Category Archives: On record

On record: Soloists, Wiener Konzertchor, ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra / Friedrich Cerha – Wellesz: Die Opferung des Gefangenen (Capriccio)

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wellesz

Wolfgang Koch (bass-baritone) Field Commander, Robert Brooks (tenor) Prince’s Shield Bearer, Ivan Urbas (bass) Head of the Council, Hae-Sang Hwang (soprano), Patricia Dewey (contralto), Wiener Konzertchor, ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra / Friedrich Cerha

Egon Wellesz
Die Opferung des Gefangenen Op.40 (The Sacrifice of the Prisoner) (1924-5)

Capriccio C5423 [56’01”]

Producer Kurt Kindl
Engineer Hans Moralt

Recorded 24 March 1995 at Konzerthaus, Vienna (live peformance)

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Capriccio continues its coverage of Egon Wellesz (1885-1974) with this live recording of the stage-work Die Opferung des Gefangenen (The Sacrifice of the Prisoner), one of his most striking large-scale dramatic pieces from the inter-war era when he was established among Austria’s leading composers.

What’s the music like?

Although now most highly regarded for the orchestral and chamber works written while in exile after 1938 (settling in Oxford, he was made a fellow of Lincoln College and became a leading authority on Byzantine music and opera of the early Baroque), Wellesz was earlier best known for his theatrical works (four ballets and five operas) as were heard throughout German-speaking territories. Not least The Sacrifice of the Prisoner, first staged in Cologne on 2nd April 1926 and whose designation ‘opera-ballet’ indicates a hybrid conception that was very much in vogue during this period – composers as distinct as Stravinsky, Martinů, Milhaud and Weill all attempting something similar, whatever the differences in aesthetic.

With a scenario by Eduard Stucken, the work concerns the territorial (and, moreover, tribal) conflict between those peoples of Quiché and Rabinal – in what is present-day Guatemala – during the early 15th century. The action is unfolded in starkly ceremonial terms (Capriccio has not included an English translation of the libretto, but Hannes Heher’s detailed booklet provides more than sufficient context) such as leave little room for exploration of character or scenic evocation, yet this does not preclude (indeed, might have encouraged) a musical response as is both personal and affecting. Sample any of the five ‘Dances’ (tracks 6, 8, 11, 13 and 15) to hear Wellesz opening out its expressive ambit in striking and evocative ways.

After the Cologne premiere, there were stagings at Magdeburg in 1927 and Berlin in 1930, before the advent of the Third Reich made further performances impossible. This account, still the only one from the post-war era, was of a concert presentation given in Vienna just over a quarter-century ago and conveys this work’s hieratic power as well as its emotional pathos in gratifying measure. Perhaps a future DVD release of a full staging will yet reveal even more of its dramatic potency, but no-one with even a passing interest in the theatrical possibilities of what was arguably the most innovative decade from the last century should pass up the opportunity to encounter what is much more than just a fascinating period piece.

Does it all work?

It does, and not least for reasons such as might have irked its composer – Wellesz’s invoking of a highly stylized and ritualistic theatre being not that far removed from what his younger German contemporary Carl Orff was working towards at around this time. There are fervent contributions by Wolfgang Koch and Robert Brooks among the vocalists, while chorus and orchestra respond with comparable dedication to Friedrich Cerha who, whether as composer, conductor, or administrator, has left an indelible mark on post-war Austrian musical culture.

Is it recommended?

Indeed, allowing this music will not appeal to all tastes. Those new to Wellesz may prefer to start with the earlier of his nine symphonies (CPO) or Capriccio’s release of his concertos for violin and piano (C67181), but no-one hearing the present piece will likely be left unmoved.

For further information on this release, and to purchase, visit the Capriccio website. For more on Egon Wellesz, the composer’s website is a helpful resource.

On record: Nashville Symphony / Giancarlo Guerrero – John Adams: My Father Knew Charles Ives, Harmonielehre (Naxos)

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Nashville Symphony / Giancarlo Guerrero

John Adams
My Father Knew Charles Ives (2003)
Harmonielehre (1985)

Naxos American Classics 8.559854 [69’03”]
Producer Tim Handley
Engineer Trevor Wilkinson

Recorded 5-7 October 2018 (Harmonielehre), 25-27 October 2019 (My Father Knew Charles Ives), Laura Turner Concert Hall, Nashville

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Naxos adds to its coverage of John Adams with this release featuring two major orchestral works – the one among the most enticing of his latter-day output, the other among the most characteristic (and recorded) of the pieces that first accorded him international prominence.

