Patrick Barnitt Holds Sway

SWAY / GORDON-WARREN: The More I See You.^{1, 2} CAHN-CHAPLIN: Please Be Kind. RODRIGUEZ-MOLINA-RUIZ-GIMBEL: Sway.² PORTER: I’ve Got You Under My Skin.² BARNITT-McDONALD: ACL Blues. McEVOY-BROOKHOUSE-DRUMMOND-PIERROT-THORP: Cascade.^{2, 6} McCANN: The Truth.^{2, 5} LAMM: Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is? KRIEGER-DENSMORE-MANZARAK-MORRISON: Touch Me.² RENIS-TESTA: Quando Quando Quando.^{2, 4, 5} CANNON: Won’t You Come Home, Bill Bailey? STYNE-GREEN-COMDEN: Just in Time. ARLEN-MERCER: One for my Baby^{2, 3} / Patrick  Barnitt, voc; Bijon Watson, Walter Simonson, Jeff Jarvis, Barbara Loronga, tpt; Paul Young, Duane Benjamin, Nick DePinna, Rich Bullock, tb; Rusty Higgins, Mike Nelson, ⁶Everette Harp, a-sax; Eric Morones, Brain Clancey, t-sax; Ken Fisher, bar-sax; ¹Robert Kyle, fl/t-sax; Paul McDonald, pno; ²Stephan Oberhoff, pno/Hammond B3/kbds/gtr/perc/strings; Ricky Z, gtr; Cooper Appelt, bs; Jake Reed, ³Kendall Kay, dm; ⁴Celso Alberti, perc/dms; ⁵Laura Pursell, voc / PBMUSIC 002

Patrick Barnitt is a jazz vocalist and actor from out in La-La Land. Reading the brief bio that came with this CD, he has been fortunate enough to play roles in some known films and TV shows, none of which I’ve watched: the horror films Coffin, Coffin 2, Star Trek: First Contact and The Last Day along with guest spots on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager. But it is as a jazz singer that he apparently feels the most comfortable and is the most proud of. Under the tutelage of famed pianist-singer-teacher Smitty Smith, he developed his talent and was able to move into the L.A. jazz scene, regularly performing at the Dresden in Hollywood.

My first impression of Barnitt’s voice when I started this CD was that he sounded like a more swinging version of Jack Jones, whose voice I liked very much, thus I was surprised to see his voice described as a tenor. It’s more of a light high baritone with a touch of Harry Connick, Jr. in it. This set is pretty much a collection of swing standards with a few more up-to-date surprises. The Paul McDonald Big Band which accompanies him is a very tight, professional outfit whose arrangements are pretty generic but also very swinging. My lone disappointments on the disc were his slow ballad renditions of I’ve Got You Under My Skin and Quando, Quando, Quando. I much prefer the uptempo versions, including those of the first tune by Frank Sinatra and Al Bowlly.

If you’re looking for a jazz singer who improvises in the manner of Al Jarreau or Mark Murphy, however, you won’t find it here. Barnitt swings but doesn’t improvise. For me, the most impressive tracks were the self-composed ACL Blues and his version of the old chestnut Won’t You Come Home, Bill Bailey?, both taken at a real uptempo clip and showing how well Barnitt can swing. The guitar solo on the former by Ricky Z is quite good, bluesy but not too much like hardcore rock guitar, which I appreciated. The rock-influenced Cascade was not at all to my taste, but c’est la vie. Someone will like it.

Interestingly, Barnitt’s voice is recorded clearly in a forward space while the orchestra (and backup singers) always seems to be swimming in an echo chamber, but again, some folks will probably like this. The slow bluesy number The Truth is a duet with Laura Pursell, who sings out a lot more than most female “jazz” singers I am asked to review. The fine singing and sparse arrangement work well together, and there are excellent solos here by one of the tenor saxists and trumpeters. I was really happy to hear Barnitt sing Does Anybody Really Know What Time it Is?, one of my favorite songs by the jazz-rock band Chicago, and McDonald’s arrangement sticks fairly close to the original (including the trumpet solo), which is a good thing since that version was nearly perfect. He also sings a cover version of The Doors’ Touch Me. The set closes with the old Frank Sinatra standard, One for My Baby.

Overall, a fine album with good singing and a solid big band backing. Some of these tracks will stay in your mind after the album is finished playing.

—© 2019 Lynn René Bayley

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The Irrera Brothers Play Robert Morris

MORRIS: In Variations.  …gradually…  Drawn Onward: Fantasy for Violin & Piano / John Irrera, vln; Joseph Irrera, pno / Centaur CRC 3696

Robert Morris, who has been teaching composition at the Eastman School of Music since 1980, here presents his music for violin and piano played by the Irrera Brothers. The music itself is very much of the 12-tone school and built around leaping figures in the violin part, but what distinguishes this disc is the emotional involvement and intensity of the performers.

Which is not to say that the music itself is “ordinary” in the normal sense of that term. Morris is clearly a more interesting (to me) composer than Elliott Carter, for instance, whose music was similarly 12-tone but unspeakably ugly and often indecipherable. Morris hears his own compositions as music, not as an intellectual game played with his listeners, and thus holds one’s attention as the music is developed, and the Irrera Brothers help bring it to vivid life.

In the first piece, In Variations, Morris also uses luftpausen as a way of making his music less consistently busy and somewhat easier to grasp, with good results. In the second piece, titled …gradually… , Morris uses similar figures but rearranges them. Here it is the piano part that is considerably different, highlighting a moving or “walking” bass line of single notes against the violin’s lines. They range from tender to fierce with various mutations in between as well as moving the interaction of the two instruments “from agreement to conflict.”

