(+++) BEYOND TODAY’S TURMOIL

Cantus: The COVID-19 Sessions. Signum Classics. $17.99.

Lux Aeterna. University of South Dakota Chamber Singers conducted by David Holdhusen. Navona. $14.99.

Re/Semblance: Saath-Saath—An India-China Musical Collaboration. Ansonica. $19.99 (2 CDs).

Songs of Japonisme: Early 20^th-Century Art Songs from Japan and the West. Sahoko Sato Timpone, mezzo-soprano; Kenneth Merrill, piano. Sheva Collection. $10.

A Mexican Christmas. The Newberry Consort and EnsAmble Ad-Hoc. Navona. $14.99.

John Aylward: Celestial Forms and Stories. Klangforum Wien. New Focus Recordings. $16.99.

     The fight against the depredations, artistic and otherwise, of the COVID-19 pandemic, has taken many forms, with the use of the human voice an especially telling way to assert that this too shall, eventually, pass. That is the assertion implicit in a new Signum Classics recording featuring the smooth blending, careful phrasing and emotional attentiveness that are the hallmarks of the vocal ensemble Cantus. The music is very much a mixed bag: Cantus often performs such pieces heard on this disc as Sibelius’ Finlandia, Franz Biebl’s Ave Maria, and Ysaÿe M. Barnwell’s Wanting Memories, but other works among the 19 heard here appear on the CD because they were planned for inclusion in tours that were cancelled because of COVID-related shutdowns. Since there is no particular overall conception for this release beyond its relationship to pandemic-caused problems, the CD is really a kind of “Cantus sampler” for people who either know and admire the group’s work already, or would be interested in making its acquaintance in varied repertoire. The variety is certainly present and is often a touch disconcerting, as when Hugo Alfvén’s Gryning vid havet is immediately followed by an arrangement of Shenandoah, which is succeeded by Hildegard von Bingen’s O Frondens Virga. So different are the works that Cantus performs here that the CD’s overall effect is of a kind of dislocation – something that certainly reflects feelings about the pandemic, but is not the intent of the singers, whose whole focus is on warmth and togetherness rather than uncertainty and turmoil. This is, all in all, an odd disc, filled with very fine and heartfelt singing but having no unifying foundation other than the pandemic during which the CD was recorded. Of course, in a sense COVID-19 has brought billions of people together – in misery and unhappiness. This Cantus release does not fully balance the negatives, but at least it is on the positive side of the scale.

     The University of South Dakota Chamber Singers are not quite as polished as Cantus, but their new Navona CD has greater thematic solidity and a stronger focus that is largely spiritual and faith-based, with no direct pandemic connection except in the implication that belief can help guide us through this (and any) time. Some of the 15 tracks on this CD have interesting parallels with those on the Cantus disc. The South Dakota singers offer their own Ave Maria, the very old and beautiful one by Josquin des Prez. This CD includes O Salutaris Hostia by Ēriks Ešenvalds, whose Stars appears on the Cantus recording. And the South Dakota singers offer several arrangements of traditional songs, as Cantus does. Interestingly, while Cantus chooses to end its disc with something intended as soothing – Billy Joel’s Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel) – David Holdhusen leads his group at the CD’s conclusion with something much closer to “revival” music: Ben Allaway’s Wake Up, Ollie Brown! The overall impression created by the University of South Dakota Chamber Singers is one mixing calm acceptance and earnest prayer with upbeat spirituality – a combination that, although not directed specifically at all the trouble and trauma that COVID-19 has wrought, can serve as one effective coping strategy.

