Alexander Scriabin died in Moscow at Easter 1915 – unaware that, over the Atlantic, Israel Baline (Irving Berlin) had hit pay-dirt with Alexander’s Ragtime Band. The David Gordon Trio here ventures into that potent realm in which ‘musics’ meet in place as so often in time.
What’s the music like?
Praeludium Mysterium evokes Scriabin’s unrealized Himalayan extravaganza in pensive yet probing terms. Integrating his ‘mystic chord’ within the harmonic trajectory of Berlin’s hit in Alexander Scriabin’s Ragtime Band would have given both pause for thought, and Scriabin would surely have been disconcerted by transforming a prelude he never played in public into the incisive modality of Scriabin’s Depressed.
Light relief comes with the Debussian high-jinx of Cakewalk, then the engaging Prelude for Both Hands suggests Scriabin could profitably have deployed jazz and dance idioms. Famous Etude unashamedly transforms his most famous piece into a rumba, with Antonio María Romeu’s danzón Tres Lindas Cubanas a trailblazing number that was hardly less influential on both its listening and dancing public.
Onward to the bluesy sequences of Nuances that suggest Bill Evans as a future acolyte, then the tensile Choro Mazurka gives a Brazilian twist to this most favoured dance of Scriabin’s output. Francisco Canaro’s tango El Pollito vividly overcomes the musical distance between Moscow and Buenos Aires, with the ethereal Rootless Sonata delving further into a putative Scriabin/Evans union.
Comparable possibilities are pursued with the hard-bopping rhythms of Improbable Hip, followed by the limpid piano study that is Pixinguinha’s Passínha and which opened-up the potential of choro music for non-Brazilian audiences. The programme closes with the diffusion of a mazurka into the caressing harmonies of River, most notable for those myriad timbral shades of which the synatheist Scriabin would surely have approved.
Does it all work?
Yes, because the David Gordon Trio is unafraid to stick out its collective neck in pursuit of a singular fusion. Hopefully it will further investigate the bringing together of artists diverse in aim yet kindred in spirit: maybe a Boulez/Bowie synthesis as a fitting double ‘in memoriam’?
Is it recommended?
Absolutely, as those who missed the trio’s memorable recent gig at London’s 606 Club can judge for themselves. Check out the David Gordon Trio website and also Mister Sam Records for previous releases from this thought-provoking jazz outfit.
Pascal Rophé, leading exponent of modern French music, conducts this up-and-coming French orchestra in music by a composer whose centenary falls this year, and whose influence on the contemporary music scene is out of all proportion to his modest if fastidiously crafted output.
What’s the music like?
The suite from Henri Decoin’s film La Fille du Diable features six brief items whose elements of Ravel and Stravinsky hardly lessen its attractiveness. Trois Tableaux Symphoniques (1945) derives from a Paris staging of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and is very different from Alfred Newman’s Hollywood score. Both pieces feature a prominent role for Ondes Martenot (made famous by Messiaen in his Turangalîla-Symphonie), its plangent tone to the fore in a haunting evocation of the Yorkshire moors then poignant depiction of the heroine’s demise.
Le Loup is a special case as though Dutilleux all but rejected the ballet, it occupies a crucial role in his evolution. The only previous complete recording – conducted by Pierre Bonneau in 1954 with co-author Jean Anouilh as narrator – has been restored to circulation (on Erato), but this new account (sans narration) is superior. Rophé finds a palpable momentum over its three tableaux, the influence of Prokofiev uppermost with that of Swiss-born Arthur Honegger – the most important younger French composer during the inter-war years – hardly less pervasive.
What is usually referred to as Deux poèmes de Jean Cassou initially comprised three sonnets by the wartime-resistance poet, these ruminations infused with pained nostalgia being joined by ‘Éloignez-vous’ for this more balanced sequence to which Vincent Le Texier responds in ample measure; his insight enhanced by luminous orchestration. More whimsical in manner, the Quatre Mélodies contains some of Dutilleux’s most appealing early inspirations, audibly increased in this resourceful orchestral version that remained unheard for over seven decades.
Does it all work?
Absolutely. From the outset Dutilleux possessed a technical finesse equalled by few of his peers, and while there is nothing on this disc to match his mature masterpieces, this music’s audible connection between its composer’s past and future makes for pleasurable listening.
Is it recommended?
Indeed. Rophé secures keenly responsive playing which benefits from the immediate yet spacious SACD sound typical of BIS. Pierre Gervasconi contributes informative notes and this disc is a necessary acquisition, not least for those who think they know their Dutilleux.
RCA bring together six discs of largely unavailable recordings made by composer / conductor Morton Gould and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra between 1965 and 1968. The varied repertoire ranges from Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov to Ives and Gould himself.
