(+++) PUTTING THINGS TOGETHER

Rachmaninoff: Prélude in C-sharp minor, Op. 3, No. 2; Chopin: Nocturne in C-sharp minor, Op. posth., No. 20; Funeral March—third movement from Sonata in B-flat minor, Op. 35, No. 2; Fredrick Kaufman: Partita for a Virus; The Whole in Parts; Marta Brankovich: Tempest; Jan Jirásek: Soulmate; Clint Mansel: Requiem for a Dream; Andrew Lloyd Webber: Phantom of the Opera. Marta Brankovich, piano; Denver Cooper, acoustic guitar. Navona. $14.99.

Music from the Association for the Promotion of New Music, Volume 3. New Focus Recordings. $16.99.

New Music for Trombone and Wind Ensemble by Felipe Salles, Salvatore Macchia, Jeffrey Holmes, and David Mallamud. Greg Spiridopoulos, trombone and alto trombone; UMass Wind Ensemble and Symphony Band conducted by Matthew Westgate. MSR Classics. $14.95.

     Juxtapositions both of specific pieces of music and of instruments can provide new ways to hear sound and new ways to experience insights, emotions and other forms of connection between creators and perceivers. A new Navona CD featuring pianist Marta Brankovich is concerned mainly with comparing and contrasting older and newer forms of musical expressiveness – but there is a combination-of-instruments element to it in some places as well. The CD begins effectively enough with two four-minute works in C-sharp minor, Rachmaninoff’s “The Bells of Moscow” and Chopin’s posthumous Nocturne No. 20. The similarities and differences between the pieces are quite pronounced here, and brought into even sharper focus with Brankovich’s offering of Chopin’s famous Funeral March from his Piano Sonata, Op. 35, No. 2. But the minor-key gloom of these three well-known classics is only the start of a journey that quickly veers into much-more-contemporary fare, starting with the very distinctly Bach-like Partita for a Virus by Fredrick Kaufman (born 1936), which is reflective of the recent COVID-19 pandemic through the uplifting and stabilizing lens of the music of centuries ago. Then comes Brankovich’s own Tempest – whose disconnected elements and frequent alternations of loud and soft are intended as tie-ins to her years growing up in the turbulence of Serbia in the 1990s, but could just as easily be additional references to the destabilization caused by the recent pandemic. Next is Soulmate by Jan Jirásek (born 1955), which seems determined to include as many disparate musical elements as possible in a 12-minute piano piece, asking listeners to find unity – or at least connection – among the very different parts of the work. Then Brankovich offers another Kaufman work, also a 12-minute exploration: The Whole in Parts, which has structural elements of sonata form but the sound of tone clusters and striking atonality. The last two works on this disc feature Brankovich and guitarist Denver Cooper and return to the short form with which the CD began. Requiem for a Dream by Clint Mansel (born 1963) is here arranged by the performers for piano, guitar and electronic orchestra. The overtly unpleasant-sounding electronic elements may be intended to increase the emotional impact of the music, but they may also come across as more annoying than illuminating. Something analogous occurs in the performers’ similar arrangement of The Phantom of the Opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber (born 1948): the power-metal noises may be intended to reach out to audiences that would be less responsive to the piece’s original, far more emotive sound, but it is just as likely that whatever emotional impact the piece initially had will be vitiated by its performance in this guise. The CD as a whole meanders from here to there temporally and in terms of the types of works presented, leaving it to listeners to interconnect the material in ways that Brankovich herself never quite does.

