Third Coast Percussion: Perspectives (CD review)

Music by Elfman, Glass, Jlin, and Flutronix. Third Coast Percussion. Cedille Records CDR 90000 210.

By John J. Puccio

To say there isn’t an abundance of purely classical percussion recordings around might be an understatement. Perhaps it seems odd, given that every classical orchestra has a percussion section, that the percussion should not have as much day in the sun as the violin and the piano have enjoyed. Maybe it’s because percussive instruments don’t make as persuasively plush, mellifluous sounds as violins and pianos. I mean, you can’t really wax too very lyrical on a drum. Anyway, such paucity of percussive recordings makes this new album from Third Coast Percussion all the more appealing. The players are quite good, and the four selections they chose for the program are all world-premiere recordings.

First, a word about the group. From their Web site we learn that Third Coast Percussion was founded in 2005 and “has performed hundreds of concerts across the country, presents an annual concert season at home in Chicago, teaches musicians of all ages and experience levels, and has commissioned dozens of new works by composers including Glenn Kotche, Philip Glass, Devonté Hynes, Chris Cerrone, Augusta Read Thomas, Donnacha Dennehy, and David T. Little.

“The mission of Third Coast Percussion is to inspire and educate through the creation of exciting and unexpected musical experiences. Third Coast Percussion's vision is a worldwide audience that embraces creativity, curiosity, and community through music. The ensemble has forged a unique path in the musical landscape with virtuosic, energetic performances that celebrate the extraordinary depth and breadth of musical possibilities in the world of percussion. The ensemble has been praised for “commandingly elegant” (New York Times) performances, the ‘rare power’ (Washington Post) of their recordings, and ‘an inspirational sense of fun and curiosity’ (Minnesota Star-Tribune). The four members of Third Coast are also accomplished teachers, and currently serve as ensemble-in-residence at Denison University.”

The ensemble includes David Skidmore, an Ensemble Member and Executive Director of the group. As a chamber musician, David has performed at Carnegie Hall, the Lincoln Center Festival, Kimmel Center, and many other leading venues. He was a member of the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble from 2007-2011 and Ensemble ACJW from 2008-2010. He has performed and collaborated with many of the world's finest musicians including conductors Pierre Boulez, Lorin Maazel, David Robertson, and Michael Tilson Thomas, composers Steve Reich, Steve Mackey, Matthias Pintscher, and Peter Eötvos, and chamber ensembles Eighth Blackbird and Ensemble Signal. David has performed as a soloist in Europe, Asia, and the United States. He has also performed as a member of the Lucerne Festival Academy, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the Pacific Music Festival, and the National Repertory Orchestra.

Robert Dillon is an Ensemble Member and Development Director of the group. He has performed with the Chicago, Boston, and San Diego Symphony Orchestras, and served as principal percussionist in the Madison Symphony Orchestra from 2007-2008. He previously served as chair of percussion studies at Merit School of Music and a percussion instructor at Loyola University Chicago.

Peter Martin is an Ensemble Member and Finance Director of the group. As a chamber musician, he has performed with many leading new music ensembles including the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Eighth Blackbird, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, the Atlantic Chamber Ensemble, and many more. In addition to his work with Third Coast Percussion, Peter is a member of the award-winning contemporary music group Ensemble Dal Niente.

The fourth member of the group, Sean Connors, is an Ensemble Member and their Technical Director. He has performed with Amphion Percussion, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Eighth Blackbird, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Signal, and Metropolis Ensemble, and he was the percussionist for two summers with the prestigious Aspen Music Festival Contemporary Ensemble. As an educator, Sean served for two years as assistant professor of percussion at the University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point.

Yes, they are good. Very, very good.

So, the first selection on the program is the Percussion Quartet by American composer Danny Elfman (b. 1953). Although Elfman is primarily known these days as a film composer (Batman, Darkman, Spider-Man, Men in Black, and the like), he has also written a number of concert and stage pieces. But he’s done only one percussion work so far, and it’s surprisingly traditional, written in four fairly symphonic movements. It’s also among the more accessible works on the disc, which is probably why the producers chose to put it first. The fusion of instruments in the music is such that one quickly forgets there are only four people involved and that they are playing solely in the percussion medium. I quipped earlier that one can hardly wax lyrical on a drum, but in the second, slow movement, that’s exactly what the players do. The whole piece is really quite beautiful and expertly handled.

