Recent Releases No. 59 (CD Reviews)

 By Karl Nehring

Veljo Tormis: Reminiscentiae. The Tower Bell in My Village (for choir, two sopranos, reciter, and bell); Worry Breaks the Spirit (for choir and orchestra); Melancholy Songs (for mezzo-soprano and orchestra); Reminiscentia(for orchestra) - Autumn Landscapes - Winter Patterns - Spring Sketches - Summer Motifs - Three I Had These Words of Beauty; Hamlet’s Song (for choir and orchestra); Herding Calls – Childhood Memories (for choir, soprano, and orchestra). Veiko Tubin, reciter; Annika Lõhmus, soprano; Triin Sakermaa, soprano; Madis Metsamart bell, percussion; Iris Oja mezzo-soprano; Indrek Vau, trumpet; Linda Vood, flute; Maria Valdmaa, soprano; Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir; Tallinn Chamber Orchestra; Tõnu Kaljuste, conductor. ECM New Series ECM 2783

 

Like most listeners, I first became acquainted with the music of the late Estonian composer Veljo Tormis (1930-2017) from his 1992 recording ECM recording Forgotten Peoples. That recording, which also featured the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir conducted by Tõnu Kaljuste, was quite an ear-opener when it was released, for it was choral music unlike anything that had ever been encountered before, sounding ancient and sophisticated all at once. It would be seven more years before we would once again hear a recording of the Tõnu Kaljuste conducting Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir in the music of Veljo Tormis, this time accompanied by a shamanic drum on an ECM recording appropriately titled Litany to Thunder. Now, 24 years after the release of that second ECM album, we now have a third, one in which conductor Kaljuste has assembled a program in tribute to his departed friend and mentor.

 

“The present album marks a rich artistic collaboration that shaped and bound Tõnu Kaljuste and Veljo Tormis for decades,” explain the liner notes. “Featuring may first recordings, it focuses on works not just significant for the artists, but for Estonian culture at large. Kaljuste draws attention  to the orchestral potential of music by Tormis, who mainly wrote for choir. Most of the arrangements featured on this album Kaljuste commissioned from Tormis. However, Worry Breaks the Spirit, Hamlet’s Song, and Harding Call – Childhood Memories are new arrangements by Tõnu Kaljuste himself, continuing and commemorating the work of the great composer. By combining the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, Kaljuste highlights the brilliant harmony of Tormis. Awakening new layers in music that is initially rooted in words.” 

Partly because the album covers such a long period of time, partly because Kaljuste has taken some music originally written for choir and arranged it for orchestra, and partly because Tormis wrote music of varying styles and moods, there is an impressive variety of music to be found in this collection. Kaljuste and his players have an intimate connection with Tormis’s sound world; in fact, the oldest composition on the album, the opening The Tower Bell in My Village, resulted from a 1978 commission from Kaljuste. “I went to his door holding in my hands the text by Fernando Pessoa and asked him to create a piece for a concert tour with my choir,” Kaljuste writes. “This album reflects upon our collaboration over the years. It is the first album that I have recorded since Veljo Tormis passed away.” It’s a labor of love, a lovingly performed and beautifully recorded labor of love.

Dream Box. Pat Metheny: The Waves Are Not the Ocean; From the Mountains; Ole & Gard; Trust Your Angels; Russ Long: Never Was Love; Styne/Cohn: I Fall in Love Too Easily; Metheny: P.C. of Belgium; Bonfa/Maria: Morning of the Carnival; Metheny: Clouds Can’t Change the Sky. Pat Metheny, electric guitar, baritone guitar. Modern Recordings 538891672

 

A couple of years ago, we reviewed an album titled Road to the Sun (you can see that review here) by guitarist Pat Metheny (b. 1954) that featured him as a composer rather than a guitarist, although he did do some playing on the album, including a haunting version of Arvo Pärt’s Für Alina on his custom-made 42-string Pikasso guitar. Although Metheny is primarily known as a jazz musician, having won 20 Grammy awards in 12 categories, Road to the Sun was a classical album featuring Metheny’s compositions for guitarist Jason Vieaux and the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet. On his most recent release, Dream Box, most of the music was composed by Metheny; whether or not you want to call it jazz or classical is up to you. Does it really matter? Metheny had recorded these tracks at various times over the past few years and saved the recordings on his hard drive. While on tour in 2022, he found time to listen to some of the tracks that he had saved and found some that seemed to fit together as a coherent whole. In his liner note, he writes that he was “excited to share what was buried in there. These nine tracks are my favorites and added up to something unique for me. I had never played any of these initial tracks included here more than once. These are really important moments in time, and in fact, I have almost no memory of having recorded most of them. They just kind of showed up.”   

The tone of the album is set from the opening piece, The Waves Are Not the Ocean, which is gentle and contemplative. Although seeing “electric guitar” listed above as his instrument might lead you to expect some loud, perhaps even distorted sounds, Metheny explains that: “The focus here is on electric guitar, but maybe more to the point, quietelectric guitar. It is an are of particular interest for me. A goal has always been to have a touch on the electric that get me as close to the kind of phrase-by-phrase dynamics that can occur naturally with an acoustic instrument… Regarding the title, box is musician slang for a hollow-body electric guitar. Using that vernacular, there are some super cool Dream Box instruments represented on this recording…  But dreams in in their broadest sense make up the vibe with this set.” The gentle, contemplative mood continues throughout the album; however, Metheny’s imaginative touch ensures that things never get boring. Just listen to what he does with that old standard I Fall in Love Too Easily, taking a familiar melody and making it blend right into this sonic portrait of waves, mountains, clouds… This is a remarkable album, well worth a listen. (And by the way, Metheny is currently touring -- solo performances framed around the music on this album.)