(+++) TOUCHES OF TODAY

Frederic Rzewski: Four Pieces for Piano; John Harbison: Piano Sonata No. 2. Walton Lott, piano. Neuma Records. $15. 

Marc Mellits: Tight Sweater; Titan. Jeff Anderle, bass clarinet; Haruka Fuji, marimba; Kate Campbell, piano; Friction Quartet. New Focus Recordings. $20.99. 

     A glance at the movement titles of Four Pieces for Piano by Frederic Rzewski (1938-2021) is enough to show their determined modernity even though the work is almost half a century old, dating to 1977: the first piece is designated first Dreamlike, then Violent, Impulsive; the second is Light + Bouncy; the third is Loosely, with feeling; and the fourth is untitled. Contemporary composers have moved well beyond traditional tempo-focused markings to instruct performers and listeners alike in how to play and hear their works, and Walton Lott takes Rzewski’s titles very much to heart in his recording for Neuma Records. The contrast between the elements of the first piece is very pronounced indeed; the second piece is more hesitant than might be expected, and its dissonances add to its overall feeling of questioning and lack of direction; the feeling implied in the third and longest piece is unclear – again the impression is of a quest and questioning, although here there are snatches of long-lined lyricism that suggest emotionalism, even passion, rather than objectivity; and that unmarked fourth piece simply swells and subsides, sometimes dense and sometimes determinedly focused on individual notes and, at the end, silence. Rzewski is known for his musical politicization – another very contemporary characteristic – but Four Pieces for Piano has no explicit or particularly apparent nonmusical reason for being, although its sound is analogous to that of other Rzewski works that are more explicitly driven by societal concerns. Certainly not an immediately appealing work, Four Pieces for Piano is a thoughtful and well-thought-out one whose disparate elements Lott puts on display with considerable skill and without attempting to forge the four pieces into a single, sonata-like or otherwise carefully organized form. The Piano Sonata No. 2 by John Harbison (born 1938), makes for an interesting contrast. The sonata dates to 2001, and here the movement titles are more traditionally descriptive (Intrada, Aria, Ricercare and Variazoni); but the determined modernism of the harmonic and rhythmic language is considerably more extreme. The sheer volume of the first movement is notable, making the contrast with the quiet opening of the second all the more pronounced. Anyone looking for lyricism or extended themes will not find it here, and indeed the second movement turns quickly into something much more proclamatory and chordal than its opening suggests. The third movement devolves into almost-jazzlike snippets and then veers into very considerable complexity in the simultaneity of upper and lower keyboard material, and the fourth offers a surprising degree of delicacy throughout, sounding a bit like Ives here and there. Harbison’s work, like Rzewski’s, ends quietly, with a sense of questioning rather than exhaustion or, for that matter, conclusive accomplishment. Both pieces feature pianistic elements that are as intriguing to hear as they are challenging to perform, and both will appeal primarily to listeners already fully engaged with the notion of modern (or postmodern) pianism. Lott makes as strong a case for both as anyone is likely to make. 

