Monthly Archives: August 2023

Switched On: Various Artists – Late Night Tales presents After Dark: Vespertine compiled by Bill Brewster

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by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

Bill Brewster returns to the decks for a new instalment in his After Dark series for Late Night Tales. Firmly entrenched as dance music royalty, Brewster has an encyclopedic knowledge of house, funk and disco, writing and co-writing a number of books and endlessly fascinating booklet notes. This love transfers effortlessly to his DJ sets and the music itself.

As before he has come up with an inventive selection of tracks old and new, plucking a number of rarities from behind the sofa, always with an eye on the overarching whole. Tracks are either brand new or digitally available for the first time.

Brewster describes his selection as “a basement, a red light and a sound system. Or, as the Beasties once rapped, slow and low, that is the tempo”.

What’s the music like?

Not surprisingly, slow and low – and very smooth with it. Brewster, whose modesty is commendable given all the tunes he knows, has come up with a set that casts its net far and wide musically. It’s a selection where the listener will find plenty to satisfy their curiosity.

Brewster’s own work in the studio shines through, joining Alex Tepper for the Hotel Motel remake of Jeb Loy Nichols’ Don’t Drop Me, the singer professing his love for ‘a little bit of dirt’. Nichols makes an excellent vocalist in this context, though it could be argued that Brewster’s work with Raj Gupta, as Mang Dynasty, is even finer. The pair lend a chunky groove to Khruangbin‘s So We Won’t Forget.

Where Brewster really scores is in the joyful unpredictability of his selections, which turn out to sound great next to each other. A great example begins with the persuasive rhythms of Jana Koubkova’s Nijána, which give way to the Hacienda-tinged vocals of Dan Wainwright and the excellent Come Home.

Island Band‘s Idle Hours is openly joyful, with its choruses of voices and saxophones. Meanwhile Gus Paterson, Fernando and IPG V Hot Toddy all present winsome summer grooves. The former’s Archipelago has a Balearic feel, while IPG’s Open Space explores a classy pool party vibe.

Wrapping things up are a nice bit of electro funk from Rheinzand, the Scorpio Twins remix of Kills And Kisses, and a very smooth, languid groove from Chaz Jankel, Manon Manon.

Does it all work?

It does indeed. The music here is gloriously unhurried, and with each track able to play out there is plenty of space around the notes.

Is it recommended?

Certainly – a great complement to previous releases in the series. Bill Brewster certainly understands what makes a dancefloor tick.

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Switched On: SareemOne – Olivine Window (VLSI)

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by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

Olivine Window is no ordinary album. Its origins lie in the Soviet spy satellite Cаяём1 (which translates roughly into English as ‘We speak as one’). This craft, launched in 1983, went missing and was thought to have ditched into the Laptev Sea – though no evidence was found to reinforce this claim.

The details were kept secret until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1988, at which point amateur radio enthusiasts started picking up a new transmission whose frequency was compromising that of other similar, high frequency stations.

This pioneering release collects recordings attributed to the station renamed Sareem1, then SareemOne. They have been restored, corrected and prepared for digital release by Mach V and Andy Gillham, of Echaskech, who have assigned each track a name from the ENIGMA logs where most of the recordings can be found.

The recordings are available digitally, or on cassette – while you can read the full story of the project here:

What’s the music like?

Compelling – and almost entirely weightless. The six compositions have no percussion or meaningful bass, meaning they exist as the original transmissions did – in mid-air. The melodies are extended to the point where each progression has a slow inevitability about it, slow enough to operate as a deep, ambient melody.

The wide-open panorama is established with Losing Nils, which has an air of melancholy, while The BCDE looks upwards to a more fragmented, heavily synthesized melody played over the top.

As the album progresses so the pieces become more substantial, with each maintaining a similar textural blueprint while varying in style. 3TIGHTGAPS has a slide guitar feel, its white noise and slow vibrato both uplifting and incredibly calming. There are hints of percussion in a slightly bassier interference, which also makes itself known in the thrumming introduction to Sol’s Goodbye. This flickers like a flame against broad background strokes, high in the treble range and carefully marshalled.

