Modern and Contemporary

Cycles – New Music for Tabla by Ledroit, Lizée, Paquet, Hiscott & Frehner
Shawn Mativetsky; Marie-Hélène Breault; Catherine Meunier; Xenia Pestova;
Windsor Symphony Orchestra;
Brian Current
ombu 1015
www.shawnmativetsky.com

Montreal percussionist Shawn Mativetsky has made a specialty of performing on the tabla (twin hand drums), not only in music indigenous to its Hindustani (North Indian) roots but also with dance, Western instruments and orchestras. As a leading Canadian disciple of the renowned Sharda Sahai he has serious tabla street cred. On Cycles however Mativetsky presents his culture mash-up side in six commissions dating from the last decade by mostly Quebecois composers. The works admirably showcase his timbral, temporal control and musical sensitivity on the tabla alone, and as supported by a series of duo, chamber music and orchestral forces.

While individual pieces variously draw inspiration from Western and Hindustani musical sources, they also clearly reflect the personalities and musical aesthetics of their composers. Metal Jacket (2005) for tabla & harmonium by the busy Montreal composer Nicole Lizée is an excellent example. This smart, crafty and playful work pushes boundaries of groove, drone, repetition, phrase augmentation and diminution — all essential features of traditional Hindustani music — and overlaps them with characteristics found in electronic mediated music: glissandos, fades and extreme distortion effects.

Mativetsky’s project reflected on this CD is not unlike that of other Canadians who have combined musical instruments and genres from afar and presented them alongside the classical music traditions of the “West.” Toronto’s Evergreen Club Gamelan’s 1980s pioneering work and that of the Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra in the 2000s come to mind. Cycles will delight both world music and new music aficionados alike.

American Flute Masterpieces
Susan Hoeppner; Lydia Wong
Marquis 774718141323

This CD is itself a little masterpiece: the six works on it by 20th century American composers, already recorded by many other flutists, are performed with such style, panache, and artistry that it is a welcome and justified addition to the catalogue.

The first track is the opening movement of Eldin Burton’s Sonatina. Susan Hoeppner’s phrasing is mesmerizing, to the point that I want to play this over and over again! Her interpretation of the Canzone from the second movement of Samuel Barber’s Piano Concerto is serene and measured, but perhaps a little too dispassionate. The most wonderful moments in the entire CD, for me anyway, come in the second movement of Lowell Liebermann’s Sonata Op.23. Hoeppner and Lydia Wong build on the strength of each other’s playing to come to a thrilling and almost superhuman intensity. Their performance of John Corigliano’s Voyage, while embracing the simplicity of the piece, infuses it with great sensitivity and tenderness and at times intensity that arises entirely out of the sound and colour of the flute. Hoeppner and Wong give stirring performances of the last two compositions, Aaron Copland’s lyrical Duo for Flute and Piano and Robert Muczynski’s technically challenging Sonata Op.14.

This CD brings us definitive performances of music from an ongoing “golden age” of composition in the United States, which continues to thrive in the protective enclaves of universities despite the vicissitudes of these tumultuous times. Kudos to both artists; this CD is a winner.

24 Frames - Scatter
Tim Brady; Bradyworks
ambiences magnetiques AM 206 CD www.timbrady.ca

24 Frames - Trance
Tim Brady; Martin Messier
ambiences magnetiques AM 203 CD-DVD www.timbrady.ca

Tim Brady’s most ambitious composition to date must surely be 24 Frames consisting of a series of 24 movements each of which he identifies as a “frame.” Adding up to three CDs and a DVD (AM 905), it amounts to well over two hours of sometime meditatively calm and at other times challenging and exhilarating music. While a soprano voice, baritone sax, bass clarinet, viola, bass trombone and percussion make appearances one at a time in substantial though supporting roles, the through-line here is Brady’s writing for electric guitar and his masterful virtuoso playing in every section of his sprawling opus.

Indeed the 8’53” section called “Scatter – Frame 1” could easily stand as a self-contained work. Featuring the nuanced vocalise of Karen Young, her vocal performance is so densely processed at times that it becomes a virtual choir. Yet Brady reminds us that this is a human voice first and foremost, by having vocalist Young imitate a wow-wow pedal effect acoustically about halfway in. It only lasts a moment but for me it is such deft and delicate touches which impress the most in 24 Frames. At the end of this section the guitar’s distant bell-like sonorities admirably support Young’s soft cooing.

Frame 2 is subtitled “In Almost Unison” and it’s an apt description of the relentless tempo guisto and metrically complex character of the joint duo of guitar and baritone sax, marvellously played by Jean-Marc Bouchard. Frame 3 on the other hand, featuring Lori Freedman’s dramatic bass clarinet, has many more contrasting angles and emotional facets to it.

Frame 4 – “Still” is a highlight, a lyrical, spacey and languid essay in viola long tones, chords and slow, surprisingly moody mid-20th century melodic passages. It’s underpinned by a lexicon of exposed delicate electric guitar effects: I heard reverb, precise string harmonics, thick gong-like chords, chorus effects and perhaps even pitch-shifted other-worldly echoes. This is a gorgeous, satisfying movement that I’ll be returning to repeatedly.

Frame 5 partners the electric guitar with bass trombone, in several sections juicily modulated with electronic effects. Indeed an outstanding aspect of this movement, as well as several others, is the astonishing range of the blend between the acoustic sounds of the instruments and their sounds electronically morphed.

The sonic shape-shifting continues in Frame 6 which introduces percussionist Catherine Meunier into the mix. She plays the vibraphone and afterward the marimba joined by Brady’s electric guitar, providing a welcome crisp contrast to several of the previous atmospheric sections, many of which did not posses a definable pulse. Here we have melodic lines, many founded on broken arpeggios, which sometimes interlock between instruments. At other moments the duo sounds in melodic and/or rhythmic unison, set in an increasingly complex metric and spectral framework. This first CD culminates in a satisfying crescendo supported by a sort of electric guitar trill stretto perhaps referencing heavy metal.

Reviewing such an immense, assured and accomplished work – and I’ve only touched on about a third of it – is truly an insurmountable challenge given the constraints of this review. I hope my listening notes have successfully reflected the scope of Brady’s fertile compositional imagination, and my own pleasure and enthusiasm for the music in his multi-CD project.

Southam - Returnings
Eve Egoyan
Centrediscs CMCCD 17211

This album marks the premiere recording of four piano works by the late Ann Southam. The music was chosen by Southam, among Canada’s finest composers, who died at age 73 in November 2010. The consummate Toronto pianist Eve Egoyan, for whom the works were created, makes a convincing and moving case for them.

I first heard Southam’s music in the 1970s when she became known for the electroacoustic works she made for Toronto Dance Theatre choreographers. I was surprised to hear later that we shared a mutual composition teacher, Samuel Dolin of the Royal Conservatory of Music. In Returnings I, the piano tolls in the low register while the consonant mid-keyboard chords support a disjunct melodic line. The haunting, though reassuring, music is over well before I want it to be. It hardly seems to last the quarter of an hour the CD timing states.

In Retrospect is like a broken harmonic series rearranged, a set of cubist impressions of bells ringing, their pitches ranging over most of the keyboard. One can imagine in the listening Southam’s abstracted, distanced and terse life in review, fastidious in its avoidance of dramatic overstatement and emotional sturm und drang. While her modernist colours are on display here, by the end of the work I am left with the feeling of unquiet, unnamed musical questions being posed rather than clear statements articulated and argued.

Qualities of Consonance, in contrast, has a dramatic agenda. It serves up dissonant, aggressive, loud musical gestures that would be quite at home in the mid-20th century, alternating with soft sostenuto passages. The resulting dialectic resonates on a deep emotional level. In the final work, Returnings II: A Meditation, Southam offers us a more refined aesthetic. Set in a haltingly rocking rhythm, it revisits the harmonic grammar of Returnings I.

Yes, I hear links in these last piano pieces to the more pattern-concerned jubilant minimalism of Southam’s earlier works, yet this mature autumnal music speaks to me with more conviction. They have the admirable gravitas and serenity of a full life well lived. These pieces, along with Southam’s Simple Lines of Enquiry (recorded by Egoyan on Centrediscs CMCCD 14609), should take their rightful place in the top tier of contemporary concert piano repertoire.