On Record – Kate Moore: Velvet (Heritage Records)

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Ole Böhn (violin) (Heather, Dies Irae, Way of the Dead); Minah Choe (cello) (Velvet), Daniel Herscovitch (piano) (all) with Benjamin Kopp (piano) (The Body is an Ear)

Kate Moore
Zomer (2006)
Velvet (2010)
The Body is an Ear (2011)
Heather (2013)
Dies Irae (2015)
Way of the Dead (2017)
Lucidity: Eyes of Hands (2018)

Heritage HTGCD137 [79’38’’]
Producers Kate Moore, Daniel Herscovitch Engineers David Kim-Boyle, David Kinney Recorded 3 March, 8 August and 9 October 2023 at Verbrugghen Hall, Conservatorium of Music, Sydney

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Heritage rings the changes on its schedule of welcome reissues with this release of music by Kate Moore (b1979), Australian composer born in the UK who currently resides in the Netherlands, all played by a notable roster of musicians based at Sydney Conservatorium.

What’s the music like?

As the booklet notes make plain, any tendency to Minimalism in Moore’s music is rendered from a distinctly maximalist perspective. Hence an inexorable build-up of tension in the two-piano version of The Body is an Ear (initially for organ and recast for two such instruments), with its inspiration in Sufist legend, or growing plangency of Dies Irae where violin intones elements of that plainchant against some ominously undulating harmonies on piano in what the composer has aptly described as a ‘‘spiritual meditation on forgiveness and redemption’’.

Arguably even more revealing of Moore’s aesthetic is the title-track. Velvet draws cello and piano into a sustained and increasingly intense dialogue whose ostensible depiction of cloth in Renaissance painting yields great textural and colouristic diversity, while building toward an impassioned culmination from which the coda is more affecting for its brevity and pathos. Hardly less absorbing, Way of the Dead takes a not dissimilar formal trajectory – this ‘danse macabre’, as inspired by a Mexican festival, fusing melodic eloquence from the violin with an implacable rhythmic accompaniment on piano such as comes to the fore in those seismic final bars. At the opposite end of the scale in all senses, Zomer takes extracts from a sermon by John Donne for this piano rumination with the simple and profound artlessly combined.

The duo for violin and piano Heather takes its cue from the composer’s Hebridean hike – the incidence of vegetation growing in patterns according to outlines of now-vanished buildings effecting a piece where instrumental coordination becomes ever more exacting, as the music’s emotional velocity gradually while also remorselessly accelerates towards another of Moore’s reticent and poignant apotheoses. Lucidity: Eyes of Hands draws on the legend of St Lucie, as related by Dante, for a solo piano work whose polyrhythmic intricacy is in constant evolution as the music unfolds – though, on this occasion, there is no crystallizing of tension at the end; rather, the accrued impetus spills over into a forceful and even unnerving peroration to leave no doubt as to Moore’s identity with the narrative that made possible this piece’s conception.

Does it all work?

Yes, given that Moore’s is an arresting and appealing idiom, one whose outward consistency is countered by its variety of technical procedures along with its underlying expressive range. It certainly benefits from the advocacy of these musicians, their dedication and commitment coming across at every turn, while the clarity of recording emphasizes its visceral immediacy. Informative notes from the composer and Daniel Herscovitch. Those listening via download have an additional item – a Prelude for piano, whose limpid poise makes for a welcome tonic.

Is it recommended?

Indeed, and hopefully those who have acquired this Heritage project will investigate further releases of Moore’s music – the volume of piano pieces Dances and Canons (ECM) and the collection of vocal items Stories for Ocean Shells (Canteloupe) proving no less worthwhile.

Listen & Buy

You can hear excerpts and look at purchase options on the Presto website. For more information on Kate Moore head to her website – and for more on the artists click on the names Daniel Herscovitch, Ole Böhn, Minah Choe and Benjamin Kopp.

Published post no.2,128 – Monday 25 March 2024

In appreciation – Maurizio Pollini

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by Ben Hogwood. Picture (c) Matthias Bothor / DG

Yesterday we heard the sad news of the death of the great Italian pianist Maurizio Pollini, at the age of 82.

You can read a number of tributes to Pollini, by Barry Millington on the Guardian website and by HarrisonParrott, his agents.

Throughout his career Pollini recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, leaving a succession of remarkable recordings ranging from a famous early collection of the Chopin Etudes through to pioneering modern collections, with a landmark LP of works by Schoenberg and a 20th century collection of Stravinsky, Webern, Boulez and Prokofiev. The playlist below is a personal selection of favourites and a memory from seeing Pollini play Schumann‘s Fantasie in C major at the Royal Festival Hall.

