Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood Recordings are so good at compilations that bring vibrant new sounds from around the world. This time they focus on South Africa, with a compilation of improvised music headed by Thandi Nthuli and Siyabonga Mthembu.
It is extremely helpful to read the commentary accompanying this release on Bandcamp, as it gives insight into the extremely wide range of influences at play here. It goes some way to explaining how the music can be approached from very different directions – jazz, classical, funk and soul to name just four.
What’s the music like?
As implied above, the eight tracks here have a musical freedom that proves to be intoxicating for the listener. The structures are impressive – The Ancestors, for example, give us eleven minutes of fluid music making on Prelude to Writing Together. Some of the issues raised are pertinent, too , few more so than The Wretched’s question What Is History, with hard hitting spoken word examples from Kwame Toure and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela complemented by a vibrant rhythm section.
Bokani Dyer finds a strong sense of purpose on Ke Nako, with its keenly felt references to the ANC, while iPhupho L’ka Biko ft Hymnself & Kinsmen build their way towards an ecstatic melodic loop on the invocation Abaphezulu, crowned by high vocals at the end. A sonorous vocal starts off Umdali, a collaboration between Sibusile Xaba, Naftali, Fakazile Nkosi and AshK, ending with what sounds like a theremin soaring high. The meditative and soulful Dikeledi, from Thandi Ntuli, makes a strong impression with its searching questions, as does the thoughtful Umthandazo Wamagenge from The Brother Moves On, complete with cool keyboards.
Does it all work?
Yes. Indaba Is celebrates musical freedom in a very important context, and rewards an open minded approach with vibrant, deeply felt music.
Is it recommended?
Without doubt. If like me you make irregular forays into jazz and improvised music, Brownswood prove to be an indispensable guide, opening up avenues to explore. At the same time, this is music offering hope for the future, resilient in difficult times and optimistic for where we could go from here.
This extended EP was released digitally towards the end of 2020 by Franck Vigroux, and will soon be available on vinyl. It reveals a more experimental and less beat-driven side of the French multimedia artist, last heard of by many on his solo 2017 album Barricades, or his 2015 collaboration with Matthew Bourne. There, the two paid an amended musical homage to Kraftwerk’s Radio-Activity album on the occasion of its 40th anniversary.
What’s the music like?
Minimal…but very descriptive. Vigroux proves himself to be a sonic architect, capable of telling a story with the barest material in a form of ‘musique concrète’. Much of the music here could soundtrack a film or an installation, for the images created are powerful and lasting.
The tracklisting is very simple – the ten tracks named Matériaux I through to Matériaux X – and the music follows suit, but with markedly different moods. Matériaux II explores blasts of sound, as does Matériaux VI, which portrays a massive space but with an increasing sense of dread, as a progression you might hear in a horror movie starts to build. Here Vigroux’s sounds are like a church organ, played at the highest range – while at the other end of the scale, Matériaux IV has a lovely rich sound with hints of quarter tones, like a group of monks recorded from the other end of a monastery. Matériaux VII stays lower in the spectrum but is still uneasy.
The two outer pieces are the most substantial, and Matériaux X is effectively a story in several parts. Early on there are individual sounds like tendrils twisting inwards to form a cluster, in the sort of style Greek composer Xenakis would have revelled, but then the sound dampens considerably, becoming easier on the ear but ensuring the listener remains wary.
Does it all work?
It does, once the listener buys into the sonic and musical language used on the album. There are no melodies as such here, no rhythm either – but the sounds and harmonies are everything, setting the colour and the mood.
Is it recommended?
Yes. Matériaux reveals Franck Vigoroux making music that is by turns caustic and comforting, and never less than dramatic.
Düsseldorf’s Stefan Schneider is the man behind Mapstation, a pseudonym he has used on eight albums since 2000. This is his eighth album, recorded in isolation between March and August 2020 – and because of that his usual penchant for including guest musicians had to be rescinded. He also scaled back the equipment used, paring down to an analog tape loop device, a Roland 808 drum machine, a Novation Peak synthesizer and a guitar – not to mention his own voice, which appears occasionally.
What’s the music like?
Schneider tends to operate towards the lower end of the frequency scale, which ties in with the influences he holds dear. Dub music and Krautrock are perhaps the two most prominent, while perhaps inevitably for a Düsseldorf-based musician the slower side of Kraftwerk and Hans-Joachim Roedelius make themselves known on occasion. So, too, does the music of Cabaret Voltaire.
