Recent Releases No. 77 (CD Reviews)

by Karl Nehring 

Sky of My Heart. William Byrd (1540-1623): Ecce quam bonum, T 96; Ivan Moody (1964-2024): Canticum Canticorum I - I. Surge propera amica mea; II. Descendi in hortum meum; III. Ego dilecto meo; John Tavener (1944-2013): The Lamb; Becky McGlade (b. 1974): Of the Father’s Love Begotten; Akemi Naito (b.1956): Tsuki no Waka; Paul Moravec (b. 1957): The Last Invocation; Darest Thou Now, O Soul; Byrd: Agnus Dei from Mass for Four Voices*; Andrew Smith (b. 1970): Katarsis; Nico Muhly (b. 1981): My Days*; Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625): The Silver Swan*. New York Polyphony (Geoffrey D. Williams, countertenor; Steven Caldicott Wilson, tenor; Andrew Fuchs tenor; Craig Phillips bass) with *LeStrange Viols (Loren Ludwig and John Mark Rozendaal, treble viol; Kivie Cahn-Lipman, tenor viol; Zoe Weiss and Douglass Kelley, bass viol). BIS-2719 SACD 

Although New York Polyphony is a vocal group new to me, it has been performing since 2006. NYP started recording for BIS in 2012, with Sky of My Heart being its seventh release on the label. According to the liner notes – and as you can certainly gather from a glance at the program above – “bridging a gap between historical and modern music is a hallmark of its performances that has not only earned New York Polyphony two GRAMMY nominations but also helped to move early music into the classical mainstream.” Supporting New York Polyphony on three tracks are LeStrange Viols, a group of American viol players that takes its name from a manuscript collection of consort music assembled by the 17th-century English nobleman and musical antiquarian Nicholas L’Estrange. There is always something delightful about hearing music presented by a small, disciplined set of voices, especially when recorded in lifelike fidelity such as afforded these musicians by the BIS engineering team. That clarity holds up when the viols join in; the Byrd Agnus Dei, for example, is utterly breathtaking. The CD booklet includes brief notes on the music plus texts for the lyrics. For fans of small-scale choral music, this is a highly recommendable release. 

Words Fall Short. Joshua Redman: A Message to Unsend; *So It Goes; Words Fall Short; Borrowed Eyes; **Icarus; Over the Jelly-Green Sea; She Knows; ***Era’s End. Joshua Redman, tenor and soprano saxophones; Paul Cornish, piano; Philip Norris, double bass; Nazir Ebo, drums; with *Melissa Aldana, tenor saxophone; **Skylar Tang, trumpet; ***Gabrielle Cavassa, vocals. Blue Note 00602475915096

Some may recall a brief review the appeared in Classical Candor a few months ago of a concert performance by jazz saxophonist Joshua Redman and his band. At that time, the band (Redman, Cornish, Norris, Ebo, and Cavassa) was touring to promote Redman’s previous album, Where Are We, a collection of songs highlighting the American experience and geography. On the aptly titled Words Fall Short, the emphasis is on instrumentals, with Cavassa (who has been touring this summer with her own band) appearing on only one tune. This time around, Redman is offering us an instrumental album featuring his band cutting loose on his compositions. It is especially fun to hear Redman and guest tenor star Melissa Aldana (whose albums as a leader are well worth seeking out) trading licks on So It Goes. (How wonderful it would be for these two tenor titans to someday record an entire album together – is there any possibility that could actually happen?) On the track Icarus, trumpeter Skylar Tang adds some extra punch to the proceedings as he sometimes doubles Redman’s sax, sometimes steps out to solo, and drummer Ebo also really drives things along with plenty of kinetic energy. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention pianist Paul Cornish, whose melodic touch is evident right from the opening track, and bassist Philip Norris, who kicks off the title track with a thumping bass solo. Although vocalist Cavassa is featured on only one tune, her contribution is a valuable one, bringing bittersweet pathos to Era’s End to close out the album. All in all, Words Fall Short is another solid effort from a modern jazz master.

Platero y Yo

by Bill Heck

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco: Platero y Yo, Op 190. Niklas Johansen, guitar. OUR Recordings 8.226930-31

This recording will be available October 3, 2025

I’ve been searching for an eye (or ear) catching way to start this review: a great metaphor, a “just right” comparison – hey, I’d settle for a clever phrase. But I’ve come up empty, so I’ll put it simply: this release is a treat. Interesting, wonderful music for solo guitar, a series of short (a few minutes long) interludes based on verses from a lovely prose/poem, superbly played and recorded, and all wrapped up in an excellent package. Let's look at each of these aspects.

We’ll start with the poem, Platero y Yo (Platero and I), by one of Spain’s most famous modern poets, Juan Ramón Jiménez, winner of the Nobel prize for literature in 1956. The 138 sketches in this monumental work are meditations or reflections on life, expressed as directed to Platero, a donkey who is more of a pet than a beast of burden. Lest this sound like some sort of weird fantasy, think of pet owners who say, or at least think, things like “Ah Fido, isn’t this a beautiful day.” Obviously Fido does not answer, nor does Platero; this literary device simply allows the poet to express himself naturally, exploring a range of emotions and a vast store of memories of a childhood in rural Andalusia.

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco

Castelnuovo-Tedesco was an Italian composer who became friends with Andrés Segovia and ended up composing quite a bit of “Spanish“ music for the guitar. (Readers may recall mention of Castelnuovo-Tedesco in my earlier review of Roberto Moronn Peréz's most recent album of music written for Segovia.) He was greatly taken with Jiménez’s literatry work, eventually composing 28 short pieces, each based on a passage from Platero. While this derivation qualifies the music as programmatic, and reading the associated sketches will deepen your understanding and appreciation of the music, be assured that you can listen to and enjoy the pieces without reference to the writings.

So what is the music like? I really hate that kind of question, as it is so difficult to convey musical experience with written words; still, convention demands that I try. All the pieces certainly are tonal and, as you might suppose, most seem introspective while conveying quite a range of emotions. We wander from sheer joy to deep grieving, from sad commentary on the human condition to wonder at the delights of nature. You might think of the individual pieces as mini-tone poems, all eminently suited to the guitar.

Niklas Johansen

The performances here are, in a word, superb. Johansen certainly is no novice, with a number of recordings and awards to his credit. Moreover, it is obvious, both from his notes in the accompanying booklet and from his playing, that he cares deeply about this music. Technically, the performances are  fully adept, with never any sense of strain. But more than that, Johansen conveys emotional nuance without overemphasis, energy when needed and quiet introspection when called for, not drawing attention to himself but letting the music speak through his instrument.

Then there’s the recording: the booklet informs us that the album was recorded in Fredensborg Palace Chapel in Denmark by special permission of King Frederik X. In this case, the king certainly has done a public service: the acoustics of the chapel are reverberant but not muddy, suiting the music very well, and the engineers have captured the sound wonderfully.

Usually, my reviews are agnostic as to what format a listener might choose: streaming the music, downloading it, buying a CD, or whatever. In this case, however, I really do prefer the two CD set -- it's not just disks, it’s a full package. The attractive outer box contains a similarly attractive inner foldout holding the two CDs (securely but easily extractable) with a handy track listing between them. The box also contains a serious booklet: 72 pages of interesting information about the guitarist, the poet, the composer, the composition itself, the recording process, and even the recording site, all nicely illustrated with photos. And wait, there's more: English translations of all of the 28 sketches on which the musical compositions are based are included, each with an original black-and-white illustration of the setting. Although I mentioned earlier that the music can stand alone without reference to the poems, surely most listeners will want to read these evocative words.

Platero y Yo has been recorded previously, of course. I certainly have not undertaken a comprehensive survey, but I did a few a quick comparisons. Catherine Liolios’s 2017 set, for instance, is good, but I find it a bit subdued compared to Johansen’s more energetic and expressive approach (and her set, along with a couple of others that I tried to locate, seems to be unavailable, at least in the CD version). I also ruled out multiple recordings that include spoken narration (in several different languages): I prefer to read the relevant passages if I’m in the mood to do so, and otherwise to simply listen to the music standing alone; YMMV.

All in all, as I said in the first paragraph, this release is a treat. It’s easy to recommend that you treat yourself to this lovely music as well.

One more quick note: guitarist Niklas Johansen has recorded a series of videos about this project. As of this writing, the first has been released on YouTube here; more are to follow.

Chopin: Mazurkas, Volume 1 (Streaming Review)

by Ryan Ross

Ingrid Fliter, piano. LINN CKD780 

 

I’ll lay some cards on the table: I like only small dashes of rubato in Chopin’s music, or indeed in any music. One reads various stories about what Chopin himself preferred, and about what others heard when they listened to him play the piano. The consensus seems to be that he did not stray, or at least did not advocate straying, too far from strict tempo in the bass while sometimes rhythmically altering the right-hand melody for expressive effect, particularly at the ends of phrases. So, while he was perhaps a touch more liberal about rubato compared to myself, I’m guessing he was decidedly more conservative than Ingrid Fliter is in this release. For what we have here is a love letter to rubato. And if you don’t love rubato as much as Fliter apparently does, you’re in for a bumpy ride.

Chopin may not have composed his mazurkas to be danced to, but they are dances nonetheless. Moreover, they are dances in triple meter with the signature rhythmic stress on the second and sometimes third beat after a dotted-rhythm opening beat. This distinctive profile can bear some rubato, but too much obscures its character and disrupts what should be a delicate balance. In my estimation, the best performers of Chopin’s mazurkas apply only a little rubato and instead rely on dynamic shading, tone color, and the intrinsically ethnic flavor of the music for optimal results. These pieces welcome a light interpretive touch; Fliter’s is anything but light. She rather capriciously applies rhythmic alteration at any given point, sometimes in consistent patterns but often not. So, for instance, while Fliter lingers on all of Op. 7, No. 1’s quarter-note B-flat trills for noticeably longer than written, she alters the triplet rhythm in the opening melodic phrase of Op. 7, No. 2 to sound like an inverted mordent while correctly playing other triplets throughout the piece. Or hear how the rubato applied at the beginning of Op. 24, No. 3 ruins the effect of dotted versus straight rhythms in the melody, because the straight rhythm gets comparatively rushed over and therefore obscured. Or listen to the performance of Op. 50, No. 1, where in the second section melody Fliter plays the eighth note/sixteenth rest/sixteenth note rhythm as written the first time, but on repeat plays it straight.

 

Sometimes Fliter fudges more than the rhythms, and not always clearly in service of rubato. Maybe the worst example comes in Op. 6, No. 1, where she repeats (rather than holds) the tied A pitches spanning the second and third full measures. On other occasions Fliter simply ignores dynamic markings. In the second section of Op. 6, No. 3, for instance, she plays the first measure at fortissimo but introduces the following pianissimo dynamic one measure sooner than written, completely altering the indicated effect. In Op. 6/1 (again), the written dynamics are not always followed in the middle section. In WN 14 (which is actually Op. 68, No. 2 but not indicated as such on the track) she under-observes the crescendo at the poco piu mosso, blowing a dynamic differentiation that we should hear properly.

My chief impression here is that Fliter is not much of a musical thinker. She relies on whims and feelings to guide her more than she does meticulous attention to detail. Actually, I think this approach is intentional. These performances sound like someone trying hard to eke out interpretive territory. But while she ostensibly wants to make this repertoire her own, it merely sounds labored and undisciplined in her hands.

 

Which is unfortunate. Because despite all this Fliter is clearly quite talented. Once in a while, some great moments emerge. The sotto voce sounds she elicits in Op. 7, Nos. 1 and 3 are very nice. And truth be told, while excessive rubato yet afflicts most of the Opp. 50 and 59 mazurkas included, the seasoned introversion that marks some of these later pieces seems to elicit from her a modicum of needed restraint, allowing better playing to intermittently shine through

 

But we’re talking a whole lot of chaff surrounding relatively little wheat. On the whole, I’m not looking forward to the subsequent mazurka installments from Ms. Fliter. My best recommendation: go ahead and give this first entry a listen if you’re curious. Just don’t expect it to rival the Rubinstein or other celebrated Chopin mazurka performances in your affections. At least, not if you’re free from addiction to rubato. 

Pictures from Finland (CD Review)

by Ryan Ross

Rumon Gamba, conductor; Oulu Sinfonia. Chandos CHAN 20401

It’s been almost two years since I reviewed Overtures from Finland here at Classical Candor. That recording was an earlier offering on Chandos by the selfsame Rumon Gamba and the Oulu Sinfonia. While not every work on it was actually titled an overture (there were a couple of “preludes”), the project at least had a tidy overarching theme for its mostly welcome discoveries. That disc remains one of my favorite new releases from the label. It’s as fun to revisit as it was to first encounter.

Pictures from Finland is, on the whole, neither quite as fun nor quite as tidy, though it does feature some of the same composers. It presents a somewhat more motley assortment of offerings in terms of taxonomy and quality. The title “Music from Finland” would be more fitting, if also more pedestrian. Some of the included works definitely are picturesque, but it is not immediately clear that Robert Kajanus’s more plainly named Adagietto or even Finnish Rhapsody No. 2, for example, fit the bill. I guess Leevi Madetoja’s short Stabat Mater could be considered picturesque, but it is also not clear why this work especially belongs on an album extolling Finnish images and featuring no other sung selections.

 

In truth, I would take this all completely in stride if I found more of the music here particularly compelling. As I did in 2023, I’m going to single out Kajanus. One “dud” (as I called it then) was not enough to substantially detract from the otherwise winning album I found Overtures from Finland to be. But now we get TWO helpings of his music on Pictures from Finland, which for me all the more dampen a project that could have been better conceived. When these works are not simply bland they’re the musical equivalent of Wagner fanfic, which might be worse than bland. The Finnish Rhapsody is oddly named, at least insofar as the climatic passages toward the end sound like re-microwaved Tannhäuser. Crucial for the emergence of Finnish national music (and especially Sibelius’s career) Kajanus may have been, but his own compositional voice leaves much to be desired.

Less annoyingly derivative are the two included works by Väinö Raitio. But what they avoid in overt mimicry they nearly make up for in being unassuming. The Idyll and “Domestic Cat” Scherzo are nice enough, but hardly do they lend any strong Finnish identity to a recording branding itself as such. Daniel M. Grimley’s liner notes mention Scriabin’s influence in the latter work, and its “almost Stravinskian humour.” I guess this is great if you like a heavy dose of cosmopolitanism with your Pictures from Finland.

 

Things improve with the remaining repertoire. Little need be said of the obligatory Sibelius piece, the “Scene with Cranes” from his Kuolema music. It’s well performed and adds much-needed picturesqueness to some of its surroundings. Welcome, too, is the Suite Pastorale by Madetoja. An orchestration of some earlier piano pieces, most of this music is of admittedly mild flavor. The best part is the “Legend” movement, which hits harder emotionally than its brethren. 

 

This album ostensibly gets its title from Selim Palmgren’s Aus Finnland, subtitled “Pictures from Finland.” If we don’t count the Sibelius, this is easily the best music included. Vivid and tuneful, it is not only the namesake of the recording but also almost singlehandedly shoulders its promise. It sounds more Finnish than almost everything else on the disc, what with its folk- and modal- flavored melodies and harmonies. It also recalls this composer’s first two piano concerti in its sheer capacity to evoke northern scenes. I would pay to hear this composition again in the concert hall far more readily than the other works here that I did not know beforehand.

 

As far as I can tell, Gamba and company perform everything well. The sound is wonderful, and the overall product gives off Chandos’s customary shine. In terms of content, I can give a mild recommendation on the strength of the Palmgren, the Sibelius, and a few other favorable points. These would just add up to me buying the disc. But if you’re not the Scandinavian music lover that I am, your mileage may vary.