The Missing Herbie Nichols Album

THE ICP ORCHESTRA PLAYS HERBIE NICHOLS IN NIJMEGEN 7 MAY 1984 / Blue Chopsticks. Spinning Song. 2300 Skidoo. The Gig. the Happening. Hangover Triangle. 12 Bard. Step Tempest (Herbie Nichols). Rollo II (Misha Mengelberg) / The ICP Orchestra: Toon de Gouw, tp; Garrett List, Wolter Wierbos, tb; Larry Fishkind, tu; Maurice Horsthuis, vla; Ernst Reijseger, cello; Steve Lacy, sop-sax; Michael Moore, a-sax/cl; Paul Termos, a-sax; Sean Bergin, t-sax; Misha Mengelberg, pno; Han Bennink, dm. ICP 026, available for free streaming on Bandcamp

Herbie Nichols (1919-1963) was an extraordinarily talented jazz composer-pianist who struggled all his life to make ends meet. Much of the time, he worked in Dixieland bands in order to make money, but his own musical aesthetic combined swing and bebop with some Caribbean influence and harmonies from Erik Satie and Bela Bartók—a strange hybrid that was, in many ways, too subtle for jazz audiences then and now. A laid-back, charming man, he recorded four tunes for the Hi-Lo label in 1952 (three of them were later re-released by Savoy Jazz, one remains lost), made three albums for Blue Note and one for Bethlehem in the mid-1950s, and died a pauper of leukemia at the age of 44.

Although Nichols was briefly part of the then-avant-garde jazz scene at Minton’s Playhouse in 1941, his basically shy nature made him feel antithetical to the highly competitive atmosphere, though he did make friends with Thelonious Monk. Yet his only real champion in the 1950s was jazz composer-bassist Charles Mingus, who told Alfred Lion of Blue Note Records that his group would cut an album for them only if they recorded Herbie. Although Lion wasn’t completely sold on his music, he arranged for five sessions in which Nichols was backed by such well-known musicians as bassists Al McKibbon and Teddy Kotick and drummers Art Blakey (a regular Blue Note artist) and Max Roach, then a member of the Clifford Brown Quintet. As Lion had predicted, the records sold poorly; all three were gone from the catalogue by 1961, along with Nichols’ lone Bethlehem release, Love, Gloom, Cash, Love.

But if the jazz public showed little interest in Nichols, jazz musicians were fascinated by his quirky compositions in which the melodic line seemed to move sideways rather than in a linear progression. In the early 1960s, he was befriended by bassist Buell Neidlinger, who in the 1990s made the first recording of Nichols’ music using the mixture of brass, reeds, and a couple of strings that he had wanted, Blue Chopsticks, fulfilling a promise he made to Nichols on his deathbed. Around the same time, Nichols was also discovered by trombonist Roswell Rudd, who later made three albums including Nichols’ music, Regeneration (juxtaposing music by Nichols and Monk) and two albums titled The Unheard Herbie Nichols in 1996 (although these pieces aremere sketches, not filled out by Rudd and depending on long and often boring solos tofill them out). There have also been two albums by an exceptional group, led by pianist Frank Kimbrough, called The Herbie Nichols Project.

But the above paragraph pretty much sums up all the domestic American releases of Nichols’ music. Yet during the 1983 session with Rudd, Nichols’ music was discovered, and embraced, by American saxist Steve Lacy, German pianist Misha Mengelberg, and Dutch drummer Han Bennink, all of whom played on that album, and they are the ones who inspired the ICP (Instant Composers’ Pool) Orchestra to give three concerts of his music in May of 1984.

One album was released in Germany on the orchestra’s own private label in the 1990s. That one included Houseparty Starting, Change of Season, Spinning Song, Hangover Triangle, Step Tempest, 12 Bars and Terpsichore. It’s now out of print, but was been available for years.

Then, in 2020, this alternate set from May 7, 1984 suddenly turned up on Bandcamp—without any announcement or fanfare. Most people probably don’t even know that it’s available. When I first saw the listing on Google, I assumed it was the original recording. But it isn’t.

The good news is that these are vital, live performances by committed musicians who clearly love playing this music. The down side is that the radio studio sound is exceptionally dry, even for the 1980s, and there are some clunkers play by the brass here and there. But as your ears become adjusted to the claustrophobic sound, you begin to appreciate the sheer joy, enthusiasm and creativity of these musicians. I was particularly impressed by Lacy, a rather quirky soloist in the Eric Dolphy style, and how well his concept—which is largely atonal-modal—fits into Nichols’ bitonal but not outré musical concept.

One difference you will note in many of these later recreations of Nichols’ music from his own recordings is that the tempi are often quite fluid, even a bit distended, which brings the scores more in line with the style of Charles Mingus than the swing-and-bop-oriented style that Nichols himself played. But as I mentioned earlier, Herbie really only considered his own recordings of these pieces to be blueprints for future recordings by full groups, and he was handicapped by not being given any rehearsal time in the studio by Alfred Lion. His accompanying musicians had to just show up, run down each tune perhaps once to get the tempo right, and then cut a record of it. There were, of course, some retakes, but since none of those musicians had had any contact with Nichols or any familiarity with his style, their playing was somewhat inhibited—except for Blakey, of course. Blakey always swung on the drums, and fit into his concept well.

One drawback of the sound quality is that not all sections of the orchestra are properly miked, thus you will hear some instruments recessed in the soundspace, particularly Maurice Horsthuis’ viola, Michael Moore’s clarinet, Misha Mengelberg’s piano, and the rhythm section in general. In those instances, you’ll have to use your inner ear to compensate for what is more distantly recorded and mentally fill it in. But you have to remember that these were live concerts, meaning live performances and one-time takes. Nothing seems to have been recorded twice, but excepting some bad trombone flubs in the first number (Blue Chopsticks), most of the playing is pretty good under the circumstances. And the band’s broader approach to tempo provides some really fascinating interpretations, such as the slow, almost pulse-less rendition of 2300 Skidoo, which almost sounds like a modern classical piece. Here Moore has some pretty obvious pitch problems, but in the almost atonal environment in which the band sets this piece, it almost fits in. It’s not until after the three-minute mark that a solo trombone plays the original theme and the music moves into a standard jazz 4 tempo. Thanks to the wider harmonic scope given to the music by the various instruments, Nichols’ Bartók-like harmonies emerge more clearly than in his original piano trio recording. Paul Termos plays a particularly excellent alto solo on this one, and the trombones make up for their previous glitches with an outstanding duo-instrument chorus.

Yet, in the end, the truly sad thing is to consider that none of Nichols’ music is part of the standard jazz repertoire—not even his most accessible song, Lady Sings the Blues, which was written with, and for, Billie Holiday. Indeed, the only jazz musician I know who has gone out of her way to perform Nichols is the adventurous avant-garde Brooklyn-based singer Kay Victor, and although she has a few albums of her own music out on CD, she can’t convince any label to take a chance on recording her sung versions of Nichols’ tunes. He’s just not known and doesn’t sell, and that’s that.