     It would be pleasant to find out that music can serve as a bridge between nations and cultures, as well as a satisfying counter to negative societal events along the lines of COVID-19. This is a bit too much to hope for on behalf of any art, but certainly composers and performers alike are willing to try, and try again, to counteract sociopolitical hostility with affirmations of the humanity that transcends national and cultural boundaries. This is the feeling that underlies a new two-CD Ansonica Records release with the somewhat unwieldy title of Re/Semblance: Saath-Saath. Like many other well-meaning projects, this one is quite complex in origin and requires interested listeners to spend some time unraveling the intent of the concept and understanding what the participants hope to accomplish. Only with considerable grounding in the background of the endeavor can an audience hope to penetrate its sometimes obscure outer layers and absorb the intended lessons and messages within. Saath-Saath, for example, means “together-together” in Hindustani, but the repetition of the word – which shows its importance – is found in Cantonese or Mandarin. So this part of the title itself reflects a joining of the Indian and the Chinese. Re/Semblance is “resemblance” in its usual meaning of “similarity,” split as a word to focus both on “re” (again) and “semblance” (apparent appearance or, in this case, sound). The recording includes two CDs, labeled “Shanghai” and “Hong Kong” respectively. The first, recorded near Shanghai, includes six vocal tracks presented by Indian and Chinese singers and instrumental performers. One piece is based on a Kazakh folk song that is popular in Mandarin; another is based on a work by a 15^th-century Indian poet; another uses Hindustani music plus a Chinese instrument. The second CD includes 10 tracks, seven of them based on poems by the Cantonese writer Chow Yiu-Fai. The provenance of the tracks is often very complex – one, for example, is a translation into Cantonese words and phrases whose tones match the notes of a melody composed in India. Back and forth, back and forth, the Indian and Chinese elements of the music flow, with an ease that belies the very real disagreements between India and China that have often brought the nations to the threshold of war. A listener interested specifically in the cultural similarities and differences between these two nations will find Re/Semblance: Saath-Saath a thoroughly fascinating project. Anyone with only a casual familiarity with the material, or anyone interested in the music of these nations (separately or together) for its own sake, will likely find the whole project overly abstruse and complex.

     To be sure, international musical cross-pollination is nothing new. In Western music, for example, Chinese poetry is the foundational basis of one of Mahler’s greatest works, Das Lied von der Erde – although Mahler knew the poems only in translation. But in fact, the early 20^th century, when Mahler flourished, was a period in which many Occidental composers had considerable interest in the Orient – as Sahoko Sato Timpone and Kenneth Merrill show on a new Sheva Collection recording. There are no fewer than 19 works here, created by eight composers – the most-interesting and most-unexpected piece being Nipponari by Bohuslav Martinů. His “Seven Song Settings of Japanese Poetry for Female Voice and Piano” are actually settings in Czech, with traditional European tempo markings: the first five are in moderate tempos and the last two considerably slower (Largo religioso and Grave). Without knowing either Japanese or Czech, it is still entirely possible to follow the cadences of the poetry and the emotions it intends to produce, as Martinů’s sensitive, introverted settings evoke and then explore a world of dream and wistfulness. Also here is a short and surprisingly effective Japanisches Regenlied by Joseph Marx. The composers of the remaining works will likely be wholly unknown to the vast majority of Occidental listeners. All lived through the early 20^th century and discovered their own ways of employing Japanese material in their individual contexts. Yoritsune Matsudaira, Kiyoshi Nobutoki, Kōsaku Yamada, Kiyoshi Komatsu, Francesco Santoliquido, and Kunihiko Hashimoto all show a strong interest in Japanese words and expressions, with settings varied according to each composer’s interpretation of the underlying material: Matsudaira includes a clarinet in Asakusa Overture, for example, while the Italian Santoliquido chooses French as the language for three very short poems, each lasting less than one minute. Rarefied this material certainly is, but it is not as abstruse as the India-China intermingling project and can be heard and enjoyed entirely for its own sake, as an exploration of one particular set of influences on vocal music in the early 20^th century.