Published post no.2,127 – Saturday 24 March 2024

On Record – Roderick Williams, Rupert Marshall-Luck, BBC Concert Orchestra / John Andrews – La Belle Dame (EM Records)

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Roderick Williams (baritone) (Holst, O’Neil, Quilter & Scott), Rupert Marshall-Luck (violin, Brian), BBC Concert Orchestra / John Andrews

Brian orch. Marshall-Luck Legend B144 (c1919)
Delius Petite Suite d’Orchestre no.1 RTVI/6 (1889-90)
Holst Ornulf’s Drapa H34 (1898, rev. 1900)
Mackenzie Colomba Op.28 – Prelude (1883)
O’Neill La Belle Dame sans Merci Op.31 (1908)
Quilter orch. anonymous The Faithless Shepherdess Op.12/4 (1908)
Scott The Ballad of Fair Helen of Kirkconnel Op.8 (1900)

EM Records EMRCD085 [61’21’’] English texts included
Producer Neil Varley Engineers Andrew Rushton, Robbie Hayward
Recorded 5-7 January 2023 at Battersea Arts Centre, London

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

EM Records continues its enterprising schedule with this collection of mainly vocal settings from the early twentieth century – heard alongside early orchestral pieces by Mackenzie and Delius, plus a recent orchestration of what is Havergal Brian’s only surviving chamber work.

What’s the music like?

This album’s title is also that of the 1819 poem by John Keats, its tale of ecstasy recollected in despair tangibly conveyed by Norman O’Neill in a setting which surely ranks among his finest concert works before music for theatre productions became his focus. Only marginally less compelling, Cyril Scott’s take on a typically over-elaborate ballad by Walter Scott has a keen sense of atmosphere – not least as rendered by Roderick Williams with an appropriate Lowland burr. Less involving emotionally, Holst’s setting of verse from an early Ibsen play is rather forced in its rhetoric – though the passages of emotional impulsiveness, allied to an acute feeling for orchestral textures, does presage those masterpieces of his maturity. Roger Quilter’s setting of a favourite Elizabethan lyric launches the collection with brusque charm.

Of the orchestral pieces, Delius’s early Première Petite Suite is here heard in full for the first time. Influences are easy to discern – Bizet in its whimsical Marche, Grieg in its winsome Berceuse, Massenet in its vivacious Scherzo then Fauré in its plaintive Duo – but never to the detriment of this music’s appeal, while the final variations on a sternly unison theme with ecclesiastical overtones will keep even seasoned Delians guessing as to its provenance. The likelihood of Alexander Mackenzie’s lyrical drama Colomba being revived is slim, but the Prelude to its first act has an evocative ardency which concludes this album in fine style.

John Andrews has the measure of these contrasting idioms and gets committed playing from the BBC Concert Orchestra. Roderick Williams is on fine form, as is Rupert Marshall-Luck in the Legend by Havergal Brian he himself has orchestrated. Ranging widely in expressive profile, while building considerable fervour during its relatively brief span prior to a calmly eloquent close, it is a stylish adaptation of the violin-and-piano original which has enjoyed increasing exposure this past decade. Marshall-Luck speculates whether Brian intended his own orchestral realization yet, given the composer had evidently written an orchestral piece with this title around 1915, it seems not impossible that the duo version is itself a reduction.

Does it all work?

Yes, in that the whole proves greater than the sum of its parts. Certainly, the works by Scott and O’Neill find these contemporaneous while otherwise very different figures at something near their best, while the Delius makes for an attractive sequence which deserves more than occasional revival. As, too, does the Brian given that comparable shorter concertante pieces by figures such as Saint-Saëns are being taken up by a younger generation of violinists. The spacious sound and extensive annotations are both up to EMR’s customary high standards.

Is it recommended?

Indeed. Hearing the Holst prompts the thought that, with the 150th and 90th anniversaries of his respective birth and death falling this year, now would be the ideal time for revival of his orchestral suite Phantastes – which has seemingly remained unheard since its 1912 premiere.

Listen & Buy

La Belle Dame is due for release on 19 April, but you can hear excerpts and look at purchase options on the EM Records website. For more information on the artists click on the names of conductor John Andrews, baritone Roderick Williams, violinist Rupert Marshall-Luck and the BBC Concert Orchestra

Published post no.2,126 – Saturday 23 March 2024

In concert – Quatuor Danel: Shostakovich & Weinberg #3 @ Wigmore Hall

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Quatuor Danel [Marc Danel & Gilles Millet (violins), Vlad Bogdanas (viola), Yovan Markovitch (cello)]

Shostakovich String Quartet no.4 in D major Op.83 (1949)
Weinberg String Quartet no.4 in E flat major Op.20 (1945)
Shostakovich String Quartet no.5 in B flat major Op.92 (1952)

Wigmore Hall, London
Tuesday 19 January 2024

by Richard Whitehouse Photo (c) Marco Borggreve

Having got past its second instalment this time around, the Quatuor Danel’s cycle of string quartets by Shostakovich and Weinberg tonight encountered its most impressive programme thus far; the latter’s Fourth Quartet being framed by the former’s Fourth and Fifth Quartets.