     If titles are one sign of contemporary compositional bona fides, those in two works by Marc Mellits (born 1966) are as up-to-date as it is possible to be. Tight Sweater (itself a very “today-sounding” title), which is for bass clarinet, marimba and piano, has six movements called Exposed Zipper, Trans Fatty Acid’s Rein, Mara’s Lullaby, Pickle Trousers, Evil Yellow Penguin, and Mechanically Separated Chicken Parts. It is fair to ask just what the titles have to do with the music (not much) and what effect they are supposed to have on the way listeners hear the piece (also not much). Ultimately, like all music, Mellits’ has to reach out – or fail to reach out – based on its own merits. The primary interest here is the multifaceted use of the bass clarinet, whose distinctive timbre (explored and exploited with considerable skill by the very talented Jeff Anderle) blends and contrasts surprisingly effectively with the two keyboards’ sound. The specific meaning of Trans Fatty Acid’s Rein, to cite one example, may be entirely obscure, but the way the woodwind intersects with the keyboards is aurally interesting – and contrasts with equally interesting interactions in much less frantic material, such as Maria’s Lullaby. By and large, the movements feature dramatic rhythms, sometimes initiated and maintained by the bass clarinet and sometimes established by the other instruments so the woodwind can perform riffs above them. There is a certain underlying (and overarching) sense of good humor about the entirety of Tight Sweater – the movement titles do, after all, point in that direction – and even though there is a degree of sonic sameness and repetitiveness that results in the piece wearing out its welcome well before its conclusion, there is much in it to enjoy. This entire CD runs only 38 minutes, split almost evenly between the two works on it, and that is just as well, since Titan – whose eight movements relate to the Saturnian moon, not to the precursors of the Greek gods – exists in much the same sound world as Tight Sweater, the differing instrumentation notwithstanding. Titan has some movement titles partaking of similar sensibilities (Velvet Kickbox Hydroxy, for example), but it does have periodic lush episodes that allow the strings to fulfill some of their communicative potential. It also features some moderately effective tone painting: Liquid Methane Rain, for instance, sounds expressively oceanic and even, to some extent, lyrical, while the strings-only pizzicato portion of Dispersed Retina is intriguing. Mellits’ bass-clarinet creations will certainly appeal to clarinetists and, more than that, to listeners who find low-woodwind sounds attractive and will enjoy hearing some unexpected and even surprising forms of interplay among the instruments for which Mellits writes.

(+++) THE VOICE IS THE FOCUS

Music for Countertenor and Piano. John Holiday, countertenor; Kevin Miller, piano. Pentatone. $17.99. 

Patrick Zimmerli: Letters from the Front. Desirée Hassler, soprano; Angela Born, mezzo-soprano; John Riesen, tenor; David Govertsen, bass-baritone; Ian Gindes, piano. Lexicon Classics. $15. 

     Sometimes – and it is certainly the case with the Pentatone release featuring John Holiday – a recording is less about what is being performed than about who is doing the performing. Holiday (born 1985) is a countertenor whose musical tastes, on the basis of this CD, are very eclectic indeed. The disc, which is called "Over My Head," includes arrangements of spirituals and popular songs by Holiday himself; three Vocalise offerings by Carlos Simon (born 1986); and works in multiple genres by Hall Johnson (1888-1970), Theo Morrison (born 1938), Robert L. Morris (born 1943), and H. Leslie Adams (1932-2024). Everything about the disc is highly personalized: the choosing of the material, the sequencing of the 20 tracks, and the hoped-for response to the recording (“each selection in this collection is a piece of my heart”). Listeners accustomed to hearing countertenor voices in Baroque music or other classical material will find little to engage them here, so variable are the tracks. For example, the vocalises are delivered sensitively and with beauty – but the fast-paced, upbeat and thoroughly unsubtle handling of Gershwin’s Summertime will likely miss the mark altogether for the vast majority of listeners. Not so for Holiday himself, though, and that is the entire point of this recording: it is made by him and for him and for those who are closest to him (the brief booklet features an extended, heartfelt dedication naming them). Gospel, jazz, blues, and other forms mix and intermingle here, united entirely by Holiday’s personal musical taste and his desire to reach out to those already in his orbit. Perhaps part of the intent is to bring others close to him as well; if so, the CD will do that only to the extent that Holiday’s use of his gifted countertenor voice is in accord with the thoughts, feelings and musical interests of audiences that do not yet know him. Also, it is certainly true that the focus of popular music (in all its genres and subgenres) has very frequently been on the performers rather than the works they perform. So there is plenty of precedent for what Holiday has done here. Listeners should be aware, though, that this is not an introduction to or exploration of the countertenor voice. It is all about this countertenor voice in this specific repertoire. The attraction here lies in wanting to experience Amazing Grace and Fly Me to the Moon and the works of Johnson, Morrison, Morris and Adams as filtered through Holiday’s very personal arrangements and his highly individual delivery of the words. 

     The vocals are equally the point, but in a very different way, on a Lexicon Classics release of Patrick Zimmerli’s Letters from the Front. This work for four vocalists and piano accompaniment not only homes in on the singers but is also intended to give voice to the men and women whose words librettist Mirabelle Ordinaire has used to structure and construct the entirety of the work. In form a song cycle, Letters from the Front is also, in its own way, as individualized an offering as anything presented by John Holiday: the words of these letters are very personal indeed, whether expressing a mother’s World War II hopes and worries to her son, a son’s Vietnam War feelings to his mother, the thoughts sent by a soldier to his brother during the American Revolution, or the concerns expressed by a Union fighter to his wife during the Civil War. The Gulf War, World War I – they too are here. Wars differ, are fought with different weapons at different times, but Letters from the Front highlights the ways, the many horrible ways, in which they are the same: families sundered, constant fear, hopes unrealized, death in so many forms from so many places. “The priceless blessing of peace,” one line from one letter, is again and again sought, again and again not found, as front-line soldiers and their loved ones contend with separation, uncertainty, worry and trauma of all kinds. If there is a criticism of what Zimmerli and Ordinaire have wrought, it is that the music, while it never makes any of the wars attractive, tends to minimize rather than accentuate the suffering underlying the words – a better (and more listenable) approach than deepening the sorrow and driving listeners into depression, but still a touch of what should probably be called graywashing (that is, nothing as extreme as whitewashing). The uniformly high quality of the singing gives a veneer of sophistication to words that are, in the main, plainspoken and straightforward, not so much elevating them to some imagined poetic pantheon as turning their specifics into unintended philosophical generalities about the nature of war and of those caught up in it. Letters from the Front is ultimately a thoughtful presentation that gives wide-ranging voice to feelings never intended to be shared with the world at large. This makes the work, to some extent, a disservice to the letter writers. But to a greater one, it is a service to listeners who, whether or not they themselves have a military background, are living in a world shaped, for better or worse, by the conflicts these letter writers experienced firsthand.

(++++) YOU REALLY HAD TO BE THERE

Orff: Carmina Burana. Chen Reiss, soprano; Reginald Mobley, countertenor; Andrzej Filończyk, baritone; Audivi chorus, Detroit Opera Youth Chorus, and Detroit Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jader Bignamini. Pentatone. $17.99. 

Idil Biret Archive Edition, Volumes 25-26: Rachmaninoff—Piano Concerto No. 3 (two versions); Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. Idil Biret, piano; Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Erich Leinsdorf; Leningrad Orchestra conducted by Alexander Dimitreev; Rundfunk der DDR conducted by Heinz Rögner. IBA. $19.99 (2 CDs). 