     COVID-19 and matters of international cross-pollination are somewhat unusual foundations for vocal exploration, but there are plenty of other underlying themes that can be used to present pleasant, interesting and meaningful vocal works. The Navona CD called A Mexican Christmas is a good example. And it is not what a listener seeing the disc for the first time might expect. It is an offering of a dozen Christmas-related Mexican vocal works from the 16^th and 17^th centuries – scarcely a time period that audiences unfamiliar with Mexican musical history are likely to know well. There are eight composers represented here, with four works by Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla (ca. 1590-1664), two by Santiago de Murcia (1673-1739), two by Gaspar Fernández (1566-1629), and one each by José De Cáseda (1691-1716), Fray Jerónimo Gonzalez (flourished 1633), Joan Cererols Montserrat (1618-1680), and Juan García De Zéspedes (1619-1678; his date of death is wrongly given on the disc as 1628). The variety of the music is intriguing: some of the works clearly have liturgical purposes, while others were intended as festive, celebratory street songs. And the instrumentation reflects the differences among the pieces: in addition to bassoon, organ, violin, viola da gamba, harp, Baroque guitar, and percussion, some of the pieces use the guitar-like jarana and similar but low-pitched leona. The inclusion of these traditional Mexican instruments does not give the music an overtly “exotic” sound in the way that the inclusion of traditional Indian and Chinese instruments does on the Re/Semblance recording. Instead, the use of jarana and leona along with more-familiar instruments deepens the ties between these specific Christmas-themed pieces and the nation where they were created. The singers pronounce the words clearly and sing with appropriately enthusiastic or devotional phrasing. The Newbery Consort heard here uses four sopranos and three altos; EnsAmble Ad-Hoc includes two sopranos and two altos. One tenor and one bass also participate. Certainly this is a specialty disc as well as a seasonal one, but it is also an unusual compilation of well-made music from a time period in Mexican history that is not very frequently explored artistically outside the country itself.

     It is worth noting that some vocal inspirations can lead, interestingly, to entirely non-vocal works, whose composers believe the underlying verbal material is better communicated through purely instrumental means. That is the attitude of John Aylward in his Celestial Forms and Stories, a set of five pieces performed by members of Klangforum Wien on a New Focus Recordings CD. As so often in contemporary music, an understanding of the basis of the compositional approach is necessary for listeners to have a full appreciation of the material. The works are based on Greek myths, an apparently still-inexhaustible source of thoughtfulness, learning and amusement. But Aylward’s approach is, by design, two steps removed from the original myths. First of all, he works from a Roman retelling of the stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Secondly and more significantly, Aylward’s interest is not in the tales themselves but in Italo Calvino’s analysis and interpretation of them. Thus, a listener who hopes fully to absorb the ideas and approaches of Celestial Forms and Stories needs to be familiar with Greek myth, Roman retellings of Greek myth, and Calvino’s approach to Roman retellings of Greek myths. This is a lot to ask of an audience, although no more than other composers today seem to consider their due (or their works’ due). The question for listeners is whether the music, so remote from the words that inspired it, is a worthwhile experience – indeed, whether hearing the music on its own will encourage listeners to learn more about its foundations, explore them, and then re-hear what Aylward has created. Listeners who start with the music itself will find out for themselves how deeply they want to go into Aylward’s source material and his worldview. On the CD, Daedalus (2016), for clarinet, flute, violin and cello, is the usual contemporary mixture of plucked and stroked and glissando-ed notes, initially individuated and later given at greater length. Mercury (2014), for the same instruments, has none of the speed and sprightliness usually associated with this god (as in, for example, Holst’s “winged messenger” movement in The Planets), although it does have enough shifting of sound and harmonic lines to deserve to be called mercurial. Ephemera (2014) is a duet for clarinet and cello: these two warm-sounding and emotionally trenchant instruments are here used in ways that undermine their typical sound, creating a work of textural dialogue that is wholly without lyricism. Narcissus (2018) is for flute, oboe, clarinet, violin, viola, cello, and percussion, and uses an unsurprising structure in which different-sounding, differently grouped instruments are heard in opposition (but not really in reflection, which might be expected in a work of this title). Ananke (2019) uses a single percussion instrument, the piano, rather than a group of them, but otherwise has the same instrumentation as Narcissus. Ananke was the goddess of inevitability and had, in a sense, more power than the other gods, although not in as dark a way in Greek myths as is the case with the overall structure of Norse legends. With inevitability comes a level of compulsion, if not quite predetermination; and in this piece, the most interesting of the five heard here, Aylward has the music veer hither and thither, confusingly but compellingly, with short phrases contrasted with longer ones and a quiet, moody section followed immediately by a bright, intense one. The question for listeners is whether Ananke and/or the other works here stand effectively on their own as music, or whether it is only through understanding and exploring Aylward’s foundational verbal inspiration that it is possible to get as much out of the music as he has put into it. The reasonable followup question, to which each listener will have to form a personal answer, is whether further exploration sufficiently enhances the musical experience to be worth the time spent studying and investigating the roots of Celestial Forms and Stories.