But the weakness of Morris’ music is that it all sounds pretty much alike. Because he uses and re-uses the same devices over and over, it doesn’t really go anywhere interesting, and the lay listener would have a very hard time trying to tell these pieces apart. Since I was playing this CD, as I normally do, in a different room from my computer and listening on the speakers in the computer room, I had no idea when the second piece ended and the third began, and I don’t think you’d be able to tell without looking either. Yes, it’s better music than Carter’s, but it’s nowhere near the level of genius one hears in Webern or the inspiration in the music of Schoenberg or Berg. It’s good but not great.

Nonetheless, as I mentioned early on, it is the playing of the Irrera Brothers that makes this disc. If just one of these pieces was heard in a recital, surrounded by contrasting works in other styles, I’m sure it would make a good impression, yet even though the CD is less than 44 minutes long, this much of Morris’ music is a bit much to take in one sitting. Better to listen to just one piece at a time, stop the CD and try to absorb it all before moving on to the next.

—© 2019 Lynn René Bayley

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Lawrence Moss Presents a New Dawn

MOSS: Ligeti Light / Kadisha Onalbayeva, pno / New Dawn / Kiev Philharmonic Orch.; Arnold Winston, cond / Voyagers / Composers’ Choir; Daniel Shaw, cond / Moments / Eric Kutz, cel; Audrey Andrist, pno / Grand is the Seen / Danielle Talamantes, sop; Sarah Eckman McIver, fl; Joel Ayau, pno / Gamelan for Flute & Percussion / McIver, fl; Lee Hinkle, perc / De Profundis / Khasma Piano Duo / Dreams by Day and Night / Danielle Talamantes, sop; McIver, fl; Hinkle, perc; Joel Ayau, pno / 5 Bagatelles for Percussion / Hinkle, perc / Inside, Outside: 4 Haikus for Our Time / Talamantes, sop; McIver, fl/pic / Innova INN027

This is the second CD of works by Lawrence Moss, the album’s producer, to be issued by Innova. This one features a mixture of piano, orchestral, choral, vocal and chamber works featuring a variety of different performers (see above).

We immediately enter his musical mind with the piano solo Ligeti Light, which the composer states combines his admiration for the Hungarian composer with his love of painting. There are many pauses in the music, and Moss alternates short, deft musical gestures with sparkling piano runs high up on the keyboard. There’s also a moment at 3:25 where the pianist is instructed to tap his or her instrument.

New Dawn is an orchestral tone poem based on five Tang dynasty poems, one for each (very short) movement. This music, too, uses brief gestures; it tells its stories indirectly, more via suggestion than stating things right out. Moss uses a lot of high-lying phrases, scoring them primarily for winds and high strings, and uses the orchestra in one or two sections at a time rather than as a full unit. At the 5:55 mark, we suddenly get a short but quirky waltz, as if danced by someone with one leg. Very interesting!

By contrast, I really didn’t care much for Voyagers, a choral piece based on two Walt Whitman poems—not because I don’t like Whitman (I do) but because the music sounded like that B.S. minimalist stuff you hear all the time and, what’s worse, the chorus has lousy diction. You can’t understand a single syllable of what should be singing in English. Let’s just forget this ever happened, OK?

Moments for cello and piano, the most recent composition on this disc, sounds like a stab at 12-tone music. Some of it works, particularly when he allows the music to breathe and become lyrical, but several of the fast phrases sounded a bit forced to me, as if he made a conscious effort to write this way and wasn’t really inspired. I also didn’t much like Eric Kutz’ cello tone, which was thin and pallid in both his high and low registers, but particularly the high. Hey, Eric: do us a favor and listen to Emanuel Feuermann playing Chopin’s Polonaise Brillante. That’s the way it’s done. The music here also sounded, to me, much more fragmented and less connected, as if Moss couldn’t quite decide which way to go so he chose different directions, some of which didn’t work out.

Grand is the Seen for soprano, flute and piano also uses Whitman as its basis. Soprano Danielle Talamantes has an attractive timbre but is somewhat nasal in the top range and she, too, can’t enunciate English clearly enough to be understood. Except for the spoken lines, which were clear, she could have been singing in Danish or Hungarian for all I knew. The music, however, is quite interesting, giving wide-ranging intervals to both the singer and flautist, and the piano part is a real tour-de-force.

Also very fine is Gamelan for flute and percussion, the percussion being primarily vibraphone, brass chimes and gong. This sound fascinates Moss as it also, for a time, obsessed Benjamin Britten, and I like it, too. Here, too, Moss seems much looser and more creative in his use of notes, where to put them and how to develop them, sometimes indirectly and sometimes in a linear fashion. Moss also has the flute play. at times, in a manner similar to that of bamboo or reed flutes. Very interesting!

De Profundis, written for piano duo, also has a quasi-Eastern sound wedded to its bitonal structure. Written in three sections, the third quotes a bit of Josquin des Pres’ Mass. The music here is almost entirely abstract, again interrupted by moments of silence, yet tightly woven into three good structures.

Talamantes returns to sing Dreams by Day and Night, a three-song cycle based on the poetry of Li Bai. Talamantes is no more intelligible in these songs as she was in the Whitman, and here she also spreads her tone under spressure. For me the music here is more conventional and less individualistic. I also wasn’t real thrilled by some cat whacking bongos in the background of the second song, “Of Drinking Wine.” If you’re gonna bang bongos, you better be writing something hip like the music of Fred Katz.

The 5 Bagatelles for Percussion Solo also feature bongos—in fact, they start out on bongos—but percussionist Leo Hinkle then jumps on his bass drum, gong, and other paraphernalia to create a nice mosaic of sound. Still, a percussion piece is a percussion piece; unless you’re using vibes, marimba or xylophone in the mix, your “music” isn’t going anywhere, even in those moments when the percussionist moans out a doleful note from his throat. Even though Moss does include a marimba in the fourth piece (“Duet”), Baby Dodds did it better.

