Let’s Dance – Various Artists: Watergate 28 mixed by Biesmans (Watergate Records)

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Reviewed by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

As the Watergate series continues its colourful journey, Belgian artist Biesmans steps up with a set made entirely of his own compositions.

He does not do this alone, working with a string of luminaries including Dusky, Mathew Jonson, Adana Twins, Kasper Bjørke, Shubostar and Mala Ika, to create a busy 80-minute mix.

What’s the music like?

This is a fine mix, make no mistake, and Biesmans wastes no time in heading for the centre of the house dancefloor. Much of the content is instrumental, but structured in such a way that the mix feels like one big piece.

Wistful entreaty let’s go on a holiday from 13:30. There are some nice, floaty big room moments at 16:04 and 21:09, then 24:39 with a reassuringly fat bass sound. Excellent 30:28 brings back memories of Let Me Show You. A big player at 51 minutes, 40 minutes excellent too. Gets a bit more old school around 61:30. 67 – 68 very good vocal from former riff from latter

Does it all work?

Pretty much. The beats may be of the solid four-to-the-floor variety, but Yamagucci is always at work within, creating interesting cross-rhythms and collections of mini hooks.

Is it recommended?

Yes, enthusiastically. Biesman hits the spot right from the start!

Listen

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On Record – Piet Koornhof, Albie van Schalkwyk & Susan Mouton – Kancheli: 18 Miniatures & Middelheim (Delos)

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kancheli

Piet Koornhof (violin), Albie van Schalkwyk (piano), Susan Mouton (cello)

Kancheli
18 Miniatures (2019)
Middelheim (2018)

Delos DE3589 [62’41”]
Producer Piet Koornhof / Engineer Stefan van der Walt

Recorded 9 & 10 April 2021 (Miniatures), 29 April 2022 (Middelheim) at Conservatoire Hall, School of Music, North West University, Potchefstroom Campus, South Africa

Reviewed by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

Giya Kancheli made his name primarily in the field of orchestral music. The Georgian composer’s style ranges from prayerful reflection to more volatile thoughts, sometimes in immediate juxtaposition. The music carries a wide dynamic range, showing its worth for the big screen as well as the concert hall or home cinema.

Kancheli did indeed write for plays and films, and extracted some of this material into 18 Miniatures for violin and piano, a rare foray into chamber music. This new album takes that extended suite and adds a late piano trio, Middelheim, dedicated to the hospital of that name in Antwerp where the composer was resuscitated in 2016.

What’s the music like?

The miniatures are well realised musical postcards, at times playful or amusing and then serious or sardonic.

There is a childlike simplicity at play in Kancheli’s writing that is immediately evident in the first piece, Lontano, which ends in a haze of harmonics, and in the third piece, a deceptively simple utterance marked Cantabile. The same marking is used for piece no.16, a short piece whose phrasing has a notable breadth.

In the fourth piece (Grazioso) the violin trills and soars like a bird, while one of the longest pieces, the twelfth (Quasi recitando) finds the instrument brooding to distracted piano accompaniment. Another Quasi recitando, the piece no.14, gives vent to longer phrases that are beautifully sung yet autumnally tinged.

The trio is a powerful piece of work, depicting with startling clarity Kancheli’s moments of distress in the hospital in Antwerp. It does this through a stern, alarming gesture at the start.

Does it all work?

Yes – though listeners may want to dip into the 18 Miniatures a little more, rather than listen to them in an unbroken span of 45 minutes.

In the Miniatures, Piet Koornhof and Albie van Schalkwyk capture the simplicity and feeling of the music, helped by a recording that gives them space. The intensity of the trio is impressive in this performance, sustained throughout a tense and meaningful 17 minutes.

Is it recommended?

Yes – it offers another perspective on Kancheli’s writing, right at the end of his life. The performances are excellent too.

Listen

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You can get more information on this release at the Delos website

On Record – Primrose Piano Quartet, New Music Players – Ed Hughes: Music for the South Downs (Métier)

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Primrose Piano Quartet [Susanne Stanzeleit (violin), Dorothea Vogel (viola) Andrew Fuller (cello) John Thwaites (piano)]; New Music Players / Ed Hughes

Ed Hughes
Chroma (1997)
Flint (2019)
Nonet (2020)
Lunar (2021)
The Woods So Wild (2020-21)

Métier msv28623 [68’32”]
Producer / Engineer David Marshalsea

Recorded 18 March 2021 at St John’s Smith Square, 28 October and 4 December 2021 at Attenborough Centre for Creative Arts, University of Sussex

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Métier continues its coverage of music by Ed Hughes (b1968) with a release of works partly inspired by and even permeated with the qualities of the South Downs, making for a cohesive selection whose five constituents are tellingly thrown into relief by having been so arranged.

What’s the music like?

Ed (formally Edward Dudley) Hughes has been an enriching presence on the UK new music scene since the BBC broadcast of his orchestral piece Crimson Flames marked him out as a name to watch over three decades ago. He has assembled a sizable as well as diverse body of work across a broad range of genres, one which reveals a notable awareness of the evolution of Western music not just over this past century but across what might reasonably be termed the ‘humanist’ tradition which stretches back through the Enlightenment to the Renaissance.

