Discovering Walter Braunfels

BRAUNFELS: Witches’ Sabbath, Op. 8 for Piano & Orchestra. Konzertstücke, Op. 64 for Piano & Orchestra. Hebridean Dances / Tatjana Blome, pno; Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz; Gregor Bühl, cond / Capriccio C5345

According to the notes for this release, “Walter Braunfels is a composer whose music died twice: Once when the Nazis declared his music ‘degenerate art,’ then again when post-war Germany had little use for the various schools of tonal music; when the arbiters of taste considered any form of romantic music – almost the whole pre-war aesthetic – to be tainted.” This is the sixth CD in Capriccio’s Braunfels edition with two world premiere recordings, the first and last works.

Although the Witches’ Sabbath contains some “demonic” effects, it is not nearly as weird as Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique, yet Braunfels was clearly a solid composer who used classical form in a sort of Straussian aesthetic with a little Scriabin thrown in for flavor. What helps is that both pianist Blome and conductor Bühl dig into this music with an almost Slavic intensity of expression; they really want you to enjoy and be impressed by this music, and their approach works miracles. In addition, Braunfels really knew musical principles inside and out and wasn’t afraid to attempt dramatic flourishes. From start to finish, this is a spectacular piece that deserves much wider circulation.

The Konzertstücke from 1946 is also a dramatic work, this time with pregnant pauses in the stately opening (and oftimes dramatic) opening section. When the tempo picks up, it is with an insistent sort of march rhythm which then morphs into a middle-tempo, odd tune played by the bassoon while the piano weaves its busy way in and out of the orchestral texture.

The Hebridean Dances from the 1950s is, perhaps, less adventurous music than the first two works, but no less well crafted, using minor keys and descending chromatic harmonies to make its point. The second piece in this suite reveals another side of Braunfels, as the music is broad and atmospheric, while the third is an upbeat little dance in asymmetric rhythm while the fourth is an odd, spacey little piece that sounds Middle Eastern.

All in all, a fascinating glimpse into the work of a very serious and very interesting composer who appears to have always been open to new things. Well worth acquiring!

—© 2018 Lynn René Bayley

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Nagano Conducts Rihm and Beintus

RIHM: Das Gehege.* BEINTUS: Le Petite Prince⁺ / *Rayanne Dupuis, sop; ⁺Kirsten Ecke, harp; ⁺Eva-Christiana Schönweiss, vln; Deutsches Symphonie-Orch. Berlin; Kent Nagano, cond / Capriccio C5337

I was not provided any liner notes with the download of this album for review, but only the following blurb on the Naxos download site:

When Kent Nagano assumed the direction of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich in autumn 2006, he had intended a new production of Richard Strauss’ Salome as one of the first premieres. He wanted to precede the challenging one-act opera after Oscar Wilde’s drama with a new music theatre work. He turned to Wolfgang Rihm. “I replied,” Rihm said in an interview with Die Zeit: “There’s only one thing: the final scene from Schlusschor by Botho Strauß.” Nagano’s commission became the catalyst in transforming this desire into reality. This is the genesis of Das Gehege, a nocturnal scene for soprano and orchestra. Kent Nagano and Jean-Pascal Beintus (* 1966) met in the orchestra pit of the Opéra de Lyon in 1988. After considering the first orchestral manuscripts, the maestro, known for his openness and great erudition, encouraged the young man to expand his musical career. Several pictorial projects came to Nagano’s mind, which he entrusted to Beintus’ musical imagination: first, Wolf Tracks for reciter and orchestra (recorded with the speakers Bill Clinton and Mikhail Gorbachov), for which Beintus was awarded a Grammy in 2004, before in 2008 writing for the family concerts of the German Symphony Orchestra in Berlin a suite on Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s omnipresent The Little Prince.

All of which sounds pretty confusing and politically slanted to me, and in my mind The Little Prince is complete rubbish, but there you are. Without visuals, however, all we have to go by on this CD is the actual music. The Rihm piece, interesting modern music which is well-written and dramatic, is sadly marred by the loose vibrato (read: wobble) of soprano Rayenne Dupuis. To editorialize a moment, in the old days conductors actually went to great lengths to procure the services of singers without wobbles, strained top ranges etc. whenever they recorded a work—any work, whether modern or old-timey. Nowadays, it seems as if whatever the hell is available is what gets on records, and although Dupuis seems to give a pretty dramatic reading of the text (whatever it is), and surprisingly has a good low range, the overall effect is consistently marred by her incessant wobbling. Like much of Rihm’s music, the phrases have no real endings or resolutions, but merely feed into the next sequence with frequent mood shifts. It’s intellectually interesting music, but not emotionally moving except in Dupuis’ delivery of the text. Unfortunately, all I could find about Strauβ’ Schlusschor was the following:

The piece consists of three almost completely separate documents, each portraying a group of people. In the first act titled See and be seen, there are 15 men and women posing for a group photo. While the photographer is looking for the right shot, the people in four rows are talking in confusion. They are incoherent, individual scraps of conversation, which could come from any company outing.