Maybe someday we’ll hear more Herbie Nichols in the jazz world…maybe. But in the meantime, I encourage you to stream and possibly record this album as well as to explore the recordings of Nichols’ music by Neidlinger and the Nichols Project. It’s a musical adventure that every jazz fan should explore.

—© 2023 Lynn René Bayley

Lafayette Gilchrist is Undaunted

UNDAUNTED / Undaunted. Ride it Out. Into the Swirl. Southern Belle. Metropolitan Musings (Them Streets Again)(Gilchrist) / Lafayette Gilchrist, pno; Christian Hizon, tb; Brian Settles, t-sax; Herman Burney, bs; Eric Kennedy, dm; Kevin Pinder, perc / Morphius Records, no number; available as CD & LP

Pianist Lafayette Gilchrist, who came to prominence playing with veteran tenor saxophonist David Murray, presents here an interesting sextet which includes both a regular drummer and an extra percussionist in a set of five original pieces. What makes the album so interesting to me, personally, is the way Gilchrist shapes both his compositions and the instrumentation. For instance, the title track opens with a bowed bass solo before the pianist overlays his syncopated theme, followed by the trombone and tenor sax playing their minor-key licks—yet these licks morph into a full-blown theme in the bridge, where Gilchrist uses some remarkable rising chromatic changes, and the theme actually continues to change and develop until Brian Settles embarks on his solo. There’s a certain Professor Longhair vibe about this piece, and the entire session, that I really liked (although Gilchrist’s playing is less rhythmically complex than Longhair’s), combined with a lilting, funky beat that is easy to discern with the ear but hard to describe in words. Although Gilchrist’s playing is not, as mentioned, overly ornate, it’s highly effective, both in solo passages as well as interacting with the other musicians. There’s a nice passage where bassist Herman Burney plays rumbling double-time figures under Gilchrist’s piano. The piece ends on an unresolved chord—a nice touch.

Ride it Out opens with a samba beat, and once again the seemingly simple theme is developed strongly. For the most part, Gilchrist has his two horns playing in unison rather than in harmony, and on this track we first really notice the extra percussionist playing bongos. the tempo relaxes ever-so-slightly once the solos begin, and although neither trombonist Hizon nor saxist Settles will bowl you over with technique, their contributions are better than that. They are musical and appropriate to the setting. What a pleasure it is to again hear jazz musicians who listen to one another and understand that the purpose of a solo is not to depart so far from the basic material that it sound like something from outer space but, rather, like an integral part of the basic piece being played. Gilchrist’s solo is particularly interesting on this track, even including a brief canon played by both hands. He, too, is an intelligent and thoughtful musician who obviously prefers substance to flash.

Into the Swirl sounds like a fast boogie-woogie; when the horns enter, they are playing a theme in sustained half notes above Gilchrist’s frantic eight-to-the-bar rhythm. Using a minor key, and in fact a difficult one (G-flat minor), gives the piece a more ominous sound than the usual boogie beat, and although the theme does include chord changes, Gilchrist’s ostinato remains in that key most of the time while the bass and percussion swirl around him. At the four-minute mark, however, a musical miracle occurs: the pounding rhythm finally stops, we morph into the major, and the horns play an interesting bridge with several harmonic changes. But then Gilchrist re-enters and we’re back to the minor-key boogie. Although there is only a bit of change and development in this piece, it only seems a little over-long at seven minutes.

This is followed by Southern Belle, which is almost in a tango rhythm (not quite, but close enough), and here the horns play the unusual and quirky theme almost immediately. One thing I’ll say for Gilchrist: he is not a “one style” composer, but has several different ideas in his musical arsenal to pull out for the listener. There’s something about this piece that reminded me of another jazz tune, but I can’t put my finger on which one as it is just a resemblance and not a copy. Once again, the leader’s solo is substantive but not flashy, which I greatly prefer…which isn’t to say that he has a limited technique so much as that he just knows which notes he wants to play, and no more. Burney has his best and most noticeable solo on this track as well. At one point in the development of the theme, Gilchrist has the horns playing quarter-note triplets, and here, at last, we hear the tenor sax pretty much alone on the theme while the trombone plays a rhythmic and occasional melodic counterpoint, though there are moments when they do play together.

Metropolitan Musings has a beat that reminded me of the old Mission: Impossible theme music, although it branches out and moves away from it. This is the funkiest piece on the album, but not as much in that style as many such older pieces. In this case the theme really isn’t much; it’s the solos that make this track interesting. Gilchrist’s own solo tends to be repetitive, creating more of a mood than an expansion of the material. One of his choruses consists solely of single bass notes in its own little theme. When the horns return, however, they are playing little swirling figures around his continuing bass line, and this is where the real interest is.

My only complaint about this album is that it is remarkably short, only a little over 40 minutes. One more piece, at least, would certainly have been welcome, but as it stands it is still a unique set of pieces that create a good vibe. Check it out!

—© 2023 Lynn René Bayley

Follow me on Twitter or Facebook

Check out the books on my blog…they’re worth reading, trust me!

Dello Joio’s Wonderful Opera

DELLO JOIO: Blue Mountain / Njål Sparbo, bass (Edvard Grieg); Marianne Andersen, mezzo (Nina Grieg); Torben Grue, bar (Dr. Rossing); Nils Harald Sedal, ten (Percy Grainger); The Norwegian Wind Ensemble; Kenneth Jean, cond / Bridge 9273

For those readers who have not yet perused my book, Opera as Drama II (click title to access the book), there are two premises in it that hold true for this opera: first, that most of the great operas written since 1902, beginning with Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, shifted the focus of sung drama away from love interests and physically combative protagonists to psychological dramas, which meant less action and more introspection in both text and music, and second, that the majority of great operas written in the last 30 years or so have been short works set to chamber orchestra scoring. This means that some of the best operas coming along today are not large-scale works that can play the “big opera barns” such as Covent Garden, Paris or Berlin or the Metropolitan in New York, but are designed more for small-scale stages.

Justin Dello Joio’s Blue Mountain is yet another example. Set in 1907 when Edvard Grieg was dying from emphysema, kept out of pain by doses of morphine, he is asking to see his daughter, who died years earlier, as well as feeling despondent because he is afraid that his music will die with him. The one thing that is keeping him alive is that he is expecting a visit from the young Australian pianist Percy Grainger, an avid devotee of his music, the next day, but the doctor convinced Grieg’s wife Nina to send him a telegram telling him not to come. Much to their surprise, however, Grainger turns up the next day on schedule; he left London early, and thus never got the message asking him to stay.

