The ‘sonic invention’ and ‘cosmopolitan outlook’ we identified in a review of Omar Ahmad’s Inheritance album get a second look, courtesy of an imaginative remix project where the whole LP is made over by guest artists.
Ahmad is a Palestinian-American artist, a multi-instrumentalist who has proved a perfect fit for the musically open approach of the Californian label AKP Recordings. The original album saw him take on all instruments, from field recordings to cello, synthesizer, voice and percussion – plenty for the assembled artists to build on.
The tracks of the original are presented in the same order.
What’s the music like?
AKP have cast the net far and wide, meaning the remixed Inheritance veers between widescreen ambience and active beat work-outs. Most of these are extremely effective, too, presenting a tableau that stays faithful to Ahmad’s colourful intentions but uses them as the stimulus for vibrant new creations.
These range from the spacey A Little Time For Me, given a strident hip hop beat by Sam O.B., or Lapses, led by some excellent broken beats with rich colouring from Otodojo. The heat soaked Sham Oasis and roomy Descended from a Wanaque Tree (Borrowed Memory) work really well, remixed by Kirin McElwain and Ki Oni respectively – while Solpara goes the other way, applying a wide-screen view of the clattering beats on Losing A Friend.
More mysteriously, Black Gesso is pulled this way and that by ACE, with mysterious sounds from the depths.
Does it all work?
Pretty much. Sometimes the clatter becomes a bit much on the faster tracks but that’s all a matter of preference – the feeling being that Ahmad’s music is most expressive at a slower tempo.
Is it recommended?
It is – a great complement to the original album, and a lesson in how best to approach a remix album.
For fans of… Thievery Corporation, Aim, RJD2, Blockhead
Saariaho Mirage (2007) [Proms premiere] Mozart Piano Concerto no.9 in E flat major K271 ‘Jeunehomme’ (1777) Richard Strauss Eine Alpensinfonie Op.64 (1911-15)
Silja Aalto (soprano), Anssi Karttunen (cello), Seong-Jin Cho (piano), BBC Symphony Orchestra / Sakari Oramo
Royal Albert Hall, London Friday 9 August 2024, 6pm
reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Photos (c) Mark Allan
Soon to begin his 12th season as chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sakari Oramo made his second Proms appearance this season for what proved a typically diverse and resourceful programme whose stretching over 230 years of Western music was the least of its fascinations.
Her untimely death last year made a memorial to Kaija Saariaho more necessary and Mirage was a judicious choice, its setting lines by Mexican shaman María Sabina drawing a suitably theatrical response from Silja Aalto (above) – alongside who, Anssi Karttunen (long-time collaborator with this composer) weaved between the vocal and orchestral writing almost as an ‘alter-ego’ of subdued if beneficent presence. Musically the piece is typical of Saariaho from this period in aligning intricate texture with a mounting fervour at times ecstatic and ultimately fulfilled.
It may have been a ‘jeunefemme’ for whom Mozart actually wrote his Ninth Piano Concerto, but this remains its composer’s earliest unequivocal masterpiece and one with which Seong-Jin Cho (below) evidently feels real affinity. Not least in an opening Allegro whose arresting repartee at the start set the tone for an incisive traversal whose pianistic agility, not least in the first of Mozart’s cadenzas, was never without its inward asides. Such introspection came to the fore in the Andantino, its interplay of archaic and ‘modern’ harmonies yielding a plangency which found soloist and conductor as one. Nor was the finale’s central Menuetto without ruminative poise, set in relief by the buoyant Presto sections either side. Impressive music-making, then, that Cho continued with his deftly eloquent take on the second movement of Ravel’s Sonatine.
