(+++) PERSONAL JOURNEYS

Music for Piano and Speaking Pianist by Veronika Krausas, Schubert, Maya Miro Johnson, Mike Garson, Ljova Zhurbin, and Clarice Assad. Inna Faliks, piano and speaking pianist. Sono Luminus. $15.99.

Spanish Songs by Manuel Valis, Graciano Tarragó, Enrique Granados, Antón García Abril, Joaquin Turina, Alberto Ginastera, and anonymous composers. Christine Moore Vassallo, soprano; Jorge Robaina Pons, piano; Pablo Giménez Hecht, guitar; Anthony Robb, flute; Rachel Beckles Willson, oud; Philip Arditti, darbuka. Meridian. $15.

John Carmichael: Piano Concerto No. 2; Piano Trio “Toward the Light”; Aria for viola and piano; Contrasts; Short Cuts—Divertimento for flute, oboe, clarinet & piano; On the Green. Antony Gray, piano; St. Paul’s Sinfonia conducted by Andrew Morley. Divine Art. $16.

     The pluses and minuses of sincere, highly personalized music CDs flow from the same source: internal commitment by the performers. Recordings that take listeners on performer-focused musical voyages are inevitably highly meaningful for those offering them and, by extension, for audiences strongly attuned (for any of a myriad of reasons) to a performer’s concerns. This also means that audiences not so attuned tend to be left cold by recordings of this type, which speak so clearly to the participants but have little if anything to say to those outside the inner circle. A new Sono Luminus release featuring pianist Inna Faliks is a perfect example of extremely narrow targeting. The disc’s title, “Manuscripts Don’t Burn,” is a reference to a 1967 Russian satire by Mikhal Bulgakov called The Master and Margarita. Thus, it goes without saying that only listeners familiar with this not-particularly-well-known work will fully understand Faliks’ focus (“manuscripts don’t burn” is a crucial line in Bulgakov’s book). In addition, Faliks’ homeland is Ukraine, and several of the works on the disc relate to that country and the ongoing war there. On top of that, five of the pieces on the CD were actually written for Faliks – and six of the works receive world première recordings. Clearly there is a lot of freight riding on the CD; the issue for a general audience is to what extent, if any, the material speaks to listeners who are not deeply engaged in the exact same issues and concerns that motivate Faliks. Certainly she is a fine pianist, as is shown in her playing of three Liszt arrangements of Schubert songs that, however, fit distinctly oddly into the program: Gretchen am Spinnrade, Erlkönig, and Am Meer. Clearly these charming little pieces are nowhere near the main point here – in fact, between the first and second of them, Faliks inserts Manuscripts Don’t Burn, for speaking pianist, by Maya Miro Johnson (born 2001). This has the usual contemporary mixture of sound-cloud elements and dissonant chords, contrasted with single-note portions. What it is doing in the midst of the Schubert/Liszt material is anyone’s guess. The CD opens – before the Schubert/Liszt and Johnson pieces – with the seven movements of Master and Margarita Suite for Speaking Pianist by Veronika Krausas (born 1963). The Bulgakov words here, as in the Johnson piece, are translated by Faliks herself: “The horses are digging in the ground,” “Jerusalem vanished as though it had never been,” “She was carrying revolting yellow flowers,” and so on. Fraught with meaning for those familiar with Bulgakov’s work, these words and their accompanying piano embellishments have little to say to a wider audience. Later on the disc, after the last of the Schubert/Liszt elements, comes A Psalm for Odesa by Mike Garson (born 1945), which opens with extreme chordal dissonance before reaching rather unsuccessfully for something approaching lyricism. Next on the CD is Voices, a three-movement suite by Ljova Zhurbin (born 1978). This is a strangely conceived work “for piano and historical recordings,” which features not only the piano but also a considerable amount of tape hiss – a significant, distracting element of old recordings that modern remasterings usually eliminate rather than accentuate. The CD ends with music by Clarice Assad (born 1978): the four-movement suite Godai (The Five Elements) for speaking pianist, and the brief encore Hero for piano solo. The suite has four parts instead of five because the second movement, Absence, is about both fire and water – and it has five elements rather than the traditional four because the final movement is Ascension-Sky, an “element” all its own. The piano music here is interestingly varied, although the spoken elements seem more an intrusion than an addition. As for the concluding Hero, it has some of the feeling of a perpetuum mobile and a pleasantly straightforward intensity that contrasts well with some of the disc’s earlier esoterica. As a totality, this CD is very, very rarefied, a journey with Faliks into her highly personal concerns and viewpoints, the music seeming almost incidental to her inner thoughts even though it is supposed to be through the music that those thoughts are expressed and highlighted. The extent to which the disc displays Faliks’ inward focus is shown not only in the material but also in the fact that the external packaging does not even mention the names of the various composers, making it abundantly clear that Faliks is the be-all and end-all of the recording.

