Floating Points releases new album ‘Crush’

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For the first time in four years, Floating Points – aka Sam Shepherd – is releasing an album.

For those who love to anticipate a book on the strengh of its cover, Crush looks like it will be a remarkable listen indeed. The signs are good, too – with three peaks of swirling electronica already made available in the last few months. These were capped by Anasickmodular, whose video Shepherd posted a couple of days ago:

The highly acclaimed video for Last Bloom is full of colour, reflecting the accelerated growth of the music:

Meanwhile LesAlpx gets straight down to action with an urgent beat, its video a set of some of the most colourful bubbles you could imagine:

If they take your fancy, head to the Floating Points Bandcamp site to explore the album further.

As a companion piece, Shepherd’s contribution to the Late Night Tales compilation series is highly recommended – a chance to broaden your mind with some after hours treats!

Switched On – Conforce: Dawn Chorus (Delsin Records)

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reviewed by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

Conforce is the work of Dutch producer Boris Bunnik, who comes from the island of Terschelling, near Rotterdam. He has a good deal of previous in electronic music, working under the Versalife and Severnaya pseudonyms. This is his fifth album for the Delsin label.

Previous Conforce albums have included references to AI and machine learning, but retain their personal edge through Bunnik’s more ambient dressing and the packaging, which often includes his own photography.

What’s the music like?

Dawn Chorus moves at two different speeds. The foreground is rich with percussion, with rolling breakbeats that generate plenty of energy. This gives the music much more of a human element, ensuring it doesn’t sound too processed. Behind all the rhythmic activity sit slow moving sets of chords, subtly changing shape like clouds in the sky or mist over a lake.

Throughout there are references to the role of electronics in everyday life, with chattering loops and bleeps. Marooned feels remote in spite of its squelchy bass, while Axis Perpendicular packs more of a bunch with its offbeat breaks. Avoid is roomy and heavily percussive, while iO also has increased activity. Void and Umbra are both excellent tracks, the latter taking on an eerie edge by the end.

Does it all work?

Yes. Without being too ground breaking, Conforce has a style that is immediately identifiable and extremely listenable. With ambience and energy combined his is a style that works on two different levels for Dawn Chorus.

Is it recommended?

Yes. Anyone following the Delsin label will want to get involved, as it maintains their quality-rich approach.

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Switched On – Steffi x Virginia: Work A Change (Ostgut Ton)

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reviewed by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

Steffi & Virginia have been regular collaborators ever since 2011, when their vocal track Yours surfaced on the Ostgut Ton label. I use the term ‘Vocal track’ rather than ‘song’ advisedly, because the two DJs and vocalists find that their vocal work complements the instrumental craft, the two elements becoming inseparable.

Eight years on and their musical chemistry remains, sparking eight track EP Work A Change.

What’s the music like?

Every bit as vital as the pair’s first work. Steffi x Virginia, as the name implies, are an incredibly cohesive unit, finishing each other’s musical sentences on tracks that exist somewhere between techno, electro and pop. They manage to satisfy the elements of each style while being difficult to pin down to a single genre.

Beats bubble below the surface while cool keyboards float above on Be True To Me, which kicks in with a catchy chorus, while the two standouts Help Me Understand and Work The Change have a great sense of urgency. Both exist in instrumental form to show just how good they are.

Sight From Above, meanwhile, has a closer harmony which leads to a warmer sound, while Until You’re Begging has a conversational style over a busy beat. Only Internal Bleeding doesn’t quite hit the spot, though the harmonies are as effective as ever.

Does it all work?

Yes, because the blend of processed electronica with a freedom of spirit is irresistible. Work A Change, Help Me Understand and Be True To Me are big hitters that repay many repetitions (from experience!)

Is it recommended?

Without hesitation. These two spark off each other to brilliant effect, and the natural creation of this album has led to some brilliant vocal and instrumental sparring. It brings forward high quality music with energy and positivity.