And guess what? Talamantes comes back one more time for the concluding Inside, Outside: 4 Haikus for Our Time. Just between you, me and the lamppost, I always wonder what composers mean when they add the tag line, “for our time,” particularly in this case when the haikus are:

Inside car
sitting, waiting

Outside rain
drizzle, sprinkling

On the windowshield
kittenpaws
creeping

Softly

I mean, really: these haikus could apply to virtually any period of time going back at least to the 1830s when boxcars were invented. The music, however, is interesting and appealing, short phrases—generally melodic and consisting of long notes—given to both the soprano and flute. Were I able to understand anything that Talamantes sang, it would have been a great finish to the CD

And there you have it. A few so-so pieces but mostly fascinating and well-written music with a bit of stylistic variety.

—© 2019 Lynn René Bayley

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Groslot’s “Matrix in Persian Blue” Released

GROSLET: Ce lac due oublié que hante sous le givre…* Le bel aujourd’hui.⁺ Matrix in Persian Blue / Asasello Quartet; *Jan Michiels, pno; ⁺Liesbeth Devos, sop / Tyxart TXA 19123

The music of Belgian composer Robert Groslot is haunting in its quality yet modern in its language. His music leans ever-so-slightly in the direction of tonality while never quite arriving there, and in these remarkable chamber works for string quartet with piano or vocalist one is immediately captivated by the sounds he creates. It is almost like the work of a modern Debussy: well structured yet using opaque textures, with a bit of an edge to the sound like the music of Honegger or Françaix.

The opening work on this CD, a nearly 25-minute piece for piano quintet, employs a variety of devices including portamento slides for the violins yet never becomes cluttered or overly busy. Groslot is apparently uninterested in writing music merely for effect; every note of his works means something and adds to the whole. In this piece there is a pizzicato section for the strings that oddly resembles, but does not duplicate, the style of Marius Constant, but again these devices are used in the service of an excellent musical mind that creates structures that are complex but never cluttered.

Yet in many ways Groslot’s music is difficult to describe because a mere litany of the technical devices used do not give the reader an impression of the actual music. It must be heard to be fully felt and understood, and it is to their credit that the very talented Asasello Quartet fully enter the spirit of the music as well as the notes.

The song cycle Le bel aujourd’hui is based on four poems by Stéphane Mallarmé, the words of which are unfortunately not given in the booklet either in French or English. I had to look them up on Emily Ezust’s LiederNet Archive. Soprano Liesbeth Devos has a high voice that unfortunately tends towards a shrill, wiry sound up top, but her singing is expressive and her diction excellent. Here, again, the Debussy comparison is apt, with grateful vocal lines and a little more of a tendency towards tonality to help ground the singer. Groslot also uses the string quartet here more as individual instruments than playing together as a unit; each instrument in the quartet gets his or her own line to play, only occasionally using the two violins together in harmony while the cello plays a fairly consistent pizzicato counterpoint to the proceedings. In the last song, Le vierge, the vocal line leans more towards the atonal and the first violin sustains very high, bright tones while the others play delicate counterpoint, often in moving pizzicato lines.

Groslot’s only (so far) work for string quartet alone is built along the same lines as the preceding works: bitonal leaning towards atonal, with bouncing counterpoint and using the quartet members individually rather than together. And once again, there is a lot of pizzicato and fast-moving bass lines played by the cello. The first violin also gets a soaring, long-note solo. Disparate parts, but somehow all fitting together to make a cohesive whole. In this work, particularly, Groslot leaves the Debussy model behind. Eventually, the polyphonic complexity grows to a point where one is caught up in its web. The second movement (there are only two) begins, unusually, with the quartet playing together, but they soon separate and toy with one another. A most interesting and unusual piece, which ends with a series of rapid-moving figures.

This is surely one of the most interesting and unusual set of pieces I’ve heart in a long time!

—© 2019 Lynn René Bayley

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David Starobin’s New Guitar Music Vol. 12

LERDAHL: 3 Bagatelles.¹ MUSTO: The Brief Light.² BLAND: Sonata No. 4.³ GREEN: Genesis: Variations for Solo Guitar. LEISNER: 3 James Tate Songs² / David Starobin, gtr; ¹Movses Pogossian, vln; ²Patrick Mason, bar; ³Yun Hao, pno / Bridge 9520

This is the 12th CD in an ongoing series by guitarist and label owner David Starobin of modern music written for his instrument. Three of these composers I’ve heard of (Lerdahl, Musto and Bland); the other two I was not much familiar with; but all of the music is interesting.

Fred Lerdahl’s low-key Bagatelles fir violin and guitar begin with the violin playing long notes against busy figures from the guitarist in quadruple time. The subtlety of the music belies its ingenuity: the use of descending chromatics attracts one’s attention. The violin holds even longer sustained notes across bars as the guitar, not slowed down a bit, plays a single-note sequence. In a piece such as this, lacking a firm tonal center, it’s hard to call such sequences a melody, but interesting it most certainly is. In the third piece the tempo is faster, with both instruments playing rapid figures against and in concert with one another.

John Musto’s song cycle with guitar, The Brief Light, calls for the guitarist to play with a more aggressive approach, which I personally prefer. Set to six poems by James Laughlin on a variety of texts and topics, Musto did a truly remarkable job matching the words to music, following the rhythm of the lyrics metrically as well as capturing the spirit of each poem/song in mood. Baritone Patrick Mason has an attractive voice that spreads on sustained notes, but he is also an effective interpreter and has excellent diction. You didn’t even need to read the words as he sang, and that in itself is a miracle nowadays. Both singer and guitarist work beautifully together, particularly in the fourth song, “The Brief Light,” a very intimate song about an older man in love with a young woman, but each song has its own character and mood. This is really excellent music. The last song in the cycle, “I Have Drifted,” has the most gracious and memorable melody line.

