(++++) VISITS

Debussy: Images pour orchestre—No. 2, Ibéria; Ravel: Alborada del gracioso; Rapsodie espagnole; Ibert: Escales. Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by JoAnn Falletta. Naxos. $19.99. 

Vivaldi: La Gloria e Imeneo, RV 687. Teresa Iervolino, mezzo-soprano; Carlo Vistoli, countertenor; Abchordis Ensemble conducted by Andrea Buccarella. Naïve. $13.99. 

Jeremy Beck: Cello Concerto; Rhapsody for Violin and Orchestra; The Highway—excerpts; Song of the Sky. Neuma Records. $15. 

     French Impressionist composers in the early 20^th century had a particular impression of neighboring Spain, finding it bright and colorful and strongly rhythmic and altogether engrossing. A very-well-played new Naxos CD featuring the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra under JoAnn Falletta collects four well-known French-in-Spain works under the unsurprising title, “The French in Spain,” and presents them with all the verve and charm the music commands. First up is Debussy’s Ibéria (1905-1908), the second of three pieces collectively called Images pour orchestre, the first being Gigues and the last Rondes de printemps. Debussy, who never spent more than a few hours in Spain, imagined it as a land of elegance and distinctive character, creating in Ibéria a three-movement piece colored by tambourine and castanets and filled with the effects of xylophone, celesta, distant bells and other charming details. Falletta conducts the work with fine attention to rhythm and suitable exuberance in its joyous finale – and then moves on to Ravel’s Alborada del gracioso (orchestrated 1918). Originally the fourth of five movements in the piano suite Miroirs from 1905, Alborada del gracioso includes many of the instruments used by Debussy but employs them differently. Castanets, tambourine, cymbals and harp color the music sensitively, and the plaintive central melody (on solo bassoon) contrasts well with the music on strings and winds – the whole work building, as Debussy’s does, to a bright climax. There is a second Ravel piece on this disc as well: Rapsodie espagnole (1907-1908). This four-movement piece too ends in an upbeat and lively fashion, but before it does so, it ventures in some very different directions. The always-quiet first movement, with the strings muted, has a sound all its own, while the second and third are ambiguous in key structure and subtly evocative of Spain rather than insistent in presenting real or fanciful elements of the country. Between the two Ravel works on this CD is a piece that only touches on Spain, although it does so with pointed skill: Ibert’s Escales (1922). The orchestration here is reminiscent of Ravel’s, but Ibert uses it to different effect, partly because his focus is not solely on Spain: only the third movement (Valencia) is set there, with the first two portraying Rome and Tunis. The first and second movements tie directly to Ibert’s personal experience during a cruise – the second actually uses a chant that he heard in Tunisia – but the third is less an illustration than a general impression, and is audibly in accord with many aspects of the other three works on this neatly programmed CD. The sound of the Buffalonians may not be particularly idiomatic, but Falletta’s careful attention to all the works’ rhythmic elements, and her willingness to let the bright sparks of finales burst with considerable color and sound, make for winning performances that turn the entire disc into a welcome sojourn into musical destinations that, no matter how familiar, continue to delight more than a century after the composers visited them. 