Mapstation’s music is never over-reliant on a single strain, however, moving with fluid ease between moods and speeds and often maintaining considerable tension. My Mother Sailor has a sonorous lower range, while the Cabaret Voltaire influence comes to the fore on the short but sharp Train Of Gerda. To A Single Listener is an intriguing track, like a musician noodling on the pedals of an organ in a snowstorm. The bleeps and tones Mapstation uses can be intimate or expansive.
Does it all work?
Yes – though you need the right listening environment for My Frequencies to make a proper impact. Listening to it at home or in a studio would be the best environments, for the lower end frequencies to have maximum impact.
Is it recommended?
It is – followers of Schneider’s music will be pleased to note his quality threshold is still high…while followers of the Bureau B label will be satisfied.
The Kaunitz Palace and Garden, Vienna by Bernardo Bellotto
Trio in B flat major Op.11 for clarinet, cello and piano (1797-8, Beethoven aged 27)
Dedication Countess Maria Wilhelmine von Thun
Duration 22′
1. Allegro con brio
2. Adagio
3. Tema con variazioni ‘Pria ch’io l’impegno’: Allegretto
Listen
Background and Critical Reception
The combination of clarinet, cello and piano was a relatively rare one when Beethoven wrote his trio in 1798. It is thought to have been written for the Viennese clarinettist Joseph Bähr, but was dedicated to Countess Maria Wilhelmine von Thun. Richard Wigmore, writing in his booklet note for Hyperion on the piece, thinks Bähr suggested a theme for the variations Beethoven wrote in the finale – on Josef Weigl’s new comic opera L’amor marinaro which was premiered late in 1797 – and which gives the trio its sometimes-used Gassenhauer nickname.
Daniel Heartz dubs the piece ‘very entertaining’, but Lewis Lockwood is less convinced. ‘Of the lesser works, designed for popularity and little more, the most developed are the Clarinet Trio Op.11 and the Quintet for Piano and Winds Op.16. On its publication in 1798 Beethoven dedicated it to a Countess Thun, presumably the oldest one of several by that title, who a few years earlier had gone on her knees to implore him to play. For her pains she now received a light and flashy reward that moved from a glittering first movement and slow movement to the circus style of its finale, made up of variation on the hit tune Pria ch’io l’impegno from a recent comic opera by Josef Weigl. In once more forcing an inevitable comparison with Mozart, whose E flat major Clarinet Trio, with viola, had been another quiet masterpiece, Beethoven did well to make his piece attractive to audiences and performers, especially cellists, but he was fully aware that instead of attempting a really serious work that could stand up to Mozart’, he was trolling the surface for easy dividends.’
Lockwood’s relative disdain for the piece has not carried over to audiences, nor artists – for as you will read below there are many fine versions of the piece. This in spite of the critic in 1798 who declared that the work was ‘difficult’ and that Beethoven wrote ‘unnaturally’.
Thoughts
What a charming piece this is.
The first theme we hear is an unlikely one. Given that the piece is in B flat major Beethoven seems to want nothing to do with the home key initially, arriving there as though by accident. The second theme is nice, too, given out by the clarinet after a simple and quite dreamy aside in D major. The tone of clarinet, cello and piano is lovely – and while the piano often takes the lead there is plenty for the other two instruments.
The second movement is sublime, a lovely period of reflection with a lyrical theme made for cello. This is also the ideal point to enjoy the colour combination of cello and clarinet in particular which Beethoven clearly relished.
The composer has a great deal of fun with the ‘Gassenhauer’ theme, which has a wide set of variations. The perky theme is taken for a run first by the piano, then through a canon between cello and clarinet, then another upright exchange with brilliant high notes from the clarinet. The fourth variation finds minor key stillness, deep in thought, but is completely swamped by tempestuous scales from the piano, blasted out fortissimo. Variation 7 returns to the minor key, in a mock-stern funeral march, then we hear a glorious high cello and clarinet unison for the eighth. The ninth and final variation goes far and wide, allowing the piano room to roam before a bracing coda.
Recordings used and Spotify links
Sabine Meyer (clarinet), Heinrich Schiff (cello), Rudolf Buchbinder (piano) (EMI)
Gervase de Peyer (clarinet), Jacqueline du Pré (cello), Daniel Barenboim (piano) (EMI)
Karl Leister (clarinet), Pierre Fournier (cello), Wilhelm Kempff (piano) (Deutsche Grammophon)
The Nash Ensemble (Virgin Classics)
Jon Manasse (clarinet), Clive Greensmith (cello), Jon Nakamatsu (piano) (Harmonia Mundi)
Paul Meyer (clarinet), Claudio Bohórquez (cello), Eric Le Sage (piano) (Alpha)
The trio led by Jon Manasse give a sparkling performance, of which you can hear half on Spotify due to time restrictions. Sabine Meyer and her trio are also superb, with Heinrich Schiff excelling in the slow movement. Karl Leister, Pierre Fournier and Wilhelm Kempff had a great rapport, as do Eric Le Sage and his trio – all of them emphasising how much pleasure this work can bring as pure chamber music to be enjoyed together.