The photo shoot is long (photographer: “I photograph you until you are a face, a head – a mouth – a look, a face!”), The group becomes impatient and begins to make absurd threats against the To eject photographers. After a “cannonade of short loud orders” it gets dark. “When it gets light again,” the director’s statement says, “the photographers only have a bundle of clothes and their shoes on the floor.” – The second act is entitled Lorenz vor dem Spiegel (From the World of Providence). Lorenz is an architect and is mistaken in the door of his client Delia’s apartment. He surprised the naked Delia in the bathroom – a trivial incident with a tragic outcome. In the subsequent conversation – actually about the extension of their attic – the language comes in increasingly mannered becoming, mythically exaggerated tone again and again on the accidental encounter in the bathroom.

While comparing Delia’s unadorned beauty with works of art, she reminds him of the fate of Actaeon, whom the hunting goddess Diana, after seeing her in the bathroom, turned into a deer and then was mangled by his own dogs. The second scene takes place in the cloakroom of a villa, which is visited by the guests of a party – one by one, in pairs – by the “woman in reed green”, the “unthought”, the “bitter man”. Fragments of the party conversation can be heard. Among the guests is Lorenz, the architect who repeatedly steps in front of the large wardrobe mirror to encourage himself for his encounter with Delia.

When he, after a seemingly failed performance, just wants to go, Delia appears in the mirror, “naked as in the beginning, in the same pose”. Lorenz shoots himself. – The third act, from now on, takes place in a restaurant. Between the conversation of the guests proclaimed “The caller”, who in the second act again and again drew attention with a bellowed “Germany”, the fall of the wall. A couple from the other appear and the noblewoman Anita von Schastorf relies on her monarchical dreams. The piece ends with Anita releasing a golden eagle from the zoo to kill.

Three groups of people, as it were three choirs, but not singing in unison, but, resolved into more or less faceless figures, banalities in between two dead and – brilliant conclusion – the slaughtered heraldic animal of the Federal Republic – but everything seems equally significant or insignificant , the little private stories as well as the sometimes conjured up myths and – the historical moment of the fall of the Wall.

Benjamin Henrichs called the play “the microscopy of the micro drama”: “the shortest and fastest pieces in the world: every movement a drama for itself.” At the same time he sees in it “something like the final assembly of all known Botho-Strauss faces and – feelings. A pile of shards, a garbage table, a crawl box of the most beautiful sentences and effects. Not a “museum of passions” but a bazaar of bagatelles. ”

I hope this helps. I confess to being baffled by all this German expressionism: killing golden eagles from a zoo, “unthoughts:” of “bitter men,” etc. And how this relates to Salome seems pretty far-fetched to me. But then, although I certainly do like a certain amount of symbolism, I’ve always felt that too much of it is just intellectual B.S.

By contrast, Beintus’ Little Prince suite is modern music with classical form and charm, although with a heavy dose of Romantic goop in the opening piece. This, however, changes in the second piece, “Apparition du Petit Prince,” which has more interesting harmonies, but returns in the third and continues to the end.

If I had the full text to the Rihm piece I might appreciate it more. The music is indeed interesting despite the heavy symbolism. The second piece is sure to turn up on your local classical music station in the near future! Excellent performances of both, however.

—© 2018 Lynn René Bayley

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The Lyrique Quintette Celebrate Arrivals & Departures

ARRIVALS AND DEPARTURES: MUSIC OF THE AMERICAS / Del AGUILÁ: Wind Quintet No. 3. LUSSIER: Dos Tropicos. LAVISTA: Cinco Danzas Breves. MUELLER: Veni Variationes. VERDIÉ: Tangoescente. D’RIVERA: La Fleur de Cayenne. Aires Tropicales / Lyrique Quintette / Mark Records 52787

 The composers on this CD represent various countries in the Americas: Uruguay (Miguel del Aguilá), Canada (Mathieu Lussier), Mexico (Mario Lavista), the United States (Robert Mueller…I did a double-take on that name!, and Adriana Verdié), and Cuba (Paquito d’Rivera, who is also a famous jazz saxophonist). From a certain standpoint, this seems like an Identity Politics Album (I don’t see chamber groups making CDs of various European composers under the title “Music of the EU”), but happily most of the music is interesting.

Del Aguilá’s wind quintet is a moody, lyrical piece with a few interesting harmonic twists, and in the slow first movement a surprising double-time passage for the clarinetist (Nophachal Cholthitchanta) in the low of chalumeau register of his instrument, later moving into the upper range, which gives a spikier harmonic edge to the piece. The second movement, titled “Bright and Dark,” features a medium-tempo theme played by four of the winds while flautist Ronda Mains twitters brightly above them. This quintet has a wonderful ensemble blend, with the rich tone of French hornist Timothy Thompson the glue that holds their sound together. Del Aquilá has a fine sense of construction; the music goes somewhere, and thank goodness it doesn’t rely on edgy, jagged sound effects from the ensemble to make its point. The “Giacoso” finale features the quintet in jolly counterpoint, yet with unusual pauses and alternate themes to hold one’s interest. An excellent piece of music.

