The ever-inventive Third Coast Percussion have another album in the bag – and they are ready to share Perspectives with us in two weeks’ time.
Furthering the ensemble’s links with Cedille Records, the new album contains four new works, headed by a new four-movement Percussion Quartet from Danny Elfman. This substantial 20-minute work was written for Third Coast Percussion at the behest of Philip Glass, whose Metamorphosis no.1 is next up in an arrangement by the quartet themselves. Electronic composer Jlin has been commissioned to write a new piece, Perspective, a large-scale suite comprising seven contrasting viewpoints. Finally Rubix, a collaboration with flute duo Flutronix, signs off the album with its three sections, Go, Play and Still.
Have a listen to the latest edition of the Cedille podcast, where Third Coast Percussion’s Robert Dillon talks through the album and plays clips from it:
Arcana will cover the album in full next month…but before then you can read more about it and hear short clips on the Cedille website
To say You Belong There is an eagerly awaited album would be an understatement. Daniel Rossen, a key member of both Grizzly Bear and Department Of Eagles, made a strong impression with his Silent Hour/Golden Mile EP in 2012, and finally follows up that release with a fully-fledged long player for Warp.
What’s the music like?
Compelling. Perhaps inevitably Rossen brings elements of the two bands’ music to his writing, but there is plenty of room for exploration of his own. The songs on You Belong There live and breathe a heady air, with twists and turns in the music and narrative that keep the listener hooked.
‘The truth is always brighter than you say’, runs the repeated hook through Shadow In The Frame, a song where Rossen’s storytelling has the vivid references of a band like Fleet Foxes or Midlake. With carefully studied guitar work and sumptuous orchestration – never overdone – the song is a beauty, its coda especially moving.
On the title track percussion flits back and forth, the music panning out as the harmonies intensify, while Celia is a remarkable song, with a multi-layered choir of Rossens confessing that “I’m still staggering as you once did”. I’ll Wait For Your Visit goes further still, the singer in a lower range with long phrases above excitable piano and guitar.
Sometimes Rossen appears to be in the same room. Unpeopled Space begins with intimate phrases picked on the guitar before striding forward with a strong sense of purpose. Tangle, meanwhile, is out in the white water, a torrent of piano notes flowing around his vessel. The music is virtuosic but wholly relatable, especially at the song’s apex. However the best song – arguably – is Keeper And Kin, another gripping story told over descriptive guitars and percussion. After this, the final two songs form an effective coda.
Does it all work?
Yes. The blend of carefully studied guitar work and instinctive melodies is a strong one, each song a windswept beauty – and the virtuosity of Rossen should be commended, for over lockdown he learned a number of new instruments to add even more colours to his music. The songs blossom in his hands.
Is it recommended?
Without question. Fans of Grizzly Bear will find a great deal to enjoy here, as Rossen gives us the debut his initial promise suggested he would achieve.
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To hear clips from You Belong There, and for purchase options, visit the Warp Records website
How heartening it is to report on the announcement of a full-to-bursting BBC Proms season once again. The festival, now in its 127th year, is able to spread its wings post-pandemic, reaching out to the four corners of the British Isles to include large orchestral concerts and overseas artists once again.
There are of course far too many concerts to mention in full here, but some deserve an extra thick highlighter pen. From the small scale (Sir András Schiff playing Beethoven‘s last three piano sonatas) to the large (Sir Simon Rattle leading us and the London Symphony Orchestra from death to life in Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony) there looks to be something for almost everyone.
Concerts are spread much further afield this year, and an especially welcome move is the multi-region approach to the weekly chamber concerts, which will be broadcast from Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, Liverpool, London and Truro. Outside of those appealing concerts, there really is such a huge variety
At a glance, the most appealing events include a tribute to Aretha Franklin curated by Jules Buckley, the wholly appropriate choice of Public Service Broadcasting to celebrate the centenary of the BBC in a newly commissioned piece, This New Noise, and concerts that bring centurion George Walker to the fore.
