John Robertson: Concerto for Clarinet and Strings; Hinemoa &
Tutanekai; Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra; Symphony No. 3. Mihail Zhivkov, clarinet; Kremera Acheva, flute;
Fernando Serrano Montoya, trumpet; Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by
Anthony Armoré. Navona. $14.99.
David
Maslanka: Recitation Book; William Albright: Fantasy Etudes; David Clay
Mettens: Ornithology S. Fuego Quartet
(Nicki Roman, soprano saxophone; Erik Elmgren, alto saxophone; Harrison Clarke,
tenor saxophone; Gabriel Piqué, baritone saxophone). Ravello. $14.99.
David
Noon: Partita; Jerry Owen: Meshquanowat’; Marc Mellits: Two Pieces for Flute and
Guitar; Amin Sharifi: Duets Exhibition; Jorge Muñiz: South
Shore Suite. Duo Sequenza (Debra
Silvert, flute, alto flute, and piccolo; Paul Bowman, classical guitar).
Navona. $14.99.
Giovanni
Piacentini: Icarus—Suite in six movements for guitar and electronics; Six
Preludes for Solo Guitar; Los Murmullos for guitar and flute; Passacaglia. Giovanni Piacentini, guitar; Gina Luciani, flute;
Fernando Arroyo Lascurain, violin; Stefan L. Smith, viola. Navona. $14.99.
The many moods of which wind instruments
are capable make them a continuing source of interest to contemporary
composers, especially ones who still find traditional musical forms congenial.
Thus, John Robertson has turned to the form of the wind concerto several times,
with his clarinet and trumpet concertos featured on a new Navona CD. The
clarinet work, which dates to 1989 and is in the traditional three-movement
concerto form, shows Robertson’s skill with exploring the range of the clarinet
without feeling obligated to push the instrument beyond the point of comfort
for performer or audience. The slow movement is the longest of the three and is
suitably melodic, but it is the finale, in which the clarinet is neatly played
off against pizzicato and glissando strings, that is the most attractive part
of the work. The trumpet concerto (2013) is also a three-movement work, opening
with a military-style fanfare that is soon contrasted with more-lyrical
elements. Again, it is the slow movement that is the longest, but again, it is
the finale that is most striking, with its snare-drum opening and some Latin
American themes and rhythms, reflecting the work’s origin: Robertson wrote it
for a Cuban trumpeter. Robertson uses winds in a different, decidedly
non-virtuosic way in Hinemoa &
Tutanekai, a 10-minute tone painting from 1988 that is based on a Mâori
legend of two lovers from warring tribes who are kept apart, on separate
islands, by their families – leaving the woman, Hinemoa, disconsolately
listening to the flute played by Tutanekai from across the water, then deciding
to swim to him. The earlier part of the piece drags a bit, especially for
anyone who does not know the legend: nothing here indicates warring tribes or
demanding parents. But once the flute begins to sound (after about four minutes
of music), the effect is pleasant and even elegant, and the piece has a
well-managed air about it even without any particular emotional depth. Also on
this CD is Robertson’s Third Symphony (2017), dedicated to the conductor Anthony Armoré, who leads it here with the Sofia Philharmonic
Orchestra in a solid, committed performance – all the performers on the CD do a
good job with Robertson’s style and the way he blends and contrasts
instruments. The first of the symphony’s three movements has some of the sound
of slow-moving waves about it, and some of the repetitiveness characteristic of
minimalism, although it is more varied than strict minimalist pieces. The
second movement, a Scherzo, is more attractive – Robertson’s faster movements
tend to be more appealing than his slower ones – and the warmer, lyrical
portion midway through makes an effective contrast. The first movement is
string-dominated, but winds are more prominent in the second, especially in the
central section. The third movement mingles strings and winds and, like the
second, contrasts livelier material with more-lyrical music. The symphony,
taken as a whole, is somewhat rambling, without a strong sense of direction or
purpose: it is well-constructed but not particularly involving.
The entirety of a new Ravello CD involves
wind instruments: saxophones, which are heard in three very different
contemporary works. David Maslanka’s Recitation
Book uses Bach works and other centuries-old music as the basis of a series
of transformations into modern forms and musical approaches. Maslanka actually
cites the specific pieces on which he bases the five movements of this suite,
making it easy for listeners familiar with the originals to hear the ways in
which he modifies and “updates” the material, for instance by turning a Bach
chorale into a kind of popular, yearning “love song” melody. The saxophones’
sound fits a different Bach work, the meditative Jesu meine Freude, particularly (and rather surprisingly) well.
Also here is a short piece based on a Gesualdo madrigal, a meditative handling
of a Gregorian chant that begins effectively in the low register, and a set of
variations on Durch Adams Fall
(“Through Adam’s fall”) that is almost as long as the other four movements
combined and that takes the Fuego Quartet members from their instruments’
highest reaches to the lowest and offers some very definitely modern rhythmic
touches and considerable speed. The six Fantasy
Etudes by William Albright are much more “modern” in sound, full of starts
and stops, unexpected instrumental blends, pervasive dissonance, and many
passages that do not so much explore the saxophones’ ranges and capabilities as
they extend and push them. The quartet members play the material well, but the
music itself is far from compelling, with Albright seeming more interested in
having saxophones utter ghostlike shrieks and foghorn-like low notes than in
having audiences get anything in particular from the material. This is one of
those works that sound as if they are more fun to play than to hear, although
the final movement, “They only come out at night,” has enjoyable bounce. The CD
concludes with David Clay Mettens’ Ornithology
S, a work that not only has the saxophones imitating birdsong but that also
takes the extension-of-sound approach of Albright several steps further by
having the performers use slaps, key clicks and other effects to extend the
sound world. As an exploration of a sonic environment that includes and goes
beyond that of saxophones, this is certainly effective, but the piece lacks
musical cohesion and does not seem to have any particular purpose beyond a
demonstration of techniques – a kind of etude exploring wind instruments’
percussive sounds, and another work that seems to be more for performers than
for listeners.