     The combinatorial elements are much clearer on a New Focus Recordings release featuring composers from the Association for the Promotion of New Music. By definition, this is a CD with limited reach – the material here is not going to produce converts to the APNM cause or suddenly make listeners uninterested in avant-garde material gravitate to it. There are, however, some interesting mixtures here, especially in the three works (out of eight total) that combine electronics with non-electronic instruments. Chromatograph – Hommage to Švankmajer by Hiroya Miura combines electronics played by the composer with the sounds of the marimba (played by Mayumi Sekizawa), and is intended as an exploration of and tribute to stop-motion animation by Czech animator Jan Švankmajer. This is about a rarefied a reference as possible and will be almost certainly unknown to almost anyone encountering the music. Listeners will hear considerable use of tremolos both on marimba and electronically modified, with the marimba often becoming part of the electronic fabric. De la détente by Louis Goldford also features its composer on electronics, here mixed with violin (Pala Garcia) and cello (John Popham). Again, this is a highly personal piece whose referents will be unknown to almost everyone hearing it: it is dedicated to one of Goldford’s friends who has died and incorporates excerpts of the friend’s voice (from saved voicemails) into a sonic canvas that never quite settles down and that contains occasional flashes of lighter-sounding material. Avots by Krists Auznieks is the third piece with composer on electronics plus some non-electronic material – in this case a glockenspiel (played by Russell Fisher). This work is practically synonymous with “New Age” music (which is now old-fashioned) in its slow and quiet electronic flotation of the delicate sounds of the glockenspiel. The remaining pieces on this CD are all for electronics only, with the composers performing their own works in all cases. Miss Anderson by Erik Lundborg starts with a recording of an improvisation and turns it in a series of layovers of sound on sound. Huit Danses Surprise by Ionel Petroi has more activity than many of the works on this disc, especially in its frequent and rapid pitch changes. Three Trees 1 by Michael Gogins is mostly electronic arpeggios that sound more-or-less like growth or a sort of opening-up. When the Sky Clears by Peter Child uses essentially random, essentially meaningless text by Lina Viste Grønli to build toward a conclusion opposing former President Trump – a rather uninspiring climax despite the intended-to-be-hopeful ending of the work. And The koma is not for spinning by Aine Nakamura uses the composer’s own voice – sometimes singing, sometimes speaking English and Japanese – to create a collage that seems to strive toward meaning without ever quite attaining it. These highly personal works will connect only with listeners who know the composers personally and understand their inspirations, or who are determined to experience the musical avant-garde for its own sake.

     The forms of connection are clearer and more traditional on an MSR Classics CD featuring world première recordings of four very recently composed pieces for trombone and wind ensemble. The first of these has a title reminiscent of those used by APNM: Asynchronous, Synchronously. But Felipe Salles (born 1973) created this piece in 2020 with an eye very firmly on trombonist Greg Spiridopoulos, whose name is the title of the second movement (the two words of the piece’s overall title are the titles of the first and third movements, respectively). The work does actually have an electronic “feel” about it, and the sounds of the accompanying instruments tend, surprisingly, to be more interesting than those of the solo trombone. This is one of those modern pieces that seem to strain to be communicative or to show off a composer’s cleverness in sound juxtapositions. It has attractive audio elements, but not enough of them to justify its 20-minute length. Lacrima (2020) by Salvatore Macchia (born 1947) is even longer, at 23 minutes, and much more effective in its use of the trombone, whose sound here even recalls the instrument’s long-ago focused use in the church. The piece does not really sustain throughout, but it is well-constructed and often involving in its interplay of solo instrument and accompaniment. The longest piece on this disc, running half an hour, is Concerto for Trombone and Wind Ensemble: A Nautical Trilogy (2022) by Jeffrey Holmes (born 1955). Less determinedly “modern” than the works by Salles and Macchia, Holmes’ is much more effective as a series of tone paintings: the three movements are “Zephyr,” “Fin Tale,” and “Catamaran,” and the music’s pacing and structure reflect the titles well enough to draw listeners in without requiring them to engage in mental or emotional gymnastics. Holmes also has a sure hand on the tiller, so to speak, in the orchestration of this work, with the solo trombone and wind ensemble developing their own personalities and also managing to merge their differing sounds to very good effect. This is a lengthy CD – 80 minutes – and as a result, the final piece on it is only partly offered on the disc, with its remainder available online. This work is the entertainingly titled Sir Dancealot’s Retro Workout Mix (2022) by David Mallamud (born 1974). The piece is in six movements, and the three offered on the CD provide a fair glimpse, through their titles, of the offbeat (so to speak) and amusingly quirky nature of the piece as a whole. These are the second, third and fourth movements, titled “The Coney Island Two-Step Strut,” “The Lusty Latin Lounge Land Lunge,” and “Cover Your Eyes, Harold!” The first of these combines an oompah feeling with a touch of vaudeville; the second gives Spiridopoulos plenty of chances to jazz things up with a gently sarcastic sense of swing; and the third takes “stripper music” as seriously as possible – which is to say, not seriously at all. It is really a shame that the entire Mallamud work did not fit on the disc, since it provides an excellent encore (or set of encores) and a delightful lighten-up feeling after the seriousness of the other pieces. Of course, it could show up in its entirety on another Spiridopoulos recording at some point – and that would not be a bad thing at all.