New Classical, Part 2

PS Audio · Nov 7, 2013

And here we are: Son of Grab Drawer, or part 2 of our quarterly roundup of good new classical recordings.
Two from ECM
Is there anyone on the planet who hasn’t fallen in love with at least one of Manfred Eicher’s ECM recordings? This venerable German producer has built one of the great boutique labels by hewing to a fiercely independent aesthetic. The look and sound of an ECM recording are unmistakable. You may have to live with some of his discs for a while, but eventually their music gets right into your bones—as with two recent offerings in the ECM New Series.
The one that’s easy to recommend is Dobrinka Tabakova: String Paths (ECM 2239). Tabakova, born in Plovdiv, Bulgaria in 1980, studied in Britain and now works out of London. She has written music for Janine Jansen, Maxim Rysanov, and Kristina Blaumane, all virtuoso string players active there and abroad. This new album presents that music and showcases their talents. Listen, for instance, to Insight, featuring Roman Mints (violin), Rysanov (viola), and Blaumane (cello).
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Intense yet sweet, it literally fills the room with the sound of three passionate performers. Or consider the slow movement of the Concerto for Cello and Strings, written for Blaumane, who is now principal cellist of the London Philharmonic:
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Tabakova has absorbed many sorts of influences, from the Brahms and Schubert LPs her grandfather played to concert performances of Gershwin, Kancheli, Gubaidulina, and John Adams she heard as a student. She’s equally open, she says, to Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concerto and to “mountain music,” whether it’s from Appalachia or the Rhodopes of her native Bulgaria. That same unforced, integrated aesthetic makes itself heard in the music on this album. Strongly recommended!
<a href="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Tabakova_2.jpg"><img class="alignright wp-image-12255" alt="Tabakova 2 New Classical, Part 2" src="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Tabakova_2.jpg" width="293" height="270" title="New Classical, Part 2" /></a>
Then there’s ECM 2283, consisting of exactly one 51-minute track, Morton Feldman’s Violin and Orchestra. I have always loved the music of Morton Feldman (1926–1987). Or at least I always loved the ideas in Feldman’s music, and often the sounds themselves. He was one of the great figures of the New York avant-garde in the 1950s and ‘60s, working alongside John Cage, Earle Brown, and Christian Wolff, deeply drawn to the visual art of Kline, De Kooning, Pollock, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rothko_Chapel#Paintings" target="_blank">Rothko</a>. If you’ve ever heard Feldman’s music, which is often very quiet, slow, repetitive, and consciously simple, you’ll understand his impact on the Minimalists, e.g., Glass and Reich.
But he was not one of them. Nor was he a Cage clone. He was Morton Feldman. Late in his life he started writing very long works. His first string quartet, composed for the Kronos Quartet in 1979, lasted for 100 minutes. In 1983 he wrote another quartet that takes up to six hours to play. So, at 50 minutes Violin and Orchestra (1979) is relatively brief. But for both performer and listener it takes patience and dedication. Listen:
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Even if you sense that this music will someday speak to you, it may take some practice. Fortunately it has been rendered in a near-ideal way here by violinist Carolin Widmann and the Frankfurt Radio SO, Emilio Pomàrico conducting. The soundstage of the recording is gratifyingly deep and wide.
<a href="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Feldman_2.jpg"><img class="alignright wp-image-12248" alt="Feldman 2 New Classical, Part 2" src="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Feldman_2.jpg" width="304" height="285" title="New Classical, Part 2" /></a>
Two from Sono Luminus
I’ve been waiting far too long to say a few words about three recent releases from the company that rose from the ashes of Dorian. Like Dorian, Sono Luminus includes some great early-music performers on its roster. It also features cutting-edge sound; many recent releases arrive in double-disc packages with your choice of Redbook CD or Blu-ray audio in three 24-bit formats.
<a href="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Io_Vidi_3.jpg"><img class="alignright wp-image-12262" alt="Io Vidi 3 New Classical, Part 2" src="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Io_Vidi_3.jpg" width="288" height="288" title="New Classical, Part 2" /></a>
Good stuff, too. My current favorite is Io Vidi in Terra, a collection of 17th-century Italian song from countertenor José Lemos, accompanied by harpsichordist Jory Vinikour and lutenist Deborah Fox (DSL-92172). I realize that this sounds like esoteric territory—trust me, it’s warmly engaging music that touches on the most basic human emotions. And these people fully inhabit (not “inhibit,” as one of my students wrote last week) that space. Listen:
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I burn, wretched, but nobody sees, nobody cares. Yes, I burn, but there is one who is protected from my fire. Alas, strange, unhappy fate, beneath a snowy bosom lies an icy heart.
