Author Archives: Arcana

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About Arcana

My name is Ben Hogwood, editor of the Arcana music site (arcana.fm)

On Record – This Is The Kit: Careful Of Your Keepers (Rough Trade)

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by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

Kate Stables and her band return with a fourth album, their first in three years. It is described as chronicling ‘a world of mistakes and mishaps, cruel circumstances, and universe-driven surprises. It’s a record that embraces the concept of outrospection – the idea that you get to know oneself by developing relationships and empathic thinking with others’. Lyrically the album looks at how to navigate change, and how we respond to it.

Realising the production is Gruff Rhys, who has at his disposal a surprisingly large ensemble, deftly used.

What’s the music like?

Softly compelling. Stables has a voice that draws the listener in, and because she sings clearly it is easy to relate to her thoughts. This is especially the case on the single Inside Outside, whose paired lyrics raise as many questions as they do answers. Similarly, Take You To Sleep, with its insistent vocal line and rippling guitar, has tension between the contradictions in its lyrics.

After these questions, More Change has a spring in its step, but is also playfully furtive. “If we hold hands, will anybody see?” asks Stables. Her voice is sweetly toned in the upward looking Scabby Head And Legs, a refreshingly straight talking number beautifully dressed by Rhys.

Then comes the title track, stripped back and revealing, seemingly set in a quiet room catching the light at the end of the day. Stables sings of ‘only just surviving’, but there is still resolve in her voice as the dappled light plays tricks in the arrangements.

Doomed Or More Doomed is a questioning number, Stables raising her voice to the sky, Rhys’ arrangement rich in colour. Stuck In A Room is also questioning, fretful even, before Stables lowers her voice for Dibs, a thoughtful coda.

There are some lovely production touches overseen by Gruff Rhys, such as the open air brass that cast their thoughts on Goodbye Bite halfway through, or the fluttering saxophone solo that breezily closes off Take You To Sleep.

Does it all work?

It does. Stables has the ability to draw the listener in to hang on every word, and while some of the music here is elusive, hers is a thought provoking vocal. The instrumentation is beautifully shaded to complement her unique voice.

Is it recommended?

It is – fans will take to it immediately, while those enjoying songs that are introverted and cryptic yet full of personality will find a great deal to enjoy here.

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On this day – Darius Milhaud: La Création du Monde

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by Ben Hogwood

On this day, 22 June 1974, your editor arrived in the world…but I have just discovered for the first time that on the same day we lost the composer Darius Milhaud.

With Milhaud’s 50th anniversary falling next year it would seem to be a good time to reappraise his output, for he has dropped off the radar rather when it comes to concert programming. This is a shame – because if you listen to one of his most popular works, La Création du Monde, you will see just how well he integrates jazz into his style, and how full of melody his writing is. Listen and enjoy!

On Record – IzangoMa: Ngo Ma (Brownswood Recordings)

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by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

IzangoMa are a 15-piece ensemble from Pretoria, South Africa, led by vocalist / guitarist Sibusile Xaba and the DJ and producer Ash Kgabo, whose credits also include keyboards, snare drum and drum machine.

Xaba had the idea of expanding their musical collaboration to include his students from Mozambique, who he had nurtured for years and had seen grow into experienced musicians.

Their debut album, whose name translates from Zulu as ‘from / by my mother’ is built on themes of creation, heritage and female energy.

What’s the music like?

Memorable. There is some remarkable music-making on this album, as IzangoMa embrace structures big and small to communicate compositions of striking intensity.

Right from the off this album is a call to arms, Agenda Remember throwing down the gauntlet with a herald-like vocal. This leads to a flurry of bird song and syncopated percussion on Birds (Of A Feather), then a descriptive evocation of the twinkling City Lights. Le Nna Mfana is more intense, with Xaba singing of “surrender to the almighty”.

These four compositions are effectively a prelude to the centre of the album, where two extended, compelling meditations take over. The first of these, Mgung u Ndlovu, starts with saxophone and guitar in extended conversation, before the vocals take over in what sounds like a hymn to nature. Ngo Ma is more animated as it tells its story, with Xaba’s intense delivery the feature.

