Rebecca Clarke: Trio for Violin,
Violoncello, and Piano; Arno Babajanian: Piano Trio; Frank Martin: Trio sur des
melodies populaires irlandaises. Lincoln Trio (Desirée Ruhstrat, violin; David Cunliffe, cello; Marta Aznavoorian,
piano). Cedille. $16.
Anthony Plog: Concerto No. 1 for
Solo Trumpet and Large Brass Ensemble; Joel Puckett: The Shadow of
Sirius—Concerto for Flute and Wind Orchestra; Jay Krush: Concerto for Bass
Trombone; Jennifer Higdon: Oboe Concerto—For Solo Oboe and Wind Ensemble; David
Maslanka: Desert Roads—Four Songs for Clarinet and Wind Ensemble; Adam
Silverman: Carbon Paper and Nitrogen Ink—Concerto for Marimba and Wind
Ensemble. Temple University Wind Symphony conducted by Emily Threinen.
BCM+D Records. $12.97 (2 CDs).
Aleksandra Vrebalov: The Sea
Ranch Songs. Kronos Quartet (David Harrington and John Sherba, violins;
Hank Dutt, viola; Sunny Yang, cello); video and animation by Andrew Lyndon.
Cantaloupe Music CD+DVD. $20.
Taylor Brook: El jardín
de senderos que se bifurcan; Andrew Greenwald: A thing is a hole in a thing it
is not; Kate Soper: Nadja. Kate Soper, soprano; Mivos Quartet (Olivia De Prato and Lauren Cauley, violins;
Victor Lowrie, viola; Mariel Roberts, cello). New Focus Recordings. $17.99.
The creativity of performers
in plumbing new works and bringing them to a wider audience knows no bounds –
although the works themselves sometimes establish boundaries by simply being
in-your-face (or in-your-ear) unappealing, as if some composers are determined
to show how up-to-date they are by creating pieces to which only they and
selected performers are likely to gravitate. That is certainly not the case
with the composers represented on an excellent new Cedille release featuring
the Lincoln Trio. Although most listeners will be encountering these works, and
two of the three composers, for the first time, this is a highly intelligently
assembled program featuring musicians – both performers and composers – who
clearly have communication with the audience in the forefront of their minds.
The concept here, as the CD’s title has it, is “Trios from Our Homelands,” and
yes, that is a gimmick – but one that works very well indeed when the music is
as good as it is here. Switzerland’s Frank Martin (1890-1974), from the
homeland of violinist Desirée Ruhstrat, is the best-known composer on the disc,
and his Trio sur des melodies populaires
irlandaises (1925), if scarcely a work of great significance, is tuneful,
artfully assembled and highly enjoyable to hear, the Irish melodies pervasive
and handled by composer and performers alike with real flair. Trio for Violin, Violoncello, and Piano
(1922) by Rebecca Clark (1886-1979) is also distinguished by tunefulness and
fine crafting; it represents England, homeland of cellist David Cunliffe. The
work is large-scale and emotionally varied, with a particularly affecting
central Andante molto semplice that
the players deliver with just the right combination of passion and clarity. The
most-recent work here is the trio by Armenia’s Arno Babajanian (1921-1983),
from the homeland of pianist Marta Aznavoorian. Dating to 1952, it is an
impassioned piece with two slower, somewhat emotionally overdone movements
(marked Largo and Andante) followed by a speedy finale
that dispels some of the tension while refusing to let all of it evaporate.
What is exceptional on this disc is not only the excellent playing but also the
underlying thoughtfulness of the program, taking what could have been mere thematic
gimmickry and turning it into a truly revelatory exploration of 20th-century
musical thinking by composers in three very different parts of the world.
A high degree of
thoughtfulness has also gone into the assembly of a program of wind concerti
offered on a two-CD release from the awkwardly named BCM+D label. The letters
stand for Temple University’s Boyer College of Music and Dance, and it is that
school’s musicians who are highlighted here, along with soloists from the
Philadelphia Orchestra. All the music here is from the United States, all of it
was written by living composers, and none of it has the emotional impact of the
works played by the Lincoln Trio – but none of it seems intended to connect in
that way. The six works are all showpieces of one sort or another, and it is
the playing, more than the underlying material being communicated, that is most
attractive. David Bilger is featured in Concerto
No. 1 for Solo Trumpet and Large Brass Ensemble (1988) by Anthony Plog
(born 1947), himself a trumpet player – and a rather demanding composer, on the
basis of this work. David Cramer is soloist in The Shadow of Sirius (2010) by Joel Puckett (born 1977), which is
based on the poetry of W.S. Merwin and offers considerable expressiveness,
especially in the solo part. Blair Bollinger plays solo bass trombone in the
2007 concerto by Jay Krush (born 1953), which is a work requiring considerable
virtuosity from an instrument not usually thought of as having much solo
potential. Jonathan Blumenfeld is soloist in the 2008 concerto by Jennifer
Higdon (born 1962), which likewise puts the solo instrument through
considerable paces. Ricardo Morales plays solo clarinet in Desert Roads (2005) by David Maslanka (born 1943), in which the
clarinet’s ability to match the range of the human voice is well-used to convey
the sense of the songs that inspired the composer. And Phillip O’Banion plays
marimba in Carbon Paper and Nitrogen Ink
(2013) by Adam Silverman (born 1973), a work that stretches the solo instrument
in some unexpected directions that are intellectually interesting even when
they do not sound especially good. Through all the pieces, the Temple
University Wind Symphony under Emily Threinen provides solid, well-balanced
backup, resulting in a release that does its job as a showcase for the
university’s music school very well indeed, while also giving listeners an
opportunity to sample mostly well-made music for some expected solo wind
instruments and some decidedly unexpected ones.
There is an underlying
communicative impulse to all the works on the Temple University release, even
when it does not come through especially clearly; this is very different from
the sort of communicative experience sought by Aleksandra Vrebalov, the Kronos
Quartet and Andrew Lyndon in a Cantaloupe Music release called The Sea Ranch Songs. The Sea Ranch is a
1,300-person community in Sonoma County, California, that proclaims itself
“environmentally planned.” It is 94% white and 83% age 45 or older, so it is
quite clearly an enclave – and there is nothing wrong with that at all, except
to the extent that the community promotes itself as a kind of utopian haven for
a world that looks very little like The Sea Ranch itself. There is some
wonderful architecture in the community, and its views of the Pacific Ocean are
remarkable, helping explain why it is a popular spot for day trips and
overnight vacationers. And this is undoubtedly a very carefully planned
community – one whose meticulousness, however, would not work on a larger
scale. Vrebalov’s music and Lyndon’s visuals are hagiographic in the extreme,
treating The Sea Ranch not only as a kind of paradise on Earth but also as the
sort of place to which people everywhere should aspire. The music starts by
portraying the Pomo Kashia Indians who lived long ago in the area, then deals
with early Russian settlers who lived harmoniously with the Indians instead of
displacing them, and then celebrates the area’s planning, development,
environmental awareness, and so forth. Vrebalov admits in the booklet notes to
the recording that The Sea Ranch “might be utopian” on a global scale, but
argues for its “urgent relevance in our wounded world.” This recording project
does not, however, come across that way: what emerges is the sense that people
everywhere should live this way and
only fail to do so because they are ignorant or misguided (and, by the by, do
not have land available right on the Pacific Ocean). The beauty of The Sea
Ranch is impressive, and the DVD in this set makes it abundantly clear.
Vrebalov’s music, though, is hopelessly naïve and almost desperate in its
attempt to be important and meaningful in ways that composers less
freighted with sociopolitical baggage (such as Clarke, Babajanian, Martin and
those represented on the Temple University recording) achieve more clearly and
cleanly. The physical loveliness of The Sea Ranch and the attractiveness of
some of Vrebalov’s music lead to a (+++) rating for this release, but it will
certainly not be for all tastes and is likely to inspire as much cynicism as
admiration in listeners and viewers who find the whole recording, and The Sea
Ranch itself, to be hopelessly self-important.
Even more limited in
audience and even less inclined to compromise in any way to reach a wider
group, a new Mivos Quartet release on the New Focus Recordings label shows a
great deal about the gap between listeners in general and contemporary
composers who write primarily for themselves and those who think just as they
do. If The Sea Ranch Songs is
overdone on the utopian scale, the three works offered here are overthought on
a different scale altogether. They are uniformly well-made within the
strictures that the composers set for themselves, but they are so
hyper-intellectual and so lacking in any of the emotional connection of which
music is capable that listeners are likely to be bored, puzzled or fed up in
short order by what they hear – in more or less equal amounts. This state of
affairs comes through especially clearly in Nadja
(2013-2015) by composer/soprano Kate Soper. The three movements offer poems by
authors whose works could scarcely be more different: Alfred, Lord Tennyson;
Ovid; and André Breton. In her
composition and her performance, Soper manages to make all the poetry sound
essentially identical – a remarkable accomplishment, although scarcely one that
most listeners will find worthy of celebration. The other pieces here are similar
in both cerebral heft and emotional vapidity. Taylor Brook’s 2013 work, whose
title translates as “The Garden of Diverging Paths” and is taken from another
literary source, a short story by the remarkable Jorge Luis Borges, imagines six
ways in which musical history might have diverged from the path it took in our
world. That leads Brook to create six movements intended to show where music as
we know it might have gone, but did not. This is an intriguing thought
experiment, and the movements’ titles lend hope that it might be an audible one
as well: “Altercation,” “Pedals,” “Strumming,” “Following,” “Lament” and
“Coils.” But in practice, very little of the erudite underpinning of the music
comes through: performers – including the very adept members of the Mivos
Quartet – will certainly see the ways in which these miniature tone poems
explore alternative realities, but it is asking too much of any but a very esoteric
audience indeed to expect listeners to be able to follow and understand just
where this music is supposed to be going. The third work on the CD, Andrew
Greenwald’s A thing is a hole in a thing
it is not (2010), is one of those portentously titled pieces that are
supposed to mean a great deal – which perhaps it will to people who are highly
familiar with Carl Andre, the American minimalist artist from whom the title is
taken. Or perhaps not even the cognoscenti will see how the extreme sonic
environment of this work, whose 11 minutes seem nearly interminable, relates to
Andre’s production. The point is not that any of these pieces is misguided –
indeed, they are all taken just where the composers want to take them, and the
Mivos Quartet delves into the material with enthusiasm and in grand style, a
major reason the CD gets a (+++) rating. But the extreme dryness of the
material, the complete lack of understanding or caring that not everyone who
might hear this music functions at the rarefied level of those who created it,
makes this CD into a self-referential exercise whose communicative potential is
confined to those “in the know,” who will congratulate themselves that they
“get” so much more than lesser mortals do. Unfortunately, preaching to the
choir produces few converts to one’s beliefs – although it is by no means clear
that these composers are reaching out to anyone who is not already convinced of
the importance of what they are producing.
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