(+++) MORE MAGIC, MORE MYSTERY

Unicorn Island 2: Secret Beneath the Sand. By Donna Galanti. Illustrated by Bethany Stancliffe. Andrews McMeel. $13.99.

     There is nothing particularly unexpected in the second book in the Unicorn Island series, and that will probably be just fine with its intended preteen audience: the book is easy to read, fast-paced and not the slightest bit intellectually challenging. Actually, to be precise, there are unexpected developments here, but they are the, so to speak, expected ones. The first book introduced Samantha Wells, who is used to living with her mom in Brooklyn and has no interest in going anywhere else – which of course means she has to go somewhere else, specifically to Foggy Harbor, South Carolina, to stay with her Uncle Mitch while her mom, an orchestral musician, is on tour in Europe. Foggy Harbor is isolated and very rural, there is little or no cellphone service, and there are dark doings about, at least according to Uncle Mitch, who does not intend to tell Sam what those are. This of course means Sam has to explore on her own (helped by new friend Tucker Thompson), leading to the discovery that Uncle Mitch is a “fog keeper,” which has to do with preserving the fog that conceals an island on which there are – what else could there be, given the series title? – unicorns. Eventually Uncle Mitch takes Sam under his wing and makes her his apprentice unicorn protector; and Sam realizes that what she wants is not to return to Brooklyn but to become a fog keeper herself.

     The consequences of Sam’s desires show up in Secret Beneath the Sand, where some of that previously mentioned darkness turns out to dwell. In this book, something is wrong with the unicorns, which seem to be losing their magic and turning into ordinary horses. Sam needs to figure out why this is happening and then reverse the process, which is supposed to be impossible to reverse – but with help from Tucker’s veterinarian mother, perhaps there is a way. Unfortunately, Uncle Mitch takes on the traditional preteen-fantasy role of the adult who just doesn’t understand anything and therefore makes it all worse – which means he does not allow Sam to help, thus forcing Sam and Tucker to snoop in Uncle Mitch’s private part of the house and discover things they were not meant to discover, which in turn makes it possible for them to rescue Uncle Mitch exactly when he needs to be rescued.

     And then there are the magical flying chipmunks. Since the island of the unicorns is, of course, filled with magic, it follows that the unicorns are not the only magical creatures there – and luckily, there turn out to be some adorable flying chipmunks as well, to which Sam can appeal for help just when help is needed, and just when the needed help is exactly the kind that chipmunks are capable of providing.

     As for the mysterious darkness, that turns out to be largely the fault of, yes, Uncle Mitch, and turns out to involve a magical creature that is as gigantic as the chipmunks are small – and it is no spoiler to relate that the creature has been kept beneath the sand, thus explaining the book’s title. It requires all of Sam’s devotion and ingenuity, and lots of help from Tucker and Tucker’s mom and (in particular) the entire herd of unicorns, to set things right after everyone learns that the huge and supposedly dangerous magical creature is really just misunderstood and really just needs everyone to help. And the unicorns must provide most of the needed assistance, even if doing so drains what remains of their magic.

     Well, because the unicorns are such wonderful beings, they quickly agree to do what is needed, no matter what it costs them. But fear not: after they almost turn into mere horses, there is a twist in the story that helps restore their magic. Like so much else in the Unicorn Island books, the twist is a small one and scarcely a surprise – the books are not called “Horse Island,” after all. In fact, the biggest twist in Secret Beneath the Sand turns out not to involve the unicorns but to relate to Sam and Uncle Mitch, whose familial bond proves to be something very different from what Sam thought it was. That twist opens up new vistas at the end of the book – actual new vistas, seen through the traditional fantasy element of a magical portal to another world. Actually, Sam seems remarkably accepting of the major revelation about her life, and far less taken aback than any real preteen would likely be under similar circumstances. And that, of course, is the point: Sam is not real and is no more realistic than are the unicorns – the point here is not character delineation or development but easy-to-read entertainment with enough sprinklings of magic to make the journey to Unicorn Island a pleasant one. “Pleasant” is a good overall description of this straightforwardly written, unassumingly illustrated series: it is not in any way complex or ambitious, but it provides enough fantasy adventure to engage young readers who do not need or expect too much depth or too many surprises in stories, plots or characters.

