Modern and Contemporary

Michael Hersch – Last Autumn
Jamie Hersch; Daniel Gaisford
Innova 907 (michaelhersch.com)

Michael Hersch is a composer who has experienced considerable success from an early age. He won first prize in the Concordia American Composers Awards, one of the youngest composers to be awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in music, and a Rome Prize recipient, all in his 20s. Due to this early success, many orchestras began to regularly commission Hersch which led to an impressive catalogue of large ensemble words. In recent years however, the composer has shifted to compositions for smaller forces that are comprised of increasingly expansive forms. The music of Last Autumn is no exception. Scored for cello and horn, the piece consists of 41 movements lasting nearly two hours. While this seems like an impossible instrumental combination to maintain a level of interest necessary over two hours, Hersch, on the contrary, has composed an endlessly impressive collection of moods and textures for the two instruments. Inspired by classical dance forms and the poetry of W.G. Sebald, each movement occupies a unique sound world ranging from the pungent and monumental to the beautifully stagnant and fragile. Many of the movements are violent entryways into small forms with unified gestures. Various solo interludes are wonderful examples of how the composer is able to successfully transfer the essence of the chosen poetry into impressive sonic journeys. Much of the music in the piece is violent and extreme while maintaining a mysterious clarity. The careful interplay between the horn and cello begins to fashion a connective tissue that stabilizes the miniature sound worlds throughout each movement. Perhaps the most impressive writing is for the cello, a feature of the piece that is undoubtedly aided by the fact that the horn player is the composer's brother Jamie Hersch. This impressive set of miniatures is an ideal listening experience for those seeking truly novel sonic experiments within a modernist approach.

20th-Century Women Composers
Trio des Alpes; Lorna Windsor
Dynamic DCS 7717

This is inspired programming, with the works on this disc thoroughly complementing each other. All three composers represented here were born within a quarter-century of each other. They each write in an expressive style that marks the transition from romanticism to modernism. None are musical innovators. But as women, they are rightly regarded as pioneers today.

Amy Beach, who was born in Boston in 1867, is the most well-known composer here. Her Trio for violin, cello and piano is a complex, virtuosic work, which ends with a memorable flourish. Swiss soprano Lorna Windsor’s performance of four art songs are engaging enough to make me want to explore more of Beach’s enormous song repertoire.

English composer and violist Rebecca Clarke enjoyed what she called her “one whiff of success” when she introduced her Viola Sonata in 1919, and then, soon after, this lovely Trio. Flamboyant, intense, driven, this is an exciting work, especially as performed by the Swiss-based Trio des Alpes.

The youngest composer here, Frenchwoman Lili Boulanger (sister of the influential teacher and composer Nadia), was only 25 when she died in 1918. The Trio des Alpes brings out the moody expressivity of her two contrasting pieces for piano trio, the first, D’un soir triste, plaintive, the second, D’un matin de printemps, exuberant.

These fine pieces are too rarely heard, making this thoroughly enjoyable disc particularly significant.

Shostakovich – Piano Quintet;
String Quartet No.2
Takács Quartet; Marc-André Hamelin
Hyperion CDA67987

This recording of Shostakovich’s chamber works is an absolute delight – hauntingly beautiful, insightful and, above all, highly sentient to the mix of turmoil and soaring of Shostakovich’s life as expressed through his music. Chamber music was perceived as an act of bourgeois elitism in Stalin’s Soviet Union, even though it was precisely the form that allowed the most intimate connections between composer, musicians and their audience. So it is no surprise that Shostakovich composed eight symphonies before his second string quartet was premiered in 1944. Interestingly enough, 13 more string quartets followed in rapid succession.

String Quartet No.2 in A Major shows little connection to the stormy events of the Second World War (as opposed to his symphonies), appearing to be much more personal. It was composed in a mere 19 days and includes wonderful folk melodies, syncopated rhythms and minor modes of Gypsy/Jewish inflections. The Takács Quartet’s playing is robust and energetic in the first movement and deeply touching in the Recitative, where violin improvisatory lamentations are supported by the rest of the ensemble playing soft seventh chords. Outstanding solos are intercepted with close-knit ensemble sound in the third and fourth movements, which end majestically yet uncharacteristically in the minor key.

The Piano Quintet in G Minor premiered in 1940, becoming one of the most beloved piano quintets of all time. It contains five movements, with the emotional tension peaking in the ethereal Intermezzo and ending with a cleverly innocent Finale. Pianist Marc-André Hamelin is dominantly powerful in percussive sections while adding sublime textures to the ensemble sound in contemplative parts. Highly recommended.

UK DK
Michala Petri; Mahan Esfahani
OUR Recordings 6.220611

Another offering from Danish recorder player Michala Petri’s own label, this disc serves up a smorgasbord of modern-era music from Denmark and Britain, played by Petri and Tehran-born, London-based harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani. It’s to be much appreciated that Petri remains so committed to the commissioning, performance and recording of new works for the recorder.

Off the top, Malcolm Arnold’s Sonatina reveals the interpretive unity and precise ensemble which make this such a successful duo, and the six little movements of Benjamin Britten’s Alpine Suite receive the best performance they’ve probably ever had. Gordon Jacob’s Sonatina and Encore are quite beautiful, but marred a little by some pungent tuning on the alto recorder. (That said, when Petri plays at blistering speed or sings a counter melody along with herself, she’s right on the Cleartune money.)

Given the title of Henning Christiansen’s piece – It’s Spring – one might expect the recorder to be typecast in its centuries-old role of bird imitator par excellence; and indeed it is, with the addition of some harpsichord bumblebee imitation. The aleatoric, post-modern angst of Daniel Kidane’s Tourbillon and Axel Børup-Jørgensen’s Fantasia provide a different mood and are very welcome here. Along with Vagn Holmboe’s Sonata, they also strike a more equal musical partnership between the two instruments than much of the other music. Mahan Esfahani’s playing is a real delight and I find it a little sad that the harpsichord parts here don’t all make better use of him.