(+++) LARGER SCALE AND SMALLER

Carlos Simon: The Block; Tales—A Folklore Symphony; Songs of Separation; Wake Up! Concerto for Orchestra. J’Nai Bridges, mezzo-soprano; National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Gianandrea Noseda. NSO. $20.98 (SACD).

Music for Clarinet, Cello and Piano by Kinan Azmeh, Pierre Jalbert, Todd Cochran, Libby Larsen, David Ludwig, and Lowell Liebermann. Romie de Guise-Langlois, clarinet; Dmitri Atapine, cello; Hyeyeon Park, piano. MSR Classics. $14.95.

Music for Violin and Piano by Gabriella Smith, Paul Wiancko, Cristina Spinei, Timo Andres, Leilehua Lanzilotti, and Christopher Cerrone. Rachel Lee Priday, violin; David Kaplan, piano. Orchid Classics. $16.99.

     Composers have always varied widely in the scope of their musical thinking and in their beliefs about the best instrument or set of instruments through which to convey their musical thoughts. The especially fortunate ones had ready access to larger or smaller ensembles, or highly talented individual performers, as they wished – these were typically the court composers of the Classical era and earlier. Nowadays the closest a composer can come to “court” is to be designated composer-in-residence for a symphony orchestra – and that is what has given Carlos Simon (born 1986) the enviable opportunity to create large-scale symphonic works for the National Symphony Orchestra. Recordings of live performances of four of his works, conducted by Gianandrea Noseda, are now available on the NSO’s in-house label. The first piece on the disc dates to before Simon became composer-in-residence in 2021: he created The Block in 2018. It is one of those works whose genesis the audience needs to know in order to appreciate it fully: Simon was inspired by Romare Bearden’s cut-paper art about the Harlem area of New York City. Those unfamiliar with the art or the milieu it depicts will at least hear some interesting contrasts between the full orchestra and a small number of instruments, notably piano and drum kit. More interesting is Tales—A Folklore Symphony (2021), which effectively melds multiple styles while paying tribute (likely consciously) to Simon’s personal background as the son of a preacher. Certainly spirituals and works with spiritual qualities pervade the music, to especially good effect in the third and longest movement, Go Down Moses (Let My People Go). Here the underlying music is pushed, pulled, expanded and arranged in multiple ways, and the resonance of the Biblical tale of the oppression of the Jews with the more-contemporary concerns of African-Americans is made clear without becoming overbearing. And then the fourth movement, based on the folk song about John Henry the steel-drivin’ man, provides an effective conclusion that raises some intriguing questions in an age of artificial intelligence: John Henry defeats mechanization but dies in the attempt, and the song celebrates his life – but that life is over. Simon’s use of brass and percussion to hammer home (almost literally) the elements of the song is particularly well-thought-through. Tales is the most-effective work on the SACD, whose first-rate sound helps bring out the details of a particularly well-scored piece that Noseda and the orchestra handle with as much attentiveness and respect as they give to the rest of Simon’s music. After Tales, the two remaining pieces on the disc, both from 2023, are somewhat lesser offerings – not disappointments, certainly, but lacking the scope, scale and emotional intensity of Tales. Simon truly wants them to make emotional connections, notably using a mezzo-soprano for Songs of Separation, which is interestingly based on 13^th-century Persian poetry and which gives J’Nai Bridges plenty of opportunities to emote – but which seems to be trying a bit too hard to assert its foundational attempt to connect audiences of today with ancient but still-relevant feelings of loss. And Wake Up! Concerto for Orchestra, although it gives the various sections and some individual instruments plenty of chances to shine, is nowhere near the level of analogous pieces by Bartók and Kodály. Simon’s work is a showpiece, in particular for brass and percussion, but its glitter is largely surface-level and might have worked better in shorter, encore-length form than it does at its 20-minute extent. Taken as a whole, this recording shows Simon to be a skilled orchestrator and a worthy user of the excellent performance forces to which his appointment has given him entry. But it is hard to imagine these works, with the possible exception of Tales, becoming part of other orchestras’ regular offerings.