The next piece is by the well-known American composer and pianist Philip Glass (b. 1937). It’s the briefest selection on the album at about nine minutes, and it is Metamorphosis No. 1. He based it on his original solo piano version, and Third Coast Percusssion perform it on marimba, vibraphone, glockenspiel, and melodica. Frankly, it sounds to me much richer and mellower on the percussion instruments than it does on the piano. I found it far more attractive in its new trappings than ever before, more varied, more mellifluous, more rhythmically dynamic, simply more appealing. And I can’t imagine it being done any better than by Third Coast Percussion.

Next on the agenda is the longest work, Perspective, in seven movements by American electronic musician Jlin (Jerrilyn Patton, b. 1987). It is remarkably varied in its rhythms and nuances and provides endless opportunities for the percussive instruments to express themselves. It’s also perhaps closer to what most of us would expect to hear from a percussion group. It has a certain exotic quality to it, some of it sounding like music of the South Seas or Asian Pacific, while other parts demonstrate a quiet dissonance. All of it, however, is rather Romantic in nature, with nothing discordant enough to jar our senses. Remarkably, too, this is the first recording I can remember that produced musical notes a good three feet or more outside the main speakers. It was as though I had additional speakers on the side walls, given the surround sound I heard. It was a little eerie, actually, but quite pleasant.

The final item is called Rubix, a collaboration by Third Coast Percussion and Flutronix (Nathalie Joachim and Allison Loggins-Hull, both of whom are reaching out from their classical roots). The music is elegant and colorful, and the precision of the players contributes to an overall sense of tasteful grace. It makes a fitting conclusion to an album of perfectly harmonious charm. What I thought might be a cacophonous disc of tumultuous noise turned out to be a calming and relaxing respite, I loved it.

Producers Elain Martone, Colin Campbell, and Danny Elfman and engineers Bill Maylone, Dan Nichols, and Jonathan Lackey recorded the music at Chicago Recording Company in October 2020. As we would expect from Cedille, who always produce good-sounding discs, this one, with its small ensemble of percussion instruments, sounds terrific. It’s done fairly close up, so each instrument is clearly delineated, and with the addition of some mild room resonance, the result is both realistic and satisfying.

JJP

Piano Potpourri, No. 7 (CD reviews)

William Bolcom: The Complete Rags. Marc-André Hamelin, piano. Hyperion CDA683991/2.

By Karl W. Nehring

Many older listeners were likely first exposed to ragtime music by Marvin Hamlisch’s performance of Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer” piano rag from the soundtrack to the 1973 hit film The Sting. Hamlisch’s performance was released as a single and became a radio hit; suddenly ragtime music was “in” and veteran ragtime piano players such as the late, legendary “Eubie” Blake enjoyed a sudden surge in media popularity. It turns out that American composer William Bolcom (b. 1938) had developed an interest in piano rags pre-The Sting, studying the rags of Scott Joplin in the late 1960s and trying his hand at writing some rags of his own.

“My growing familiarity around 1967 with Scott Joplin’s opera Treemonisha inspired my very first rag, Glad Rag, which quotes that opera in a transitional passage,” he recounts in his helpful, in-depth liner notes. “A very personal rag, Lost Lady is a lament for a failed marriage. But a real epiphany for me soon after that break-up was meeting James Hubert ‘Eubie’ Blake in 1966—at eighty-six, he was one of the few still-performing practitioners of the urbanized ragtime (called ‘stride piano’) of James P. Johnson and Thomas ‘Fats’ Waller. Bolcom goes on to recount that “Eubie and I became friends and gave concerts together frequently. (Purely by example Eubie was showing me how artificial was the division between composing and performing, which had become de rigueur in music; I consider him my last great teacher).”

Canadian pianist and composer Marc-André Hamelin (b. 1961) is widely known for his technical prowess and willingness to perform and record music outside the classical keyboard mainstream. Those qualities serve him – and us – well as he turns his attention in this release to the complete collection of Bolcom’s piano rags (27 in all, seven of which Bolcom wrote in collaboration with his friend William Albright) on this two-disc set. If this review communicates nothing else, let it get across these two points: First, this is serious music, written by a serious composer and played by a serious, gifted pianist. Not in any way is this some sort of novelty or crossover album. Second, this is an album of entertaining music that is entertaining precisely because it has been composed, performed, and recorded by serious professionals and can easily withstand the rigors of repeated listening. The album includes rags that will appeal to a broad spectrum of attitudes and emotions, from sad to glad and trad to rad and plenty of shades in between. Even for those unfamiliar with ragtime or stride piano, the piano rags of Bolcom as played by Hamelin and recorded by Judith Sherman and crew would be a great place to start.  