You can listen to these versions on the playlist below:
You can chart the Arcana Beethoven playlist as it grows, with one recommended version of each piece we listen to. Catch up here!
Also written in 1798 EyblerClarinet Concerto in B flat major
Coastal Landscape by Caspar David Friedrich (c1798)
Piano Sonata no.7 in D major Op.10/3 for piano (1798, Beethoven aged 27)
1 Presto 2 Largo e mesto 3 Menuetto: Allegro 4 Rondo: Allegro
Dedication Countess Anna Margarete von Browne Duration 25′
Listen
Background and Critical Reception
The third of the sonatas published as Op.10 in September 1798 is, for Lewis Lockwood, ‘the grandest and most powerful of the group’. The word also appears in the praise given to the piece by Beethoven’s contemporary Carl Czerny, who dubbed it ‘a grand and significant piece’.
His label is referred to by Angela Hewitt in her booklet notes for the sonata recordings on Hyperion, though she goes further to call it ‘the first masterpiece in the cycle of sonatas’.
Commentators are united in praise and an awestruck respect for the great slow movement. For Lockwood, it ‘breathes an air of desolation whose only parallel from the time is the great slow movement of the Op.18/1 quartet, a movement we know Beethoven associated with the tomb scene in Romeo and Juliet.’ Hewitt quotes Donald Tovey’s performance advice in full, which states that if you as a pianist ‘simply make sure that you are playing what is written you will go far to realize the tragic power that makes this movement a landmark in musical history.’
The second movement casts a lasting shadow over the third and fourth, though Daniel Heartz enjoys the ‘lyrical and lovely’ third, and the fourth, whose theme ‘never reaches a very firm answer in the way of a thematic-harmonic conclusion until the last moment, when the questions are finally transformed into an answer – a very Haydnesque ploy that is akin to pulling an ace from one’s sleeve to end the game’.
Thoughts
This is indeed the sonata that makes the strongest emotional impression so far – and an awful lot of that is down to the slow movement. Yet the impact of that funereal tribute is even more powerful because it follows on the heels of the first movement’s bravura, with glittering scales as both hands chase each other around the keyboard.
Because of this all energy feels spent when the second movement casts its mood of contemplation and sorrow. Time seems to stop, and though there is a little hope in the central section, where an idea seems to grow from the depths and climb slowly up the piano, a bell-like tolling still runs ominously in the background.
Consolation is sought and almost found in the Menuetto, and its bright and elegant interaction between the hands and cheery trio. The Rondo theme initially feels short changed, but Beethoven pulls out his trick of making a great deal from minimal material. The stop-start nature suggests he may have written it in a single improvisation, moving between tiny melodic cells and big, grand gestures showing off the player’s virtuosity. It is ultimately a hard-fought victory in a piece of highs and lows.
Recordings used and Spotify links
Emil Gilels (Deutsche Grammophon) Alfred Brendel (Philips) András Schiff (ECM) Angela Hewitt (Hyperion) Paul Badura-Skoda (Arcana) Stephen Kovacevich (EMI) Igor Levit (Sony Classical)
Again there are some special performances to treasure of this sonata. Perhaps inevitably Emil Gilels finds the deep tragedy of the slow movement, time seemingly suspended in his traversal of grief. Alfred Brendel offers the ideal mix of elegance and virtuosity, his third movement emerging with a smile after the thoughtful second. A flurry of notes on Paul Badura-Skoda’s dfgd piano threaten to take the first movement out of his reach, but this is an edge of the seat recording that proves to be very enjoyable. Its second movement is on the quick side but the left hand chords are chilling on the fortepiano. András Schiff feels too quick here in comparison to Claudio Arrau, Igor Levit and Stephen Kovacevich, all of whom find a special and profound atmosphere. Angela Hewitt is slowest of all, but balances the tension beautifully with the eventual release of the Menuetto.
You can hear clips of Hewitt’s recording at the Hyperion website
You can chart the Arcana Beethoven playlist as it grows, with one recommended version of each piece we listen to. Catch up here!
Also written in 1798 HaydnDie Schöpfung (The Creation)
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