Grieg is thrilled to see him and tells him about the “blue mountain” which inspired so many of his works. He becomes quite animated talking to him, much to the consternation of the doctor who arrives to chase Grainger out of the room and administer more morphine to Grieg. Later, Grieg tells his wife Nina that he would like to adopt Grainger as his son so that he has a child and can leave his estate to him. She talks him out of this, but agrees to include him substantially in his will.

But Grieg still wants to go to the blue mountain with Grainger, and he does, scaling the peak despite his pain and discomfort. He feels rejuvenated, and plans a tour of England with the pianist, but of course the opposite happens. The trek up the mountain has drained the last ounce of energy out of Grieg; he lies dying, suddenly sitting up on his deathbed and bowing to an unseen audience. His last words are the first of the opera: “Silence, oh silence.”

Dello Joio’s score bears no resemblance to Grieg’s music, but is atonal and mystical, opening with a cymbal crescendo and opening up with individual brass and wind instruments playing increasingly busy figures. He keeps the orchestration “open” and uncluttered, creating delicate, shifting ensembles of various instruments, often playing against one another as the music grows in intensity, mirroring Grieg’s physical discomfort and pain.

And surprise, surprise! The largely “unknown” cast of singers is simply wonderful. Basso Njål Sparbo, as Grieg, not only has a rich, dark voice but also a rock-solid one as well as perfectly clear English diction (and not only clear, but with the pronunciation of a native-born American. You would never guess from his enunciation that he was Norwegian. His sung lines are strophic, mostly atonal and rather angular, although there is a bit of an arietta in which he sings lyrical lines lamenting his child’s death—yet this almost immediately morphs into a faster, more angular and dramatic monologue. Thus is the pattern of modern opera: music that is designed to reflect and enhance the dramatic aspects of the words rather than pleasing an audience with tunes and high notes. It may not sell to the mainstream operagoer, but it is actually a return to the concept of opera created by Monteverdi and sustained for a while by Lully—not to mention using some of the occasional dramatic devices that Giuseppe Verdi used to break up the melodic and rhythmic regularity of his operas (think of “Pari siamo” from Rigoletto, for instance).

Indeed, the imagination and diversity of Dello Joio’s music is simply astonishing; at no point do you feel that he is not terribly creative or lapsing into set patterns. And the other singers are nearly as good as Sparbo. Marianne Andersen, as Grieg’s wife Nina, has a luscious mezzo-soprano voice, although her English diction is not always as clear, and baritone Torben Grue as the doctor has perhaps the most attractive timbre of the lot. As Percy Grainger, Nils Harald Sedal reveals a light tenor voice, almost that of a very good comprimatio but also with a relatively firm timbre, good placement and pretty good diction. So if Bridge Records can assemble a cast this good for a recording of an opera, tell me why we have to put up with the miserable specimens we hear on major-label recordings of both repertoire and unfamiliar operas? Youth wants to know!

As the opera progresses, we also get duo and trio scenes (Grieg, Nina and the doctor, for instance), and here, too Dello Joio shows great skill in his vocal writing—and the orchestration becomes more and more adventurous. I was of two minds regarding this. On the one hand, it clearly makes the orchestra a fuller participant in the ongoing drama, but on the other, there were moments when I felt that the orchestral parts were so “busy” that they interfered somewhat with the vocal line. Mind you, these moments are not frequent, but when they do occur they detract somewhat from the drama rather than enhancing it.

Nonetheless, for the most part Blue Mountain maintains a fascinating balancing act between strophic drama and expressive lyricism, and does so in a way that keeps the listener alert for the various changes of mood and style in the music. In short, although Blue Mountain is not going to compete with Strauss or Puccini for audiences’ affections, it is not as overwhelmingly abrasive in style as such other great modern operas as Reimann’s Lear or Birtwhistle’s The Minotaur. But then again, since it is about the death of a major Romantic composer, why should it be? In brief, though it is not music that the average listener will warm up to, neither is it music that will continually frighten them away.

I particularly liked the Grieg-Grainger duet when the former tells the latter about the blue mountain. Here, Dello Joio combines styles, using broader lines for the former character and short, rhythmic ones for the latter, clearly revealing the conflicting states of mind of these protagonists. He also created a nice arioso for Nina Grieg just before Grieg takes Grainger to the mountain (“Enough! What are you thinking?”). As for staging the opera, most of it is pretty simple since it takes place in Grieg’s bedroom, but there is that trip up the mountain…which, incidentally, is very brief. I think they must have flown up to the peak. I’d be curious to see a production to know how this was managed, although miracles can now be created with digital imaging.

But this is clearly an opera worth hearing. The music is really outstanding and original, and the performance first-rate in every respect—as is the sound, which captures an excellent ambiance.

—© 2023 Lynn René Bayley

Follow me on Twitter or Facebook

Check out the books on my blog…they’re worth reading, trust me!

Poul Ruders’ Piano Trio

 

 

RUDERS: Piano Trio / Trio Con Brio Copenhagen: Soo-Jin Hong, vln; Soo-Kyung Hong, cel; Jens Elvekjaer, pno / OUR Recordings 9.70892, digital only release available on Apple iTunes, Spotify, and YouTube (in individual movements).

I generally make it a policy not to review very short albums or classical “singles,” the point of which I completely fail to grasp, but I made an exception in this case because the piece is by the great Danish composer Poul Ruders. In this case the recording is also not being issued as a physical disc, but as a digital-only release. Sadly, this is the way the classical market works nowadays. Except for a handful of adventurous CD labels, if you want to sell a great modern work to the classical public you have to just put it online because most well-known piano trios won’t even touch new works in live performances.

Fortunately, the Trio Con Brio Copenhagen is one of those adventurous trios, although it’s a bit ironic that only one of their members, pianist Jens Elvekjaer, is Danish. His wife is the Korean-born cellist Soo-Kyung Hong and his sister-in-law Soo-Jin Hong is the violinist. More power to them!

I found it interesting that the Hong sisters both play this piece with straight tone, a technique normally reserved for ruining older music, but in the mysterious opening of the first movement it creates an eerie sound quality wholly appropriate to the music. As the movement gets into gear and becomes faster, we do hear an occasional fast vibrato on held notes, which is appropriate, but in this case it is the music and not the medium that grips the listener. Here, Ruders has created yet another masterpiece. The music evolves and develops with almost lightning speed in this first movement, yet he never uses this speed simply to dazzle the listener with meaningless rhetoric. Every note has a purpose, and as the music continues he shifts gears between fast and slow passages, occasionally even using surprisingly melodic lines with tonal harmony for contrast. Ruders, like Kalevi Aho, simply has one of those great musical minds that simply cannot turn out a shallow or uninteresting work. He has a higher standard than many younger composers.

