Modern and Contemporary

Shamanic Journey
Deanna Swoboda
Potenza Music PM1013 (www.potenzamusic.com)

The noble tuba is the only instrument in the standard symphony orchestra that can claim that virtually all of its solo repertoire has been composed within the last 60 years. This is in large part due to the efforts of tuba players themselves, who often seek out the friendship of composers, who they then commission (or brow-beat) into composing these solo works.

American tuba player Deanna Swoboda is no exception to this: a professor of tuba and euphonium at Western Michigan University and the President of the International Tuba and Euphonium Association, she also is a fantastic performer, as this solo CD, her second, ably shows. Most of the featured repertoire is by women composers and most is of the “easy-listening” variety – a number of the works having a jazz or pop-infused feel. Particularly enjoyable is the Concert Piece for Tuba and Piano by the noted American composer, Libby Larsen.

A bonus for listeners on our side of the border is the inclusion of two works by Canadian composers, Elizabeth Raum’s Ballad and Burlesque (commissioned by Swoboda) and Barbara York’s Sonata for Tuba and Piano, subtitled “Shamanic Journey,” which gives Swoboda’s new CD its name.

Saariaho - D’om le vrai sens; Laterna Magica; Leino Songs
Kari Kriikku; Anu Komsi; Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra; Sakari Oramo
Ondine ODE 1173-2

Kaija Saariaho stands among today’s outstanding concert music composers. She was born in Finland (1952) but has been a long-time resident of Paris. Her research at IRCAM, the Paris institute where FM synthesis and electroacoustic techniques associated with spectral music have been developed, has had a profound influence on her compositions, which often combine live and electronic musical forces.

This CD features three recent all-acoustic works performed by some of Finland’s finest interpreters. Saariaho’s clarinet concerto D’om Le Vrai Sens, inspired by the famous La Dame à la Licorne medieval tapestries is almost operatic in scope, the solo clarinet virtuoso Kari Kriikku playing the protagonist to the orchestra’s lushly mysterious textures.

Saariaho’s dramatic orchestral piece Laterna Magica derives its title and theme from film director Ingmar Bergman’s memoirs, referring to an early type of manual film projector. The title underscores the composer’s fascination with boundaries: between observation and imagination; between objective light and subjective dream-like reality. The latter is represented in sound by shifting, colourfully orchestrated, alternating dense and wispy chords and evanescent hissing instrumental sounds. Whispered words uttered by the musicians, describing light’s effects both on objects and on human mood, are culled from Bergman, adding to the music’s mystery.

The four Leino Songs, built on texts by Finnish poet Eino Leino (1878-1926), were composed for the polished and nuanced voice of the Finnish soprano Anu Komsi and orchestra. Epigrammatic and voice-friendly, the songs follow the lyrics admirably, allowing the words to dictate the overall form and duration of each song. This is by far the shortest of the works here, yet its emotional impact is perhaps the greatest.

Concert Note: The Canadian Opera Company will present eight performances of Kaija Saariaho’s Love From Afar, featuring Russell Braun, Erin Wall and Kristina Szabó, February 2 to 22.

From the New Village
Duo Resonance
Woodlark Discs (www.silverflute.ca)

German Romanticism of the 19th century, in spite of much turbulence at the time, was a golden age for the arts, especially for music and poetry. Duo Resonance is composed of guitarist Wilma van Berkel and flutist Sibylle Marquardt. The title is derived from the first set of compositions on the disc, Songs and Dances from the New Village by Dusan Bogdanovic, pieces based on traditional music from south-eastern Europe. The rest of the repertoire, with the exception of Toru Takemitsu’s Toward the Sea, is similarly related to folk or traditional music.

There is some invigorating music-making on this CD. In the first movement “Bordel” of Astor Piazzolla’s L’histoire du tango, for example, Marquardt’s robust sound, incisive articulation and precise rhythmic sense, coupled with van Berkel’s dynamic and fluid playing, propel the music forward to an exciting climax. Van Berkel‘s solo at the beginning of the contrasting second movement, exquisitely languid, sensitive and touching, sets a sultry summer mood.

Van Berkel also excels in Toronto composer Alan Torok’s idiosyncratically spelled Native Rhapsody in Hommage of James Brown. The writing for guitar, while neither particularly “native” nor “folk” to my ears, is rhythmically sophisticated and works well with the modal flute line.

The notation of Takemitsu’s Toward the Sea, described in the liner notes as “annotated to the point of excess,” proves effective, nevertheless, in drawing Marquardt, playing alto flute, into a more expressive mode than elsewhere on the disc, exploring a greater variety of tone qualities, colours and dynamics.

Kudos to the duo for coupling some of the better known repertoire for their instruments with lesser known contemporary compositions that need to be heard.

Winging It - Piano Music of John Corigliano

Ursula Oppens; Jerome Lowenthal

Cedille CDR 90000 123 www.cedillerecords.org

John Corigliano is a musical dramatist who melds the past century’s innovations into his own compositional style. Equally comfortable in classical repertoire and in contemporary music, pianist Ursula Oppens is an ideal interpreter of Corigliano, with the delicate sensitivity and fearless assurance to meet his music’s wide-ranging demands. This disc spans nearly 50 years, from Kaleidoscope (1959) to Winging It (2008). The latter comprises three composer improvisations “translated” from recorded sequences to written compositions. Corigliano succeeds in maintaining an improvisational feel, as does Oppens in her exploratory interpretation.

Corigliano’s Fantasia on an Ostinato (1985) is the most expressive minimalist work I know. His Etude Fantasy (1976) struck me as an outstanding and original work when I heard dedicatee James Tocco play it shortly after it was composed. Oppens’ interpretation maintains a wonderful sense of fantasy, while rising to the demands of five difficult pieces that never become strenuous technical exercises. For example, Etude No.3: Fifths to Thirds fits the hand beautifully.

Pianist and pedagogue Jerome Lowenthal joins Oppens in works for two pianos. In the evocative Chiaroscuro (1997) for pianos a quarter tone apart, the second piano suggests variously an out-of tune instrument, or “blue” notes, or high-register tinkling chimes! And in the early Fantasia (1959) Corigliano emerges as an Ivesian proto-Magic Realist, already with his own remarkable technique and colour-palette well established.