Lovers of British music will not be disappointed either. John Wilson conducts his Sinfonia of London band in Bax, Walton, Vaughan Williams, Elgar and the new Flute Concerto by Huw Watkins. The BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and Omer Meir Wellber will compare and contrast the Fourth Symphonies by Tippett and Vaughan Williams. Dame Ethel Smyth and Doreen Carwithen will get long-overdue appraisals – the Glyndebourne production of Smyth’s opera The Wreckers looks set to be essential, but so does her Mass in D major and Concerto for horn and violin. Meanwhile Carwithen’s String Quartet no.2 and Bishop Rock are welcome, though we could perhaps have done with one more piece from her.
Visitors from Germany (Berlin Philharmoniker), Austria (Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra), Finland (Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra) and Norway (Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra) provide four must-see concerts. To them we can add the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who will perform Florence Price‘s Symphony no.1.
The music of Shostakovich will surely take on greater poignancy this season in the light of the awful tragedies unfolding in Ukraine – the Fifth, Tenth and Fifteenth Symphonies will all be loaded with extra meaning. The establishment of the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, however, will trump even these when they play the music of recently exiled composer Valentin Silvestrov, his Symphony no.7. Brought together by the Metropolitan Opera, New York, and the Polish National Opera, the brand new orchestra will by led by Canadian-Ukrainian conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson and will include recently refugeed Ukrainian musicians, Ukrainian members of European orchestras and leading musicians from Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv, Odesa and elsewhere in Ukraine.
This is just a flavour of the season, from which you will see that from first night Verdi to final night Sheku Kanneh-Mason and Lise Davidsen, there is so much to appreciate. Get over to the BBC Proms websiteand start planning!
Debussy arr. Büsser Petite Suite; Debussy arr. Caplet La boîte à joujoux (1919), Children’s Corner (1911)
What’sthestory?
This beautifully packaged collection from BIS brings together a trio of Debussy pieces arranged for orchestra. There are two characterful suites whose cleaner lines look back to classical and baroque forms, beginning with the four-movement PetiteSuite, originally for two pianos and arranged for orchestra by Henri Büsser.
The central work of the three is La boîte à joujoux (Thetoybox). This surprisingly substantial piece was written by Debussy in 1913 as a piano score, but due to the first World War was not performed until 1919, after the composer’s death, by which time it had been orchestrated by André Caplet. The ballet tells in miniature detail of a toy soldier falling in love with a doll protected by a polichinelle, who will not give her up. The two fight and the soldier is wounded, but is nursed back to health by the doll, and they fall in love.
Caplet was a trusted collaborator, having already arranged Debussy’s Children’sCorner suite for orchestra in 1911. The composer wrote the piano version for his daughter Claude-Emma, nicknamed ‘Chou-Chou’, in 1908.
What’sthemusiclike?
As attractive as the cover! What is abundantly clear from each of the three scores is that even in his keyboard music Debussy had orchestral designs – which Caplet and Büsser bring to fruition.
The PetiteSuite is a charmer in this performance, from the languid Enbateau to the brisk, bracing Ballet. The phrasing is especially beautiful in the winds towards the end of the former, while there is an attractive lilt to the Cortège and a light bounce to the rhythms of the Menuet.
La boîte à joujoux features some exquisite storytelling and wind playing. There is a beautiful oboe solo as the scene isset in the toy shop, the music hanging mysteriously. The lovely clarinet in The doll’s waltz is complemented by detailed shading in the strings. There are stylish contributions from the orchestral pianist too, especially at the very end where the orchestra hang on every note. The bluster of battle and The sheepfold for sale leads to a translucent coda. Here a tender, slightly mournful finish from piano is trumped by an emphatic sign off from the orchestra
Children’sCorner is similarly colourful. The Berceuse has long shadows enhanced by the bass strings, but the SerenadefortheDoll is delightful. TheSnowIsDancing is appropriately mysterious, and there is a poignant oboe solo for The Little Shepherd. Finally the Golliwogg’s Cake Walk is a brilliant study of light and shade, with the ebullient theme a treat.
Doesitall work?
It does. Pascal Rophé brings great detail to Debussy’s storytelling, and while the orchestral playing is of an extremely high standard the wind section deserve special mention for the way in which they inhabit the characters of each tale. The BIS recording captures every detail. There are also reminders that in spite of these colourful stories the spectre of World War One lies in the shadows.
Isitrecommended?
Heartily. This is a colourful and thoroughly enjoyable album, lovingly realised and beautifully played. An essential addition to any Debussy collection.
Paul Lewis (piano), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Christoph König
Mozart Piano Concerto No. 27 in B flat major, K595 (1788-91)
Mahler Symphony No. 5 in C sharp minor (1901-02)
Symphony Hall, Birmingham Wednesday 21 April 2022, 2.15pm
Written by Richard Whitehouse
Back from a first European tour since the pandemic and following the Easter break, the CityofBirminghamSymphonyOrchestra hit the ground running with a programme of contrasts featuring Mozart’s last piano concerto and what is likely Mahler’s most popular symphony.
It may have been finished early during his final year, but Mozart’s27thPianoConcerto was drafted several years earlier, while its relative inwardness as compared to those from 1785-6 need not be read as fatalistic; still less be taken for valediction. This was certainly how PaulLewis approached it with a poised but never flaccid opening Allegro – its subtle contrasts of themes and dynamics creating their own, discreet momentum with an eloquent rendering of the development then a lucid cadenza such as brought the whole movement deftly full circle.
Might it be that this concerto is only as good as the best performances? Thanks to Lewis the central Larghetto never risked seeming plain spun or uniform, piano dovetailing into strings and woodwind to ingratiating effect. In the closing Allegro, ChristophKönig pointed up the dance-like robustness of its rondo theme with a lilting impetus as never faltered. This is one of Mozart’s few concertos where his own cadenzas survive; Lewis’s probing manner in the finale setting the seal on a reading as thoughtfully conceived as it was insightfully realized.
His recent recordings of Louise Farrenc having gained widespread praise, König is evidently a conductor in demand and his account of Mahler’sFifthSymphony provided a decisive, no-nonsense take on this much-played piece. Not least an initial FuneralMarch whose bracing objectivity did not preclude a more visceral response to its frenzied climax or ominous close. Its successor’s competing strands of violence and resignation were purposefully juxtaposed, through to the as-yet provisional emergence of the chorale then a tellingly speculative coda.
Time and again the central Scherzo fails to fulfil its role as this work’s formal or expressive crux, and if König’s approach fell short of the ultimate conviction, it was more than usually cohesive – whether in the discursive unfolding of its ländler-informed sections or the central trio with its rustically evocative overtones. Equally persuasive were those transitions either side, thereby endowing the movement with a cohesive follow-through which paid dividends during a coda whose unalloyed ebullience more than usually indicated what was to follow.
Most conductors now make the famous Adagietto a soulful interlude rather than full-blown slow movement, König going further by making it an extended introduction to the closing Rondo. This evolved almost seamlessly through the gradual intensification of ideas already heard towards the re-emergence of that chorale, here blazing forth with an affirmation that did not pre-empt those final bars in their almost nonchalant affirmation. Mahler might have written deeper finales, but not one whose triumph over adversity was so potently achieved.
An impressive demonstration, too, of the CBSO’s collective prowess (while not neglecting that of trumpeter MatthewWilliams) for what is well worth catching in Saturday’s repeat performance; before this orchestra offers ‘something completely different’ next Thursday.
For more information on the CBSO’s 2021-22 season, click here
Meanwhile for more information on the artists, click on the names to access the websites of Paul Lewis and Christoph König