Given its public premiere over four years after completion (it seems likely there were private hearings in the interim), Shostakovich’s Fourth Quartet is one among several of his pieces in which Jewish melody and inflection predominates. The key surely lies in emphasizing these as a structural as much as, if not more than, an emotional facet – as the Danel demonstrated with a take on the preludial Allegretto whose fervour never seemed anecdotal. The ensuing Andantino’s heightened pathos becomes anguished at its climax, while the scherzo is one of those speculative movements whose intimations the Danel projects so convincingly. With its implacable heading to an impulsive culmination then its allusive subsiding into an equivocal half-close, the final Allegretto conveys a tangibly but by no means concretely human drama.

Arguably his first masterpiece in the genre, Weinberg’s Fourth Quartet finds this composer tackling the Beethovenian model head-on – albeit with an opening Allegro whose unhurried manner and burnished textures only takes on greater urgency in its latter stages. The Danel brought this out accordingly, then pointed up the expressive contrast with a scherzo whose driving and ingratiating main themes alternate without hope of resolution. No less potently realized was the interplay between strident rhetoric and halting processional in the ensuing Largo, its unrelieved sombreness tentatively countered by a final Allegro which hints at an affirmative end, only to dismiss such possibility with its desperate closing crescendo. Well- received at its premiere, this quartet should have secured Weinberg’s reputation forthwith.

Other than his Twelfth, the Fifth Quartet is Shostakovich’s finest such achievement – directly preceding his Tenth Symphony with which it shares a comparable formal as well as expressive inclusivity. The Danel launched its opening Allegro with ample resolve, as if to underline the cumulative momentum of an outwardly Classical sonata form whose strenuous development carries over into a heightened reprise, then on to a coda whose pizzicato undertow establishes an emotional distance that connects seamlessly with what follows in this continuous design.

What follows is the most inwardly profound of Shostakovich’s slow movements – its overall remoteness tempered by allusion to his recent works then embargoed, with a passing raptness that might or might not be inherently personal in import. The Danel maintained concentration unerringly here, then headed straight into a finale whose initial geniality duly gives way to an explosive central climax and, in turn, tentative retracing of earlier ideas before a coda whose fatalistic radiance yields the most affecting end to any of its composer’s large-scale statements.

It certainly brought out the best interpretively from the Danel, who still found energy for an encore in the guise of a Capriccio that Weinberg wrote in the wake of his First Symphony in 1943: its amiable if sometimes barbed playfulness an ideal way to conclude a superb recital.

You can hear the music from the concert below, in recordings made by Quatuor Danel:

For more information on the next concert in the series, visit the Wigmore Hall website. You can click on the names for more on composer Mieczysław Weinberg and Quatuor Danel themselves.

Published post no.2,125 – Friday 22 March 2024

New music – Erland Cooper: Carve the Runes Then Be Content With Silence (Mercury KX)

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by Ben Hogwood

The story behind Erland Cooper’s new work Carve The Runes Then Be Content With Silence is by no means an ordinary one – it is a deeply personal document.

On his website, Cooper himself describes the work as “a meditation on value, patience and time, as well as the often disposable nature of music. It seems fitting to me that the tape will slowly return and dry out between Orkney and London, in those safe havens of record shops that bring value to mine and my peers’ work.”

Carve the Runes Then Be Content With Silence will be released on the Autumn equinox, 20th September 2024, following its premiere live at The Barbican in London on 8th June. This first public reveal comes 3 years after the only master tape was planted deep in the soil of the Scottish Highlands and Islands of Orkney and all digital copies were deleted. It will be released exactly as it sounds from the earth. The recording is Cooper’s new three-movement work for solo violin and string ensemble.

After digitisation, the composer will complete the score for live performance as a true collaboration with the natural world. The piece was written to mark the centenary of celebrated Orcadian poet George Mackay Brown, as 2021 marked 100 years since his birth.

Inspired by natural landscapes and ruminating on time, hope, community and patience, the sole recording of the work – on ¼ inch magnetic tape, with the digital files permanently deleted – was planted, to grow and be nurtured or “recomposed” by the earth, before being exhumed and released. A treasure hunt of clues was slowly revealed by the composer every equinox period for fans and his record label alike to search for it if they so wished. In three years, if not found, the composer would return to dig it up himself.

In late 2022, the tape was found on a hunt by Victoria and Dan Rhodes. The album will now be digitised on the spring equinox in a special ceremony captured on film and released, exactly as it sounds from the earth, with nature having collaborated in the compositional process. The final score will then be completed and performed by live musicians at special concerts scheduled across the UK, Europe and America.

You can explore purchase options for the limited edition vinyl release of Carve The Runes Then Be Content With Silence on the Mercury KX website

Published post no.2,124 – Thursday 21 March 2024