Bruce Wolosoff: Matisse Fragments; Blues for the New Millennium; Blue Mantra. Narek Arutyunian, clarinet; Deborah Buck and Michelle Ross, violins; Clarice Jensen, cello; Bruce Wolosoff, piano. AVIE. $19.99.
Elena Ruehr: String Quartets Nos. 9-11. Quartet ES (Anton Miller and Ertan Torgul, violins; Rita Porfiris, viola; Jennifer Kloetzel, cello). AVIE. $19.99.
Daniel Strong Godfrey: String Quintets “Ricordanza-Speranza,” “Toward Light,” and “To Mourn, To Dance.” Cassatt String Quartet with Ursula Oppens, piano; Eliot Fisk, guitar; Nicole Johnson, cello. New Focus Recordings. $16.99.
The illustrative and expressive possibilities of small-group music continue to engage contemporary composers, both the ones looking for new combinatorial possibilities and the ones finding new ways to use more-traditional instrumental mixtures. A new AVIE disc finds pianist/composer Bruce Wolosoff (born 1955) creating works from multiple sources of inspiration – each of which results in a piece for a small ensemble. Matisse Fantasies, as the title indicates, has its origins in specific works by Henri Matisse (1869-1954). It is for a quartet: Narek Arutyunian, clarinet; Michelle Ross, violin; Clarice Jensen, cello; and the composer on piano. In keeping with Matisse’s era, the work is largely Romantic in conception; in keeping with Matisse’s art, it tends to the languorous in the first of its three movements, Femme assise en robe longue; initially to the somewhat disconnected and almost playful, then to the instrumentally expressive, in the second movement, La Violoniste à la fenêtre; and to the warm and swaying in the concluding La Danse. Heard as a whole, it is a thoroughly engaging piece, far more content in its somewhat old-fashioned aural environment than are many other works by modern composers. And even listeners unfamiliar with Matisse in general or the specific inspirational works in particular will have no difficulty being absorbed into the worldview that Wolosoff creates – and then absorbing it into themselves. The concept of Blues for the New Millennium is also clear from the work’s title: the sound is that of the blues, the concept that of a new millennium (the work commemorates the turn of the 21st century). This piece is a trio for clarinet (Arutyunian), violin (Deborah Buck), and piano (the composer). Given the underlying concept, listeners will likely expect some sort of stylistic duality here, and that is pretty much what Wolosoff delivers, the more-acerbic, more-pointed material earlier in the piece giving way later to greater lyricism and more melodic engagement. The piece is a tad on the obvious side, but it is well-constructed and features some pleasantly bluesy writing that contrasts well with a non-blues-focused conclusion that seems to point toward a differing but unknowable future. The third work on the CD, Blue Mantra, is another piece inspired by visual art – in this case by a painting by Margaret Garrett, who is Wolosoff’s wife. It would be unreasonable to expect listeners to know anything about the specific painting that led to the creation of this trio for the same instruments used in Blues for the New Millennium. But as in the Matisse-focused work, Wolosoff manages to create music that is engaging and enjoyable on its own terms, in this case producing a piece with a more-modern aesthetic than in the Matisse-inspired work – greater dissonance, more repetitive elements, more-insistent rhythms, an overall sense of disquiet rather than lyricism, more focus on individual instruments’ contributions and less of a sense of ensemble cooperation. The work is not as easy to listen to as either of the others on the CD, with some of the extended dissonant passages wearing thin well before they end. But within the overall context of this recording, it serves as a kind of palate cleanser for those who may have had a surfeit of lyrical warmth from the rest of the material on the disc. The CD not only provides interesting insights into Wolosoff as composer but also – and more importantly for a general audience – shows how well-crafted contemporary chamber music can reach out beyond a hardcore group of aficionados who would be attracted to material that is new for its own sake.