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Wigmore Mondays – Barry Douglas & Borodin Quartet – Shostakovich: Piano Quintet

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Barry Douglas (piano, above), Borodin Quartet [Ruben Aharonian and Sergei Lomovsky (violins), Igor Naidin (viola), Vladimir Balshin (cello)] (below)

Wigmore Hall, Monday 14 October 2019 (lunchtime)

You can listen to this concert on the BBC Sounds app here (opens in a new window)

Review and guide by Ben Hogwood

For the 2019-20 season many of the BBC Radio 3 lunchtime concerts at the Wigmore Hall have taken on a playlist appearance. This all-Russian programme was no exception, with Tchaikovsky miniatures acting as a prelude to Shostakovich’s most successful chamber work, the Piano Quintet.

Tchaikovsky‘s The Seasons are a lovely set of miniatures for piano, characterising each month of the year rather than the four seasons. Barry Douglas, who has recently recorded the cycle, clearly holds the collection dear, and his accounts of March (the Song of the Lark) and October’s Autumn song were haunting and thoughtful by turn.

The Borodin Quartet followed with Tchaikovsky’s famous Andante cantabile for strings. The previous week they had given it in context, the second movement of four in the composer’s String Quartet no.1 in D major Op.11, where it is most effective. Here the silvery, muted textures were lovely, and the central section evoked a light dance, but the work’s placement felt constricted knowing the main act was still to come.

All that was emphatically put to bed by a storming performance of the Shostakovich Piano Quintet, as authentic an account as you could wish to hear. The first incarnation of the Borodin Quartet worked closely with the composer on many of his string quartets, and they performed the quintet with the composer on several occasions. The first-hand experience of their predecessors has not diluted the intensity of the experience in transition, and this was a searing account of one of 20th century chamber music’s most powerful utterances.

The Prelude (20:36) and Fugue (25:27) dovetailed beautifully, the former section imposing and powerfully wrought, the latter gathering a mood of grim resilience as the elements of its theme became ever more closely interwoven. This carried through to the outburst that is the Scherzo (35:28). Here Douglas came to the fore, striking the octaves in the upper right hand with shrill clarity, the quartet responding in kind as the textures veered towards the orchestral.

A graceful Intermezzo (39:12) was deeply poignant, the combination of bittersweet violin and simple plucked cello affecting from the outset. Emotions bubbled just under the surface throughout this movement, threatening to break loose at any moment. As the music slipped effortlessly into the finale (45:17) it shifted up a gear, with time for another big theme (46:35) before navigating to the calmer waters of the coda, where resolution was finally found in spite of the slightly ghostly string tone.

This was a tremendous performance, with every ounce of feeling communicated to the audience, occasionally at the expense of tuning in the upper violin area but with an unwavering intensity. The audience loved the repeat of the Scherzo as an encore.

Repertoire

This concert contained the following music (with timings on the BBC Sounds broadcast in brackets):

Tchaikovsky The Seasons Op.37a: March (2:00), October (4:31) (Barry Douglas solo)
String Quartet no.1 in D major Op.11, Second movement (Andante cantabile) (11:12) (Borodin Quartet)
Shostakovich Piano Quintet in G minor Op.57 (1940) (20:36) (Barry Douglas, Borodin Quartet)

Further listening

You can hear the music from this concert on the Spotify playlist below, containing recorded versions by the artists. The Borodin Quartet released Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet with pianist Alexei Volodin for Decca in 2018 – and here it is prefaced by one of the group’s several recorded versions of the Andante cantabile. Barry Douglas’s Tchaikovsky is part of an album of the complete cycle of The Seasons:

Another Russian chamber music powerhouse can be heard below. Tchaikovsky’s Piano Trio, written in memory of pianist Nikolai Rubinstein, is a deeply expressive piece full of pain and resilience. Here it is from Trio Wanderer:

Shostakovich was not done with his piano-based chamber music, adding a substantial Second Piano Trio four years later. You can hear it below with pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy, violinist Zsolt-Tihamér Visontay and cellist Mats Lidström – part of a very impressive all-Shostakovich disc:

On record – CBSO / Edward Gardner – Mendelssohn in Birmingham Vol.5: Overtures (Chandos)

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Mendelssohn
Trumpet Overture Op.101 (1825)
Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream Op.21 (1826)****
Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage Op.27 (1828)**
The Hebrides (Fingal’s Cave) Op.26 (1830)*
The Fair Melusine, Op. 32 (1834)
Overture to St. Paul Op.36 (1836)
Ruy Blas Overture Op.95 (1839)***
Overture to Athalie Op.74 (1844)
Lorenda Ramou (piano)

Chandos CHSA5235 [74’53”]

Producer Brian Pidgeon
Engineers Ralph Couzens, Jonathan Cooper and ****Robert Gilmour

Recorded *20-21 October 2013; **15 and ***16 February 2014; ****13-14 July 2015; 10-11 July 2018 at Town Hall, Birmingham

Written by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

For the fifth release in Chandos’s series Mendelssohn in Birmingham, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and its onetime guest conductor Edward Gardner further traverse the orchestral output of a composer who was not averse to snatching mediocrity from the jaws of greatness.

What’s the music like?

It should be pointed out only a part of this release consists of new material. The Hebrides, Ruy Blas and Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage first appeared in harness with Symphonies nos.4 and 5, nos.1 and 3, and no.2 respectively; while A Midsummer Night’s Dream was coupled with a selection of the incidental music for Shakespeare’s play as well as the Violin Concerto. Those who have been acquiring this series may thus feel a little short-changed, which perhaps makes purchasing those previously unreleased items as individual downloads the best option.

Proceeding chronologically, the Trumpet Overture reinforced Mendelssohn’s precocity in the wake of his Octet for strings – its breezily incisive manner, opened-out expressively by ominous asides, a viable template for future generations on which to hone their aspirations. Few could have hoped to match A Midsummer Night’s Dream as to prodigality of invention or technical resource, not least in terms of its redefining the orchestra near the outset of the Romantic era. A more prolix structure, Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage yet merits revival through the limpid eloquence of its introduction and surging impetus of its Allegro towards a rousing peroration. That said, it cannot compare with The Hebrides in terms of an evocation sustained via formal sleight of hand and emotional clarity as remain breath-taking to this day.

Into the 1830s, The Fair Melusine still remains engaging for those subtly tangible images of watery domains (proto-Wagnerian, though the connection is easily overstated) and headlong fate through a vivid if increasingly impersonal idiom. Such impersonality had all but taken hold by the time of the oratorio St Paul, its overture breathing an aura of unforced piety and ‘natural order’ increased by the fugal interplay at its centre then almost apologetic fervency near its close. Mendelssohn rather grudgingly supplied incidental music for Victor Hugo’s play Ruy Blas, but the overture retains its drama and melodic appeal up to the surging coda. Would that Athalie conveyed comparable conviction, but this overture to Jean Racine’s play yields little more then technical proficiency as its composer strives gainfully for inspiration.

Does it all work?

On a technical level, absolutely. Mendelssohn was a master of his craft whose abundant early promise was only intermittently fulfilled by his later music. Tackling these overtures in order of composition (rather than that of this disc) tends to reinforce such an observation, which is not to deny the sheer technical command of even those lesser pieces or of the conviction that Gardner and his players have invested into this programme overall. Save for just a couple of overly headlong climaxes, there is little to fault here in terms of either playing or recording.

Is it recommended?

Yes, with the proviso detailed above. Bayan Northcott’s estimable booklet note mentions the overture to cantata The First Walpurgis Night as being inseparable from its main work, which makes a CBSO recording of this ‘dark horse’ among Mendelssohn works the more desirable.

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For more information on this release and to purchase in multiple formats visit the Chandos website