Lussier’s Dos Tropicos may seem an odd choice for a Canadian composer as it is obviously Latin music; indeed, in style and form it sounded like an extension of del Aguilá’s piece; but it, too, is well-constructed if somewhat blander in sound, with few surprises in its lyric flow until we reach the faster section towards the end. The Latin contingent then continues with Lavista’s five Danzas Breves, light but intriguing pieces with plenty of counterpoint for the ensemble. I particularly liked the loping theme of the second, slow piece (“Lento, flessible”) and the strange-sounding “Adagio.”

Mueller’s Veni Variaciones, again Latin-oriented, nonetheless contains some elements of old-style polyphony. It’s a fascinating work due to the composer’s strong emphasis on a continuing structure. The final variation is especially complex, pitting a slow tempo in the main tune against syncopated figures played by the flute and clarinet. Verdié’s Tangoescente continues the Latin theme in an edgier-sounding piece, although the music has very little resemblance to a tango beat. Rather, it features a sort of ground bass played by bassoonist Lia Uribe against a lyrical theme by the oboe and syncopated figures by the others.

We then get the first of two pieces by d’Rivera, La Fleur de Cayenne, initially played out of tempo in the introduction, then introducing Cuban jazz rhythms which the quintet plays fairly well for a classical ensemble. This features a heavy amount of counterpoint in a quasi-Latin rhythm but still with an asymmetric beat. It eventually becomes very complex rhythmically, so much so that without a score I found it difficult to follow the beat! The Aires Tropicales are harmonically complex but rhythmically a bit simpler, although in “Dizzyness” d’Rivera throws in the famous opening lick from Dizzy Gillespie’s A Night in Tunisia. Complexity returns in the “Contradanza” with its jazz-oriented backbeats played against Cuban rhythms.

A fascinating disc, and I especially comment the engineer who balanced the recording. Every instrument was perfectly placed to achieve maximum clarity and a perfect ensemble blend!

—© 2018 Lynn René Bayley

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Boughton & Jones Play Joubert

JOUBERT: Piano Concerto.* Symphony No. 3 / *Martin Jones, pno; BBC National Orch. of Wales; William Boughton, cond / Lyrita SRCD367

South African-born, British composer John Joubert, who celebrated his 91st birthday on March 20 of this year, is a fairly conservative writer whose music is not much known outside the British Isles. The Piano Concerto, which dates from 1958, is apparently typical of his oeuvre: sprightly rhythms and an interesting use of chromatics within his essentially tonal style. He uses a very economical four-note theme as the launching pad for the first movement, and although I am not ready to put him in the same category with York Bowen, it is very fine music indeed. Joubert is quoted in the booklet as saying, “Communication is important to me. I want to be understood, enjoyed and used. I do not want to live in the enclosed and artificial world of ‘Contemporary Music,’ but in the repertory of musicians whom I respect, in the schools, in the churches, and in the theatre.” I would think that this brilliantly-played recording would ensure him of that. The second movement I found to be even more original than the first, using almost modal harmonies with a bright wind texture à la Stravinsky, and quite powerful orchestral climaxes that belie its designated tempo of “Lento.”

Another thing I really like about Joubert is that he is very economical in his use of material; none of his music overstays its welcome, and is always fascinating enough to hold the listener’s attention. Nowhere is this more evident than in the last movement of the concerto, which starts with an actual “Lento” theme before moving into the “Allegro vivace.” It’s always a trap for composers to write such movements without sounding as if they are simply recycling material in order to keep the momentum up (think of the last movement of the Schubert Ninth Symphony). Joubert has no such problem, for despite the continual forward momentum his music is always changing and morphing.

The Third Symphony, by contrast, was composed between 2014 and 2017 when Joubert was a young man of 87-90 years old! It is based on “Themes from ‘Jane Eyre,’” but the music is nowhere near as echt-Romantic as the plot of that famous book. Joubert has been quoted as saying that if he had his way he would write opera and “nothing but opera,” and this symphony gave him an opportunity to write “operatically” for orchestra. His themes, again, are lyrical but not maudlin or sappy; his acute sense of harmonic movement precludes such a predictable outcome. The symphony’s five movements are titled “Lowood School – Lento,” “Thornfield House – Lento-Allegro,” “Thornfield Church – Andante-Allegro,” “Whitecross Rectory – Lento-Allegro” and “Thornfield Park – Allegro,” and each is masterfully conceived and executed. Boughton, who is one of my favorite British conductors not widely known here across the pond, gives the music a muscular, dramatic reading that in itself belies its Romantic inspiration. Even such lyrical episodes as the second movement keep the listener on the edge of his or her seat, enjoying the composer’s very personal and fascinating mode of musical progression. None of his harmonic movement is predictable or formulaic; everything is an adventure. This is clearly music that would not be played on most American classical music stations, and thank goodness for that!