What’s the music like?

Adams has long expressed a penchant for the music of America’s great visionary of the late-Romantic era, and My Father Knew Charles Ives is his oblique while affectionate homage to the composer who gave American classical music its aesthetic basis. Not that the title should be taken literally – rather, the work’s three movements add up to an inclusive portrait of Ives in a way not dissimilar to that of the composer’s orchestral sets. Thus, the opening Concord deftly identifies the cultural environment behind Ives’s thinking besides alluding to some of his most inimitable music, while The Lake builds upon this with evocative and atmospheric writing whose concertante role for piano also finds resonance in the senior composer’s music. The final and longest movement, The Mountain returns to those transcendental strivings as infused Ives’s creative maturity, though its finely sustained initial pages are not followed up by the falling back on well-rehearsed minimalist routines that ensue. Conversely, the closing pages inhabit an ethereal introspection as makes for an understated and affecting apotheosis.

Hard to believe it is now 36 years since Harmonielehre first blazed a trail over the Western musical landscape, or that what once provoked extreme reactions (causing a near riot at the 1987 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival) should have come to represent a musical lingua franca imitated many times in the interim. That this earliest of Adams’s ‘symphonic’ works remains among his most representative is fully reaffirmed here. Giancarlo Guerrero finds a viable balance between drama and lyricism in the lengthy opening movement, then builds the mingled Wagnerian and Mahlerian resonances of The Amfortas Wound toward a climax of potent anguish (if such is the music’s intent). The luminous opening of Meister Eckhardt and Quackie demonstrates the best in the Nashville Symphony – as with its superb release of Christopher Rouse (Naxos 8.559852) – and while even astute pacing cannot make the closing peroration sound other than manufactured, the approach yields a methodical and eventful sense of purpose as makes its ‘travelling in hope’ more compelling than any arrival.

Does it all work?

It does, from the perspective that Adams often makes his larger-scale works cohere through sheer force of impact more than formal ingenuity – his trademark post-minimalism proving renewable at almost every turn. Guerrero’s take on My Father Knew Charles Ives is certainly preferable to the composer’s rather calculated account with the BBC Symphony Orchestra (Nonesuch), while his Harmonielehre can rank high among the seven available recordings of this piece – among which, Kent Nagano with the Montréal Symphony Orchestra (Decca) currently leads the field.

Is it recommended?

Yes, not least when recording and annotations are first rate. Hopefully, future Naxos releases of Adams will explore further his extensive back catalogue and revive such as the impressive ‘symphony’ El Dorado, which still awaits its second recording after virtually three decades.

For further information on this release, and to purchase, visit the Naxos website. For more on John Adams, the composer’s website is a great resource. Meanwhile the Nashville Symphony website is here, and you can visit conductor Giancarlo Guerrero’s website here

On record – Orlando Jacinto Garcia : String Quartets – Amernet String Quartet (Métier)

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Orlando Jacinto Garcia
String Quartet no.1 (1986)
String Quartet no.2 (1998)
String Quartet no.3 (2018)

Amernet String Quartet [Misha Vitenson, Avi Nagin (violins), Michael Klotz (viola), Jason Calloway (cello)]

Métier MSV28613 [65’39”]

Producer Orlando Jacinto Garcia
Engineer Jacob Sudol

Recorded 27 August 2019 at Concert Hall of Wertheim Performing Arts Centre, Miami

Written by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

The highly enterprising Amernet Quartet latest releases comprises the three string quartets by Orlando Jacinto Garcia (b1954), the Cuban-born American composer for whom these works underscore the gradual and incremental changes in idiom across his now substantial output.

What’s the music like?

Although its subtitle Rendering Counterpoint may suggest music which is beholden to such luminaries of post-war complexity as Milton Babbitt, the First Quartet is aesthetically much closer to Morton Feldman (with whom Garcia had undergone an intensive while productive period of study) in its content. Put another way, the very concrete shapes and textures do not so much develop as metamorphose across the course of its almost 26 minutes – with lengthy silences not so much interrupting as motivating the discourse through to an ending the more conclusive for its sparseness. Those daunted by the imposing duration of Feldman’s quartets should find this piece an excellent primer, as well as an engrossing listen on its own terms.