One thing that fascinated me in this opening movement was that Ruders gives the strings the melodic content whereas the piano is generally relegated to a series of single notes with an occasional chord tossed in here and there. This emphasizes the underlying rhythm without overdoing it, and there is no question that Trio Con Brio has the full measure of this music. The legato passages sing, the fast, exciting ones absolutely crackle with energy. You couldn’t ask for a better performance, and thus, between the high quality of the music and the high quality of the playing, you have here once of the most intriguing and brilliant modern piano trios I’ve heard in a long, long time. At the end of this movement, the music reaches fever pitch as Elvekjaer’s piano suddenly becomes a full partner in the whirlwind coda, which almost gave me whiplash to listen to!

Then there is the second movement. Typically of Ruders, it is music of depth and feeling, a more modern successor to Nielsen, and just listen to how the Hong sisters imbue every single note with feeling, almost with pathos but never overly-sentimental. The music here is essentially tonal but with the chord roots moving around underneath to slightly subvert the harmony, and once again the Hong sisters use straight tone to create an almost unearthly mood that could not have been achieved if played with too much vibrato. This is music of great but undefined sadness, so strongly felt that it is almost cosmic.

The third and final movement is a bizarre whiplash of sound at the outset which occasionally settles into brief melodic gestures but never quite becomes a continuous theme, rather a series of short ones strung together (another Ruders trademark). Yet, as in the first movement, somehow it all makes sense as you just listen and absorb it all. The violin and cello play loud upward glissandi at one point with the piano smashing chords underneath, then they pull back a bit on the volume but not the tempo. The cello plays held notes with crescendos in them which further heighten the drama—and a very dramatic piece this last movement is.

What a great gift to the world this recording is! I highly recommend it to you. Listen to it a few times; you’ll hear things on repeated listening that may have escaped you the first time. It’s that rich and that great of a piece.

—© 2023 Lynn René Bayley

Follow me on Twitter or Facebook

Check out the books on my blog…they’re worth reading, trust me!

Angelica Sanchez’ Sonic “Nighttime Creatures”

NIGHTTIME CREATURES / Night Creatures. C.B. the Time Traveler. Cloud House. Astral Light of Alarid. Land Here. Ringleader. Big Weirdo. Wrong Door for Rocket Fuel. Run (Sanchez). Lady of the Lavender Mist (Duke Ellington). Tristeza (Armando Carvajal) / Angelica Sanchez Nonet: Kenny Warren, ct; Thomas Heberer, ¼-tone tp; Michael Attias, a-sax; Ben Goldberg, contra a-cl; Chris Speed, cl/t-sax; Sanchez, pno; Omar Tamez, el-gt; John Hebert, bs; Sam Ospovat, dm / Pyroclastic Records PR 30

One would think that, by this time, there would be no new surprises to emerge in the jazz world, but pianist-composer Angelica Sanchez has proven me wrong. This new album is indeed something new under the sun, as we will explore in the review below.

According to the promo sheet for this release, Sanchez moved from Arizona to New York 29 years ago (wow, was 1994 really that long ago??), where she has collaborated with such famed jazz musicians as Wadada Leo Smith, Paul Motian, Richard Davis, Jamaladeen Tacuma, and Tim Berne. This nonet was created due to her love of orchestrated jazz, particularly that of Duke Ellington, Carla Bley and Anthony Braxton. Her somewhat ironic comment on this nonet is that “There’s less safety in numbers…There’s a lot of freedom within the music, and the musicians can choose how they want to exercise that freedom. The(ir) individual personalities were really important to me, so I tried to create space for that.” This album is due for release on October 27.

Much of the innovation in Sanchez, music comes from its form—though clearly jazz-based, it is through-composed—and some of it from her unusual orchestration. Sanchez thinks nothing of having the cornet and the guitar play complex lines in unison, and when the full band plays together, her voicings are strange indeed. This is considerably beyond the kind of things that Ellington and Bley have done in terms of timbral blends, and the resultant sounds are clearly as much a part of each composition as the underlying musical structure.

I was also impressed by the fact that these musicians are not only good improvisers, but that they listen to each other, picking up little things from one another as solo follows solo. This is not at all common in modern jazz, though it was a feature of jazz musicians from the late 1930s through the early 1960s.

And then there is the fact that Sanchez’ compositions, in and of themselves, are constantly evolving structures which use elements of the early parts of each piece in new ways as each one goes on. Because of this, there are absolutely no “dead” spots in this music, no passages where either she or the soloists “coast.” Perhaps this is one reason why every soloist within the ensemble is so much on his toes (and all of them besides Sanchez are men). In C.B. the Time Traveler, Sanchez uses quarter tones with impunity in the opening theme, thus giving ¼-tone trumpeter Thomas Heberer a chance to mix in with the reeds which, of course, can play between the cracks of notes much easier. I must also give Sanchez great credit for choosing an electric guitarist who plays in a jazz style and not in a rock style. In this second piece, it makes a great deal of difference, all to the better.

With such complex morphing and changing of the music, it’s difficult to describe in words what is happening because there’s just so much. I would, however, say that in some places, such as the finale of C.B. the Time Traveler, I hear another musical influence, that of Henry Threadgill, although Sanchez has her own voice.

Of course, to many listeners much of this music may not sound like “jazz” in the sense that they know it, particularly since the rhythm is amorphic and fluid throughout but also due to how much of each piece is written out. But of course that horse left the barn a long time ago and there’s no way to insist that any music that includes this much improvisation isn’t jazz. Michael Attias’ alto sax, for instance, completely dominates the first three minutes of Cloud House, so much so, in fact, that I began to wonder if more than eight bars of it were written beforehand. Only Sanchez and Attias really know for sure.

Oddly enough, it also struck me when listening to this music that there is at least some subliminal influence from Lennie Tristano’s free jazz recordings of 1949, the first free jazz, in fact, ever recorded. I say this because whenever the full band isn’t playing, which is more often than you might think, the texture seems to be focused on the rhythm section of piano-guitar-bass with the drums playing its own thing behind them. In fact, Sanchez herself doesn’t contribute anything much to the proceedings in the first two tracks, making her presence felt much more strongly in Cloud House but only as a “side voice” playing in the right channel while other, stronger improvisation is played in the left.

Another unusual feature of this music is that, although the themes are generally complex and often use repetitive if rootless chords, they are generally attractive if somewhat elusive. Such is the case with Astral Light of Alarid, one of those pieces where Sanchez came up with not one but two entirely different and contrasting themes. Kenny Warren’s cornet solo on this one is also remarkably lyrical, reminding me a bit of Chet Baker, using sparse notes at times mixed in with modal improvisation. Here, too, the ghost of Bix Beiderbecke was also present. Sanchez has more of a solo on this one although it mostly ruminates while the cornet, bass, drums and contrabass alto clarinet add their own commentary around her. As the music becomes a bit quicker in tempo and more aggressive, however, the other instruments eventually fall away  and she takes center stage with the bass and drums, giving us a piano trio interlude that is remarkably creative. Some of the horns, playing soft chords together, fall in behind her as Warren adds his own commentary to the mix. The out chorus leans heavily in the direction of the minor.