What’s the music like?
Colourful. If you want a slightly random introduction to some very different styles of 20th century music then this is an excellent place to start. Charles Ives heads the bill, with the fiercely patriotic Three Places In New England and bracing Symphony no.2 exploring hometown themes in modernist settings.
Nielsen’s Symphony no.2, The Four Temperaments, is revealed as an emotional tour de force, while Gould’s own Spirituals are heart on sleeve and all the better for it. From the previous century comes a selection of Tchaikovsky waltzes and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Antar Symphony, whose insistence on an exceptionally catchy tune burns it into your consciousness.
Does it all work?
Yes. These are edge-of-the-seat performances. One of the shortest pieces here, William Schuman’s orchestration of Ives’ Variations on America, is also one of the most entertaining and humourous. The Russian repertoire is punchy and powerful, and including a rare performance of Myaskovsky’s Symphony no.21 a bonus, but it is the bigger Ives works that make this set so worthwhile.
The Three Places In New England are brilliantly played, bringing the homespun melodies through the complicated but invigorating textures, while the two symphonies make the strongest possible impact – even the first, where Ives was still writing conventionally. Here it is fresh and charming, channelling the spirit of Dvořák. If you have not heard the Symphony no.2 before, make sure you listen right to the end, as there is a surprise in store!
Is it recommended?
Yes. It’s a bargain – and nicely packaged too, with RCA using the original artwork and some interesting documentation of a brief but meaningful relationship between conductor and orchestra.
Listen on Spotify
You can judge for yourself by hearing the album on Spotify here:
A new disc from The Wallace Collection on Nimbus Records, exploring Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ rich and varied writing for brass instruments.
What’s the music like?
This collection brings with it some fascinating contrasts. On the one hand is the substantial Brass Quintet, a large-scale piece the composer wrote for the Empire Brass Quintet in 1981. It leaves a lasting impression, especially in the second of the three movements – an Adagio 16 minutes in length. It explores some desolate sound pictures, the composer achieving a strikingly dark and often subdued backdrop akin to the sky of the Lowry painting on the cover of the release.
Yet like that picture (Yachts, from 1959) there are pinpricks of light, too, as Maxwell Davies brings the instruments out in a solo capacity – especially the horn and two trumpets. It is a pointer towards the two complementary solo works on the disc. Litany for a Ruined Chapel between Sleep and Shore is for trumpet, and was written about the medieval ruins on the Orkney island of Sanday, where the composer moved in 1999. Sea Eagle, for solo horn, is a musical observation of a creature that captivated the composer from his first Orkney home in 1982.
Shorter works for brass complete the program, with a ceremonial fanfare written for the opening of The Lowry arts centre in Manchester, and arrangements of four short pieces by Tallis that reveal his influence on Maxwell Davies as a composer.
Does it all work?
Yes – but the music of Maxwell Davies, especially in the Brass Quintet, requires some work on the part of the listener to realise its full potential. It has taken me a long time to appreciate the composer’s music, as it can be difficult to connect with emotionally, and there are some complex harmonies. Yet familiarity brings great reward, and the bold writing for brass on such a large scale can be appreciated – especially when the music is quiet. The Wallace Collection are superb in the quintet, their feats of stamina and virtuosity complemented by genuine strength of feeling.
The works for solo instruments are more immediate in their impact, and helped by performances that could not be bettered. John Wallace plays as the composer would wish in the Litany, evoking an outdoor scene in the middle of the ruined Orkney church. Meanwhile Sea Eagle is still more effective, a vivid picture of the magnificent bird and the ultimate freedom it finds on the wing. With an especially reverberant recording in St Marylebone Church Paul Gardham delivers an outstanding performance.
The other pieces are well positioned on the disc and lighten the mood – the Four Voluntaries especially poignant in the simplicity of their arrangement.
Is it recommended?
Yes. This disc is a fine achievement documenting not just one of our greatest living composers but celebrating his habitat too.
Listen on Spotify
You can judge for yourself by hearing the album on Spotify here:
Richard Whitehouse considers in detail John Cale’s Music For A New Society, back from its original release in 1982 and now in digital guise.
That John Cale should have chosen to make his 16th studio album the rewriting of his eighth is hardly provocative in itself. Not least as Music For A New Society remains in any case the most provocative of all his releases, coming at a time when Cale – poised on his fifth decade – was not so much reassessing his creative priorities as searching, uncertainly if by no means tentatively, for the way forward. That the way forward only made explicit its fraught genesis explains why Cale should wish to readdress such anxieties and, in doing so, transcend them.