(++++) THOROUGHLY THOUGHT-THROUGH

Schumann: Symphonies Nos. 1-4. Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR conducted by Roger Norrington. SWR Music. $12.99 (2 CDs).

     A fascinating if sometimes wrongheaded approach to Schumann’s symphonies, this cycle of live recordings featuring Roger Norrington and the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR may not be most listeners’ first choice in this repertoire but surely deserves to be owned as a second or third version. These are performances from 2004 that stand up very well in both sound and interpretation, their flaws largely stemming from Norrington’s determination to implement his very thoughtful analyses of the symphonies even if so doing does not always serve the music as well as might be expected.

     The thoughtfulness is apparent from the inclusion in this two-CD set of spoken introductions by Norrington to all four symphonies. These are in English and are clearly reflective of a conductor who genuinely understands the music, its antecedents and its place in history and in the concert hall, and who has very strong interpretative opinions regarding the material. However, getting to Norrington’s excellent commentary requires listeners to jump around on the discs a bit: the comments on the symphonies on each disc appear after both performances have finished, not before each reading, and the odd arrangement of the CDs (Symphonies Nos. 1 and 3 on the first disc, Nos. 2 and 4 on the second) makes matters worse, since everything would have fit easily if the discs had simply included Nos. 1 and 2, then Nos. 3 and 4. Still, it is worthwhile even for listeners who know this music well to listen to what Norrington has to say before hearing his performance of each work, because his insights are genuine and intelligent, and some are surprising but, on reflection, quite apt. In the latter category, for example, is his comment that all four symphonies have specific thematic content, not just the first (“Spring”) and third (“Rhenish”). The second, Norrington explains, is Schumann’s Bach symphony – an intriguing viewpoint, since comparisons with Beethoven are more common here: Norrington acknowledges those, but insists they are of lesser importance. The fourth symphony, Norrington says, is the “Clara Symphony,” devoted in large measure, structurally and thematically, to Schumann’s wife. Arguable this may be, but it is without doubt a fascinating lens through which to observe and play the music.

     Norrington’s understanding of these symphonies is especially apparent in his respect for their time period and Schumann’s place in it. He uses the correct ensemble size and the orchestral seating of Schumann’s time (split violins, double basses at the rear, horns and trumpets on opposite sides), and carefully observes period expectations regarding phrasing and note values. This makes the symphonies seem fresh despite their familiarity in the concert hall. Furthermore, Norrington performs the first, much-less-often-heard version of Symphony No. 4 (which was actually written second by Schumann): this one has cleaner  orchestration and uses an overall smaller ensemble, avoiding the doubling of parts that is prominent in the sound of the more-often-performed second version. A few recordings of the Schumann cycle offer both versions – those conducted by Heinz Holliger and John Eliot Gardiner, for example. But most recordings opt for the 1851 revision rather than the decade-earlier original. Thanks to the size of his ensemble and his care in seating the performers, Norrington’s choice to use the 1841 version of Symphony No. 4 makes perfect sense and provides a strong argument for this version’s superiority (Norrington even points out that Brahms considered it the better of the two).

     His handling of the 1841 Symphony No. 4 is a major strength of Norrington’s cycle. The other symphonies, however, do not come off quite as well. Norrington’s spoken introduction to No. 1 omits the interesting way in which Schumann opens the work with the exact rhythm of the words of Adolph Böttger that inspired the music: “O wende, wende deinen Lauf / Im Thale blüht der Frühling auf!" (“O turn, o turn, change your course – In the valley, Spring blooms!”) More significantly, the performance misses some of the ebullience of the music, notably in the finale, which is less grazioso than Schumann intended. In Symphony No. 3, to whose very serious and forward-looking fourth movement (Feierlich) Norrington aptly draws attention, neither the first movement’s strength nor the finale’s lightness comes through as fully as possible – there is a certain amount of cautious restraint in both movements. Norrington is also addicted to inappropriate rubato from time to time, notably at movement conclusions – a surprise, given his usual careful attention to informed performance practice.

     It is Symphony No. 2 that suffers the most from decisions that are usually fairly minor matters elsewhere. Norrington considers this Schumann’s greatest symphony and, indeed, a high point in 19^th-century symphonic creation. He argues persuasively in his introductory remarks that the symphony juxtaposes the two sides of Schumann’s personality – outgoing Florestan and inward-focused Eusebius – and eventually reconciles them. That is an excellent way to make a case for this symphony, which not all conductors regard nearly so highly (Georg Tintner, for example, found the first movement so weak and unconvincing as to pull down the entire work). Unfortunately, Norrington is so determined to pursue the Florestan-Eusebius approach that he turns Schumann’s elegant forward motion into something grotesque in the finale – and gives the first movement such a slow pace that objections such as Tintner’s seem all too understandable. Norrington correctly notes the unusual nature of the second movement Scherzo and the difference between its two trios, and he certainly plumbs the emotional depths of the third movement’s Adagio espressivo – indeed, perhaps over-plumbs them. But if the middle movements are largely convincing here, the outer ones are not, and the performance becomes all that more of a disappointment in light of Norrington’s professed admiration for this symphony and its significance.

     Certainly there are far more pluses than minuses in this Schumann cycle, with the attention to historical performance practices, the seating of the orchestra and the overall excellence of the musicians’ playing being major strengths. But the sometimes quirky way in which Norrington implements his very carefully considered view of the music is puzzling, and if Symphony No. 4 comes off exceptionally well here, Symphony No. 2 is a genuine disappointment. This very-well-priced SWR Music release provides some highly interesting perspectives on Schumann – but is not consistent enough to be worthy of first place in listeners’ music libraries.

(++++) WIND POWER

Brahms: Sonatas Nos. 1 and 2 for Clarinet and Piano; Sonata No. 2 for Violin and Piano, adapted for the clarinet. Michael Collins, clarinet; Stephen Hough, piano. BIS. $19.99 (SACD).

Dai Fujikura: Contour for Bass Clarinet; Pierre Boulez: Dialogue de l’ombre double; Isang Yun: Monolog for Bass Clarinet; Unsuk Chin: Advice from a Caterpillar, from Alice in Wonderland; Hideaki Aomori: Split. Alicia Lee, clarinet. New Focus Recordings. $16.99.

David Liptak: Folgore’s Months; Soundings; Through the Brightening Air; Octet; The Sacred Harp. Eastman Wind Ensemble conducted by Mark Scatterday; Tony Arnold, soprano. New Focus Recordings. $16.99.

Andy Teirstein: Restless Nation; Secrets of the North; Azazme Songs; Letter from Woody. Navona. $14.99.

     The meltingly beautiful sounds of Brahms’ late clarinet works are among the greatest chamber-music pleasures of the Romantic era: the two Op. 120 sonatas are not exceptionally virtuosic but invite performers to explore the limits of expressiveness and of the dialogue between wind and percussion. Brahms here holds in check his occasional tendency elsewhere to overemphasize the piano’s importance, balancing the instruments so adeptly that, when well played, the sonatas flow with utmost naturalness and a sense of inevitability. Michael Collins and Stephen Hough give these works superlative performances on a new SACD from BIS: the elegance, poise and care with which they balance and intermingle their instruments are remarkable, and the way in which clarinet and piano come respectively to the fore when Brahms wants to make some specific point is handled with such apparent effortlessness that the sonatas are like a warm bath of audible beauty. It is interesting how the key of the first sonata (F minor) carries with it nothing dark or dour, while that of the second (E-flat) includes nothing of the heroic: Brahms uses the keys as frameworks, of course, but composes, in a sense, against the expectations that the key signatures generate. Gracefulness is everywhere here: neither sonata has a deeply intense slow movement (the first has Andante un poco adagio, the un poco being operative, while the second has only an Andante con moto at the start of the finale). Collins and Hough clearly find the sonatas gracious and emotionally appealing, and their commitment to the music comes through strongly throughout, with just-right pacing to complement the excellence of instrumental balance and sensitivity to the feelings generated by the material. And their commitment shines through as well in the surprising third work heard here: Collins’ arrangement for clarinet of the Violin Sonata No. 2 in A, Op. 100. Written in 1886, eight years earlier than the Op.120 sonatas, the violin work partakes of much of the still-to-come burnished emotion of the clarinet pieces: each of the three movement of Op. 100 has a tempo modifier that would not be out of place in the clarinet-and-piano pieces – amabile in the first movement, tranquillo in the second, grazioso in the third. It turns out that this sonata, which sings beautifully in its original scoring, actually gains in warmth and emotive power in this clarinet version, which in fact involves a relatively minor adaptation of the original – Brahms includes little double-stopping in the violin part, for example, but focuses on the instrument’s singing capabilities and on the same sort of easygoing qualities that he would later bring out on woodwind in the Op. 120 pair. This is a first-rate reading of the two clarinet sonatas, mingled with an insightful adaptation that extends those sonatas’ mood and shows the power of the clarinet to demonstrate and underline Brahms’ aesthetic in his later works.

