. Swinden and Mara perform them with elegance.

However the musicians really shine in the more contemporary works. Heather Schmidt’s Chiaroscuro is filled with mysterious harmonies and tension-filled rhythms. A technically challenging work, it is also the highlight. The duo creates a sense of sweeping moods in their performance. In contrast, Cecilia McDowall’s Piper’s Dream has both instruments emulate the sound of the pipes and draws on traditional folk music for its melodies and ambience. Swindon’s lengthy held notes are breathtaking in colour and duration. Anne Boyd’s minimalistic Bali Moods, Jean Coulthard’s Where the Trade Winds Blow and Katherine Hoover’s witty Two for Two complete the collection.

The production quality is clear, capturing even the most subtle of Swinden’s and Mara’s distinct musical nuances and technical abilities.

between the shore and the ships –
The Grand-Pré Recordings
Helen Pridmore; Wesley Ferreira
Centrediscs CMCCD 17912

The fallout from the Acadian expulsion haunts Canadian amour-propre to this day. That is the fact lurking behind a release from Centrediscs called between the shore and the ships, a loose cycle of settings for voice and clarinet by eight Eastern-Canadian composers and performed with fitting solemnity by Helen Pridmore and Wesley Ferreira. The texts are varied and range from an extract from Longfellow’s Evangeline to contemporary reflections like Mouvence by Gerald Leblanc. The compositional range is somewhat narrower and though the pairing is highly effective — composers have often been drawn to the matching character of soprano and clarinet — the material rarely strays from dour and dreary elongations of vocal line and wandering clarinet decoration. A welcome change is the above-mentioned Mouvence as set by Jérôme Blais. The text is mysterious and fresh; he sets it for spoken voice and largely improvised bass clarinet. Interestingly, the only francophone composer to be included chooses a text that “carries the essence of the Acadian tragedy without ever referring to it directly.” Could the rest be too earnest in their expressions of retroactive guilt?

Singer Pridmore is fearless faced with repeated demands for expressive vowelizations entwining with a clarinet accompaniment that is sometimes played for pleasing dissonances: a challenge for the singer and usually rewarding for the listener. Her tone is on occasion nasal and raw and her pitch suffers in a number of instances, most noticeably the Robert Bauer setting of the Dykes of Acadie. Ferreira has a beautiful and controlled sound that he uses to support as well as he can the soprano and which he highlights beautifully in his solo passages. The overall effect is strong, but I have the urge to go hear some Zydeco and eat some blackened catfish just to feel better.

Secret of the Seven Stars:
Music of Hope Lee and David Eagle
Stefan Hussong; New Music Concerts; Robert Aitken
Centrediscs CMCCD 18012

Three of this recording’s five selections feature German new music accordion virtuoso Stefan Hussong. Hope Lee’s Secret of the Seven Stars is performed by the New Music Concerts Ensemble with Joseph Macerollo as soloist. Hussong’s sound highlights a brighter, more metallic area of the instrument’s timbral range, while Macerollo’s accordion is deliciously deep and mellow sounding.

Composer David Eagle’s works make up the first half of the program and each relies on an electronically enhanced sense of acoustic space. This music requires a good delivery system, i.e. headphones or home stereo. Computer speakers won’t cut it, and MP3 is less than adequate, so buy a full quality download or, better still, the physical CD to get the added benefit of extensive printed information in a very nice package. (The same goes for my review of Janet elsewhere in these pages.) Eagle pursues an inventive array of strategies and techniques in combining and counterposing the live accordion with the computer’s “responses.” In his 2009 work for flutist Robert Aitken, Fluctuare, the computer interactivity elegantly supports Aitken’s warm and masterful interpretation of the solo part.

Hope Lee’s spiritually inspired, highly gestural style is featured in Secret of the Seven Stars and the unaccompanied solo and the end is the beginning. Here, the accordion’s extended resources are on display: pitch bending, bellows shaking and other titillating accordion exotica. Both works trace the emergence of entire soundworlds from a single, sustained pitch — a process the composer repeats in a consistently fascinating variety of ways. Lee’s approach to the contemporary quasi-concerto format in Seven Stars is more to combine solo and ensemble voices than to counterpose them, making her acoustic music sound just as “interactive” as Eagle’s electronica.