Beethoven: 33 Variations Op. 120 on a Waltz by Diabelli. Mitsuko Uchida, piano. Decca 485 2731.

Last week’s New Releases No. 33 included a review of an ECM New Series CD by the Danish String Quartet that featured a performance of one of Beethoven’s late quartets. If you are familiar with those works, you know that they are both beautiful and sublime, at times seeming to originate from some realm almost beyond human comprehension, a world of timeless beauty with which Beethoven was somehow able to communicate. His late piano works, especially his final sonata, Op. 111, also have that sense of other-worldly beauty, a great performance evoking in the listener a sense of the transcendent.

Sometimes overlooked in the catalog of Beethoven’s late works for piano is his Diabelli Variations, a composition that was actually his final large-scale work for solo piano. The story behind the piece is a convoluted one. In brief, the composer and publisher Anton Diabelli had entered into a partnership in 1918 with an art dealer named Pietro Cappi. To call attention to their Vienna business, they hit upon the scheme of asking 50 notable musicians form throughout the Austro-Hungarian empire to provide a brief variation on a simple waltz tune that Diabelli had composed. The project wound up taking several years to pull together (no fax machines, no cell phones, no internet…), so the final version did not appear until 1824, in a printed volume that featured variations by the 50 composers, who were presented in alphabetical order. The variations included were of little lasting musical value, with the exception of a waltz by Schubert. Along with the volume containing the 50 variations, Cappi and Diabelli also published a companion volume: a reissued collection of Beethoven’s 33 variations of Diabelli’s waltz.

Wait, what? Reissued? Well, it seems that Beethoven thought the 50-composer idea was not something he wanted to be involved with, so he dismissed the idea of submitting a single variation out of hand. However, according to the liner notes, “Beethoven had in any case always been attracted by the challenge of building large edifices out of less than first-rate material, and he found Diabelli’s waltz a rich source for elaboration, setting to work on it almost as soon as he received it. Approximately two-thirds of the ‘Diabelli’ variations were written in 1819, before he laid the project aside in order to begin work on his Missa solemnis. By the time he returned to the variations, towards the end of 1822, Beethoven had not only finished the Mass, but had also composed his last three piano sonatas, Opp. 109, 110 & 111. The experience of the late sonatas clearly left its mark on those portions of the ‘Diabelli’ Variations that came after them. But more than that, the journey from the mundane to the sublime may be shorter than we imagine, and Diabelli’s innocuous little waltz tune, with its simple tonic-dominant harmony and its bass line giving out the falling interval of a fourth, from C to G, and then a fifth, D to G, is first cousin to the wonderfully serene ‘Arietta’ on which the finale of Beethoven’s last sonata, Op. 111, is based.” Cappi and Diabelli had received far more than they had requested from Beethoven, so in June of 1823 they published an advertisement for the score in the Weiner Zeitung (founded in 1703, still being published, one of the oldest newspapers in the world) that heralded:

We present here to the world variations of no ordinary sort, but a grand and important masterpiece, worthy of being added to the immortal creations of the old Classics, and in a manner that only Beethoven, the greatest living representative of true art, can supply. The most original structures and ideas, the boldest musical transformations and harmonies are here exhausted, every pianoforte effect based on a solid technique is employed; and this work is all the more interesting through the circumstance that it is elicited from a theme which no one would otherwise have supposed capable of a working-out of in the manner in which our exalted Master stands alone among his contemporaries. The splendid fugues, Nos. 24 and 32, will astonish all friends and connoisseurs of serious style, as will Nos. 2, 6, 16, 17, 23, etc. the brilliant players; and altogether all these variations, through the novelty of their ideas, care in working out, and beauty in the most artful of their transitions, will entitle the work to a place beside Sebastian Bach's famous masterpiece in the same form. [The Goldberg Variations]