Between them the last two tracks last over 26 minutes, yet remain compelling to the close listener. Olivine Window itself has hints of the human voice and a diverse range of timbres, though its watery textures remain as a support throughout. Mastaba looks wider still, its textures akin to a massive intro for a shoegaze song, guitar-like sounds rippling over sustained notes. Rich chords and sonorous white noise combine to make the audio equivalent of cotton wool.

Does it all work?

It does. This is very deep ambient music, ideally produced and matching its cover art, which is the striking, immersive Day of Radiance Quilt by Susannah Eisenbraun

Is it recommended?

Yes, without hesitation. The fascinating back story demands to be read, and is more than matched by a soundtrack that does wonders for the mind.

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On record – George Zacharias, Alexandros Koustas, LPO / Brabbins – Skalkottas: Two Concertos (BIS)

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George Zacharias (violin), Alexandros Koustas (viola), London Philharmonic Orchestra / Martyn Brabbins

Skalkottas
Violin Concerto (1937-8, ed. Mantzourani)
Double Concerto (1939-40, ed. Zacharias)

BIS BIS 2554 SACD [57’57”]

Producers Matthew Bennett (Violin Concerto), Alexander Van Ingen (Double Concerto)
Engineers Dave Rowell (Violin Concerto), Andrew Mellor, Brett Cox (Double Concerto)

Recorded 5-6 January 2020 (Violin Concerto), 19-20 April 2022 (Double Concerto), Henry Wood Hall, London

Written by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

BIS continues its long-running project devoted to music by Nikos Skalkottas (1904-49) with this revisiting of his Violin Concerto, alongside a first recording for his Double Concerto in what is a typically apposite pairing which none the less points up the diversity of his output.

What’s the music like?

It was with a release featuring the Violin Concerto that BIS inaugurated its Skalkottas series a quarter-century ago. This recording uses the ‘new critical edition’ prepared in 2019 by Eva Mantzourani, whose volume The Life and Twelve-Note Music of Nikos Skalkottas (Routledge: 2011) is necessary reading for anyone interested in this composer. Many of these corrections will only be evident to those having access to the score, but interpretive differences between Gorgios Demertzis in 1997 and George Zacharias in 2022 are clear from the outset. The latter adopts appreciably quicker tempos for the first two movements that make the opening Molto appassionato more febrile in its expressive contrasts, then the Andante spirito feels closer to an intermezzo after the example of Schoenberg’s Violin Concerto as is brought more directly into focus. Demertzis launches the final Allegro rapidly, Zacharias gaining momentum more gradually before tackling the Prestissimo coda with abandon. Which one prefers depends on how one views the competing expressionist and classicizing impulses of this masterly work.

Although finished barely two years later and pursuing a nominally similar formal trajectory, the Concerto for Violin, Viola and Wind Orchestra presents a markedly different take on its composer’s thinking. Different though not unexpectedly so, given Skalkottas’s approach to serial composition was anything but predictable while it took shape, moreover, in a cultural milieu where Hindemith and Weill (briefly his teacher) were as necessary a creative catalyst as Schoenberg. Not only does the scoring of this piece find accord with that of Hindemith’s concertante works and Weill’s Violin Concerto during that period, but the evolution of each movement in sometimes oblique though always discernible terms gives the overall design a distinctly neo-classical feel. Zacharias sounds even more ‘inside’ this work, and Alexandros Koustas is no less assured in viola writing which is (surprisingly?) always audible against an orchestra whose saxophone section accentuates the presence of jazz as against the militaristic element of brass and other woodwind. The result is a piece by turns engaging and disturbing.

Does it all work?

