Arturo O’Farrill’s “Four Questions”

FOUR QUESTIONS / O’FARRILL: Baby Jack. Jazz Twins. Four Questions.⁺ Clump, Unclump. A Still, Small Voice* / The Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra; Arturo O’Farrill, pno/cond; ⁺Dr. Cornel West, speaker; *The “Still Small Voice” Singers, dir. Jana Ballard; Aubrey Johnson, Edda Fransdottir, sop; Sharon Moe, Fr-hn; Jason Marshall, bar-sax; Ivan Renta, sop-sax; Peter Brainin, t-sax; John Bailey, tpt / Zoho ZM 202002

This is a truly arresting CD by Arturo O’Farrill, son of the late, great Cuban-American jazz composer-arranger Arturo “Chico” O’Farrill, who first came to prominence in the late 1940s with his innovative charts for Benny Goodman’s big bop band.

The CD is divided, more or less, into two sections. The first of these contain four original compositions by O’Farrill for big band, Baby Jack through Clump, Unclump while the second consists of his 21-minute suite dedicated to Dr. Cornel West, A Still, Small Voice. Yet both sections of this CD are based on the four questions regarding integrity, honesty, decency and virtue posed by pioneer Civil Rights leader W.E.B. DuBois in 1903 and reiterated by Dr. West in a speech he gave in Seattle in October 2014. Dr. West’s speech was a reaction to the great financial crisis of 2008, a crisis I can certainly relate to as I lost half of my IRA in it. I do take exception, however, to O’Farrill’s wholly unfair and unfounded assessment of the “gravity of the 2016 presidential election and its potential doom (italics mine).” But it is a vanity of many jazz musicians today that they simply must politicize their art, assuming that all their fans and listeners agree with their political views.

The music, however, is fascinating. O’Farrill learned well from his father, whose work was noted for its harmonic sophistication even within standard Latin beats. In Baby Jack, Arturo O’Farrill extends this to include a device I refer to as the “moving bass line,” meaning that the bass line moves with the top line rather than simply supporting it. This was a device originated in the mid-1920s by pioneer jazz arranger Bill Challis, but O’Farrill takes it much, much further. Indeed, the entire harmonic sequence on which Baby Jack is based is continually moving and shifting; the composer says that it was inspired by the way “babies can laugh with the brilliance of pure joy, instantly howl with pain the next, and then burst back through with radiance in the blink of an eye.” David DeJesus’ alto sax solo forms the centerpiece of this track; it is the only section of the piece that is in conventional harmony and rhythm, immediately returning to the harmonic “chaos” of the opening right after.

Jazz Twins is based on his friends Arnold and Donald Stanley, who attended many of O’Farrill’s concerts throughout the U.S. He initially thought “they might be part of a government agency,” but came to realize they were fans who quickly became almost like family. Although not as edgy as Baby Jack, O’Farrill uses shifting meter and yet another moving bass line to induce the harmonic underpinning, the melody line being played on solo trumpet by David Smith. At the three-minute mark the music suddenly jumps into a fast Afro-Cuban beat with complex, almost atonal figures played repeatedly by the saxes, over which the brass plays a contrasting theme in a contrasting rhythm. An unnamed pianist (O’Farrill?) plays a nice running solo against the band’s frenzy, followed by a superb tenor solo by Ivan Renta. Smith then returns to play a brilliant improvised solo comprised mostly of fast eighth-note figures in ascending and descending lines.

Four Questions opens with hard, stomping, atonal chords played by the orchestra, following which Dr. West comes in with his narration. He apparently still thinks that he’s fighting the Civil Rights battles of the 1960s, but what the heck. I certainly have no hatred for him or any other Africa-American. Once again, the music is interesting and complex, this time with crossing figures within the trumpet section and continued bitonality in the harmony. At 9:16 the tempo and rhythm shift upwards into a quicker beat, the piano plays a different motif and the orchestra, first led by low trombones and then with contrasting rhythmic figures played by the trumpets, take over.

Clump, Unclump,  a piece “about the relentless law of gathering and scattering, the coming together and the falling asunder.” It opens with a frenzied piano solo, followed by frenzied playing by high reeds, staccato brass interjections and an overall feeling of mechanical coldness. At 1:30 another piano lick, this one in stiff staccato rhythms, introduces a second, more harmonically and rhythmically complex theme. But O’Farrill is scarcely done; the music continues to shift and morph as it moves throughout its duration. Seneca Black plays an absolutely brilliant trumpet solo on this one.

A Still, Small Voice, in four sections, opens with a gorgeous French horn solo by Sharon Moe, which is followed by the horn playing with a solo trombone, then the other trombones enter to provide the harmony, followed by the trumpets. O’Farrill has a keen ear for orchestral texture. During the ensuing piano solo, the two vocal soloists seem to be talking gibberish as the music becomes more chaotic. Eventually words emerge, but very quickly in staccato rhythms and, without a text to go by, it’s difficult to understand them (something about “passing by”). Jason Marshall plays a fine baritone sax solo, followed by more choral work and outstanding orchestral playing. The second and shortest section, “Amidst the Fire and Whilrwind,” is all choral, while the third, “Cacophonous,” is mostly orchestral, opening with some knotty brass chords before leading into a piano solo that moves like a freight train and then rising chromatic sax figures with brass interjections playing against them. A bit later on, there’s a quirky section of stiff counter-rhythms, followed by a smooth soprano sax solo by Renta. The last section opens with a fairly quiet bongo solo, followed by a brass chord and one of our vocal soloists. I’m not certain what she’s singing, however, or in what language, although she has a beautiful voice.