Pale and only half-alive, ever do I groan, for the laments of my afflicted and tortured heart bring joy and delight to my beloved.
Almost as much fun is a collection, Nine Notes that Shook the World, from lutenist Ronn McFarlane and flutist/piper/fifer Mindy Rosenfeld (DSL-92169). Don’t let the wildly hyperbolic title throw you off. This is a fine collection of Renaissance and Baroque dances, sonatas, airs, suites, and whatnot that ends with some traditional Celtic folksongs. Like Io Vidi in Terra, its recording technology captures every delicate nuance. If you enjoy hearing the little “mouth noises” that singers make, or the distinctive sound that breath creates as it flows through each sort of flute, these discs will be catnip for you.
<a href="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Nine-Notes_2.jpg"><img class="alignright wp-image-12250" alt="Nine Notes 2 New Classical, Part 2" src="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Nine-Notes_2.jpg" width="270" height="343" title="New Classical, Part 2" /></a>
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But why does Sono Luminus attach such silly titles to albums? I have no idea what Nine Notes that Shook the World means. As titles go, it is outdone by another Sono Luminus release, Mosh Pit (DSL-92167), featuring the one-piano, four-hands artistry of ZOFO, i.e., Keisuke Nakagoshi and Eva-Maria Zimmermann. Well, it is all dance music, or full of dancelike rhythms, I guess. Gershwin’s Cuban Overture, a Sonatina by Conlon Nancarrow, Samuel Barber’s Souvenirs, and works by Corigliano, Allen Shawn, and Paul Schoenfield. But Mosh Pit??
My favorite is the Barber Souvenirs, which he wrote in fond memory of childhood excursions with his mother to the Palm Court of the Plaza Hotel. There he heard a certain kind of light music that has vanished forever. Barber’s treatment of the genre is not campy, exactly, but it’s shot through with knowing wit, a love letter from an accomplished musician remembering another time and place. He performed the work frequently at parties in New York and Europe with its dedicatee, old friend and frequent companion <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=6IwvB77VQR0C&pg=PA73&lpg=PA73&dq=samuel+barber+charles+turner&source=bl&ots=brQyJATHbP&sig=kMyKIru7n_WoTuROkrALNx5Ukyw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=sWVcUvjXBoO49QTLmoBw&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=samuel%20barber%20charles%20turner&f=false">Charles Turner</a>.
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<a href="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Mosh_Pit_2.jpg"><img class="alignright wp-image-12251" alt="Mosh Pit 2 New Classical, Part 2" src="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Mosh_Pit_2.jpg" width="270" height="270" title="New Classical, Part 2" /></a>
Choral Music
Sometimes a recording comes along, and it seems pointless to describe its many virtues. The artists have long since established a reputation for excellence; the repertoire includes many of the most beloved works in a genre; the sound could hardly be bettered. All you can do is point the consumer toward certain bliss.
Gentle reader, such is The Phoenix Rising, latest in a triumphant series from the British a cappella group Stile Antico (Harmonia Mundi HMU 807572; SACD). Here they celebrate the centenary of the Carnegie UK Trust, which among its many beneficent acts saw to the publication from 1922–29 of Tudor Church Music, a ten-volume anthology that encouraged the return of many great 16th-century English choral works to the active church repertoire. As program annotator Matthew O’Donovan (also a singer in the group) writes,
<blockquote readability="14">Nowadays there can hardly be a cathedral, collegiate or serious church choir whose repertoire does not include a significant quantity of music by Byrd, Tallis and Gibbons; furthermore, aided by the advent of high quality sound recording, this music has since become as commonplace outside the ecclesiastical environment as in it. . . . The knowledge of this repertoire was also to influence profoundly a whole new generation of English composers, Howells, Tippett and Britten amongst them.</blockquote>
<a href="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Phoenix-Rising_2.jpg"><img class="alignright wp-image-12252" alt="Phoenix Rising 2 New Classical, Part 2" src="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Phoenix-Rising_2.jpg" width="270" height="270" title="New Classical, Part 2" /></a>
So what’s in the album? Byrd’s Ave verum corpus, for starters. (It was the runaway “hit” for Oxford University Press in the years following the publication of TCM.) And we get Byrd’s Mass for Five Voices, a dazzling display of that composer’s contrapuntal skills. Tallis’s Salvator mundi. Gibbons’ O clap your hands together. Taverner’s O splendor gloriae. And more, all done up in Stile Antico’s customary warmth, energy, and precision—if you like that sort of thing. This conductor-less ensemble does wonders. Just listen to a bit of Ave verum:
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The harmonic eccentricity and momentary discords you hear throughout the album are written into the music, incidentally. Cross-relations (e.g., E in one voice, E-flat in another) bring a characteristic “spice” to Tudor church music, which Stile Antico bring off as naturally as breathing. They’re also a good test of just how “defining” your equipment really is.