The sounds are intriguing on a new Navona
CD featuring Duo Sequenza, because this two-person group combines wind
instruments with guitar – an unusual mixture that opens up some interesting
sound possibilities. The five pieces on the disc, by five different
contemporary composers, are of varying levels of interest, but listeners will
find the mingling of sound intriguing in all cases. David Noon’s Partita (1989) is a work that, like
Maslanka’s Recitation Book, looks to
the past for inspiration, with four movements whose titles reflect old forms:
“Preludio,” “Musette,” “Pastorale,” and “Rigadoon.” The first and third are
gently lilting, the second and fourth more energetic, and all are pleasantly
scored. Jerry Owen’s 1995 Meshquanowat’
(the apostrophe at the end adds a syllable, so the word is pronounced mesh-quan-o-wát-eh in the Native American Mesquakie language) has some
elements of dance and lyricism as well, but here they are captured within a
series of short, fast-changing sections that are intended to reflect the
red-tailed hawk: the piece’s title is what the Mesquakie call the bird. Two Pieces for Flute and Guitar (2000)
by Marc Mellits starts hesitantly but soon becomes intricate and strongly
rhythmic in the first piece, after which the second (somewhat more ordinarily)
strives for a kind of poignant nostalgia. Amin Sharifi’s Duets Exhibition (2016) includes four brief pieces with evocative
titles: “Seven Color Tile,” “Prelude,” “The Game,” and “Murdered in His
Labyrinth.” The music is less intriguing and involving than the words, however.
Debra Silvert and Paul Bowman interrelate their instruments skillfully here (as
they do throughout the disc), but there is little sense of either forward motion
or scene-painting in these miniatures. The CD concludes with its longest piece
by far: the six-movement South Shore
Suite (2016) by Jorge Muñiz. This work is, by intent, very
much a mixed bag of sounds, incorporating elements of jazz, blues, country
music and other styles. The elements do not fit together particularly well, and
some of the effects, such as the hesitant opening of the second movement, sound
contrived rather than clever. The “South Shore” of the title is that of Lake
Michigan, and the individual movements are supposed to evoke historical and
contemporary figures within that geographical area. But listeners who are not
familiar with the region will hear only a series of not-very-closely-related
pieces in which Silvert and Bowman play skillfully, but without the music ever
really seeming to go anywhere. It is all pleasant enough, but to no apparent
purpose for anyone who does not know the specific circumstances or scenes that
inspired each of the six individual pieces within the larger suite.
Flute and guitar are also joined in one of the works on a new Navona CD
of the music of Giovanni Piacentini. This is Los Murmullos, which uses alto flute and guitar to convey the
dreamlike quality of the “magical realism” literary movement. Close familiarity
with such literature is not needed in the way familiarity with specific
geography and legends is in the Muñiz South Shore Suite. That is because Piacentini
uses the lower part of the flute’s range, in combination with guitar strumming,
plucking and other sounds (such as striking the wood of the guitar with his
hands), to produce a somewhat dreamlike landscape in five movements whose
individual elements are less important than their cumulative effect. It is the
tonal ambiguity that ultimately turns Los
Murmullos into a musically imaginative experience, independent of whether
listeners are familiar with the specific book that inspired Piacentini, Juan
Rulfo’s Pedro Parama. Piacentini is
an effective performer of his own music, and his guitar is heard without other
instruments in other works on this CD – although with electronics in Icarus, a six-movement retelling of the
Greek legend of the boy whose wings took him too close to the sun. The tale is
familiar, its treatment here much less so: atonality, twelvetone writing,
percussive segments, many electronic samples of guitar music, jazzlike rhythms,
and the usual distortions of sound with which electroacoustic music abounds,
produce an intermittently gripping sonic landscape that never seems to reflect
the old legend in any significant way. Also here are Six Preludes for Solo Guitar, this time without electronics, and this
sequence offers the most interesting material on the disc: there is no specific
literary or legendary gloss here, only a series of complex and beautifully
handled etudes that range from Impressionism to tranquility to dynamic display
to nostalgia to generalized scene-painting, showing just how wide an expressive
range the guitar can have in the hands of an expert player such as Piacentini.
In truth, the preludes are inspired
by specific scenes or places, but so effective is Piacentini’s playing that the
underlying motivation for these two-to-three-minute works becomes much less
significant than their exploration of the guitar’s capabilities and the
multitude of sounds of which the instrument is capable. The CD ends not with a
guitar piece but with one for violin and viola: Passacaglia, a slow, encore-length, meandering tribute to Ravel’s
Piano Trio in A minor – a non-traditional sort of encore, without flash or
brightness, and a work very different
from the others heard here, showing that Piacentini has interests beyond
tone painting and skills that go beyond writing for his own instrument.