After these there is still plenty to enjoy, especially the Tribute To Johnny Dyani, a tribute to the late member of the Blue Notes. “Yes you photo man, yes you video man, we love you, we really really do!”, sings Xaba.

Does it all work?

It does. Occasionally chaotic but never dull, this is an album full of musical invention and lyrical warmth.

Is it recommended?

Yes, enthusiastically. This is an inspirational collaboration, part celebration and part meditation. More please!

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On record – Ellen Nisbeth, Norrköpping Symphony Orchestra / Christian Lindberg – Pettersson: Symphony no.15, Viola Concerto, Fantaisie (BIS)

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pettersson-15

Ellen Nisbeth (viola), Norrköpping Symphony Orchestra / Christian Lindberg

Pettersson
Symphony no.15 (1978)
Viola Concerto (1979)
Fantaisie for solo viola (1936)

BIS BIS 2480SACD [67’37”]

Producers Stephan Reh, Marion Schwebel
Engineers Bastian Schick, Marion Schwebel

Recorded 13-17 January 2020 at Louis de Geer Concert Hall, Norrköpping (Symphony & Viola Concerto); 29 May 2020 at Petruskyrkan, Danderyd, Sweden (Fantaisie)

Written by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Christian Lindberg nears the close of his Allan Pettersson cycle for BIS with this coupling of two of the composer’s late works, both of which had previously been issued on this label and are now added to its extensive series of recordings with the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra.

What’s the music like?

Although following-on directly from the Second Violin Concerto [BIS2290], Pettersson’s 15th Symphony might be thought of as forming the end of a trilogy with its predecessors (1976 and 1978) – a sequence becoming more compressed in scale as it becomes less volatile in content. At barely 36 minutes No. 15 was its composer’s shortest symphony since the 11th, but this is not to suggest any lack of drama or eventfulness in a score as finds Pettersson grappling with existential issues key to his thinking since at least the Second Symphony of 25 years earlier.

As so often in this cycle, the salient ideas are heard at the outset: here, ejaculatory chords on brass over side-drum, then wistful lines for viola and violin over lower strings. What follows seems less an extended evolution than an elaboration and intensification – during the course of which a more conciliatory mood takes precedence, though the coda proves to be as tonally oblique as it is emotionally ambivalent. Dividing the present recording into 11 tracks enables listeners to navigate their own route through this absorbing and wholly characteristic piece.

The Viola Concerto has a curious history – its existence not even known about until after the composer’s death; its manuscript suggesting a work complete as a formal entity if lacking in textural detail. Whether or not Lindberg had any input in this latter respect, the solo part has been edited by Ellen Nisbeth and hence sounds appreciably more integrated into the musical content than hitherto. Conceptually the work continues from the Second Violin Concerto and 16th Symphony with saxophone [BIS2110] in its eliding between concertante and symphonic domains; such that the viola line can be heard as a motivic ‘backbone’, affording focus to the sparse orchestral texture and channelling its expressive essence to an ending at once forceful yet provisional. Concerto or not, this is a notable as well as valuable addition to its repertoire.

In between these works comes Fantasie for solo viola, composed when Pettersson was in his mid-20s and still a practitioner on this instrument rather than a composer. Alternately soulful and incisive, this is eloquently rendered by Nisbeth and makes a worthwhile inclusion here.

Does it all work?

Yes, assuming familiarity with at least several of Pettersson’s earlier symphonies. In the 15th, Lindberg steers a more cohesive course than does Leif Segerstam [BIS680] or Peter Ruzicka [CPO9990952] with more idiomatic orchestral playing than either. As to the Viola Concerto, Nobuko Imai [BIS480] is no less sympathetic an advocate but her tone is a little too rounded for this music, whose idiom Nisbeth has down to a tee. Sound is comparable to earlier issues from this source in clarity and perspective, with decent booklet notes by Per-Henning Olsson.