In the third movement, Joubert uses dramatic pauses within the opening “Andante,” yet keeps things moving in an interesting way. He then develops the “Allegro” with jumping, asymmetric figures, juxtaposing strings, winds and brass in unusual ways. The only part of the symphony that disappointed me was the very ending of the last movement: to my ears, somewhat predictable and bombastic. Otherwise, it’s a fine piece of music.

I strongly recommend a listen to this CD. It’s well worth your while.

—© 2018 Lynn René Bayley

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Cervini’s Turboprop is Full of Abundance

ABUNDANCE / DAVIDSON: The Queen. DAMERON: Tadd’s Delight. ARLEN: My Shining Hour. CHAPLIN: Smile. LOOMIS: Abundance Overture. FARRUGIA: The Ten Thousand Things. CERVINI: Gramps. Song for Cito / Turboprop: William Carn, tb; Tara Davidson, a-sax/fl/s-sax; Joel Frahm, t-sax; Adrean Farrugia, pno; Dan Loomis, bs; Ernesto Cervini, dm / Anzic Records ANZ-0063

Ernesto Cervini is a Canadian jazz drummer and leader of his own band, Turboprop, in addition to acting as a promoter of other Canadian jazz artists through Orange Grove Publicity. He is, in addition, a nice man and a musicians with “open ears,” as they say, since he promotes a wide range of jazz styles (some of which, and he knows this, I don’t care for), but within his own band there’s a big but imaginary sign hanging up that says, “True Jazz Spoken Here.”

His newest album, due for release on October 5, is a typical example of the high artistic standards he sets for himself and his musicians. The opener, written by the band’s reed player Tara Davidson, is a wild piece in asymmetric rhythm, with Cervini’s drums churning in the background as the horns play the opening theme statement before moving quickly into a brilliant piano solo by Adrean Farrugia, followed by the composer herself on alto sax. This band not only swings, they’re highly creative soloists who feed into each other with aplomb. Cervini’s own solo is exciting and equally inventive, using cross-rhythms with apparent ease.

I was delighted to see a composition here by Tadd Dameron, the brilliant but self-destructive jazz composer-arranger from the late 1940s/early ‘50s. The original version was by bop legend Theodore “Fats” Navarro in 1949, issued under the title Sid’s Delight (as a tribute to legendary jazz club announcer and DJ “Symphony Sid” Torin). This one really jumps, with tight, excellent solos all round. Two other “old-timers” make an appearance next: Harold Arlen, next to Johnny Mercer the jazziest of jazz-influenced pop tune writers, and Charles Chaplin, who didn’t have a jazz bone in his body. Turboprop predictably makes a nice soufflé of Arlen’s My Shining Hour, with imaginative rhythmic displacements, embellishments on the original theme, unusual harmonic shifts and quick little solos by Davidson on soprano sax, Carn, Frahm and Farrugia, while Cervini pounds the percussion happily in the background. Chaplin’s Smile (a theme for the Muscular Dystrophy Association’s annual telethons for decades) is played lyrically by Carn on trombone while the reeds provide nice little fills behind him. Carn then gets the bulk of the solo space, doubling the tempo and expanding on Chaplin’s theme.

Dan Loomis’ whimsical Abundance Overture begins with Cervini playing a sort of tap dance on the rims of his snare drum, with the flute, saxophone and trombone entering in a sort of Irish jig tempo. Loomis’ bass then “toughens up” the rhythm with some tight jazz playing in tandem with the leader, and Farrugia’s piano leads us into solo-land. A bit of handclapping backs up a two-part fugue played by the alto and tenor saxes before leading back into the ensemble. What a nifty arrangement!

Although written by pianist Farrugia, The Ten Thousand Things is centered around the bass, which plays the opening chorus and remains a strong presence under the reeds when they perform the theme. When Farrugia does enter, it is after a pause, and the tempo drops down to a slow ballad while he plays a sort of fantasia. The tempo eventually picks back up again and  the whole band plays interesting scored figures, with Frahm on tenor coming out of the ensemble for an excellent solo. A free-form, wild jam ends it. Cervini’s Gramps, a ballad, opens with some soft brush work by the leader, with the two reeds and arco bass playing the simple theme. Eventually a sort of canon is set up between the tenor sax and trombone behind Davidson on alto. The finale, Song for Cito, is a relaxed 6/8 sort of piece backed by the leader’s enthusiastic drums. Pianist Farrugia is the solo star of this one, however, and he connects the musical material very well. A sort of quick “ta-da!” tag ending closes the piece, and the CD.

This is another fine outing for this talented band, and I highly recommend it to your attention.

—© 2018 Lynn René Bayley

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Carlos Kalmar Presents “Aspects of America”

ASPECTS OF AMERICA / SHEPHERD: Magiya. CURRIER: Microsymph. ROUSE: Supplica. BUNCH: Aspects of an Elephant. BARBER: Souvenirs / Oregon Symphony; Carlos Kalmar, cond / Pentatone Classics 5186 727

Well, if it’s modern American music you’re after, this is a CD for you. With the exception of Samuel Barber, who died in 1981, none of these composers are in the classical mainstream, and of the others the only name I recognized was that of Sebastian Currier, whose music I have been singing the praises of for the past decade. Sadly, none of the modern American composers represented here are women—part for the course, sadly. We doesn’t write nothin’ gud.

