Modern and Contemporary

American Dream
Amstel (saxophone) Quartet
Amstel Quartet AR018 (amstelquartet.nl)

The Amstel Quartet is based in the Netherlands and describes itself as “the world’s most colourful saxophone quartet.” They have an active concert schedule (currently employing livestreaming) and have released over ten albums of music in many genres including classical, contemporary and popular music. American Dream is their survey of selected American composers who represent different aspects of musical culture which (the quartet writes) include the influence of jazz, working from modernism to post-modernism and employing unique rhythms. 

Paul Creston (1906-1985) is well known to saxophone players for his Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano which is a mainstay of the repertoire. His Suite for Saxophone Quartet, Op.111 was written towards the end of his career and illustrates his craftsmanship in the opening fugue, the rhythmic elements and the Pastorale written, strangely, in 15/12. Michael Torke’s May, June and July combine to demonstrate the “rhythmic dynamism” of his writing. May is sprightly and leaping with lush and melodic interplay; June is more sombre and July returns to a lighter form. John Cage’s Four5 is a series of instructions that can be played by almost any four instruments and includes percussive and tonal parts. The YouTube video the quartet produced playing this piece is well worth enjoying: it is the perfect COVID-era work combining Cage’s structure with the quartet’s own musical proficiency, isolated performances and sense of humour. American Dream is rounded out by Marc Mellits’ Tapas and Christian Lauba’s Mambo. 

The Amstel Quartet plays precisely and warmly and this collection of American saxophone quartet music is thoughtfully assembled.

Personal Demons
Lowell Liebermann
Steinway & Sons STNS 30172 (steinway.com/music-and-artists/label)

Composer-pianist Lowell Liebermann has just released a two-disc testament, expertly curated and impressively executed. It is a witness statement to five decades of life in music – a glimpse into an artistic practice that consistently hits its creative stride, fuelled by flames that still burn bright. The album has been adroitly produced, edited and mastered by Sergei Kvitko of Blue Griffin Recordings (featured in the November 2020 issue of The WholeNote.)  

Three of Liebermann’s own works are included in his debut solo recording as a complement to music by Liszt, Busoni, Schubert and little-known Czech composer, Miloslav Kabeláč. Each composer has galvanized – even haunted – Liebermann throughout his career. Such “demons” are presumably specters of the inspirational sort and Disc One opens with Liebermann’s most popular piano work, Gargoyles, Op.28. He swiftly introduces us to a forthright and individual brand of pianism, one with roughcast textures and crystal-clear melodic lines, obliging our ears toward resonant, robust and irresistible soundscapes. We perceive a virtuosic abandon, underpinned with an urgent, restless vitality. 

Such forthright modes of expression carry into the next tracks: the Eight Preludes, Op.30 by Kabeláč. These pieces are especially significant for Liebermann and he unveils them to us consummately. Finely etched, bearing echoes of Benjamin Britten, these evocative miniatures have absorbed Liebermann for decades and are here bestowed like building blocks: compositional models at which to marvel. The final work on Disc One is Liszt’s stalwart Totentanz, S525, a vivid, dazzling pianistic essay. The music’s economy of means – characteristic of Liszt’s best writing – remains of discernable influence for Liebermann hinting at the American composer-pianist’s own Lisztian lineage.

Disc Two’s Four Apparitions, Op.17 are followed by the extemporaneously tender Variations on a Theme of Hüttenbrenner, D576 by Franz Schubert. This unfamiliar set proves an ideal platform for Liebermann’s lyrical abilities at the keyboard. Next is Busoni’s Fantasia Contrappuntistica, BV256. Likening it to a “Mount Everest that he wanted to climb – a challenge in a way,” Liebermann’s affinity for Busoni is striking, with an audible reverence for the Italian master’s intellect and formalism on full display. 

Finally, the intimately benevolent Nocturne No.10, Op.99 ushers in a denouement. Highly personal for Liebermann, this music hums and swells, waxing poetic like a lucid conversation between lovers, revealing truths of a lifetime. Shades of Samuel Barber and Carl Vine drift in a dusky, sonic bloom as Liebermann’s piano now quietly sings this album to a whispered, nocturnal close. And so, what might the morrow bring, we wonder?

True Stories & Rational Numbers
Chris P. Thompson
Independent (chrispthompson.com)

New York-based percussionist Chris P. Thompson is a longtime member of Alarm Will Sound, the American Contemporary Music Ensemble and other groups. His album True Stories & Rational Numbers a nine-movement 43-minute work, however showcases him as composer and pianist. 

True Stories & Rational Numbers reflects Thompson’s large-scale exploration of piano music in just intonation, the tuning system based on tuning notes to simple mathematical ratios of the natural harmonic series. He also employs whole-number rhythmic and harmonic relationships in his score. Taken together, he likens listening to this music to having his “eyes re-opened to music and seeing it in colour for the first time.” was composed and programmed in modern piano roll notation, an extension of how 20th-century commercial piano rolls were made. Thompson’s main inspiration here was American composer Conlon Nancarrow’s boundary-pushing experimental player-piano compositions. Other influences were German scientist and philosopher Hermann von Helmholtz, the author of the landmark book, On the Sensations of Tone, and the music of Aphex Twin and modern drumline. The chamber music of Ben Johnston, which liberally employs unorthodox tunings, is cited as another important influence, as is Johnston’s elegant notations of just intonation.

Thompson states his goal in True Stories… was “to marry the machine with the warmth of human emotion…” Listening to it not only gradually reveals an unorthodox musical mind, but also what “in tune” in music is.

Listen to 'True Stories & Rational Numbers' Now in the Listening Room

Firefly Songs
Melia Watras
Planet M Records (meliawatras.com)

While we continue to endure the extended shutdowns and performance cancellations, there was a particular joy in discovering Melia Watras’ Firefly Songs. Listening to what feels like a personal diary of her inner thoughts, one could almost call this an album of accompanied poetry, yet it is so much more. At times deceivingly simple, more often there are complex musical pairings to thoughts, poems, literary references, inspirations and memories. American violist and composer Watras wrote these 13 individual pieces between 2015 and 2018 for combinations of violin, viola, cello and voices, and the flow of the album is both unique and comforting. 

Full of surprises, from the charming Mozart Doesn’t Live in Seattle to the trancelike tones and rhythms of overlapping voices in Seeing Cypresses with Catherine C, this is an album of singular gems as well as a complete collection. A work belying its complexity, Firefly Songs also stands strongly, piece by piece as beautifully expressed miniatures, each feeling free and spontaneous. Watras’ solo viola work, Lament, written for the passing of her father, expresses a delicate nuance of emotion delivered with depth and presence. In William Wilson, the complexities hidden between the lines of Edgar Allan Poe are beautifully unveiled both with voice and on the violin by Michael Jinsoo Lim. Lim also stands out in the operatic (one). It would be hard to pick a favourite from this box of gems, but Vetur öngum lánar liō (Winter aids no one) was the perfect accompaniment to my icy walks on the beach.

This collection would be enjoyable either in the suggested order or as random treats that would slip easily into any playlist.