(+++) VOICES IN THE WINDS

Music for Clarinet and Piano by Gabriel Fauré, Helen Habershon, John Lenehan, Robert Schumann, Claude Debussy, Sir Edward Elgar, Gerald Finzi, Johannes Brahms, Antonin Dvořák, and Joseph Horovitz. Helen Habershon, clarinet; John Lenehan, piano. Divine Art. $18.99.

Music for Oboe and Piano by Paul Hindemith, Pavel Haas, William Bolcom, Benjamin Britten, José Siqueira, and Klement Slavický. Alex Klein, oboe; Phillip Bush, piano. Cedille. $16.

Karl Kohn: Complete Works for Flute. Rachel Rudich, flute; Karl Kohn and Gayle Blankenburg, piano; Mark Robson, organ; Jack Sanders, guitar; Andrew McIntosh, violin; Christine Tavolacci, Daniel Lemer, and Sarah Wass, flutes. Bridge Records. $31.99 (2 CDs).

Michael Cohen: I Remember; Prelude; String Quartet; Just a Little Sky Away; A Song for Silenced Voices. Navona. $14.99.

     A very clear encapsulation of the pluses and minuses of highly personalized recitals and recordings, a new Divine Art CD featuring composer/performers Helen Habershon and John Lenehan is a treat for their fans, a matter of middling interest for those who enjoy clarinet-and-piano recitals, and a less-than-compelling offering for anyone who may not share the specific sensibilities that led Habershon and Lenehan to select these particular works and to perform them in this particular sequence. On one level, this release is by intent a strong focus on the music created by the performers: of the 19 short pieces here, six are by Habershon and six are Lenehan’s – he composed two and arranged four others. So more than half the music is written or adapted by the players. The longest work offered (although still lasting less than six minutes) is actually not an arrangement or adaptation and not by either performer, but is the third movement of Brahms’ Clarinet Sonata, Op. 120, No. 1, which is nicely played but fits rather oddly into what is essentially a disc filled with encores. Habershon and Lenehan are certainly capable players of classical works – for example, the CD also includes two of Gerald Finzi’s Five Bagatelles – but their main interest is in lighter, fairly moody music that they either create themselves (Habershon’s Yesterday’s Dreams, Lenehan’s Dreaming of Summer) or arrange to suit a specific crepuscular mood (Lenehan’s arrangements of Fauré’s Après un rêve and Schumann’s Träumerei). Whether newly composed, arranged, or drawn from tradition (Lenehan’s setting of Deep River), the music here is moderately paced, pleasantly played, and rather static in overall effect: it is basically “mood music,” better suited as background while doing something else than as anything repaying close attention and focus. This is, as a whole, a rather calming disc, but also a rather unremarkable one – the impressions it creates during the performances fade quickly thereafter, and it does not seem like the type of CD to which listeners who are not already fans of Habershon and Lenehan are likely to listen with any frequency.

     Equally personal and equally combinatorial of diverse works, a new Cedille recording featuring Alex Klein on oboe and Phillip Bush on piano has an ostensible theme tying everything together – “revolutionary works for oboe and piano” – but much depends on how one defines and interprets “revolutionary.” Does it mean the works explored significant new musical territory? Does it mean they were born of political upheaval or designed to promote it? Are the pieces intended to incite revolution, respond to it, lament it, or what? There are in fact explanations for the inclusion of each work here, but the reality is that the issues of war and peace and the times within which each piece was written are only tenuously connected: if anything, the rationales for these works simply show that people have been horrible to other people in many ways, in many places, for a very long time – and that only includes the 20^th century, when all this music was created. Ultimately, as with any mixture of disparate pieces, what will matter to listeners is whether the individual works come across well and whether, as a totality, they communicate effectively. Certainly Klein and Bush play all the music with admirable sensitivity and involvement, and certainly they seem equally at home in the very different styles of these six composers. But the program as a whole is somewhat less than the sum of its parts: many listeners will be able to find one or more works here that they will enjoy and/or find emotionally satisfying, but the disc as a whole will be attractive mostly to people who simply want to hear some fine oboe-and-piano writing and playing from the last century, and who enjoy a mixture of material by better-known and comparatively obscure composers. Hindemith’s two-movement Sonata for Oboe and Piano dates to the eve of World War II (1938) and contrasts a short, unusually perky (for Hindemith) movement with a broader, more-expansive one. Suite for Oboe and Piano by Pavel Haas (1899-1944) is a three-movement work of the same vintage. It is more thoughtful and inward-looking than Hindemith’s sonata, although its movement designations do not entirely fit the music, notably in the non-furious Furioso first movement. The year 1938 has a different meaning where William Bolcom is concerned: it is the year in which he was born. His short Aubade—for the Continuation of Life (1982) does not really sound like a work for early morning, but it effectively conveys a rather dour mood and uses the interplay of instruments well. Britten’s Temporal Variations range from the thoughtful to the jaunty after the initial presentation of the rather mournful theme. Each short variation neatly encapsulates a specific mood, with more than one hint of sly humor – notably in “March,” the deliberately overdone “Exercises,” the not-very-threatening “Commination,” and the slow and sultry “Waltz.” The beauty of “Chorale” is particularly noteworthy. Three Etudes for Oboe with Piano Accompaniment by Brazilian composer José Siqueira (1907-1985) are more harmonically conventional than Britten’s work and more direct in expression, veering pleasantly into and out of dance rhythms. The four-movement Suite for Oboe and Piano by Czech composer Klement Slavický (1910-1999) concludes this interestingly varied recital with some especially subtle interplay of oboe and piano that shows to better effect in a complex and intense Scherzo movement than in the rather straightforward Triste that follows and is twice as long. There are pleasures of all sorts throughout this CD, even if the specific combination of music does not hang together thematically or topically to quite the extent that is intended.

