…tell the old story for our modern times. Find the beginning.
-Homer, The Odyssey (Emily Wilson translation)
When I first got the email notice of this concert, I was, to say the least, intrigued. A two piano concert at Littlefield Concert Hall on the campus of Mills College featuring two composer/performers who figured prominently in that Temple of new music and in my personal listening life. Alas, I live some 350 miles from that location. But further intrigue came from the featured artists: Sarah Cahill and Joseph Kubera, two of the finest working new music pianists anywhere and both worked with the evening’s composers. This was just too compelling and I decided that I would regret missing this if I failed to go hear it.
So it was, I planned my little odyssey, leaving at about 9AM from Santa Barbara on a nice lightly trafficked trip, more a pilgrimage than an odyssey. A pilgrimage, frequently defined as a personal spiritual journey ostensibly in search of insight or enlightenment is how I’ve come to identify my listener’s adventure to the secular temple of Mills College featuring music of former Mills faculty Robert Ashley (1930-2014) and Robert Sheff (1945-2020), better known by his stage name, “Blue Gene Tyrrany”.
Robert Ashley (copyright unknown)
“Bob and Blue” (copyright by Other Minds)
The two featured composers had a strong connection to the Bay Area, mostly via their work at Mills College. This intelligent but modest production left little room to print program notes so the performers spoke of the music at various points during the concert and the excellent liner notes were made available by a QR code in the program book.
Sarah Cahill, pianist, radio host, producer, tireless advocate for new music (photo copyright by Other Minds)
Joseph Kubera, pianist, member of the SEM ensemble, Downtown Music, and countless collaborations promoting new music with many fine recordings to his name. (Photo copyright by Other Minds)
Our two performers are no strangers to each other or the composers on the program, having collaborated on numerous performances and recordings. The well rehearsed duo turned in riveting performances of this largely unknown repertoire which made a strong case that it be better known. Their playing and choice of repertoire compelled this listener’s attention such that I forgot to take all but a few performance shots. See those program notes for further biographical info on these two fine musical celebrants.
Entrance to Littlefield Concert Hall (copyright by author)
Mills College has long been a temple, a Mecca for new music in the Bay Area of California. Its roster of faculty and students comprises some of the finest post 1945 composers and performers. Darius Milhaud (1892-1974) and Luciano Berio (1925-2003) and students as diverse as Terry Riley (1935- ), Steve Reich (1936- ), and Dave Brubeck (1920-2012) to name but a few. Many artistic spirits musical and otherwise, exert their presence here. It’s a perfect destination for a pilgrimage.
A bust of frequent Mills visitor Lou Silver Harrison (1917-2003) in the lobby, a persistent benevolent spirit. (photo copright by author)
The concert was organized by Charles Amirkhanian and his Other Minds organization, another guiding light in the San Francisco/Oakland new music scene. Pianists Sarah Cahill and Joseph Kubera were to be the celebrants in the concert ritual paying homage to “Bob and Blue” as well as to the oracular Mills College.
Scene from the lobby (photo copyright by author)
Let me tell you about this concert hall. It is the work of legendary California architect Julia Morgan (1872-1957) who famously also worked on Hearst Castle. This is one of her several architectural gems on campus. Her spirit was also witness to this celebration by virtue of her fine architecture.
Stage at Littlefield Hall showing the ornate, colorful detailed designs (photo copyright by the author)
Look at that ceiling and those chandeliers (photo copyright by the author)
Two pianos, a new Steinway stage left and a slightly worn Baldwin stage right were placed such that the pianists seated at their respective keyboards could see each other. The Steinway with its lid open to reflect the sound to the audience and that well worn Baldwin with no lid at all (for reasons to be revealed later). The sonics of the hall and tuning of those pianos were excellent.
Unseen Worlds’ wonderful survey of Blue’s ensemble works.
The concert opened with Blue Gene Tyrrany’s peaen to old Route 66 in his “Decertified Highway of Dreams” (1999) for two pianos. It was clear from this first selection, that our performers were well rehearsed and in sync despite rhythmic complexities inherent in this quite beautiful work. It is cinematic and sweetly nostalgic, a fine example of “Blue”’s genius. The performance was riveting and worthy as the first performance ritual of the evening.
This was followed by a real rarity, a performance of Robert Ashley’s Piano Sonata (1959, 1979, 1985). In fact, it appears to have been the first complete performance of the two piano version of this impressive serially structured piece. Previous recordings are available, one with the composer performing the first movement at the ONCE Festival from 1966, the other by Blue Gene Tyrrany on his album, “Just for the Record”. This writer also found some useful analysis by musicologist Kyle Gann on his website. Gann worked with Ashley and later published a fine survey of Ashley’s music that is well worth your time. The result was a convincing, almost romantic sounding performance of this foundational work in Ashley’s oeuvre.
This was followed by a solo rendition by Joe Kubera of Tyrrany’s “The Drifter” (1994), which was written for Mr. Kubera. He spoke briefly about the structure of this work (which he also recorded on his recent “Horizons” album). This piece has a meandering quality created by the intricate evolving structure. Kubera’s performance was hypnotic and a fine tribute.
The second half began with Ms. Cahill solo at that stage left Steinway playing first Tyranny’s “Nocturne With and Without Memory” (1989), one of his better known works. Then she played his “Spirit” (1996/2002), a piece that is a sort of homage to the experimental composer/performer Henry Cowell (1897-1965). It was rather unusual in that it involved harmonics over which the pianist plays. The title is an homage to Cowell’s famous piano piece, “The Banshee”, a malevolent spirit in Irish mythology. Both were vintage Blue Gene pieces.
Two pianists, one piano.
Then Kubera returned, taking a seat at the blemished Baldwin with Cahill standing at that same piano, at a 90 degree angle to Kubera. Here, in these two obscure Ashley pieces, Viva’s Boy (1991), and “Details” (2b, 1962), Cahill played like a chef at a chef’s table, playing the strings inside the piano while Kubera manned the keyboard. These true rarities getting perhaps their first performance, were certainly a highlight of the concert.
It was Blue Gene Tyrrany’s spirit that was the final ritual celebration on this magical night with both pianists at their respective pianos to give a heartfelt reading of his, “A Letter From Home” (2002). This brought this learned, well rehearsed, beautifully collaborative evening’s ritual to a satisfying close.
The modest, self selected audience, applauded warmly and gave an extended, much deserved ovation and seemed as enthralled as this listener whose musico-spiritual pilgrimage found an ecstatic height. I drove home that same night, blessedly lifted, if only briefly, from the chaos of the world by this wonderful artistic ritual. They will now take this great program to New York.
Denise Burt’s beautiful design effectively encompasses the scope and meaning of this album in arresting images
Maya Beiser, cellist, Bang on a Can member, listener, composer, innovator, interpreter, and producer. Beiser’s hats are many and each new album traces the musings of a truly interesting artist, ever evolving, revisioning, thinking, growing. She cuts a singular, intelligent, and deeply felt path that is both monolithic and definitive.
Looking back and forward
This latest release on her own Islandia label is another exposition of a powerful musical mind bringing fascinating perspectives, the artist’s singular take on music spanning some 500 years. Beiser is not about “authentic” interpretation (mostly) but rather about lucidly sharing her perspective, her musical visions.
Previous releases gave us her take on living musical icons like Philip Glass and Terry Riley. She also dares to look back upon some of the “sacred cows” of the repertoire like the Bach Cello Suites and Riley’s seminal “In C” among others. Her revisionings are respectful homages and insightful performances that challenge and inform her listeners to maybe hear in a new way. As T.S. Eliot said,
“We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place (or the piece) for the first time”
So it is with the carefully curated selections on this disc. Beginning with a Missy Mazzoli composition featuring vocalist and performance artist Helga Davis (featured most visibly in the most recent iteration of Glass’ “Einstein on the Beach”). Her vocal skills drive these settings of texts by Erin Cressida Wilson. And this piece sets the tone for this album which is both lament and celebration for the experiences of women in history, mythology, and memory.
The first five tracks contain the bittersweet song cycle, Salt, from which the album takes its name. Here the listener is brought into the context of the Biblical story of Lot’s wife, forever imprisoned in a pillar of salt. But, rather than a pedestrian retelling of the tale, this cycle appropriates the context of the story to establish, with painful directness, the tone and direction of what will follow.
Helga Davis (photo from WNYC)
From her mineral prison, a mineral ironically known for its preserving properties, she sings of her crime of looking and remembering. She sings of pain, anger, and sadness, but never with remorse for her “crime”. It is an image that Beiser says lives powerfully in her personal memory. Mazzoli, Davis, and Beiser recontextualize the prisoner as victim, not criminal.
The ghostly images of the women we meet on this album are lamented as well as celebrated for their stories which burn deeply into our collective mythology, into our personal memories. Beiser lovingly dedicates this release first to her daughter, Aurielle Kaminsky, then to the principals whose creativity and energy pervade this album: Missy Mazzoli, Clarice Jensen, Meredith Monk, Erin Cressida Wilson, Helga Davis, Odeya Nani, Beth Morrison, and Christina Jensen.
In Lament to Phaedra, a work by the late British composer John Tavener is heard in an arrangement by Beiser. The 1995 work is sung by Phaedra’s sister Ariadne in response to Phaedra’s suicide by hanging. But here we have a wordless arrangement for cello and electronics that focuses on Tavener’s unique harmonic style and lyrical melodic construction. The result is effectively an affirmation of the lament for her fate.
Then we are treated to yet another transcription of a curiously difficult but very effective use of the early music concept of “hocket”, an interactive counterpoint of two voices. The eponymous Hocket, though vocal in its original form is, like much of Meredith Monk’s work, without a text. Monk’s work is about the voice, or the voices. And her revisioned operatic creations are fed by the mythological streams of women’s stories. This creative arrangement by this artist is an homage to Monk and, by extension, to the women she so beautifully celebrates in her work.
Meredith Monk with Allison Sniffin after a performance of Hocket at the Other Minds Festival in San Francisco (copyright Allan J. Cronin)
Another arrangement follows. It is a Melody from Orfeo ed Euridice, from the late baroque opera by Christopher Willibald Gluck. It is, of course, another ill fated relationship ended by the same infraction of looking and remembering that sealed the fate of Lot’s wife. Here Beiser chooses the gorgeous “Dance of the Blessed Spirits”, another wordless homage that imprints on the listener most effectively.
Next up is yet another wordless work, this one by fellow cellist and composer, Clarice Jensen, whose work has graced these blog pages before in reviews of her singular, drone, minimalist, meditative albums. Whether you call her work “drone” or “minimalism” or whatever you choose, your ears will bask in her meditative sonic ministrations. Jensen’s work, while related by its medium (that of cello and electronics), is a distinctly different style, immersive, meditative, evocative, a sound bath for the listener.
Clarice Jensen (from Jensen Artists page)
From the 21st century we are now transported to 17th century Venice and the work of the early baroque master Claudio Monteverdi. In the only surviving music from his second opera, we hear Ariadne, sister of Phaedra, singing the lament for the sister who had taken her life in shame and sadness.
The penultimate track brings us to this artist’s cultural roots with a song by Yedidya Admon to lyrics by Yitzchak Shenhar.
My Field (Shedemati)
My field, At dawn I sowed it in tears, Let the prayer of the farmer be heard! My field, It is saturated with dew, It is intoxicated by the light of the sun. The grain bends low in front of the reaper. The strides are long, The burnished scythe is raised high.
Odeya Nini provides the voice in this “reimagining“ of this classic song of sadness and lament by the lowly farmer imagined by the poet.
Odeya Nini (unknown copyright)
Fittingly, this last track is about death, endings. It is Beiser’s arrangement of Henry Purcell’s “When I am laid in the earth” from his opera, Dido and Aeneas. The text:
When I am laid, am laid in earth, May my wrongs create No trouble, no trouble in thy breast; Remember me, remember me, but ah! forget my fate. Remember me, but ah! forget my fate.
But forgetting is not allowed here. Beiser begs us to remember. And we cannot avert our ears or eyes.
I am grateful for this music review aggregator Feedspot. They have declared my blog New Music Buff to be among the top 35 new music blogs. I made number 20 this year.
Here is their review:
20. New Music Buff » Experimental Music
Blog https://newmusicbuff.com/category/experimenta.. Indulge perspectives from an informed new music fan. Enjoy nuanced takes and some amusing anecdotes from artists of Experimental Music. New Music Buff envisages the musical interest and preferences of a long-time listener with a fervent interest in all music new and old.
I am grateful to have achieved this ranking but I am also delighted to be able to see the perceived context of my peers in this area. New Music Buff is a solo effort now going into its 14th year of publication. And that description does a fine job of characterizing my work. I’m grateful to get to see my competitors (though competition is hardly the point).
With the relative demise of print magazines that carried reviews of new releases, listeners now tend to rely upon the blogosphere to find new music to suit their interests. The problem is that the meanings of words like “new music”, “experimental”, “avant garde”, etc. can steer the reader to a great deal of music and not necessarily music that satisfies their thirsts. So this blog aggregator attempts to collect sites and provide brief descriptions that help hungry listeners find items to satisfy their tastes.
One of the very useful aspects of this aggregator is also to provide bloggers a context by defining a purported peer group which I can tell you, has enlightened this blogger/listener. This site is designed in part to provide mailing lists and contacts for musicians, promoters, and publishers. There are various useful products but listeners can find low or no cost items here that can really help searchers find their way.
Any release by composer/musicologist Peter Garland is a reason to take notice. The same can be said for organist Carson Cooman and, for that matter, Cold Blue recordings. Add to that the inspiration gleaned from poet Robert Creeley and I dare say we have a major event begging to sound from your favorite speakers or headphones.
Cold Blue is a visionary record label from Southern California. You owe it to yourself to peruse their releases available from various sources. But I digress.
Carson Cooman is an organist and composer whose lovely recordings of new music for organ appear regularly in my YouTube feed. It is most fitting that he has commissioned these fine works.
Peter Garland is known both as a musicologist (most famously known for his scholarship on the music of Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas) and a composer with a varied and unique body of work that might be described as “gently avant-garde”. His work definitely deserves your attention.
These seven tracks ranging in length from about 5-8 minutes are inspired by the poetry of Robert Creeley. These are not vocal settings, they are musical impressions or perhaps reactions to his work. As such these “tone poems” are characteristic of Garland’s deeply felt and personal style.