The thing that struck me with this piece was O’Farrill’s ability to write music that had disparate parts yet which somehow coalesced into a whole when heard together. In this respect, I liked A Still, Small Voice a bit better than George Russell’s anti-Vietnam War piece, Listen to the Silence. It all falls together with exceptional musical brilliance.

This is, for the most part, an excellent album of creative, individual music that crosses the boundaries between written (formal) and improvised music. Recommended.

—© 2020 Lynn René Bayley

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Ilker Acayürek Sings Lieder & Operetta

MAHLER: Songs of a Wayfarer. Ruckert-Lieder: No. 5, Ich bin der Welt abhanden.  LÉHAR: Erste Liebe. Wenn eine schöne Frau befiehlt. WOLF: Mörike Lieder: An die Geliebte. Italian Lieder Book: Der Mond hat eine schwere Klag’. HRISTIĆ: Elegija. MILOJEVIC: The Autumn Elegy: No. 1, Jesenja elegija. LISZT: Im Rhein, im schönen Strome. ILSE WEBER: Wiegala. BRAHMS: Ich sah als KnabeBlumen blühn. O wüsst ich doch den Weg zurück. Auf dem Kirchhöfe / Ilker Acayürek, ten; Fiona Pollak, pno / Avi 8553937D

Tenor Ilker Acayürek, who to judge from this cover photo looks like a homeless Hippie, was born in Istanbul, Turkey but grew up in Vienna, where he sang in the Mozart Boys’ Choir. He is a dedicated lieder singer and, in this his second solo CD, includes one song each by Stevan Hristić by Miloje Molijevic amidst a program of conventional German lieder.

Acayürek has a completely firm voice; in fact, his tone has no vibrato whatsoever in it, which makes his tone sound completely even throughout its range. If I had to pick one singer from the past who he reminds me of strongly, it would be American tenor Paul Reimers, who made a number of lieder recordings for the old Victor Blue Label (and a few duets with “name” sopranos on Red Seal) back in the acoustic era. Like Reimers, Acayürek is a somewhat generic interpreter whose main attraction is the incredible purity of his tone, an almost “tubular” sound that is unique. When he opens up the voice, as on Mahler’s “Ich hab’ein glühend Messer” from Songs of a Wayfarer, it almost comes as a surprise that he can emote this strongly, although on one high note his tone spreads a bit. He is partnered well in this recital by pianist Fiona Pollak, who plays with an equally understated but well-judged sense of drama.

Sadly, the two Franz Léhar operetta numbers have no charm at all. A superb vocalist he may be, but apparently living in Vienna for most of his life hasn’t given Acayürek a clue how to sing what is quintessentially Viennese music. He needs to listen to Richard Tauber and/or Daniel Behle. Not too surprisingly, the Hristić and Milojevic songs receive his most passionate delivery.

A very interesting disc, then, for tenor fanciers, particularly lovers of lieder, but mostly for Acayürek’s unusual timbre and superb voice control.

—© 2020 Lynn René Bayley

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Sharon Isbin Has an “Affinity” for Music

AFFINITY / C. BRUBECK: Concerto for Guitar & Orch.¹ BROUWER: El Decameron Negro. A. LAURO: Waltz No. 3, Natalia.² DUN: Seven Desires for Guitar. DANIELPOUR: Of Love and Longing³ / Sharon Isbin, gtr; ¹Maryland Symphony Orch., cond. Elizabeth Schulze; ²Colin Davin, gtr; ³Isabel Leonard, voc / Zoho ZM 202005

This rather strange CD came to me only as a download from a promoter who works nearly 100% with jazz and jazz-influenced pop music, but I suspected something was different when I saw the name of Richard Danielpour, a strictly classical composer, on the promo sheet and also noted that Chris Brubeck had written a guitar concerto for her. And sure enough, Sharon Isbin is not a jazz guitarist, but a classical guitarist who apparently enjoys playing modern repertoire. Well, good for her!

Chris Brubeck’s Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra is a crossover work similar to some of the things his father wrote. Although in one continuous movement lasting over 16 minutes, it does include different sections, the first of which is a fast one with some interesting syncopation and a bass line played pizzicato like a jazz bassist. I was delighted to hear how well the Maryland Symphony Orchestra adapted to this music, giving it the right bounce and inflection. Isbin has a superb technique and does a fairly good job of catching the syncopations properly. At 4:28, the music moves into its slow section, a piece that has some Latin music overtones albeit ones more related to Latin pop music rather than jazz—a very sentimental melody in conventional harmony. At 9:11 we move into what might be termed the “Scherzo” section, again Latin-influenced but in a bouncy 3 tempo with a tambourine heard prominently in the background and, a bit later on, handclapping as the rhythm breaks up and becomes a more complex 9/8. Here, too, Brubeck’s writing for the orchestra almost sounds like an improvisation. This section eventually becomes wilder before a slow guitar cadenza at 12:29 emerges. Then, at 13:28, the finale, a rollicking, driving piece that almost sounds like Middle Eastern music mixed with a jazz beat. Overall, a very interesting piece.