The concert opens on a highly dramatic note with Sean Shepherd’s Magiya or Magic. Like close to 80% of modern classical music nowadays, it’s spiky and edgy, with brilliant brass and biting winds playing atonal, serrated figures. It might be nice if, once in a while, some of these modern composers would display a little individuality. (It reminds me of that scene from Monty Python’s Life of Brian where Brian tells his unwanted band of groupies to think for themselves and be individuals, to which they all chant, in unison, “YES. WE’RE ALL INDIVIDUALS.”) That being said, young (b. 1979) Shepherd clearly understands musical construction and thus gives us a fine piece of music with development that also includes the juxtaposition of different rhythmic elements. It’s an interesting opener if a bit of a cliché.

Currier, whose music (I feel) sort of initiated this style (he’s 20 years older than Shepherd), presents a Microsymph in the same vein but with even more stringent classical form beneath his sharp, jagged lines. The slow movement of this work also has a somewhat lyrical quality about it that I found attractive, almost sounding like Viennese operetta music of the 1920s. This clearly shows how he is able to re-use older styles (although this tune seems to me wholly original) within his own aesthetic. He also has a sense of humor, which I appreciate, often ending phrases or movements in the “middle of nowhere.”

By contrast, Christopher Rouse’s Supplica is a well-written lyric piece in the tradition of Barber’s Adagio for Strings, beautifully conceived and contrasting the styles of the first two composers. The Oregon Symphony plays this, and indeed all of the pieces on this disc, with outstanding feeling and style.

Aspects of an Elephant, by 45-year-old Portland composer Kenji Bunch, struck me as the most original piece on this CD. At least, it is clearly the most different. Bunch writes in a style that seems to combine elements of Stravinsky, Barrtók and Ligeti in his melodic and harmonic arsenal. This unusual five-part suite traces elephantine “aspects” such as a whip, a spear, a silk cloth, a tree, a snake and a throne. In the liner notes, Bunch explains that he drew his inspiration from “the timeless parable of the so-called Blind Men and the Elephant, of which various versions have appeared throughout Asia and Europe since the 13th century.” Much of this suite is lyrical, though using lean, Stravinskian textures and melodic themes that play against the occasional rhythmic aspects of the score. It is clearly the work of a fine composer. In “The Elephant is a Tree,” he does a fine job of simulating the lumbering gait of a pachyderm, and in “The Elephant is a Snake” he uses rapid string and xylophone figures played against bongo drums. This is very clever and imaginative music!

Although I am not normally a fan of Samuel Barber’s extended orchestral music, which I find derivative and overly melodic in a syrupy sort of way, I found his 1952 ballet suite Souvenirs charming in its own way if overlong.

In toto, then, an interesting album, particularly recommended for the Currier and Bunch pieces.

—© 2018 Lynn René Bayley

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Hannigan Presents Vienna in the Fin de Siècle Era

SCHÖNBERG: 4 Lieder. WEBERN: 5 Lieder on the Poetry of Richard Dehmel. BERG: 7 Frühen Lieder. ZEMLINSKY: Aus Lieder, Opp. 2, 5 & 7. A. MAHLER: 5 Lieder: Die stille stadt; Laue Sommernacht; Ich wandle unter blumen. 4 Lieder: Licht in der nacht. WOLF: Goethe-Lieder: Mignon I-III; Kennst du das land / Barbara Hannnigan, sop; Reinbert de Leeuw, pno / Alpha 393

Barbara Hannigan is an outstanding höch sopran who, like Patricia Petibon two decades ago, enjoys presenting herself in bizarre settings as sort of a “bad girl” of music. The difference is that Petibon specializes in early music while Hannigan sings primarily 12-tone and modern music. She has performed Berg’s Lulu in a semi-insane production while on pointe throughout the performance (and mostly in a bra and panties) and Ligeti’s Mystère du Macabre with Sir Simon Rattle dressed as a slutty schoolgirl popping bubblegum. Whether or not you like these things (I don’t), she is surely a great talent vocally and interpretively as this recital amply proves.

One of her greatest attributes is her ability to sing modern music as music, meaning that she phrases with a true musical line, with superb legato and phrasing, in addition to being able to interpret superbly. In this respect she is quite different from Petibon, who sings early music with a very impassioned and oftimes forceful delivery, rendering the scores as if they were passionate Romantic lieder.

In this endeavor, Hannigan is superbly aided by Dutch pianist Reinbert de Leeuw, whose playing style matches her own. From the very first notes of “Erwärtung,” the first of Schoenberg’s Op. 2 lieder, one enters a world of gentle caresses that are, surprisingly, emotionally charged without being the least bit mushy. It is an incredible achievement, and she brings the same sensibilities to the music of Anton Webern, whose music is almost always sung with a more angular sense of phrasing. Occasionally, as in “Himmelfährt,” she drains the voice of vibrato to create a haunting effect. All this is the work of a master singer.