Is it recommended?

Indeed. Those who have been following this cycle will be pleased Lindberg has been given the go-ahead to record all the symphonies. With just Nos. 3, 8, 10 and 11 to go, the end is in sight for this traversal of one of the most significant symphonic cycles from the post-war era.

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For more information on this release visit the BIS website

In concert – April Fredrick, Thomas Humphreys, English Symphony Chorus & Orchestra / Kenneth Woods: Voyage to America

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April Fredrick (soprano), Thomas Humphreys (baritone), ESO Chorus, English Symphony Orchestra / Kenneth Woods

Dvořák Symphony no.9 in E minor Op.95 ‘From the New World’ (1893)
Sawyers Mayflower on the Sea of Time (2018) [World Premiere]

Worcester Cathedral
Saturday 17 June 2023

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

This final concert of the season by the English Symphony Orchestra brought us the premiere of a piece delayed from three years ago. Philip Sawyers’ Mayflower on the Sea of Time was to have been launched at the Three Choirs Festival in April 2020, but the pandemic derailed this as so many other events. Happily, the tenacity of conductor Kenneth Woods has paid off such that the composer’s largest work so far was finally heard, and in the venue originally intended, making for a notable addition to the English choral tradition and one wholly on its own terms.

Commissioned to mark the 400th anniversary of the sailing of the Mayflower from Leiden to Plymouth and thereby founding the United Sates of America, this is an oratorio in concept but equally a choral symphony in its overall design and thematic cohesion. Its libretto, mainly by the artist Philip Groom, features set-pieces for various figures from the Old and New Worlds duly taken by soprano and baritone soloists (those for treble being allotted to sopranos in the chorus), but these along with ones for chorus are drawn into an inherently musical evolution.

Formally, there are four continuous parts. Persecution and Journey, a sonata design such as informs the Pilgrims’ flight from religious persecution and their decision to cross the Atlantic; Arrival in the New World, a slow movement charting their embarkation and tentative initial interaction with native peoples; Survival and Making our Community, a scherzo where the Pilgrims’ industriousness and idealism quickly becomes its own justification; and Our New World, a rondo-finale whose looking to the future is framed by choruses of growing fervour.

As befits such a work, the choral writing is both extensive and resourceful – not least when it elides between depicting Pilgrims or Natives, and that of a more abstract commentary. No less assured, the writing for soprano and baritone allows Sawyers’ lyrical impulse free reign – not least in extended sections toward the end of the second and fourth parts; the latter, especially, rendering comparable passages by Delius or Tippett from a perspective wholly of the present. On either side, luminous and ecstatic choruses accentuate an essentially affirmative message.

The contributions of April Fredrick (no stranger to Sawyers via her long association with the ESO) and Thomas Humphreys could hardly be faulted for commitment or insight, while that of the ESO Chorus exuded a power and immediacy amplified by the resonance of Worcester Cathedral’s acoustic as to belie its relatively modest numbers. The ESO gave its collective all throughout, projecting the textural intricacy and emotional heft of music whose longer-term formal integration was securely conveyed through Woods’s precise yet unobtrusive direction.

Before the interval, Woods gave a notable account of Dvořák’s Ninth Symphony. The poised anticipation of its introduction and visceral drama of its coda were highlights of the opening Allegro, proceeded by a Largo of an eloquence epitomized by rapt cor anglais playing from Louise Braithwaite. Contrast between the incisiveness of the Scherzo’s outer sections and the lilting delicacy of its trio was pointedly underlined, then the final Allegro surged onward to a coda paying tribute to 19th-century symphonism while blazing a trail for what was to come.

Further information on the ESO’s latest Philip Sawyers release (Nimbus NI6436) can be found at the English Symphony Orchestra website. For more on the artists in this concert, click on the names of April Fredrick, Thomas Humphreys, Kenneth Woods and the English Symphony Orchestra themselves – and click here for more on composer Philip Sawyers.