Adding this disc to the Cold Blue catalog is yet another “brick in the wall” in the overall sonic tapestry that defines the vision of this label and the loosely defined group of California composers generically categorized as “ambient”. But that term carries connotations of mediocrity but Garland, Cold Blue, and Cooman are anything but mediocre. This is a lovely production and a valuable addition to the recorded repertoire.
I’ve listened to this utterly charming debut album from this flute and marimba duo several times. It is an engaging and charming selection of music by composers all unfamiliar to this listener but all seem to have the gift of substance.
I will not attempt to survey each of these composers’ works or even their biographies except to provide references for listeners who wish to explore these composers more in depth. Many do not (yet?) have web pages. They are:
They all contribute compositions delightfully suited to this combination of instruments. Many were written for this duo.
All the compositions have characteristics ranging from jazz to light classical chamber music. And when I say “light” I simply mean basically friendly works with tonal melodic content but the music here has depth and substance.
There is a clear and wonderful synergy of just really good dedicated musicians whose interpretive skills that flatter the composers’ works. Rather than attempt to describe each of the pieces on this album, I am choosing in this brief review to simply report the experience of this reviewer’s multiple listenings.
I have played this through many times, each time in varying contexts, some with no distraction, focused listens, sometimes in the background letting the music draw its gentle spell in the background, and all revealed joyful, seductive musicianship of music with creative substance. I will leave further analysis to those trained far better than me. I’m just a happy listener. As Shakespeare said, “…play on”!
Chandos is one of my favorite classical labels with an intelligent selection of repertoire. The Neave Trio consisting of violinist Anna Williams, cellist Mikhail Veselov, and pianist Eri Nakamura is clearly a fit for Chandos. This trio’s releases have been consistently interesting and creative. This most recent release is a perfect example.
The recording includes three works by three composers (and a brilliant arranger) for piano trio. The first is by the venerable Brahmsian Charles-Camille Saint-Saens, his second Piano Trio Op. 92 (1892). I am not familiar with the chamber music portion of this prolific, virtuoso pianist/composer’s oeuvre but I’ve yet to have heard anything by him that failed to impress. Indeed, this 5 movement trio is a gloriously engaging fin de siècle salon music. Cast in 5 movements, it is a handsome piece of chamber music that deserves more hearings. And The Neave Trio clearly make a case for that in a lively execution of this virtuosic music.
The next work is a fine example of the curiosity and vision of these artists. These two movements for piano trio entitled “Soir-Matin” Op. 76 (1907) are by a composer wholly unknown, even to your eclectically curious reviewer. Mélanie Hélène“Mel” Bonis(1858-1937) is a new name to this listener and likely to most listeners. The lack of recognition of female composers is slowly being remedied by artists such as these who have here found a composer whose reputation deserves at least a little boost. I mean, she was a student of Cesar Franck and her music was lauded by no less than Saint-Saens. She was also a classmate of Debussy at the Paris Conservatoire. And this leads us to…
As if these first two entries alone weren’t enough to recommend this fine release, behold the ear opening arrangement (yes, for piano trio) of the masterful La Mer (1905) by Claude Debussy. The arrangement is by one Sally Beamish from 2013.
As a listener, I have frequently been amazed by the power of the long tradition of “arrangements” of music generally better known in a different form. Some use reduced forces to allow music to be performed more affordably (chamber ensemble vs. orchestra). Take Maurice Ravel’s brilliant orchestration of Modest Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition”, or the two piano arrangement of Igor Stravinsky’s seminal “Rite of Spring” ballet (1913) as examples. Comparatively few people even know that Pictures at an Exhibition was originally a solo piano piece. But both versions each have their charms, and each communicate the musical message differently. And though audiences are doubtless more familiar with the colorful orchestral original, The Rite of Spring, reduced to the work of four busy hands on two keyboards is a more portable experience. Especially before the flourishing of the recording industry, it made this music accessible to more listeners at less cost (2 musicians instead of a whole orchestra).
In both cases, the one vastly and gloriously expanding the evoked pictures described in sound, the other compacting a big orchestral tapestry into a more intimate “salon” experience. Each carries its own message and provides its own insights.
And it is here in the last three tracks of this fine album that we hear the ultimate glory, the real reason you want to add this disc to your collection. I have not heard any but the original orchestration (requiring an orchestra of some 60 musicians) of this French impressionist masterpiece. I could not imagine how one could squeeze these fully orchestrated harmonies and have that make sense to a listener using but three instruments. But the Neaves (if I may mint a friendly collective noun), with this arrangement by Beamish, provided this listener with a revelatory experience comparable to Joshua Rifkin’s brilliant arrangement of Joni Mitchell’s “Clouds” sung by the equally brilliant Judy Collins. Or, even more eclectic, the Anton Webern orchestration of the J.S. Bach Ricercar from his Musical Offering. The point here is that great performances of great arrangements have the effect of opening your ears and mind.
So let the “The Neaves” open your ears and mind with this delightfully unusual and very effective recording.
I’ve written before (and likely will again) about the disturbing lack of attention given to new classical composers from Canada. Nova Pon (1983- ) is a Canadian born and educated artist who was awarded an “Emerging Composer” award back in 2015 here, in this release, shows herself to be a composer who has emerged and continues to develop substantial works that are easily approached yet quite original. The two works on this disc (released just last year) are the work of a mature and evolving artist from my neighbor to the north (not the 51st U.S. State).
The disc begins with World Within (2015), a chamber work of a brief but symphonic dimension that provides the listener with a sonic taste of the composer’s work at the time of that emerging composer award. It is scored for a modestly sized chamber orchestra. The composer describes the work as a musical metaphor describing the visuals of staring into a little sphere (like a terrarium) as well as a metaphor for the experience of deep emotion. It appears to be a set of variations in more or less classical tradition, This concern with visual, emotional, and musical metaphor develop much more substantially in the five movement Symphonies of Mother and Child (2022), the featured work on this fine Redshift Records release.
Ms. Pon shares, in the concise liner notes, the intended metaphorical underpinnings of both works on the disc, and describes each of the five movements of this symphony. The composer invokes the same metaphor that Luciano Berio did in titling his masterful “Sinfonia” of 1968, the original meaning of “sounding together”. In doing so she invokes her connection to the past and the evolving meaning of “symphony”. She also returns to her focus on her internal world contemplating her experiences as a mother. It is ,perhaps, a world known more completely to women who have borne children, but the music does speak universally.
The performance duties are discharged most enthusiastically by Vancouver’s Turning Point Ensemble under the able guidance of Owen Underhill. This music, I suspect, may not be easy to play but it is a delight to hear. Whether the listener connects with the intended metaphors, their own metaphors, the music, or both, the music and performance here are likely to connect with listeners. This is quite a spectacular release and puts Nova Pon on my musical radar which I will monitor eagerly awaiting this artist’s next effort.
I must also comment on the beautiful album art work by Kathryn Beals which seems to evoke the very images that inspired the composer. No surprise that both album design and liner notes were also the work of Ms. Pon. This is a very personal album that explores themes not often considered in the classical western music traditions, a trend that this writer has noticed lately. As the emerging composer was born and crowned, she now shares her personal experiences of pregnancy, childbirth, and nurturing even as she gives birth to some amazing new music. Give a listen. You will be glad you did.
What a gut punch! I’ve been seeing this man in concert, buying his albums, reviewing his albums and imagining in some way that this artist, whose work has become a constant in my life, would always be there. But along comes the inevitable finale and the gut punch that this wonderful artist is also a human being. One takes for granted sometimes that in some way they will always be there, that another concert or recording will be there. And then it isn’t.
There is great comfort in the fact that his art will live on. It will live on in his 23 or so albums but, more importantly, he lives on in the experience of his audience. The delight of his inventiveness, his humor, his genial presence will always live in my heart and in the soundtrack that plays in my head.
I generally don’t feel obliged to write eulogies but for some reason (or reasons) I find his passing to be rather marvelously impactful. Thank you to all of his collaborators, friends, and family. Thank you to the producers who have lovingly preserved his legacy in a bunch of great recordings. And thank you to the anonymous fellow audience members and music buyers and listeners who supported this wonderful artist over the years.
An overflow crowd packed the lovely auditorium at Berkeley’s David Brower Center this past January 19th. Octogenarians (and younger folks as well) populated both stage and audience in a show of appreciation for a man whose work as music director of KPFA (1969- 1992) and subsequently as an arts promoter and curator of new music in California’s Bay Area continues to enhance the artistic reputation of the Bay Area.
A rare and exciting aspect of this evening were the rare opportunities to hear Charles’ music, including representative sound poetry classics and a recent major opus capped off by a world premiere of a new work.
The hands of the artist. Photo by Allan J. Cronin
The genuine affection, appreciation, and respect was palpable as the honored guest demonstrated his skill at hosting when a couple of technical glitches slowed (but did not stop) the amiable birthday celebration. The audience waited calmly and quietly.
Both the guest of honor and the host (Liam Herb) used a well honed, self effacing humor used most skillfully to entertain the sympathetic audience while the technical difficulties were surmounted in real time.
Panel discussion featuring (left to right) Susan Stone, Anthony Gnazzo, Paul Dresher, Charles Amirkhanian, Sarah Cahill, and Liam Herb (Photo by Allan J. Cronin, Creative Commons license)
Herb, a composer and performer, introduced himself in the midst of the technical resolutions, graciously announcing that, as producer, he accepts responsibility for the glitches. Charles maintained his familiar master of ceremonies crowd pleasing good humor as Herb worked goodnauturedly (if that’s a word) with the rest of the crew to resolve the issues and get on with the show.
The formal opening remarks were given by Other Minds’ associate director, Blaine Todd. And the evening began in force.
Blaine Todd (photo by Allan J. Cronin, Creative Commons license)
The program glided past the initial hiccup to present a film about our guest of honor. The bevy of fans and bona fide new music professionals sat with rapt attention as the film, featuring the familiar faces of several “Bang on a Can” artists.
The late great Robert Black interviewed by Amirkhanian in the streaming premiere of Audible Autopsy. (Photo of film appearance by Allan J. Cronin)
Excerpts from the 2015 Other Minds 20 documentary featured Julia Wolfe, David Lang, and Peter Gordon (now, it seems elder statesmen (and women) in their own right.
Production manager Liam Herb then served as moderator for a conversation or live interview (with Amirkhanian) for the next segment. This was followed by some videos with music by the guest of honor:
Real Time/T.V. Time Video with Amirkhanian’s “Muchrooms”
The film, presented in its entirety was accompanied by “Muchrooms”, from the CD recording of that standalone work.
Next was Amirkhanian’s and Carol Law’s classic collaboration: History of Collage (1981). This is a major work and a great collaboration with his partner in life and arts. I’m pleased to add my own shot from the performance at the Other Minds 23 experience, my favorite OM festival(so far).
History of Collage (1981) photo by Allan J. Cronin taken at the Other Minds 23 wonderful live performance of this work (Photo by Allan J. Cronin is Creative Commons license 2015)
We also heard and saw Audience (1978) with photography by Law and music/poetry by Amirkhanian followed by Chairs with photography by James Petrillo and music/poetry by Amirkhanian (excerpts from Seat Belt, Seat Belt (1973).
There followed a panel discussion led by Carol Law with Betsy Davids discussing David’s’ work and her connections via her work as a book artist. These two embody the experimental visual arts that characterize the skills of these fellow artists both onstage and off tonight. In fact, interactive collaboration and both respect and friendship were everywhere to be seen in this warm and pleasantly nostalgic evening.
Carol Law speaking with Betsy Davids (Photo by Allan J. Cronin, Creative Commons license)
This was followed by a recording of a major opus, Ratchet Attach It (2021) recently played at one of the (still ongoing) Other Minds Festival. This work is a major opus by Mr. Amirkhanian, one I’m pleased to say I heard live at the Chinese Theater in San Francisco a few years ago. Scored for a huge percussion ensemble, with audio recordings, and a conductor who moves between the podium and a space among the performers playing with the ensemble. It is perhaps one of his most integrated and evolved compositions. Stunning to hear it live. Glad to hear the (always too short) excerpts.
In fact Mr. Amirkhanian, a fixture in the arts of the Bay Area, continues to influence musical taste and present new and interesting music as he has for well over 50 years. His work as Executive Director of Other Minds includes the fabulous OM Records as well as the annual Other Minds Festival and a continual flow of carefully curated concert events by luminaries (or soon to be luminaries) throughout the Bay Area and beyond. There is also the huge archive of thousands of hours of interviews and concerts that are available in streaming audio and video via the Other Minds website.
Many of the artists featured in the Other Minds concert series continue to work, innovate, and expand musical concepts. An Other Minds commission, Henry Brant’s Organ Concerto, Ice Field, earned him a Pulitzer Prize. Many have gone on to greater achievements in their respective careers. Of course not every composer started their musical careers at Other Minds concerts. Many mid or late career musicians have joyfully been represented over the years. Its one of those festivals that innovative musicians seek to participate.
Such achievements reflect on Amirkhanian’s leadership and curatorial acumen, but more importantly his relationships with his fellow artists. Charles has earned a reputation for his support and his collaborative nature. Arguably, everyone in the house (and the overflow in the lobby) all have a degree of connection to Charles and his guests. It is why we’re all here tonight.
Charles Amirkhanian and Joseph Bohigian performing with Liam Herb’s electronics (Photo by Allan J. Cronin, Creative Commons license)
Following a brief intermission we were treated to a world premiere of a new work by our guest of honor, Noose Ratchet (2025) for two percussionists and electronics. Amirkhanian performing and/or promoting his own music is a relatively rare event and this alone was certainly worth the trip.
The work is arguably a trio for two percussionists playing ratchets, a curious instrument whose sound, if not entirely ubiquitous, is familiar. And the two play interactively with the electronics (the third member of the trio). Extended techniques and other duties get assigned (when in doubt it’s responsibility of the percussion section, right)?
There followed a lively and friendly panel discussion amongst frequent and past collaborators Susan Stone, Anthony Gnazzo, Paul Dresher, Sarah Cahill, and Liam Herb. This truly felt like a gathering of friends.
Program Berio:Wasserklavier Schubert: Fantasia in F minor for Four Hands Cage:Experiences No. 1 Nancarrow (arr. Thomas Adès): Study No. 6 John Adams:Hallelujah Junction Arvo Pärt:Hymn to a Great City Rachmaninoff:Symphonic Dances
From the very beginning this concert defied convention in so many ways. The Granada Theater hosted a sold out crowd for these two distinctly different rock stars. The two pianos were arranged so that the artists were sitting next to each other, Wang was seated slightly upstage and stage right while Òlafsson was stage left and a bit downstage (the conventional staging for two piano concerts has the pianists facing each other and equally center stage). Also noted was Wang using the iPad score reader whilst Òlafsson had a page turner for the hard copy paper score.