And yet…somehow or other, Hannigan manages to make most of these songs, regardless of composer or style, sound very much alike. A rare exception is Alma Mahler’s “Ich wandle unter Blumen” with its more dramatic outburst near the end. Good or bad? I leave this decision up to you, the listener. As a specific recital of very well-chosen songs meant to express a very specific German meaning, Sehnsucht, which is literally untranslatable into English, it works very well. As the liner notes point out, “A more romantic German song text than this poem does not exist! So many composers set it, for example Schubert (six times!) and Schumann. Their songs are undoubtedly beautiful, but what Wolf did (and that was only possible at the end of the 19th century), moved it really so much further. In Wolf’s setting, the text and the music are so intertwined that one can hardly imagine anymore that they were ever separate things. At this pinnacle in the development of Lieder, music gives the word a meaning which becomes bigger than the word itself.”

This recital is indeed lovely in the truest sense of the word. None of this music is low-level, based-on-popular-music-of-the-time stuff. It is most definitely high art, but a very sensual form of high art.

—© 2018 Lynn René Bayley

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Liebowitz & Flick’s Surprisingly Brilliant CD

LIEBOWITZ-FLICK: Moon. Portrait. Visions. Hummingbird. Jasmine. Sehnsucht. Crossed Lines. Reflections. FLICK: Malita-Malika (for Johanna). Medley: BAUER: Marionette/ DUBIN-WARREN: September in the Rain. RAYE-DePAUL: You Don’t Know What Love Is / Carol Liebowitz, pno/voc; Birgitta Flick, t-sax / Leo Records LR 838

Here’s a very unusual jazz CD. When I first saw the cover and looked at the titles of the tunes being played, I said to myself, Oh, no! Not another mooshy-gooshy “ambient jazz” CD! I get so many of them as proposed review material, and every time I put them on and hear that soft, tinkly piano and/or those whispery, echt-sexy vocals, I just want to take the CD off my player and smash it. (I do NOT respond to mushy music of any genre.)

But this one took me by surprise. Liebowitz and Flick, who originally met in Berlin in 2010 and again in New York in 2014, are free jazz artists. Their music veers in and out of tonality, constantly shifts rhythms, uses tone clusters and is, for the most part, improvised on one or two short licks rather than tunes in the conventional sense. And they are BRILLIANT. They follow each other in and out of musical nooks and crannies, corners and crevices, sometimes a bit far out but for the most part stunningly together in their musical train of thought.

Moreover, in certain works, such as Portrait, their music is less harmonically complex and uses tonality more consistently. In the liner notes, Flick and Liebowitz are quoted as saying, “Whether it is a spontaneous free improvisation or a standard that dates back nearly a century – to us it’s all one: we’re guided by the spirit and the intuition of the very moment the music comes into being. A continuity of feeling and inspiration, each time anew.”

Interestingly, Flick’s method of playing the tenor saxophone uses a dry, vibratoless tone, and possibly a hard reed, which gives her perfect control high up in the instrument’s range. Most of the time, it sounds much more like an alto sax than a tenor, even more so than Lester Young’s dry, vibratoless timbre. (My late jazz friend, Frank Powers, one told me that he thought that Paul Desmond of the Dave Brubeck Quartet was playing a soprano sax because of the same thing, the dry tone—Desmond called it “dry martinis”—and light, airy sound.) Due to their open-mindedness in alternating between tonality and atonality, the duo’s music has a more varied sound and feeling than those musicians who remain adamantly in atonal realms. And the listener is kept tuned in because he or she really doesn’t know what to expect, which makes the listening experience an adventure as well as stimulating. It is both a sensual and an intellectual experience. In a strange way, they almost make you feel as if you were looking into their souls or psyches as they play.

A detailed description of their playing would take more space than I have on this blog, but as a general description they alternate between elegant, curved musical lines and edgy ones. In a piece like Malita-Malika, they keep the music pared down to basics, almost moving together one note or phrase at a time, and in Hummingbird they actually do simulate the flutter of wings while exploring swirling, bitonal lines, feeding each other motifs, sometimes together and at other times separately. Their sense of unity is so complete that you’d think they had been playing together for years rather than sporadically.

I was particularly surprised to see Billy Bauer’s Marionette on the program. For those who don’t know, this was one of the tracks recorded in the very first free jazz session headed by pianist Lennie Tristano, back in 1949, and it is oddly juxtaposed with the old Dubin-Warren classic September in the Rain. The two don’t really go together, but somehow the duo make it work despite Liebowitz’ whispery vocal. The same may also be said for You Don’t Know What Love Is, although Flick’s wonderful a cappella saxophone intro holds one’s attention, and here Liebowitz’ vocal sounds hipper and less ballad-y. The saxist’s fills behind Liebowitz are also very effective in this number, and in the middle section they explore the music instrumentally.

Overall, this is a marvelous recording, and I urge you to listen to it.

—© 2018 Lynn René Bayley

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Salonen Nails Stravinsky’s “Perséphone”

STRAVINSKY: Perséphone / Andrew Staples, ten; Pauline Cheviller, narr; Finnish National Opera Chorus, Children’s Chorus & Orchestra; Esa-Pekka Salonen, cond / Pentatone 186688 (live: Helsinki, August 11, 2017)

For the past 26 years (wow, a quarter-century! How time flies!), my favorite performance of Perséphone has been the one by tenor Anthony Rolfe-Johnson and conductor Kent Nagano. I’m sure that part of my loyalty to this performance was that it was my first hearing of this work, and since Nagano coupled it in a 2-CD set with a really terrific performance of Le sacre du Printemps I just sort of assumed that it was a nonpareil performance.

But I was wrong.

One of the things I liked about the Nagano performance was the lovely tenor of Rolfe-Johnson, but upon relistening to it I found it too legato, smooth and lyrical, a style that would have been very well-suited to Tom Rakewell in Stravinsky’s more lyrical opera The Rake’s Progress, but Perséphone, although a ballet, dates from the composer’s neo-Classic style, the same era as Oedipus Rex and Les Noces, and I don’t necessarily want to hear Perséphone sung in that style. Granted, there are light, lyrical passages in this work, which is, after all, a ballet, but to my ears both tenor Andrew Staples and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen have gotten the style exactly right. I should also point out that even Nagano’s conducting in this work was smoother and more lyrical than Salonen’s, but this, too, did not work in context with the more strophic, strongly rhythmic sections of the score.

Moreover, and this is a point I’ve made over and over in my reviews, the sonics on the Nagano recording had too much reverb and echo on them, which also worked to slightly dull the impact of the music, which is for the most part lightly scored and thus needs a clearer sound profile. The Salonen recording has natural reverb, but it’s clearer and more biting, particularly in the winds and strings which were always a Stravinsky trademark, this despite the fact that Salonen’s tempi are much slower than Nagano’s—his performance runs a full three minutes longer. (I would remind my readers that eventually even Stravinsky decided, in his Columbia Records years, that some of his works should be played slower than he originally wrote them.) I also found that Staples’ voice was malleable enough to sing lyrically in those passages that called for lyricism while still being able to project a brighter tone in the louder parts, something Rolfe-Johnson was unable or unwilling to do.

I should also point out that this recording uses Stravinsky’s 1949 revised score. My original copy of the Nagano CD does not indicate that the revised score was used, thus it is probably the 1934 original. The text Stravinsky used to depict the adventures of Perséphone, Demeter and Eumolphus in the Underworld was by André Gide, but he cut large portions of it to bring it more in line with the original by Homer. Thanks to the sharper, clearer sound, the Finnish National Opera Orchestra makes a much more visceral impact, not only in the softer passages but especially in the louder ones, where one needs to hear the bite of the orchestra. Narrator Pauline Cheviller gives us an impassioned, almost breathless reading of her lines, which adds to the musical drama.

Interestingly, although Salonen conducted the first two portions of the ballet at slower tempi than Nagano, the third section, “Perséphone renaissante,” is considerably faster by more than a minute. This is clearly evident to the listener in the tauter, more driving rhythms, such as in the opening of “C’est ainsi, nous reconte Homère,” and even the more lyrical passages in this section have more forward momentum. Interestingly, Salonen’s tempo choices come extremely close to the German-language performance, issued on Audite, by tenor Fritz Wunderlich and conductor Dean Dixon.

This is clearly an outstanding performance of Perséphone, highly recommended.

—© 2018 Lynn René Bayley

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The Ken Thomson Sextet in Their Little Red Wagon

LIGETI: Passacaglia Ungherese (arr. Thomson). THOMSON: Misery is the New Hope. Icebreaker. Resolve. Helpless. Turn Around. Phantom Vibrations Syndrome / Ken Thomson Sextet: Russ Johnson, tpt; Alan Ferber, tb; Ken Thomson, a-sax; Anna Webber, t-sax; Adam Armstrong, bs; Daniel Dor, dm / New Focus/Panoramic Recordings PAN09

This very odd album came my way in even stranger packaging: an oversized ( 7 1/8” X 7 1/8”) cardboard sleeve, in which was contained, in a little cardboard pocket, the CD. And despite the rather large size of the fold-over container, there were absolutely no liner notes. I looked inside the open portion of the sleeve and only found a little business card which thanked me for buying the CD and offering me a free digital download of this very same album. As Alice said in Wonderland, “Curiouser and curiouser!” On the artist’s website, it says this recording is scheduled for release on September 7.

