In his explorations, Brubaker continues to use a Steinway concert grand piano with electromagnetic bows that help him create sustained drone textures.
Here he takes two sections from the 1978 ambient classic Music For Airports album alongside three others, using advanced IRCAM spatialization tools to create an “immersive acoustic experience, turning the piano into a supernatural synthesizer.”
What’s the music like?
The Music For Airports excerpts, not surprisingly, are incredibly calming – and beautifully played. The second version of 1/2 uses the electromagnetic bows to create a sound almost like the clarinet in timbre. Brubaker judges the critical elements like attack and sustain just right, a faithful recreation of the original Eno work but one that gives him plenty of room and space around in the acoustic.
The slow tracks work beautifully, especially Failing Light from Eno’s Ambient 2: The Plateaux Of Mirror, the collaboration with Harold Budd, which is lovingly shaded here. The big surprise, however, is The Big Ship, where he recreates everything by hand, including the shift of rhythmic emphasis that Eno originally performed with an organ drum machine. Here it is commanding and delivered with impressive poise.
Does it all work?
Very much so. Brubaker’s eye for detail and virtuosity work hand in hand.
Is it recommended?
Enthusiastically. Eno Piano 2.0 is an obvious complement to the first instalment but shows Eno’s music in a new and enchanting light. Ambient music has lasted a lot longer than we dared imagine, and reinterpretations like this will only prolong its appeal further.
For fans of… Brian Eno, Harold Budd, Philip Glass, Michael Nyman
Breath is the ambitious new album from Ocoeur, aka Franck Zaragoza, the Bordeaux-based producer. On this record Zaragoza looks to reawaken an appreciation for the world around us, and connect with the landscapes that are for most of us within easy reach.
As well as looking at elemental connections, Breath is a call for peace in troubled times.
What’s the music like?
This is an album that works on two levels. On one hand there is a blissful ambience running throughout Breath, meaning it is easy to connect with especially at either end of the day. Yet listening closely is even more rewarding, with Zaragoza’s clever internal workings revealed as tightly knit melodic loops spread their wonders far and wide.
The album grows from small beginnings to reach an early apex with Life, which has real gravitas and orchestral dimensions. The music repairs for the softer piano musings of To Love, Ocoeur exploring deep and primitive emotions, before Calling For Peace makes an understated impact. Here a steady drum tread proves immediately reassuring, pairing up with a rather beautiful chime-like figure.
Everything Moves, as its title suggests, is more active, the music dancing like ripples on a lake, before the coda Our Home finds a softly-voiced calm.
Does it all work?
It does, beautifully. Best heard in one sitting, Breath is a work that may be mostly electronic but could easily transpose for full orchestra.
Is it recommended?
Very much so. This is an album of poise and presence, one of a minimalist beauty but with emotional heft, too. With his Ocoeur pseudonym, Franck Zaragoza is creating a deeply impressive body of work.
For fans of… Harold Budd, Gas, Howard Skempton, Biosphere
Listen & Buy
Published post no.2,348 – Thursday 31 October 2024
words from the press release, adapted for publication by Ben Hogwood
The Piatti Quartet releases a new album of Quartets Nos. 2-4 by British composer Joseph Phibbs, “one of the most successful composers of his generation” (BBC Music Magazine).
The Quartet and Phibbs have maintained a close relationship that stretches back several years. Since its joint second prize and Sydney Griller Award at the 2015 Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition, the Piatti Quartet has established a high reputation, particularly in the contemporary repertoire. They have recorded and performed Phibbs’ String Quartet no.1 almost 50 times.
Joseph (above) says:
“Having studied the cello as a child, I have always felt a special affinity with string music. My introduction at the age of 14 to the music of Britten was through his first string quartet, the opening of which still fills me with awe, and his works – especially those for strings – have remained a lifelong inspiration. After the first commission, the Piatti’s enthusiasm encouraged me to continue exploring the genre, and – a decade later – it has been both a privilege and a huge pleasure to have another opportunity to write for them (String Quartet No.4). Much of my music is inspired by light and landscapes (as well as cityscapes). When considering which images would best sum up the overall feel of the album, light – both natural and artificial – as seen within a landscape, seemed the most fitting choice.”
As a composer, Phibbs’ main influences are Lutoslawski, Britten and his former teacher Steven Stucky. Over recent years, he has been primarily exploring melody, forging his way using modal, diatonic and triadic harmonies.