Pretty much always. Thoughtfully conceived and impressively executed, Skalkottas’s music does not play itself so that performers need to take the lead in rendering its inherent qualities as comprehensively as possible. Which is undoubtedly the case here – Zacharias and Koustas convincingly overcome any incidental technical difficulties, while Martyn Brabbins secures a trenchant and committed response from the London Philharmonic Orchestra in works with which neither he nor they have had the opportunity to come to terms via live performances.

Is it recommended?

It is. Those who already have that earlier recording of the Violin Concerto still need this new release which, with its immediate sound and detailed notes, brings the Skalkottas discography nearer fruition. How about a complete version of the Second Symphonic Suite as a follow-up?

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For more information on this release visit the BIS website

BBC Proms 2023 – Soloists, London Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra / Gardner – Ligeti & Richard Strauss

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Prom 36 – Jennifer France (soprano), Clare Presland (mezzo-soprano), Edvard Grieg Kor, London Philharmonic Choir, Royal Northern College of Music Chamber Choir, London Philharmonic Orchestra / Edward Gardner

Ligeti Requiem (1963-5); Lux aeterna (1966)
Richard Strauss Also sprach Zarathustra Op.30 (1896)

Royal Albert Hall, London
Friday 11 August 2023

by Richard Whitehouse photos by Mark Allan / BBC

There did not seem any more concrete reason to build a Prom around the music from Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey other than this being the 55th anniversary of its release, but it at least offered an opportunity to revive one of the last century’s defining choral works.

Much has been made of a then avant-garde composer writing a piece based on a seminal text from the Christian liturgy, but centenary composer György Ligeti’s Requiem is anything but beholden to tradition. Focussing on what would normally constitute the first half of the Requiem Mass itself skews the textual imagery away from any hope of attaining ‘eternal rest’ – the four movements duly proceeding from a sombre Introitus in which the music’s conceptual vastness along with its expressive extremes are laid bare. The Kyrie is the most (in)famous part – emerging in two successive and cumulative waves of micropolyphony both overwhelming and disorientating, not least when rendered with the poise and precision that the combined choirs summoned in the Albert Hall’s expanse. Inevitably, the terror of the infinite gives way to that of the absurd.

Hence the Dies irae sequence, designated On the Day of Judgement and a veritable tour de force of choral outbursts with vocal interjections; Clare Presland’s ominous intoning tellingly offset by Jennifer France’s stentorian pronouncements, with the wind and brass of the London Philharmonic Orchestra visceral in their contribution under the attentive guidance of Edward Gardner. Neither did the Lacrimosa lack gravitas, the soloists musing eloquently if wearily against a stark instrumental backdrop whose essential emptiness carries through to the close.

While not intended as a continuation of the larger work, Lux aeterna still makes for a viable resolution in its undulating yet never static textures such as conjure the presence of ‘eternal light’ without any concomitant spiritual aspect. Set high-up in the gallery, to the right of the platform, the Edvard Grieg Kor evinced a faultless intonation along with a tangible sense of the music’s timelessness – though this piece would maybe have been better placed after the Ligeti instead of before the Strauss, not least as there was no segue between the latter works.

Also sprach Zarathustra was, of course, elevated to a new level of public recognition after its Introduction had been utilized as fanfare in Kubrick’s film, and a less than thrilling rendition here at least ensured this Sunrise could not pre-empt the remainder in Strauss’s free-ranging overview of Friedrich Nietzsche’s influential tract. On fine form overall, the various sections of the LPO relished their passages in the spotlight, reminding one that this piece is as much a ‘concerto for orchestra’ before its own time as the musical embodiment of human aspiration. Pieter Schoemann audibly enjoyed setting The Dance Song in motion and while others have made its climax more intoxicating, Gardner brought a rapt serenity to the Night Wanderer’s Song such as made the tonal equivocation of those final bars the more acute and intriguing.

Numerous recent Proms have followed the second-half work with an ‘official’ encore and, while this practice is not always justified, the inclusion tonight of a certain waltz by another Strauss would have extended the 2001 concept still further and effected a more definite close.

