Modern and Contemporary

Awake and Dreaming – Music of Alice Ping Yee Ho
Katherine Dowling
Independent (katherinedowling.com)

In her first solo album, pianist Katherine Dowling presents music by Chinese-Canadian composer Alice Ping Yee Ho. Colourful and dynamic, Ho’s writing makes impressive use of the piano’s resources, including some imaginative strumming and plucking of strings, and Dowling relishes the significant technical and interpretive demands of these works with assurance. Dowling has a keen ear for texture and colour, but also an impassioned – even impulsive – sense of forward momentum and line.  

Inspired by Dali, the album’s opening work, Aeon (2012), provides a good sense of Ho’s piano writing as a dramatic and resonant slow introduction leads into a brilliant and driving toccata. Dowling’s characterization of the non-stop passagework is impressive. The most recent work on the album, There is no night without a dawning (2023) was commissioned by Dowling herself for this recording. An elegiac, meditative beginning works up to an agitated climax featuring ringing chords and trills. The album’s emotional high point is The Weeping Woman (2022), inspired by a series of portraits by Picasso. Dowling movingly captures the work’s depiction of the suffering of war, ranging from hushed mystery to searing intensity. Lighter, more playful moods are explored in shorter works such as the scherzo-like Fire of Imagination (1991) and Cyclone (1994), a repeated-note toccata.   

Recorded at the Polaris Centre in Calgary in a resonant but detailed acoustic, Katherine Dowling’s portrait of Ho is an impressive achievement. Her extensive experience with and commitment to contemporary music results in authoritative interpretations, underlining both the drama and the atmosphere of Ho’s piano writing. Highly recommended for anyone interested in contemporary piano music, and the chance to hear music by one of Canada’s most acclaimed composers in compelling and virtuosic performances.

Listen to 'Awake and Dreaming: Music of Alice Ping Yee Ho' Now in the Listening Room

landscapes of memory – solo piano music by Emilie Cecilia LeBel
Wesley Shen; Luciane Cardassi
Redshift Records TK551 (redshiftmusicsociety.bandcamp.com/album/landscapes-of-memory)

Alberta-based Canadian composer Emilie Cecilia LeBel’s landscapes of memory features her subtle, delicate compositional style in two solo piano works with extensions. Both are over 30 minutes in length, inspired by nature, and each is performed by the work’s commissioner. A distinct highlight is LeBel’s use of EBows, electromagnetic exciters which are commonly used on electric guitars. The E-Bow is placed inside the piano causing the strings it is put on to create a continuous vibrating drone effect dependent on the pianist’s articulation, volume and tempo.

Toronto pianist Wesley Shen performs ghost geography (2022) which is inspired by the North Saskatchewan River. This is slow, very hypnotic and reflective, using a wide piano range with a repeated held chord, higher interspersed notes, ascending single notes and low tones blending with one continuous quasi-background drone. Especially moving is how the ends of the piano held notes blend with the drone sound.

Brazilian-Canadian pianist Luciane Cardassi performs the five-movement pale forms in uncommon light (2023) which is inspired by the Montane ecoregion in Alberta and its filtering light patterns through trees. The middle register positioned EBow drone is louder throughout, moving string position with each movement. Alternating low, mid-range and high piano notes against the mid-pitched drone creates a shimmer effect.

Both pianists perform brilliantly, effortlessly combining each composition’s inherent texture, resonance and tone colour with the drone. The unique hypnotic slower tempos, chromatic harmonics, held notes and drones are worth the possibly challenging listen.

Kaleidoscope – Contemporary Piano Music by Female Composers from Around the World
Isabel Dobarro
Grand Piano GP944 (naxos.com/CatalogueDetail/?id=GP944)

The Spanish pianist Isabel Dobarro has long championed music by contemporary female composers. Born in Santiago de Compostela in 1992, she studied at the Madrid Royal Conservatory and has been a prize-winner in several competitions. While she has frequently taken part in premieres, this recording, titled Kaleidoscope and featuring the music of 12 female composers all born between 1943 and 1996 is even further proof of her commitment to modern music. The names are perhaps unfamiliar to the average listener and come from different backgrounds, but all are composersDobarro particularly admires for their individualism. 

These compositions may have been written during the last 25 years, but there is little of the avant-garde here; instead, a decidedly neo-Romantic flavour pervades the program, which is marked by contrasts. The disc opens with the languorous Nocturne by the Grammy-nominated Bulgarian composer Dobrinka Tabakova – do I hear echoes of Rachmaninov? Very different in style is the Estudio 3 by Gabriela Ortiz, an angular perpetuum mobile composed in 2007. While Nkeiru Okoye’s Dusk and Suad Bushnak’s Improvisation are quietly introspective, Tania Léon’s Tumbao is all frenetic energy.

Clearly, Dobarro has a deep love for this repertoire. She truly makes these works come alive, combining a sense of tonal warmth with a fine resonance, while demonstrating a flawless technique in the more demanding compositions. At almost 14 minutes, the lengthiest piece on the program is Gustav le Grey by the American Grammy and Pulitzer Prize winner Caroline Shaw. Just as Tabakova’s Nocturne harkens back to Rachmaninov, this piece is more than a nod to Chopin in its quasi-extemporary style and use of mazurka-type rhythms.

Kaleidoscope is aptly titled - a fine performance of engaging music by 12 living female composers whose works deserve greater

Passages
Blackwood
Sanctuary Concerts (jeffreilly.bandcamp.com/album/passages)

For over 25 years, the Canadian instrumental duo Blackwood has performed their lyrical music touching on jazz, classical, improvisation, minimalism and contemporary soundscapes. Talented musicians/improvisors/composers Peter-Anthony Togni (pipe organ/piano) and Jeff Reilly (bass clarinet) work closely together “inspired by plainchant, improvisation and holy minimalism.” Passages features Togni on three different Atlantic Canada pipe organs, and Reilly on bass clarinet in three Togni, and two Togni and Reilly compositions. They are joined by special guest cellist India Gailey on two tracks. 

Togni/Reilly’s Passages is a colourful accessible duet. Repeated lower organ notes form an accompaniment to a glamorous bass clarinet  melody.  The piece builds much louder and then, after a a short silence, birdlike clarinet sounds and organ flourishes are enchanting. Togni’s multi-sectional Benedicite (To Alison Howard) opens with Gailey’s calming cello lines above organ sounds. A short silent break is followed by reflective slow clarinet and cello conversations above organ held notes. It makes for gratifying listening as organ chordal modulations, lyrical cello melody, clarinet flourishes and organ volume builds to another silent break. The next “orchestral” section is highlighted by lyrical cello and clarinet lines to an intriguing closing low organ stop. There are mysterious cello and clarinet lines, cello slides, hilarious low clarinet notes and held organ notes in Togni’s To Look Out Beyond Oneself. Togni’s duet Silentio features contrasting lower clarinet below higher organ notes. Togni/Reilly’s Feathery Spirit is mood-lifting, subtle jazz flavoured with slow/fast bass clarinet, and loud wide-ranging pitched organ. 

Blackwood performs their musical sections as one, creating calming, mesmerizing music.