Next up is William Bland’s Sonata No. 4 for guitar and piano which begins with a lively figure in 6/8 time played on guitar, to which the piano enters in a supporting role. Bland’s music is melodic and tuneful, to some degree reminiscent of pop music of the 1960s (but not rock music), which actually helps the less sophisticated listener follow the music’s development much easier. In the development section it becomes less pop-like, but returns to this mode for the recapitulation of the first theme. (The liner notes mention that “Bland’s sonatas are a…mélange of old and new…abounding in blues, rock and other popular and classical references.” Thank goodness he left rock out of this one.) The third movement is a guitar solo with cadenza, while the fourth, marked “Blues,” sounded through most of it very much like the second of Gershwin’s three piano preludes. Overall a pleasant work, but not something that held my attention.

Edward Green’s eight-minute Genesis: Variations for Solo Guitar is more atonal in structure but very well written, with a busy fast section in which the guitarist plays some difficult figures, providing counterpoint to his own melodic line, which Starobin handles masterfully. Bravo! If I may nitpick just a bit, however, I felt that this piece sounded more like a suite than a set of variations; it’s just the way it struck my ear. But I certainly did like it, as it held my attention. You could never quite figure out where it was going next. Really creative music. Later on, there’s another section in which Starobin is called upon to play in rhythmic counterpoint, which also fascinated me.

Patrick Mason returns in David Leisner’s 3 James Tate Songs. Like Bland, Leisner writes in a tonal style. If not quite as closely related to pop music, the first song has, to my ears, a folk music feel about it. I could almost imagine a less-well-trained singer (albeit a good one) performing it and, if a good enough musician, doing a fine job. The difference is that Leisner’s music breaks up the rhythm, following the mood of the lyrics into unusual chord and mood changes. I was particularly impressed by “Never Again the Same,” a very complex piece built around juxtaposed melodic-rhythmic figures that mirrors the words of the poem perfectly and ends in a quiet, reflective mood. The last song, “From an Island,” sort of combines classical structure with a folk music feel, but in this one the unusual metrical division of the melodic line, and particularly the running single-note bass line played by the guitar, would be just a bit beyond the capabilities of most folk performers. As in the Musto cycle, Mason’s diction is flawless, and here his vocal control is much better, with little or no uneven vibrato on sustained notes.

All in all, a fascinating album of diverse pieces, well played and sung.

—© 2019 Lynn René Bayley

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Dixon’s 1960 “Perséphone” Broadcast a Gem

STRAVINSKY: Perséphone (in German) / Doris Schade, speaker; Fritz Wunderlich, ten; Schwanheimer Kinderchor; Chorus of Hessian Radio; Chorus of South German Radio; Sinfonie-Orchesters des Hessischen Rundfunks; Dean Dixon, cond / Audite 95.619 (live: 1960)

For most collectors—and for the issuing company of this CD, Audite—this is the Fritz Wunderlich Perséphone, but for me it is the Dean Dixon Perséphone because, without his impetus in programming this work and choosing Wunderlich as his tenor soloist, it frankly wouldn’t even exist.

More to the point, it is a rare example of Dixon on record conducting Stravinsky. The ill-fated conductor was so good that Toscanini invited him to guest-conduct his NBC Symphony Orchestra in 1941 and Eugene Ormandy had him conduct the Philadelphia Orchestra later that decade but fought racial prejudice all his life. Technically speaking, Dixon was not African-American because his ancestors came from the Caribbean, not Africa, but in the racially divided America of his time it didn’t matter. Too many doors were closed to him, thus he left the United States for Israel in 1949, where he directed the Philharmonic Orchestra there in the 1950 and ’51 seasons. He then became principal conductor of the Gothenberg Symphony from 1953-1960 and the Hessian or simply hr-Sinfonieorchester in Frankfurt from 1961 to 1974. I remember him best from his work with the New York Philharmonic and the Chicago, Pittsburgh and San Francisco Symphony Orchestras in the 1970s and always found his work to be top-notch both technically and emotionally. He died unexpectedly at age 61 in 1976.

One of the striking things about this performance is its “rounder,” more fluid phrasing. Dixon avoids the more angular approach of such conductors as Kent Nagano and Esa-Pekka Salonen, both of whose recordings (in the original French) I admire. In this respect he is closer to the way Leopold Stokowski performed Stravinsky, yet he does not shy away from the big climaxes and angular rhythms when they appear.

Doris Schade was a well-known German actress who continued to appear in shows on German television into her early 80s, and her reading of the narration here is absolutely superb. So too is Wunderlich’s singing. Despite its being a “wrong language” performance, I cannot think of any other tenor in any other recording or performance of this work who sings nearly as well. His voice, particularly at this stage of his career, rings out with golden purity and beauty of tone, and he gives his all.

The recording has typical German radio sound quality, clear and full but a trifle dry, but no matter. Whatever other recording you may have of Perséphone in French, this performance is a must-have. It is unique in so many ways.