     The visit is to the French Embassy in Venice in the year 1725 for the latest release in the fascinating and long-running Vivaldi Edition from Naïve. It was there that the Serenata now known as La Gloria e Imeneo was first performed – for the wedding of Louis XV and Polish princess Marie Leszczynska. Only three of Vivaldi’s eight Serenatas survive, so this recovery from the manuscripts at the Italian National Library in Turin is especially welcome. What has remained is incomplete: the title page is missing, as are the pages for what would have been the opening Sinfonia – so Andrea Buccarella and the Abchordis Ensemble open the CD with the suitably upbeat and well-paced Concerto per archi, RV138. The Serenata itself is nothing outstanding in Vivaldi’s music: it is avowedly an occasional, celebratory work, with the two main, allegorical characters of the title that is now used for the music alternating their praise of the royal couple. The libretto (whose author is unknown) is suitable to the occasion but scarcely original in thought or approach: marriages of this type were invariably political, and the words thus focus on the royal dynasty, the cementing of geopolitical relationships, and the anticipated peace and prosperity that will follow upon the momentous occasion of the wedding. Teresa Iervolino and Carlo Vistoli have voices well-suited to their parts, have no problems with the vocal lines and with the historically informed decorations included in this performance, and blend particularly well when they sing together, as in the brightly upbeat duetto Vedrò sempre la pace. Individual arias can be formulaic, but Vivaldi’s music tends to elevate the otherwise unremarkable text, as in the extended, moderately paced Al seren d’amica calma, with its lovely and poised instrumental opening, and the rhythmically insistent Se ingrate nube. It would be overstating to call La Gloria e Imeneo a major Vivaldi work, but its appearance on this 73^rd volume of the Vivaldi Edition reaffirms, yet again, the consistency of Vivaldi’s musical production, the poise and clarity of his style, the ease with which his works engage listeners, and the remarkable wealth of music now held in Turin – all 450 or so items of which are intended to be recorded by 2027, in advance of the 350^th anniversary of Vivaldi’s birth in 1678. 

     The places to which Jeremy Beck (born 1960) invites musical visitors are very much ones of the modern world. Of these, the most distinctive and disturbing on a (+++) Neuma Records CD is the world of The Highway, an operatic story of an attempt to surmount the difficulties of living an artistic life (a theme already well-seasoned by the time of Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann) in a world that gives glancing attention, at most, to music. The self-referential elements of the theme are clear, and the contemporary gloss on the topic – including elements of murder, suicide, sex and time imbalance – gives the piece up-to-the-minute bona fides. Beck calls this 1992 work an opera noir, a designation that seems apt based on the brief but intense Prelude and four vocal excerpts heard here – performed by soprano Emily Albrink, tenor Robert Frankenberry, baritone Chad Sloan, and the Sofia Session Orchestra conducted by Lyubomir Denev, Jr., with Seth Thomas on electric guitar. Everything is portentous and darkly anticipatory in the first three vocal extracts, although the fourth and shortest lightens things a bit and allows a touch of Kurt Weill’s sound into the scenario. The CD also invites listeners to visit a higher realm through Song of the Sky (2022), written for harp (Denitza Dimitrova, to whom the work is dedicated) and orchestra. This is a work of gentle emotion and considerable, rather surprising poignancy, intended as Impressionism: it is based on photographs by Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946). Thankfully, knowledge of specific photos or of the photographer himself is not necessary to enjoy and appreciate the music, which is a series of brief episodes rather than a fully connected through-composed fantasy. It is played very well and retains throughout a pleasant, rather straightforward balance between harp and orchestra, resulting in a work that is as much evanescent as it is uplifting. The other two pieces on this CD offer no specific destinations: both are exercises in traditional forms as Beck embraces them, and both feature the Sofia Session Orchestra conducted by Grigor Palikarov. The expansive four-movement Cello Concerto (2020) is made up of movements intended to evoke specific moods and reactions: With determination—slower—pensive; Playful; Relaxed; and Deliberate—with longing. Soloist Atanas Krastev digs deeply into his instrument from the solo passage at the work’s very beginning, exploring the emotive elements of the score throughout. The longer first and last movements, which are more emotionally trenchant than the lighter middle ones, come across with considerable sincerity here, although the music has a sense of going through the motions (and emotions) rather than exploring any particularly new territory. The lighter central movements are pleasant enough but less convincing. Still, the work as a whole is well-constructed and clearly shows Beck’s ability to produce well-crafted soloist-focused material – in a vein different from that of Song of the Sky. Yet another soloist-and-orchestra piece on this CD, Rhapsody for Violin and Orchestra (2016), is equally well-made, giving violinist Dora Dimitrova plenty of opportunities to explore lyrical and expressive thematic material that sways and meanders gently in a work that has both bucolic and nocturne-like elements. Nothing on this CD stands out so clearly that it will likely entice a wide audience, but Beck’s willingness to work largely in consonance except for special purposes such as those of The Highway, and his skill in instrumentation, make the disc attractive for aficionados of the sort of contemporary music that seeks to learn from and employ many techniques of the past rather than discard them altogether in an insistent search for the new.