The last and most inclusive of Richard Strauss’s tone poems, An Alpine Symphony has received more than its share of tendentious reviews (and perfunctory programme notes), so credit to Oramo for emphasizing those purely musical qualities which, much more than its being a ‘bourgeois travelogue’ or even existential statement, duly determine this most formally and expressively integrated of its composer’s such works. As was evident at the outset: Alpine vistas emerged via a preludial crescendo that headed seamlessly into the ascent with its assembly of offstage horns, placed to advantage on the right of the gallery, then frequently arduous traversal above the treeline and on to the glacier prior to the summit. Its attendant ‘Vision’ drew an affecting soliloquy from oboist Tom Blomfield, then resplendent response from a 125-strong BBCSO.
What goes up tending to come down makes the following portion most difficult to sustain in terms of its ongoing momentum. The present account marginally lost focus here, but not in a mesmeric evocation of that eerie calm before the thunderstorm; organ and percussion adding to the overall mayhem before the relative calm of encroaching sunset. Ausklang is no mere epilogue – here, it afforded transcendence in the amalgam between those human and natural domains, while ensuring an overall fulfilment in the face of night with its inevitable closure.
The piece has come into its own since first appearing at these concerts 42 years ago and, if tonight’s reading did not quite touch all relevant bases, it conveyed the work’s measure like few others in tribute to the continuing creative partnership of this conductor and orchestra.
This Sunday Arcana returns to the serenades of Brahms – his first orchestral works. Having fallen under the charms of the Serenade no.1 in D major, we give you the chance to enjoy the slighter but equally enjoyable Serenade no.2 in A major, completed in 1860 and published as Op.16:
Moon Diagrams is the solo project of Deerhunter drummer Moses Archeluta – and Cemetery Classics is his second release, seven years after the acclaimed Lifetime Of Love, also on Sonic Cathedral.
Intriguingly, Moses’ description of the album is that “It’s about finding out your arms are too short to box with God…the inverse of a desert island disc – a graveyard disc. Songs to take into the afterlife.”
Cemetery Classics features guitar from Josh Diamond (Gang Gang Dance) and Patrick Flegel, along with vocals from Anastasia Coope – and, strikingly, keyboards and drum programming from James Ford.
What’s the music like?
The title may imply a gallows humour, but there is some dead good music here from Archeluta, and as Cemetery Classics progresses it delivers a bunch of excellent grooves and tableaus that vary from dark to uplifting.
On occasion his work resembles that of Andrew Weatherall, especially in the murmured vocals and smoky beat of Brand New Effie. The languid guitar and breezy mood of NRG hints at much sunnier climes, while Big Ref and Fifteen Shows At One time present irresistibly groovy music.
Listen To Me and Fragment Rock are compelling, widescreen grooves with more than a hint of dub, the latter featuring some disorientating brass and boomy, bassy vocals.
Does it all work?
It does. On occasion Archeluta’s work resembles Animal Collective or an outtake from an Adrian Sherwood session, but he can turn his work to so many styles, all of which knit together beautifully here.
Is it recommended?
It is, enthusiastically. One of those albums that impresses on first listen but gets you in a musical and emotional hold in the next few encounters. One of the sleeper albums of the year so far.
For fans of… Animal Collective, Andrew Weatherall, Adrian Sherwood
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra / Martyn Brabbins (Birthday Variations); Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra / Pekka Kuusisto (Symphony)
Various Pictured Within: Birthday Variations for M.C.B. (2019) Jaakko Kuusisto (comp. Pekka Kuusisto & Eskola) Symphony Op.39 (2020-21)
BIS 2747 [66’32”] Producers Andrew Trinick (Variations), Robert Suff (Symphony) Engineers Graeme Taylor (Variations), Enno Mäemets (Symphony) Live recordings, 13 August 2019 at Royal Albert Hall, London (Variations); 8 December 2022 at Music Centre, Helsinki
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse
What’s the story?
The BIS label issues one of the most fascinating among recent releases, one that juxtaposes a latter-day equivalent to Elgar’s Enigma Variations with a posthumously completed symphony by one of Finland’s leading conductors which now becomes a tribute to his untimely passing.
What’s the music like?
