Modern and Contemporary

Electroclarinet
Jean-Francois Charles
Independent (electroclarinet.com)

I must say it’s refreshing to consider a CD that includes a poem instead of traditional liner notes. The untitled poem written in French, by Alice Gervais-Ragu, seems to refer specifically to the beast that is the clarinet (most especially the contrabass and the basset). Jean-François Charles has tamed these hounds, the whole pack in fact, who wag their tails with delight on this disc.

Clarinetist and composer Charles, whose series of six pieces titled ElectroClarinet make up the bulk of the disc, gives no other accounting for his work than the audible evidence: Ten tracks, recorded in Iowa City over a two-day period roughly one year ago. His métier is acoustic instrument with live electronics. He grapples with every member of the broad range of horns, from contrabass (an octave below the bass clarinet), through bass, basset horn, A, B-flat, and E-flat. Electroclarinet 1 dates from 2009; the latest and longest, Electroclarinet6, from 2014. The four in between are subtitled as Homage to… (in order) Debussy, Weber, Messiaen and Stravinsky.

Delays, reverb, and a variety of granulating effects create soundscapes distinctly unclarinet-like. Anyone so inclined is welcome to delve into how the homages relate to the various composers and the works they notably added to the repertoire. (There’s something reminiscent of L’Abyme des Oiseaux in number four and flat-out quotes from Stravinsky’s Three Pieces in number five.) I recommend putting these on and enjoying the path to wherever the pooch wants to go.

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Toshio Hosokawa – Orchestral Works 3
Basque National Orchestra; Jun Markl
Naxos 8.573733 (naxosdirect.com/items/toshio-hosokawa-meditation-nach-dem-sturm-klage-448889)

Multiple award-winning Japanese contemporary classical composer Toshio Hosokawa (b.1955) has built an illustrious career rooted in both his Japanese birthplace and in European, particularly German, musical culture. Those bicultural influences, drawing on Schubertian lyricism and Webernian tone colouring, are seamlessly integrated with intrinsically Japanese musical, theatrical, aesthetic and spiritual elements.

Hosokawa has stated his philosophical goal was to give “musical expression to the notion of a beauty that has grown from transience. … We hear the individual notes and appreciate at the same time the process of how the notes are born and die: a sound landscape of continual ‘becoming’ that is animated in itself.”

His orchestral triptych Meditation, Nach dem Sturm, and Klage forms the heart of this album. It is Hosokawa’s personal and theatrical – in some places near cinematic – response to the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. While Meditation mourns the many victims of that tragedy, Nach dem Sturm invokes oceanic turbulent darkness.

I find Klage the most moving and musically convincing. Based on a poem and fragments of letters by Austrian poet Georg Trakl (1887-1914), Klage rages against human life taken by the ocean. Haunting images in the lyrics – a shattered body, lamenting dark voices, a lonely boat sinking in stormy seas under “unblinking stars” – are reflected in the music.

Hosokawa masterfully unleashes the full power of the contemporary symphony orchestra in Klage. It’s underscored by the emotional power of the female voice, here eloquently rendered by mezzo-soprano Mihoko Fujimura, which serves as the work’s consoling mother figure.

Global Sirens
Christina Petrowska Quilico
Fleur de Son FDS58046 (naxosdirect.com/items/global-sirens-473518)

The last Classical & Beyond beat column I wrote for The WholeNote (October 2013 issue) was titled “Let’s Hear It for the Women!” Now, five years later, I am pleased to be reviewing Global Sirens, released last month by the exceptional (and exceptionally busy) Canadian pianist and educator, Christina Petrowska Quilico, and featuring works by 15 women composers, some known, most essentially neglected. Several were born around the turn of the last century; a few are still composing today.

As the title suggests, the 15 composers – I’m about to give them their due and name them all – hail from all over the globe: Germany (Ilse Fromm-Michaels, Else Schmitz-Gohr, Lotte Backes, Barbara Heller, Susanne Erding); France (Lili Boulanger, Cécile Chaminade, Germaine Tailleferre); Italy (Ada Gentile); Canada (Larysa Kuzmenko); USA (Meredith Monk, Adaline Shepherd); Australia (Peggy Glanville-Hicks); South Africa (Priaulx Rainer); and Russia (Sophie-Carmen Eckhardt-Gramatté, who lived in Winnipeg the last 20 years of her life). Some had fathers who forbade or discouraged their musical pursuits; others were expected to give up composing once married. And because her husband was Jewish, the Nazis banned performances of works by Fromm-Michaels.

Petrowska Quilico covers a lot of ground over the CD’s 19 tracks, from Chaminade’s rich and romantic Méditation and Schmitz-Gohr’s lovely Elegie for the Left Hand to Backes’ jazzy, Debussyesque Slow and Kuzmenko’s haunting and evocative Mysterious Summer Night. And then there’s Shepherd’s delightful Wireless Rag, yup, an honest-to-goodness rag.

Let’s hear it for Christina Petrowska Quilico, champion of women composers!

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Frank Horvat – For Those Who Died Trying
Mivos Quartet
ATMA ACD2 2788 (atmaclassique.com/En/Albums/AlbumInfo.aspx?AlbumID=1618)

It is impossible to escape Frank Horvat’s mystical hypothesis that music is somehow part of all human DNA. It is also a testament to the genius of Horvat that he is able to craft this into each segment of this unique 35-movement string quartet so that each so comes poignantly alive with the personality of 35 Thai environmentalists and human rights warriors who died in the act of defending the truth. The magical experience magnifies exponentially as one is struck by the fact that the inspiration for all of this is, further, inspired by a visual essay created by photographer Luke Duggleby titled For Those Who Died Trying.

Both Horvat and Duggleby have been transformed by the senseless murders of the 35 Human Rights Defenders (HRDs). The portraits of the HRDs made by the photographer are starkly unglamorous images of each defender. The musical resurrections are Horvat’s as he melds the story of each life and death, using a unique melodic language in which the poignant sense of humanity and tragic loss is never far from the surface of each piece.

The Mivos Quartet, a unique string ensemble, responds brilliantly to this music. There’s a strong sense, in each of the 35 sections, of the quartet functioning like actors in some powerful tragedy. Each musician, solo and in ensemble, controls his forces with an unfailing sense of the right emphasis and the right moment together to deliver performances of affecting power.

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