Whatever the rationale behind the oversized booklet and its lack of information, his website bio describes him as “a staple of New York City’s contemporary music and jazz communities,” which probably explains such depressing titles on this disc as Misery is the New Hope and Helpless (funny, those of us here in the Midwest don’t feel helpless or miserable at all, in fact we’re pretty happy folk). But I was surprised to discover that he is part of the Bang on a Can group, because their music, to my ears, is noisy and obnoxious while Thomson’s is utterly brilliant and attractive. In fact, I would deem this one of the jazz finds of the year, on the high level of the Alchemy Sound Project and Jungsu Choi’s Tiny Orkester. As one might expect, Thomson’s arrangement of György Ligeti’s Passacaglia Ungherese walks a tightrope between jazz and classical feeling, but what really impressed me was his highly imaginative scoring. Thomson doesn’t just use his sextet in the conventional jazz manner, but rather has them play in counterpoint against each other like a classical sextet, only with jazz swing and feeling, and this aesthetic carries over into the original compositions. Even more impressively, all of Thomson’s players are extraordinarily inventive improvisers, taking risks while actually creating little compositions within their solos that relate to the surrounding material, and even when he has them play canons or rounds, there is constant invention going on. In Icebreaker, Thomson adds backbeat handclapping against the constantly-moving melodic line played by the two saxes, with rhythmic punctuation by the two brass instruments. Like the late Rod Levitt or Charles Mingus, Thomson has discovered the secret of making a sextet almost sound like a full orchestra. Alan Ferber’s staccato trombone solo sounded to me like a modern equivalent of Miff Mole’s brilliant playing in the late 1920s, with its interesting intervallic leaps and harmonic daring, and no matter where you are in any given track of this outstanding album, your attention never flags. For me, that’s the surest mark of a great recording.

In my online book, From Baroque to Bop and Beyond (see link at the bottom of this review), I ended my fairly exhaustive survey of the intersection between classical music and jazz by saying that, for me, the best future of art music in the new millennium would be a continual mixture of both because they need each other in order to keep invention alive without resorting to modern clichés to replace the old clichés in either genre. I receive many jazz and classical albums for consideration to review, but pass on a great many of the former because they seem to be more interested in recycling older jazz ideas from the 1950s through the early ‘70s without adding a single new idea to the mix. Here, even in a jazz ballad like Resolve, which is somewhat more conventional than the first three tracks, Thomson manages to morph the music as it goes along, adding contrasting themes in different rhythms and again using counterpoint to enliven the ensemble. At about the midway point, the tempo doubles, Thomson plays a busy figure on the alto, Webber plays an opposing theme on tenor, and then the brass joins them for a happy little fugue (more precisely, a fugue played by the two reeds while the two brass play slower figures underneath them) before moving into the improvised sections. Thomson’s group lives on the edge of “free jazz” but never immerses itself in it because their musical ideas are too tightly constructed and the direction of the music more concerned with development and structure than musical anarchy. Even when the rest of the band falls away and all you hear is Thomson on alto with Adam Armstrong’s bass propelling him (with occasional little comments from Daniel Dor on drums), the music continually develops in forward-moving patterns. As I said, this is almost on the high level of Levitt or Mingus.

Helpless begins with a dolorous solo trumpet, the two saxes interweaving fluttery little figures around it (the trumpet tune almost sounds like something Aaron Copland would have written), which goes on for some time. Eventually, the saxes play a little riff in thirds with bass and drum accents while the trumpet interjects in the spaces between their notes. The bass becomes slowly and subtly more active as underpinning, nudging the music gently forward with a jazz pulse, while the trumpet takes over the lead, crafting an improvised solo while the saxes’ interjections become more minimal. Then the swirling, fluttery sax figures return, and bassist Armstrong plays a bowed (arco) solo beneath them and the trumpet tune also returns. This is extraordinary cyclical writing.

Turn Around returns to a sort of stiff-rhythmed melodic line, again with little fugal interludes, before the rhythm section begins to propel them forward as if encouraging them to move on to something else. Armstrong then plays a fine plucked solo, in the second chorus of which the horns and reeds interject new little figures behind him before slowing the tempo down and playing another counterpoint passage. Ferber gets another solo, a bit more in the Jimmy Knepper vein here, while the drums play happy little figures behind him as if glad that the music is finally jumping. After this passage comes to a stop, Thomson begins another little canon, this time with all of the other lead instruments playing an opposing figure in unison behind him.

The finale, Phantom Vibration Syndrome, opens with a little fugal riff by the two brass which is then played above longer-held notes by the tenor sax before the two reeds get into the picture and the opposing figures again morph and change. Then, just as suddenly, we’re in jazz time with Thomson playing a brilliant solo against the bass with occasional cymbal interjections. After a pause, we hear a secondary theme, almost a dirge, played by the four horns sans rhythm section. Thomson plays a busier figure above it, then we move into a series of asymmetric staccato chords by all four horns. Thomson’s little figure then moves us into another counterpoint passage. The little alto figure then becomes a sort of moto perpetuo with the rhythm supporting and, eventually, the others joining him in counter-figures. This is really brilliant composing/arranging.

What a great album this is! Maybe I’ll even give Bang on a Can another listen.

—© 2018 Lynn René Bayley

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