Leo Brouwer’s El Decameron Negro is a suite of three ballads inspired by African love stories, written especially for Isbin. But these are not all slow, drippy ballads; the music includes some interesting eighth-note runs and the harmony, though tonal, moves around interestingly. Indeed, in the first of these, “El Arpa del Guerrero,” Brouwer plays the contrasts between these busy sections and the more lyrical ones quite interestingly, introducing what sounds like modal harmonies. I was also delighted but surprised to hear Isbin play her guitar in these pieces with a bit more energy and more “metal” in her sound, which is wholly appropriate to Latin music. In the third piece, “Balada de la Doncella Enamorada,” Brouwer takes Isbin into some quite exotic harmonic territory and asks her to play the guitar in more of a Spanish Gypsy style, which she does and quite well. This is really not the kind of piece you’d hear on your local classical radio station; it’s just a bit too edgy and modern-sounding.

Natalia is a waltz by Antonio Lauro arranged for two guitars by her partner on this track, Colin Davin. This is much more in the South American pop style and, although very well played, is more of a charming trifle.

No so, however, Tan Dun’s Seven Desires for Guitar, written for Isbin in 2002. This is a really edgy modern work using multiple rhythmic devices as well as demanding some string- and guitar body-slapping by the performer. The rhythms seem to want to tend towards normalcy, but Dun keeps breaking them up in asymmetric patterns and at times almost makes Isbin’s acoustic guitar sound like an electric with feedback, so percussive are the effects he calls for…and she is up to the challenge in each and every section. As a footnote, I can also tell you that this is a VERY technically difficult piece to play. Also on this CD are Richard Danielpour’s three little love songs for voice and guitar.

Overall, a very interesting disc, with pride of place definitely going to the Dun and Brubeck works.

—© 2020 Lynn René Bayley

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Introducing the Amatis Trio

ENESCU: Piano Trio in g min. RAVEL: Piano Trio in a min. BRITTEN: Introduction & Allegro / Amatis Trio / Avi-Music 8553996D

This is the debut recording of the Amatis Trio, a group formed in 2014 by German violinist Lea Hausmann, British cellist Samuel Shepherd and Dutch-Chinese pianist Mengjie Han. The group happily enjoys exploring unusual repertoire, although on this CD the Ravel Trio is something of a staple.

I immediately liked the way they tore into the Enescu Trio in g minor: not only with a good tempo, but with the kind of from-the-gut playing that I admire most. This is not a shy group; they play boldly and with a good tone in the two string instruments, although cellist Shepherd seems to favor a leaner, more manicured timbre than many of his fellows on the concert scene today. And of course I enjoyed the music, since Enescu is one of my very favorite composers of this period although, for me, the piano part in the first movement seemed a bit perfunctory in some places.

The trio is recorded in a resonant space, but not so much so that they sound as if they are swimming in echo. This allows one to appreciate the many soft and delicate passages as much as the louder, more extroverted ones. In their very capable hands, the music soars, and this is not as common a quality as one might think nowadays. They also pay very close attention to little details in the music, not too dissimilar from the way the legendary Thibaud-Casals-Cortot trio played back in the late 1920s, and this, too, is a rare commodity nowadays. Note, for instance, the way they transition between themes in the second movement of the Enescu trio.

Moreover, they vary their approach to music of different cultures. Their performance of the Ravel Trio is light, airy, and quintessentially French-sounding, an entirely different world altogether from the Enescu piece. They even lighted their tones; if one were to listen to this trio first, one might not suspect that they had passion or sweep enough to handle the Enescu work. The music floats delicately in the air like little wisps of sound, wafted along on a summer evening’s breeze—until one hears the way they play the effervescent second movement.

The Britten Introduction and Allegro, dating from 1932 when the young composer was still a student at the Royal College of Music. It was written as an entry for the Cobbett Prize for Music at the Conservatory, but he won it for his Phantasy Trio instead. The opening sounds tentative and ambiguous, but by the three-minute mark it opens up and becomes more interesting, using a rocking motion in the piano to propel the bitonal themes which he had learned in part from his private studies with Frank Bridge. Some of the writing, particularly the cello part, is quite atmospheric, but as a whole this piece really doesn’t hold together well. Most of the best music is saved for the “Allegro” portion, which sounds a great deal like some of his mid-to-late-1930s music. Yet the Amatis Trio also plays this very, very well, making a strong case for it.

An excellent debut disc.

—© 2020 Lynn René Bayley

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Annika Treutler Plays Ullmann

ULLMANN: Piano Concerto, Op. 25. Piano Sonatas Nos. 3 & 7 / Annika Treutler, pno; Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin; Stephan Frucht, cond / Berlin Classics 0301463BC

As in the case of George Antheil, Viktor Ullmann has also crept—perhaps not as prominently but still a presence—into the standard repertoire hither and yon. (Well, maybe yon; hither still doesn’t program his music.) And with him, it started with his politically-charged, anti-Nazi opera The Emperor of Atlantis, written while he was in the concentration camp where he would die.