     A peculiar propensity has developed in some quarters to turn retail releases of live recordings into what are essentially concert souvenirs. It is a matter of packaging, not performance: live recordings have been around for decades, and so has small-scale production of limited-edition discs sold to audiences at concerts. But the trend is now bigger than that, and the new Pentatone CD of Orff’s Carmina Burana, recorded in Detroit at performances from November 7-9, 2025, is a clear example of it. The 28-page booklet bound into the packaging (actually 27 pages, since the back cover is glued to the package) includes nine pages listing every single performer, vocal and instrumental; seven pages of photos; a page of technical acknowledgments; and a page of effusive praise for the participants, written by conductor Jader Bignamini. Since there are also track listings with timings, and a decorative booklet cover, that leaves precious little space for information on the actual music – and precious little attention is just what it gets. Notably and really unconscionably, the words to this fascinating hour-long cantata are entirely omitted; there is not even a link to a website where they can be found. But the words are absolutely key to what Orff was doing in this first and by far the most popular of his Tronfi triptych, which he originally conceived as a multimedia extravaganza and which would still be an unalloyed delight in that form for any troupe bold enough to take it beyond the now-traditional concert-hall performance. The multilingualism of the texts provides a big part of listeners’ experience of Carmina Burana, and the way in which specific segments expand on or diverge from each other simultaneously brings the work a sense of flow and contrast. Leaving this crucial element out of the CD, while including all the well-meaning name listings and self-praise, is the very essence of turning a serious entry in the Carmina Burana catalog into a souvenir program for concert attendees. However, just as a performance, this is indeed a seriously competitive one. The Detroit Symphony throws itself into the music with enthusiasm, the brass and percussion being the standout sections. Among the soloists, Andrzej Filończyk has a full, rich voice that grounds his material well. Chen Reiss takes an operatic approach to her solos but is somewhat standoffish in her delivery: this is no museum piece (despite the age of the texts) but a living, pulsing, highly expressive work, and a bit more personal engagement would have been welcome – although, again, Reiss’ actual singing is very fine. Using a countertenor rather than Orff’s called-for tenor is an interesting decision that should presumably make the roasted swan’s song, in particular, stronger than it is when sung falsetto – but despite Reginald Mobley’s very well-done (pun intended) handling of the material, that specific item should sound more strained than Mobley sounds, since the conceit is that the material is a last-gasp utterance by a bird that is literally being cooked as it sings and emotes. The choruses of adults and young singers are first-rate, sometimes a trifle shaky on pronunciation but every bit as engaged and enthusiastic as they need to be to put the music across with plenty of punch. Bignamimi, for all that he handles the orchestra with considerable skill, has a few slightly odd approaches to tempo, making some slow sections very slow indeed and some speedy ones a bit rushed. Neither singers nor instrumental players have any trouble managing the pacing anywhere, but the cohesiveness of Carmina Burana does suffer a bit from this kind of periodic taffy pull of tempos. Nevertheless, the overall impression of this performance is a very positive one, reaffirming both the cleverness and the accessibility of Orff’s music and undoubtedly having given the Detroit audience a bang-up time (actually several of those over several days). Audience members with fond memories of this Carmina Burana will in fact want this CD as a souvenir – but it would have been nice if Pentatone had packaged it with more of an eye toward at-large attractiveness for people who were not in the concert hall when the recording was made. 

     The “souvenir” element of recordings is even more strongly present – by intent – in the long-running Idil Biret Archive series, which has been around for the better part of two decades. The whole point of this sequence is to dig up older recordings by Biret (born 1941) and make them available to modern audiences, often for the first time – and to showcase the skill and musical understanding that Biret has brought to performances worldwide ever since she was a pianistic child star in the 1940s. Even within this series, though, some releases are more souvenir-ish than others; and one such is the two-CD Rachmaninoff-focused one labeled as volumes 25 and 26. The music is almost secondary to the time capsule of the first disc, which is wholly devoted to November 22, 1963 – the day of Biret’s U.S. debut, the day after her 22^nd birthday, and the day on which President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. The horrible news came to Symphony Hall in Boston during the concert in which Biret was to perform – and hit even harder there than elsewhere, if that can be imagined, because of the Kennedy family’s deep Boston roots. This disc includes the announcement by Erich Leinsdorf, remarks by Boston Symphony board president Henry Cabot, commentary by announcer Martin Bookspan that was added when the performance was rebroadcast, and the Rachmaninoff Third Piano Concerto itself – performed after Cabot eloquently suggested that music might provide some consolation to the audience. There is also a snippet of the funeral march from Beethoven’s “Eroica” symphony, which Leinsdorf had the orchestra play immediately after he announced the shooting. It is hard to imagine many listeners wanting to replay, much less relive, the events of that day, by hearing and rehearing the verbal portions of this CD. But they do stand as scene-setters for a remarkably tightly controlled, fast-paced and detail-oriented performance in which Biret and Leinsdorf subsume whatever their personal feelings were into music whose capacity for uplift here proves greater than would otherwise have been expected – most notably in the near-breakneck pace of the concerto’s very last pages, which (from the audience reaction) clearly brought people immense, if only momentary, pleasure. The second disc in this IBA release features a performance of the same concerto from almost 20 years later – July 2, 1983 – and displays Biret in a very different mood: this is a significantly more-expansive, more broadly conceived reading that tends to bog down in places but that shows Biret’s ability to meld with the Soviet-era Leningrad Orchestra under Alexander Dimitreev just as effortlessly as she did with Leinsdorf in Boston. This disc also includes an “Iron Curtain” performance of Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, from April 14, 1985, with the Radio Symphony Orchestra in East Berlin under Heinz Rögner – a creditable reading, certainly, although a touch heavy-handed, with both Biret and Rögner downplaying the lighter and more-humorous elements of the piece in favor of emphasizing its serious ones. Biret’s technical skill is everywhere apparent, even when the recordings themselves are not of the best – the sound in the 1983 concerto is actually inferior to that of the 1963 performance. But top-quality aural presentation is not the point of the Idil Biret Archive recordings, and especially not of this recording, with its historical emphasis front-and-center. The “souvenir” element here carries through to the booklet material: the names of the orchestras and conductors on the second disc are not given anywhere in the track listings and have to be ferreted out by reading the notes, and those notes themselves get into very considerable detail about the ins and outs of concert planning and eventual presentation, with almost the entire 16 pages devoted to the before, during and after of November 22, 1963. Like the Idil Biret Archive Edition in general, this recording is intended almost entirely for Biret enthusiasts – but to an even greater degree than other releases in the series, it is for listeners interested in Biret in historical context as much as in Biret displaying her pianistic prowess in the music she performs.

