Modern and Contemporary

Sean Friar – Before and After
NOW Ensemble
New Amsterdam (newamrecords.com)

Maybe all art has ever been able to offer is solace. NOW Ensemble’s newest release, Before and After, is the compositional work of Sean Friar. His big ideas concern the rise and fall of human civilization, the tininess of our individual lives, perhaps the meaninglessness of it all? And yet, here are these beautifully crafted pieces that we can immerse our ears into and forget – or release – our grief.

Tracks one and two run together: Chant establishing a kind of jangling consonance, and Frontier fracturing it before subsiding into unison resignation. Spread repeats a manic cadential figure plucked on electric guitar? or inside the piano?: an ostinato that underlies the spread of melodic efforts to find a home. 

This extemporal description is in keeping with the creative impetus of the work. Developed from improvised fragments, Friar sent his ideas as sketches to the performers in 2017; they each fleshed them out and over the intervening period performed various versions. The process culminated in this recording, made pre-pandemic (lest anyone think Spread is a reference to COVID). 

These first three tracks are followed by five more. Sweetly keening, Cradle links with Artifact in a way reminiscent of the first two tracks, although Artifact is much shorter; in turn it segues directly into the pop-happy Rally. Solo is, oddly a work for several voices, but perhaps it’s about the loneliness of facing certain existential truths. Not to be a downer, but the final haunting track is called Done Deal.

Ourself Behind Ourself, Concealed
Tasha Warren; Dave Eggar
Bright Shiny Things (brightshiny.ninja)

A line from the ever-elliptic Emily Dickinson’s poetry provides the title for this new release of various works commissioned by clarinetist Tasha Warren and composer/cellist Dave Eggar.

It’s hard to give this disc its due, on account of the similarly dark and perhaps overlong nature of the opening selections. 

The producers might’ve done better to reorder the tracks. The latter three are the strongest: not so deadly in earnest, more concise and jaunty. Maybe I’m worn out by the entire “responses to the pandemic” genre I’ve been touting lately, or by moroseness in general. Lalin (Haitian Creole for La Lune) by Nathalie Joachim, opens with a nocturne, then continues into a pointillist dancing depiction of the composer’s Haitian home. Phantasmagoria by Meg Okura (who joins the ensemble on violin) and Snapshots by Pascal Le Boeuf (joining on piano) also get the blood moving through the veins, with some decidedly upbeat character; I detect some Joni Mitchell in Snapshots. The duo benefits greatly by both composers’ energetic performances. 

Paquito D’Rivera’s African Tales opens proceedings. Purporting to move through musical landscapes of that vast continent, Rivera avoids overt references and recognizable styles. A soliloquy for bass clarinet leads to Eggar’s first entry; the two travel in tandem before dividing tasks. I hear influences of Donatoni and Messiaen.

Cornelius Boots’ Crow Cavern, and Black Mountain Calling by Martha Redbone, come next. By turns angry and sombre, and at nine minutes each (similar in length to African Tales), they stretch one’s patience. Interesting pieces, but the D’Rivera is a tough act to follow. 

Close miking provides lots of key noise, reed hiss, bow hair, finger pluck. The two principals seem to focus on extremes of expression, not on getting everything pristine, which is refreshing.

Jānis Ivanovs – Symphonies 15 & 16
Latvian National Symphony Orchestra; Guntis Kuzma
LMIC SKANI 126 (skani.lv)

I’d never heard any of the 21 symphonies by Latvian composer Jānis Ivanovs (1906-1983) before listening to the two on this CD, each lasting about half an hour, both filled with dark sonorities, propulsive energy and clamorous dissonances.

 Violence and disaster dominate Ivanovs’ Symphony No.15 in B-flat Minor (1972), subtitled “Symphonia Ipsa.” In the opening Moderato, quiet, tentative apprehension is suddenly shattered by brutal explosions. Heated struggle ensues in the Molto allegro’s agitated, snarling rhythms and desperate pleading. The grim, mournful Molto andante (Adagio) conjures, for me, a desolate battlefield strewn with bodies; brief, snide, sardonic phrases seemingly comment on the absurd futility of the preceding bloodshed. Nevertheless, martial mayhem returns in the Moderato. Allegro with cacophonous fanfares and pounding percussion before the symphony ends in a slow, ghostly procession.

Restless, fluctuating moods pervade Ivanovs’ Symphony No.16 in E-flat Major (1974), perhaps memorializing the victims of No.15. In the Moderato. Allegro moderato, gloomy, throbbing despair, sinister foreboding and dissonant shrieks are intermittently relieved by unexpected, hymn-like concordances and even touches of Sibelius. The Allegro busily churns with mechanized rhythms leading to the distressed Andante. Pesante. Here, dispirited resignation turns into anger and determined resistance until a gentle bassoon solo intones consolation. The Allegro moderato drives relentlessly to a strident triumphal chorale, ending in a simple major chord, the first happy moment on this CD.

Powerful music powerfully performed by conductor Guntis Kuzma and the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra.

Gail Kubik – Symphony Concertante
Boston Modern Orchestra Project; Gil Rose
BMOP Sound 1085 (bmop.org)

Three members of the Little Orchestra Society of New York were pestering conductor Thomas Scherman for solo opportunities, so Scherman commissioned Oklahoma-born Gail Kubik (1914-1984) for a work that would “kill three birds with one stone.” Using his trademark mix of Stravinskian neo-classicism, Coplandesque Americana, Hollywood and jazz, Kubik drew from his 1949 score for C-Man, a crime-caper B-movie, for the 1952 Pulitzer Prize-winning Symphony Concertante for Trumpet, Viola, Piano and Orchestra. The brightly orchestrated first movement is filled with fragmented melodies and snappy syncopations. In the middle movement, uncomfortably shifting tonal centres reinforce the viola and muted trumpet’s long-lined desperation over thumping piano chords. A jazzy rondo features the solo instruments taking turns in the spotlight before the work ends with a raucous orchestral blast.

Gerald McBoing Boing (1950), based on Dr. Seuss’ story about a boy who “couldn’t speak but made noises instead,” won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short. Unusually, Kubik composed his 13-minute, percussion-heavy score before the visuals were created to fit the music and narration, here provided by Frank Kelley.

Both Kubik’s five-movement, 15-minute Divertimento No.1 (1959), scored for 13 players, and his six-movement, ten-minute Divertimento No.2 (1958), requiring only eight players, are predominantly perky, with movements including Humoresque, Burlesque, Dance Toccata and Scherzino (Puppet Show). Seascape (in No.1) and Dialogue (in No.2) offer some pleasing breathing space. It’s all persuasively performed by conductor Gil Rose and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. Entertaining throughout!

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