Yet as I’ve said many times, I don’t judge or promote a composer just because he was Jewish and a victim of the Nazis, I promote composers who wrote good, original music, and in my view Ullmann was a truly original and interesting composer.

All three of these works date from the late 1930s, when Ullmann had fully formed his own musical style but before he was arrested and sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp where he was killed in 1944. The first movement of the Concerto is built around a simple rhythmic motif, repeated and slightly varied as it progresses. To my ears, this first movement is not a particularly interesting piece. The second movement, slower and more lyrical, was for me a more interesting piece but it didn’t seem to have much connection either in themes or style to the first. In the third movement, Ullmann creates another staccato theme, but this time it is interspersed with a slightly slower, more syncopated figure, and the construction is more interesting. The fourth movement, an “Allegro molto,” moves along at a brisk clip, here combining more complex rhythmic themes with a moto perpetuo. In short, an interesting piece but not really very convincing.

The Piano Sonata No. 3, on the other hand, is a whimsical and lively piece, interesting and well-written, combining rhythmic motifs with quite interesting development. I have all seven of Ullmann’s piano sonatas played by pianist Christoph Sirodeau on Bis, and to my ears the problem here—and, possibly, even in the piano concerto—is Treutler, a wussy, soft-grained pianist who sounds as if she is scared to death to hit the keys with anything resembling force. Her fortes and sforzandos are all small-scale; she has an extremely narrow dynamic range, and plays none of this music as if she really cares much about it.

Any composer is better appreciated when the interpreter is a good one and has something to say about the music, but since Treutler doesn’t seem to care a whit about these pieces it’s hard for the listener to stay engaged either. Therefore I recommend the Sirodeau recordings and advise you to skip this one.

—© 2020 Lynn René Bayley

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Haimor Conducts Antheil Serenades

ANTHEIL: Serenades Nos. 1 & 2. The Golden Bird. Dreams / Württenbergische Philharmonie Reutlingen; Fawzi Haimor, cond / CPO 555196-2

It almost boggles the mind to realize that the music of George Antheil has become mainstream. For decades, the only piece that anyone paid any attention to was his Ballet Mécanique, and that only because it was attached to a surrealistic film of the same title that was suddenly being rereleased on VHS tapes (and later, DVDs), but in the past few years—and it really has been only a few, perhaps six or seven—a large number of his other works have been recorded, most of them for the very first time: Archipelago, Fireworks and Profane Waltzes, The Golden Bird, Jazz Sonata, McConkey’s Ferry, Piano Sonata No. 4, Death of the Machines, The Airplane Sonata, Sonatina for Radio and Symphonies Nos. 3, 4 & 6.

This new CPO release gives us more pieces, the major ones being the String Serenades of 1948 and 1950. By this time, Antheil was past his edgiest, most experimental period and had settled down into writing “Americana”-type pieces in more conventional forms. Some of the music was good and some of it was fairly conventional. One of his stranger pieces during this time was the film score to an independent movie, The Specter of the Rose, but both movie and film score did poor business.

The String Serenade No. 1 is typical of this period. It is a fine, solidly-crafted work using a little bitonal harmony but more or less fashioned in the traditional form. It is still very good music, but it sounds more like certain works by Creston, Harris and even Britten and not like the Antheil of the 1920s and ‘30s. Apparently, he had reached a point where wanting to have his music performed overrode his desire to shock his audiences.

But “entertaining” Antheil is still worth hearing. He didn’t compromise his principles all that much; he just softened his all-out maniacal tendencies for more conventional form. Within those forms, the music still had quite a bit of invention, but it just lacked his individual stamp. “Popular” Antheil is still a bit edgier and less conventional than, say, the popular works of Morton Gould or Aaron Copland. The second Serenade, written for a full orchestra. is cut from a similar cloth, but in the first movement in particular seems to be reaching back a bit to his older, more radical style. The second movement of this serenade is surprisingly different for Antheil: slow, quiet and brooding, almost like a late work of Debussy or Koechlin, both composers he admired. Of course, I don’t claim to know what Antheil’s entire oeuvre sounds like, but within my own frame of reference I can’t think of another piece by him that really sounds like this. In addition to the slow movement and soft profile, he also uses very soft wind and brass blends as Debussy did with frequency. There is, surprisingly, a piano solo in it about 3:15 in, uncredited in the booklet, and a bit later a viola solo, also uncredited. The brisk last movement, though energetic and somewhat bitonal in a Prokofiev-like manner, is somewhat more conventional, but by and large this second serenade is a masterpiece in Antheil’s later style.

The lengthy, convoluted and poorly-written liner notes by one Eckhardt van den Hoogen give long and torturous “background” for the other works while obscuring the year of composition, but from what I can gather The Golden Bird seems to come from 1922, the year of his London concert debut. Van den Hoogen does give us the date of Dreams, “a ballet composed in1934,” although the very next paragraph tells us that it premiered in June 1933! I think The Golden Bird may have lost a bit in its translation from keyboard to orchestra, but there are some odd moments of Oriental harmony in it that grab the listener’s attention. As for Dreams, a half-hour ballet written in nine sections, parts of it look forward to his later style (the “Introduction” and “Andante – Allegro molto (Sonatina”) while other portions (“Polka” and “Rat”) look back to his anarchistic days. All in all, the music, though interesting, is very episodic in nature and doesn’t really cohere as a ballet score should. It sounds more like a suite, albeit a very interesting suite.

Haimor and the Württenburg Philharmonic give us clean, brisk, rousing performances of each piece on this CD. Overall, I rate it as an important entry in the Antheil discography despite a few weak moments.

—© 2020 Lynn René Bayley

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Luisa Imorde’s “Moon Rainbow”

J.S. BACH: Keyboard Concerto in D, BWV 974. Pastorella in F: II. Andante cantabile (arr. Lipatti). Toccata in e min., BWV 914. Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II: Preludes & Fugues Nos. 3, 23. 2-Part Invention No. 6 in E, BWV 777. Keyboard Concerto in D, BWV 972. KAPUSTIN: 24 Preludes, Op. 53: Nos. 4, 5, 9, 23. 24 Preludes & Fugues, Op.82: No. 22 . 8 Concert Etudes: No. 6, “Pastoral,” No. 3. 10 Inventions, Op. 73: No. 9. Piano Sonatina, Op. 100. Moon Rainbow. Contemplation / Luisa Imorde, pno / Berlin Classics 885470014678

Pianist Luisa Imorde enjoys juxtaposing music of different eras, and here she hit on a really odd idea to pair the very formal Baroque music of Johann Sebastian Bach with the jazz-influenced compositions of modern Russian composer Nikolai Kapustin. As she reports in the publicity blurb for this album:

“I really like it when I can properly immerse myself in a topic.” Before making these recordings, Imorde was able to take a look at Kapustin’s own manuscripts at his publisher, Schott. “I really get a kick out of that – and at the same time, it allows me to offer my listeners something they have never heard before.” So it was that she decided on the piece that would lend its name to the album: Moon Rainbow. She is the first pianist to ever record it. “In comparison to the other compositions by Kapustin, Moon Rainbow is very varied. The piece develops a very rich fabric of tonal colours. That too is why the title is so perfect for the work.”

And so here we go, with each piece by Bach immediately juxtaposed with one of Kapustin’s until we reach the album’s finale.

What makes Imorde’s project so likeable is that she takes a highly rhythmic approach to the music of both composers, which means that Bach sparkles and dances beneath her fingertips as much as Kapustin does. It also found it interesting that she chose to play two concerti of Bach based on other composers, BWV 974 modeled after Alessandro Marcello’s Oboe Concerto and BWV 972 after Vivaldi’s Violin Concerto in D, RV 230, since these two Italian composers took more of a dance-like approach to their works, as does Kapustin.

Imorde isn’t the most swinging classical pianist I’ve heard in Kapustin, but swing she does. Her playing is, perhaps not surprisingly, closer in touch and rhythm to Bill Evans, with a warmer, deep-in-the-keys sound than that of Kapustin’s great inspiration, Oscar Peterson. I was also fascinated by the many little rubato touches she brought to the second movement of the Bach-Marcello Concerto, placed on track 3 (the third and final movement, on track 5, follows Kapustin’s Prelude No. 5 in D). And, of course, not all of the Kapustin pieces are uptempo, the Prelude in D being almost in a slow ballad tempo.

Another element of Imorde’s playing that I really enjoyed was her ability to “roll” Bach’s triplets under her fingers. This gives the music, in my view, a somewhat more contemporary sound since it is the kind of thing a jazz pianist would do. Most classical pianists do not roll their triplets the way she does. It’s also quite possible that her immersion in Kapustin’s music has somewhat informed her playing of the Baroque style. Certainly, Kapustin’s Concert Etude No. 6 is rolled under her fingers in a quite similar manner, bringing out its quirky, cakewalk-like rhythm. Just an observation of mine; I’m not saying it’s fact. Yet when one hears the way she plays Bach’s Pastorella in F, with its “slow-drag” rhythmic feel, I can’t escape that impression.

An interesting sidelight: when I heard the late George Shearing play one of Bach’s Keyboard Concerti with the Cincinnati Symphony back in the late 1980s or early ‘90s, he brought the same touch that he imparted to his jazz playing to his classical playing. The notes were Bach’s, and he did not consciously distort the rhythm one bit, but the resultant performance sounded exactly like a George Shearing jazz improvisation insofar as the very slight manipulation of pulse was concerned. Conversely, when you listen to Fats Waller’s jazz piano solos, the rhythm—though swinging—had a very similar articulation to the music of Bach, which he was raised on as a child. So such things do happen. And clearly, the way Imorde plays Bach’s Toccata in e minor has a slight swagger that makes it enjoyable, and yet is also very much like Waller’s jazz playing.