Oddly, Lady of the Lavender Mist is an Ellington composition I’d never even heard of before. (Apparently checking online, it dates from about 1948.) Sanchez is entirely respectful of Duke’s basic structure, merely changing the orchestration to suit her own group—and, naturally, taking an extended piano solo. She plays primarily right-hand figures that use a lot of double-time passages, letting the bass player fill in what would normally be her left hand figures. With its steady 4 beat, it provides a welcome break from the more fluid music that precedes and follows it. Attias plays a superb alto solo although its content is closer to Willie Smith than to Ellington’s star player, Johnny Hodges. With that being said, I did feel that Sanchez’ arrangement went on far too long (9:45), the one questionable spot in this otherwise perfect program.

She makes up for this, however, with the extraordinarily abstract Land Here, a piece so strange that I won’t even attempt to describe it. Suffice it to say that it seemed comprised of little bits and shards of music, tossed together into an uncomfortable-sounding but utterly fascinating atonal pot of gumbo (to paraphrase one of Wynton Marsalis’ favorite analogies). This piece eventually becomes a free jazz free-for-all before suddenly pulling back and coalescing into an actual theme around the four-minute mark, although this is followed by Sanchez playing a series of repeated chords while the bass and drums go absolutely crazy behind her (and into which the horns, playing chords together, eventually move into).

Ring Leader is yet another strange piece, opening with the guitar playing a soft atonal theme with sharp staccato chords by the two brass players, followed by Sanchez noodling around at the keyboard while the sax meanders in and around the edges of the music. Armando Carvajal’s Tristeza is the most abstract piece on the album, music that literally has no theme until the 2:21 mark, when it suddenly arrives on the cornet with saxophone and contrabass clarinet obbligato before moving into a slow a cappella bass solo. But as I said earlier, words really cannot convey either the actual sound or the emotional impact of this music, and although there is stylistic unity each track is different and has its own feeling and mood.

For those reasons, along with the extremely high quality of all of the solos, I would simply recommend this recording to you and tell you that you HAVE to hear it. There is no alternative, and once you give yourself up to Sanchez’ aesthetic and just absorb it all, you’ll find yourself caught up in its vortex, which is what it is supposed to do anyway.

—© 2023 Lynn René Bayley

Follow me on Twitter or Facebook

Check out the books on my blog…they’re worth reading, trust me!

Storgårds Conducts Weinberg

WEINBERG: Dawn. Symphony No. 12 / BBC Philharmonic Orch.; John Storgårds, cond / Chandos CHAN 20165

Having always been impressed by the work of conductor John Storgårds, such as in his CDs of music by George Antheil and Per Nørgard, I was most interested in hearing this disc because it is one of the few Weinberg symphonies I don’t have in my collection and I was generally unimpressed by Vladimir Lande’s prosaic and uninspired read-through on Naxos. Yet since poor Weinberg doesn’t get his music recorded nearly as frequently as it deserves—there is, for instance, no recording of his Ninth Symphony (does the score even exist??), and some of the others are lucky to have even one recorded example—I decided to give this one a listen.

Am I ever glad I did! The difference between Lande’s reading and Storgårds is like comparing Henry Lewis to Artur Rodziński, one completely uninspired and the other practically jumping out of your speakers and grabbing you by the throat. And if the music sounds more like Shostakovich than the other Weinberg symphonies, that’s because it was written in memoriam of his dear friend, who had died in August of 1975. As the liner notes tell us, this work was written five years after the 11th Symphony and no less than 13 years since his last symphony without a soloist or chorus (No. 5). Yet although he did a splendid job of emulating the style of his predecessor, there are still moments in it that could only have been written by Weinberg. Although he did indeed capture the ironic side of Shostakovich, he did not wallow in self-pity as the older conductor often did, which is the one thing about his music that has always bothered me. One such example of Weinberg’s genius is the fast, complex, polyphonic passage in the middle of the first movement, tightly structured and highly dramatic. And to be honest, this music is really anomaly for Weinberg whose style, as we know, generally focused on sad (but not whining) themes and feelings. Such an outburst of strength was rare for him; he was much more comfortable retreating inside himself.

Shostakovich & Weinberg, c. mid-1960s.

Another way Weinberg went outside himself in this work is the overall orchestral sound. Most of Weinberg’s symphonies use opaque orchestral blends in order to convey his inner feelings, but this one relies on the bright, almost acidic wind-oriented scoring that Shostakovich liked so much. Perhaps this is one reason why this symphony is so seldom recorded, although there is the USSR TV & Radio Symphony recording conducted by Maxim Shostakovich. And perhaps listeners can appreciate what Storgårds achieves here even better from the way he conducts the Shostakovich-quirky but less dramatic second movement (Allegretto). Here, the orchestral texture is much thinner than in the first movement, which means that nearly every note that Weinberg put on paper sounds quite exposed, and in this sort of aural environment it is easy to achieve clarity but not necessarily the kind of 3-D effect that Storgårds gives us here. In the interchange between a solo trombone and high winds, for instance, the music almost seems to be coming (aurally speaking) from two different positions out of your speakers. Just how he achieved this I don’t know, but it’s a stunning effect and typical of his work here. At every moment in this movement, even the quiet ones where background figures could very easily sound opaque, Storgårds keeps everything sharply focused. As I suggested earlier, it’s like listening to a performance by Rodziński—or Szell, or Toscanini—clarity combined with strong but not sentimental emotion.

The third-movement Adagio is much more like Weinberg than the preceding music: introspective, opaque, deeply felt but never weepy or hysterical, more like a deep sadness from within. Storgårds captures this side of him equally as well as the more extroverted parts of the score. Suddenly, at the nine-minute mark, near the end of the movement, the music suddenly becomes louder and more emotionally powerful…but, again, not hysterical. The last-movement Allegro follows without a pause, opening with, of all things, a xylophone solo, into which the strings and later some brass instruments wander with slower themes to break up the quasi-jolly mood. As the string theme develops, Weinberg begins a long, slow crescendo which recedes and returns to loudness in quick succession. The quirky little xylophone solo returns, after which the astringent winds take over and we are back in Shostakovich-land. A bright clarinet, sounding almost like a klezmer player, plays an astringent theme as the strings swirl around him. The xylophone then has a little conversation with what sounds like either a bass clarinet or a bassoon before the strings return for further development. It’s a very interesting and complex piece in and of itself, almost, I would say, a stand-alone tone poem, and the BBC Philharmonic plays it splendidly, as they do the entire symphony.

