Frank Martin: Piano Quintet; Trio for Strings; Quartet for Strings. Utrecht String Quartet (Eeva Koskinen and Katherine Routley, violins; Mikhail Zemtsov, viola; Sebastian Koloski, cello); Ilona Timchenko, piano. MDG Scene. $23.99.
Igor Santos: portrait RE; George Lewis; Flux; Carola Bauckholt: Pacific Time. Ensemble Dal Niente conducted by Michael Lewanski. New Focus Recordings. $18.99.
Frank Martin’s music remains popular in his native Switzerland and much of continental Europe, but it has never traveled particularly well internationally. One reason may be the unusual and highly personalized way in which Martin adapted his musical style to the times in which he lived (1890-1974). Martin, in common with many composers in the early 20th century, spent years searching for his own musical voice in the post-Romantic landscape after World War I, in which he served. Martin also spent years seeking his own personal faith: he was the youngest of 10 children of a Calvinist pastor but had a much more expansive view of Christianity than Calvinism offers. Nevertheless, Martin’s faith informed much of his music – in which, at the same time, he tried to come to grips with important secular trends, notably Schoenberg’s twelvetone method and the school that followed it. The result during his compositional career was the production of a number of works in conventional forms – albeit often without conventional harmonies – as well as ones for unusual instrumental combinations: two pianos and small orchestra; alto saxophone or basset horn, string orchestra, piano, timpani and percussion; flute, string orchestra and piano; harp, harpsichord, piano and two string orchestras; harpsichord and small orchestra; oboe, harp, string quintet and string orchestra; viola, wind orchestra, harpsichord, harp, timpani and percussion; and others. Martin, who was scarcely prolific, wrote only a small amount of chamber music, a dozen or so significant pieces in all. A few showcase his interest in less-common instrumental combinations: Rhapsodie for two violins, two violas and double bass and Sonata da chiesa for viola d'amore and organ, for example. But others, including the three works on a new MDG Scene CD, may provide better insight into the thinking underlying Martin’s compositional processes. The works on this disc collectively span the three major periods of Martin’s music. The Piano Quintet of 1919 dates from the years in which he was looking to the past and trying to find his own way through it to something more up-to-date but still respectful of older forms and approaches. Elements of Bach are clear in the four-movement work (Martin elsewhere paid direct tribute to Bach and Mozart), combined with a sound reminiscent of César Franck’s and themes that in part reflect folk melodies that Martin heard during the Great War. But already there is enough dissonance and harmonic ambiguity in this piece to show a kind of restlessness in Martin’s search for personal expression. Ilona Timchenko and the Utrecht String Quartet perform the quintet with great sensitivity, providing stylistic clarity that highlights both its more-traditional elements and those with a slight hint of experimentation. The Trio for Strings then takes matters to what may be thought of as Martin’s middle period: it dates to 1936 and is a strongly exploratory work, its chordal density, especially in the Grave first movement, sounding quite modern even today. The highly chromatic and rather frenetic second movement leads to a finale that eventually returns to a chordal dimension – and throughout the piece, lyricism creeps in here and there, as if Martin is trying to retain at least a smidgen of Romantic-era expressiveness while producing music that reflects a Schoenbergian approach without following it slavishly. Interestingly, Martin wrote little chamber music after the 1930s, turning mostly to larger-scale works – but then, in 1966, produced his String Quartet, a remarkable piece that gave the 75-year-old composer considerable creative difficulty but that repays listeners and performers alike with elements that collectively sum up much of Martin’s musical vision. The Utrecht Quartet takes the full measure of this piece and plays with real panache, finding a level of underlying stylistic consistency in its four movements despite a whole slew of disparate influences ranging from, yes, Bach, to flashes of instrumental humor, to twelvetone used with considerable subtlety, to a vaguely dancelike concluding Allegretto leggero that has an otherworldly quality about it. There is enough stylistic restlessness here and throughout his music to show that Martin never quite figured out where he might fit in the panoply of 20th-centuiry composers; and perhaps that explains the comparative obscurity that continues to haunt his works. But these very fine performances show that even if Martin’s ultimate stylistic goal remained unsettled, his lengthy search for it is one to which it is more than worthwhile for audiences to be attuned.
Many of today’s composers have none of Martin’s hesitation about fitting into the latest fads and trends: they embrace them wholeheartedly, proudly proclaiming themselves members of the avant-garde through their works if not necessarily their words (although often through those as well). Performance extremes, sonic exploration, amplification, technique extension, and electronics of all sorts are among the elements enthusiastically employed by many contemporary composers, often in direct collaboration with performers who will bring the works to life. That is the situation with the three composers and three pieces on a (+++) New Focus Recordings release featuring Ensemble Dal Niente – a short CD (47 minutes) that packs a great deal of “today-ness” into its duration. It opens with Igor Santos’ portrait RE (spelled that way), which uses traditional instruments that rarely sound traditional: strings behave like percussion, acoustic sound is electronically amplified and modified, and the ensemble (led by Michael Lewanski) initially produces a constantly metamorphosing sound cloud. Then sudden chords lead into a vocal segment – not sung but spoken, with a Brazilian philosopher named Paulo Freire urging self-awareness of the oppressed. And then instruments, individually and collectively, interact with and comment on the spoken material. The totality is considerably less than the sum of its parts: as is often the case with avant-garde music, the work reaches out to listeners who will accept its approaches and techniques unquestioningly and nod their heads (figuratively if not literally) in agreement. Much the same sort of audience will find Flux by George Lewis appealing. Like the Santos work, Lewis’ aims for societal connection and commentary beyond what the instruments themselves provide. Flux is specifically tied to a painting called JamPact JelliTite (for Jamila) by Jeff Donaldson, and is supposed to be a commentary on and response to that work – which means audiences unfamiliar with it have no real basis for fully understanding and appreciating, much less judging, the musical material. Strictly on an aural basis, Lewis’ use of percussion is extensive and often impressive, although the sheer density of the sonic environment treads a thin line between music and noise (as is common in avant-garde material). The third piece here, Pacific Time by Carola Bauckholt, also focuses on percussion, but not until it has first emerged from a cloud of white noise that sounds like an extensive and extended escape of steam from a particularly large kettle, followed in turn by organized cacophony in which a largely successful attempt is made to have acoustic instruments sound as if they are electronic. There is some intriguing sound here, mostly percussive and at times involving unexpected instruments such as the güiro (a hollowed, notched gourd played by scraping a stick across its surface). But the overall point is not exoticism so much as sonic exploration for its own sake – and there is quite a bit of it: lasting more than 19 minutes, this is the longest work on the CD. All the pieces here are experiential in nature and intent, aimed less at any traditional notion of music than at audiences interested in how far musical instruments can go in nonmusical directions, being played more in ways that go against their inherent nature than in ones that explore it. To those not already committed to performances of this sort, the CD will have little to recommend it; but the “in” group that instinctively and intellectually embraces extended sounds and techniques will find Ensemble Dal Niente neatly tuned into its interests and concerns.
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