In this musical atmosphere, then, Kapustin sometimes sounds a little like Bach and Bach swings a bit more than usual. Whatever the reason, I somehow feel that this was Imorde’s intent, to show that Bach, too, used dance rhythms in his music and wanted them emphasized as such while Kapustin, a traditionalist at heart, never really abandoned the musical training of his youth even after his exposure to and infatuation with Oscar Peterson. And she does all of this in a natural and artless way, just digging the music as she’s playing it.

The result of this unusual yet enjoyable programming is an album that makes great rainy-day (or Sheltering in Place day) listening. For me, personally, a real bonus of this CD was that I didn’t have most of these Kapustin pieces in my collection!

—© 2020 Lynn René Bayley

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Milstein & van Bellen Play Violin Duos

PROKOFIEV, GÓRECKI, YSAŸE: Sonatas for 2 Violins / Maria Milstein, Mathieu van Bellen, vln / Challenge Classics CC72807

Russian violinist Maria Milstein and her musical partner, Dutch violinist Mathieu van Bellen, team up here to perform three rarely-played works, the two-violin sonatas of three 20th-century composers from different eras. Of the three, the only one I have in my collection is the Prokofiev work. Both artists are avid chamber musicians, Milstein with the Van Baerle Trio and van Bellen with the Busch Trio. In fact, van Bellen plays Adolf Busch’s 1793 Guadagnini violin.

One thing that struck me immediately in the opening of the Prokofiev sonata was these artists’ sweetly soaring legato. The other thing that struck me is that van Bellen plays Busch’s violin with the same rich, slightly thick tone that its previous owner possessed. This almost makes his violin sound like a viola, which to a certain extent is appropriate, since his lines are lower than Milstein’s and thus assign a pseudo-viola role to his instrument.

To be honest, however, I was not as much taken by the first movement as by the second, where they play with more energy, although Milstein continues to soften Prokofiev’s music by giving it a “German” treatment. An aside: since she is Russian and her name is Milstein, is she somehow related to the famed Russian émigré violinist of the past, Nathan Milstein?

Despite my caveat about her reliance on a silken legato, I admit that the duo plays with plenty of energy. And please understand, it’s not that I’m against a good legato, only that I think that taking it to extremes dulls the impact of the music, reducing it from high art to the level of a soporific. Both violinists again play in this manner in the third movement of the Prokofiev sonata.

Having not heard the Gorecki sonata before, I was startled by the fast, edgy opening of the first movement, so unlike his other works. But this was written in 1957, when he was only 22 years old and had not yet arrived at the softer, more relaxed style of his later years. If the style is less individual, the music itself is no less excellent because of that. A couple of minutes into the movement and we encounter the more typical Górecki style, albeit with more bitonal harmony than in his later works, and here both Milstein and van Bellen play with a more intense legato than in the Prokofiev work. The, at the six-minute mark, we return to the edginess of the opening for the remainder of the movement. The second movement is entirely slow, almost minimalist in its inexorably halting repetition of identical or similar motifs, while the third is a medium-tempo piece using a lot of pizzicato effects in a bitonal framework. Towards the end, we return to the fast, edgy music of the first movement’s beginning.

The Ysaÿe Sonata for Two Violins dates from 1915, before he wrote most of his justly-praised solo violin sonatas, and is a much more Romantic work. I didn’t really care for it at all.

In short, excellent playing in a mixed bag of works.

—© 2020 Lynn René Bayley

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Exploring the Bohlen-Pierce Musical Universe

BEYOND THE HORIZON / HAJDU: Burning Petrol. Beyond the Horizon. HARROP: Maelstrom. Bird of Janus. A. HOFFMANN: Duo Dez. MÜLLER: Morpheus. LEMKE: Pas de Deux.⁺ HELMER: Preludio e Passacaglia.* STAHNKE: Die Vogelmenschen von St. Kilda. SCHWENK: Night Hawks / Nora-Louise Müller, Ákos Hoffmann, cl/Bohlen-Pierce cl; Julia Puls, B-P cl; Lin Chen, B-P kalimba/perc; *Melle Weijters, 41-tone el-gtr; *Julia Stegmann, vla; *Tair Turganov, bs; Georg Hajdu,  elec/synth; ⁺Sascha Lino Lemke, elec / Genuin 20695

The German label Genuin, which generally sticks to fairly conservative chamber music repertoire, here goes out on a limb to present an entire album of harmonically far-out music. The Bohlen-Pierce system, named after the two people who apparently arrived at the same point independently of each other, German microwave electronics engineer Heinz Bohlen and American satellite technology engineer John R. Pierce, consists not of an octave but of the perfect 12th (octave + 5, in Bohlen-Pierce terms a “tritave”), divided into 13 equal steps according to various mathematical considerations. According to the liner notes, “Each step is almost equal to a three-quarter tone in equal temperament: 146.3 centimeters. Simplified, one can imagine this as an elastic band: instead of reaching the octave after 12 semitone steps, we stretch the elastic band in order to choose the tritave as the returning point. We hence go about one-and-a-half times as far as before, with only one step more. Thus an alternative harmonic system evolves in which, notably, the octave does not appear. Due to the step size which differs from the usual, the octave is simply stepped over.”