—© 2019 Lynn René Bayley

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Wunderlich Sings 20th-Century Music

FRITZ WUNDERLICH: MUSIC OF THE 20th CENTURY / RAPHAEL: Palmström-Sonate / Walter Triebskorn, cl; Roman Schimmer, vln; Karl Schad, dm; Alfred Kretzschmar, bs; Rolf Reinhardt, pno / NEUMEYER: Studentenlieder / Radio Orch. of the Saar; Karl Ristenpart, cond / VON BAUSZNERN: Jacqueline Putputput: Einerlel ob arm oder reich / Katherina von Mikulicz-Radecki, sop; State High School for Musik, Freiburg Orch.; Günther Wich, cond / HELM: Die Belagerung von Tottenberg: excerpts / Hetty Plümacher, sop (Agnes); Ingeborg Lasser, alto (The Widow Abt); Günther Abbrosius, bar (Feldwabel, Feldoberst); Rudolf Gonszar, bs (Bürgermeister); Südfunk-Chor & Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart; Hans Müller-Kray, cond / FEISCHNER: Zirkus Carambas: Ach Bumbo, mein gutter Alter; Herrlich ist dieses Plätzchen / Lore Paul, sop (Arabella); same orch. & cond. as Helm / PFITZNER: Von Deutscher Seele: excerpts from Acts I & II / Annelies Kupper, sop; Margarethe Bence, alto; Ernst Denger, bs; Stuttgart Philharmonic Chorus; South German Radio Symphony Orch.; Heinz Mende, cond / REUTTER: Triptychon / same orch. & cond. as Helm / STRAVINSKY: Oedipus Rex: Non reperlas vetus scelus / same orch. & cond. as Helm / ORFF: Antigonae: Aber jetzt kommt aus dem Thor Ismene; Der Geibst der Liebe. Oedipus der Tyrann: Ach, wie schwer ist Wissen; Bist du noch eigenmächtig / Gerhard Stolze, ten (Oedipus); Württemberg State Opera Chorus & State Orch.; Ferdinand Leitner, cond. / EGK: Der Revisor: Ganz ungewöhnlich, ganz unverhofft; Die Anstalt gefällt mir / Gerhard Stolze, ten (Chlestakow); Gustav Grefe, bar (Dobtschinsky); Frithjof Sentpaul, bar (Curator); Fritz Ollendorf, bs-bar (Stadthauptmann); Huber Buchta, ten (Mischka); Stüttgart Radio Symphony Orch.; Werner Egk, cond / BERG: Wozzeck: Du der Platz ist verflucht; Ich hab ein Hemdlein an / Toni Blankenheim, bar (Wozzeck); Gerhard Stolze, ten (Hauptmann); Fritz Linke, bar (Doctor); August Seider, ten (Drum Major); Maria Kinas, sop (Marie); Hetty Plümacher, mezzo (Margret); same chorus, orch. & cond. as Orff / SWR Music 19075CD

In his brief 35 years on this planet, tenor Fritz Wunderlich left an amazingly large number of commercial recordings, live opera performances and radio broadcasts, especially considering that he was not the leading German tenor of his day. That honor, for better or worse, went to the dry-voiced, leather-toned Rudolf Schock, who was a superior stage actor (watch his televised Lulu performance to see what I mean) and had both a larger voice and a wider repertoire.

Yet in a sense, “wider repertoire” in Schock’s case meant operatic roles by Weber, Wagner and Verdi, many of which were beyond Wunderlich’s small but extremely pretty voice. Wunderlich eventually became a Mozart specialist not so much by choice as by natural proclivity; despite occasionally singing such roles as Alfredo in La Traviata (opposite Teresa Stratas and Hermann Prey), Lensky in Eugene Onegin and the occasional forays into Monteverdi (he made the first “historically informed” recording of that composer’s L’Orfeo in 1954) and modern music that could use his small but sweet voice, it was what provided his steadiest income.

The present collection, drawn entirely from radio broadcasts, presents Wunderlich in the music of 20th-century composers, but as we all know, 20th-century composers are not all created equal—nor did they all write music that was modern in harmony and/or structure. Technically speaking, Giacomo Puccini and Richard Strauss were 20th-century composers, and although Strauss went much further harmonically than Puccini only a very few of his operas are complex structures. And then there were reactionaries like Gian-Carlo Menotti and his ilk, writing fairly trashy tonal music that made Puccini sound like Stravinsky. But Wunderlich was trying to make a living, so he sang it all. Quite a bit of it is collected here in this new compilation from SWR Music.

As it turns out, the Palmström-Sonate of Günter Raphael (1903-1960) is an excellent piece of music, sounding like a cross between Klezmer music and Poulenc. The harmonies are spicy enough to brand it as modern music, but the rhythms are lively (the second piece sounds like an off-center German cabaret waltz from the 1920s) and the music somewhat challenging as the vocal line does not always coincide with what the instruments are playing. A wonderful piece!

By contrast, Fritz Neumeyer’s Studentenlieder is resolutely tonal, almost neo-Romantic except for occasional oddities in the harmonic progression, which sometimes moves sideways away from the home key. In this respect, it almost sounds like early Britten, but at least it’s interesting music and not overly Romantic. It probably also helps that the conductor here is the excellent Karl Ristenpart, better known for his involvement in Baroque music. The one thing you note about Wunderlich as the set goes on—and, indeed, in his oeuvre as a whole—was that he sang gloriously and with energy but was never really a great interpreter. It was all about the sound of the voice, although to his credit he was a first-rate musician who never distorted anything he sang. (The surviving film clips show that he wasn’t much of a stage actor, either.)

Next up is a duet from an opera unknown to me, Dietrich von Bausznern’s Jacqueline Putputput. Whatever the plot is, this duet is lively and attractive even if I have absolutely no idea what on earth they’re singing about. This is followed by four excerpts from Everett Helm’s 1956 opera, The Siege of Totenberg, which was issued complete on Gala GL 100.679. The oddity of this work is that it was only performed on the radio and never in an opera house. The music is typical impressionist German style of the 1950s, leaning towards both lyricism in the vocal lines and modern harmonies in the accompaniment. Aside from Wunderlich, the most notable singer in this performance is soprano Hetty Plümacheur, who recorded a great many Grosser Querschnitt (operatic highlights) during the late 1950s/early ‘60s, several of them with Wunderlich. The music is somewhat interesting but, without knowing what the libretto is or the plot is about, it doesn’t really hold the listener’s attention and the music sounds contrived.