On the surface these two artists have distinctly different personas. Both are possessed of a high level of technical skill along with interpretive abilities that communicate with their audiences. But the juxtaposition of these two pianists is a pairing that had this listener wonder if they could occupy the same space. Òlafsson the contemplative man in the dapper blue suit and the introspective facade contrasted just a bit with Wang’s more extroverted showmanship. And Wang’s fashionable but characteristically flashy outfit (which was even “flashier” after intermission).
The concert began with a brief and generally lesser known piece by the great Italian composer, Luciano Berio (1925-2003), his Wasserklavier (1965). This short, contemplative work functioned as an appetizer as the duo segued directly to Franz Schubert’s (1797-1828) gorgeous Fantasy in F minor (1828). This work originally written for one piano, four hands, was played here on two pianos. The work, written in the year of Schubert’s death is of symphonic dimension. The duo played rather uptempo but delivered a very convincing performance.
After acknowledging applause they gave us a sort of brief palate cleanser, John Cage’s (1918-1997) Experiences No. 1 (1945-8), a work for two pianos. The soft and sparse texture segued to Thomas Adès arrangement of Conlon Nancarrow’s Player Piano Study No. 6 (ca. 1962). This study, one of about 50 studies, sounds gentle and bluesy but belies the actual rhythmic complexities which characterize all the studies. This team handled the complexities most deftly.
This was followed by another work of symphonic dimension, that of John Adams’ (1960- ) Hallelujah Junction (1996). It was this writer’s first hearing of the work and it was a charming and engaging post minimalist work that challenged the virtuosity of the artists and gave ample evidence of how well they performed together. The rousing ovation then took us to intermission.
(Photo by David Bazemore, all rights reserved)
The second half included Wang in a more revealing outfit more characteristic of much of the publicity photos I’ve lately seen of her. But most important is the artist’s virtuosity and interpretive power. She is a force of nature. Òlafsson is just a gentler expression that managed to link most successfully with his upstage partner on this night.
They began with Arvo Pärt’s (1955- ) Hymn to a Great City (1984-2004). This ca. 3 minute work (the city of greatness is not named) was a soft meditative work, perhaps echoing the Berio work which opened the concert.
It led without pause into Rachmaninoff’s (1873-1943) Symphonic Dances (1940) I had only been familiar with the lovely version for large orchestra (apparently written concurrently with the orchestral version) so it took a bit to grasp the intricacies that suggest that this music was written for two skilled pianists. Òlafsson and Wang traded moments to shine in this truly symphonic work but it worked very successfully with these two artists in their respective driver’s seats.
A standing ovation brought the two back to the stage where they sat next to each other for a rendition of Schubert’s bouncy Marche Militaire. A second encore two dances, by Dvorák and Brahms, eased into a calmer Brahms’ familiar Waltz in A-flat Major capped off a truly fine concert, not a union of opposites but rather a collaboration of genius.
A Photography Experiment done during this self imposed “sabbatical” (Creative Commons License by Allan J. Cronin
I am not an academic but I use the term “sabbatical” to denote the two and a half month break I’ve taken from writing this blog. My reasons for the break don’t really matter but I decided I owe it to myself to make an accounting of what I have done during this time.
Well, in addition to catching up on reading, I managed to attend many films at the 40th anniversary of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival in February. Several of the 20+ films I saw will get at least brief reviews to share the amazing artistic wealth from these films.
The new home of the film festival on upper state in Santa Barbara. (Street photography by yours truly)
The old cineplex known as “Fiesta Five” is going to undergo major renovation including new air conditioning, projection systems, and sound systems. These five little theaters hosted many of this year’s films along with the (already fabulous) indie film center at the Riviera Theater as well as the 2000 seat Arlington and smaller venues like the Marjorie Luke Theater and others.
Temporally nestled between the just completed Sundance Festival and preceding the Oscars, the festival is conveniently set to attract stars and visitors to this historically low tourism portion of the year. And the newly acquired theater complex is set in a less traveled segment of State Street.
Meanwhile I have been adjusting to a new work assignment (still within the county system). The adjustment has more to do with the learning curve for a new department and related protocols. Not a horrible stress actually, but a time eater for sure.
As I move into my thirteenth year of this blog (I am also approaching my 40th year as a Registered Nurse) I have made some decisions regarding this blog and have some interesting plans (at least to me). Please do stay tuned.
One of the things I did not expect, but pleases me, is the fact that I’m still averaging about a thousand hits per month even though I haven’t published anything new lately. WordPress tracks visitors and view counts along with the countries from which the views are coming. So it’s impossible to tell if my viewers are new or long time readers just checking to see when something new is published. At any rate I am pleased to have a following of people interested in a rather lesser known musical genre, that of new, mostly recent, and sometimes decided difficult listening. Thanks to you all.
In addition to the film festival I did attend some events more in line with the general theme of this blog which will appear in forthcoming reviews. One of the most important to me was the 80th birthday of composer, producer, musician, broadcaster, and promoter of new music and executive producer of Other Minds (an annual new music festival held in San Francisco). My brief volunteer tenure at Other Minds prompted me to start this blog. There are mountains of new music articles, interviews, concert recordings, interviews, etc. on their website.
So, my apologies to those who came here for new material and had to go nearly three months without. This is the first of many concert and CD reviews to come.
This listener hears the influence, or at least some common elements of Morton Feldman, La Monte Young, and a too little known David Toub. What are those common elements? The long, frequently slow development of Feldman and Toub along with long held tones of La Monte Young.
Emilie Cecilia Lebel (photo from composer’s website)
What we have here are two solo piano pieces by Canadian composer Emilie Cecilia Lebel (1983- ). After reviewing her nicely organized website I came to the conclusion that this composer works in drones, long held tones, and long form works that not infrequently bleed into sound installation and ambient musics categories. She writes for piano and other instruments including works that are suitable for traditional concert stages as well as works that function in a more ambient mode like gallery installations or site specific sound design.
These two works are best heard in an environment that allows the listener to focus on the slow development of ideas that both these works share. That environment can be a recital hall or, as in this listener’s case, a CD player attached to some good headphones, reclining with eyes closed. Despite said slow development, these pieces compelled this listener to stay put and really enjoy the way this music unfolds as the initially perceived sparseness gives way to allow the structure and logic to emerge.
Despite the perceived similarities to the sound world of other composers as mentioned above, these pieces have a unique and developed voice. In a sense they are the next generation containing the musical DNA of their predecessors.
One of the things I had to look up was the “e bow drone”. This little electromagnetic device is more commonly found in jazz and fusion, perhaps rock bands as well. Primarily used with electric guitars and basses, this device excites a targeted string on a given instrument to produce long held tones. Exactly how it is used by the performers is doubtless indicated in the score but, suffice it to say that it works well here. These held tone fades from foreground to background and back again as the music relates always to the anchor of the drone.
Both pieces utilize this drone apparently as both a structural and sonic tool. By that I mean that the music unfolds partly via its relationship to the drone tone. Within that framework the pianist plays a variety of chords, arpeggios and near melodic lines that produce cadences which delineate the structure. And here I’m only relating this listener’s experience. I do not have the knowledge to attempt a more sophisticated analysis but I guess the point is that such analysis, while doubtless interesting, is not essential to the appreciation of this music and I respectfully leave this to those with more sophisticated training than I.
The two works presented are here performed by the artists who commissioned them. Technical concerns aside, these works are satisfying to the listener able to focus on the flow of the music. These are well developed, engaging pieces that conceivably could be successful as a concert performance or an ambient sound installation.
This release is another valuable feather in the cap of the Vancouver based Redshift Records. This label celebrates Canadian Composers new and old (mostly new). Interested listeners would do well also to check out Riparian Acoustics, a marketing organization with some fascinating curatorial radar. (N.B. This reviewer has published at least two other Redshift productions reviews here and here).
This is a composer I’m delighted to have made it onto my personal radar. She deserves to be a person of interest for successful artistic transgressions, so to speak. Enjoy!
By whom? This is latest release in this fascinating series that seeks to record music that has been neglected. Music in Exile shares a kinship with Decca’s “Entartete Musik” (Degenerate Music) series, among others. That series focused on music and composers judged inferior by the leaders of the Third Reich. Their suppression of music paralleled their suppression of visual art which suppressed works purported to be “degenerate” and presumably toxic to their political goals. That meant, in the case of music, essentially two categories. The largest is the suppression of Jewish composers (regardless of style and/or content) and also musical modernism that the regime did not understand. Similar suppression occurred under Stalin in Russia.
But Music in Exile casts a wider net. One does not need a totalitarian regime to cause suppression. Economic and performance opportunities are mediated by many factors and music gets neglected for many reasons, some far less onerous than directed political oppression. This music which was composed for general performance has no overt political agenda, rather it is the victim of political and economic agendas.
That, in a nutshell, is the essence of the choices of repertoire that ARC (Artists of the Royal Conservatory) director, Simon Wynberg makes to create this fascinating and historically significant recording project. Of course neither suppression nor neglect confer values by themselves. I mean, the thrill of finding a major masterpiece is certainly the driving force but, even if these recordings ultimately only fill the gaps in the list of historical recordings, the opportunity for listeners to hear them is the point here. That said, I am appending a list of this ensemble’s discography (kindly supplied by promotional staff) thus far:
ARC ENSEMBLE DISCOGRAPHY
On the Threshold of Hope, Mieczyslaw Weinberg Chamber Music (2006) with Richard Margison, tenor RCA Red Seal (Sony) 82876-87769 2 (GRAMMY and JUNO nominations, 2007) Right through the Bone: Julius Röntgen Chamber Music (2007) RCA Red Seal (Sony) 88697-158372 (GRAMMY nomination, 2008) Two Roads to Exile: Walter Braunfels String Quintet, Adolf Busch String Sextet (2010) RCA Red Seal (Sony) 88697-64490 2
Music in Exile: Chamber Works by Paul Ben-Haim (2013) Chandos 10769 Music in Exile: Chamber Works by Jerzy Fitelberg (2015) Chandos 10877 (GRAMMY nomination, 2016) Music in Exile: Chamber Works by Szymon Laks (2017) Chandos 10983 (JUNO nomination, 2018) Music in Exile: Chamber Works by Walter Kaufmann (2020) Chandos 202170 (OPUS Klassik nomination, 2020) Music in Exile: Chamber Works by Dmitri Klebanov (2021) Chandos 20231 (JUNO nomination, 2022) Music in Exile: Chamber Works by Alberto Hemsi (2022) Chandos 20243 (JUNO nomination, 2023) Music in Exile: Chamber Works by Robert Muller-Hartmann (November, 2023) Chandos Records All titles produced by David Frost and engineered by Carl Talbot
Now comes the latest release, all premiere recordings, of chamber music by “Frederick [Friedrich] Block [Bloch]” (1899-1945). This series is a real “feather in the cap” of the wonderful Chandos label whose curatorial choices are always intelligent and wide ranging.
This latest release is another triumph, another unveiling of some truly fine music which, thanks to the passion of researcher/producer Simon Wynberg and the fine musicians of the Toronto Conservatory, are now available in definitive performances lovingly documented in high quality recordings. Even if these works never again have performances or recordings (something this writer doubts), they will have a life heretofore denied them in the lasting medium of recorded sound. In addition to the music, Wynberg pens some profoundly useful program notes that help provide flavor and context to this all but forgotten composer. Wynberg notes that, while Block’s archive was acquired by the New York Public Library and carefully preserved, this recording represents the first serious effort to explore his ultimate legacy. All works are world premiere recordings.
Four works, all but one written in the interwar years (1918-1939), an era in which American composer Aaron Copland suggested that there remain many works which deserve attention. How right he was.
The disc opens with the substantial four movement Piano Trio No. 2 Op. 26 (1930). Frederick Block was not a modernist or innovator but that is not a bad thing. Block was a fan of Gustav Mahler’s music and, as such, a proponent of a similarly post romantic ethic. Here we have a highly entertaining work which is challenging to performers but wonderfully entertaining to audiences.
The first movement signals a post Brahmsian style with highly virtuosic writing and a slightly extended harmonic language just enough to let the listener know that the 19th century has indeed passed.
It is followed by a playful, brief scherzo-like movement followed by a lovely, sometimes mournful adagio and a truly fun last movement deriving inspiration from tango music but still firmly ensconced in classical traditions going back to the classical era of Mozart and Haydn.
It left this listener longing to hear Maestro Block’s first essay in this form (and sparked curiosity about his other unheard music). Perhaps a future release will expand the exploration and documentation of this forgotten master still further.
Next up is String Quartet Op. 23 (1929-30) cast in the classical four movements. Again the harmonic language is just noticeably post romantic (and quite beautiful). It is easy to imagine this work included in a satisfying evening of chamber music. It is melodic and requires significant performance skills but poses little challenge to the engaged listener.
The Suite for Clarinet and Piano Op.73 (1944), written at the height of the Second World War, consists of 5 brief movements (the longest clocks in at just over 3 minutes and the entire suite at just shy of 8 minutes). It is as lively and engaging as imaginable, suggesting no echoes of the still ongoing world war. It is sort of a delightful palate cleanser for the closing work on the disc.
And the closing work is in a form born in the romantic era with Schubert’s “Trout Quintet” (1819) being the shining emblematic work in that genre. Other well known examples include the quintet by Robert Schumann (1842) and that of Johannes Brahms (1864). Now I don’t mean to suggest that Block’s entry in the genre will give these classics serious competition but this 1929 entry would do well in a pairing with one or all of the aforementioned classics.
Block’s Piano Quintet is cast in three movements and is a beautiful example of some of the best post romantic pieces for this chamber grouping. As with the previous works on this recording, this one delights the ear with rich melodic and harmonic gestures that would likely please a chamber music audience.
This disc makes a strong case for further curatorial efforts by Mr. Wynberg and the fine musicians of the Royal Conservatory in Toronto. This is a wonderful release which adds some substantial pieces to the chamber music repertory. It is also, in its way, a strong advocacy of musical art as well as a condemnation of those people and forces which cause the oppression of artistic expression.