Got it? Well, I didn’t really until I started listening, particularly since George Hajdu’s opening piece, Burning Petrol, sounded to my ears like a tonal piece in a somewhat minor key with atonal harmony. Yet as the music progressed, I began to sense a strangeness to it, almost as if I were listening to Le sacre du printemps played slightly flat. Oddly enough, however, one’s ears adapt to this unusual sound-world fairly easily, certainly more easily than to the microtonal music of Julián Carrillo or the microtonal keyboard music of Harry Partch. Part of this is due to the fact that Hajdu creates real melodic lines, however strange, within this strange harmonic system, since it is based on Scriabin’s Vers la flamme.

I was thankful for a certain amount of “grounding” in Scriabin as we then moved into Todd Harrop’s Maelstrom. Here, the strangeness of the harmonic system is more apparent, although to the naked ear it almost sounds like continuous diminished chords. I should also note that both of the first two pieces are played rather slowly, perhaps to allow the listener to adapt. It also makes perfect sense to me that our two intrepid clarinetists are in their mid-40s, which means that they grew up in a modern classical and jazz world when experimentation was accepted rather than ignored or, worse yet, discouraged. As the piece reaches its mid-point, however, we encounter even more strangeness in this sound-world, as certain notes tend to sound flat or otherwise out of kilter. One wonders, however, if the Bohlen-Pierce system could be used on string instruments or, as in Partch’s case, a specially-tuned keyboard. I suppose so, but clarinets are what we get here.

Indeed, one of the interesting things about this CD is the way in which each composer has, consciously or subconsciously, tried to keep the tritave somewhat within the boundaries of conventional tonality; indeed, Hoffmann even admits as much in his liner notes for Duo Dez, which I found interesting. Apparently, these performer-composers would like this system to be used and played in conventional concert settings, hoping that it will NOT become a “freak” system such as those of Carrillo and Partch.

Only with Müller’s Morpheus do we finally arrive at a piece so outré that one can no longer think of it as being simply bitonal or atonal. She revels in the Bohlen-Pierce anomalies, exploring the BP clarinet’s ability to produce an almost continuous glissando in addition to its unusual multiphonics. Hajdu’s Beyond the Horizon opens with a fairly dull narration about the expansion of the universe before moving into music, initially meant to describe “dark energy” in the universe which creates a “fixed event horizon.” But here, too, the music is certainly odder than in some of the previous works, pulling us deeper into the BP musical vortex. We eventually reach swirling figures played by the two clarinets, around which one also hears some light triangle-like percussion which is, Hajdu tells us, is computer technology used to create “artificial bell-sounding spectra” which helps lead to “an agreement of the spectral, harmonic and tonal dimensions as we know it from 12-tone tuning.”

 Bird of Janus is for a solo clarinet in two tunings, the BP tuning and the Carlos Alpha tuning, which is nine steps per perfect fifth. Once again, the composer makes an attempt to “place” these odd tunings in music that sounds, at least superficially, somewhat conventional.

Sascha Lemke’s Pas de deux, which opens with electronics, is “all about the confrontation between the 146-cent(imeter) scale of the Bohlen-Pierce clarinet and the 100-cent scale of the classical clarinet,” but for me this piece was too much electronics (nasty and noisy-sounding) and not enough actual music. All I really heard from either clarinet were squeaks, squawks and descending scales, nothing that really sounded like music to me. By contrast, Benjamin Helmer’s Preludio e Passacaglia combines traditional old forms with the Bohlen-Pierce scale. He also tosses a 41-tone electric guitar, a violin and a cello into the mix, which adds to the lonesome sound while satisfying the crossing themes of the passacaglia.

Manfred Stahnke’s Die Vogelmenschen von St. Kilda describes a community that lived on a group of remote islands in the Scottish Hebrides, “unpopulated today but once inhabited by birdcatchers and egg harvesters who had little contact with our civilization. When these people, who were completely on their own, were introduced to the mirror, their community came to an end.” This is wildly inventive music, simulating some pretty loony-sounding bird squawks and chirps via the clarinets. Or maybe it’s the squawking of the population of St. Kilda. Who knows?

The last selection is Fredrik Schwenk’s Night Hawks, and here we return to somewhat more conventional-sounding music, or at least low-range flutters from two BP clarinets and two regular clarinets, which share the tuning note A, so that’s where the music mostly stays in varying rhythmic patterns, although with some high-range flutters later on.

Well, I don’t know what to say about this one. It’s strange, all right!

—© 2020 Lynn René Bayley

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Michael Thomas’ “Event Horizon”

EVENT HORIZON / THOMAS: Distance. Drift. Bass Intro. Dr. Teeth. Framework. Sax Intro. Chant. Underground. Drum Intro. Event Horizon. Fox and Cat / Michael Thomas, a-sax; Jason Palmer, tpt; Hans Glauwischnig, bs; Jonathan Blake, dm / Giant Step Arts GSA 005 (live: New York City, August 14-15, 2019)

Alto saxist Michael Thomas apparently won a Grammy for his first release from 2011, The Long Way. He also played on the Terraza Big Band album, but this disc, scheduled for release on May 8, is his first as a leader in nine years.

The title, Event Horizon, refers to an astrological point of no return, generally the edge of a black hole. For this project, Thomas has solicited the services of the outstanding trumpeter Jason Palmer, whose work I have raved about on this blog, as well as Miguel Zenon’s usual bassist and drummer, Hans Glauwischnig and Jonathan Blake. The 2-CD set was recorded live for an extra kick.

Despite his prior experience, this is the first time I’ve heard Thomas play. His tone and style owe something to both Paul Desmond (that “dry martini” tone) and Ornette Coleman (a more harmonically adventurous style), although I give him credit for trying to create his own persona. Unlike both Desmond and Coleman, Thomas also employs many overblown high notes, going outside the tonality as he progresses. Having Palmer in the band is a definite plus: his duets with the saxist, even the written passages (as in the opener, Distance), are interesting, and of course Palmer’s solos are a treat to hear in any circumstance. Glauwuschnig and Blake roil happily in the background, the drummer constantly breaking up the rhythm even as the bassist adheres to it.

As Thomas’ solo in Distance becomes more complex, one also hears the influences of John Coltrane and Arthur Blythe. One wonders what he might sound like playing free-form jazz with the likes of Ivo Perelman…he’s that good. Not only are his improvisations startlingly original, but they have an inner logic that captivates the listener and holds him fast. In such company, Palmer’s more tonal-based, Clifford Brown-like lines come as a stark contrast to Thomas, yet are captivating in their own way. I don’t know why, but I just can’t get enough of Palmer’s playing. He even surprised me on this track with some outside playing of his own yet, as in the case of Brownie, everything is logically structured even in the heat of invention. Best jazz trumpeter I’ve heard in more than 30 years. Only one thing surprised me, and that was the anemic sound of the audience when it was finished. How many people turned out to hear this utterly brilliant music? Twelve? Fifteen? Then just think of the thousands who turn out to hear the idiotic music of pop rock bands. Culture is definitely dying in America.

Drift begins at a nice, moderate walking tempo, but then slows down even more as Thomas plays a very Desmond-like solo with bass underpinning. Here he uses alternating eighth-note and triplet figures, staying within the confines of the harmony which in this case is fairly simple. Blake then joins them as the solo continues, becoming a bit more Coleman-like. Glauwuschnig then follows with an excellent solo of his own, after which the tempo slows down even further. Thomas plays a half-chorus, after which he and Palmer play in duet for a time, sometimes in thirds and sometimes in unison, and the tempo ebbs and flows. The crown of 15 then applaud.

Leading into Dr. Teeth is a two-minute bass intro, one of three such pieces (the other two are for alto sax and drums) on the album. The tune itself is an attractive-but-quirky line using widely-spaced intervals within an extended chord, and this time Palmer is up first, playing his usual creative yet structured type of solo, eventually expanding on it and including some widely-spaced intervals of his own. Thomas apparently heard this as a challenge, because when he enters he picks up on some of the things that Palmer had just played and expands on them in his own manner. This solo so inspires the rhythm section that they increase their intensity as Thomas does, raising the musical temperature to blistering hot. When it’s finished, the crowd seems to have swelled from 15 to 25 people for the applause.

Framework has a quirky tempo that seems to be trying to sound Latin in the opening bars but not quite making it. It’s a very irregular meter for sure, possibly 9/8 or something like that. (Pulses of this type are difficult to discern, particularly when played by a band that keeps the meter moving forward in such a way that it all blends together in the listener’s ear.) Eventually, during Thomas’ extended solo, we reach a point where the meter seems to have coalesced at 4/4, driven almost to the breaking point by the saxist and the rhythm section. When Palmer enters, he sounds as if his rockets are already at blast-off level, as he takes almost no time to start hitting heights of his own. And yet, after all this excitement, Thomas and Palmer end the piece playing a nice, polite series of figures together in thirds.

The leader then plays a nearly-four-minute a capella intro to Chant, using a number of fast triplet figures in quick succession. After a pause, the tune proper begins, with a sort of 5/4 beat divided unevenly as the two horns play the theme in unison. Thomas’ first solo repeats many of the same rapid triplet licks from the intro, eventually moving on to upper harmonics in a staccato chorus of tremendous brilliance. Palmer, again, is primed and ready when he enters, yet occasionally balances his wildest phrases with judiciously-placed notes. The rhythm section keeps spurring him on, however, with the bassist switching to double time, until his playing is almost manic. The two horns then engage in a sort of hocket-style duet, alternating the same two licks over and over as they hurtle towards the end.

The remainder of the album contains similar delights and surprises, particularly in the surprisingly lovely second theme of Underground, played in unison by the two horns, as well as Thomas’ surprisingly relaxed, almost tubular-sounding first chorus on this one. But verbal descriptions always have their limitations. Unless one is willing to start notating the actual music and solos (and I certainly don’t have the time to do so), the listening experience will be much richer than just reading what I have to say about it. Suffice it to say that Event Horizon should be a breakout album for Michael Thomas as well as adding another feather in the cap of Jason Palmer. Together, they are a duo of incredible invention, and I hope they can record together again soon.

—© 2020 Lynn René Bayley

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