But wait—maybe you have sampled Tudor church music already, and you’re just not that into it. Or maybe you have Stile Antico’s seven other albums, and you’d like to hear something other than superhumanly pristine renditions of Renaissance church music. Okay, for you we have (drum roll) La Nuova Musica, a freshly formed English Baroque ensemble, doing two masterpieces of concerted church music from the 18th century (Harmonia Mundi HMU 807587; SACD). Both Vivaldi and Handel wrote Dixit Dominus settings, which is not surprising, since Psalm 109 is the opening psalm sung at Vespers every day. The Vivaldi Dixit on this recording is the third by this composer to have been unearthed, and that only in 2005. No matter. It has the same driving rhythms, catchy tunes, and overall clarity that has kept Vivaldi’s name alive for centuries.
<a href="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Dixit_2.jpg"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-12247" alt="Dixit 2 New Classical, Part 2" src="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Dixit_2.jpg" width="300" height="300" title="New Classical, Part 2" /></a>
Handel’s Dixit is also well known, even though it’s an early work, one that reflects his apprenticeship in Italy. Here is a snippet of the opening chorus:
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La Nuova Musica’s director David Bates is a singer too. It shows. Even though his orchestra plays accurately and with spirit, you can feel the energy level tick up markedly when the chorus comes in. Overall these are splendidly spirited performances. It’s especially nice to have a Vivaldi “motet” for soprano and orchestra thrown in. In furore iustissimae irae features an ultra-vivid presentation by Lucy Crowe, who tackles a text as least as fiery (“In wrath and most just anger / you divinely exercise power. . .”) as that of Ps. 109 itself (“The Lord said unto my Lord: / Sit thou at my right hand, / Until I make thine enemies / thy footstool.”).
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More Symphonic Music
Besides the exotica included in part 1 of this survey—Villa-Lobos, Kevin Puts, Bang On A Can—you should know about a few more mainstream recordings of orchestral music that surfaced recently. Actually, you probably do know about two of them, because they were reviewed in our two big audiophile magazines. So let me just chime in here with some additional thoughts.
<a href="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Schubert-Symphonies_2.jpg"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-12254" alt="Schubert Symphonies 2 New Classical, Part 2" src="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Schubert-Symphonies_2.jpg" width="300" height="300" title="New Classical, Part 2" /></a>
Pablo Heras-Casado recently became chief conductor of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, New York’s premiere free-lance orchestra. They are lucky to have him. To judge from his new recording of Schubert Symphonies Nos. 3 and 4 (Harmonia Mundi HMC 902154), he can turn almost anything into a rewarding musical experience.
Not that these little Schubert symphonies are chopped liver! Every twenty years or so, some ambitious conductor discovers Schubert’s Forgotten Masterpieces and makes a meal of them. (Riccardo Muti recorded a complete set in the early ‘90s, I think.) But they do demand sympathetic treatment: unless conductor and orchestra really believe in them as music, they will fall flat, dismissed as “preliminary works”—which is how Brahms described them when he undertook the editing of a critical edition in 1884.
Good thing that Heras-Casado and the Freiburger Barockorchester understand these products of a Viennese teenager’s enthusiasms. Their performances crackle with excitement, communicating all the pleasure the composer must have felt in spreading his symphonic wings for the first time(s). Listen to the scherzo of Schubert’s 3rd:
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Elsewhere Schubert’s indebtedness to Haydn (specifically “Chaos” from The Creation), Mozart, Beethoven, and others is clearly felt, but so is the lyricism and delicate Romanticism that we associate with later, greater Schubert. It’s well worth hearing (Harmonia Mundi HMC 902154).