The present sequence opens with Flint that evokes the Sussex landscape in terms of natural cliff formations and man-made quarries. The three movements are pointedly distinct – often angular gestures of the first being contrasted with the restrained fervour of its successor (in which a local song once collected by George Butterworth threads it way across the content), before the third highlights solo violin for a texture whose shifting emphases add appreciably to its expressive impetus. Although written to complement a film by Sam Moore (which can be seen via Hughes’s website), Nonet is musically self-sufficient – whether in the undulating variety of incident in its initial ‘Con moto’, the sense of being side-tracked and even waylaid in the central ‘Tranquil’, or a gradual feeling of emergence then arrival in the final ‘Flowing’.

Very different in its concept is the Lunar diptych – inspired by Isamu Noguchi sculptures and juxtaposing the darkly translucent harmonies of ‘Lunar 1’ with the agile luminescent gestures of ‘Lunar 2’. The earliest work here, Chroma is also the most abstract in terms of content that derives meaning from its interplay of outward volatility with underlying calm; a process made manifest in the distinction between string quartet and string ensemble over much of its course. Finally, The Woods So Wild turns to the medium of piano quartet and a song from the Tudor era whose plangent modality is brought to bear on the animated melodic weave of its opening movement as on the harmonic eloquence of its central intermezzo – duly heading into a finale whose rhythmic intricacy does not prevent the song coming through affirmatively at the close.

Does it all work?

It does indeed. Without drawing attention to itself in technical terms, Hughes’s music has an understated virtuosity such as adds greatly to the attraction of those pieces featured here. The performances are audibly attuned to this music, whether those by the Primrose Piano Quartet (arguably the finest such ensemble in the UK) or New Music Players which Hughes founded over three decades ago. Nor does the sound, recorded at two different venues, leave anything to be desired in clarity and perspective. The composer has provided informative annotations.

Is it recommended?

Very much so. There are four earlier releases of Ed Hughes from Métier and those who have acquired some or all of these will want this new one too. Those new to his music will find the latest selection an appealing way into this composer and, as such, to be warmly recommended.

For further information on this release, and to purchase, visit the Divine Art website, and for more on Ed Hughes click here. Click on the artist names for more on the Primrose Piano Quartet and the New Music Players, and click here for the South Downs National Park website.

In Memoriam Queen Elizabeth II

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Listening to Elgar’s Cello Concerto and remembering, in gratitude. RIP Queen Elizabeth II, and thank you for your life of service and example to the people of the United Kingdom.

On Record: Steven Beck – George Walker: Five Piano Sonatas (Bridge)

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george-walker

Steven Beck (piano)

George Walker
Piano Sonatas: no.1 (1953, rev. 1991); no.2 (1956); no.3 (1975, rev. 1996); no.4 (1984); no.5 (2003)

Bridge 9554 [53’13”]

Producer Steven Beck
Engineer Ryan Streber

Recorded 4 & 14 February 2021 at Oktaven Audio, Mount Vernon, NY

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Bridge continues its wide-ranging coverage of American music with this release featuring all five of the piano sonatas by George Walker (1922-2018), a composer who is now coming into his own on this side of the Atlantic and through, one trusts, the intrinsic quality of his music.

What’s the music like?

Although he achieved success in the USA, with commissions from several leading orchestras and a Pulitzer Prize in 1996 (making him its first black recipient), Walker was little known in the UK until recently – other than Natalie Hinderas’s account of his Piano Concerto in CBS’s ground-breaking Black Composers Series from the 1970s and occasional revival of his Lyric for strings (the most played such piece in America after Barber’s Adagio). That the current Proms season featured no less than three of his works is hopefully in itself a positive sign.

With its antecedents in Copland and Piston, the First Sonata appeared at a time of incipient change for American music – its three movements classically conceived but never adhering to formal archetypes; witness the flexible handling of sonata principles in the initial Allegro, followed by the contrasted sequence of six variations on a winsome folk tune, then dextrous contrapuntal texture and cumulative impetus of the rondo which comprises its final Allegro. Barely three years later, the Second Sonata sounds as if it might be responding to Sessions’s ‘transitional’ music of not long before – its initial movement’s theme the basis of 10 gnomic variations, followed by a Presto as brief as it is virtuosic, then an Adagio circumspect in its restiveness, and an Allegretto ensuring a degree of finality for all its harmonic ambivalence.

Almost two decades on and the Third Sonata postdates Walker’s most intensive involvement with serialism, but it does not eschew innovation – whether in the constantly metamorphosed shapes of the opening Phantoms, distanced yet ominous emotional resonance of the central Bell, or those myriad textural contrasts which build considerable momentum in the closing Choral and Fughetta. In the Fourth Sonata, number of movements may be further reduced but the emotional range is further extended – the forceful if never unyielding rhetoric of its Maestoso ideally complemented with the formal and expressive disjunction of its Tranquillo. Outwardly a concert study, the Fifth Sonata has as emotional impact out of all proportion to its brevity while leaving little doubt as to Walker’s creative prowess during his ninth decade.

Does it all work?

Almost always. As dates of composition suggest, these sonatas afford a viable (not inclusive) overview of Walker’s evolution – responding to the aesthetic changes in post-war American music methodically and resourcefully, without detriment to his creative integrity. It helps that Steven Beck is as audibly attuned to this music as to that by other US composers – rendering these pieces with precision and commitment, but the recording might have had a degree more warmth to complement its unfailing clarity. Succinctly informative notes from Ethan Iverson.

Is it recommended?

It is. All these sonatas have previous been recorded (notably as part of the extensive coverage on the Albany label), but this release is a clear first choice for anyone coming to them afresh. Hopefully Bridge will record further Walker – maybe an integral cycle of his five Sinfonias?

For further information on this release, visit the Bridge Records website, and for more on George Walker click here. You can read more about Steven Beck on his website