Philip Glass: Perpetulum; David Skidmore: Aliens
with Extraordinary Abilities; Peter Martin: Bend; Robert Dillon:
Ordering-instincts; Gavin Bryars: The Other Side of the River. Third Coast Percussion (David Skidmore, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin, and Sean
Connors). Orange Mountain Music. $19.99 (2 CDs).
Victoria
Bond: Instruments of Revelation; Frescoes and Ash; Leopold Bloom’s Homecoming;
Binary. Chicago Pro Musica. Naxos.
$12.99.
Kinan
Azmeh: Suite for Improvisor and Orchestra; Ibn Arabi Suite; The Fence, the
Rooftop and the Distant Sea; Kareem Roustom: Clarinet Concerto—Adrift on the
Wine-Dark Sea; Zaid Jabri: Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra; Dia Succari:
Paroles—Suite for Clarinet and Orchestra. Kinan Azmeh, clarinet; Yo-Yo Ma, cello; Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester
Berlin conducted by Manuel Nawri. Dreyer Gaido. $29.99 (2 CDs).
Copland:
Appalachian Spring—Suite; Ravel: Daphnis et Chloé—Suite No. 2;
Stravinsky: Firebird Suite. Park
Avenue Chamber Symphony conducted by David Bernard. Recursive Classics. $18.99.
Minimalist music would be more readily dismissible if it did not
occasionally stop taking itself so seriously. But give credit to Philip Glass,
a master of the form: although much of what he has created sounds like New
Age-y background music (which is
readily dismissible), Glass often proffers a glimmer, or more than a glimmer,
of amusement and cleverness that sets his work apart from similar material by
other composers. Such is the case with Perpetulum,
Glass’ first-ever work for percussion ensemble – and one whose portmanteau
title (“perpetual” plus “pendulum”) gives a pleasant hint of its structure and approach,
and of the fact that it is quite an enjoyable piece that does not include any
deep emotional or intellectual material or expect major analysis from the
audience. Third Coast Percussion, which commissioned Perpetulum, is an avant-garde group that also does not take itself
too seriously (at least not all the time), and the pairing of these percussionists
with this music is exceptionally apt. Perpetulum
is in three movements plus an extended and very interesting three-minute
cadenza; the work as a whole runs about 22 minutes and, like much of Glass’
music and minimalist music in general, is hard to pay attention to for its
entirety, since its endless swells, arpeggios and repetitive themes (and
non-themes) quickly blend into each other. But the character of percussion,
especially keyboards such as marimba and xylophone contrasted with drums and
similar instruments, is such that the sound itself provides variety in Perpetulum in a way that keeps the work
interesting – which it would not be to nearly the same extent if played by,
say, a string quartet. Orange Mountain Music, Glass’ own label, offers Perpetulum as part of a fascinating (if
rather uneven) two-CD collection of percussion works, most of the rest of which
were created by Third Coast Percussion members themselves. The only work by an
“outsider,” Gavin Bryars’ The Other Side
of the River, is the least-interesting piece here, going on as long as Perpetulum but lacking the cleverness
and variability-within-sameness that make the Glass opus intriguing. The
longest work on this release, though, is neither by Glass nor by Bryars but by
David Skidmore. Aliens with Extraordinary
Abilities runs 35 minutes and takes up the whole of the first disc in a
series of seven sketches with such intriguing titles as “Torched and Wrecked,”
“Don’t Eat Your Young,” and “Things May Be Changing (But Probably Not).” The
use of titles of this sort is typical in contemporary music and often takes the
place of genuine cleverness in the music itself; but not here. These are pieces
that take Third Coast Percussion through many paces and many pacings,
showcasing the instrumental complement in a wide variety of sound mixtures,
tempos and rhythms. It is as interesting in its way as Perpetulum is in Glass’ way. Two shorter works fill out the
recording nicely, and both show how members of Third Coast Percussion take
their music-making seriously but do not seem to take themselves seriously all the time: Peter Martin’s Bend is relentlessly bouncy and upbeat,
while Robert Dillon’s Ordering-instincts
has a kind of witty insistency about it that comes through very well. Listening
to this entire release straight through may not be the best idea – an hour and
a half of percussion ensemble is a bit much – but by and large, the individual
pieces are worth hearing on their own and worth returning to repeatedly.