In addition to Simon Wynberg’s scholarly curatorial efforts, thanks are due to the following musicians of the Royal Canadian Conservatory: Erica Raum and Marie Bérard, violins; Steven Dann, viola; Tomas Wiebe, cello; Joaquin Valdepeñas, clarinet; and Kevin Ahfat, piano.
If you’re a chamber music fan and/or a supporter of the arts, you owe it to yourself to check this one out. You won’t be disappointed.
İlhan Kemaleddin Mimaroğlu (1926-2012) photo credit unknown, fair use
Portrait of Ahmet M. Ertegun and Nesuhi Ertegun, Turkish Embassy (record room), Washington, D.C., 193- (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
It would be difficult to underestimate the impact of Turkish immigrant brothers Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegun on the American music industry in the last half of the 20th century with their promotion and production of jazz and rhythm and blues artists. Their lesser known colleague, Ilhan Mimaroglu labored under a slightly different esthetic. In addition to having been involved with the production of many artists’ work on the Atlantic label (including Charles Mingus, Freddie Hubbard, et al) his study of the developing techniques of electronic and tape-based music helped him develop a unique voice as a composer where he worked with electronics, tape, acoustic instruments, musique concrete, and combinations of these media. He was equally skilled in the art of music production and recording and he utilized this knowledge to produce an impressive body of work which deserves to be better known. He also curated the sub label Finnadar to release his own music and that of other artists with similar vision like Anthony Braxton, Frederic Rzewski, Morton Feldman and others.
Mimaroglu wrote a number of works reflecting his political views during the same turbulent years during which Atlantic records shaped the popular soundtrack of the sixties era. Using his knowledge of studio technology in combination with emerging developments in electronic music synthesis he created many purely electronic studies, musique concrete, at least 4 string quartets, solo piano pieces, and more that has yet to be fully catalogued.
First let me clarify the term ‘Agitprop’. This is a hybrid word or ‘portmanteau’ for the terms ‘agitation’ and ‘propaganda’. The word appears to have first been coined and used in conjunction with the Russian Bolshevik revolution and it’s political tactics. The idea was to create a form of propaganda that would not only inform but also encourage action.
This unusual piece, a concatenation of an electronic score, the Freddie Hubbard Quintet, organ, and strings is perhaps his greatest example of Mimaroglu’s brand of political music. It is by no means his only agitprop/ political piece but it may be his finest and one of the best works of this thorny, frequently controversial genre.
The title is a combination of the name of the town (Son My), the location of the My Lai massacre, and the ironic words, “Sing me a song of Songmy”. The collage and non-linear format of the piece actually contains a dizzying mix of concurrent horrors including the Sharon Tate murders and others whose subjects await a comprehensive analysis by a historian and/or a musicologist. The work includes poetry by Fazil Husnu Daglarca, news clippings, etc. Luciano Berio did something similar in his similarly political masterpiece, Sinfonia (1968). That work is rife with musical and textural references subsequently enumerated by the late American composer/musicologist, Alan Stout.
This is also one of the most expensive productions of a mix of evolving musical genres with a strongly controversial and ugly subject. It can stand in comparison to Picasso’s Guernica for its power to provoke. Add the thorny early electronics with the free jazz of Hubbard and the jazz/blues inflected writing, and you have a powerful indictment of war crimes but hardly a best seller. And it is only with the healing of time and the fading of the sting of those memories that this work has begun to be appreciated more fully.
Terry Riley with a t-shirt displaying the entire score of “In C” (photo from Facebook, copyright unknown)
November 4th, 2024 marks the 60th anniversary of the premiere of Terry Riley’s seminal masterpiece, “In C”. After having completed a variety of respectable compositional efforts, Terry Riley (1935- ) was jolted by the Muse to write this defining work that charted a path very different from that of the western classical mold of the composer’s formal education. It premiered in the very unconventional venue of a house in San Francisco, not in an auditorium designed for concerts. And it’s one of those pieces that now marks the transition from almost purely experimental writing to a style later dubbed “minimalism” (though many composers whose music is subsumed under this title eschew it in varying degrees). And whether you call it minimalism, trance music, drone, etc., the style would come to dominate a huge portion of concert works and recordings.
The score consists of 53 short musical phrases with no specified instrumentation and with no conductor’s score, just parts with a seemingly simple set of instructions. One page is what one might expect of a sketch of a larger work to be, not a complete score but, that’s it, One page with the instruction for the musician to repeat each cell or phrase ad libitum and then move on to the next. It was ostensibly the suggestion of composer/performer Steve Reich to have a pianist play eighth note repetitions of the top two highest octaves on the keyboard. In addition to this “click track” like strategy, the playing of those high “C”s also serves to anchor the tonality much as continuo does in that quasi improvisational baroque practice.
There is simply no finer account and analysis of this music than that of Robert Carl’s “In C”. Robert Carl (1954- ) is a teacher, composer, performer, and musicologist. I do not presume to have as extensive an analysis as he does but I’m interested here in providing a celebratory perspective from where I sit (and have been seated).
This music (as does all art) stands in a context with concurrent and recent events surrounding its conception and performance. Temporally it stands along with other notable compositions from 1964: Witold Lutoslawski- String Quartet, John Coltrane (admittedly one of Riley’s influences)- the albums, “Bessie’s Blues” and “Lonnie’s Lament”, Igor Stravinsky- Elegy for JFK and Variations in Memoriam Aldous Huxley (both men died on November 23rd, 1963), Roger Sessions- Symphony No. 5 and his opera, “Montezuma”, Milton Babbitt- Philomel, Karlheinz Stockhausen- Mixtur, Ben Johnston- Sonata for Microtonal Piano, Luciano Berio- Folksongs (written and premiered at Mills College, the later home of the Tape Music Center where Berio was teaching then), Olivier Messiaen- Et Expecto Ressurectionem Mortuorum, Iannis Xenakis- Eonta, and La Monte Young- (the first iteration of his masterpiece), The Well Tuned Piano.
My little list here is just a sampling of the western classical and jazz works that graced the natal year of “In C”. Admittedly, it is a cornucopia of some more experimental, some less so music that lie in this historical orbit. But, among the works in this list, it is the work of John Coltrane and La Monte Young that shares musical DNA with Riley’s aesthetic in this music. The other works contemporary mentioned represent a sort of “Garden of Forking Paths“ to a panoply of styles very different from the work at hand.
At a time when the style of American pop music had just recently met The Beatles, this work was a sort of coalescence of experiments done by La Monte Young, Steve Reich, and others. “In C” seems to have come out fully formed in its way. It was seemingly influenced by pop, jazz, and blues (whose use of repetition is endemic). 60 years later it is performed frequently and there exists at least 40 or so recordings of the work.
When I began writing this article I realized that Robert Carl’s book on this work fully covers the history and provides a definitive analysis to which I cannot contribute anything additionally useful. I then considered eliciting commentary from musicians and listeners about this music but found little interest because that has been well covered by several previous anniversary essays. So I decided to share a discography and photos of some the recordings I could find that have given me further insights into this touchstone work.
This discography is not comprehensive but my intent here is to celebrate this anniversary with the cover artwork that adorns the ever increasing documenting of this landmark of western art music. I will present what I believe is a representative selection of some 40+ versions.
Your humble author was 8 at the time of this work’s premiere. And my first hearing of ‘In C’ was in 1976 when my local radio station, the great WFMT in Chicago, aired a program curated by Raymond Wilding-White, a composer and professor of music at De Paul University. His task was to present representative works of American music, one for each day of the nation’s bicentennial year. ‘in C’ was one of them.
Since then I have heard many interpretations of this work. The original performance was at 321 Divisadero Street in San Francisco, California on November 4th, 1964. The original performers were: Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Jon Gibson, Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster, Morton Subotnick, Warner Jepson, Tony Martin, William Maginnis, and Ramon Sender (who celebrated his 90th birthday this past week). This venue was the second and last home of the San Francisco Tape Music Center before it relocated and was renamed The Mills College Center for Contemporary Music in 1966 in Oakland.
Here, with brief commentaries, are my favorites. There are at least 38 versions according to the Wikipedia article. Here are my personal favorites in chronological order of release date:
The original Columbia Records release (1968)
If you only have one recording this is probably the one you want. Recorded in 1968, this brought the work effectively to a wide audience via international distribution. The instrumentation (some overdubbed) includes: saxophone, oboe, bassoon, trumpet, clarinet, flute, viola, trombone, vibraphone, marimbaphone.
Riley with the Chinese Film Orchestra (1989)
This important recording was made in China around the time of the Tiananmen Square uprising and the tapes were in effect smuggled out of the country in the aftermath of that incident. It stands as a fascinating document of eastern musicians encountering and interpreting this masterpiece.
The 25th anniversary release on New Albion (1990)
Don’t you just love anniversaries? By the time of this release (1989), this work had been disseminated into wide geographic regions and cultures. This version includes many of the musicians who premiered the work and this “traditional” reading is a loving homage to Riley’s work.
The Bang on a Can release (1998)
The Bang on a Can All Stars are among the finest ambassadors of new music. They have earned the right to put their stamp on any new work they choose and subsequently bring it anew to another generation of listeners.
Prog Rock does homage to Terry Riley (2001)
If you want to hear the wide range of musicians who have chosen to pay homage to this work this is a fine place to start.
The Africa Express release (2015)
Another fine example of the way this work can sound from a Central African perspective. This performance from Mali is absolutely electrifying.
Another fine culturally tinged version (2017)
This album is a personal favorite from the Brooklyn based collective featuring instruments from Hindustani traditions and others alongside western instruments. You can read my enthusiastic review here.
There are probably at least 50 recordings of this work. Some are private, maybe even bootleg versions. Clearly this work continues to become more and more essential and influential piece of music. It is not unlike a musical version of the Iconic monolith from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. The anomalous structure was of alien origin and was purported to accelerate the evolution of species who encounter it.
Riley’s work is most .definitely of terrestrial origin (well, San Francisco anyway) but, clearly this work continues to intrigue musicians worldwide and has arguably influenced the development of music itself.
A landmark set of recordings of Schoenberg’s chamber music for strings
The Juilliard Quartet, founded in 1946 by composer William Schuman (1910-1992) is a highly respected and justly lauded ensemble. This fine CD set includes two complete cycles of Arnold Schoenberg’s String Quartets. It also includes the composer’s too little known String Trio of 1945 and a ravishing string sextet version of Verklärte Nacht. This 7 CD set documents a bit of recording history as well, offering the original mono recordings of his numbered string quartets alongside the Grammy winning (Steven Epstein, producer) 1978 stereo recording (which also included an early unnumbered string quartet in D major).
I grew up expanding my musical horizons with that 1978 release, offered here for the first time on CD format. But the present box set was my first hearing of the 1951 mono recordings of the numbered quartets.
I would venture a guess that most listeners, even those drawn to the sorts of modernism that characterizes my blog reviews, probably own no more than one set of the Schoenberg String Quartets. They just don’t seem to get the same love that other modernists like Bartok, Ravel, Debussy, and maybe even Elliott Carter get from fans of new music. (All of these composers, by the way, have had their quartets recorded by the Julliard Quartet). But hearing two readings across just over a thirty year span by two different generations of this iconic ensemble does much to suggest that Arnold deserves at least another reckoning and perhaps an elevation of his reputation as a brilliant musical mind. It is also a fine testament to the enduring creative interpretive skills in the various generations who have been The Julliard String Quartet.
For that reason alone (the inclusion of those 1951 recordings), discerning listeners will want to own this wonderful set. The production is itself a work of homage and respect with some lovely nostalgia inducing reproductions of the original cover art. And the photographic image of a vinyl record that adorns several CD helps set that tone, one which virtually screams “COLLECTOR’S ITEM”.
I fell in love when I opened the box
The Juilliards have helped identify and characterize the whole of string quartet literature much as the Guarneri Quartet, the Arditti, Kronos, etc. have. Having a work performed and recorded by any of these (to name but a few performers) virtually assures the accepted work a place in the actively performed canon of concert works. It is a stamp of authenticity.
The Quartets span most of the creative span of the composer’s career. That early D Major Quartet (1897), First Quartet (1905), and the Second Quartet (1908) were written before his 12 tone method had been fully developed. We hear the 12 tone method in the Third and Fourth Quartets and the Trio.
That Second Quartet is apparently the first time a soprano had been used as an adjunct to the ensemble. Uta Graf sings in the 1951 recording and Benita Valente in the 1975 cycle. The text (curiously not included in the otherwise delightful and intelligent notes) are by poet Stefan George (1868-1933). I include them here in English for interested listeners:
Rapture I feel air from another planet. The faces that once turned to me in friendship Pale in the darkness before me.
And trees and paths that I once loved fade away So that I scarcely recognize them, and you bright Beloved shadow—summoner of my anguish—
Are now extinguished completely in deeper flames In order, after the frenzy of warring confusion, To reappear in a pious display of awe.
I lose myself in tones, circling, weaving, With unfathomable thanks and unnamable praise; Bereft of desire, I surrender myself to the great breath.
A tempestuous wind overwhelms me In the ecstasy of consecration where the fervent cries Of women praying in the dust implore:
Then I see a filmy mist rising In a sun-filled, open expanse That includes only the farthest mountain retreats.
The land looks white and smooth like whey. I climb over enormous ravines. I feel like I am swimming above the furthest cloud
In a sea of crystal radiance— I am only a spark of the holy fire I am only a whisper of the holy voice.
Litany Deep is the sadness that gloomily comes over me, Again I step, Lord, in your house.
Long was the journey, my limbs are weary, The shrines are empty, only anguish is full.
My thirsty tongue desires wine. The battle was hard, my arm is stiff.
Grudge peace to my staggering steps, for my hungry gums break your bread!
Weak is my breath, calling the dream, my hands are hollow, my mouth fevers.
Lend your coolness, douse the fires, rub out hope, send the light!
Still active flames are glowing inside my heart; in my deepest insides a cry awakens.
Kill the longing, close the wound! Take love away from me, and give me your happiness!
Schoenberg said he had been inspired by the poetry to compose these angular, expressionistic melodies. The poetry, like the music reflects tenor of the times.