     There is little attempt to use the clarinet for its sumptuous beauty, and no interest in blending its sound with that of another instrument, on a (+++) New Focus Recordings release featuring Alicia Lee. The music here is as contemporary as possible – the oldest work on the disc dates to 1983 – and the clarinet is highlighted strictly for its own sake, except in one work that combines it with electronics. That piece is Dialogue de l’ombre double (1985) by Pierre Boulez, the best-known of the composers represented here. This piece is designed with a technique typical for avant-garde electroacoustic compositions: Lee’s clarinet is paired with an electronic version of itself, and the acoustic and electronic material ranges from dialogue to competition. Boulez, however, uses his material more cleverly than do many other modern composers, eschewing effects for their own sake and instead turning them into an exploration of the sonic similarities and differences between acoustic Lee and electronic Lee. The work does take too long to make its points – it runs almost 20 minutes – but its structure is interesting, and the writing for clarinet is accomplished. The remaining pieces here are generally of less interest. Contour by Dai Fujikura, written in 2018 for tuba and revised for clarinet in 2020, flows well and has some attractive syncopations, but seems more gestural than genuinely communicative. Isang Yun’s Monolog (1983) was also originally written for a different instrument, the bassoon, before being redone for bass clarinet. The concept here seems to be a monologue with elements of dialogue within it – Yun calls for a number of alterations in clarinet sound and technique that, if they could be played at the same time, would be dialogue-like; but as is, the piece is simply a series of contrasts. Unsuk Chin’s Advice from a Caterpillar, from Alice in Wonderland (2007) is, unsurprisingly in view of its title, a comparatively lighthearted work, and is attractive in its willingness to take the usually serious-sounding clarinet in a humorous, bassoon-like direction from time to time – also contrasting the instrument’s natural melodiousness with some near-harsh exclamations that fit the Lewis Carroll scenario quite well. In contrast, Hideaki Aomori’s Split (2020), which at about six minutes is the shortest work on this CD, is all seriousness in its contrasts between the clarinet’s low and high registers – but is not particularly convincing in its created clashes between upper and lower material, or in the rather unpleasant sound that sometimes results. The disc as a whole serves as a showcase for Lee, who plays all five works with commitment and concentrated energy. Clarinetists interested in contemporary repertoire will find much to admire here. For a more-general audience, the pieces by Boulez and Chin are the most congenial offerings by far.