The two excerpts from Heinrich Feischner’s “opera giocosa” Zirkus Carambas don’t sound very comic at all; in fact they, like the previous opera, sound plodding and uninteresting. Feischner was one of those composers who apparently tried to combine bitonal harmonies with lively rhythms, some in 6/8 time, but none of it sounds the least bit inspired or interesting except in a technical sense. Carl Orff he was not. Wunderlich sings well as usual, but even he doesn’t seem to have his heart in it—and why should he? The music was ephemeral junk and he probably knew it.

By contrast to this piece of junk, Hans Pfitzner’s cantata Von Deutscher Seele sounds absolutely terrific, despite it being one of his lesser-known works, although contralto Margarethe Bence had a pretty ugly voice. The biggest problem in this performance is that the orchestra is too thick and muddy-sounding, and it’s not just the radio sonics. In fact, the second excerpt here (“Herz, in deinen sonnenhellen Tagen”) has terrific natural reverb around singers, orchestra and chorus, and here you can tell that although Wunderlich’s voice was small it had good “ping” which made it carry well. It’s just that Heinz Mende was a fairly plodding, unimaginative conductor with little concept of orchestral color or timbre. The singers almost make up for it with their enthusiasm and verve, but the problem is the music itself, turgid and repetitive. After a while you just wish it would stop.

Hermann Reutter’s Stravinsky-like Triptychon has its abrasive moments but is much more interesting and better written. Interestingly for an album devoted to Wunderlich, however, there is as much if not more choral singing here than solos for the tenor. The second part opens with a long, slow orchestral prelude of haunting beauty. Wunderlich’s legato in this section is also quite spectacular, showing off his breath control. The third piece, “Das Punschlied,” may be the most Stravinsky-like of all, sounding for all the world like a missing part of Oedipus Rex. Wunderlich, the chorus and conductor Hans Muller-Kray all do an excellent job on it.

The brief excerpt from Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex is sung very well and there is good reverb around Wunderlich’s voice. Of the two Orff operas excerpted here, Antigonae was one of his best late operas, Oedipus der Tyrann one of his most dirge-like, with a bit too much spoken dialogue. Both the tenor and conductor (Ferdinand Leitner) do a nice job in both, however, and in Oedipus we are blessed to have the great character tenor Gerhard Stolze in the title role. The excerpts from the latter opera are considerably livelier and more interesting than the complete commercial recording issued by Deutsche Grammophon.

Werner Egk’s Der Revisor is a black comedy based on Nikolai Gogol’s play The Government Inspector (which bears only a superficial resemblance to the Danny Kaye movie of the same name). This is really excellent and interesting music, a bit in the Orff vein (repeated note sequences) and a bit in the Stravinsky mold (oddly Russian-sounding melodic lines and harmony), although the lover of arias will hate it because it is mostly sung recitative and has no arias (even the ensemble singing tends more towards sung recits than real “tunes,” for all you tune freaks). FYI, the entire performance, mislabeled as 1960 (it was actually May 1957), is uploaded on YouTube in five sections. The composer himself is the conductor.

The album ends with two excerpts from an undated live performance of Berg’s Wozzeck with Toni Blankenheim in the title role, Gerhard Stolze as Hauptmann, Maria Kinas as Marie and August Seider as the Drum Major. These are superfluous, since Wunderlich’s performance of Andres is already preserved on the superb studio recording of the opera with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and conducted by Karl Böhm, and annoying because the sound quality of these live excerpts is simply awful. Not only are they muddy, but the voices are recessed and the whole thing sounds like a botch job.

So there you have it. The best music/performance combinations are the Raphael, Neumeyer, von Bauznern, Reutter, Stravinsky, Orff and Egk. These are superb and treasurable, but as for the rest of it, caveat emptor.

—© 2019 Lynn René Bayley

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Brazilian Pianist Antonio Adolfo’s Samba Jazz

SAMBA JAZZ ALLEY / ALF: Ceu de Mar. ADOLFO-GASPAR: Hello, Herbie. POWELL-De MORAES:  So Por Amor. LOBO: Casa Forte. DURVAL-FERREIRA-MAURICIO: Tristeza de Nos Dois. DONATO: The Frog. ADOLFO: Obrigado. JOBIM: Passarim. Corcovado / Antonio Adolfo, pno; Jesse Sadoc, tpt/fl-hn; Rafael Rocha, tb; Serginho Trombone, v-tb; Marcelo Martins, s-sax/t-sax/a-fl; Mauricio Einhorn, Gabriel Grossi, harm; Claudio Spiewak, gtr/shaker; Lula Galvao, gtr; Jorge Helder, bs; Rafael Barata, dm / AAM 0713

Antonio Adolfo was still a teenager in the early 1960s when he became a fan of the bossa nova boom. In addition to guitarist-composer Antonio Carlos Jobim, he became a big fan of pianist Sergio Mendes—not just the Sergio Mendes of his wildly popular “Brazil ‘66” band, but the jazz-oriented Mendes who was part of that musical revolution.

Now here in 2019, we have an album by Adolfo and his band of “samba jazz,” and it’s a delightful one at that. But for many of us “foreigners” here in the USA, Jobim is the only composer on the album whose name we would readily know. Aside from Adolfo himself, the other songwriters are such folks as Johnny Alf, Tiberio Gaspar, Baden Powell, Vincius de Moraes, Edu Lobo and Joao Donato; but they all speak the language of Brazilian jazz.

The album’s title comes from a small alley in Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana district (yes, they had one!) which, from 1958 to 1965, became known as Beco das Garraras or “Bottles Alley” because the neighbors in taller buildings would throw bottles down from their apartments to protest the loud music and boisterous conversation below. As Adolfo puts it in the notes, “It was like a cauldron of jazz, samba and bossa nova…the Alley’s four nightclubs gradually welcomed them as this new type of music tool hold with enthusiastic audiences.”

