Recent Releases No. 47 (CD Reviews)

by Karl Nehring 

Move: The Westerlies. Nico Muhly: Move; Caroline Shaw: Entr’acte (arr. The Westerlies); Mason Bynes: For Rosa; Andy Clausen: This Is Water I: Carmel; This Is Water II: Lopez; This Is Water III: Harlem River. The Westerlies (Riley Muhlerkar, trumpet; Chloe Rowlands, trumpet; Andy Clausen, trombone; Willem de Koch, trombone. Westerlies Music WST012

 

The Westerlies is a New York-based brass quartet consisting of four childhood friends from Seattle. The group has a varied and interesting recording history, including albums by Fleet Foxes (rock), Vieux Farka Touré (world music), Common (rap) and Dave Douglas (jazz). On their new album titled Move, they play music by three contemporary classical composers plus a suite composed by one of their own, trombonist Andy Clausen. About this newest release, The Westerlies said: "This album is a culmination of decades of friendship, music-making, and risk-taking, going all the way back to our days in the middle school band room in Seattle, to our first rehearsal at Juilliard ten years ago, to the countless hours in tour vans, rock clubs, and concert halls across the country... It's all about cultivating a sound and expressive palette that feels honest, exciting, and personal, regardless of where it comes from genre-wise, and regardless of whether or not it falls within the brass-chamber-music canon.”  

 

The album begins with the group’s arrangement of Nico Muhly’s 2017 solo piano piece, Move. The brass quartet version has a jumpy quality, charged with energy throughout its brief three-minute span, with trumpets on the left and trombones on the right recorded with startlingly realistic clarity and impact. Next up is the longest piece on the program at just a shade under 12 minutes, a reimagining for brass quartet of Caroline Shaw’s string quartet titled Entr’acte. The sonority that The Westerlies bring to this work is much different, with breathy sounds at times producing a particularly striking effect. The “Rosa” of Mason Bynes’s For Rosa is civil rights heroine Rosa Parks; his 11-minute “musically expressed love letter and tribute” that is in essence a miniature tone poem. The program ends with Clausen’s This Is Water, a 20-minute piece comprising three movements, titled respectively Carmel, Lopez, and Harlem River. Carmel is upbeat and bubbly, evoking sunshine on the waves; Lopez is quieter, moodier, darker; while the program-ending Harlem River brings a feeling of movement before slowing down and seeming simply to slip away. The sound quality is crisp, clear,  and dynamic, with a realistic perspective, but liner notes giving some background information about the music and musicians (for that, you can check out the group's website) would have been welcome. Overall, though, Move is a stimulating release both musically and sonically that would be well worth tracking down by fans of contemporary classical music.

 Beethoven: Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 61 (cadenzas by Jörg Widmann); Fragment from Violin Concerto on C Major, WoO 5. Veronika Eberle, violin; Sir Simon Rattle, London Symphony Orchestra. LSO Live LSO5094

 

The German violinist Veronika Eberle (b. 1988) is another of the amazingly talented young musicians who demonstrate that the level of virtuosity in the rising generation of classical musicians is as high or higher than it has ever been. It shows my age when I confess that there are moments when I still find myself as thinking of British conductor Simon Rattle (b. 1955) – now Sir Simon – as a conducting wunderkind. In this new release, the young violinist and by now seasoned conductor team up with the venerable London Symphony Orchestra to bring us a recording of one of the most beloved – and oft-recorded – violin concertos, that of Ludwig van Beethoven. There are of course numerous recordings of this work already available; in fact, there are many noted violinists and conductors who have made several recordings of the piece over the years, and most devoted fans of classical music no doubt have at least one and in many instances several favorite recordings already in their collections. What sets this new recording apart from all the rest on the market is that the performance features new cadenzas by the German composer, clarinetist, and conductor Jörg Widmann (b. 1973), whose Wikipedia page asserts was the world’s third-most performed contemporary composer in 2018. By the way, Widmann contributes a brief liner note essay in which he offers a brief explanation of his musical intentions, which is a welcome addition to the expected liner note material about the composer and the music. 

 

As you might expect from musicians of this stature, the performance is excellent, as is the live recording (note: the SACD includes a 5.1 surround mix and HD stereo mix, but listened to the CD layer). The question most listeners will have will concern the cadenzas, which are definitely different. At first listening, they might come across as a bit jarring, as they did for me – “the shock of the new” – but after listening to the performance a few more times, I found them interesting, if not completely convincing. Some readers may recall the controversial recording by Gidon  Kremer with Sir Neville Marriner and the ASMF in which Kremer chose to use cadenzas by Alfred Schnittke. It was considered pretty “out there” when it was released and in fact disappeared from the catalog for a while. But when you consider that one of the ideas of a cadenza was to give the soloist the opportunity to improvise on themes from the movement, the idea of using a cadenza other than Beethoven’s is not completely wrong. Some, as I do, might find this new release an interesting alternative recording of the Beethoven, well worth keeping on the shelf alongside (in my case, at least) the likes of Heifetz, Perlman, and yes, Kremer. Although it would not be my first recommendation for someone new to classical music, I would recommend that those familiar with the Beethoven Violin Concerto would do well to give it a listen – preferably more than one – and see what they think, then please let us know with a comment below.