Its subtitle Cuatro might seem straightforward in context, but the Second Quartet predicates the number ‘four’ at conceptual, structural, or expressive levels. Hence four instruments and (continuous) sections, alongside evocations of an eponymous Cuban guitar with four sets of strings, then four composers whose work is alluded to literally yet obliquely. Beyond these, there is the interplay of registers, timbres, textures, and dynamics such as make the resultant piece a varied and involving listen despite (or even because of) its more consonant harmonic sense. Nor is there anything unmotivated about music whose ultimate destination is one of a repose is deeper for its unwavering concentration on the most elemental motifs and gestures.

And so to I Never Saw Another Butterfly, the subtitle of a Third Quartet with inspiration in the art and poetry of children from Terezin (aka Theresienstadt), the transit camp just outside Prague where many artists or composers and their families were interned prior to being sent to concentration camps. Numerous pieces have been written over recent decades in tribute or commemoration, with Garcia’s surely among the most affecting in its absence of extraneous emotion or superfluous rhetoric – opting instead for a contemplative inwardness where solo and ensemble passages are freely alternated, even superimposed over the course of a journey whose 24 minutes proceed eventfully towards a conclusion eloquent in its deft quizzicality.

Does it all work?

Yes, though anyone expecting to encounter radical or seismic changes along the way might be disappointed. More approachable and immediate as Garcia’s idiom has become, there is never any sense of his music courting easy appeal or popular acclaim. Rather, these quartets maintain a steady and methodical course akin to a thawing out or loosening up of emotions audible from the outset. It helps that the Amernet Quartet (who previously recorded quartets by Steven R. Gerber for the Albany label) is so attuned to this music’s understated intensity.

Is it recommended?

Indeed. The sound is well-nigh ideal in its balance and focus, while cellist Jason Calloway’s booklet notes are the more pertinent given his involvement in the actual recording. Garcia’s discography is not yet sizable, but this release should help pave the way to greater coverage.

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You can discover more about this release at the Divine Arts website, where you can also purchase the recording. For the composer’s website, click here, and for more information on the Amernet String Quartet click target=”_blank”>here

Switched On – Two Synths, A Guitar (And) A Drum Machine (Soul Jazz Records)

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reviewed by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

Soul Jazz describe their new compilation as ‘a new collection of current D-I-Y post-punk bands shaped by the mutant sounds of no wave, punk funk and New York Noise bands from the late 70s and early 80s that collided with the world of underground dance music found at the Paradise Garage, Mudd Club in New York City’.

This also incorporates influences from the UK – Manchester and Sheffield along with a bit of London – and makes for an open musical policy leading to a wide range of beats and rhythms.

What’s the music like?

Invigorating. The collection has such a wide range but is impeccably laid out, so that a noise-heavy track like Toresch’s Tocar can be followed by the cool keyboards of Becker & Mukai’s La Rivière des Perles.

Soul Jazz have cast the net far and wide to come up with a selection of 15 tracks from around the globe, so while New York and the UK hold the key for source material, the ear can track just how far those influences have travelled.

It’s great to see an appearance for Zongamin, whose elastic Underwater Paramid is a more recent track from the long running band. It comes after one of the best vocals on the collection, the distinctive call to arms from LA band Automatic giving Too Much Money pride of place at the front of the compilation. Not all the vocals are as endearing as theirs – Ixna’s Somebody Said will be too shrill for some tastes!

Elsewhere Gramme hit the centre of the dancefloor with a great bass line on Discolovers – excellent vocal too – while New Fries’ Lily and Charles Manier’s Sift Through Art Collecting People are propulsive propulsive groovers. Meanwhile Niagara explore dubbier territory with Ida, as does Black Deer’s Baseball Shorts, taking in even wider perspectives. Wino D expands the mind still further with the final Untitled, drifting away in a spacey cloud of atmospherics at the end.

Does it all work?

It does. Soul Jazz know more than most record labels how to make a good compilation, and the abundance of notes that goes with the music is the icing on the cake. For that reason – not to mention the eyecatching artwork – a physical purchase is the way to go.

Is it recommended?

Yes, enthusiastically. If your shelves already groan under the weight of Soul Jazz releases then you are advised to add a few hundred grams more to the mix. An excellent set of tunes that will introduce you to some new names.

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You can hear clips from the compilation and purchase from the Soul Jazz shop, Sounds Of The Universe

On record – Joly Braga Santos: Chamber Music Volume Two (Toccata Classics)

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Joly Braga Santos
Piano Quartet Op.28 (1957)
Suite de Danças Op.63 (1984)
Piano Trio Op.64 (1985)
Adagio e Scherzino (1956)
Suite para intrumentos de metal (1985)

Piano Quartet, Piano Trio: Jill Lawson (piano), Eliot Lawson (violin), Natalia Tchitch (viola), Catherine Strynckx (cello)
Suite of Dances: Jill Lawson (piano), Ricardo Lobes (oboe), Natalia Tchitch (viola), Adriano Aguiar (double bass)
Adagio e scherzino: Nuno Ivo Cruz (flute), Ricardo Lopes (oboe), António Saiote (clarinet), Paulo Guerreiro (horn), Carolino Carreira (bassoon)
Suite for brass: Jorge Almeida, António Quítalo, Pedro Monteiro (trumpets), Paulo Guerreiro (horn), Jarrett Butler, Vitor Faria (trombones), Ilídio Massacote (tuba)

Toccata Classics TOCC0428 [71’20”]

Producers Brian MacKay, Romain Zémiri
Engineer Romain Zémiri

Recorded 5-8 December 2017, 6-8 June 2018 at Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon, Portugal

Written by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Toccata Classics issues the second instalment devoted to the chamber output of Joly Braga Santos (1924-88), one which ranges widely in terms of its instrumental media and features one of the undoubted high points from over the Portuguese composer’s extensive catalogue.

What’s the music like?

To describe three of these pieces as ‘occasional’ is not to deny their musical attraction. The Suite of Dances makes the most of its unlikely combination of oboe, viola, double bass and piano – the astringent harmonies of its Prelũdio commuted into more plaintive expression by the Sarabanda, before the Tarantella rounds off the sequence with heady insouciance. In its follow-through of wistful song then whimsical dance, the Adagio and Scherzino is an unassuming gift to the repertoire for woodwind quintet that all such ensembles should seize upon. Although a combination of horn, three trumpets, two trombones and tuba might prove awkward, the Suite for Brass is no less diverting – whether in the soulful pathos of its initial Moderato, incisive fanfares of its central Allegro or insinuating resolve of its final Andante.

Highly appealing as these all are, the remaining works more completely affirm Braga Santos as a composer of substance. Cast in a single movement lasting almost 15 minutes, the Piano Quartet unfolds as the interplay between tensile and rhapsodic main themes such that neither mode of expression ever quite gets the upper hand. Moreover, the writing for the four players is of an integrated ensemble with any solo expression secondary to that of the collective; not least in the final pages as the music regains its initial impetus on the way to a forthright close.

Undoubtedly the main achievement here, the Piano Trio can rank alongside the Third String Quartet (included on the previous volume) among Braga Santos’s finest achievements. The opening Largo elides between distanced and ominous expression, its unforced synthesis of modal and non-tonal facets accorded greater resolve by the ensuing Allegro with its tensely intertwined strings and repeated-note piano writing that, between them, reach an impetuous climax. More than twice the length of its predecessors, the closing Lento is also one of this composer’s most potent inspirations – the sheer remoteness of its initial gestures underlying the speculative discourse which follows, and while the later stages afford greater emotional variety, the destination of this music towards its ethereal final repose can never be doubted.

Does it all work?

It does, allowing for the fact that some of the pieces here are modest in scope but written most felicitously as to the ensemble required. The performances of the main two pieces –    by violinist Eliot Lawson, cellist Catherine Strynckx, pianist Jill Lawson and (in the Piano Quartet) violist Natalia Tchitch – make a strong case for these works to form part of their respective repertoire. The other items mainly feature woodwind and brass players from the leading Portuguese orchestras and bring similar combinations of insight and commitment.

Is it recommended?

Indeed. The sound avoids that slightly out-of-focus perspective of the first volume, even if breaks between works could have been lengthier. The booklet has an affectionate memoir by Santos’s pupil Alexandre Delgado, with detailed notes on each work by Bernardo Mariano.

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You can discover more about this release at the Toccata Classics website, where you can also purchase the recording. For our review of volume one in this series, click here