In addition to the quartet cycles, this set is intelligently filled out by the inclusion of the string sextet version of the 1899 Verklärte Nacht. Here the Julliards (consisting of Robert Mann and Joel Smirnoff, violins; Samuel Rhodes, viola; Joel Krosnick, cello) are augmented by two exceptionally worthy soloists, Yo Yo Ma on cello and Walter Trampler on viola. It is followed on the disc with a powerful reading of the masterful String Trio from 1946. It is an illustration of the historical development of the composer over that 44 year period. I listened casually the first time but more carefully in subsequent hearings as the disc moved from the last track division of Verklärte Nacht to the first of the Trio finding this to be a lucid illustration of the composer’s seemingly natural development from post Wagnerian harmonies of fin de siecle Transfigured Night to those of the now fully developed 12 tone compositional method so beautifully integrated in the post war String Trio (played here by Robert Mann, Samuel Rhodes, and Joel Krosnick).
I used the term “post war” in my previous paragraph as a convenient segue to the last piece in this collection. The Trio is offered in a 1965-6 recording (stereo) played by Robert Mann, Rafael Hillyer, and Claus Adam. It is followed by the anti fascist “Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte” from 1942, a setting of a text by Lord Byron. Here the Julliards are joined by Glenn Gould on piano and speaker John Horton. It is one of Schoenberg’s politically tinged works. It has much in common with A Survivor from Warsaw (1947) and Schoenberg can only really be understood in the context of his turbulent times.
Perhaps there’s a parallel to our turbulent present. Maybe Schoenberg can be better understood if his listeners have experienced a certain amount of existential angst. We certainly have a lot of that. But, ultimately, this box set is a cause for joy and even optimism. It is a loving document of compositional, performance, and recording excellence.
Ever since the introduction of digital recording in the 1980s there has been an ongoing controversy as to the merits of the new medium over the old. And unlike the leap from acoustic to electrical recording which happened about 1929 and the move to stereo recording in the mid 1950s the adoption of digital recording in the 1980s was not universally embraced as a step forward in recording technology by audiophiles.
So what is the issue? Well it’s really quite simple. Acoustic recording involved a needle connected to a membrane which vibrated analogously (more or less) to the sounds stimulating that membrane. Electrical recording basically extended this technology by having the membrane (in the microphone) translate the sounds into analogous electrical impulses which were then recorded to a disc and later to magnetic tape. This in turn would be used to drive a cutting lathe which cut the vinyl discs. The discs are played with a needle in the groove which reads the little bumps and translates them into electrical impulses which are amplified to drive speaker cones which excite the air and produce sound.
Digital recording involves a sampling technique in which certain sounds or parts of sounds get encoded digitally and then reproduced or re-converted back to electrical impulses which then drive speaker cones. The problem is that this is a sampling involving choices on the part of programmers as to which sounds/parameters will get encoded. So potentially this would not be as accurate a representation of the sound as analog recording which responded directly to the sound as it occurred. Of course more sampling containing more information produces a better recording than one which uses less sampling.
Now to be fair, all recording technologies have their flaws. Even the best analog recordings do not reproduce the experience of hearing the sound live and in person. Characteristics and flaws in the analog equipment can and do limit aspects of the recording. There is a limit to what this equipment can record so there are choices made even in the best case scenario as to what portions of the sound spectrum will get captured. The frequency range and dynamic range are limited for example. But the sonic experience of an analog recording is said by connoisseurs to be a warmer and more genuine sound than digital.
Certainly most people can hear the difference between early digital recordings and more recent ones. That is because the sampling has gotten better, a wider range of frequencies and dynamics are being included. But die hards will insist that analog recording was the finest recording technology for reproducing a satisfying listening experience and for faithfully reproducing the experience of the live sound.
I am not an engineer but as a person with ears I still enjoy the warm sound of analog recording. Of course I listen to digital recordings because it is the dominant technology and I want to hear new recordings. I am not advocating a change here, just pointing out the essential differences.
OK, you ask, this is all about sound but your title said it wasn’t all about sound. So what gives?
Well my intention here is to use this simple exposition of recording technology as a metaphor for the digital sampling of opinions which are rampant in today’s business driven culture. Everywhere we are asked for our opinions. Whether you are approached by an interviewer, filling out a warranty card, or evaluating some experience you’ve just had at a concert or theater your opinions are being surveyed and placed into some sort of database which in turn undergoes some kind of analysis and that analysis, in turn, drives future choices made in a given business model.
Most of the audience at the première of Igor Stravinsky‘s Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) were rather famously not pleased with their listening experience on that night in 1913. Yet today there are few people who would deny that this music is one of the most significant compositions of the twentieth century. Modern business practices however would dictate that such music should not be programmed because it displeased the audience who would likely not return if they expected a repeat of such an experience.
The great musicologist/conductor/composer Nicolas Slonimsky (1894-1995) identified this phenomenon in his marvelous Lexicon of Musical Invective (1953) in which he documents quite a number of critical reviews of music which is now acknowledged as great but which, on first hearing by said critics, was described as inferior. The point is well-taken. Our initial experience of a new piece of music may be very different from our subsequent opinion after hearing it again.
With the elevation of statistical modeling to a religious practice there is increasing belief that those models embody the essence of truth and clear vision. But what are the motivations behind this modeling? Anyone who has taken a statistics course or who thinks about it for a bit will realize that statistics can obscure outcomes just as efficiently as they can clarify it. So if the motivation is profit (as it should be in a business model) then there would necessarily be less of a focus on quality (whatever that is).
I have had many exciting and joyful experiences of hearing a new piece of music at a concert which I had never heard before. I have experience the exhilaration of discovery. Now not every new piece of music has this effect and, as I’ve said before, I have had that exhilaration of discovery after a second or third hearing.
I used to be very much a fan of classical broadcast radio. At the time, in my adolescence, classical music was an adventure of discovery. Of course I heard a lot of average and even poor music alongside the masterpieces but I also recall that there was an element of risk at times in programming new and less familiar music. Sometimes I was bored, sometimes I was repelled, but sometimes I discovered something new to add to my listening repertoire choices.
That was in Chicago in the 1970s and 80s with Zenith’s WEFM, WFMT and the late lamented independent WNIB. But radio seems to have changed in similar fashion in terms of its programming to that of the concert hall. Those radio stations frequently broadcast concerts of various orchestras including the Chicago Symphony, Milwaukee Symphony, Boston Symphony and various foreign orchestras. Their programming also contained a fair amount of new music.
Over the last 5-10 years or so I have found classical broadcast radio to be increasingly dull and predictable. Sure it’s good to hear Beethoven Symphonies and Mozart Piano Concertos but some stations have gone to a “request” model for their broadcasting which has resulted in an over representation of Bolero, the 1812 Overture and the broadcasting of what one writer called “wallpaper music”. Wallpaper music is a reference to any number of newly recorded repertoire which is so mediocre as to make me almost scream with boredom and ennui.
I am not advocating ditching digital recording or a libertarian approach to concert programming. Certainly both radio stations and concert organizations need to make at least a slim profit to survive. What I am advocating is the inclusion of adventure and discovery in those business models to which I referred earlier.
Democratizing musical programming and playing to the center or the majority appears to produce mediocrity. Every concert program and every broadcast classical station now are largely the same. Of course there are notable exceptions as some orchestras employ resident composers and play the occasional premiere of a new work. Less common is a second performance of a new work.
There are adventurous festivals of new music which program interesting music. But these stand outside of the vast majority of classical programming today. So, at the end of the day (or the end of this little essay) listen to what gives you joy, but don’t be afraid of new musical ideas. And just be aware of new (and old) sound recording/reproducing technology and its impact on what you hear. It is not just about the music, it’s about the sound.
Cover of the original vinyl release of “Der Floss der Medusa”
The 1913 riotous premiere of Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” is pretty well known in classical music history. Sandwiching the premiere of his masterpiece of modernism between well known conservative chestnuts such as “Les Sylphides” (an orchestration by Alexander Glazunov of piano music by Chopin, 1907-9) which opened the concert along with Carl Maria von Weber’s “Les Spectre de la Rose” (an 1841 Berlioz orchestration of Weber’s 1819 piano piece, “Invitation to the Dance”) and Alexander Borodin’s “Polovtsian Dances” from his opera “Prince Igor” (1887-1890) which were programmed to follow it. Combine these (familiar to audiences) conservative works with the Rite’s original choreography by Vaclav Nijinsky and the subject of pagan ritual that form the scenario played before an audience consisting of elite concert goers seeking a familiar easy experience along with a burgeoning group of bohemian leaning audience members (who loved the Rite’s loud, subversive nature of both music and staging) and you have a formula for conflict. Speculation is that Stravinsky and/or his producers planned this event to create a contrast for his new modernist work but more likely it was a largely a product of its time and of human nature.
Fifty two years later, Hans Werner Henze appears to have had nothing in mind (at least initially) other than the premiere of his new work, “Das Floß der Medusa” (The Raft of the Medusa) on December 9, 1968 in Hamburg’s “Planten und Blomen” Hall. The recording which was later released on DGG LPs had been done sans audience on the previous days, December 4-8th, and preparations were being made for that night’s world premiere performance before an audience.
An article would later run in the German magazine Der Spiegel describing the event. I present the text of that article in my own translation:
Der Spiegel, December 12, 1968
“What is necessary”, says Hans Werner Henze, 42, “are not museums, opera houses and world premieres … What is necessary is the creation of mankind’s greatest work of art: the world revolution.”
Last Monday, Henze’s “Das Floss der Medusa,” an “Oratorio volgare e militare, in due parti” commissioned by the NDR, was to be premiered in Hamburg — instead, there was a revolution in the hall.
The 1060 seats in Hall B by Planten un Blomen were fully occupied, the NDR Symphony Orchestra was already tuning the instruments, on the podium were ready: Edda Moser (soprano), Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (baritone) and Charles Regnier (speaker) , the North German Radio Choir, the RIAS Chamber Choir and the St. Nikolai Boys’ Choir. The game could begin, and it began — a duo volgare e militare between NDR and SDS.
Because the Berlin SDS friends under Gaston Salvatore, summoned by Henze, didn’t want to do without this premiere of the APO (Außerparlamentarische Opposition) man Henze any more than the socialist students of the Hamburg Music Academy — albeit for different reasons: The Hamburgers cared about Henze’s music as reactionary to expose the Berliners, to bring their Hamburg colleagues to reason and to divert attention to the middle-class audience. Action against Henze, argued the Berlin “Project Group Culture and Revolution,” would only benefit the bourgeois enemy.
Che Guevara (1928-1967)
After three days of palaver, the Hamburg wing was lame. For example, the intention to ask the composer to explain the structures of his music when he played Medusa was abandoned, as was the plan to intervene in the choral singing, and the attempt to expose Henze’s listeners to Henze as culinary Henze consumers.
On Monday evening, Berliners and Hamburgers moved in socialist harmony to Planten un Blomen, the premiere location that Henze claims to have confused with Blohm & Voss. At least that’s how the Berlin SDS had informed the Hamburg SDS.
NDR program director Franz Reinholz, to whom Henze owes the “Medusa” commission, knows otherwise: “Henze,” Reinholz assures, “inspected the hall himself beforehand. He was also informed about the audience.” shipyard workers, it was, the socialist students recognized once again, an audience of “rich bastards.”
Shortly before 8 p.m. the squad was ready for action in Hall B. And before the conductor Henze stepped out of the artist’s room, Che was already in the hall: the agitators had pinned a Che Guevara portrait to the desk; it was intended to remind us of what had been concealed in the program with Henze’s approval: the oratorio is dedicated to the Latin American freedom fighter.
NDR program director Franz Reinholz didn’t appreciate this memento at all – he tore down the poster. He felt that politics and art did not go together.
The students didn’t think so. They put up a new poster and hoisted the red flag, and a team of anarchists, who had come with duck decoys and other hunting instruments, hung a black one next to it. Then the radio hit, the police joined in, the RIAS Chamber Choir began, but not in unison. “Lower the red flag,” demanded one singer, two singers left sobbing: “We are Berliners and have had enough of red flags.” to whose honor they should sing, left the stage and never came back.
The composer, however, was determined to prove his revolutionary sentiment to his comrades for the first time by saying, “The red flag,” said Henze, “it stays.”
While NDR director Gerhard Schröder (SPD), long since in the safe broadcasting van, stopped the live tumult at 8:19 p.m. and radioed his listeners a recording of the dress rehearsal, his deputy, Freiherr von Hammerstein-Equord (CDU), countered in the hall the resistance of the demonstrators banners and placards; A little later, a squad of 25 police officers, visors on combat helmets, broke into the hall. “Nazis!” “Fascists!” shouted the audience. One artist yelled enthusiastically, “Down with the Reds!”
“The police,” Hammerstein explained, “were ready at the request of the NDR, which considered demonstrations possible and had to ensure the safety of its employees, the audience and valuable instruments.”
Ernst Schnabel, librettist
NDR employee Ernst Schnabel, librettist of “Medusa”, felt the precautions thoroughly. Several police officers threw him through a glass door, expedited him with six other delinquents to police headquarters, took his fingerprints, and locked him in cell 7 until midnight. Schnabel to Hammerstein-Equord: “We don’t have breakfast together anymore.”
Meanwhile, Hammerstein kept order in Planten un Blomen. When Henze informed the audience: “The intervention of the police prevented the discussion,” Hammerstein snatched the microphone from his hand. The hands in the stalls responded with rhythmic Ho Chi Minh clapping, and Henze clapped along — three times. Then he disappeared through a back door.
At that time the “raft of the Medusa” was already well advanced in the ether waves — on the usual counter-revolutionary course.
“Wherever”, the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” judged, “the choirs sang, there was the old, floating, iridescent Henze sound, which doesn’t hurt anyone and never becomes distinctive. The orchestra … strangely often reminded of Richard Strauss.”
The music critic Heinrich von Lüttwitz saw “Medusa” as a “tragi-comic absurdity” full of “romantic colours”, with “sometimes clumsy, sometimes fussy recitatives and melodramas”.
Henze biographer Klaus Geitel saw the “raft” in the “ocean of an emotional but overly extended, lyrically colored monotony”.
It may be that, as Henze puts it, this evening “brought him a little further” politically. But the Henze fans in the APO have failed — that’s how the currently most thoroughly analyzing music theorist Heinz-Klaus Metzger, who identifies with the “anti-authoritarian wing of the SDS,” puts it.
‘The APO, Metzger predicts, ‘will only have created meaningful conditions when German musicians no longer refuse to perform under a red or even a black flag, but instead perform a work by Henze. And for strictly musical reasons. Unfortunately, not even Tucholsky’s bon mot applies to this composer: “Because of bad weather, the German revolution took place in music.”