     Contemporary composers without ongoing access to large instrumental groups – that would be most of them – tend to channel their creativity into chamber-music forms, not only to make performances more likely but also because there are significant advantages in clarity and communicative potential when writing for a small, intimate ensemble. The six world première recordings on a clarinet-focused MSR Classics release address that potential in varying ways. One work, A Scattered Sketchbook (2012) by Kinan Azmeh (born 1976), is for clarinet and cello; the other five also include piano. Azmeh’s set of six short “sketches” meanders pleasantly here and there, with some gentle clarinet-led rocking (No. 2), a few bits of expressive cello pizzicato (Nos. 3 and 4), a touch of argumentative instrumental dialogue (No. 6), and more. Ultraviolet (2013) by Pierre Jalbert (born 1967) emerges from sonic depths into brighter spheres. Soul-Bird (2022) by Todd Cochran (born 1951) focuses more on disconnections among the instruments than on their complementarity. Trio Noir (2022) by Libby Larsen (born 1950) is not especially dark, but its insistent dissonances and widely separated intervals give it an emotionally distanced feeling. Flowers in the Desert (2009/2022) by David Ludwig (born 1974) consists of five short pieces that start by making the clarinet sound like a flute and continue by undermining any sense of all the instruments’ warmth and expressive potential – a reflection, perhaps, of a bleak landscape, and in any case a mostly bleak musical one except in the third piece, Mille regrets de vous abandonner (Des Prez). The final work on the CD, Trio (2015/2022) by Lowell Liebermann (born 1961), is also the longest, nearly twice the length of any of the other pieces here. Its three movements show Liebermann’s typical attentiveness to individual instruments’ timbres and capabilities. Dissonances are pronounced, but they are employed as part of the overall sound world rather than for surface-level effect, and Liebermann does not hesitate to include some rather old-fashioned lyricism in the central Largo before building the concluding Allegro into an effective interplay of instruments. This is the most-successful work on the CD, although all the pieces feature intriguing elements that show their composers’ abilities to work in small-ensemble forms. Romie de Guise-Langlois, Dmitri Atapine and Hyeyeon Park perform quite well together, with sensitivity to the nuances of the music and to the requirements of small-group interplay.

     The seven world premières, by six composers, on a new Orchid Classics release featuring Rachel Lee Priday and David Kaplan, similarly explore sonorities and the intricacies of instrumental relationships – here using only two performers, violinist and pianist, in a combination somewhat more typical for chamber music than that of clarinet, cello and piano. The underlying concept of the Priday/Kaplan disc, however, is anything but typical: titled Fluid Dynamics, it is supposed to represent the composers’ thoughts about the physical phenomena of the flow of liquids and, through those thoughts, to communicate something about the oceanography studies of Georgy Manucharyan. The title also indicates that the aural dynamics of the pieces on the disc are fluid – quite fluid, in fact. If all of that sounds hopelessly abstruse and highly unlikely to generate any feelings of connection for the vast majority of listeners – well, so be it. Yes, the project (which has a visual element that of course cannot be captured on an audio CD) operates in a very rarefied realm, but as always with such endeavors, it is worth considering whether the music as music has something to offer audiences that may have neither time nor inclination to explore the foundational underpinnings of the presentation. Unsurprisingly, the music is very much a mixed bag, and not entirely a fluid one. Entangled on a Rotating Planet by Gabriella Smith (born 1991) has the violin sounding like a sound wave rather than imitating a watery one. Waterworks by Paul Wiancko (born 1983) alternates chordal and single-line elements and produces an overall sound of old-fashioned fiddling. Convection Loops by Cristina Spinei (born 1984) weaves a surprising degree of lyricism above a wavelike undercurrent. Three Suns by Timo Andres (born 1985) proceeds chordally at a deliberate pace, then offers contrasting scalar material. Leilehua Lanzilotti (born 1983) is represented by two pieces, a single-movement five-minute one and a three-movement one that is just a bit longer. The single movement, ko’u inoa (no capital letters – a common title affectation of some modern composers), has a repetitive ostinato quality that pulls the violin into near-feedback-sounding territory. The first movement of to speak in a forgotten language (again no capital letters) further explores the same sonic phenomenon and throws in some intense squeals; the second is a gradual crescendo/decrescendo with percussive overtones; the third overtly offers repetitive, pointed electronic-sounding aural elements that are quite far from any traditional definition of music even if they elucidate physics in some specific way. The final and longest work on this short (48-and-a-half-minute) CD bears the most traditional title, Sonata for Violin and Piano, and is by Christopher Cerrone (born 1984). Listeners who have not read up on fluid dynamics can still get a strong hint of the intellectual underlayment of this project from the titles of Cerrone’s three movements: Fast and focused, with gradually increasing intensity; Still and spacious, but always moving forward; and Dramatic, violent, rhythmic, very precise. In strictly musical terms, however, Cerrone’s movements sound little different from other pieces proffered on this disc. The most-interesting of them is the second, which contrasts individual piano notes with violin harmonics that are apparently intended to be as screechy as possible. Ultimately, listeners can pretty well swap the names of composers and/or pieces on this CD without losing or gaining anything – there is little distinctiveness or distinction here. Visual elements would surely elucidate the project’s overall focus to better effect, although even with them, there would be a sense of sameness regarding the audio portions of the presentation. Priday and Kaplan work well together in this repertoire, but they really do not have very much to work with – like a complex mathematical formula or physics experiment, this disc is directed at an “in” group and contains little that will be attractive to those not already enamored of its underlying premise.