     The composers, when known, do get mentioned on a new Meridian disc featuring soprano Christine Moore Vassallo, but this too is a very performer-focused release. Called “An Odyssey of Spanish Song,” the CD is at least equally Vassallo’s own personal expressive odyssey, drawing on her Middle Eastern background and her sense of Arab sounds heard within Spanish music. Although presented as a journey through time, the disc is not actually chronological: Vassallo offers more of a trip through forms of expressiveness than a strict this-and-then-that presentation. The CD starts with an old Andalusian song set to a melody of the Ottoman era, then continues with an anonymous 16^th-century Mudéjar song, from the Muslims who stayed in Iberia after the Christian reconquest of the area. Then there are nine Canciones Sefarditas (“Sephardic Songs”) arranged by Manuel Valls (1920-1984), most of them very brief (all but one lasting less than 80 seconds) and all flowing in gently melodic lines. Next are three anonymous Canciones Antiguas Españoles, arranged by Federico García Lorca (1898-1936); these are more extended and give Vassallo more opportunities to contrast expressive elements of the texts: she has a warm, pleasant, well-balanced voice that sounds particularly good in these pieces. After this Vassallo sings a short song by Graciano Tarragó (1892-1973) and then the three-song La Maja Dolorosa by Enrique Granados (1867-1916), one of three well-known composers on the disc. The high level of expressiveness of these songs comes through especially strongly in Vassallo’s near-operatic presentations. After this she presents the five Canciones del Jardín Segreto by Antón Garcia Abril (1933-2021), an extended cycle whose central and longest song, Elegia a la Perdida de la Alhambra, is especially moving. The CD concludes with works by the other two well-known composers. The five-song Poema en Forma de Canciones by Joaquín Turina (1882-1949) has an underlying gentleness interrupted from time to time by exclamatory elements, resulting in an overall unsettled atmosphere. And the Cinco Canciones Populares Argentinas by Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983), which really have nothing of significance to do with the Spanish focus of the rest of the disc, provide some moments of levity and straightforward emotionalism that contrast well with the greater intensity heard elsewhere on the CD. As a whole, the recording is a deep immersion in Spanish songs of many eras – 33 tracks in all – with suitable accompaniment (hence the use of the lutelike oud and darbuka goblet drum), the collection itself being a deep dive into Vassallo’s interests in her personal background and musical/historical concerns. It will be attractive almost entirely to listeners with a background similar to Vassallo’s or a very strong interest in the music and the musical history of the Iberian peninsula.

     The focused nature of a new Divine Art recording featuring the music of John Carpenter is clearly on the composer: the Faliks disc omits composers’ names, while this one’s outer packaging makes no reference to any performers. Carmichael (born 1930) has amassed a notable although not particularly large catalogue of works, most often focused on the piano – he himself is a concert pianist. He is also a music therapist – one of the first – and it can be interesting to listen to his own works with that in mind. However, the six variegated pieces on this CD are not especially therapeutic or, for that matter, especially closely related to each other – the disc is really an exploration of multiple aspects of Carmichael’s musical interests. Piano Concerto No. 2 features three well-balanced movements for piano and strings; echoes of Rachmaninoff are notable, but the overall impression is more intimate and altogether gentler, especially in the nicely flowing central Andante. The Piano Trio “Toward the Light” is also a three-movement work with a fine sense of balance among its elements, and here the neo-Romanticism is if anything a bit more pronounced, the passionate elements somewhat more heart-on-sleeve than in the concerto. Interestingly, the second and third movements of both works have the same tempo indications: Andante and Moderato ma molto ritmico. The trio’s third-movement pizzicato elements are especially engaging. Aria for viola and piano is a warmly expressive single movement, while Contrasts is a three-movement work that, true to its title, offers listeners significantly contrasting experiences that conclude with a bouncy Flamenco. The eight-movement divertimento Short Cuts is neatly titled – its components range in length from one minute to three – and is pleasant and lightweight. It neatly showcases Carmichael’s ability to write idiomatically for individual and paired woodwinds as well as piano and then, in the final movement, brings everyone together for an exuberant finale. The CD concludes with the mildly Impressionistic On the Green, its three movements first swaying gently, then emoting expressively, and finally tripping along jauntily and ebulliently. This Carmichael disc shows him, in a sense, as a miniaturist: there are 22 tracks on the CD, and most are short, as the composer makes his points with clarity and directness and then moves on to something else. The disc’s Carmichael-only focus makes it immediately appealing only to audiences that already know and enjoy this composer’s music, but the music itself, expertly crafted, tonal and accessible, has the potential to engage listeners who do not know the composer yet but are willing to open themselves up to a welcome set of new musical experiences.