It was clearly a great idea that the BBC commission a piece to mark Martyn Brabbins’s 60th birthday, featuring 14 composers with whom this stylistically most wide-ranging of current British conductors has been associated. The outcome is Pictured Within: Birthday Variations for M.C.B. – each composer having provided a variation on the ‘anonymous’ theme for what here becomes an inverse take on Elgarian procedure in the latter’s Variations on an Original Theme; a work whose ground-plan also furnishes the formal framework of the present piece.
It is worth considering the ways in which these composers seem either inhibited or liberated by their placing (determined beforehand by Brabbins) within the overall scheme. Given this theme – understated to a fault – yields its potential more from the harmonic then melodic or rhythmic angle, the most successful tend to make a virtue of such constraints: thus the ‘Tact 60’ of Variation I finds Dai Fujikura hinting guardedly at ‘C.A.E.’. David Sawer capriciously conjures ‘H.D.S-P.’, while Sally Beamish offers a deftly ironic parallel to ‘R.B.T’ and Colin Matthews rumbustiously complements ‘W.M.B.’ Iris ter Schiphorst captures the pensiveness if not the geniality of ‘R.P.A.’, whereas violist-turned-composer Brett Dean proves a natural fit for the undulating poise of ‘Ysobel’ and Win Henderickx evokes ‘Troyte’ with real gusto.
His ruminative Variation VII finds Richard Blackford emulating more the connection with a country house than ‘W.N.’, while Harrison Birtwistle throws caution to the wind in a darkly inward contrast to ‘Nimrod’, and ‘Sixty Salutations’ finds Judith Weir in an engaging take on the halting charms of ‘Dorabella’. Gavin Bryars rouses himself to unexpected activity in his reading of ‘G.R.S.’, whereas Kalevi Aho is more suited to the sombre eloquence of ‘B.G.N.’ and Anthony Payne ably plumbs the inherent mysteries of ‘***’. John Pickard then takes on the daunting challenge of ‘E.D.U.’ in The Art of Beginning – the mingling of portentousness and humour appearing to make light of its Longfellow association, but whose organ-capped apotheosis confirms real appreciation of the ‘right ending’ as constituting an art unto itself.
The coupling is as unexpected as it proves apposite. Remembered as a notable violinist and a versatile conductor, Jaakko Kuusisto (1974-2022) turned increasingly to composition and, at his untimely death through brain cancer, had planned a symphony for Osmo Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra. Acting on behalf of his widow, his younger brother Pekka and copyist Jari Eskola realized this piece from several minutes of extant fragments such that Kuusisto’s Symphony takes its place as the last statement by one who ostensibly had much more to give.
Playing just over 25 minutes, the work falls into two separate movements. Shorter and more outwardly cohesive, the first of these emerges as imperceptibly as it evanesces – taking in a tersely rhythmic central episode, then a warmly expressive melody with more than a hint of American post-Minimalism. Almost twice as long, the Lento seems more discursive but no less absorbing – picking up where its predecessor left off as it builds to impulsive climaxes, separated by an eloquent span derived from a chorale-like theme. Nothing, though, prepares one for the ending – a sequence of quietly interlocking ostinato patterns, evidently inspired by light signals beamed in the Gulf of Finland and underpinned by undulating timpani. The effect is haunting and unworldly but, for these very qualities, wholly fitting as a conclusion.
Does it all work?
Pretty much always. Those expecting an Elgarian ‘re-run’ may be disconcerted by Pictured Within, but this only serves to reinforce the stylistic autonomy and variety of the composers involved (three of whom sadly no longer with us) in what is a tribute to Brabbins’s acumen for involving them in the first instance. Quirky and compelling, the Kuusisto is appreciably more than a labour of love on behalf of those who brought about its completion: both works deserving revival for their intrinsic merits rather than commemorating a particular occasion.
Is it recommended?
Absolutely. These live performances (that of Pictures Within being that of the premiere) have come up well as presented here, while there are detailed notes on each piece by John Pickard and Jaani Länsiö. This fascinating release more than justifies itself musically and artistically.
Arcana.fm 