(++++) BITS AND PIECES

Bruckner: Symphony No. 9, including sketches of the finale. Altomonte Orchester St. Florian conducted by Rémy Ballot. Gramola. $24.99. 

Bach: Concerto for Three Violins in D, BWV 1064R; Concerto for Two Violins in D minor, BWV 1043; Orchestral Suite No. 3—Air on the G String; Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor, BWV 1041; Concerto for Oboe and Violin in C Minor, BWV 1060R. Elsa Claveria, Friederike Jahn and Darius Kaunas, violins; Frauke Tautorus, oboe; Neubrandenburg Philharmonic conducted by Daniel Geiss. PASCHENrecords. $18.99. 

     The superlative Bruckner cycle led by Rémy Ballot turns out to have some unexpected elements still in store. The main sequence of symphonies was assembled year by year from 2013 to 2023 – with the Ninth appearing in 2015 in a very unusual two-CD set giving the work for orchestra and, separately, presenting Karl Grunsky’s 1911 version for two pianos, which the musicologist based on the Ferdinand Löwe arrangement of 1895. As intriguing as it was to hear the symphony in two guises, both were the Ninth in three-movement form, and it has long been known – indeed, since Bruckner’s own lifetime – that there was supposed to be a fourth movement. Ballot’s decision not to offer any of the fine completions/reconstructions of the finale was disappointing, although understandable. But now Ballot, in another of the inimitable surprises of his Bruckner sequence, has conducted the Ninth with the finale – sort of. Ballot’s new Gramola recording – which comes in at an astonishing 90 minutes on a single disc – offers a 2024 orchestral presentation of the Ninth in three-movement form, followed by the sketches that Bruckner left behind for the finale. Just the sketches: eight short fragments of what would have become the finale if Bruckner had lived to complete it. Arranged in what would have been their order of appearance in the symphony’s last movement, and offered “completely incomplete,” with no attempt to connect them, these one-to-five-minute snippets are all that Bruckner left for those who, in more-recent times, have sought to bring his Ninth to a satisfactory conclusion. Aside from a few additional sketches of just a couple of measures – not enough music to be worth performing – these fragments are everything that we have to indicate where Bruckner might have gone with his fourth movement, except that he would no doubt have incorporated them into the overall plan in ways that he would have modified from what he left behind. We will never really know what Bruckner would have done with these sketches, which last, in the aggregate, about 17 minutes – perhaps two-thirds of the length of the planned finale. What Ballot does, though, is allow listeners to speculate on their own about where Bruckner’s Ninth could have gone, what could have been built using this scaffolding. That is a fascinating musical/emotional exercise – and an unnecessary one for anybody disinclined to contemplate what might have been, since Ballot’s full-fledged performance of the three completed movements is at least as stately, elegant, knowing and emotionally charged here as was his 2015 orchestral presentation. What this CD tries to do is nothing new – as far back as 1960, conductor Max Goberman (1911-1962) recorded Schubert’s “Unfinished” symphony with the sketches of its third movement, which faded to unorchestrated piano material and then eerily into nothingness. But this is a new approach to Bruckner’s Ninth, whose three-movement version has always been magnificent but never satisfactory, no matter how hard some musicians and scholars have tried to argue it into a sense of finality. Aside from the overall beauty of Ballot’s performance with the Altomonte Orchester St. Florian – the primary orchestra used throughout Ballot’s Bruckner cycle – this release is genuinely valuable for allowing listeners to experience Bruckner’s Ninth with as much mystery and uncertainty as they wish. Listen to the work in three-movement form, listen to its three completed movements and the surviving elements of the fourth, or choose a non-Ballot recording such as Gerd Schaller’s to hear the full four-movement version: in any of these presentations, Bruckner’s Ninth continues to engage and enthrall, and Ballot continues to show himself a first-rate Bruckner conductor with an unmatched sense of both traditional and nontraditional ways to bring the Bruckner symphonies to vivid and deeply meaningful life. 