For more on the 2023 BBC Proms, visit the festival’s website at the BBC. Meanwhile click on the names for more information on artists Jennifer France, Clare Presland, the London Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Ed Gardner. For more on Ligeti, head to this dedicated website

On record – Orchestra New England / James Sinclair – Ives: Complete Sets for Chamber Orchestra (Naxos)

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Orchestra New England / James Sinclair

Ives
Set no.1
Set no.2
Set no.3
Set no.4: Three Poets and Human Nature
Set no.5: The Other Side of Pioneering, or Side Lights on American Enterprise
Set no.6: From the Side Hill
Set no.7: Water Colors
Set no.8: Songs without Voices
Set no.9 of Three Pieces
Set no.10 of Three Pieces
Set for Theatre Orchestra

Naxos American Classics 8.559917 [68’17”]

Producer Kenneth Singleton
Engineers Benjamin Schwartz, Jonathan Galle

Recorded 8-9 March 2022 at Colony Hall and Choate Rosemary Hall, Wallingford CT

Written by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

James Sinclair here continues his long-term Naxos project devoted to Charles Ives with this first complete release of the sets for chamber orchestra that the composer put together across two decades and several of which are only now receiving their first recordings in this guise.

What’s the music like?

While his contribution to such major genres as the symphony, piano sonata and string quartet can hardly be gainsaid, Ives was no less committed to the miniature – whether in terms of his c130 songs, or nearly 40 evocative vignettes that are collated here. As Sinclair points out, the first three of these sets emerged during the First World War so pre-date the songs which were derived from them, whereas those other seven drew retrospectively on Ives’s songs as well as revising numerous of the composer’s shorter pieces – including his most famous single work.

Those relatively familiar with Ives’s output will be aware of many of the pieces through other media, not least the still excellent When the moon collection which Richard Bernas recorded with Music Projects in the 1990s (Decca) and which remains available for download. The 16 items which became songs are included thus in estimable readings by soprano Susan Narucki or baritone Sanford Sylvian with pianist Alan Feinberg, though the merit in having these sets as an integral series is self-evident as to make it surprising this had not earlier been attempted.

That the first three sets are relatively well-known does not lessen the arresting quality of such items as Ives’ quirky take on a Yale processional which is Calcium Light Night (Set 1/No 5), sardonic elision of (in)famous people in Gyp the Blood’ or Hearst!? Which is Worst?! (2/2), or his stark directive to embrace the future in Premonitions (3/3) with its subsequent setting of Robert Underwood Johnson. The ensuing five sets (Nos. 4 and 8 are recorded here for the first time) each has a descriptive title with which to characterise its content, while the last two sets (again in their first recordings) emerged nearly a decade after Ives had effectively ceased original composition – but inclusion of a (definitive?) version of The Unanswered Question (9/3) and reappearance of Like a Sick Eagle (1/4 & 10/1) thereby brings the series full circle.

Also featured here is the Set for Theatre Orchestra that Ives assembled around the same time as the First Set, and whose individual items between them encapsulate three distinct facets of his mature idiom – being respectively ominous, uproarious and nostalgic in their expression.

Does it all work?

It does indeed. Taken overall this collection might be felt to represent the essential Ives – its diversity of contents allied to its economy of means comparable to the orchestral miniatures which Webern composed some years earlier, not least by their exuding comparable intensity of expression. It helps to have so attuned an Ivesian as Sinclair at the helm, who directs with precision and insight these pieces – many of which he, Kenneth Singleton and David Porter realized for performance. Both sound and annotations are fully on a par with these readings.

Is it recommended?

Very much so. This is the fifth volume of Ives which Sinclair has now recorded for Naxos and, whether the series is slated to run to eight or nine volumes, it is building into the most inclusive and reliable edition of the composer’s orchestral output that has so far been made.

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For more information on this release and purchasing options, visit Naxos Direct. For more information on the conductor’s Ives discography, visit the James Sinclair page on the Naxos website