Third Coast Percussion is Chicago-based, and the Chicago area is
something of a hotbed of modern classical music: a new Naxos CD of chamber
works by Victoria Bond shows this clearly, with first-rate performances by
Chicago Symphony members playing as Chicago Pro Musica. Actually, only two
works on the disc were recorded in Chicago; the other two were done in New York
– and the recording dates range from 2012 to 2016. But wherever and whenever
the recordings were made, they clearly show Bond’s style and her approach to
chamber-sized ensembles. Bond is nearly a decade younger than Glass – she was
born in 1945, he in 1937 – and stylistically very different, but her style is
quite as fully formed as his, if not so immediately distinctive. Like the
Skidmore piece on the Glass-focused release, one of the works here is in seven
sections: Frescoes and Ash (2009)
uses clarinet, strings, piano and percussion – in varying combinations – to
paint musical portraits of the ancient city of Pompeii, its doom by volcanic
eruption, and (to a lesser extent) its place in the modern world. The work,
which is about the same length as Glass’ Perpetulum,
has an intriguing final movement called “Ash” that Bond turns into a meditation
on human mortality. This works particularly well because Bond is essentially a
tonal composer, so her works can and do evoke emotional responses effectively. She
is also skilled in managing the sounds of this small instrumental complement,
whether in the virtuoso requirements of “The Sybil Speaks” or in the intriguing
violin-and-bass duet in “Chiron Teaches Achilles to Play the Lyre” – a case in
which the instruments particularly neatly encapsulate the characters. Just as
substantive as her Pompeii pictures is Bond’s Leopold Bloom’s Homecoming (2011), a song cycle for tenor (Rufus Müller) and piano (Jenny Lin) based on James Joyce’s Ulysses. Bond handles the voice and
piano parts well, and the performers do a good job with the material, but the
stream-of-consciousness text becomes rather wearing to hear after a while, and
the cycle comes to seem overly long, if not quite interminable. More successful,
and not just because it is shorter, is Instruments
of Revelation (2010), a three-movement set for winds, strings and piano
based on three Tarot cards: “The Magician,” whose meaning of ambiguity is
neatly encapsulated through quick juxtapositions of solemnity with verve; “The
High Priestess,” representing wisdom and secrets, with music that starts calmly
enough but then becomes impassioned; and “The Fool,” both mystic and lunatic,
with music that appropriately contrasts chaotic elements with amusing ones.
Here and in the Pompeii miniatures, Bond shows her skill in short-form
portrayals: musical visualizations neatly captured. The CD concludes with Binary (2005), a work for piano solo
(Olga Vinokur) whose bright liveliness, based on the Brazilian samba, ends the
disc pleasantly.