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So it went in 1968. The Oratorio performance was cancelled and the world premiere had to wait until January 29, 1971 when it was performed in Vienna by the ORF Orchestra conducted by Miltiades Carides. The recording of the first performance was achieved prior to the performance with the audience. That recording was released in 1969.
Many more performances followed but one of those performances, in 2001, was attended by a former chorister, Henning Sidow. He was twelve years old at that 1968 non-concert. And the following article on his experiences of that attempted performance was published in Der Spiegel in 2013.
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Blaze at the choral-concert. How the “Raft of the Medusa” went down.
He was anxiously awaiting the big performance: when he was twelve, Henning Sidow was supposed to perform on stage with the NDR boys’ choir in Hamburg. And indeed, the live performance of the oratorio was exciting – but for completely unexpected reasons.
The boys’ choir was founded in 1960 as the choir of the North German Radio and has been connected to the main church of St. Nikolai since 1967.
“As a twelve-year-old in 1968, I had only vague ideas about the political and social turmoil of the time. But on December 9th, as a member of the St. Nikolai boys’ choir, they became tangible experiences for me as a result of the unsuccessful premiere of the oratorio “Das Raft der Medusa” by composer Hans Werner Henze in Hall B in Hamburg’s Planten un Blomen Park.
I had been in the boys’ choir for four years, which belonged to the NDR until 1967 and was then taken over by the St. Nikolai parish in Hamburg. We “experienced” boys felt quite up to the task of taking part in Henze’s musically demanding oratorio and also appearing in a world premiere that was to be broadcast live on the radio.
The play tells the tragic story of the French frigate “Medusa”, which ran aground as the only ship in a convoy on the way to Senegal in 1816. Since there were not enough lifeboats for the 400 people on board, the crew built a raft that could accommodate around 150 men, women and children and which was to be pulled ashore by the boats. But the officers fled in the boats, leaving the people on the raft to fend for themselves. On the day of the accidental rescue 13 days later, there were only 15 survivors. The others fell victim to starvation, lack of water or cannibalism.”
Hide and seek in the empty hall
“Our boys’ choir was supposed to portray the children on the raft – first as living, then as dead. A difficult piece with a socially critical background, this “Raft of the Medusa”, we knew that. It meant not only intensive rehearsals, but also many afternoons and evenings of rehearsals. What we didn’t know was that the premiere was never to take place.
The location of the event and the preparations fascinated me. The hall seemed huge to me as a child. Large platforms were set up here for the performance, with countless instruments on them. There were people everywhere: stagehands, technicians, orchestra musicians, choristers and soloists – it was just teeming. Now we guys were added.
We had a lot of waiting time and were able to explore everything. So we crawled under the stage construction, played hide and seek, crawled under the platforms and shimmied over wooden struts until we got too many splinters in our fingers. And right next door there was another hall, several stories high – a gigantic glass box. There was no event taking place at the time, so the hall was yawning and unlit. We strolled through them, hearts in our pants because of the darkness and the eerie acoustics of the room.”
Protest in the concert hall
“Then things got serious, rehearsals began. In my memory, Hans Werner Henze was a small man who was already a bit bald at the time, but incredibly energetic. He radiated a mixture of warmth, ingenious artistry and normality. We boys found him sympathetic, but he had no airs and graces and met everyone completely naturally, friendly and patiently. He treated us as if we were adults, which I found very beneficial. When I was a child, I was used to other well-known personalities whom we had met here and there through our performances to be treated and professionally not taken very seriously.
Henze was excellent at conveying his music to the participants, it was lively, colorful and exciting like the story itself. The dramatic story and the historical background that he and the music told us captivated me even then. Conducting, however, was not his thing, I remember his somewhat awkward gestures. But that’s not so important in a professional ensemble, as long as the right impulses and cues come. In any case, we children liked and admired him and his music.
On December 9, 1968, as far as I can remember, the hall was filled to the last seat with an audience. There was talk of more than 1000 guests. Henze was already at the desk. But just before it started, there was a small crowd in front of the stage. A few protesting students stood directly in front of the podium and hung red flags to the left and right of Henze’s desk. It was not clear whether the master just put up with this or whether it had been agreed with him, as was later speculated. In any case, he didn’t seem to put up much resistance to the activities.”
The situation is escalating
“Shortly thereafter, the audience and the choir became restless. Because one of the choirs, the RIAS Chamber Choir, came from Berlin, the enclosed city. Red flags were literally a red rag for many who lived there. At first I – and I’m sure my fellow boys too – didn’t understand much of what was happening down there. But when voices from the Berlin choir grew louder and louder, refusing to sing under “the red flag”, I understood what it was all about. The adults feared that they and the music would be exploited by demonstrating communist students. In addition, a large portrait of Ché Guevara has now been erected, to which the work is dedicated.
Henze’s efforts to get the performance started were nipped in the bud by the boycott of the Berlin singers. The removal of the communist symbols was demanded louder and louder from the podium, before they would refuse to sing a single note. In the meantime it was getting more and more restless in the auditorium and in front of the stage there were small scuffles between the demonstrators and some spectators who got involved. Negotiations between the choir and the composer were taking place behind the scenes as to the conditions under which the performance could still take place.
We boys watched the whole thing with suspense, since the circumstances had now reversed: the auditorium had become the stage, and we on the podium had a box view of this live cultural scandal. Music was out of the question. In the back of the hall, the doors flew open and police officers in full riot gear marched in. Like a horde of ants, they came down the aisles from several sides to the podium. I don’t remember how many there were, maybe a hundred. They looked particularly martial with their helmets with full visors and the shields they – to protect against what actually: a few students, musicians and false notes? – carried in front of them.”
A dark chapter
“Henze had meanwhile disappeared unnoticed and downstairs young people were having their arms twisted behind their backs in order to be taken away. Among them was Ernst Schnabel, who wrote the text of the play. He was later charged with “resisting the authority of the state”. On the other hand, part of the audience did not like the actions of the police and protested, which did not prevent the state authorities from their plan to convict the “perpetrators” in flagrante delicto.
I can’t remember exactly how long the commotion lasted. In any case, it never came to a performance, and at some point we left the stage disappointed. It was incomprehensible to us children why a few red flags and the likeness of a bearded South American led to such an uproar. For us it was about art, about music. We felt cheated of our work.
The newspapers reported extensively on this event in the following days. Some tabloids insisted on turning it into a real political scandal. To this day it is unclear to me what the state authorities were thinking when they made this appearance. That’s for sure
That she was thin-skinned in those times and liked to overreact on such occasions. The fear that the ideology that prevailed behind the Iron Curtain could also spread to the West was too great.
For Hans Werner Henze, who died in 2012, this scandal is said to have been a dark chapter in his artistic career. Later, it is said, he did not want to be reminded of it.
My own memories of that evening only surfaced again years later: at the much delayed premiere in June 2001 in Hamburg’s Laeiszhalle. After 33 years I experienced “The Raft of the Medusa” a second time. The fact that I was still able to silently speak and sing along to the lyrics and the music showed how much the piece and the story it was based on had impressed me at the time. None of it was lost. I left the performance deeply touched.”
So, here we are some 46 years after the riotous non-premiere of Henze’s fine oratorio/requiem, 111 years since the famed “riots at the Rite”. The Stravinsky has since firmly taken its place in the commonly performed orchestral and ballet repertory. The Henze work, never laying any claim to the seminal and visionary compositional methods that characterize Stravinsky’s landmark work, continues to receive performances and recordings having established itself as a substantial work, and himself as a significant composer with a rich and varied career.
NB: All translations are my own efforts. Historical photos are included under fair use terms.
After agonizing about writing a “best of” blog and publishing it before January 1, I decided to take a pause and enjoy the holidays. So here I look back on my 2023 in the rear view mirror but with memories still pretty fresh.
Regular readers of this blog likely already know of my oft shared opinion of the superfluous nature of “best of” lists and of my acquiescence in producing such on an annual basis. I certainly don’t think of this as a meaningless exercise and I think the process has grown on me. It is a chance to achieve a perspective which would be missed by simply plowing on ahead with the usual flow of reviews and articles. But drawing down that 12 month perspective is an opportunity to evaluate those months, to see where we’ve been and to hopefully get a smidgen of insight into where I/we are likely headed.
My Facebook friends will recognize the representative meme at the head of this article which is one of the more cloying aspects of “AI”, whatever that is. So indulge me for a moment to look at this seemingly new intrusion into the reality we thought we knew. So, what is “AI” and what will it do to us? Ultimately I’m not the one to answer that question but I’d like to throw some ideas to add to the speculation.
First, the choices a composer makes, like the choices of a painter, a writer, etc. are the stuff of the mystery of creation itself. Why “A major”, or why that tuning, or scale, or rhythm, or orchestration, etc? So along comes the notion of removing, or at least distancing, the artist from their creative product. That notion started not with famed proponent John Cage but rather with Johannes Chrysostymous Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in his K. 516f musical dice game. Voila! Algorithmic composition (actually fairly common practice in the classical era). An early manifestation of “AI”? Perhaps.
Lejaren Hiller (1924-1994) was the first composer to employ electronic data processing in a musical work in his Fourth String Quartet subtitled “Iliac Suite” in 1957. There followed similar experiments with various iterations of electronic creations at music centers worldwide including The University of Illinois at Champaign, Columbia-Princeton, Stanford, The University of California Berkeley and San Diego, The San Francisco Tape Music Center (later subsumed into the Mills College Center for Contemporary Music, IRCAM in Paris, Israel Electronic Music Studio, and counterparts in the Nordic countries, Germany, Belgium, etc. Proto “AI”?
While historically interesting I raise this issue to say that, as far as I can tell, “AI” has not made this writer’s greatest hits list but it is interesting and maybe even useful. With that, my concern for the subject officially goes to the back burner for a later time.
2023 has been a year of great personal changes for the writer of this blog. A job change, a geographical relocation, and many things unrelated to this blog characterized a busy year for New Music Buff. So here in a sort of holiday tradition I present my “Best of 2023” from my little listener’s corner of the world. For the sake of simplicity I present a more or less chronological exposition of my sonic adventures. (N.B. Not one portion of this article made use of “AI”).
I begin with not with my 20 most read posts, a practice that characterized previous iterations of this annual exercise. Instead I am providing my top 20 favorite releases that were reviewed in 2023. Please note a couple of caveats. First, I receive a lot of review requests, more than I can even listen to, much less give a reasonably intelligent review. Albums that I’ve not reviewed should not be assumed to be bad or insignificant and my reviews are personal observations. I really only review albums that interest me anyway. Second, this article is only one reviewer’s opinion and not intended to be definitive or to supersede anyone else’s opinions. Third, this is not the end of my attention to music that was released in 2023. Some releases require more time to give a fair listen and a respectful review. There are more to come in 2024.
First a few stats: 2023 saw the publication of some 45 blog posts on New Music Buff, earning me 9693 views for the year. I rarely get comments on my posts (though I welcome and invite comments both positive and negative). Not bad, I think, for the overall less appreciated musical styles that fuel my desire to write about.
Now, in chronological order (of publication) are my personal favorites as a listener:
Neuma 158
Binaural Beats in the Tudor Rainforeststarted my new year with a bang. Reviewing this disc required me to take a closer look at the astounding work of David Tudor and his unique contributions to new music. This important release is a recording of a work which, by its own concept cannot receive a “definitive” performance. But this recording comes mighty close, involving “binaural” recording utilizing a mobile set of binaural microphones which are worn by the recordist. In addition this recording involved a collaboration with Pauline Oliveros and a group called, “Composers Inside Electronics”. The recording was done during Oliveros’ tenure at UCSD. Rainforest IV is so called because it is the fourth iteration of the instructions that form the original concepts of Tudor’s composition, “Rainforest”. It is an immersive sonic experience heard on headphones but actually not bad even heard on stereo speakers. A rich and wonderful release.
Starkland S-236
From a 1960s electroacoustic to a budding 21st Century composer Kotoka Suzuki released on the reliably interesting and even visionary Starkland label. Next Gen Electroacoustic: Kotoka Suzukiwill introduce the listener to this rising star who doubtless will produce more of her compelling compositions.
Sony 194399434826
Igor Levit is a fine concert pianist whose albums are effectively redefining the way we, as listeners, perceive the western classical oeuvre. Igor Levit: Defining Tristandoes for the various musical pieces inspired by the Tristan legend what Levit did for the concept of the great keyboard variations in which he selected Beethoven’s “Diabelli Variations” and Frederic Rzewski’s “El Pueblo Unido Variations” to join his recording of the Bach “Goldberg Variations” in a 3 disc package placing these three large sets of variations as emblematic of the genre in three different centuries (18th, 19th, and 20th). Levit, by his recorded output, is providing a valuable perspective which may influence repertory choices for years to come.
Levit’s traversal of the Tristan legend here ranges from the second recording of Hans Werner Henze’s too seldom heard “Tristan Preludes” back to works by Wagner (of course) and Liszt. He even slips in his wonderful solo piano transcription of the Adagio of Mahler’s unfinished 10th Symphony into the mix. This is a very compelling Tristan anthology by a deservedly still rising star.
Cantaloupe
This Cantaloupe release by Bang on a Can composer and master clarinetist Evan Ziporyn is both masterful and great fun. Evan Ziporyn: Bang on a Popconsists of transcriptions of “pop” songs for multiple clarinets all played by Ziporyn via his very effective multi-track recordings. The album is very personal and pretty much cliche free with these engaging and insightful transcriptions. It is an homage to the songwriters as well as a showcase for Ziporyn both as composer and as performer.
Microfest MF 23
The Young Person’s Guide to Ben Johnston is an ideal way to introduce listeners to the wonderful world of the late Ben Johnston’s music. Johnston, a student and colleague of Harry Partch shows his compositional skills utilizing non-traditional western tunings in these representative works. Johnston here does for some quasi pop tunes what Evan Ziporyn did with his clarinetist perspective for the tunes on Pop Matters. But Johnston’s pretty, accessible work belies fascinating complexities that don’t actually sound complex to the listener. This disc contains Johnston’s last completed work, “Ashokan Farewell” (which Johnston took to be a public domain folk tune but is in fact a piece written by Jay Ungar). It is paired with the 4th String Quartet (a set of ingenious variations on “Amazing Grace”) from 1982 and the 9th String Quartet of 1997. Profound, lovely to listen to, and a great homage.
