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.

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Meet the Staff

Meet the Staff
John J. Puccio, Founder and Contributor

Understand, I'm just an everyday guy reacting to something I love. And I've been doing it for a very long time, my appreciation for classical music starting with the musical excerpts on the Big Jon and Sparkie radio show in the early Fifties and the purchase of my first recording, The 101 Strings Play the Classics, around 1956. In the late Sixties I began teaching high school English and Film Studies as well as becoming interested in hi-fi, my audio ambitions graduating me from a pair of AR-3 speakers to the Fulton J's recommended by The Stereophile's J. Gordon Holt. In the early Seventies, I began writing for a number of audio magazines, including Audio Excellence, Audio Forum, The Boston Audio Society Speaker, The American Record Guide, and from 1976 until 2008, The $ensible Sound, for which I served as Classical Music Editor.

Today, I'm retired from teaching and use a pair of bi-amped VMPS RM40s loudspeakers for my listening. In addition to writing for the Classical Candor blog, I served as the Movie Review Editor for the Web site Movie Metropolis (formerly DVDTown) from 1997-2013. Music and movies. Life couldn't be better.

Karl Nehring, Editor and Contributor

For more than 20 years I was the editor of The $ensible Sound magazine and a regular contributor to both its equipment and recordings review pages. I would not presume to present myself as some sort of expert on music, but I have a deep love for and appreciation of many types of music, "classical" especially, and have listened to thousands of recordings over the years, many of which still line the walls of my listening room (and occasionally spill onto the furniture and floor, much to the chagrin of my long-suffering wife). I have always taken the approach as a reviewer that what I am trying to do is simply to point out to readers that I have come across a recording that I have found of interest, a recording that I think they might appreciate my having pointed out to them. I suppose that sounds a bit simple-minded, but I know I appreciate reading reviews by others that do the same for me — point out recordings that they think I might enjoy.

For readers who might be wondering about what kind of system I am using to do my listening, I should probably point out that I do a LOT of music listening and employ a variety of means to do so in a variety of environments, as I would imagine many music lovers also do. Starting at the more grandiose end of the scale, the system in which I do my most serious listening comprises Marantz CD 6007 and Onkyo CD 7030 CD players, NAD C 658 streaming preamp/DAC, Legacy Audio PowerBloc2 amplifier, and a pair of Legacy Audio Focus SE loudspeakers. I occasionally do some listening through pair of Sennheiser 560S headphones. I miss the excellent ELS Studio sound system in our 2016 Acura RDX (now my wife's daily driver) on which I had ripped more than a hundred favorite CDs to the hard drive, so now when driving my 2022 Accord EX-L Hybrid I stream music from my phone through its adequate but not outstanding factory system. For more casual listening at home when I am not in my listening room, I often stream music through the phone into a Vizio soundbar system that has tolerably nice sound for such a diminutive physical presence. And finally, at the least grandiose end of the scale, I have an Ultimate Ears Wonderboom II Bluetooth speaker for those occasions where I am somewhere by myself without a sound system but in desperate need of a musical fix. I just can’t imagine life without music and I am humbly grateful for the technology that enables us to enjoy it in so many wonderful ways.

William (Bill) Heck, Webmaster and Contributor

Among my early childhood memories are those of listening to my mother playing records (some even 78 rpm ones!) of both classical music and jazz tunes. I suppose that her love of music was transmitted genetically, and my interest was sustained by years of playing in rock bands – until I realized that this was no way to make a living. The interest in classical music was rekindled in grad school when the university FM station serving as background music for studying happened to play the Brahms First Symphony. As the work came to an end, it struck me forcibly that this was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard, and from that point on, I never looked back. This revelation was to the detriment of my studies, as I subsequently spent way too much time simply listening, but music has remained a significant part of my life. These days, although I still can tell a trumpet from a bassoon and a quarter note from a treble clef, I have to admit that I remain a nonexpert. But I do love music in general and classical music in particular, and I enjoy sharing both information and opinions about it.

The audiophile bug bit about the same time that I returned to classical music. I’ve gone through plenty of equipment, brands from Audio Research to Yamaha, and the best of it has opened new audio insights. Along the way, I reviewed components, and occasionally recordings, for The $ensible Sound magazine. Most recently I’ve moved to my “ultimate system” consisting of a BlueSound Node streamer, an ancient Toshiba multi-format disk player serving as a CD transport, Legacy Wavelet II DAC/preamp/crossover, dual Legacy PowerBloc2 amps, and Legacy Signature SE speakers (biamped), all connected with decently made, no-frills cables. With the arrival of CD and higher resolution streaming, that is now the source for most of my listening.

Ryan Ross, Contributor

I started listening to and studying classical music in earnest nearly three decades ago. This interest grew naturally out of my training as a pianist. I am now a musicologist by profession, specializing in British and other symphonic music of the 19th and 20th centuries. My scholarly work has been published in major music journals, as well as in other outlets. Current research focuses include twentieth-century symphonic historiography, and the music of Jean Sibelius, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Malcolm Arnold.

I am honored to contribute writings to Classical Candor. In an age where the classical recording industry is being subjected to such profound pressures and changes, it is more important than ever for those of us steeped in this cultural tradition to continue to foster its love and exposure. I hope that my readers can find value, no matter how modest, in what I offer here.


Bryan Geyer, Technical Analyst

I initially embraced classical music in 1954 when I mistuned my car radio and heard the Heifetz recording of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto. That inspired me to board the new "hi-fi" DIY bandwagon. In 1957 I joined one of the pioneer semiconductor makers and spent the next 32 years marketing transistors and microcircuits to military contractors. Home audio DIY projects remained a personal passion until 1989 when we created our own new photography equipment company. I later (2012) revived my interest in two channel audio when we "downsized" our life and determined that mini-monitors + paired subwoofers were a great way to mate fine music with the space constraints of condo living.

Visitors that view my technical papers on this site may wonder why they appear here, rather than on a site that features audio equipment reviews. My reason is that I tried the latter, and prefer to publish for people who actually want to listen to music; not to equipment. My focus is in describing what's technically beneficial to assure that the sound of the system will accurately replicate the source input signal (i. e. exhibit high accuracy) without inordinate cost and complexity. Conversely, most of the audiophiles of today strive to achieve sound that's euphonic, i.e. be personally satisfying. In essence, audiophiles seek sound that's consistent with their desire; the music is simply a test signal.

Mission Statement

It is the goal of Classical Candor to promote the enjoyment of classical music. Other forms of music come and go--minuets, waltzes, ragtime, blues, jazz, bebop, country-western, rock-'n'-roll, heavy metal, rap, and the rest--but classical music has been around for hundreds of years and will continue to be around for hundreds more. It's no accident that every major city in the world has one or more symphony orchestras.

When I was young, I heard it said that only intellectuals could appreciate classical music, that it required dedicated concentration to appreciate. Nonsense. I'm no intellectual, and I've always loved classical music. Anyone who's ever seen and enjoyed Disney's Fantasia or a Looney Tunes cartoon playing Rossini's William Tell Overture or Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 can attest to the power and joy of classical music, and that's just about everybody.

So, if Classical Candor can expand one's awareness of classical music and bring more joy to one's life, more power to it. It's done its job. --John J. Puccio

Contact Information

Readers with polite, courteous, helpful letters may send them to classicalcandor@gmail.com

Readers with impolite, discourteous, bitchy, whining, complaining, nasty, mean-spirited, unhelpful letters may send them to classicalcandor@recycle.bin.

"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa

"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa