Rival Consoles, aka Ryan Lee West, will release his ninth studio album, Landscape from Memory on July 4 via Erased Tapes. The label have released a new single, Known Shape, ahead of a pre-album tour across Europe.
Talking about the track, West said “I’ve always been obsessed by controls on machines because they produce beautiful sounds and they have their own rhythms. The drums are made from rotating switches and the synths are set in motion by invisible mechanical rhythms. Machines have a special connection to the human spirit, which is both good and bad but above all restless. There is a constant searching in Known Shape for some kind of answer or emotion.”
Known Shape is a relatively understated piece of music, but compelling too – the beats describing the mechanical processes flit across the stereo picture, while snippets of melody drift in, as though the listener is hearing a piece of music on the other side of a door.
The piece is accompanied by a graphical score West created, shown below:
Martucci Romanza facile (1889) Capriccio e Serenata Op.57 (1886) Sei Pezzi Op.38 (1878)* Notturno Op.25 ‘Souvenir de Milan’ (1875)* Minuetto e Tempo di Gavotta Op.55 (1880/88)* Sonata facile, Op.41 (1878)* Scherzo in E major Op.53/2 (1880) Nocturne in G flat major Op.70/1 (1891) Tarantella Op. 44/5 (1880) Prima barcarola, Op. 20 (1874)*
Matteo Generani (piano)
Naxos 8.574628 [71’51”] * World premiere recordings Producer & Engineer Joseph Tesoro
Recorded 25-27 April 2023 at White Recital Hall, James C. Olsen Performing Center, Kansas City, USA
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse
What’s the story?
Naxos continues its coverage of Giuseppe Martucci (1856-1909) with this selection of piano music, a medium for which the Italian composer wrote extensively but that has tended to be overshadowed by the upsurge of interest in his symphonies, concertos and chamber works.
What’s the music like?
As indicated by Tommaso Manera in his informative booklet notes, Martucci was established as a pianist when barely out of his teens and could have enjoyed an international career had it not been for his attraction to conducting and, most importantly, his determination to promote Austro-German symphonism when it was hardly established in the Italian-speaking territories. Even the piano pieces that enjoyed popularity in his lifetime often did so in transcriptions for orchestra, making the present anthology a viable overview of his achievement in this domain.
What is immediately noticeable about Martucci’s piano music is the relatively short time in which it was written – the 50 or so opus numbers over which it extends equating to 17 years of composing. Certainly, the Prima barcarola yields a melting limpidity redolent of Chopin, while the Notturno affords an evocation of Milan that wears any Lisztian antecedents lightly. More distinctive is the Sonata facile, a study in deftness and understatement which is by no means ‘easy’ and has an appealing humour. More substantial, however, the Six Pieces are not only contrasted within themselves but amount to a cohesive overall sequence (were they ever performed as such?). Highlights are its fourth and fifth pieces, an ebullient La Chasse then a beguiling Sérénade, but the whole sequence is demonstrably more than the sum of its parts.
Martucci’s piano output tended to fall away as the 1880s progressed, but what he did write is worth attention. Hence the capering Minuetto which was partnered almost a decade on by an even more engaging Tempo di Gavotta, or the Scherzo in E which is playful and resourceful by turns. A further set of six pieces is represented only by its final item, but this Tarantella is the most substantial piece here and testament to the increasing sophistication of its composer. Nor is Capriccio e Serenata other than a brace of genre-pieces unified in overall conception. Emerging either side of 1890, the Romanza facile is a compact study in unforced sentiment, whereas the Nocturne in G flat could hardly be further removed from that eponymous piece written some 16 years previously in terms of its harmonic subtlety and textural translucency.
Does it all work?
It does. As a composer for piano, Martucci may not have had the distinctive profile of Busoni (even at a comparable stage in their respective developments) or Sgambati, though the best of what he did write has no lack of character or personality. It is also music that cries out for the level of commitment evident throughout this selection, Matteo Generani audibly enjoying its technical challenges while always aware of that aspiring towards something more ambitious that was to find its outlet in the multi-movement works which crowned Martucci’s maturity.
Is it recommended?
It is. Although this does not survey the extent of Martucci’s piano music, Generani’s selection is an enticing one that will certainly appeal to those with any taste for the byways of musical Romanticism, along with those who have acquired earlier releases of this composer on Naxos.
Walt McClements began work for On A Painted Ocean in a Pasadena church in 2022. There he was given unexpected access to the building’s organ, recordings that he revisited at a later date while on tour as part of the group behind Weyes Blood.
With months on the tour bus, and restricted access to musical instruments, McClements began to add his own processed accordion sound from a synthesizer, forming the basis of the album. Unsure how to move forward, he explored collaborative options on a visit to former home New Orleans, and the album took shape with saxophonist Aurora Nealand and with studio help from Rachika Nayar.