DVD OM 4001
This DVD is a major addition to the discography of Charles Amirkhanian’s sound poetry as fine sampling of one aspect of Carol Law’s (Amirkhanian’s life partner) complementary visual art. These collaborations are also important contributions to the visual and performative aspect of these collaborative works. Amirkhanian has been a fine curator and promoter of the work of others but he has rather seldom stepped into the spotlight himself. This quirky genre got some fabulous exposure at the 7 day Other Minds 23 festival in 2018 in which Amirkhanian’s work was presented in the (surprisingly varied) context of sound poetry of the amazing international collection of artists who were hosted at those events. This DVD should be in the collection of anyone interested in new music sound poetry and performance art. It is both entertaining and mind bending featuring a juxtaposition of images and sound reviewed in greater detail in the post “Dyadic Dreams”. But words cannot do justice to these works. You really have to see them.
Cedille CDR 90000 210
Readers of this blog know my fondness for the Chicago based label Cedille and their promotion of Chicago based musicians. This disc stands out in this group’s embrace of non-traditional composers alongside more traditional works. The inclusion of works by DJ composer Jlin and the academy based genre defying duo Flutronics alongside composers like Danny Elfman and Philip Glass demonstrate the wide ranging repertoire of Third Coast Percussion. Much more information can be found in Perspectives: Spectacular World Premiere Recordings from Third Coast Percussionon my blog. This one reimagines the percussion ensemble.
Neuma 176
This disc is a good example of why listeners and collectors should pay attention to the Neuma record label. Philip Blackburn, who had been the very successful curator of Innova records, took over the defunct Neuma label which was founded with the intention of promoting largely electroacoustic music though not exclusively.
Agnese Toniutti‘s New Music Visionis actually a review of two discs by this rising star, a dedicated new music pianist that needs to be on your radar. The other Neuma disc contains Toniutti’s traversal of John Cage’s reluctant masterpiece, “Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano”.
The disc pictured here is Toniutti’s vision beyond the Cage work. This one focuses on mostly living composers Lucia Dlugoszewski, Tan Dun, Philip Corner, and Toniutti’s herself. Basically, if Toniutti plays it, you should probably at least give a listen.
2023 saw the completion of Bay Area pianist Sarah Cahill’s epic survey of piano music by female composers. Cahill is another (predominantly) new music focused pianist about whom I would also assert that, if she plays it, you should probably give at least one listen.
The End of the Beginning: Sarah Cahill’s “The Future is Female” Trilogy Completedwill tell you all you need to know about this trilogy which encompasses about 300 years of music history and sheds light on some fascinating and substantial music written by women. Most of the works on this trilogy of albums are, in fact, world premieres but, fear not, even the pieces which are not premieres are likely not in your collection. This is a brilliant selection of music that effectively throws down the gauntlet to challenge other artists to explore this repertory. This trilogy is a true landmark and a joy to the ears.
This third volume in the wonderful Catalyst Quartet’s survey of another unjustly neglected group of composers focuses on the music of three black Americans of the twentieth century. Catalyzing Blackness, Volume Three: The Catalyst Quartet plays 20th Century music by Black Americans was nominated (but didn’t win) for a Grammy Award and, happily, I’m told that more volumes are in preparation. Again, this music is a pleasant revelation that does for black composers what Sarah Cahill has done for women composers (N.B. The first volume by the Catalyst Quartet focused on the black female composer Florence Price). And here’s hoping that Coleridge Taylor Perkinson, George Walker and William Grant Still will become household names in the concert hall.
Microfest MF 21
Son of Partch, Carrying on a Traditionis a really wonderful disc which, though I reviewed it in exceedingly positive terms, provoked a strongly negative reaction from the artist. The reaction apparently also provoked enough interest to have made this review one of my most read of 2023.
But, aside from the unfortunate negative reaction, I still maintain that this is a fine release worthy of attention from anyone who likes new music, microtonality, and the music of Harry Partch. Cris Forster is a composer, theoretician, and instrument builder clearly descended from the Partch tradition. His work deserves attention and this disc is a very satisfying experience.
Islandia IMR 011
Steven Schick is a master percussionist and conductor. This release is the first volume of his personal choices of solo percussion repertoire. Solo Percussion Manifesto Volume I: Steven Schick’s “A Hard Rain” is a manifesto of sorts and does for solo percussion music what Sarah Cahill has done for women composers and the Catalyst Quartet is doing for black composers. There are not many recordings of solo percussion music and Maestro Schick essentially presents his favorite works in definitive performances on a label produced by Bang on a Can cellist Maya Beiser. The second volume is in my review queue and, if this first volume is any indication, it will be a landmark survey.
Cedille
Rising Star Seth Parker Woods’ “Difficult Grace” is a Classic in the Making. Here’sanother Grammy nominee that did not win but, this second album by this fine American new music cellist is a winner in my book (er, blog). This is actually the audio of what was developed as a staged performance but the music speaks for itself. Keep an eye/ear out for this rising star who, even now, is storming the new music cello scene in invigorating ways.
Neuma 128
A Reason to Listen: Roger Reynolds’ Latest, “For a Reason”,new recordings on Neuma Records. Here we see Neuma following its original electroacoustic mission with this remarkable set in celebration of Roger Reynolds’s 90th year. This is a lavish 2 CD box set with a beautiful booklet and lucid liner notes. It is a worthy production which showcases recent works by this prolific and important American composer.
Readers of this blog likely are aware of my interest in music that is suppressed and/or neglected so this disc grabbed my attention immediately. Israel does a great job of funding the arts and this can be seen in the proliferation of truly fine performers nurtured by that funding. Less well known are the composers who have flourished in the art healthy politics of this country. Some 50 years of history are represented here. This is but a sampling, albeit finely curated, of several generations of composers displaying a plurality of styles with substantial results. This entertaining disc will whet the appetites of intelligent and curious listeners and, hopefully, bring about more recognition of the world class composers who deserve an audience.
Though this was ostensibly Randall Goosby ’s show, the music making was a wonderfully integrated duo with pianist Zhu Wang, These two fine young musicians shared the virtuosic duties that the music in this concert demands. Both are clearly hard working and dedicated artists. Both have technical and interpretive prowess. And they clearly embody a mutual respect for each other.
Pianist Zhu Wang
The music on the program served to demonstrate the duo’s creative selection of music:
Coleridge-Taylor: Suite for Violin and Piano, op. 3 Brahms: Violin Sonata No. 2 in A Major, op. 100 (“Thun”) Still: Suite for Violin and Piano Price:Two Fantasies Strauss: Violin Sonata in E-flat Major, op. 18
Curiously, due to this reviewer’s lack of familiarity with the violin and piano repertoire and having written some recent reviews of black composers’ music, the only familiar pieces were two of the three pieces by black composers. Now, overall, this is a marvelously chosen set of pieces that reflect the eclecticism and technical skill of both of these musicians.
The classic Paul Freeman conducted set of music by black composers.
The Brahms was perhaps the most familiar to audiences but the other works were equally substantive and worthy of being heard. It is these rather visionary choices that characterizes this duo as fresh and innovative. In addition their obvious knowledge of the music along with their enthusiasm and affection for it conspired to make for a delightful evening and even nudged this reviewer to try to become more familiar with the violin and piano repertory in general.
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) was a black British composer who has of late had a much needed revival of his music. He was named in honor of the celebrated British poet Samuel Taylor-Coleridge (1772-1834). During his rather brief lifetime, Samuel had been hailed as “the British Mahler but, after his death, his music lay largely fallow until revived by the late, great American black conductor, Paul Freeman (1935-2015). His revelatory series for Columbia records (now Sony) opened listeners’ ears to a fascinating selection of music by black composers internationally.
The Coleridge-Taylor opus 3 Suite for violin and piano (1893) is an early work cast in the high romantic late 19th century style of broad melodies and virtuosic demands. It served as the introduction to an intoxicating evening of (partly) seldom performed works alongside some fairly established works in the repertoire.
The Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) second violin sonata (of three) was written in 1879 and was named “Thun” after the Swiss city where he composed it. The three movements follow the classical fast, slow, fast structure common to this genre.
It is a product of high romanticism and it remains a staple of the repertoire. It, as with most of this composer’s music, is technically challenging for both instrumentalists. It was a fine vehicle to confirm the incredible technical skills of these young artists.
William Grant Still (1895-1978) was one of the finest composers of the early to mid twentieth century. Like Coleridge-Taylor and Florence Price (1887-1953), his music was lauded during his lifetime but was neglected until fairly recently in the aforementioned Black Composers set. These musical choices revealed another aspect of this delightful pair of musicians, that of being essentially musical archeologists uncovering forgotten gems much as Lord Carnarvan’s work availed the world to the marvelous Egyptian art of King Tut’s tomb.
Still’s Suite for Violin and Piano was inspired by three sculptures–Richmond Barthé’s African Dancer, Sargent Johnson’s Mother and Child, and Augusta Savage’s Gamin. Written in 1943, it synthesizes elements of blues, pop, and classical music to create musical description of this ethnically inflected visual art.
Richmond Barthé’s African Dancer
Sargent Claude Johnson’s Mother and Child (ca. 1932)
Augusta Savage’s Gamin
The three movements comprise essentially tone poems based on the visual artwork. It was after the second piece, depicting the Mother and Child sculpture that the spell cast by the duo’s that revealed the “Thrall” of this blog’s title.
Goosby embodies a calm and casual confidence and he let the audience know early on that it is OK to applaud after a single movement if you are so inclined. He has a warmth that put the audience at ease, embracing us in a most genial manner. There is, of course, nothing wrong with musicians who might seem more aloof but Goosby’s warmth was both generous and welcome. However, it became clear that this audience, after hearing that gorgeous second movement so beautifully played, paused in a seemingly hypnotic response to the impassioned performance that captured the beauty of the music. It felt as though we had become collectively and deeply engaged. That is the meaning of “thrall” and that was a beautiful experience that spoke of connections between composer, performers, and audience that represent the pinnacle of the art of chamber music performance. All three movements were wonderfully executed but that moment and the collective reaction was a truly moving experience.
Following a brief intermission we got to hear both of Florence Price’s two Fantasies for Violin and Piano (1933, 1940). Though I’ve become familiar with much of Price’s work (her three surviving symphonies and Goosby’s own reading of her two violin concerti have been released in the last couple of years) I had not heard these fantasies before.
Though written only seven years apart, the works embody distinctively different qualities. Both are certainly “capricious”, embodying a variety of moods, but the second is a bit longer and seemed to reflect the composer’s maturing style. Both works were enjoyable and seemed to please the audience.
This led us to the final work on the program, the Violin and Piano Sonata (1888) by Richard Strauss (1864-1949). Best known for his big orchestral tone poems and his grand operas, this was an early work which has found an audience due to its lyrical and friendly character.
It is cast in three movements, and it was at the end of the slow movement that we again saw/heard a sort of “agreed upon” silence in which the audience seemed to have shared a deep impact from that lovely movement played so passionately. No one applauded as a reverent silence came upon us.
The much busier third movement again presented the virtuosity and broad melodies of high romanticism. And there was applause and, much deserved standing ovations. It was a joy to have heard these talented and hard working musicians in an ecstatic night of chamber music.
Santa Barbara conductor Nir Kabaretti (photo copyright David Bazemore)
It was the day before Passover and all through the lovely acoustics of the Granada Theater, nostalgia was afoot. It came in the form of a Mozart Overture, a Mahler Symphony, and some new music for clarinet, the klezmer clarinet of David Krakauer. (N.B. Klezmer is a style of playing common to the Ashkenazi Jewish communities of Eastern Europe and Russia).
Maestro Kabaretti’s thoughtfully crafted program featured the integration on non-western vernacular (folk) musics into the western classical idiom. The incorporation of an age’s popular music into the newly written concert music of that era is a time honored tradition in music history.
Today’s concert would feature Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s imitation of the exotic music (to Viennese audiences) of Turkish Janissary music in the overture to his opera, “The Abduction from the Seraglio”. The plot consists of a story that involves a Turkish Pasha who has kidnapped the lover of the leading man. (Spoiler: He rescues her).
There was a personal nostalgia in that the first opera recording I bought was the budget LP of the Josef Krips conducted performance of that opera. The overture quotes some of the music of the opera and sets the exotic locale with the imitation of Turkish music.
The relative exoticism of Turkish music was imitated by Mozart in his 5th Violin Concerto, subtitled “Turkish”, as well. Listeners may recall the imitation of Turkish martial music in the finale of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony (just after the cherub stands before God). Mozart’s inclusion of piccolo, triangle, big drum, and cymbals (rarely seen in classical era orchestras) typify the European imitation of this ethnic music.
Mozart’s overture works well as a standalone piece and Kabaretti’s Santa Barbarans stimulated at least this listener’s sense of nostalgia in a beautifully crafted reading of this music. From the familiar opening notes this overture this listener was transported to nostalgic reverie and simultaneously enthralled by the energetic reading of the work. It was a delightful balance of both nostalgia and an opportunity to somehow hear this work anew.
Clarinetist David Krakauer (c)Linus Lintner Fotografie
What followed that delightful overture brought featured performer David Krakauer to the stage for a performance of a new (2018) concerto for klezmer clarinet. But before that, we were treated to what Krakauer described as “an arrangement” of a classic klezmer wedding tune. The affably chatty Krakauer is apparently possessed of a genuine humility here because this was virtually a mini concerto for clarinet and string orchestra whose style had some resemblance to the Mahler Symphony programmed post intermission.
Krakauer is a seriously accomplished musician, composer, musicologist, and teacher. His technical and interpretive skills are of Olympian dimension and his ability to relate to fellow musicians and the audience were a joy to behold. Readers of this blog might recall an earlier review of yet another klezmer concerto also championed by Krakauer. You can read that blog entry here.
The youngest music by the youngest composer on the program was next. Wlad Marhulets (1986- ) is a Polish born and educated composer. His name had been unfamiliar to me but a quick look at his website and a few listens on YouTube revealed this man to be a marvelously skilled and creative composer. Put this man’s name on your listener’s radar.
Doubtless our soloist had some input on the performance of this concerto but Marhulets appears to have an in depth understanding of klezmer performance along with a solid grounding in western classical music and a marvelously nuanced skill at orchestration. This is a substantial concerto and a great addition to the repertory.
Like the Mahler Symphony which would follow in the second half of the concert, Mr. Marhulets demonstrated a range of compositional skills. He can evoke humor, terror, nostalgia, joy. He handles a large orchestra augmented by an electric bass guitar and a drum kit. And he has a subtle but effective sense of orchestral color. The soloist, who has a lot to do, winds in and out of passages that pit his clarinet variously against the full orchestra and in duet pairings, sometimes fleetingly, that suggest images of pub, dance hall, and street concerts. All of these the natural milieu of Klezmer music.