     Winds are used very differently by David Liptak of the Eastman School of Music on a (+++) New Focus Recordings CD featuring five of his works as played by the school’s justly renowned wind ensemble. Liptak’s interest in these pieces is primarily in massed sound and combinatorial sonorities that are far from intimate and, although expressive in their own way, are quite distant from the intimate emotion conveyed by Brahms. Folgore’s Months (2008) is based on four 14^th-century sonnets by Folgore da San Gimignano, each intended to illustrate a specific month and all combining massed winds with words sung by soprano Tony Arnold. The vocal writing is pointed, melismatic, and rather self-consciously “contemporary” in its alternation of smooth passages with angular, almost screechy ones. The ensemble is treated differently in each movement: in February it is brassy, chordal and rhythmic; in August it is milder, although scarcely lyrical; in May it is impulsive and driven; in December it is on the quiet, even mysterious side. The remaining works on the disc do not have a vocal component. Soundings (1982) is dominated not by winds but by percussion: individual winds are contrasted with massed percussive exclamations. Through the Brightening Air (2017) is especially effective in its use of winds to establish an atmospheric opening, and its lighter, dancelike middle section is effective, although Liptak’s penchant for chordal exclamations is prominent here too from time to time. Octet (2005/2015) is the most-interesting piece on the disc, a short four-movement suite that starts by creating layers of sound, continues with bouncy rhythmic sections separated by full-ensemble pauses, moves to a quieter place with more lyricism than Liptak usually offers, and concludes with a movement that mixes stop-and-start elements with massed sound in the way that Liptak clearly favors throughout the works on this CD. The recording ends with The Sacred Harp (1994), an occasional piece for an academic ceremony that eschews, or rather disguises, the inevitable fanfare-like celebratory elements expected under such circumstances in favor of Liptak’s preferred massed sonorities and, somewhat surprisingly, some melodic material that is more-straightforward than he usually presents. All the pieces are very well played by the Eastman Wind Ensemble under Mark Scatterday, and the CD will certainly be of interest to wind performers. But its determined abandonment of wind instruments’ more-lyrical, more-expressive elements makes it less than fully effective for a general audience.

     A single wind instrument, the harmonica, is featured on a new (+++) Navona CD of the music of Andy Teirstein – played by the composer himself. The harmonica solos are in Letter from Woody, a work inspired by a Woody Guthrie love letter; but although they are folksy and at times plaintive enough to convey the emotional climate that Teirstein is trying to create (or re-create), the harmonica does not fare especially well when set against an entire symphonic ensemble (the Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Jiří Petrdlík). Still, the music itself, which features some of the swells and surface-level emotions of film music (which Teirstein sometimes composes), has some effective moments. The remaining three works on the CD, however, are more interesting. All are chamber pieces, one being strictly programmatic and the others including unusual instruments. Restless Nation is the program music, played by the Cassatt String Quartet (Muneko Otani and Jennifer Leshnower, violins; Ah Ling Neu, viola; Elizabeth Anderson, cello). It is a six-movement suite based on a cross-country trip that Teirstein and his wife took with their two children, with each movement intended to illustrate a different element of the expedition. The movements are more about overall experiences than specific places (“Flora and Fauna,” “Of Rocks and Rivers”), and are less impressionistic than they are representative of emotional touchstones of the family’s travels. They are well-made but not especially distinctive from a musical perspective, and do not seem intended to reach out to an audience but to ruminate on a specific shared experience. Then there is Secrets of the North for string quartet and the traditional Swedish fiddle called the nyckelharpa, played by Marco Ambrosini. The quartet here is the Mivos String Quartet (Olivia De Prato and Lauren Cauley Kalal, violins; Victor Lowry Tafoya, viola; Mariel Roberts, cello), and the nine-movement work is mostly focused on dances (“Gamel Vals,” “Polska,” “Sarabanda” and so on). Inspired by an Isak Dinesen story, Secrets of the North also seems more emotionally engaged than specifically illustrative, although it is hard to escape the impression that knowing the story (in which a woman-turned-hawk helps a young boy) is required for full enjoyment of the material: Teirstein originally conceived the music as accompaniment to a reading of the tale. The fourth work on this disc is, like Restless Nation, a travelogue of sorts. It is Azazme Songs and is written for string quartet (the Mivos ensemble again) with solo oud (Yair Dalal) and dulcimer (played by the composer). The combination of the lute-like oud with zither-like dulcimer gives this piece a very unusual and highly intriguing sound, and its four movements are intended to reflect Teirstein’s experiences traveling across the Aravah desert in Israel with a Bedouin family. The music is based on old tunes sung by the Bedouins, and mixes exotic (to Western ears) material with clear folk-like elements. This is the most successful work on the disc, in part because its total length of 10 minutes is enough to establish the premise without dwelling overmuch on it. Teirstein writes more-accessible music than do many contemporary composers; but the works heard here do require listeners hoping to enjoy the music fully to learn and understand the background of each piece and internalize the type of communication for which Teirstein is striving.