New Releases, No. 31 (CD reviews)

By Karl W. Nehring

Yolanda Kondonassis: Five Minutes for Earth. Takuma Itoh: Koholā Sings (Humpback Whales); Michael Daugherty: Hear the Dust Blow; Aaron Jay Kernis: On Hearing Nightbird at Dusk; Chen Yi: Dark Mountains; Máximo Pujol: Milonga para mi Tierra; Reena Esmail: Inconvenient Wounds; Gary Schocker: Memory of Trees; Keith Fitch: As Earth Dreams; Jocelyn Chambers: Melting Point; Philip Maneval: The Demise of the Shepard Glacier; Patrick Harlin: Time Lapse; Zhou Long: Green; Nathaniel Heyder: Earthview; Daniel Dorff: Meditation at Perkiomen Creek; Stephen Hartke: Fault Line. Yolanda Kondonassis, harp. Aziza Records AXD-71349.

Classical music lovers who have been around for a while may well remember the harpist Yolanda Kondonassis from her many wonderful albums for the Telarc label. If you are one of those folks, then you should be please to learn be pleased to learn that abundantly talented Cleveland-based musician recently released a new album titled Five Minutes for Earth, a splendidly informative and entertaining trailer for which can be seen at her website: https://www.yolandaharp.com. As it turns out, Ms. Kondonassis is also committed to a cause and is using music as a means of communicating her concern. Briefly put, the CD documents the music that itself is a reflection of a larger project of the same title, a multimedia presentation that features the music as part of a multimedia presentation, as she explains in her liner notes. “FIVE MINUTES for Earth is a project that both celebrates our planet and illuminates our challenge to preserve it. In 2020, I asked each of the composers featured in this collection if they would consider contributing a work for solo harp of approximately five minutes in length that expresses a powerful experience inspired by Earth in one its many conditions or atmospheres. I was overwhelmed by the generosity of their immediate responses and set about assembling this labor-of-love project. The endeavor quickly expanded to include a live, multi-media concert, a unique video for each track, a separate published collection of Earth-inspired solos for younger harpists, and most importantly, the opportunity for harpists all over the world to perform these innovative works for solo harp by some of today’s most lauded composers. Every verified performance of any of the works from the FIVE MINUTES for Earth collection, anywhere in the world, will result in a monetary contribution to a recognized earth conservation organization sponsored by my non-profit foundation, Earth at Heart. FIVE MINUTES for Earth is also a metaphor for the urgent and compressed timeframe for our global community to embrace and implement solutions to our fast-growing environmental crisis.” With so many composers being represented, all of them contemporary, the natural expectation would be to hear a quite varied batch of compositions, ranging from the engagingly melodic to the not quite sure what to call that but whatever. For these ears, it was a pleasant surprise never to encounter a single instance of the latter. From the opening pleasant strains of Takuma Itoh’s Koholā Sings with its bent notes, an effect I had not expected to hear from a harp, followed by Michael Daugherty’s gently atmospheric Hear the Dust Blow, through the shortest cut, Jocelyn Chambers’s Melting Point, which manages to convey a sense of gentle urgency in less that two minutes, and the longest cut, Zhou Long’s Green, a gorgeous 8-minute tone poem for harp – throughout these tracks and the rest, 15 in all, the overall feeling evoked by the music is one of beauty and peace. (It is ironic in a way that an album so committed to engagement can be so useful for escape. Concerned about global warming? Just put on this CD and chill out…) The album cover folds out to reveal thumbnail photos along with brief paragraphs about each of the 15 composers, a nice touch. As you might expect, the harp seems bigger than life, but is very well captured by the engineers. All involved in this release are to be commended for bringing such fresh and vital new music into our world. Brava and bravo!

Daniel Hope: America. Gershwin (arr. Paul Bateman for violin, jazz trio, and string orchestra): Gershwin Song Suite; Sam Cooke (arr. Bateman for voice, violin, and piano): A Change Is Gonna Come; Bernstein (arr. Bateman for voice and string orchestra): West Side Story Suite; Florence Price: Adoration (arr. Bateman for violin and string orchestra); Copland (arr. Bateman for violin and string orchestra): At the River; Hoe-Down; Ellington (arr. Bateman for violin and string orchestra): Come Sunday; Weill (arr. Bateman): American Song Suite; Ward (arr. Bateman for violin and chamber orchestra): America the Beautiful. Daniel Hope, violin; Zurich Kammerorcherster; Marcus Roberts Trio (Marcus Roberts, piano; Jason Marsalis, drums; Rodney Jordan, bass); Joy Denalane, vocals; Sylvia Thereza, piano; Joscho Stephan, guitar; Alexander Ponet, percussion. Deutsche Grammophon 4861940.

The South-African born British violinist Daniel Hope (b. 1973) evidences a special connection to the USA in the dedication for this release, declaring: I dedicate this album to my great aunt, “Tante” Leni, who escaped Germany at the eleventh hour and who became the greatest American I ever met. He further evidences that connection to the USA by devoting the lion’s share of the program to jazz, as a quick perusal of the titles – and performers – listed above will quickly reveal. And not only does the Marcus Roberts Trio play a prominent musical role, but the liner notes feature a conversation between hope and Roberts that revolves around the question, “What makes music sound American?”  I have argued many times in Classical Candor that jazz can be thought of as a form of chamber music; Roberts and Hope converse along similar lines. Moreover, the music on this release effectively brilliantly bridges the gap between “jazz” and “classical,” expertly melding the two into music that swings and sings makes you appreciate the creativity of the composers and the virtuosity of the performers, regardless of their nationality, citizenship, or musical background. The selections and the arrangements do not come across like a routine run-through of familiar tunes. Instead, they are energetic, probing, sophisticated arrangements that allow Hope, the Marcus Roberts Trio, Ms. Denalane, and the other musicians to display their considerable talents. Hope’s violin soars in many of the cuts, but never do you get the sense that Hope is trying to draw attention to himself; rather, his playing always seems to be in service of the music, clearly expressing his love for these tunes. At a time when there is so much division and hatred being sown by dark forces in our country, music such as this is reminder of what is worth preserving and fighting for in our blessed land. What a wonderful album for these troubled times!  

Joyce DiDonato: Eden. Ives: The Unanswered Question; Rachel Portman: The First Morning of the World; Mahler: Rückert-Lieder-II. "Ich Atmet' Einen Linden Duft!";  Biagio Marini: Scherzi E Canzone Op.5, III. "Con Le Stelle in Ciel Che Mai"; Josef Myslivecek: Oratorio Adamo Ed Eva (Part II) Aria: "Toglierò Le Sponde Al Mare" (Angelo Di Giustizia); Copland: Poems of Emily Dickinson for Voice and Chamber Orchestra, I. Nature, the Gentlest Mother; Giovanni Valentini: Sonata Enharmonica; Francesco Cavalli: Opera la Calisto (Act I, Scene 14), Aria: "Piante Ombrose" (Calisto); Opera Orfeo Ed Euridice WQ. 30, Danza Degli Spettri E Delle Furie. Allegro Non Troppo; Scena Misera, Dove Son! from Ezio WQ. 15 (Fulvia); Aria: "Ah! Non Son Io Che Parlo..."; Handel: Dramatic Oratorio Theodora HWV 68 (Part I), Aria: "As with Rosy Steps the Morn" (Irene); Mahler: Rückert-Lieder, IV. "Ich Bin Der Welt Abhanden Gekommen"; Wagner: 5 Gedichte für Eine Frauenstimme WWV 91 (Wesendonck Lieder), IV. "Schmerzen"; Handel: Opera Serse HWV 40 (Act I, Scene 1), Recitativo: "Frondi Tenere E Belle"; Aria: "Ombra Mai FÙ" (Serse). Joyce DiDonato, Mezzo-Soprano; Maxim Emelyanychev, direction/harpsichord. Il Pomo D’oro. Erato 0190296465154.

American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato is known in the opera world primarily for her powerful voice but also for her engagement and activism in behalf of social causes. A quick glance at the list of titles will reveal no protest songs, but Eden does feature DiDonato’s powerful voice attempting to convey through song what she considers to be an important cause. As she asserts on the back cover of the CD package: “EDEN is an invitation to return to our roots. It is an overture to engage with the sheer perfection of the world around us, to consider if we are connecting as profoundly as we can to the pure essence of our being. It is a clarion call to contemplate if our collective suffering isn't perhaps linked to the aching separation from something primal within and around us. This is a vivid musical exploration through the centuries to remember and to create a new EDEN from within.” To be honest, I’m not sure how much the listener will be inspired to create “a new EDEN from within,” but on the other hand, I’m quite confident that most listeners will find this release to be just how Ms. DiDonato has described it: “is a vivid musical exploration through the centuries to remember.” Vivid it certainly is, and wide-ranging, in repertoire, performance, and sound. She has a powerful, expressive voice, which for this release she (and/or the producers) has chosen to pair with a relatively small chamber orchestra for accompaniment, which makes her voice sound all the more powerful. Actually, though, she starts off less assertively, using her voice in place of the trumpet in Ives’s The Unanswered Question. As a devoted fan of Mahler, I particularly enjoyed her renditions of his lieder, but there are assuredly performances here to please a wide range of music lovers as she and Il Pomo D’oro work their way through a wide range of musical selections. The sheer power and color of her voice, the sheer depth of feeling she brings to her singing are wonders to behold. Lyrics are included in the liner notes, enabling the listener to become more involved in the musical proceedings. All in all, this is truly a first-class release.

KWN

Messiaen: L'Ascension (CD review)

Also, Ives: Orchestral Set Number 2. Leopold Stokowski, London Symphony Orchestra. HDTT remastered.

This 1970 Decca release, remastered by HDTT (High Definition Tape Transfers), combines a very popular but somewhat controversial conductor with an equally popular but almost equally controversial recording format. I suspect that despite the high quality of the performance and sound, the listening public may still find the disc at least slightly suspect. Let me explain.

First, the conductor. English-born U.S. orchestra conductor Leopold Stokowski (1882–1977) established an enormous following with his often highly idiosyncratic interpretations of the basic classical repertoire. His long association with the Philadelphia Orchestra and his starring role in Disney's Fantasia didn't hurt his reputation, either. People then and now found his music making enormous entertaining. But it was sometimes this same eccentricity so many folks thought charming that at the same time annoyed other people. His unusual tempo changes, his stops and starts and pauses and elongations, could at times twist familiar music into something unbearable to dedicated classical music lovers. Add to that his own orchestral arrangements and transcriptions of well-known music, and it could be too much for some listeners.

Second, there was Decca's Phase 4 sound. Stokowski lived into his mid nineties, long enough to have made a number of stereo recordings for companies like RCA, EMI, and Decca. By the time of this Messiaen disc, Decca was well into their Phase 4 era. According to Decca, "Phase 4 was a special series of recordings from the '60s and '70s which presented music in spectacularly vivid sound." And according to Wikipedia, this sound "was characterised by an aggressive use of the highest and lowest frequencies and a daring use of tape saturation and out-of-phase sound to convey a lively and impactful hall ambiance, plus considerable bar-to-bar rebalancing by the recording staff of orchestral voices, known as 'spotlighting.' In the 1960s and 1970s, the company developed its 'Phase 4' process, which produced even greater sonic impact through even more interventionist engineering techniques." The fact is, Phase 4 sound used multi-miking to the extreme, often producing a close-up, compartmentalized sound field that dazzled some listeners with its clarity and detail yet exasperated others, especially audiophiles with its frequently unnatural perspective.

Leopold Stokowski

Fortunately, neither the performances on the program nor the sound on this HDTT remastering should concern Stokowski or Phase 4 critics. Both hold up pretty well.

First up on the agenda is L'Ascension ("The Ascension" of Christ into Heaven after the Resurrection) by the French composer and organist Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992). He wrote the orchestral suite between 1932-33, the composer describing its four brief movements as "meditations for orchestra." He labeled the sections "Majesté du Christ demandant sa gloire à son Père" ("The majesty of Christ demanding its glory of the Father"), "Alleluias sereins d'une âme qui désire le ciel" ("Serene alleluias of a soul that longs for heaven"), "Alleluia sur la trompette, alleluia sur la cymbale" ("Alleluia on the trumpet, alleluia on the cymbal"), and "Prière du Christ montant vers son Père" ("Prayer of Christ ascending towards his Father").

Stokowski handles the score with a characteristic élan, most often elevating it to graceful heights. It's fairly quiet music, yet it has a distinctive rhythmic drive, which the conductor invariably observes. The orchestra, always on its toes at a moment's notice, plays compellingly for the old man and, if anything, sounds almost too lush and luxuriant for the relative modesty of the music. Or perhaps it's just the richness of the Phase 4 sound that sometimes overwhelms the score. In any case, it's a lovely interpretation, with just the right mixture of wonder and inspiration to keep a listener transfixed.

The other item on the program is also a modern piece but quite different from the Messiaen. It's the Orchestral Set No. 2 by American composer Charles Ives (1874-1954). He wrote it between 1915 and 1919, a three-movement suite based on musical reminiscences: "An Elegy to Our Forefathers," a kind of memory of Stephen Foster music; "The Rockstrewn Hills Join in the People's Outdoor Meeting," memories of camp-revival meetings; and "From Hanover Square North at the End of a Tragic Day, The Voice of the People Again Arose," a recollection of the day news broke of the sinking of the Lusitania, a catalyst for the U.S. entering World War I.

Here, Stokowski seems to relish in indulging the composer's eccentricities. The reading is crammed full of grand sweeps and dramatic gestures, the conductor capturing the atmospheric theatrics of Ives's vision of Americana. If the Messiaen work is spiritually uplifting, the Ives is just plain fun.

The only catch to the album: its length. The two pieces combined total just a little over thirty-five minutes. If that doesn't bother you, and it's quality of performance and sound over quantity of material, the length shouldn't be a problem.

Producer Tony d'Amato and engineer Arthur Lilley recorded the music for Decca Records at Kingsway Hall, London, in June 1970. HDTT remastered it in 2016 from a London 4-track tape, and they make it available in a wide number of formats, from CD and DVD to various HD digital downloads.

The remastered sound conveys all of the characteristics of Phase 4 described earlier, yet it exhibits a good deal of orchestral depth and warmth as well. The result is that the sonics may be a tad too close for comfort and too spotlighted, yet they also sound fairly natural, with the ambience of Kingsway Hall in ample evidence. While the strings tend to appear too hard and steely at times, it's only in isolated instances that it happens, the rest of time sounding just fine.

For further information on HDTT products, prices, discs, and downloads in a variety of formats, you can visit their Web site at http://www.highdeftapetransfers.com/.

JJP

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click on the forward arrow:

Danse macabre (CD review)

Music of Saint-Saens, Mussorgsky, Dukas, Dvorak, Balakirev, and Ives. Kent Nagano, Montreal Symphony Orchestra. Decca 483 0396.

Witches and devils and demons. Oh, my!

This album showed up just in time for Halloween. Kent Nagano and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra present a program of mostly familiar and some maybe unfamiliar symphonic music inspired by traditional supernatural folk tales. It's fun stuff, although listeners will probably find they already have most of the material on their shelves. Still, it's nice having it all in one place, even if Decca chose to record it live in concert.

I have long enjoyed the work of the Montreal Symphony. In fact, the very first CD I ever played in my home featured them, at the time led by Charles Dutoit. That was back in the early 80's, as I recall, a Decca/London recording of Ravel's Daphnis et Chloe, which I still have. The Montreal Symphony remain a terrific ensemble, so it's always good to hear them again.

I've also long enjoyed the work of Kent Nagano. He was the longtime conductor of the Berkeley Symphony (from the late 70's to the mid 2000's), a local group for me, so I had the pleasure of hearing Maestro Nagano on many occasions. He always added an extra spark to the music that made it enjoyable, no matter what the subject matter. He continues that tradition with the Montreal players.

So, first up on the agenda is The Sorcerer's Apprentice, a tone poem by French composer Paul Dukas (1865-1935). As with Mussorgsky's Night on the Bare Mountain below, the Apprentice may have achieved a measure of immortality through Leopold Stokowski's performance of it in Walt Disney's Fantasia. Here, Maestro Nagano gives us a smooth, atmospheric rendering of the work. It perhaps lacks some of Stokowski's dramatic flair, but it conveys more than its fair share of requisite thrills. What's more, the Montreal forces are in fine form, sounding luxuriously rich and exuberant.

Next, we get The Noonday Witch, a tone poem by Czech composer Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904). This one relies a good deal on mood to tell its gruesome story of a mother who warns her unruly son that if he doesn't behave she'll call on a witch to quiet him. When the demon actually appears, the mother becomes so overwrought with fear, she winds up smothering the child to death. Sweet. Although I thought Nagano could have used a bit more melodrama here, the music is grim enough to pretty much take care of itself.

Kent Nagano

After that is the Halloween favorite A Night on the Bare Mountain by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky (1837-1881). In Rimsky-Korsakov's reorchestration, it's the centerpiece of the program, and again Nagano has to contend with the specter of Stokowski for our attention. Still, Nagano whips up a good deal of excitement in this unwholesome Sabbath, and its witches and devils frolic gleefully about.

Then we come to what may be a less well-known number, the tone poem Tamara by Russian composer and pianist Mily Balakirev (1837-1910). Less well known, perhaps, but considered by many musical scholars as one of Balakirev's best works. It tells the legend of Tamara, a beautiful but evil queen who lures men to their deaths and tosses their bodies from her castle into the river below it. Under Nagano's guidance the piece runs along elegantly at first, becoming more ominous as it goes along and reaching its theatrical climaxes with appropriate flair.

After that we find the album's title tune, Danse macabre, by the French composer, organist, pianist, and conductor Camille Saint-Saens (1835-1921). In this one, Death calls forth lost souls with the fiendish music of his violin, and under Nagano it's probably the most effectively frightening track in the album. It can be scary stuff.

Things conclude with what may be for most listeners the least-famous piece on the program, Hallowe'en, one of Three Outdoor Scenes by the American modernist Charles Ives (1874-1954). It's very brief and every bit as eccentric as you would expect it to be from this composer. Nagano makes it more than palatable.

Producers Dominic Fyfe and Carl Talbot and engineers Carl Talbot and Christopher Johns recorded the album during concerts presented at the OSM's new home, the Maison symphonique de Montreal in October 2015. It's a shame, really, about the audience presence because the listener always feels aware of them during quieter passages. It's not terribly intrusive, but for people like myself who prefer hearing the best possible sound without distraction, the coughs and rustling are a little annoying.

For comparison purposes, I first listened to a few excerpts from the 1980 Daphnis et Chloe album I mentioned earlier. Although it was a different venue for the Montreal Symphony back then, I found the older sound big, warm, detailed, and pleasantly ambient. Ironically, although (or because) the newer release has a live audience, I found it less realistic. The newer sound is closer, brighter in the midrange, and slightly harder. It still retains a good degree of concert hall bloom, and it's certainly transparent enough, yet it didn't make me feel as though I were really in the same room with the performers.

In short, the newer Decca recording with Nagano and the Montreal Symphony, despite its cleanness and clarity, did not sound as natural to me as the older one with Dutoit. Then there's the matter of the applause at the end of the Nagano concert, but I suppose we can at least be grateful to Decca for not including applause after every selection.

JJP

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click on the forward arrow:

Aurora Orchestra: Road Trip (CD review)

Sam Amidon, voice and guitar; Dawn Landes, voice; Nicholas Collon, Aurora Orchestra. Warner Classics 0825646327911.

Conductors Nicholas Collon and Robin Ticciati founded the adventurous young British chamber orchestra Aurora in 2005. Since then, they have been receiving good reviews not only for their performance style but for their diverse programming, playing everything from Baroque to modern music. Road Trip (oddly misspelled as one word on the cover and the disc) appears to be the orchestra's debut album.

The ensemble plays beautifully, a precision instrument yet full of spunk and spark. They remind me a lot of San Francisco's New Century Chamber Orchestra and New York City's The Knights. The question I have, though, is how many classical listeners buy record albums because of favorite orchestras rather than favorite soloists or favorite composers. I dunno; well, not my business.

A look at the disc's program shows just how diverse Aurora's material is with works by American composers John Adams, Charles Ives, Aaron Copland, Paul Simon, and several traditional numbers arranged by Nico Muhly. The program is both daring and conventional at the same time.

Whatever, first up (after a brief introduction) is Chamber Symphony by John Adams (b. 1947). Adams himself writes that Arnold Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony was his inspiration for this 1992 composition, as were some animated cartoons. So, it's understandable the work involves a good degree of high spirits and kinetic energy. The Aurora Orchestra capture the fun of the three-movement piece with apparent glee, right up until the closing mixture of clashing gaiety.

Next are several tunes arranged by Nico Muhly (b. 1981): "Reynardine," "The Brown Girl," and, closing the set, Paul Simon's "Hearts and Bones." "Reynardine" tells the story of a young girl and a werewolf, nicely sung by Sam Amidon and smartly accompanied by Aurora. Singer Dawn Landes does a sweet-voiced rendition of "The Brown Girl," a lovely lilt always present in the music. Then Sam Amidon again does the voice and guitar work on Simon's tune, making a fitting conclusion to this "road trip."

Nicholas Collon

The Housatonic at Stockbridge from Three Places in New England by Charles Ives (1874-1954) was for me the highlight of the program. The work, though brief, captures the soft, misty moods of a quiet river at night, the orchestra always at the command of the music. It's wonderfully evocative in a gentle, comforting manner, culminating in the sound of a church spiritual across the way before falling back into silence.

And there is Appalachian Spring by Aaron Copland (1900-1990), the familiar piece performed in its original version for thirteen instruments. Because Copland's work is probably the most familiar thing on the program, it has the most competition on disc, including the composer's own 1973 recording for chamber orchestra (which is a bit longer and more complete than the suite we get here). Copland marks the first movement "Very slowly," and that's exactly how the Aurora Orchestra plays it, very slowly indeed. It sets the tone and creates the atmosphere for the remainder of the work. Although taking things a tad more leisurely than other recorded performances I've heard, the Aurora players make the composition as colorful and engaging as any you'll find, and they do up the famous variations on a Shaker hymn in a most-gentle and poignant fashion.

Raphael Mouterde engineered and produced the album, recorded at Kings Place, London in January and April 2014. The sound is about as ideal as one could want, with plenty of transparency in the midrange and bloom and air around the instruments. In other words, it sounds real, dimensional, each player in the ensemble clearly delineated yet blending into the whole. With its smooth, detailed response, the sound is among the best I've heard from a new recording in quite some time.

JJP

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:

Ives: Symphony No. 2 (CD review)

Also, Carter: Instances; Gershwin: An American in Paris. Ludovic Morlot, Seattle Symphony. Seattle Symphony Media SSM1003.

Here's another live recording from Maestro Ludovic Morlot and Seattle Symphony, this one covering several twentieth-century American works.

Morlot begins with the Second Symphony of Charles Ives (1874-1954). A lot of listeners have concerns with Ives's music, and I have to admit that I can take it or leave it. However, it always amuses me to listen to it because Ives often makes these things a game of "Name That Tune," with his references to so many bits and pieces from other composers. The Second Symphony is no different, quoting snippets of "Turkey in the Straw," "Long, Long Ago," "Camptown Races," "America the Beautiful," "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean," and this and that from Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms, among others.

Ives wrote his Symphony No. 2 early in his career, somewhere between 1897 and 1901, although it never saw a premiere performance until 1951 with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic. Indeed, a fine DG recording Bernstein later made with his old New York orchestra has rather spoiled me these past few decades, with Bernstein seeming to make Ives more palatable than recordings from most other conductors. For that matter, though, several conductors I've heard have also impressed me, most notably Bernard Herrmann and Michael Tilson Thomas.

Anyway, the Second Symphony under Morlot is fine, too. As I say, this early Ives work is pretty easy to take compared to some of the more-raucous pieces he would later produce. The Second Symphony is full of sweetly flowing melodies, and Morlot does a decent job of maintaining the rapturous qualities of the tunes. The symphony is a little unusual in that it adds a fifth movement to the conventional four, a slow Lento Maestoso before the final Allegro. This tends to give it even more of a grand Romantic feel, although, to be fair, Morlot doesn't play up its sentimental attributes quite as much as Bernstein does. Listeners may find this a plus or a minus.

It's in the second movement that we get the greatest number of musical allusions, and Morlot seems to have a good time with them. However, the conductor's style may be a tad too straightforward to reveal the full joy of the music. Again, Bernstein seems a bit freer with his rhythms and a touch more lyrical. And so it goes, with the finale under Morlot adding a zesty conclusion to the affair.

Next up is a brief piece, a world-premiere recording of Instances by American composer and two-time Pulitzer Prizewinner Elliott Carter (1908-2012). It would be Carter's last completed work, and as such it is the most-modern in structure and sound. I didn't find it particularly to my liking, but others will no doubt enjoy its rhythmic vitality, its intriguingly colorful interludes, and its various percussive effects.

Ludovic Morlot

Finally, we get the most-popular piece on the program: the symphonic poem An American in Paris by composer and pianist George Gershwin (1898-1938). Here, too, I'm afraid I have to admit that Bernstein is the superior interpreter on his Columbia (now Sony) recording with the New York Philharmonic. This is by no means a repudiation of Morlot, you understand; it's just that side by side, Bernstein communicates the greater energy, greater emotion, greater color and description. Morlot seems just a shade more reticent to let go. Still, Morlot has the measure of the music well enough, and those car honks at the opening do put us in the mood of big-city life. The sultry blues section in the middle also comes off well, the conductor displaying a good feeling for the idiom. For me, it was Morlot's best work on the disc, and the Seattle players don't let him down.

Dmitriy Lipay produced, engineered, and edited the album, which he and his team recorded live in concert at the S. Mark Taper Foundation Auditorium, Benaroya Hall, Seattle, Washington in June 2012 (Ives), February 2013 (Carter), and September 2011 (Gershwin). The live sound in the Ives work seems fairly distanced and spacious, the audience for the most part quiet. It presents a good concert-hall effect. The Carter piece appears closer up, the Gershwin in between. The only things that disrupt the effect of the music are the unwanted eruptions of applause that follow the first and third works on the disc. I mean, why go to all the trouble of keeping an audience as unobtrusive as possible throughout much of the music, only to have them disrupt our concentration at the end? Oh, well; otherwise, the sound is smooth and moderately well extended in terms of dynamics and frequency response in the closer-miked works, less so in the opening Ives piece.

JJP

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:

Masterpieces in Miniature (SACD review)

Michael Tilson Thomas, San Francisco Symphony; Yuja Wang, piano. SFS Media 821936-0060-2.

First off, I have to admit a bias: I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the San Francisco Symphony has always been my hometown orchestra, so to speak. I remember first hearing them while I was kid back in the early Fifties, a school (or Sunday school) outing to one of the symphony's annual Nutcracker specials, if memory serves me right. In any case, even though the Bay Area has a multitude of fine orchestras, I have always considered the San Francisco Symphony the king of the hill, one of the greatest orchestras ever. Maybe that's why I felt my opinion vindicated when a few years ago Gramophone magazine listed the San Francisco Symphony among the ten best orchestras in the world. Yeah, well, I could have told them that.

In Masterpieces in Miniature Maestro Michael Tilson Thomas and his orchestra present twelve short favorite pieces by twelve familiar composers, each of the pieces a polished little gem under the conductor and ensemble. Tilson Thomas imbues them with energy, subtlety, refinement, and grace as the occasion demands, and the orchestra plays them with vigor, nuance, culture, and élan always. Together, the conductor and orchestra provide a polish and sparkle to make even the most timeworn of these warhorses sound fresh again.

Since I haven't the time or the energy to comment on every piece of music on the program, I'll just mention what they are and point out a few favorites. The disc includes Henry Litolff's Scherzo from Concerto symphonique No. 4, with Yuja Wang, piano; Gustav Mahler's Blumine; Gabriel Fauré's Pavane; Claude Debussy's La Plus que lente; Franz Schubert's Entr' acte No.3 from Rosamunde; Charles Ives and Henry Brant's The Alcotts from A Concord Symphony; Sergei Rachmaninov's Vocalise; Antonin Dvorák's Legend No. 6; Jean Sibelius's Valse triste; Frederick Delius's On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring; Edvard Grieg's The Last Spring; and Leo Delibes's Cortége de Bacchus from his ballet Sylvia.

Pianist Yuja Wang gets things off to a rollicking good start in Litolff's Scherzo, taken at a pace that might have left some ensembles behind. Not here. The music comes off in a sprightly, witty fashion, and the only thing that disappointed me was that Wang doesn't appear on any more of the program's selections.

Tilson Thomas shows his skills as a seasoned Mahler interpreter in Blumine, which the composer probably wrote originally as a stand-alone piece, then later incorporated into his First Symphony, only later cut. It works best as we hear it here, vaguely melancholic and atmospheric, with a wonderful trumpet solo.

Under Tilson Thomas, Faure's Pavane flows gracefully and stylishly along; Schubert's Entr'acte is as beautiful and lyrical as one could want; Rachmaninov's Vocalise for orchestra sounds expectedly enchanting; Sibelius's Valse triste comes across appropriately sad and wistful; and Delibes's Cortege de Bacchus seems almost Elgarian, even though it predates Elgar by some years.

Anybody's recording of Delius's On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring has stiff competition from its original advocate, Sir Thomas Beecham, yet Tilson Thomas manages pretty well to convey its sensitive changes of color, expression, and inflection. Otherwise, the music can merely come off as repetitious and meandering. Despite the pleasing character and vitality of some of the other pieces on the disc, this one touched me the most with its delicate beauty.

Producer Jack Vad and engineers Roni Jiles, Gus Pollek, Dann Thompson, and Jonathon Stevens recorded all the works live at Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, California. They recorded "The Alcotts" in 96 kHz/24-bit audio in February 2010 and the rest in PCM 192 kHz/24-bit audio in September 2013 and May 2014. What's more, they recorded the music for hybrid two-channel (regular CD and SACD) and multichannel (SACD) playback from an SACD. I listened in two-channel SACD.

It's all a rather elaborate recording considering the engineers captured the resultant sound before a live audience. Fortunately, the audience is pretty quiet throughout the performances; the only offset is that the engineers had to record the orchestra somewhat closely, so we don't get quite as much sense of place, environment, or dimensionality as we might like. There is, however, just enough hall resonance to make everything sound fairly natural, with no jagged edges, forwardness, or brightness. Stereo spread is understandably wide, the dynamics and impact appear strong. The frequency response covers most of the spectrum nicely (although the top and bottom ends seem slightly rolled off), and the overall clarity is fine despite some softness in the presentation. An inevitable eruption of unnecessary applause occurs only after the final number.

JJP

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:

Ives: String Quartets Nos. 1 & 2 (CD review)

Juilliard String Quartet. Newton Classics 8802197.

Don’t you just love the music of American composer Charles Ives (1874-1954)?  It’s always so quirky, and the older the guy got, the more eccentric his music became. The present album combines two of his more-popular works, the early String Quartet No. 1, which is rather conventional for the man, and the later String Quartet No. 2, which dates from over a dozen years on and shows how unique (and curious) his music had become. The two works make a fascinating study in comparisons and contrasts, and you couldn’t ask for better performances or sound than these 1967 re-released recordings from the world-famous Juilliard String Quartet.

I don’t need to remind you that the Juilliard String Quartet is among the oldest continuing string quartets in the world. Founded in 1946 at the Juilliard School in New York, the group has won numerous awards over the years, including four Grammys, and recorded countless discs. Of course, all of the original musicians are gone now, but at the time of this recording, it still involved several founding members. The main thing is that they play impeccably, and no one has matched their performances of these Ives String Quartets. As constituted here, the group included Robert Mann and Earl Carlyss, violins; Raphael Hillyer, viola; and Claus Adam, cello.

Ives wrote his String Quartet No. 1 (subtitled “From the Salvation Army”) somewhere between 1897-1900, just after he’d finished Yale. However, like many of his compositions, it never saw a public performance in his lifetime. The fellow was definitely ahead of his time in the field of modern music, and because his stuff was even more far-out than most modernists of his day, he didn’t have a lot of followers at the time. The First Quartet didn’t see a public performance until 1957, several years after his death, even though it is one of his more-traditional pieces of music.

Ives grew up loving band music, and one can hear its influence in almost all his music including the First Quartet. Further defined as "A Revival Service," the First Quartet abounds in faintly recognizable melodies, in this case hymns, as was Ives's wont. In all of the composer's work we hear familiar tunes that are just barely out of reach. Ives divides the "Service" into an introductory Chorale, a Prelude, an Offertory, and a Postlude, corresponding to a traditional four-movement quartet arrangement. The first section is a meditation, the second a zippy scherzo with lilting dance numbers, the third a beautiful slow movement, and the forth an Allegro finale.

The Juilliard Quartet play the piece with energy, dexterity, grace, variety; you name it, they do it.  There doesn't appear to be anything they can't handle with virtuosic ease. Given that the First Quartet is fairly straightforward (comparatively, for Ives), that doesn't mean that the Juilliard players perform it in any perfunctory manner. Instead, they invest it with all the spirit they can muster, making the music glisten with vigor. It's possible that no one may equal their rendition of the work.

Then, there's the Second String Quartet, and we're suddenly listening to something more reminiscent of Ives, the composer with the weird, atonal harmonies and sudden dissonances. What a difference a decade makes. The Second Quartet dates from around 1913-15 and shows how far Ives had moved along in his unique musical style. It’s filled with far more disharmony, discords, tonal disparities, argument shifts, complex rhythms, and transcendent conflicts than the First Quartet, and, therefore, makes for more-challenging listening.

Ives said he wrote the Second Quartet as a counterpoint to the "trite" character and style of typical concert quartets. I’m not sure if he was also referring to his own First Quartet. In any case, the Juilliard players manage to make it a lot less harsh than I've sometimes heard it played. What's more, the oddball interjection of familiar songs isn't nearly so jarring as it can sometimes sound. Ives also said he intended the work's three movements to represent four men "who converse, discuss, argue, fight, shake hands, shut up--then walk up the mountain side to view the firmament." Fair enough; people can be pretty strange when they're in the midst of tensions and disagreement. And it's these contrasts that we hear the Juilliard players bring out most clearly in the music. It's not quite program music in the sense of a Mussorgsky or Strauss tone poem, but Ives clearly wanted to convey specific impressions, which the Juilliard performers are happy to exploit and still make it sound like music and not noise. The conflicts may get raucous, but the interpretation remains likable, maybe because the Juilliard players appear to like the music so much. Although the Second Quartet is not something you might want to listen to very often, this is the version to which you'll want to return as the mood strikes you.

Columbia Records (CBS) originally recorded the music at the Columbia 30th Street Studio, New York City in 1966-67, releasing the record in 1967. Newton Classics re-released them on the current disc in 2013. The sound is quite good, very transparent, with each of the four players distinctly placed across the room. Detailing is more than up to the job, and the frequency response appears nicely extended. The sound is big and bold, well spread out but not entirely across the room--just fairly close up for maximum clarity. OK, maybe the stereo spread is a tad too wide for so small an ensemble, yet the disc sounds better than most anything being made today: beautifully realistic, immaculately clean, with remarkable separation and air. There is no harshness here, no brightness, no forwardness; it's all as smoothly and naturally recorded as you could want, putting real players and real music in your living room.

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:

JJP

Hanson Conducts Carpenter, Sessions, and Ives (CD review)

Carpenter: Adventures in a Perambulator; Sessions: The Black Maskers; Ives: Symphony No. 3. Howard Hanson, Eastman-Rochester Orchestra. HDTT HDCD216.

You may recall that HDTT (High Definition Tape Transfers) is the company that transfers older stereo recordings from the Fifties and early Sixties, recordings in the public domain, to compact disc and digital download. They do this with meticulous care, offer their handiwork in a variety of formats to meet most budgets in a form that most often sounds better than their commercially available tape and LP counterparts.

You may also know, especially if you are of an audiophile bent, that Mercury made some of the finest classical recordings of all time during the Fifties and Sixties, using simple microphone techniques and three-track tape, releasing their LP's and tapes under the Mercury Living Presence label. Today, collectors much prize these products. In fact, the Mercury recordings were so good that during the Eighties and Nineties Philips Classics painstakingly transferred them to CD and SACD from the original master tapes, including separate discs of the Carpenter, Sessions, and Ives performances gathered together here by HDTT. Which brings up the question:  If these performances are already available on CD in such good shape, what's the point of this HDTT remaster, unless the sound is even better than Mercury provides or unless a person is looking for this particular combination of music?  The answer is a little of both.

HDTT culled the three selections on this disc from several Mercury albums, the first item being Adventures in a Perambulator, a delightful suite by American composer John Alden Carpenter (1876-1951). Carpenter wrote the work in 1914 for the Chicago Symphony, using his own child, Ginny, as the inspiration for a day in the life of a baby. It's divided into six movements depicting various encounters the baby has as her nursemaid pushes her perambulator (baby carriage) around the city. The music is highly descriptive, charming, fun, and accessible, especially the way noted teacher, composer, and conductor Howard Hanson plays it with his accomplished Eastman-Rochester Orchestra. The performance is filled with vivacity and humor, my own favorite, the child's meeting with the hurdy-gurdy man, wonderfully colorful.

American teacher, critic, and composer Roger Sessions (1896-1985) wrote The Black Maskers, a suite in four movements for large symphony orchestra, in 1923, revising it in 1928. Sessions based his little tone poems on a Russian play by symbolist Leonid Andreyev, a play about the human spirit under attack from sinister and mysterious forces. It's a dark, moody, sometimes eccentric piece of music with a ton of melodramatic flourishes, the complete opposite in tone from the lighthearted Carpenter work yet almost as entertaining in its way. Maybe that, too, is thanks to Hanson, who does his best persuading us to take it all seriously and keep a straight face in the process.

The final piece on the disc is the Third Symphony, "The Camp Meeting," of American composer Charles Ives (1874-1954). People largely ignored Ives during his lifetime but toward the end started paying attention. For instance, Ives never had his Third Symphony, which he wrote in 1904 and revised many times over, performed until 1946; yet it won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1947. Critics praised Ives late in his life for combining old and new musical elements in what appear sometimes arbitrary ways. The Third Symphony, one his more-conservative works, contains throwbacks to folk songs and church hymns--the music attempting to evoke the spirit of a revival meeting--as well as the dissonances for which he would become famous. Ives had fun playing with traditional melodic music and often bizarre juxtapositions of radically modern, discursive music, with Hanson again having a field day with the work's many contradictions. (At times, listening to Ives's crazy-quilt concoctions is like playing a game of "Name That Tune.")

HDTT used Mercury 2-track tapes for the Carpenter and Sessions transfers and a 4-track tape for the Ives. Recorded at the Eastman Theater in Rochester, New York, in 1956 and 1957, the sound on all three pieces is vivid and alive, with a very wide stereo spread, brilliant transients, and deep bass. However, the 2-track sources sound superior for their greater clarity, air, and dynamics; they can appear a trifle bright in spots, but they make up for it in the extreme clarity of their presentations.

There's an obvious similarity of sound in the three selections, given that Mercury recorded them in the same place with the same orchestra at around the same time, so any differences we hear we can probably attribute to the transfer sources. In comparison to Mercury's own remastered CD's, the HDTT disc is distinctly better in the Carpenter and Sessions material, not as obvious in the Ives. Still, in my own comparisons, the HDTT selections were better defined, more or less, in all three works, and with greater left/right stereo separation to boot.

Believe me, this is absolutely remarkable sound for recordings made over half a century ago, sound that surpasses almost anything recorded today.

For further information on the various formats, configurations, and prices of HDTT products, you can visit their Web site at http://www.highdeftapetransfers.com/storefront.php.

JJP

Ives: Variations on 'America' (CD review)

Also, Old Home Days; The Alcotts. Colonel Timothy W. Foley, United States Marine Band. Naxos 8.570559.

With the big exceptions of "The Unanswered Question" and "Central Park in the Dark," some of the music by Charles Ives (1874-1954) can be more than a bit clamorous and dissonant, turning off a few listeners. But it seems to me that it would be hard for anyone not to like this collection of Ives's early band music, superbly rendered in modern concert-band arrangements by "The President's Own" United States Marine Band.

The booklet note tells us that Ives grew up like his elder contemporary, John Philip Sousa, enjoying and later composing band music, and the works of Ives on this disc, from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, show us the influence it had on the young man.

Most of the pieces, which range from marches ("Country Band March") to waltzes ("Waltz") to fictitious college anthems ("Omega Lambda chi") to legitimate college tunes ("A Son of a Gambolier") to miniature tone poems ("Runaway Horse on Main Street") to full-blown suites ("Old Home Days"), are absolutely charming, touching, and moving by turns, only occasionally erupting into the cacophonous discord we sometimes associate with the composer. Of course, whereas Sousa remained devoted to band music all his life and seldom strayed too far from the martial style, Ives soon developed a taste for wider interests, as his symphonies, songs, and chamber music attest.  Still, Ives remained, as did Sousa, dedicated to pure Americana, and one can hear in this band music the many nationalistic themes to come.

The audio, which Naxos recorded in 2003, is pleasantly smooth for a band recording, with plenty of depth and bloom, though not a lot of air around the instruments. The miking sounds moderately distanced, yet the sonics still carry a nice impact, and, most of all, everything is highly listenable.

Adapted from a review the author originally published in the $ensible Sound magazine.

JJP