Dawn is a much earlier work, written in 1957, was meant to be a public piece played during the anniversary-of-the-Communist-Revolution festivities, but it was passed over and never performed in Weinberg’s lifetime. As the liner notes indicate, it’s a “well-crafted” piece but fails to fill its 18-minute duration with anything of real substance. Either I’m more tolerant of pieces written for celebratory occasions or my taste isn’t as good as that of annotator David Fanning, but I really liked Dawn from start to finish. Granted, it’s not “deep” music, but I’ve heard far, far worse works written by living composers in the past decade than this one. Aside from its being “well-crafted,” Weinberg’s themes are interesting ones to my ears and he develops them quite well indeed. In fact, as the piece continued, I found it harder and harder to agree with Fanning’s assessment of it. There are no “dead” spots in the work or moments when I said to myself, “This isn’t going anywhere.” On the contrary, Weinberg held my interest in this piece from first note to last. Of course, some of my reaction to it may well be due to the intelligence, clarity and passion of Storgård’s performance, and I found it interesting to learn that it was he, and not a Russian conductor, who gave the world premiere of this piece in 2019. I particularly liked the soft, almost chamber-music-like passages for winds, which sound so typical of Weinberg at his best, and the way he connects the various sections of the work is not merely good “craft” but very inventive. The only part I thought was somewhat weak was the very ending; it almost sounds as if Weinberg realized that he had to wrap it up and couldn’t think of a really great finale.

For whatever reason, this year has provided me with some of the most interesting and stimulating classical recordings I’ve ever heard, and this CD is another one of them. If you’re a Weinberg fan, this is an absolute must.

—© 2023 Lynn René Bayley

Follow me on Twitter or Facebook

Check out the books on my blog…they’re worth reading, trust me!

Dello Joio’s Piano Concerto

DELLO JOIO: Piano Concerto, “Oceans Apart.” / Garrick Ohlsson, pno; Boston Symphony Orch.; Alan Gilbert, cond / Due Per Due / Carter Brey, cel; Christopher O’Riley, pno / Blue and Gold Music / Kevin Cobb, Raymond Nase, tp; David Wakefield, Fr-hn; Michael Powell, t-tb; John Rojak, bs-tb; Colin Fowler, org / Bridge 9583

Justin Dello Joio (b. 1955), four years younger me, is yet another good academic composer. Born in New York City where he lives to this day, his friendship with pianist Garrick Ohlsson led to the recording of the opening work on this program. Della Joio couldn’t have a better conductor for this work than Alan Gilbert who, despite the fact that the New York Philharmonic refused to renew his contract after six seasons (he played too much “modern” music like, ooh, Carl Nielsen!), is one of the finest conductors around. They were also lucky to procure the services of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Dello Joio is a composer who apparently likes to include ambient sounds into his music to create atmosphere. The very opening of the concerto is mysterious, even a bit eerie, with what sounds to me like a bit of electronic music mixed in with the normal instruments (or perhaps that is just my aural perception of what is clearly unorthodox scoring). In either case, it’s decidedly unusual, using what sounds like Middle Eastern harmonies (which also, here, change very seldom) and relying on the lower instruments of the orchestra as well as the tympani to create a strange environment for the soloist, who doesn’t really play much in the way of extended material until around the four-minute mark, when he suddenly embarks on a somewhat extended solo, which is followed by a sudden increase in both tempo and volume. Here, Dello Joio relies much more on the aggressive sound of upper-range instruments, mostly the brass and winds, while the violins swirl around them and the tympani explodes underneath. But my poor description of what happens in the orchestra cannot really convey the musical progression, which becomes more and more focused, and thus more Western, as it goes on.

In the liner notes, Dello Joio tells us that

Writing this piece conjured to my mind the unlikely images of big wave surfers; one person surrounded—nearly consumed—by the daunting force and fury of these massive 100-foot walls of water. That scale feels akin to the relationship of a piano soloist and the force of a large symphony orchestra, sound is a vibration that manifests as a wave.

So let’s call it “La Mer with an attitude.” There is indeed structure and direction in this music though it does not follow conventional lines. Della Joio was smart to make it a continuous one-movement work; breaking it into individual movements would have diluted its impact. Once the Western music elements appear, the Eastern ones are subjugated and pushed to the background; but the main point is that in every second of this concerto, one hears a brilliant and innovative mind at work. Gilbert’s conducting is just as good as I remembered it from his NY Phil days, meticulous in terms of instrumental voicing and technical control of the orchestra, allied to a driving inner force that is almost overwhelming. In short, it’s a brilliant work, brilliantly played, but except for the live performances of January 12 & 14 of this year (2023) from which this recording was derived, I sadly doubt that audiences will hear much of it in the future. After all, there’s just so much Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Liszt, Brahms and Tchaikovsky they gotta play, you know?

Due Per Due for cello and piano has some of the features one noted in the piano concerto but, surprisingly, also a broad and lyrical melody in the first of its two movements that is attractive without sounding “ordinary” or maudlin. It takes some kind of talent to come up with something melodic that is neither cheap-sounding nor derivative of anything else by any other composer, but Dello Joio did so. The second movement, titled, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, “Moto in perpetuo,” is built around a syncopated rhythm, not quite jazzy but close enough to intrigue the listener. Here, Della Joio exhibits a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor with surprising pauses in the midst of this “moto perpetuo,” as well as some key changes. And the cello part is highly virtuosic, calling for some incredible passages spanning the rage of the instrument in addition to calling on his fast bowing technique. Yet where most “moto perpetuos” pretty much stay within a basic melodic theme—and nearly always within a steady and unchanging rhythm—Della Joio continually tinkers with both. Indeed, around 4:50 into this piece, some of his tonality shifts are quite remarkable if fleeting, moving the tonality around with nearly the same speed as he does the highly inventive musical line. I should also mention that the piano part in this piece is no cakewalk, either, and Christopher O’Riley handles it brilliantly.

We conclude this survey of Dello Joio’s music with Blue and Gold Music for brass quintet and organ, written as a commemorative piece for the Trinity School at the corner of Broadway and Wall Street, which celebrated its tricentennial in 2009. (P.S.: MS Word’s “Spell Check” doesn’t like or recognize the word tricentennial, possibly because so few organizations celebrate one, so I had to add it to my dictionary.) Here I found the music quite clever but, perhaps not having much more than a celebration in mind, not emotionally communicative. Nonetheless, Della Joio came up with some very catchy themes, sometimes using what I call “backwards” rhythms, i.e., rhythms that jump around within the bar and do not land on conventional beats. Perhaps because it had to include the organ, it was recorded at Riverside Church in New York—Virgil Fox’s old stomping grounds—and thus has, well, a “churchy” ambience that helps the organ but somewhat diffuses the bite of the brass. But to be honest, it was the organ part that, to me, was the most interesting and the “meatiest” part of the score.

This is an outstanding album of colorful music which the rather dark and drab-looking album cover belies. Highly recommended.

—© 2023 Lynn René Bayley

Follow me on Twitter or Facebook

Check out the books on my blog…they’re worth reading, trust me!

