Tag Archives: Emanuele Arciuli

Nadia Shpachenko’s Poetry of Places


shpachenko

This is another in an ongoing series from various labels which are publishing a selection of repertoire chosen by artists who define themselves by their individual approaches to new and recent music.  Kathleen Supove, Sarah Cahill, R. Andrew Lee, Lisa Moore, Liza Stepanova, and Lara Downes come to mind as recent entries into this field.  In the past similar such focused collections has opened many listeners minds to hitherto unknown repertoire.  One would have to include names like Robert Helps, Natalie Hinderas, and Ursula Oppens, all of whom produced revelatory adventures into the world of new and recent piano music in historical landmark recordings. (A recent such collection by Emanuele Arciuli was reviewed here).

On this Reference Recordings disc Nadia Shpachenko presents a series of works, many commissioned for her, of piano music whose focus is architecture, buildings, facades, etc.  It is a curious and unique angle on choosing new music.  There are 11 pieces here all involving Shpachenko at the piano but sometimes with various combinations of electronics, another piano, and a couple of percussionists.

Strictly speaking this is the third disc by Shpachenko featuring new music.  Last year’s “Quotations and Homages” and 2013’s “Woman at the Piano” are doubtlessly worthy precursors to the present disc.

poetryofplacestracks

These works are neither trite nor easy listening.  They are new works and one can get lost in their complexity worrying about the way in which architecture is incorporated.  Or one can listen simply to hear the gorgeous sounds (this is a Reference Recording) of the introductory interpretations by a master musician of works which may or may not become repertory staples but whose substance deserves more than a passing listen.

I won’t go into any detail about these works except to say that the disc seems to have been well received by virtue of the amount of reviews it received on Amazon (I am frequently the first and only reviewer on Amazon when it comes to new music such as this) and those reviewers seem to have heard this release in a way similar to what this reviewer has experienced.

Shpachenko is an important artist who, along many of the artists mentioned at the beginning of this review, is pointing the way to some of the best music currently being written.

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Emanuele Arciuli, Defining a Genre: Walk in Beauty


walk in beauty

Innova 255

This 2 CD set virtually defines a genre.  Following in the traditions of such notable compilations as Robert Helps’ “New Music for the Piano”, Alan Feinberg’s wonderful series of discs on Argo records among many others we see Arciuli displaying his grasp of music in the tradition of the gentle musical anthropology found in the music and scholarship of Peter Garland.  The album’s title comes from Garland’s lovely multiple movement Walk in Beauty (1992) released on New World records in the 1990s.  The present collection is both nostalgic and forward looking reminding us of great past efforts and introducing us to new work.  It is a look at a loosely defined style of mostly late 20th century American piano music through the lens of a non-American artist.

Garland’s interest in Native American myths and music inform his post minimalist ethic and the additional pieces chosen for this two disc set reflect similar artistic sensibilities.  Emanuele Arciuli is an Italian pianist whose interests range from the Second Viennese School to the unique compositions of Thelonius Monk.  He also has a strong interest in classical music from Native American traditions which puts him very much in sync with Garland’s work as well.  Here he has chosen music which he clearly understands and which appear to have deep meaning for him.

There are 28 tracks on 2 discs representing 13 composers.  Five of these composers are explicitly affiliated with their respective Native American traditions and the remaining eight composers take their inspiration at least in part from the rich music and/or mythology of those cultures.  The bottom line here is that these are carefully and lovingly chosen works which open a window on one fine musician’s perception of a certain Western/Native American/New American style which, at worst, holds up a mirror and, whether we like it or not, it tells us something about who we are and from whence we came.

Connor Chee‘s “Navajo Vocable No. 9” opens the album and sets the tone.  This is one of a series of piano pieces by this fascinating composer/pianist whose star is deservedly rising.  His work celebrates Navajo culture and is informed as well by his training in traditional western art music.

This is followed by Peter Garland‘s “Walk in Beauty”.  This piece is representative of Garland’s post-minimalist, impressionistic style.  It was previously recorded so wonderfully by Aki Takahashi on the eponymously titled New World Records album from the early 1990s.

Garland’s music is fairly well documented but deserves a wider audience. (Curiously he does not have a dedicated web site.)  His scholarship and promotion of new music also serve to place him very highly among this countries finest artists and scholars.  In addition to his compositional output he is known for his Soundings Press publications and his papers are now held by the University of Texas at Austin.

