14 Akropolis QuintetHymns for Private Use
Akropolis Reed Quintet; Shara Nova
Bright Shiny Things BSTC-0180 (brightshiny.ninja)

The Akropolis Reed Quintet are at it again. What a terrific ensemble, and what a distinctive blend. Like Ghost Light (reviewed April 2021) this disc responds to the group’s home town, Detroit, in a musical offering giving back to their community.    

The material consists of two works, one by celebrated American Nico Muhly and one by Annika Socolofsky. Muhly’s Hymns for Private Use comprises five settings of devotional texts from the 4rth century through the 19th. Soprano Shara Nova is a sixth reed in the mix, so well do she and the instrumentalists blend. The texts are haunting, especially when one considers the span of ages through which poets and mystics have addressed verses to an imagined or real creator. Two overtly Christian texts, Virga Rosa Virginum and Sleep address Mary and Jesus respectively. The Holy Spirit, written by Anne Steele (who used the nom de plume Theodosia) in the 18th century is interposed between them. The final two texts (An Autumnal Song and Hark the Vesper Hymn is Stealing) were taken from an American songbook for schoolkids. Muhly gives these two quite a dark treatment; the cycle ends by sowing more doubt than faith. But the performances along this descent are beautiful, especially An Autumnal Song, which starts in a searching a cappella, the winds meeting the voice at the second stanza. 

Hymns is followed by an extraordinary piece by Socolofsky on the latter half of the disc. The players accompany a series of personal stories, fragmented and overlayered at first,each detailing in their own voices what it has meant to them (all citizens of Detroit) to open and manage their private businesses. The title – so much more – describes how each has come to feel about their experience, and the context becomes clearer as the five sections unfold. Ultimately not so very much a musical as a textual work, the accompaniment bridging the stories alternately delicate and forceful, although the fourth of five tracks is an instrumental interlude where lyrical lines are stitched through with rapidly repeated notes. As it ends, with the words of the title spoken over gentle chords, one realizes this is also a set of prayers.

15 Christopher NickelChristopher Tyler Nickel – Sonatas and Chamber Music for Oboe & Oboe d’amore
Mary Lynch VanderKolk; Various Artists
Avie AV2558 (avie-records.com/releases)

Featuring the talents of oboist Mary Lynch VanderKolk, the new album Christopher Tyler Nickel: Sonatas and Chamber Music for Oboe and Oboe d’amore masterfully explores the full range and lyrical aspects of the oboe while spiritedly challenging its technical capabilities.

Opening with the Oboe Sonata specifically composed for VanderKolk, Nickel’s own familiarity with the oboe is clearly demonstrated as he insightfully captures the strengths of the player – creating beautifully sweeping lines that showcase VanderKolk’s colourful and lyrical capabilities as she artfully navigates the dynamic and rhythmic passages in a way that only the most consummate performer could.

Imagining the pensive sadness of the lone instrument at twilight is what one may experience as they listen to Nickel’s second piece of this collection, the Oboe d’amore Sonata. Perhaps seemingly absurd or contradictory… the tenebrous quality of the oboe d’amore truly shines in this technically challenging and yet melancholically dazzling achievement.

The narrative in the third instalment of Nickel’s delightful and most recent exploit can be summed up in one simple word… virtuosic. The Suite for Unaccompanied Oboe, features contrasting movements that explore mixed articulations, lustrous technical flourishes and dramatic leaps over the full range of the instrument. VanderKolk’s interpretation and execution of this work make it absolutely breathtaking.

The album concludes with the Quintet for Oboe d’amore for the namesake instrument and string quartet in a uniquely distinctive composition drawing the listener in with the dark, melancholic timbre of the double-reed instrument traditionally only heard in Baroque music, making this piece the first of its kind and a true testament to this Canadian composer’s proclivity for the oboe family and ability to fashion narrowly defined aspects of both music and the instrument into a broader phenomenon.

Listen to 'Christopher Tyler Nickel – Sonatas and Chamber Music for Oboe & Oboe d’amore' Now in the Listening Room

16 Weinberg Symphonies 3 7Weinberg – Symphonies 3 & 7; Flute Concerto No.1
Marie-Christine Lupancic; City of Birmingham SO; Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen; Mirga Gražinyté-Tyla
Deutsche Grammophon 486 2403 (deutschegrammophon.com/en/catalogue/products/weinberg-symphonies-nos-3-7-grazinyte-tyla-12783)

Mieczysław Weinberg initially composed his 34-minute Symphony No.3 for Large Orchestra, Op.45 in 1949-1950, a time when fearful Soviet composers were compelled to write “optimistic,” folk-flavoured music. In 1959, under a milder regime, he extensively reworked it. The Allegro opens lyrically, quoting a Belorussian folk song; turmoil erupts, serenity returns, but the movement ends with dark, ominous chords. The Allegro giocoso ebulliently quotes a folk song from Weinberg’s native Poland. The ensuing Adagio moves from contemplation to high tragedy. Tumultuous fanfares announce the Allegro vivace. Clearly influenced by Weinberg’s friend and mentor Shostakovich, it’s a bitterly sardonic mock celebration, filled with motorized dissonances, ending the symphony.

Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla conducts the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in this symphony and the 16-minute Flute Concerto No.1, Op.75 (1961). In the opening Allegro molto, Marie-Christine Zupancic, the orchestra’s principal flute, plays cheerful chirpings over the string orchestra’s repeated pulsations. The Largo is a lonely, melancholic song. The Allegro commodo is strangely indecisive, with Zupancic’s flute meandering over plucked strings, ending abruptly.

Gražinytė-Tyla leads the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Dresden in Weinberg’s darkly mysterious, 31-minute Symphony No.7, Op.81 (1964) for strings and harpsichord. Its five connected movements begin eerily, quiet and slow, gradually growing in volume and intensity (Adagio sostenuto), followed by restless, driving discords (Allegro), wandering “night music” (Andante), agonized cries (Adagio sostenuto), sinister skittering, savage barrages and, finally, a return to the opening spookiness (Allegro). It’s haunted, haunting music.

17 White JujuSoweto Kinch – White Juju
London Symphony Orchestra; Lee Reynolds
LSO Live (lso.co.uk)

Perhaps one day there will be a genre of pandemic music studied and discussed like Baroque, bebop etc. This genre could include music composed during the lockdown when live concerts mostly stopped and White Juju would be a substantive contribution. Soweto Kinch is an award-winning alto saxophonist and composer who played several concerts in smaller centres in England at the end of the first lockdown. Walking along empty streets he noticed the “imperial emblems, flags and statues” that tended to go unnoticed during busier times. 

These experiences led to the creation of White Juju, which pairs his jazz quartet with the London Symphony Orchestra to create a magic carpet ride of hip-hop, rap, jazz, dance hall music, classical influences and lounge music, all while expounding on themes of colonialism, racism and class struggles. For example, Dawn begins with some sparkling and impressionistic flutes moving into strings and oboe presenting a Peer Gynt Sunrise vibe, then some soft horns and the rhythm section develops a jazzy hip-hop beat. After some gorgeous instrumental sections Kinch begins rapping over top (“the world looks different when it’s put into reverse”) and then embarks on a bop-influenced saxophone solo. The 16 sections of this live performance contain many surprises and White Juju combines humour with beauty while offering original political insight.

04 Mendelssons KaleidoscopeFanny and Felix Mendelssohn
Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective
Chandos CHAN 20256 (chandos.net/products/catalogue/CHAN%2020256)

The sting of Richard Wagner’s bitter anti-Semitic missive had a numbing effect on the true appreciation for Felix Mendelssohn’s music. It was probably worse so for Fanny Mendelssohn who had to also deal with the patriarchy of European society, not dissimilar to the lack of recognition for Clara Schumann among other women of the period.       

The repertoire performed by the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective proffers a snapshot of filial Mendelssohn genius. Think then of this recording of chamber works as the most recent delectable musical presentation of Mendelssohnian hors’d’ouevres; the suggestion also being that (hopefully) there is much more to come. 

Kaleidoscope give a touchingly emotional account of Fanny’s String Quartet in A-flat Major H-U 55 whose harmonic richness and subdued melancholy reveal both a debt and contrast to her brother’s exquisite way with form and structure. Her later Trio in D-Minor Op. 11 H-U 465 displays a remarkably wide range of touch and timbre especially magical in the whispered delicacy of its Lied movement.

Felix Mendelssohn’s Sextet in D Major, Op. post. 110 MWV Q 16 came a whole year before his revolutionary String Octet in E-flat Major. Like its worthy successor, what clinches the greatness of this sextet is the buoyant jubilation and tight fugal construction, which gives it a power equalled by few other finales in chamber music. This is beautifully fresh and energetic music-making from a quite extraordinary ensemble.

01 Clark CeccareliLandmarks
Katelyn Clark; Isaiah Ceccarelli
Another Timbre at192 (anothertimbre.com)

After reflecting on some recorded improvisations, Katelyn Clark and Isaiah Ceccarelli release an album of jointly composed works for organ and percussion. The eight tracks on the recording unfold as dreamy sonic apparitions that hypnotize and enrapture. This immersive listening experience begins with the opening track Bells – an ominous ten-minute journey of undulating sonora and distant rumbles, providing a haunting and beautiful sonic mass below relentless mid-range organ fields. 

In tracks such as Landmarks, Landforms and Chaparral, the wonderful patience and restraint in the music urges the listener to remove themselves from the immediate and to allow the sounds to untangle in the mind that hasn’t been examined or confronted. One finds sombre reprieve in Improvisation on Kyrie Eleison and Improvisation on a quarter where blurry polyphonic relics live among the hazy ashes of drone debris. The towering 20-minute Five Distances is arresting in its glacial insistence to live in a space where observable sensation lives more in imagination than in reality. 

With their sensitive and delicate playing, Clark and Ceccarelli carefully unravel a path of feral resonances where listening begins when listening ends. All in all, this release is a deeply meaningful ambient odyssey capturing slowly falling auditory masses strewn in veins of afferent emissions that circle and deliberate in the basin of the most transcendent of listening experiences.  

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