Modern and Contemporary

John Robertson – Portraits
Bratislava Symphony Orchestra; Anthony Armore
Centrediscs CMCCD32623 (cmccanada.org/product-category/recordings/centrediscs)

Kingston-based John Robertson (b.1943) creates colourfully scored, neo-Romantic music that succeeds in sounding freshly minted, avoiding Hollywood clichés or borrowings from other composers. This CD presents six pieces, all but one under 12 minutes long.

Overture for a Musical Comedy, Op.15 evokes, for me, the song-and-dance of a 1930s cabaret. Salome Dances, Op.32 is more subtly suggestive of that legendary unveiling than Richard Strauss’ frenetic version. Cyrano, Op.53 affectionately depicts scenes of love and strife from Edmond Rostand’s classic play.

The Death of Crowe, Op.30 describes an episode in Timothy Findlay’s novel Not Wanted on the Voyage in which Mrs. Noah laments the death of her blind cat’s dear friend. The music is fanciful and poignantly lyrical, featuring an extended clarinet solo wandering over repeated descending strings. The melancholy, perturbed Overture to Robertson’s ballet Lady Jane – A Fable, Op.66 includes, writes Robertson, “various themes that will be heard later in the work.”

The 31-minute, six-movement Suite from Robertson’s opera Orpheus – A Masque, Op.64 suggests that his take on the familiar myth is closer in spirit to that of the irreverent Offenbach than to Monteverdi or Gluck, its insouciant lack of gravitas offsetting the tender beauty of Orpheus’ and Euridice’s love music. (The rocking, bittersweet waltz tune of Dancing in the Elysian Fields has become, for me, a recurrent, invigorating earworm!)

Anthony Armoré, conductor of four CDs of Robertson’s compositions on the Navona label, continues to champion Robertson’s music with enthusiasm, entirely merited.

All we are made of is borrowed
Paramorph Collective
Redshift Records TK534 (redshiftrecords.org)

Montreal-Ottawa musicians and multidisciplinary artists, An Laurence (guitar, voice, etc.) and Kim Farris-Manning (piano, voice, synthesizer, etc.), comprise the Paramorph Collective. “Paramorph” in mineralogy refers to the process of transformation of a mineral through the reorganization of its molecular structure only. Analogously, the collective aims to transform itself and its audience through “rearranging inner feelings or thoughts… seeking new perspectives.” The Collective’s nine-track debut album All we’re made of is borrowed shows the duo in twin roles: music creators and performers of scores by Canadian composers Rodney Sharman and Linda C Smith, and California-based Margot George. 

Smith’s remarkable Thought and Desire is an engaging piano solo until 3’45” when the pianist begins singing in her soft soprano. At that moment the piano’s identity suddenly shifts, its role thereafter is to accompany. It’s a delightful perceptual shift for listeners. Four of the tracks are original works by the Collective, evoking an overall peaceful, soft and layered aesthetic space through spoken word, electronics and guitar-supported song. Margot George’s rousing Fruiting Bodies forms the album’s centerpiece. Farris-Manning’s custom-built organ synthesizer’s sustained chords are animated by Laurence’s crashing electric guitar clusters and sustained single tones. This 21-minute commission presents dichotomic extremes: of sound pressure and distortion, sustained keyboard vs plucked strings – counterpointed by shimmering stacked organ chords evoking ecclesiastical regions.

The album notes ask listeners to reflect on the title – All we’re made of is borrowed – and to hold onto “the time we have left as medicine.”

Live in Toronto
Spindle Ensemble; Evergreen Club Gamelan Ensemble
Hidden Notes (spindleensemble.bandcamp.com/album/live-in-toronto)

Live in Toronto, the 2022 collaboration between the seven-musician Toronto group Evergreen Club Contemporary Gamelan and the UK Spindle Ensemble (violin, cello, piano, marimba), is nothing short of captivating.

Spindle pianist Daniel Inzani’s composition Lucid Living firmly establishes ECCG’s degung gamelan voice, amplified by Spindle’s tight harmonies. Evoking monochrome hues of early morning light, the musical palette is enhanced with the addition of Spindle’s marimba and piano before opening into full daylight. Inzani’s music took me on an impressionistic Joycean journey.

Orpheus by Spindle’s Harriet Riley begins as an homage to Stravinsky’s ballet of the same name. Its Western roots however soon give way to ECCG’s Southeast Asian tones, reminding me of American composer Lou Harrison’s gamelan-centric approach in some of his works. Riley found exquisite ways to blend the 11 instruments at her disposal: the strings (violin and cello) overlap ECCG’s wind (suling, a ring flute) making for an enchanting sonic exchange.

ECCG suling soloist Andrew Timar’s composition Open Fifths: Gardens takes us to the EP’s summit, a work featuring complexity of a kind I associate with the best modal jazz improvisation. The performers play off one another with a sensitivity that finds the fruitful common ground between the musical worlds the two ensembles inhabit. When Timar’s low-sounding suling gambuh invites the cello into the conversation we witness an unanticipated aural blending and the unfolding sound palette celebrates all the voices present.

My only question lies in Open Fifths’ ending. The suspended silence before the last note – reminiscent of a certain Chopin piano Prelude in E Minor – caught me off guard. Open Fifths, like the rest of this EP, is filled with happy surprises.

Composing Israel – The First Three Generations
Various Artists
Neuma 177 (neumarecords.org)

Ten compositions spanning six decades present an overview of “the first three generations” of Israeli composers, variously performed by 24 musicians including members of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and five different pianists.

Toccata, Op.34, No.5 for piano (1943) is a wild, whirlwind dance by Paul Ben-Haim (né Paul Frankenburger, 1897-1984), a German refugee who helped found the “Eastern-Mediterranean School” of Israeli composition. German refugee Tzvi Avni (né Hermann Steinke, b.1927) studied with Ben-Haim and dedicated his Capriccio for piano (1955, rev.1975) to his mentor. Like Toccata, it embraces the volatile rhythms of Middle-Eastern music.

Arabesque No.2 for flute and harp (1973) by Ben-Haim student Ami Maayani (1936-2019) mixes Arabic rhythms with glissandi suggesting quarter-tones in its exultation of exoticism. Bashrav for chamber orchestra (2004) by Betty Olivero (b.1954), based on classic Persian music, while clearly Middle-Eastern in mood and materials, is less “folkish,” filled with explosive bursts and sudden silences.

I enjoyed all these much more than the non-Middle-Eastern-sounding piano pieces by Abel Ehrlich (1915-2003), Arie Shapira (1943-2015) and Ari Ben-Shabetai (b.1954) or the electronic collage of Bedouin children speaking by Tsippi Fleischer (b.1946), all dating from the 1980s.

In the 19-minute Wire for soprano and chamber ensemble (1986) by Oded Zehavi (b.1961), Denise Lundine keens a Hebrew poem, her “voice crying in the wilderness” over bursting percussion, the French horn emulating liturgical shofar (ram’s horn) elephantine trumpetings making this, by far the CD’s longest work, also its most “Jewish.”

Listen to 'Composing Israel: The First Three Generations' Now in the Listening Room