     Bruckner and Schubert symphonies are scarcely the only works whose provenance and final versions are less than 100% clear. A number of pieces by Bach are also uncertain in various ways – and Daniel Geiss and the Neubrandenburg Philharmonic intriguingly tackle some of them for a PASCHENrecords release called “The Bach Project.” The five pieces here are an interesting mixture of the known and unknown. Violin Concerto No. 1 and the famous Air movement from the third orchestral suite are thoroughly authentic in the forms heard here. Things are more complicated, however, when it comes to the other three works. The Concerto for Three Violins in D, BWV 1064R, is known as a three-harpsichord concerto, but is lost in the three-violin form in which it is thought to have originated – so what we have here is a reconstruction, up a tone from C to D. And the Concerto for Oboe and Violin in C Minor, BWV 1060R, has a similar history: in Bach’s final version, labeled BWV 1060 without the “R,” it is for two harpsichords, but its original version was probably for two violins, and it is here offered in that re-created form. As for the Concerto for Two Violins in D minor, BWV 1043, this is Bach’s own, earlier version of what would eventually emerge as his two-harpsichord concerto, BWV 1062. All this reuse and rearrangement of material was entirely normal and expected in the Baroque era – and, indeed, afterwards. What is intriguing, though, is the exceptionally careful way in which Bach mapped a concerto from one instrument or set of instruments to another – care to which later arrangers (of works whose original form remains unknown) were at pains to adhere. The Neubrandenburg Philharmonic regards itself as a constant “work in progress” of sorts, and assembled this CD – all of whose soloists are members of the orchestra – as a 75^th-anniversary offering reflective of its roots and its philosophy. Listeners, however, need know nothing of the genesis of the recording in order to appreciate the verve, elegance and sense of delight with which the musicians handle all the pieces. These performers understand Bach intellectually and also feel his music emotionally: their playing is historically informed, never dry, always well-balanced between soloists and ensemble, and remarkably attentive to detail – the positively jaunty finale of BWV 1041 and the interplay of the oboe’s bounce with the skittering violin figures in the finale of BWV 1060R are just two examples among many here. Interestingly, three of the five offerings on this disc are in minor keys, a fact that lends an aura of warmth to the CD as a whole and enhances the impression of a small chamber orchestra experiencing a sense of connection among its members and bringing forth that feeling, through the music, to an audience at large. There is nothing unusual about regarding Bach as foundational to an orchestra’s sense of self and of ensemble, but the stylish care with which the Neubrandenburg Philharmonic presents these Bach selections shows that the group is thoroughly versed in the careful proportions and well-wrought balance that are two of Bach’s primary characteristics – both in works that have come down to the present in Bach’s final form and in ones whose original versions are missing but that can, with care, be brought back in reconstructions as apt and enjoyable as those heard here.