Originally released in September 1982, Music For A New Society came in the midst of what is perhaps Cale’s most challenging creative period. Seemingly caught on the back-foot with the advent of punk rock, this most recalcitrant of singer-songwriters duly stormed the citadel in the visceral guise of 1979’s Sabotage/Live (among a select handful of live albums to consist wholly of new songs), followed by its studio complement in 1981’s waspishly sardonic Honi Soit. Finding himself without a touring back the following year became the catalyst for Cale to pursue a more inward and uncompromising take on those issues personal and social in its successor – the result of live improvisations at New York’s Sky Line Studios – and how like Cale to focus his acute emotional angst through the discipline of a ‘time is money’ schedule.
Warmly while equivocally received on its release, Music For A New Society predictably died a death in commercial terms and soon went out of print. For a 1993 reissue, Cale subjected it to a degree of revision – notably with the inclusion of the track ‘In the Library of Force’ for a close of magisterial despair. Appreciative of if understandably guarded as to the qualities of an album long held in high esteem, he performed it live at the Aarhus Festival in 2013 then refashioned it from scratch into the very different if no less absorbing statement of M:FANS.
This release comprises a remastered Music For A New Society (largely adhering to the 1993 revision), such as renders its claustrophobic intensity with even more unsparing immediacy, along with M:FANS: their differences (not so) paradoxically highlighting their relatedness.
The precise nature of that relationship is clear at the outset – the barbed nostalgia of blurred keyboards and acoustic slide guitars of ‘Taking Your Life in Your Hands’ now an ominous processional of fazed ambience and interpolated voices, while the world weary vocal as set against mindless ostinato patterns of ‘Thoughtless Kind’ yields to an agile vocal line made more tactile by an unwavering rhythmic backdrop as makes possible the heady culmination. ‘Sanctus’ (heard now in a ‘Sanities mix’ as though to acknowledge its history of mistitles) duly swaps a fragmented vocal given context by fugitive percussion and glowering organ for a dehumanized rendition made even more menacing by its remorseless electronic backing.
By the same token, the eloquent vocal as enhanced by a fervent organ contribution of ‘If You Were Still Around’ is accorded greater sonic presence through melding of its keyboards and guitars with a motoric rhythmic undertow. Most lauded among the original tracks, ‘(I Keep A) Close Watch’ (the stripped down reworking of an opulent ballad from 1975 album Helen of Troy) has now acquired a deft lilt to its vocal thanks to the soulful backing voices – while, in ‘Broken Bird’, the formerly haunting combination of imploring vocal with subtly shifting keyboards has taken on heightened expression with piano and electronics sharply separated.
The intimate confession with acoustic guitars and intertwined strings of ‘Chinese Envoy’ gets a complete rhythmic overhaul with syncopated backing vocals over a funky electronic groove – while ‘Changes Made’, with its almost affirmative vocal and full-on rock backing, receives a more circumspect treatment via a whimsical central interlude and narrower sonic ambience. ‘(In the) Library of Force’, its initial incarnation no less fateful despite loss of that slammed piano lid, is more self-contained with its spoken voice foregrounded and an equivocal close.
M:FANS finds no place for ‘Damned Life’, its careworn vocal thrown into relief against the skewed instrumental paraphrase of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, or the palpably uneasy amalgam of matter-of-fact recitation over an intrusive classical sample that is ‘Risé, Sam and Rimsky-Korsakov’. Music For A New Society is rounded off by out-takes of ‘Chinese Envoy’, heard in a ruminative acoustic version that is an almost perfectly realized demo, and ‘Thoughtless Kind’, which emerges as no less direct in its emphasizing one of Cale’s most revealing lyrics. M:FANS opens with ‘Prelude’, the fragmentary sample of a reticent phone-call between Cale and his mother as heard through a haze of processed ambience, and gains a second version of ‘If You Were Still Around’ whose discreet choral enhancement exudes even greater emotion. It closes with ‘Back to the End’ – a wistfully affecting number not so much abandoned as lost at the original sessions, and that makes for a restrained yet uplifting close wholly in keeping with the underlying affirmation of this ‘new’ album as well as (one presumes) of John Cale.
Make no mistake, such affirmation does not make M:FANS any ‘easier listening’ than was its parent album; rather the raw confessional of 33 years ago takes on a greater musical presence that conceivably serves to obscure or at least make the more oblique its singular perspective. As such, it fits securely into that sequence of albums which began with 2003’s HoboSapiens and then continued via 2005’s blackAcetate to 2012’s Shifty Adventures in Nookie Wood: a sequence in which personal observation has been rendered no less expressively acute for all that its creator has become not so much a primarily emotive force as a teasingly provocative presence. Where Cale goes from here remains to be seen: he evidently has an album of new songs ready for later this year; meanwhile, his realizing of The Velvet Underground & Nico to mark its 50th anniversary of release should be no less timely or relevant than is M:FANS.
Arcana.fm 