Kyle Gann is, similarly, a scholar and a prolific composer.  He has for many years demonstrated a keen interest in Native American myths in his diverse and creative output.  Gann is here represented by his “Earth Preserving Chant”.

Michael Daugherty is known for his incorporation of pop culture in his work and has been recognized with no fewer than three Grammy Awards.  His work is rooted in pop Americana and “Buffalo Dance” is his homage to Native Americana.  And if his homage seems a bit P.T. Barnum at times, that too is Americana.

John Luther Adams, a recent Pulitzer Prize winner for his orchestral work, Become Ocean, is a prolific composer who derives much of his inspiration from the mythology of Alaskan natives.  Adams spent many of his creative years in Alaska working with ecological projects as well as musical ones.  “Tukiliit” is representative of this work and pays homage to Native American/First Nation peoples.

Raven Chacon is an emerging composer who has produced a great deal of work though little appears to be available on recordings.  “Nilchi Shada’ji Nalaghali” (Winds that turn on the side from the Sun) is an electroacoustic work serves as a little sample of this artist’s work and its inclusion in this fine collection alone suggests that the remainder of his work deserves to be explored.

Martin Bresnick is an honored member of the American Institute of Arts and Letters and his work is fortunately well known.  The present piece, “Ishii’s Song” is a reference to an American Indian, the last of his tribe who lived out his life under the protection and scrutiny of anthropologist Alfred Kroeber at the University of California Berkeley.  His spirit still seems to linger in the Bay Area and this piece is a sort of homage to him.

This set contains two works by Louis W. Ballard (1931-2007) who was a Native American composer that composed classical concert music.  His work is steeped in Native American mythology and deserves to be better known.  Leave it to a non-American to point out this deficit.  Arciuli makes a strong case for listeners and for other musicians to embrace this neglected artist.  Disc Two track 2 contains the “Osage Variation” and Disc two tracks 13-16 contain his “Four American Indian Piano Preludes”.

Jennifer Higdon is a star already very much risen on the musical scene and she is here represented by a substantial piano piece called “Secret and Glass Gardens”.  Higdon, also a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, is one of those composers who manages to be friendly and accessible as well as modern.  Arciuli seems to perceive similarities in her vision that make this work fit in convincingly in this collection.  Hers is seemingly a similar romanticism and nostalgia and Arciuli has convinced at least this listener of the kinship of this piece in the vision of this collection.

Arciuli introduces another composer unknown to this reviewer, Peter Gilbert.  This young composer with an impressive resume is the co-director of the composition program at the University of New Mexico.  The offering here is his set of four “Intermezzi” for piano.

The inclusion of Carl Ruggles‘ “Evocations-Four Chants for Piano” seem at first to be a strange choice but following the Gilbert Intermezzi one gets the impression that the Americana that is Ruggles is a part of the provenance of this collection.  Ruggles coarse and famously racist attitudes hardly fit with the generally romantic vision of this collection but Americana as perceived by a non-American need not edit the unsavory from the overall picture.  The music is what this is about and these are indeed masterful little essays and a part of the American grain.

Another new name is given a brief appearance in the “Testament of Atom” by Brent Michael Davids.   This young composer’s clever website lists a plethora of works whose titles resemble many of the pieces on these discs.  Again we must trust the artist that his inclusion of this work is representative of his vision of this version of Americana.

For his concluding track Arciuli does a wonderful thing by including the work of Talib Rasul Hakim (1940-1988), another too little known American composer.  Born Stephen Alexander Chambers, he changed his name in 1973 when he converted to Sufism, a spiritual sect of Islam.  The music, “Sound Gone”, is a fitting finale to this beautiful, challenging, and ultimately inclusive collection of Americana.  Bravo, Mr. Arciuli and thank you for the gift of showing us some of the best of how we Americans look to you.

