Modern and Contemporary

David Lang – Composition as Explanation
Eighth Blackbird
Cedille CDR 90000 230 (cedillerecords.org/albums/composition-as-explanation)

This album is serious fun. As an adaptation of Gertrude Stein’s seminal 1926 lecture, David Lang’s multi-disciplinary work showcases the creative and technical prowess of this Pulitzer-prize winning composer. Adding to the marriage is the dedication to the work of Grammy-winning sextet Eight Blackbird, who bring us a solid performance of an interesting and dynamic work. And a performance it is, as the piece was written to be presented on stage, with the composer asking the musicians to be stage performers, to learn acting, diction and the art of theatre, to produce an integrated and seamless work. 

The lecture by the iconic Stein, Composition as Explanation, was a description of what she is doing in her writing. “…in her same repetitive, plainspoken and circular format that she uses in her writing…” (Lang). Lang paints the lecture’s writing as billboard-sized enactments, blurring the lines between text and performance, while also stretching the musicality of his writing to showcase the versatility, technical skill and group dynamics of Eighth Blackbird. Each track of the composition reads as a small chapter of the lecture, which includes nearly all of Stein’s writing word-for-word, and the complex music never overshadows the text. As an illustration of Stein’s work, it is a colourful, theatrical exposition, a larger-than-life performance allowing the listener to discover the lecture in more detail, giving it new meaning and relevance today. It is a work one would wish to see live, but the album does well to impart the flavour of a stage performance, and the album booklet’s inclusion of photos from the performance does well to set the scene.

New Music for Brass and Percussion
Metalofonico
New Focus Recordings FCR413 (newfocusrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/metalofonico)

What happens when you mix 16 brass players, seven percussionists, electric guitar and synthesizer? A sonic wallop, here courtesy of trumpeter Jon Nelson, University at Buffalo professor and his ensemble Metalofonico, named after Brazilian Dimas Sedicias’ rowdy, big-band dance piece, included in this CD. (Sedicias’ bluesy tuba solo, Raymond My Friend, played by Raymond Stewart, comes midway through the disc, a brief respite from the mostly clamorous goings-on.)

This newly-released CD was recorded back in 2001-2002. Responding to my email query, Nelson explained that it was originally manufactured in 2003 to serve as a limited-distribution promotional item – “I decided last year to put it out ‘for real’ in the hope of giving new life to the pieces.”

Four world-renowned composers are represented – Charles Ives’ From the Steeples and the Mountains, memorably evoking overlapping, reverberating church bells; Iannis Xenakis’ Khal Perr (Greek for “Walking Dance”), a kaleidoscopic compendium of percussion-braced sonorities; Milton Babbitt’s atonal, amorphous Fanfare for Double Brass Ensemble; Giovanni Gabrieli’s noble Canzona XXV, from the first golden age of brass.

The disc’s longest piece, Tom Pierson’s 11-minute Music for a Solemn Occasion, is predominantly slow and introspective. In marked contrast are Nelson’s pounding, jazz-rock Insomnio and his rollicking arrangement of Perez Prado’s 1950 hit, Mambo No.5, Brian McWhorter’s industrially pile-driving Lucre Iota and David Felder’s Two Tuttis – Incendio and Shredder, the latter, writes Felder, “meant to be ferocious fun.” There’s ferocity and fun aplenty on this CD.

Listen to 'New Music for Brass and Percussion' Now in the Listening Room

Scelsi – Integrals des quatuors a cordes; Trio a cordes
Quatuor Molinari
ATMA ACD2 2849 (atmaclassique.com/en/product/giacinto-scelsi-complete-string-quartets-and-string-trio)

Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi wrote some of the most sublime music of the past century. It’s also some of the most radical. He was notoriously secretive, even forbidding photos of himself.  Yet these string quartets, which span a forty-year period, are so personal that heard together they reveal much about this remarkable composer whose musical language was transformed by a profound spiritual awakening. 

This is the first complete recording of Scelsi’s five string quartets since the legendary Arditti Quartet’s from 1990. It’s a significant addition to the Montreal-based Molinari Quartet’s invaluable series of complete string quartets by key modern composers. The Molinari brings the precision and clarity required for the close listening Scelsi’s music demands, plus a contemplative soulfulness. ATMA’s stellar sound does the rest. 

You can already hear Scelsi pushing boundaries in the post-Schoenbergian String Quartet No.1 from 1944 – the gong effects, the pitch-bending. But after a devastating mental breakdown he came to reject its engaging rhythms, intricate counterpoint, complex harmony and delightful thematic developments.

 Immersing himself in theosophy and eastern religions, Scelsi spent months at the piano repeating one note over and over. He eventually switched to an Ondioline, an early electronic keyboard. It allowed him to explore the infinity of sounds contained in a single pitch through alterations like microtones, vibrato, glissandi and ostinato. The searing Trio from 1958 initiates his new language, a year before his acknowledged breakthrough work, Quattro Pezzi su una nota solo. 

 The more expansive Second Quartet followed two years later. There’s an especially thrilling passage which reveals the Molinari’s mastery of Scelsi’s strange and wonderful style when the heightened drama of the fourth movement resolves into the dreamy incantations of the last movement. He gave each of the five movements of the Third Quartet titles describing conflict, liberation and catharsis, though there’s more catharsis than conflict. In the more fraught Fourth Quartet the Molinari unfurls an enthralling sweep of colours and textures in a single movement. 

 The Fifth Quartet was Scelsi’s last major work. Distilled into seven transcendent minutes, it serves as a fitting memorial to this remarkable composer.

Listen to 'Scelsi: Integrals des quatuors a cordes; Trio a cordes' Now in the Listening Room

Gabriel Dharmoo – Vestiges d’une fable
Members of NACO; Gary Kulesha
Centrediscs CMCCD 34324 (cmccanada.org/shop/cmccd-34324)

Gabriel Dharmoo makes you laugh and then wonder if that was the right response, and then laugh again. So yes, it is fine to hear and feel the mirth behind the title track of his recent release: Vestiges d’une Fable (2014, current arrangement 2023) for voice (originally for soprano but here the composer’s own) with flute cello and piano. The musicians on the disc are select members of the National Arts Centre Orchestra, conducted by Gary Kulesha. The players are excellent, and Kulesha very capably marshals their forces. 

Dharmoo produces theatrical, evocative, even surreal music. Vestiges references his mocumentary performance piece Anthropolgies imaginaires, and the fog in our poise (2016) “evokes the ceremonial music of an imaginary culture” per the liner notes. Like the writer Jorge Luis Borges, Dharmoo posits alternate worlds from which to explore our own. His voice in Vestiges seems drawn from an alien cabaret, or one where the creatures we know sing text we can almost understand. The final track, sur les rives de (2011), gives us his impressions of the opposite and contrasting banks of the Ganges river. 

Moondaal Moondru (2010) at 18:10 is the substantial centre-weight of the disc, the piece comes in taut sections, with virtuosic outbursts sometimes punctuating a droning whine. Dharmoo lacks nothing in orchestrational skill, and his moods are clearly if unsettlingly depicted. There’s a roll and a rhythm to the music, and I suggest you move with the underlying pulse to best experience it.