Elena Ruehr (born 1963) sticks to traditional string-quartet design in three new works available on another AVIE disc – but her inspiration is different from Wolosoff’s. Ruehr, like many other recent and far-from-recent composers, draws in these pieces on the outdoors, specifically from cold climates that she has experienced: the works are collectively labeled The Northern Quartets. All were written for Quartet ES, which performs them here. Ruehr strongly advocates and expertly explores the string-quartet milieu, and these are her ninth through eleventh works in the form. No. 9 is called “Keweenaw” and is the most personal of the pieces, its title referring to the small rural town where Ruehr grew up. The five movements illustrate specific scenes, from the quiet desertion of ghost towns in Michigan’s isolated Upper Peninsula to the grandeur of Lake Superior to individual occurrences that Ruehr deems emblematic of the region, such as the concluding Wolf Chase movement that forgoes any sort of easy “pursuit” music in favor of intense passages that imply stealth as well as speed. No. 10, “Long Pond,” spreads the partial water focus of No. 9 throughout its entire canvas: it offers Ruehr’s reminiscences of a small lake in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where she has spent considerable time. A somewhat more-superficial work than No. 9, this tenth quartet includes the sort of scene-painting that listeners will likely have encountered in other composers’ works about similar waterside tranquility: rising sun at the start, setting moon at the end, a nicely bouncy dog walk, the enjoyment of sailing. There is a concluding portrayal of a big storm, called a “nor’easter” in the Cape Cod area, and it is effective enough – but it soon passes, allowing a return to the placidity and underlying prettiness that Ruehr has experienced at and taken from this location, and tries to share with listeners. The three-movement No. 11 is a more-interesting work and is built around a location outside the United States. It is called “Reykjavík,” which is the name of the capital of Iceland, and portrays seasonal changes in and around the city. Iceland’s long winter nights are a defining characteristic of the country and are given their due here, being represented by a first movement that is longer than the other two put together – an eminently suitable musical design. Then the rest of the quartet presents the emergence of sunshine (in a movement lasting less than two minutes) and, finally, the joy felt in Iceland when the lengthy and intense cold is releasing its grip at last. This is an unsurprising sequence: deeply felt cold and darkness (although not exactly gloom), snippets of instrumental sunshine peeking through, and eventual celebratory singing and dancing to welcome the return of warmth. But although the underlying material is unexceptional, Ruehr does a good job of creating musical passages that engage the audience without requiring slavish adherence to a specific program or set of scenes, and she understands the dynamics and interactions of the string quartet so well – here and in the other music on this CD – that she produces involving and convincing works that transcend their visual and geographical inspirations even as, for those knowledgeable about the areas, they offer specific points of familiarity.
A larger instrumental complement – five players – is used by Daniel Strong Godfrey (born 1949) in the three pieces on a New Focus Recordings release that, unlike the Wolosoff and Ruehr CDs, requires greater understanding of its inspirations for listeners to enjoy the material fully. The three quintets here have slightly different instrumentations and performer makeups even though all are built around the Cassatt String Quartet. That ensemble includes Muneko Otani and Jennifer Leshnower as violinists in all the music. In Ricordanza-Speranza (2006), the violist is Sarah Adam and the cellist is Nicole Johnson; this piece includes piano (Ursula Oppens). In Toward Light (2023), the violist is Rosemary Nelis, the cellist Gwen Krosnick, and the work includes guitar (Eliot Fisk). In To Mourn, To Dance (2013), the violist is Ah Ling Neu, the cellist is Elizabeth Anderson, and the music requires a second cellist (Nicole Johnson). No matter how the players are sorted and re-sorted, all are fully committed to the music and all handle their roles with skill and a clear sense of involvement in Godfrey’s aesthetic. The first two works on the CD, Ricordanza-Speranza and Toward Light, are both intended to be look-toward-the future pieces, the first of them also including a look back (hence the first part of its title). These quintets, both of which were Cassatt String Quartet commissions, have no particularly evident connection with their underlying concepts – the first of them, for example, does not use a backward-looking musical style that eventually evolves into or is replaced by a forward-looking one (however defined). It is true that the last movement of Ricordanza-Speranza has a fairly quick pace and sense of forward motion, but that is so common in works of so many types that it carries no particular meaning here. And although Toward Light might be expected to start in a dark place, then move through the crepuscular toward the bright, that is not what really happens in its four movements, the first three of which meander rather than progressing – with the fourth having more bounce (and a more-interesting use of the guitar) but ultimately no substantial sense of a future orientation that would contrast with what has come before. In both these pieces as well as To Mourn, To Dance, the tonal language is mostly of the mid-to-late 20th century (despite the works have been created in the 21st), which means dissonance and atonality dominate. The cello-focused To Mourn, To Dance is aurally much the same: it does include some longer lines and occasional dips into warmth (if not true lyricism), but the harmonic underpinnings are somewhat too harsh to take advantage of the inherent warmth of the cello – much less two cellos. Here too the title does not really reflect the musical structure: the work’s early portions are not especially mournful, although the third of its four movements does include episodes of sadness. The fourth movement actually begins with a kind of dour pronouncement that soon turns into a rhythmically drunken section that could be a dance, albeit a rather lurching one. But anyone expecting some sort of joyousness or upbeat contrast between this movement and the prior ones will likely be disappointed. This is a (+++) CD that will be of interest mainly to listeners who enjoy music in a modern idiom that showcases Godfrey’s ability to handle quintets of three slightly different types but that – at least for a more-general audience – has a whiff of the formulaic throughout.
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