Japanese-born British pianist Mitsuko Uchida (b. 1948) has long been one of my favorite musicians. Not only does she play wonderfully, but her modesty and charm are world-class, as you can see for yourself in this video from 2012 on the occasion of her being presented an award from the UK’s Royal Philharmonic Society: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHh7pDApfCA. Perhaps even more indicative of her modesty and charm is this promotional video for her new recording of the Diabelli Variations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z38Y8LfJHXY. Despite a long career throughout which she has been known primarily as a specialist in the Viennese masters who has won wide acclaim for her performances and recordings of Mozart, Schubert, and Beethoven, this new Decca release is Dame Mitsuko’s first recording of the Diabelli Variations. Her performance comes across as thoughtfully balanced, able to express depths of emotion without ever sounding forced; neither too excitable or rushed in the lighter moments nor overly drawn-out and melodramatic in the softer, more reflective passages. Particularly noteworthy is the way the recording closes out, Variations XXIX-XXXIII. These variations have a little bit of everytbing, blessed with some of the most sublime soft and slow passages extant. (unless you are perhaps quite young, XXXI will likely have you reflecting on mortality), culminating with Variation XXXIII, marked Tempo di Minuetto, moderato, and sounding like one final farewell dance. This is a truly first-rate recording of a sometimes-overlooked masterpiece.

Reynaldo Hahn: Poèmes & Valses. Contains selections from Le Rossignol Éperdu (53 Poèmes pour Piano) and Premières Valses. Pavel Kolesnikov, piano. Hyperion CDA68383.

Not having heard of either the composer or the performer before receiving this release for review, I really had no idea what to expect, but once again this is one of those cases of being most pleasantly surprised by what awaited me when I finally got around to giving this CD an audition. It turns out that Reynaldo Hahn (1874-1947) was born in Venezuela but his family moved to Paris when he was a child and he wound up spending most of his life in the City of Light. According to Wikipedia he was a composer, conductor, music critic, and singer who was most well-known during his lifetime for his songs, of which he composed more than 100. His portrait in the CD booklet bears a remarkable resemblance, at least to these eyes, to some I have seen of the famous French composer Claude Debussy.

As for the performer, Russian pianist Pavel Kolesnikov (b. 1989), a bit of digging around on my part quickly revealed that he has been gaining a reputation as a remarkable young pianist of exceptional sensitivity and touch, with an ability to tease out the poetry woven into the printed score. Although the Tchaikovsky concerto certainly is far different from Hahn’s music for solo piano, this brief video clip offers some insight into who Kolesnikov is both as a musician and as a person: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkyPk6DHOX8.

Kolesnikov says that although at first he struggled to understand Hahn’s works, to get below the surface. It was the piece Éros cache dans les bois (“Eros hides in the woods”) that suddenly sparked his interest. “Gone were my initial reservation about these works; I surrendered myself to the music, which in itself is at once uncertain and precise, and was won over.” As he began to comb through Hahn’s piano pieces, finding that “some of the works left me unmoved, but others {a lot of them} took me back to those first impressions of mystery and apprehension, in which the listener is situated at the boundaries of familiarity” the COVID-19 lockdown suddenly hit, which for the pianist “seemed like the ideal moment to get started… After a few days of procrastination, I found the resolve to start conceiving this recording… for this recording I used a Yamaha CFX, whose sound is less textured than the usual concert Steinway. I specified that the piano be tuned in such a way as to maximize the extreme sensitivity of the keys, with closely positioned microphones. This serves to highlight a flurry of detail; but one has to be extremely attentive, for the downside of this placement is that it accentuates absolutely all the weaknesses, albeit microscopic.”

Hahn’s music is hard to pin down. It definitely sounds French, something like a mix of Satie, Debussy, perhaps Ravel – but not really just like any of those more familiar names. And when I say “Hahn’s music,” I need to point out that as you can see from the header above, the selections on this recording are taken from two different collections, the 53 Poèmes of Le Rossignol Éperdu (“The Bewildered/Distracted/Distraught/Ecstatic Nightingale”) and the Premières Valses (“First Waltzes”). There are 25 tracks in all: 9 Poèmes, 6 Valses, followed by 10 more Poèmes. The Poèmes have a more airy, other-worldly feel to them than do the Valses, which are livelier and more grounded, although still unmistakably French in character. Moreover, the Poèmes that Kolesnikov has chosen for the closing portion of the program are generally longer than those that he chose to open the program. Despite my clumsy attempts at describing it, this really is delightful music. If you like the piano music of Ravel, Satie, or Debussy, then I believe there is a good chance that you will find this music enjoyable. Kolesnikov is an impressive young pianist from whom I expect to we shall hear more from in the future. For now, we have this recording to savor.