Adolfo’s take on this style is a bit smoother and cooler than Mendes’ own but no less interesting, thanks to a cadre of very gifted improvisers. Adolfo’s own playing style almost sounds like a piano version of Jobim’s guitar rather than the busy, percussive style of Mendes. But in this band, the sum of the parts is greater than the individual members. This band works together like a well-oiled machine, with every part of it clicking in just the right places and in the right proportion. As an arranger, Adolfo combines the hot sounds of 1960s Brazilian jazz that once backed tenor saxist Stan Getz with a bit of a funky blues beat. He uses the saxophones to fill in nicely behind the trumpet, trombone and guitar soloists, and drummer Rafael Barata plays in a style that combines enthusiasm with subtle forward propulsion.

I was also delighted to hear that Adolfo varies his tempi; this doesn’t sound like an endless parade of uptempo numbers, but include some in a medium or slow speed. This variance makes for an interesting program. Like the old Stan Getz-Jobim and Getz-Brazilian big band recordings, this is excellent summer jazz listening. Another feature I liked about these arrangements was the way Adolfo used trumpeter Jesse Sadoc to play brisk eighth note and triplet figures in the lead line, sometimes in unison with the trombone and sometimes in thirds to create the illusion of there being more brass in the band than there actually is. Guest artist Serginho Trombone plays an especially fine solo (on valve trombone) in The Frog, and there’s a really gutsy tenor sax solo on Obrigado.

All in all, a fun record with some excellent solos and arrangements. Great for summertime listening!

—© 2019 Lynn René Bayley

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Exploring Erika Fox’s Paths

PATHS / FOX: Paths Where the Mourners Tread. Quasi una Cadenza. On Visiting Stravinsky’s Grave at San Michele.* Malinconia Militaire. Café Warsaw 1944 / *Richard Uttley, pno; Goldfield Ensemble; Richard Baker, cond / NMC D254

Erika Fox, an 82-year-old Austrian refugee who settled in England with her family at age three, is a British music educator and composer. Her music was discovered by Kate Romano, artistic director of the Goldfield Ensemble, a few years ago when listening to Nicola LeFanu’s BBC radio program “Inspiring Women in Music” three years ago, and she was utterly fascinated.

The music presented here is for the most part slow-moving, albeit with moments of quicker tempi and energy, but what distinguishes it is her eclecticism. Inspired in part by Eastern European folk music and Hassidic music, Fox’s creations are modern in both its melodic lines and her use of harmony, yet somehow retain qualities of the Old World that are almost forcibly aligned with the New. In a way, it’s like opening a door to another era only to find the inhabitants speaking the music language of the present in order to express their older sentiments.

Fox also composes in sparse lines. During the 1970s, she was involved with such groups as the Fires of London, the Nash Ensemble, Dartington and SPNM; for 20 years her works were performed regularly and even broadcast in the UK. Her large ensemble piece Shir was featured on Channel 4 television, and her puppet music drama The Bet was performed more than 100 times. Yet despite this exposure, she remains a relatively obscure figure on the British musical scene.

But no longer.

Here, at last, Fox is being given wider exposure on this NMC release, and if you go to nmcrec.co.uk/recording/kaleidoscope you can stream Kaleidoscope, which won the 1983 Finzi Award for best composition. Listening to the first and longest piece on this CD, Paths Where the Mourners Tread, I also heard a kinship to a modern composer whose work I really like but who, like Fox, is not as well known for his own pieces as for his other work in the musical world, Leif Segerstam. With its sliding chromatic violin passages that sound like crying creatures from Alpha Centauri, edgy string tremolos and an amorphous sense of construction, Fox’s music and that of Segerstam could easily be twins raised by wolves, civilized humans with a touch of the wild about them. The music doesn’t so much steamroll you as creep up on you and wind its way into and around your psyche, creating disturbing yet strangely interesting figures that somehow manage to touch several different tendrils in your mind.

As Romano puts it in the notes, rehearsing her music opened up surprises to them as the music took shape: “there is very little conventional development in her music. Often, the ‘argument’ takes place within a single line; the linear journey is quickly completed and a new one begins. Don’t listen for things to come back – they won’t. Or, if they do, they come back as collapsed fragments, intricately woven into an ever-changing tapestry of sonorities. It is inward-reaching music, like a series of ever-decreasing spirals that feels both alien and utterly compelling. Erika Fox agrees that the self-contained lines are closely connected to the wordless chants of the Hasidic rabbis.”

Fox herself describes the ideas she hears in her head as “foreign to performers, though I myself did not recognize their foreignness.”

Quasi una cadenza is a bit more rhythmically swift and active than the first piece. The clarinet in particular interjects Hasidic or Klezmer phrases while the violin, French horn, piano etc. pursue other lines. Most of these bisect and intersect one another; Fox seldom writes for a group of musicians as a unit, to play together. Her harmony is both fluid and suggested rather than stated. On a personal note, I was also delighted to discover that young Ben Goldscheider, whose French horn recital on Willowhayne Records I previously raved about, is a member of this group. Kate Romano is the clarinetist, but the booklet doesn’t say whether or not it is she who plays the bass clarinet on Quasi una cadenza. The other members are Nicola Goldscheider on violin, Bridget Carey on viola, Sophie Harris on cello, Carla Rees on flutes, Anna Durance on the oboe and English horn, Richard Uttley on piano and George Barton on percussion. All of them play with pretty much the same energy and enthusiasm as Goldscheider does on horn.