Kožena Sings “Folk Songs”

BARTÓK: 5 Hungarian Folk Songs, BB108. BERIO: Folk Songs. RAVEL: 5 Mélodies populaires grecques. MONTSALVATGE: 5 Canciones negros / Magdalena Kožena, mezzo; Czech Philharmonic Orch.; Sir Simon Rattle, cond / Pentatone Classics PTC 5187 075

Simon Rattle, who in the mid-to-late 1970s was the darling of the music world, has since settled down to become a good but inconsistent conductor, yet he always was and remains an outstanding interpreter of French and Hungarian music. And clearly, one of his greatest assets was in marrying the splendid Czech mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožena, who in addition to having a gold-plated voice is also an outstanding interpreter.

In this new Pentatone release, she sings a group of what are optimistically called, simply, “Folk Songs,” though they are in fact classical settings of folk songs and some rather complex settings at that.. Just about the only pieces on this CD that sound very close to what “real” folk songs sound like are the famous Canciones negros, particularly the last one, “Canto negro,” though Luciano Berio surprisingly used two familiar American folk songs, “Black is the color” and “I Wonder as I Wander,” as part of his series of 11 such settings.

But with such a fine interpreter singing them and a fine conductor supporting her, the entire album is thus elevated from the level of “classical entertainment” to true art. Seldom have I heard both singer and accompanist so locked into the depths of this music as this duo is; Kožena brings out all the meaning of the words while Rattle pulls richness of orchestral detail and powerful feelings out of the orchestration. Although this is especially true of the Bartók and Ravel material, the duo is constantly on their best game throughout the album. In fact, I can’t recall an equal to this disc in terms of orchestrally-accompanied songs except, perhaps, the ancient Heinrich Rehkember-Jascha Horenstein recording of Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder, now nearly a century old.

Without trying to sound patronizing in any way, I am guessing that their being husband and wife helped lead to this monumental outing. Living together gives singer and conductor the opportunity to go over the material in depth in a way that might not be accessible to the singer who is not married to the accompanist. This isn’t to say that Rattle doesn’t try to give his best in every performance he gives of classical song material, only that there seems to me an extra amount of chemistry working between them.

One can draw a similar conclusion from the Berio series in a slightly different way. Since he was then married to the superb but eccentric mezzo-soprano Cathy Berberian, these songs were set for her to sing. Yet in a way, this presents an even greater challenge to modern interpreters because we know from her many recordings what a great singer Berberian was. Surprisingly, Kožena is not only just as good as Berberian, not an easy thing to achieve in itself, but even a shade better. And for my readers who become irked when I criticize an American or British soprano or mezzo-soprano for not singing with clear diction, PLEASE listen to Kožena—a Czech mezzo whose English diction is as clear as a bell at all times, and idiomatic in pronunciation to boot. Yes, it’s only songs in English, but if you follow the texts in the booklet you will note that her pronunciation in Hungarian, French, Spanish, and Azerbaijanian is equally clear and, I would infer from the languages I know, equally idiomatic.

Thus what started out, for me, as an expectation of a good album was elevated to the highest level. Kožena’s is an art that conceals art; one can only wonder at the hours she spent working on these songs and honing them to the point of perfection. The most overtly dramatic of her performances here is the fifth Berio song, a la femminisca, whereas her technique is put to the highest test in the sixth song, La donna ideale, where she is called upon to sing rapid sixteenths with a completely clear note-separation. Berberian could pull this sort of thing off, but not many others. Kožena is one of the very few.

Thus I was riveted—yes, I said riveted—throughout this recital, discovering one great moment after another, almost as if I were attending a live performance. What an astonishing achievement, to create and sustain such a fresh approach at every moment in this splendid CD. The only other recording I have of Ravel’s Popular Greek Melodies is the one by Gérard Souzay and Dalton Baldwin; it’s a very good one, but Kožena is a shade better…plus, we get the orchestral accompaniment here. And here’s the kicker: not only was this recording NOT made “live,” which it feels like (although the ambience is clearly that of a studio and not a performing venue), but rather in three recording sessions spanning four years: the Berio in June 2020, Bartók and Ravel in November 2022, and the Montsalvatge just this past February (2023). I’m sure that the Covid-19 pandemic had something to do with this sporadic recording schedule, but still, to be able to maintain this high a level of artistry in sessions so far apart is clearly a major achievement in itself. Yet the booklet includes a photo of Kožena performing in front of the Czech Philharmonic (see below), so it seems that Rattle, the singer and the orchestra did have live performances to hone their skills in. But the surprises never stop coming in this disc; I have never heard the Montsalvatge songs conducted as well as they are here. Normally, it’s just a sort of flippant “background” to the singer. Here, the orchestra is fully a dramatic partner with the singer, and this in itself elevates this music to a higher level.

This is not just the best vocal recital disc of the year, which it is, but without question one of the supreme vocal recital discs ever issued. Not even such master song interpreters of the past as Fischer-Dieskau, Janet Baker or Jon Vickers ever received an accompaniment as detailed, dramatic and on point as the one that Rattle supplies here. I’m not just impressed by this recording. I’m in shock, and I don’t think the memory of this recording’s greatness will leave my memory very soon.

—© 2023 Lynn René Bayley

Follow me on Twitter or Facebook

Check out the books on my blog…they’re worth reading, trust me!

Five Compositions by Karchin

KARCHIN: Chamber Symphony / The Washington Square Ens. / Rochester Celebrations / Margaret Kampmeier, pno / Postlude / Sam Jones, tp; Han Chen, pno / Quest / Alice Teyssier, fl; Susan Jolles, harp / Barcarolle Variations / Renée Jolles, vln; Susan Jolles, hp / Bridge 9543

Louis Karchin is an academic composer who, like most of his fellows, is very successful within his sphere of influence but is scarcely known to the classical music public at large. Back in March of 2019, I reviewed his album Dark Mountains/Distant Lights and found it interesting but not so spectacular that it really grabbed me.

Yet in sampling his music on YouTube, I came across this album which came out in 2020, a bad year for most people (it was The Year of Covid), and somehow I overlooked it (or perhaps passed it up because Dark Mountains didn’t grab me). But what I heard online was so intriguing that I requested the physical CD to review, so here it is.

The Chamber Symphony, written in 2009, is the earliest work on this CD, and from the very opening, with its swirling harp and flute figures in French-impressionist-styled harmonies, I was in its spell. (My late friend Alonzo Levister used to say that if the opening of any piece, classical or jazz, doesn’t grab your attention in some way, it’s not a really good one.) A dramatic piano chord around 1:13 leads into a theme by winds and brass, very ingeniously scored so that the instruments both clash with and complement each other in their timbres (sort of a classical analogy to what Duke Ellington did in jazz for nearly a half-century). Moreover, the development in this movement, which includes double-time figures, is so well written that every thread of the music complements and enhances everything that comes after. In short, this movement is masterful, revealing a music mind that can both indulge in creative new forms and stay focused on the course and shape of the music. Around the five-minute mark, the tempo relaxes into a sort of andante as we hear a cello solo, later with what sounds like a viola playing around it, before it is absorbed back into the orchestra.