The concerto began loudly, raucously, and assertively. The soloist navigated the complex rhythms and subtle balances of texture as only a master musician can do. Kabaretti and his fine orchestra were clearly up to the significant challenges of this music and clearly enjoyed their labors.
The loud, declarative, opening gave way to a lovely and lyrical slow movement followed by a long and engaging cadenza, sometimes punctuated briefly at times by the orchestra. It then led into a really fun (though hardly trite) finale.
Following a richly deserved standing ovation, Krakauer and the orchestra gifted the audience with an encore. Echoes of klezmer in the many moods evoked by this afternoon’s music making left this listener reflecting on the chaos in our world here, in this beautiful hall, in this beautiful city, on the eve of Passover. I fancy that there is a gentle activism here, one in which the sharing of the beauty of a culture’s esteemed artists (composers and performers) acts as a proud display of some of the best that that culture has to offer. The quality of the music and the music making can’t fix the world’s problems but they can give us hope and joy. Great art elevates the soul. At least that’s what this reviewer felt.
The intermission was needed to replenish listeners’ emotional reserves for the second half. No doubt the musicians needed to recharge as well.
The Mahler First Symphony (1888) triggers more personal nostalgia for two reasons. One, my first Mahler purchase was the Bruno Walter reading of this and the ninth symphony. Second, I will forever associate that first movement depicting dawn in its opening. Astute listeners may recognize television and film composer Alexander Courage’s appropriation of this music in his now iconic theme for the original Star Trek series (which debuted in 1964 when your humble reviewer was 9 years old). I would encounter Mahler some years later.
It is difficult over 100 years after the symphony’s premiere to understand how radical this music seemed to players and listeners. Its Budapest premiere has been described as a disaster mediated by uncooperative musicians in the orchestra and an unsympathetic audience. After his death in 1911, Mahler’s compositional star rose to new heights when the late, great Leonard Bernstein championed his work during his long and fruitful career, even reintroducing Mahler’s music to the Vienna of its beginnings. This is the Vienna where Maestro Kabaretti was trained. And he gets this music deeply.
To be fair, this piece presents many challenges for players and conductors but, when it is well done, it thrills audiences. Maestro Kabaretti and his Santa Barbarans delivered as fine a performance of this symphony that this reviewer has heard. It was positively thrilling and, unlike the musicians who played in the disastrous premiere, the Santa Barbara Symphony clearly enjoyed their hard work and respected their leader.
This was a thrilling and invigorating concert experience. The hometown orchestra put in a world class performance and our esteemed soloist was matched in his expertise by their skills. The nearly full house was most obviously pleased as was this reviewer.
It is the duty of performers to infuse their performance with their nuances of interpretive skills until they (and, hopefully, composer and audience) are satisfied that they are doing justice to the music. When the music at hand challenges established norms and expectations that task becomes quite large. One need only look at the plethora of performances of Terry Riley’s seminal “In C” to realize that the nature and structure of this piece invites, by design as it were, experimentation with instrumentation and experimentation with the music itself which consists of 51 short notated cells.
This is the whole score
The original release in 1968 has been followed by at least 40 recordings reflecting choices made related to tempo, instrumentation, etc. In an earlier review of the “In C” version by Brooklyn Raga Massive, I addressed the inherently heretical nature of this music in light of the etymology of the term “heresy” (derived from “hairesis”, the Greek word for decision or choice). And this music demands intelligent choices.
This 1964 composition has been definitively analyzed in Robert Carl’s fine volume, “Terry Riley’s in C” so interested readers should seek out this book for definitive analytical detail. My main point here is that the musics elicits the making of choices much more so than the traditional western classical notated score. And the present release says nearly as much about the performer/producer, as it does about the composer. It is Maya Beiser’s expertise on her instrument, certainly. It is her experience performing at the center of the new music performance scene to have a definitive grasp of the pluralities that are the nature of new music. And, finally, it is her daring to make choices that threaten to make her not merely a performer but virtually a co-composer. All that with managing to flatter the composer and engage adventurous listeners. She did something similar in her Philip Glass album. She even did it with her recording of the Bach cello suites. Now that’s heresy at its best.
There can never be a definitive recording of this work. That is a huge part of this music’s charms as well as its importance as a challenge to the very nature of western classical music. The music itself is heretical.
Not all listeners may appreciate this significantly new, innovative, and very personal performance but the composer shared an appreciative blurb on the album’s back cover and the reviews this writer has seen have been unanimously positive.
Beiser’s use of harmonics and, indeed, quite a few of her instrument’s extended capabilities (pizzicati, harmonics, etc) all conspire to her revisioning of this music. On top of that she even uses her own voice and employs two percussionists to round out her orchestration of the work.
The percussion accentuates the ritual nature of the music. The harmonics and multiphonics place this version in the spectral realm of new music and even suggested to this listener the Phil Spector “wall of sound”, another hallmark of some ritual musics.
It is an album that invites repeated hearings to grasp the subtleties and insights of this interpretation. Beiser here, even at her most transgressive, is not seeking to supplant other interpretations, rather she simply shows the power of this landmark work to inspire another generation of talented performers (and enlightened listeners, for that matter) to experience the enduring cultural significance of this masterpiece. Brava, Maya! And sincere thanks, Terry.
There is an aptness that accompanies the publication of my first blog of the new year. Much as we aspire to review our past year and resolve improvements for the next, this book effectively plays a similar role.
Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) was born into tumultuous times. His life intersected with political change, social changes, two world wars, and huge changes in the way music would be written and heard. His life and the above mentioned changes in the world are the subjects of Harvey Sachs’ relatively brief review of Schoenberg’s life and career. But the relative brevity does not sacrifice the apparent aim of presenting this composer’s work in the context of the times thereby providing the reader/listener with a perspective that aids an understanding of the man, his music, and his (arguably still evolving) place in history.
“You can see it isn’t easy to get on with me. But don’t lose heart because of that.”- Arnold Schoenberg
At 272 pages this book wisely focuses on the composer’s published work and the drama of its performance along with critical and audience responses. This is not a comprehensive review of all things Schoenberg. While Sachs makes references to the composer’s earlier works, he focuses primarily on the published music and the responses of musicians, critics, and audiences. More importantly he focuses on the massive socio-political changes that paralleled the music thereby providing a useful context for future listeners and performers to better understand Schoenberg and his place in musical history.
Sachs places less emphasis on the composer’s paintings and even his writings. What the author achieves is a very readable and understandable essay that listeners (your humble reviewer included) can use to take another look/listen and to come to a new reckoning of Schoenberg and his place in the world. To, as the subtitle suggests, better understand, “Why he matters.”
I must admit that I did not understand and appreciate the music of Arnold Schoenberg immediately, and even when I ventured to read this volume, I found that my familiarity with this composer was limited primarily to “Transfigured Night”, “Pierrot Lunaire”, the “Second String Quartet”, Moses und Aron” (the Solti recording), Piano Concerto, Violin Concerto, the String Trio, and a fleeting listen or two to the piano music.
The joy of this book was in its chronological exposition of all of the composer’s major works and their historical and political contexts. As a result I found myself listening for the first time (or at least the first in many years) to the two chamber symphonies, the other string quartets, etc. It was an opportunity to reset my perceptions/misperceptions and acquire a better understanding and appreciation of his oeuvre.
As Sachs concludes:
“There are cycles in the arts. Perhaps we have reached the end of one great, centuries long cycle of individualistic European Art Music and its global offshoots. We cannot know. But, in the unlikely case that the subspecies Homo Sapiens Sapiens doesn’t destroy itself in the meantime, there is good reason to expect that sooner or later a new cycle will begin. And, for now, we have an enormous treasure of outstanding creations that continue to speak to anyone who is willing to listen to them.”
For the humble listener, a musician’s technical and interpretive performance skills are one of the most compelling reasons to buy a concert ticket or a recording of said musician. But your humble reviewer has another, perhaps equally important reason for investing time and money in the work of a musician. And that skill is what I like to call “musical radar”. It is the (sometimes uncanny) ability of such gifted musicians to intelligently choose repertoire.
Conductor Kellen Gray demonstrates a keen sense of what music sounds good and also has the weight of substance. Following in the footsteps of incisive conductors like Leopold Stokowski (1882-1977), Dean Dixon (1915-1976), and Paul Freeman (1936-2015) Gray is clearly a champion for contemporary music and is now into the second volume of what this listener hopes will be many more releases of substantive music by black composers whose work has lain fallow for reasons unrelated to quality.
The first volume included early to mid twentieth century masterworks like William Levi Dawson’s 1934 “Negro Folksong Symphony”, William Grant Still’s First Symphony “Afro American” (1930), and George Walker’s “Lyric for Strings” (1946, orch 1990). These are certainly great and foundational works that deserve a place in concert programs but these works have had at least some exposure via recordings. Nonetheless they are fine foundation on which to build this series. Gray demonstrates a depth of understanding for these works and his skills as a conductor were displayed well here. But that was just the first volley in an exciting survey in progress.
In this second volume we see more deeply the acumen of this conductor’s musical radar. These are new commercial recordings of orchestral works by mid to late 20th century black composers, works of obvious substance that remain unjustly neglected. It is this “not the usual suspects” angle that finds this enterprising conductor demonstrating his personal perspective and respect for music history. And they are revelatory. Hearing these definitive performances will leave listeners wanting more as we get to hear some very exciting music that deserves at least a reckoning if not a place in the repertoire.
The four victims of the Birmingham Church bombing.
The disc begins with Margaret Bonds’ “Montgomery Variations” (1964), a classical set of variations, in this case on a gospel tune, “I want Jesus to walk with me”. But this work was “lost” and was only rediscovered in 2017. Its neglect was likely due both to the work being by a black woman, and the fact that it is a response to the 1963 Birmingham church bombing, a hate crime that killed four little girls. So, here it is, Bonds’ only surviving purely orchestral work getting a truly fine hearing. And what a great piece it is.
Margaret Bonds (1913-1972)
The work is structured in distinct sections with titles (Decision, Prayer Meeting, March, Dawn in Dixie, One Sunday in the South, Lament, Benediction). Each title is reflected in the musical mood of each section. It is an overt and powerful denunciation of a horrific hate crime. It is harrowing at times, somber and reverent at others, but Bonds’ composition is also effective in the metaphorical quality of the music itself. It is also very nearly a concerto for orchestra in its broad symphonic dimensions and clever orchestration most deftly handled in this recording.
The genre of “variations” is common throughout musical practice but only took on the guise of monolithic large orchestral works in the late 19th century. Well known examples include, Elgar’s “Enigma Variations”, Britten’s “Variations and Fugue on a theme of Henry Purcell”, Brahms’ “Haydn Variations”, etc. It’s hard to say if this work will find a place in the concert hall alongside those proven classics but Maestro Gray and the talented musicians of his Royal Scottish National Orchestra really make a strong case to do just that.
Ulysses Kay (1917-1995)
Next we are introduced to Ulysses Kay’s “Concerto for Orchestra” (1948). This work, first performed by the similarly incisive conductor, Leopold Stokowski has been sorely in need of a new recording and Maestro Gray serves up a taught and insightful performance that, like all the works on this release, stand as a challenge to performers, broadcasters, and listeners to not let this music fade into obscurity. The “Concerto for Orchestra” genre was first heard in a 1925 Hindemith work with that title and the work best known in the genre is without doubt Bartok’s 1943 “Concerto for Orchestra”. Where Kay’s work will stand in relation to other concerti for orchestra remains to be seen/heard (as with the Bonds work) but at least it now has a chance to be heard in all its glory.
It is one of Kay’s major works and it is of grand symphonic scale. This neoclassical work was written in 1948 and is cast in three movements. The work is eminently listenable but it puts challenges to the orchestra which this orchestra handles quite well.
Coleridge Taylor Perkinson (1932-2004)
The disc concludes with a rather brief work by a composer with whom even adventurous listeners (including myself) have limited familiarity. Coleridge Taylor-Perkinson. It is the only work here that comes from the 21st century. This 2001 Concert Overture subtitled, “Worship” reflects Perkinson’s exposure to black church music which he utilizes in this tone poem written for a sizable orchestra.
Gayle Murchison’s fine liner notes help guide the listener by providing context and by understandable descriptions of the compositional processes. This is an exciting release that builds nicely on the first volume and leaves this listener excitedly anticipating Kellen Gray’s next installment.
When Bassist Robert Black (1956-2023) succumbed to colon cancer this past June, the music world lost one of its finest advocates, performers, and teachers. This posthumous release of composer John Luther Adams’ (1953- ) works for solo and multiple bassists receive definitively beautiful renditions here in this satisfying release in which Maestro Black plays all parts (two works are for solo double bass and one work is for 5 double basses). It strikes this listener as a fitting eulogy for Robert Black and his fine performance legacy.
Robert Alan Black (1956-2023)
First, let me say that the Cold Blue label has defined its own take on post minimalist experimentation, it’s one of those labels that I recommend you just buy anything they choose to release. So this chamber music by John Luther Adams fits most comfortably within the little niche that Cold Blue defines (sort of). In fact this is Adams’ 9th CD on this label. And Robert Black is perhaps the ideal musician to plumb the sonic depths of this “other John Adams”. This listener can’t imagine these works having been done better. These performances are definitive, an example of interpretation with which all subsequent performers will have to contend.
The opening work, “Those High Places” (2007) is a work in three movements, originally for solo violin, played here for the first time on a double bass. Black pretty much reimagines Adams’ piece for his instrument. This is not mere transcription. This version is virtually a new work in the soloist’s sensitive and insightful hands.
Those three movements serve, as do the last three tracks on this album, as bookends, nicely framing the centerpiece, “Darkness and Scattered Light” (2023). Unlike those bookends, this work is in one large movement and is scored for 5 double basses. This multitrack recording is an essential and very effectively produced effort that does as much justice to the composer’s intent as does the effort of the performer.
The last three tracks are, in their compositional processes, intimately linked to that first three tracks. Both rely on special tunings to produce the intended effects.
This release is also a fine example of the artistic style that characterizes the look that accompanies the sounds within. The photography, the overall design, visually pleasing, creating a metaphor for the sound of the recording, and paying respectful homage to composer and performer. This just fires on all cylinders for me. This is Cold Blue at their best.
New Music Buff 