<a href="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Rihm_2.jpg"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-12253" alt="Rihm 2 New Classical, Part 2" src="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Rihm_2.jpg" width="300" height="300" title="New Classical, Part 2" /></a>
I was glad to see Andrew Quint review Symphonie “Nähe Fern” by German composer Wolfgang Rihm (Harmonia Mundi HMC 902153) in TAS, but also a bit surprised. This is essentially music about other music, very expressive, but not the friendliest Rihm by a long shot. The four principal movements were written to serve as “pendants” to each of the Brahms symphonies—each one was performed alongside the appropriate older work. Rihm went further, fashioning each movement from motives and themes in the related symphony. Now there’s a hat trick: borrow Brahms’ tunes but not the grandly coherent structures that empowered them in their original contexts. For instance: here’s the ending of movement 1:
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Your sharp ears probably detected the rising stepwise motive that drives forward so much of the first movement in Brahms’ Symphony No. 1. And, toward the end of that excerpt, you heard a few ghostly timpani strokes, echoing the propulsive beats that launch the Brahms. In that work, these ideas generate energy; for Rihm they serve to dissipate it.
Yes, I know that Rihm disavows any actual quotation. Instead, he speaks of
<blockquote readability="7">echoes to be sure, but as if they were early forms. As if they had not yet taken on the shape they will have in Brahms.</blockquote>
The trouble is, we’ve already heard them take on “the shape they will have.” So the effect here may strike some listeners like that final moment in Planet of the Apes (see below). Maybe that’s okay. Maybe that’s conscious, and significant.
<a href="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/planet-of-the-apes-statue-of-liberty-blu-ray-disc-screencap-hd-1080p-05.jpg"><img class="alignright wp-image-12240" alt="planet of the apes statue of liberty blu ray disc screencap hd 1080p 05 1024x580 New Classical, Part 2" src="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/planet-of-the-apes-statue-of-liberty-blu-ray-disc-screencap-hd-1080p-05-1024x580.jpg" width="502" height="284" title="New Classical, Part 2" /></a>
There is much to admire in Rihm’s piece. His varied, evocative use of orchestral timbres, for instance: listen especially for the contrabassoon (one of Brahms’ favorite orchestral coloring agents), the horns, and the low strings. Rihm can also do rip-roaring climactic passages full of brassy counterpoint, as in his pendant to Brahms 3. You may well decide that the ear-candy aspect of his music outweighs the whiff of cultural decay that inevitably accompanies post-modern exercises like this. Or perhaps that will suit your mood. (As I type these words three days before Halloween, it’s dark and rainy here in north Georgia.)
I got more satisfaction out of the latest (and, alas, <a href="http://www.minnesotaorchestramusicians.org/farewell-maestro-until-we-meet-again/" target="_blank">probably last</a>) installment of Sibelius symphonies from Osmo Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra. Their coupling of Nos. 1 and 4 (BIS-1996; SACD) is a match made in heaven, particularly for those who want to listen all the way through a 74-minute recording. You get a big dose of Sibelius here, evenly split between the composer’s bow to 19th-century tradition (No. 1, of course) and his first steps into “an entirely foreign world,” a work of “spare, uncompromising utterances” that “bewildered” its first audiences, as Robert Layton makes clear in his album annotation.
<a href="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Sibelius_2.jpg"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-12269" alt="Sibelius 2 New Classical, Part 2" src="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Sibelius_2.jpg" width="300" height="300" title="New Classical, Part 2" /></a>
There can be no better proof of the originality of Sibelius’ thinking in the 4th than that it was the only one of his symphonies that made a positive impression on Benjamin Britten. It’s a safe bet that three things appealed to Britten here: lots of “dark, brooding intensity,” a development that “embraces some of Sibelius’s coldest and most strange inspiration,” and at times an unprecedented “angularity and tonal uncertainty” (Layton again). But listen to this mesmerizing excerpt from the slow movement. Obviously the composer was speaking from the center of his lonely Finnish heart:
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Both works are very well recorded, upholding the high standard that BIS has set over the years.
Featured Image:*Part of the musical “grab drawer,”*chez*Schenbeck. (You can click on the image and get a bigger one, which actually makes the titles readable.)
Next Time: Packaging Classical Music. What value do we place on the physical trappings of a classical-music release? How important are the notes, the art, everything offered besides the performance itself? How does downloading change the picture?
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New Classical, Part 2

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