 

 

Huang Ruo: Red Rain, a New Generation From the East Makes Itself Known


redrain

This recording grabbed my attention in wonderful ways from the very beginning and didn’t cease to amaze me until it ended.  Huang Ruo (1976- ) is one of the most striking new voices this reviewer has heard in some time.  This Chinese born American composer draws on his ancestral culture, modern culture and synthesizes it with contemporary compositional techniques in new and interesting ways.  He provokes the same sort of excitement in this reviewer that first contact with the music of Bright Sheng and Ge Gan Ru did when they first came into earshot some years ago.

huangruo

Huang Ruo (1976- )

(Perhaps it is due to the rising star nature of this artist but there seems to be relatively little reliable info on him.  His website is apparently not yet complete and even his Theodore Presser page fails to even give dates for his scores.  I’m hoping these glitches get resolved soon because I think this is a composer who deserves serious attention.)

The very first track, Four Fragments (2006?) in the version for cello solo (apparently there is a version for violin solo but it is not clear which came first) is a powerful and virtuosic piece loaded with various pizzicati, glissandi and other effects that perhaps only a score could really tell you with certainty.  What is interesting is the really organic nature of these effects, that is to say that they serve the composition and aren’t simply “golly gee what a virtuoso” type fireworks. The amazing Canadian Korean cellist Soo Bae handles this work beautifully and seemingly with relative ease.  This is the second longest (by about ten seconds) of the pieces on this disc and the music, the performance snagged me immediately.  What a powerful piece!

After that I was prepared for perhaps a let down, something more “ordinary”.  But, no, the next track, the title track, Red Rain (200?) for piano played by the wonderful Emanuele Arciuli is another distinctive statement which seems to mine the riches of the composer’s native culture and place it anew in a contemporary and relevant modern context.  At 10:50 it is a substantial piano work.  Like the cello piece it seems to use some unconventional idioms for the instrument and by that I mean it sounds nothing like Mozart, Beethoven, Debussy or even Boulez or Stockhausen.  It seems infused with an eastern musical flavor no doubt gained from techniques native to non-western traditions.

In another assault to any expectations I might have had the three movements of Shifting Shades have the pianist using a whistle such as your gym coach likely used with the pea inside to create a tremolo.  Here the pianist whistles (and plays some sort of flute, maybe a recorder or shakuhachi? at one point; he also apparently plays directly on the piano strings at times) whilst playing the rapid tremolos and the drones that seem to characterize Huang’s keyboard writing. Stephen Buck is the hard working pianist here.

Buck comes back again for the Tree Without Wind for piano (this time played a bit more conventionally).  This is the longest piece on the disc at 13:57 and rewards the listener’s attention.  It seems to probe mythological depths and was suggested by a Chan Buddhist narrative by Hui Neng.  Tremolos, clusters, drones and melodic fragments take on a symphonic grandeur at times.  There is a wide range of dynamics and tempi as the pianist recounts in sounds the meaning of movement and silence.

Three Pieces for Piano gives names to the short movements.  Prelude: Diffluent, Postlude: Left… and, Interlude: Points and Lines all contain the same techniques as the other piano pieces here (though without any additional instruments this time).  These sound like they might be earlier works and perhaps studies investigating different techniques though they seem fully fleshed out and complete in themselves.  The three movements are varied and the last one is apparently the composer’s only dalliance with twelve tone techniques and is by far the most conventional sounding work here though Huang’s distinctive fingerprint is present.  Once again we hear Stephen Buck navigating the score.

In the last track we get to hear the composer himself at the piano with Arash Amini (a member of the American Modern Ensemble) on cello in Wind Blows…  Like the previous tracks and as indicated in the fine notes by Stephen Buck this piece utilizes specialized effects to produce a unique sonic image.  The piano part is referred to as a “drone” and it is indeed static at least in relation to the part for cello. Unlike the preceding pieces there seems to be less concern about evoking images and more concern for just the sound itself which is described aptly as “meditative”.   In fact it is powerfully lyrical, even “Brahmsian” if I can be forgiven for that comparison.

The brief biography in the overall fascinating liner notes describe the composer as having been influenced by a wide variety of musical styles ranging from traditional Chinese folk musics to Chinese Opera, various western classical traditions including modernists such as Lutoslawski and various “pop” traditions as well.  He studied at the Shanghai Conservatory and he appears to have achieved a fascinating synthesis in what seems to be his mature style.  He is a composer, conductor and vocalist.  His music is unique and beautiful as a Taoist painting but grounded in traditions that embrace perhaps the entire world as filtered through his creative mind. Bravo Innova for bringing this music to light in this fine and interesting CD.

Definitely keep and eye and ear out for this guy.  He has many things to say and interesting ways to say them.