Although some of the harmonies Karchin uses are of the more extended modern variety, much of this music had the same kind of hypnotic impact of Szymanowski’s scores, which is indeed a compliment. The busier latter part of this movement, however, is faster, busier, and more wide-awake than anything that Szymanowski wrote—a touc, you might say, of Americanism in the midst of this exotic setting. Indeed, the movement becomes quite busy indeed towards the end. At 10:28 long, it takes up nearly half the length of the entire symphony.

The second movement, which opens with low, mysterious-sounding notes played by both bass and piano, continues the mood of the first but with different thematic material. If anything, the opening of this movement is even more sparsely orchestrated, sounding much like an octet most of the time. Although I don’t ordinarily go out of my way to praise the playing of orchestras in a symphonic performance, I must give very high marks to the Washington Square Ensemble for its unusually sympathetic handling of the music. They make it sound as if they’ve lived with this piece for at least a year, playing it in live performance prior to the recording, which I don’t think is the case. They’re just a really outstanding group that has an intuitive feel for this score, and how they play it is so good that you’d think it would encourage othr orchestras to pick it up and make it a repertoire piece. But don’t hold your breath.

The third movement is a more aggressive brother of the first. Here, the initial spaciousness is compressed and contracted, as short figures follow and bump into each other in the music’s headlong whirl. The piano has a more prominent part in this movement as well, playing against the high winds quite effectively. Many of Karchin’s effects in this movement are achieved via the orchestration (again), but also by his tight compression of the rhythm, which seems to be in what jazz musicians call “double time” throughout. The relaxation and spaciousness of the first two movements have thus been sucked out of the music as if via a vacuum cleaner, which pulls the listener out of his Szymanowski-like trance into a fve-minute whirl of hyper-activity.

The piano piece Rochester Celebration (2017), which the notes claim uses “motivic transformation” resembling 19th-century romantic piano literature. This may indeed be true, but the irregular, jumpy rhythms and unusual chords, sometimes using open harmonies without any fill in the middle, immediately mark it as a modern work. Indeed, I doubt that anyone listening to it for the first time, without reading the notes, would ever connect it with the music of Liszt or Brahms. The music simply jumps around too much to resemble theirs, though it is clearly an excellent modern piece. Margaret Kampmeier, a pianist I’ve praised in past reviews, does a superb job with it.

Surprisingly, the Postlude for trumpet and piano is indeed a lyrical work with an interesting, rather melodic musical line. Trumpeter Sam Jones has an unusually mellow tone on his instrument, reminding me strongly of the great Louis Mucci, whose playing was highly sought-after by both classical and jazz ensembles for its mellow, almost French horn-like timbre. Since the piece was written specifically for Jones, I think that this is why Karchin leaned a bit more on his lyrical side. The piano accompaniment consists largely of arpeggios played in the middle of the keyboard by the right hand while the left plays rumbling low notes—again, very French in style. By contrast, Quest for flute and harp is considerably more angular music for both instruments but particularly for the flautist, who is called upon to play what I call “puckered: sounds on the instrument. And once again, Karchin crosses styles by using extended French-styled harmonies with Stravinskian-styled rhythms. Both pieces are highly effective.

We end our current journey of Karchin’s music with the Barcarole Variations (2015) for violin and harp, which is in much the same vein as Quest. In fact, unless one is paying very close attention to each piece, it might be possible to confuse one for the other.(In fact, if a flautist were to transcribe the latter for that instrument, they would sound like much the same piece although with some differences along the way.) This is a problem that many modern composers face, in my view, an inability to have more than one compositional “voice” when writing certain pieces. Who knows? In any event, although I very much enjoyed this piece on its own merits, having heard Quest first rather spoiled some of the music’s surprises for me…at least, up to the five-minute mark where the music suddenly increases in tempo and truly does become a different piece.

All in all, however, this is a really fine album which I thoroughly enjoyed. Kudos to all concerned in this project, composer, performers and the audio engineer who caught all of it in superb sound, just enough ambience around the instruments without drowning them in reverb.

—© 2023 Lynn René Bayley

Follow me on Twitter or Facebook

Check out the books on my blog…they’re worth reading, trust me!

Bevilacqua Plays Berio

BERIO: Petite Suite. 6 Encores. Sequenza IV. Canzonetta for Piano 4 Hands.* Touch for Piano 4 Hands.* Cinque Variazioni. Rounds. Piano Sonata / Matteo Bevliacqua, *Luca Trabucco,pno / Grand Piano GP 903

Luciano Berio was generally an amusing modern composer. His music wasn’t entirely comprised of light pieces and trifles, but by and large it wasn’t profound. This survey of his complete piano works, so far as I’ve been able to determine, is the second such release, the first having been played by David Arden on the New Albion label way back in 1997.

With that being said, young Italian pianist Matteo Bevilacqua seems to me to make more of these piece than Arden did, not only in the more modern pieces like Sequenza IV but even in the very early (1947) Petite Suite. Part of the difference is in the way the piano is miked. Here, the sound is very close, revealing greater detail in the music, but there is more to it than that. Bevilacqua plays each piece with more gravitas, which makes the emotional impact of each piece stronger and more visceral to the listener. Along with this, his tempi are just a shade quicker, and the combination of these two elements is quite impactful for the listener.

And there is something else. Although both pianists have excellent techniques, there is just something more impressive in the way the music rolls off Bevilacqua’s fingers. Call it an intangible, but if you compare the two recordings as I did, the difference is unmistakable.  In Arden’s hands, the early (1947) Petite Suite sounds merely charming. The way Bevilacqua plays it, it sounds as if it meant to impress the listener and not just entertain him or her. A good example is the last piece in the Petite Suite, where Berio wrote opposing running figures in 6/8 for bothhands to play simultaneously. In short, where Arden’s performances are pleasant listening experiences, Bevilacqua’s are gripping.

This approach clearly elevated the quality of music for me personally. Had I been forced to judge this music from the Arden CD, I would have found it pleasing but unmoving emotionally, but that extra dollop of commitment to his material tells me that Bevilacqua is simply the superior interpreter of this music. True, there are a few pieces here that simply are too lightweight to get much out of, such as the Canzonetta and Touch for piano four hands. The music is interesting on the surface due to Berio’s use of an extended harmony that seldom resolves itself, but that’s really all there is to these pieces, but listen to the eerie way in which he plays the first of the Cinque Variazioni and you’ll have a good idea of what Belivacqua can do with the music when there is more meat on the bones.

For me, however, Berio’s one and only Piano Sonata struck me as a gimmicky piece without any real substance, and this was a shame because it seemed as if the entire CD was leading up to that point. Nonetheless, for the good piece on this CD, and there are several, Bevilacqua’s performances are clearly the ones to hear.

—© 2023 Lynn René Bayley

Follow me on Twitter or Facebook

Check out the books on my blog…they’re worth reading, trust me!