Phibbs’s opera Juliana premiered in 2018 showed “a strong sense of continuity with the past – not least in the markedly post-Britten soundworld” (BBC Music Magazine). The Guardian added, “Juliana is that rare thing nowadays, a genuinely well-made, effective new opera that achieves exactly what it sets out to do.”
You can listen to excerpts from this album at the Presto website
Sunday 27 October was a pretty momentous day on BBC Radio 2, for it marked the last broadcast in the 58-year career of DJ Johnnie Walker.
Walker was a Sunday afternoon companion to many, myself included, over the last 15 years. His two-hour programme Sounds of the 70s was a national institution, a place where people could forget about the forthcoming week and enjoy some quality music along with their chores, car journeys or dinner preparations.
It was the last in a long line of broadcasting assignments for Walker, who also fronted Radio 2’s Rock Show – a natural move for a figure steeped in rock music ever since he arrived on the scene on one of the pirate ships in the 1960s.
By way of a small ‘thank you’, here is a playlist in tribute to Johnnie, with many thanks for the music he introduced me to, and also recognition of the music he played that I already loved. It’s a small portrait of a broadcasting legend, but – like his programmes – is put together with a great deal of affection for his craft.
Yeol Eum Son (piano, below), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Jonathon Heyward (above)
Still Threnody: In Memory of Jean Sibelius (1965) Prokofiev Piano Concerto no.2 in G minor Op.16 (1912-13, rev. 1923) Sibelius Symphony no.5 in E flat major Op.82 (1914-19)
Symphony Hall, Birmingham Thursday 24 October 2024
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Pictures (c) Laura Tiesbrummel (Jonathon Heyward), Marco Borggreve (Yeol Eum Son)
American by nationality, and currently music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Jonathon Heyward is no stranger to orchestras in the UK and this afternoon’s appearance with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra confirmed a rapport that will hopefully continue in future seasons.
His symphonic output may now be well covered by recordings, but performances of William Grant Still remain infrequent such that his Threnody came as a welcome novelty. Dedicated to Sibelius in the anniversary year of his birth, this finds its composer in understandably sombre mood (akin to that of his masterly concertante piece Dismal Swamp from two decades earlier) and, while there is little about its content that recalls the Finnish master, the interplay between elegy and processional is effectively handled through to its subdued yet highly affecting close.
It might not have enjoyed the popularity of its successor, but the CBSO has given memorable accounts of Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto over the decades and the present reading with Yeol Eum Son (above) was as good as it gets in a piece that does not make things easy technically or interpretatively. Starting reticently, the opening movement duly hit its stride in the capricious second theme before the orchestra made way for Son’s electrifying take on a cadenza which encompasses development and reprise; the orchestra’s climactic return being no less visceral.
Wresting coherence out of the unlikely formal design of this work is hardly an easier task but, here again, there was no doubting Son’s insight as she fairly tore through its Scherzo without loss of clarity; she and Heyward then drawing abrasive irony out of an intermezzo which can easily descend into caricature. Nor was there any lack of focus with a Finale whose headlong outer sections frame one of folk-tinged pathos – afforded a cumulative intensity only outdone by the propulsive closing stage where soloist, orchestra and conductor were thrillingly as one.
If the reading of Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony after the interval did not quite maintain this level of excellence, it was no also-ran as a performance. Heyward might have observed the Tempo molto moderato of its initial movement more literally, as his swift underlying pace made for too precipitate a climax into its scherzo-like second half. The accelerating transition between them was adeptly managed, but there was little room left for manoeuvre during the approach to a coda where not even the CBSO’s unfazed commitment could gain the necessary velocity.
Neither did the second movement lack forward motion, though here Heyward found a viable balance between the andante and allegretto elements – its (mostly) ingratiating poise abetted by felicitous playing from CBSO woodwind. Setting off impulsively, the finale rather lacked eloquence in its ‘swan theme’ but the resourceful evolution of its material was never in doubt. Other performances have conveyed greater emotional breadth thereafter yet, as those indelible six closing chords unfolded, there could be no doubting their decisiveness as parting gestures. Overall, then, this was impressive music-making with Heyward evidently a conductor on a mission. Next Wednesday brings a programme of Spanish evergreens conducted by Kazuki Yamada, with Miloš Karadaglić taking centre-stage in a certain guitar concerto by Rodrigo.
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