McClements describes the album as, “A credit to strong relationships and mutual support…adapting to the tides and remembering your community can help when you feel stuck at sea.”
What’s the music like?
Often close to weightless. The woozy combination of pipe organ and accordion make appealing sonorities to form the basis of McClements’ music, whose wide open textures are surely as a result of all that time spent on the road. The music has an appealing freedom but also melancholic tones that speak of homesickness and confinement.
A Painted Ship has a touching intimacy in its thoughts, but reveals a surprising depth to the fulsome chords as the music gradually swells. The title track pares back to accordion alone, a thoughtful elegy. Washed Up has a lovely backdrop that you can dive in to, with shimmering textures that reflect the blue and white cover.
Elsewhere peace is found in the midst of a struggle. Cloud Prints is initially more elusive, before the saxophone of Aurora Nealand soars above the musical landscape like a soaring eagle – and Nealand appears too on the longer form Parade, whose stately chord sequence from the organ is adorned with glitter but also scarred – and effectively rescued by an instructive field recording. The coda, Clattering, drifts in and out of focus.
Does it all work?
It does. McClements is right – his music is a source of comfort, but also of beauty in spite of the scars.
Is it recommended?
It is. Walt McClements has created something original and rather special here, one that speaks of how it was composed – but also offers a unique form of comfort, converting damage and strife into ambience and light.
For fans of… Philip Glass, Terry Riley, Tim Hecker, Peter Broderick, Efterklang
Peter Donohoe (piano, above), Royal Philharmonic Orchestra / Martyn Brabbins (below)
Vaughan Williams Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus (1939) Bliss Piano Concerto in B flat major Op.58 (1938-9) Elgar Variations on an Original Theme Op.36 ‘Enigma’ (1898-9)
Cadogan Hall, London Wednesday 16 April 2025
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Pictures (c) Andy Paradise
June 1939 saw one of the more memorable occasions for British music with several premieres at the World’s Fair of New York, this multi-day festival with its theme of ‘Building the World of Tomorrow’ thrown into ironic relief given the outbreak of war in Europe three months later.
The first half of tonight’s concert by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra duly replicated that on June 10th, beginning with Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus which Vaughan Williams wrote for the event. One of the few non-symphonic orchestral works from his later years, its scoring for divided strings and harp gives a warmly evocative context to this succession of paraphrases whose steadily unforced evolution is rounded off by one of its composer’s most radiant codas. Various solo passages provided the RPO’s section-leaders with their moment in the spotlight.
That concert 85 years ago continued with the Piano Concerto that Arthur Bliss had written for Solomon which enjoyed frequent revival over the next quarter-century. This 50th anniversary of its composer’s death provided an ideal opportunity to reassess a work conceived within the late-Romantic lineage, notably an opening movement whose thunderous initial gestures set in motion this large-scale sonata design whose overt rhetoric is tempered by an expressive poise and more ambivalent asides which make it anything but the epigone of an already bygone era.
Among a few present-day pianists to have this piece in his repertoire, Peter Donohoe tackled its many technical challenges head-on; the RPO and Martyn Brabbins (who had never before conducted it) overcoming some occasional moments of mis-coordination so as to present it to best advantage. He brought a lighter touch and no little emotional poise to bear on the central Adagietto, its inwardness carried over into a finale whose probing introduction was a perfect foil to the bravura that followed. Whatever qualms Bliss may have had regarding the ‘world situation’, there was little sense of doubt as the music surged to its emphatic and affirmative close – thereby setting the seal on this memorable performance and a work which, whatever it lacks in distinctive invention, vindicates Bliss’s overall ambition to an impressive degree.
A pity that logistics (and economics!) made revival of Bax’s Seventh Symphony, which had originally featured in those New York concerts, impracticable but hearing Brabbins direct so perceptive an account of Elgar’s Enigma Variations was no hardship. Perhaps because of the immediacy of the Cadogan Hall acoustic, it was also one in which the relatively brief livelier variations came into their own – hence the unbridled impetus of the fourth (W.M.B), seventh (Troyte) or 11th (G.R.S) variations, though there was no lack of eloquence in the first (C.A.E) and fifth (R.P.A) variations, or suffused fervour in the ninth (Nimrod). The 10th (Dorabella) variation was made into an intermezzo halting if whimsical, and the 13th became a romanza such as opened out this work’s expressive remit onto an altogether more metaphysical plane.
Those having heard Brabbins conduct this work in the Royal Albert Hall quite likely missed that organ-reinforced opulence afforded the 14th (E.D.U) variation yet, as this finale built to its triumphal conclusion, the unfailing conviction of this performance could hardly be denied.
Arcana.fm 