The third piece, inspired by Fox’s visit to Stravinsky’s grave in San Michele, Venice, is a long piano solo. Once again Fox uses juxtaposed themes which she says are then “’clarified’ by dint of varying repetition, becoming familiar together.” Among these, which she lists, are loud octaves, Oriental melodic fragments, ostinato figures and “Stravinskian” chordal passages. Uttley’s playing is sensitive and exciting in turn, as is the music; despite its Stravinskian inspiration, it somehow sounds unfamiliar and strange—again, as if one had opened a door to the past and suddenly found the inhabitants behind it speaking a language that sounded like ours but was foreign in a strange way and not quite graspable. To a certain extent, I found the repeated ostinato figures to be the glue that held the rest of the piece together, despite their being less frequent and not really the “meat” of the work. Perhaps this is because I personally “heard” these figures as being somewhat related to the “walking bass” that also permeates portions of it.

In Malinconia Militaire, Fox was inspired by a poem based on a piece of music, “Webern Op. 4” by Amelia Rosselli. As Fox puts it, Rosselli’s poems “are tense, with violence and lyricism presented together as an integral part of the whole structure,” and these qualities are evident in this piano quartet. Unlike the previous works on this disc, Malinconia Militaire is in three discrete movements, the second being the fastest and edgiest and the third the darkest despite its very slow tempo, which briefly picks up around the 2:40 mark. It ends in the middle of nowhere.

Café Warsaw 1944 was again influenced by a poem, this one by Czesław Milosz of his memories at a Polish café frequented by his friends and colleagues, of which he was the only one to survive the War. Fox makes it clear in her liner notes that although literary forms inspired her music, the scores themselves are not meant to be poetic allegories; for her, music is absolute and an expression in and of itself. The first two movements are sinuous and exploratory; like the first piece, it sort of oozes across your mind, getting its tendrils into your cerebral cortex. This changes, however, in the third section, a quirky scherzo marked by busy percussion (including cymbals) and a piano solo in the midst of edgy atonal figures played by the individual strings and clarinet.

The bonus track, Kaleidoscope, is in itself nearly 20 minutes long. Here, soft, plaintive notes played by the cello and accented by the harp expand into portamento figures played by the strings with flute, vibes and harp accents. It is indeed a kaleidoscope of sound, the music moving forward on its own pace and with its own strange inner logic. A little repeated flute figure then dominates while the vibes continue to come and go in the background, along with the strings and then the harp playing edgy figures. Eventually things morph and change via faster tempi, edgier figures and other devices, yet it returns to the slowish pace of the opening.

Fox’s music is really fascinating and different. This album is a gem, which I hope gets noticed by more and more people within the classical community.

—© 2019 Lynn René Bayley

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Prieto’s Pan-American Reflections

PAN-AMERICAN REFLECTIONS / COPLAND: Symphony No. 3. CHÁVEZ: Symphony No. 2, “Sinfonía India” / The Orch. of the Americas; Carlos Miguel Prieto, cond / Linn CKD 604 (live: Lusławice, Poland, July 14-15, 2018)

Here’s one culturally mixed production: a Mexican conductor who graduated from Harvard Business School, leading a mixed-culture orchestra in the music of an American and a Mexican composer, playing in Poland and released on a Scottish CD label. If that isn’t cultural crossover, I don’t know what is!

The liner notes by Juan Arturo Brennan indicate that “There is impeccable logic in pairing Aaron Copland and Carlos Chávez on an album. Both were important in establishing and solidifying, each in his own environment, a musical language with a clear national profile and, at the same time, informed by an unmistakable modern outlook. On the other hand, after leaving their mark with works written in a clearly national vein, both Copland and Chávez effected a transition, in the late stages of their creative lives, towards a more universal, abstract mode of expression.”

As usual, however, the proof of these claims is in the listening. When Copland’s Third (numbered) Symphony premiered in 1946, Copland wrote that although it “contains no popular or folk references,” it was “a war piece or, more precisely, a piece on the end of war” using his own Fanfare for the Common Man in “an expanded and augmented manner,” and this is certainly true. Copland also compared this symphony to Mahler, admitting that as “a great admirer of Mahler, my music sometimes shows his influence.” Listening to it, it is clearly an epic piece built out of simple building blocks—simpler and more “American”-sounding than anything Mahler wrote. The music is also more logical and clearly developed than Mahler; it does not fly out in several different directions at once, juxtaposing various themes with an almost schizophrenic delight. Prieto’s performance is clear and lucid, emphasizing the music’s lyrical qualities while not underplaying the dramatic moments. The second movement sounds very much like an “American Mahler” in feeling, though the themes and orchestration are typically Copland’s own.

Yet in the liner notes, Copland says that “The conductor who has understood my music with greater intuition is Leonard Bernstein. His way of conducting the Third Symphony is the closest to what I had in mind when I wrote it.” Listening to Bernstein’s recording with the New York Philharmonic, one notes a less smooth orchestral blend (Bernstein often preferred rougher sonorities than other conductors) but also a greater urgency in the rhythms—sometimes subtle, as in the first movement, and sometimes overt, as in the second. It’s a fine distinction, but interesting nonetheless. Prieto is very obviously a fine conductor, but he doesn’t quite give 100% throughout, and the coolness of his orchestra’s playing (unfortunately, not confined to this orchestra alone) is just a bit of a remove from the emotional pull of the score.

This is also audible in his performance of Chávez’ Sinfonia India. Had you never heard it before, you may indeed think it a fine performance; the music is certainly colorful and interesting; but if you compare it to the superb recording by Enrique Batiz, you will again find it somewhat cool.

With that being said, Prieto brings out the lyrical qualities of both symphonies with exquisite phrasing and lovely playing by The Orchestra of the Americas, thus if this, again, was your first exposure to either of these works, you will be pleased if not necessarily caught up in a feeling of a special event. For some listeners, then, this will be a fine introduction to these two works, though I still recommend Bernstein in the first of them and Batiz in the second.

—© 2019 Lynn René Bayley

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