     The two-CD Bridge Records release of the complete flute music of Karl Kohn (born 1926) is yet another specialized item. There is well over two hours of music here, written as far back as 1966 and as recently as 2021. Rachel Rudich’s fine and sensitive flute playing ties all 15 pieces together – she is the dedicatee of a number of Kohn’s flute works – and she is joined by a series of committed and able performers in various instrumental combinations. Kohn’s musical style is eclectic: although largely tonal and based in the European tradition and neoclassicism, it contains elements that are not so easily classifiable, especially in terms of how he handles individual instruments within larger groups – and how he structures pieces for a solo instrument. The sequencing of these two discs is rather peculiar, the works on the first CD having been written in 1966, 1989, 1958, 1972, 1982, 2009, and 1974; while those on the second CD date to 1993, 2005, 2018, 1986, 2016, 2012, 2007, and 2021. This unfortunately makes it nearly impossible to follow Kohn’s stylistic development in his flute works, if one is so inclined; and it does not allow an easy way to hear how Kohn’s handling of different forms that include flute has varied over the decades. This is too bad, because there are some intriguing ways in which For Four Flutes (1989) and Cantilena for Flute and Organ (1982), both on the first disc, show approaches that differ from those used by Kohn in the five flute-and-piano works on the remainder of this CD. Similarly, More for Four Flutes (2005), which could logically be juxtaposed with the 1989 four-flute piece, simply shows up on the second disc, which includes Concords for Flute and Guitar (1986), A Bar for Three for Flute, Violin and Piano (2016), and Soliloquy for Solo Flute (2007) as well as four flute-and-piano pieces of varying length and provenance. Kohn is not exactly a miniaturist, but he has a sure sense of length and pacing, and the works here tend not to overstay their welcome. The longest by far is Paronyms for Flute and Piano (1974), which lasts nearly half an hour – but is in four well-differentiated movements. The two four-flute works are particularly intriguing in their use of massed and individual voices, although the solo-flute Soliloquy goes on somewhat too long (almost 10 minutes). One thing Kohn shows throughout is considerable ability to contrast the flute’s range with the much larger one of the piano, playing off the wind instrument skillfully against what is essentially a percussion one. The single flute-and-organ work is especially interesting in the way Kohn highlights these two very different wind instruments, while the brief work that includes violin as well as flute and piano shows him to be adept at blending and contrasting the three instruments’ very different sounds. Everything here is played well and with committed enthusiasm, and if the project as a whole is very definitely a highly specialized, limited-audience one, it is certainly one that listeners interested in Kohn’s multi-decade engagement with the flute as a solo and chamber instrument will find thoroughly involving.

     Flute, piccolo and alto flute are featured in one of the five pieces on a Navona CD devoted to a wide variety of works by Michael Cohen (born 1938). The three instruments, all played by Mary Kay Ferguson, are responsible for much of the effect of I Remember, an extended song cycle using text by Enid Futterman, based on the diary of Anne Frank. The use of Frank’s diary in music meant to be both touching and commemorative has become, unfortunately, something of a commonplace, resulting in a sense of having heard these words (sung by soprano Sandra Simon) before, whether or not these specific ones have been used elsewhere. Cohen sets the material carefully and dutifully, and it fulfills its purpose of drawing attention to Frank as an ongoing symbol of the terrors of the Holocaust. And the piece is nicely performed – it also uses cello (Ralph Curry) and harp (Lisa Wellbaum), resulting in a kind of dreamlike evanescence that fits the material well by contrasting with the terrors that the audience realizes are ever-present, even if not overtly portrayed. I Remember is effective enough as occasional music, but not especially distinctive in its handling of its topic. The other vocal work on this CD, the aria Just a Little Sky Away from the opera Rappaccini’s Daughter (based on a Nathaniel Hawthorne short story), is much shorter and more modest in scope, with lyrics by Linsey Abrams sung by soprano Samantha Britt, and with Elenora Pertz on piano. The piece’s brevity and simplicity are appealing, and it reaches out in a heartfelt way that the much longer I Remember never quite does. The remaining music on this disc is instrumental. Prelude is a short piano piece (played by Anna Kislitsyna) that nicely contrasts upbeat and lyrical material. The two-movement String Quartet (played by the Sirius Quartet: Fung Chern Hwei and Gregor Huebner, violins; Ron Lawrence, viola; Jeremy Harman, cello) has a similar contrast, but makes it rather less effectively – the first movement is mostly driven, the second quieter and more lyrical, but there is an obviousness in the evocation of moods that makes the quartet seem studied rather than sincere. The final piece on the CD is called A Song for Silenced Voices, but it includes nothing vocal: it is for cello (Norman Fischer) and piano (Jeanne Fischer). It is a somewhat extended vocalise or “song without words” in the Mendelssohnian sense (although not harmonically resembling anything by Mendelssohn). It is an effective piece, emotionally evocative although it does not actually evoke anything in particular. What makes it most attractive is the interplay of cello and piano, the way in which the differing emotive capabilities of the two instruments are employed skillfully by Cohen to communicate a series of feelings. Of the five works on this CD, A Song for Silenced Voices is the one most likely to leave listeners with a lasting impression. The disc as a whole is not quite at this level, but each of the pieces on it has at least occasional effective moments, and all are well-designed and carefully crafted.