KWN

Brahms: Symphonies 3 & 4 (CD review)

Herbert Blomstedt, Gewandhausorchester. Pentatone PTC 5186 852.

By John J. Puccio

When I first got to know the talents of Swedish conductor Herbert Blomstedt (b. 1927), it was during his tenure as Music Director of my local big band, the San Francisco Symphony, from 1985 to 1995. My wife and I attended a number of his performances, and I always thought of him as a good, sturdy conductor. He never seemed splashy or flamboyant, just musically solid, so I sort of characterized him in the class of a Karl Bohm, Eugene Jochum, Adrian Boult, Eugene Ormandy, or Bernard Haitink. Friends of mine would sometimes say he was too “foursquare,” too “old fashioned,” or too much the “kapellmeister” in a derogatory sense. It’s true, he never displayed the celebrated idiosyncrasies that defined some other famous conductors like Stokowski, Bernstein, Karajan, or Klemperer, but he made up for it in concerts of simple, elegant taste.

Whatever, Blomstedt seems a perfect fit for the music of Brahms, who was himself a kind of old-fashioned, throwback composer. So, on this second-installment of Blomstedt’s survey of the Brahms symphonies for Pentatone, we start with the Symphony No. 3 in F Major, Op. 90, written in 1883, about half a dozen years after his Second Symphony. Dvorak considered the Third Symphony the most beautiful Brahms had yet produced, and a lot of people agree with him, with various allusions to the music of Schumann and Wagner helping extend this belief.

Some listeners may prefer a bit more energy behind their Brahms, and, in fact, a quick check of timings between Blomstedt and several other recordings of the Third I had on hand finds Blomstedt the slowest of the lot. This is not necessarily a bad thing, only a difference. For example, Blomstedt is slower than even Otto Klemperer in all four movements, and Klemperer usually took things at a fairly deliberate pace. Not to complain, then, because Blomstedt does mold each phrase with loving care, and the resultant product does, indeed, sound quite lovely. The Andante and Poco allegretto are especially sweet, and one can understand Dvorak’s appreciation of the piece.

Then there’s the symphony that may be Brahms’s most popular, at least in terms of the number of times it appears in concert programs, the Symphony No. 4 in E Minor, Op. 98. Brahms began writing it in 1884 and premiered it a year later, so it came close on the heels of No. 3. Critics to this day continue to compare the Brahms Fourth Symphony to the best of Beethoven, so it’s no wonder that its popularity continues as well.

The opening movement with its undulating rhythms should be familiar to most everyone. Yet I couldn’t help feeling that it needed a bit more zing than Blomstedt gives it. Certainly, there is good reason for understatement here, but a touch more pizzazz might have encouraged me to become more engaged with it. While the usually melancholic mood of the second-movement Andante moderato seems a tad too dour under Blomstedt’s direction, it, too, has its moments of mellow reflection. Brahms followed the slow movement with a joyously outgoing Allegro giocoso (“quick, lively, and playful,” “full of fun and high spirits”). Blomstedt handles it delightfully if not vigorously. The final movement adds an appropriately formidable touch to the whole, a movement Klemperer treated with his usual monumental construction by which Blomstedt seems a little tame by comparison.

My overall conclusion after listening to Blomstedt’s Brahms, as good as it can be, is that I’ll content myself with the recordings of two very different Brahmsians: Otto Klemperer and Sir Adrian Boult: Klemperer with his precise, granite-like shaping and Boult with his gentler, more loving manner.

It helps, too, that on this album we get an old-school conductor (Blomstedt was in his mid-nineties when he made this recording) performing with an old-school ensemble (the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra is among the oldest in the world, dating back to the mid eighteenth century). The orchestra sounds glorious, as always, the Gewandhaus concert hall giving the sound a burnished glow that adds to the richness of the performance.

Producers Renaud Loranger and Bernhard Guttler and engineer Rene Moller recorded the symphonies at the Gewandhaus, Leipzig in April 2021. There’s nothing reticent about the sound. It is big and bold, with good definition and impact. It’s in ordinary PCM two-channel stereo, but it has all the dynamics of Pentatone’s SACD releases. There is also a reasonable amount of depth and hall ambience to give the presentation a realistic effect. Quite nice.

JJP