If Bond stays firmly, or at least moderately firmly, in a tonal
universe, Kinan Azmeh sticks to one in which sounds of different cultures are paramount
and tonality, although often present, is largely incidental. It is hard to
escape the notion that Azmeh, like Third Coast Percussion, does not always take
himself entirely seriously, especially in light of his Suite for Improvisor and Orchestra, in which he pulls, nudges and
shoves his clarinet all over the place in a manner perhaps loosely derived from
jazz but decidedly non-jazzlike in effect. The work comes across as a sort of
“song of myself,” giving Azmeh plenty of opportunities to show all the things
he can do with and on the clarinet. Like most of the other music on this (+++)
Dreyer Gaido release, it may be more enjoyable for Azmeh’s fellow clarinetists
than for listeners in general: there is a certain sense of showing-off
throughout, not only in Azmeh’s own music but also in three
clarinet-and-orchestra works, all written for him by Syrian composers, that
take up the second of the two discs. All those concertos draw to some extent on
Syrian music, which, like other music of the Middle East, has cadences and
rhythms that sound different and exotic when compared with Western,
specifically European music. The differences are more formal than
communicative, however: all the pieces here give Azmeh plenty of opportunities
to show off his virtuosity – that seems to be their primary reason for being –
and also provide at least periodic moments of soulfulness and emotive
distinction that Azmeh fully explores (and, in fact, exploits). Azmeh seems to be
a performer who would be more effective in person than when heard on a
recording: his involvement with the material is almost palpable even when
unseen, and it is hard to escape the notion that he and the other composers
represented on this recording know that his skill lies as much in his on-stage
presence as in the quality of the musical material he offers. That impression
is heightened through the most-interesting piece heard here, which Azmeh wrote
for himself and cellist Yo-Yo Ma. The
Fence, the Rooftop and the Distant Sea is both a tour de force for the two performers and an occasionally wistful,
even tender exploration of the similarities of and differences between the
sonorities of their instruments. Clarinet and cello here seem to have a very
close sonic relationship, and the way Azmeh and Ma merge, then contrast their
instruments tonally and rhythmically is fascinating and definitely
ear-catching. Ma is himself a considerable stage presence, even a showman, and
has become more so in recent years; the way he matches Azmeh in this piece makes
it likely that the two would play well off each other (not just play well with
each other) in a visual sense. They share warmth and stylistic certainty on
their respective instruments in a way that makes The Fence, the Rooftop and the Distant Sea more intriguing in its
impressionism than are most parts of the other pieces heard here. Manuel Nawri
leads the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin with clarity and firmness in all
the works, and if the accompaniment tends to be a bit characterless from time
to time, that is likely because Azmeh and the other composers keep the musical
spotlight trained so strongly on the clarinetist – who clearly enjoys being
front-and-center as much as possible.
It is worth pointing out that contemporary composers, no matter how far
they reach for new approaches and in what direction, are simply doing what
other composers did when they were in
the vanguard of musical modernity. The works of Copland, Ravel and Stravinsky
on a new Recursive Classics CD, although they are now in or close to the
standard repertoire, show this clearly – all the more so in the beautifully
balanced and excellently played renditions by the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony
under David Bernard. This (+++) release would have very clearly been a (++++)
CD if the producers had only chosen to offer more of the music and to position
the whole disc as being ballet music instead of calling it “Symphonic Dances,” a
title that is scarcely helpful or accurate. The CD is not really short – it
runs 65 minutes – but the entirety of Appalachian
Spring, for example, lasts only 15 minutes longer than the suite recorded
here; it would have fit on the disc without difficulty. This in no way
minimizes the excellence of the performances, but there is a pervasive sense of
the dances (that is, the ballet music) being taken out of context throughout
the disc. What the CD does offer,
though, is commendably rhythmic and aurally attractive versions of ballets that
differ not only in national origin (U.S., France, and [essentially] Russia) but
also in the time periods in which they were written and in which they broke new
musical ground (Copland’s work was first heard in 1944; Ravel’s in 1912;
Stravinsky’s in 1910, with this suite dating to 1919). Copland’s folklike
“American” music, much better known than his thornier and more-modern-sounding
works, represented in its time an elegant merger of European classicism with a
rather naïve view of the United States’ past. Ravel’s ballet, which is the
longest work he ever wrote, merges Impressionism and very lush harmonies with
Wagnerian elements in its use of leitmotifs.
And Stravinsky’s breakthrough ballet takes the sound world of Rimsky-Korsakov
toward and into a new century in which acerbity and striking rhythms would come
to dominate a great deal of music (The
Rite of Spring came only three years later). This recording conveys a sense
of “innovation light” to the music by presenting the material as excerpts
rather than in context. But that in no way detracts from the high quality of
what is offered here: the
performances are exemplary, and it is regrettable that Bernard and the Park
Avenue Chamber Symphony do not offer even more of music that was, in its time,
very forward-looking indeed.
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