Tag Archives: Deutsche Grammophon

On record – Adès Conducts Adès: Piano Concerto & Totentanz (Deutsche Grammophon)

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Kirill Gerstein (piano), Christianne Stotijn (mezzo), Mark Stone (baritone), Boston Symphony Orchestra / Thomas Adès

Thomas Adès
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (2018)
Totentanz (2013)

Deutsche Grammophon 4837998 [55’58”]

Producer Nick Squire
Engineer Joel Watts

Live performances, recorded November 2016 (Totentanz) & March 2019 (Piano Concerto) at Symphony Hall, Boston

Written by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Thomas Adès has latterly been enjoying a productive association with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. They appear here in two recent and pointedly contrasted pieces which, between them, make for a viable overview of a compositional ethos as absorbing as it is frustrating.

What’s the music like?

From the outset Adès evidently had in mind a ‘proper’ piano concerto, and the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra is precisely that: three movements, of virtually equal length, unfolding along archetypal designs – sonata, ternary and rondo forms – even if their angle of approach is not what it might have been. The first movement abounds in jazzy inferences, albeit with a more relaxed ‘second subject’ to provide a modicum of contrast, while the central Andante is overlaid with intriguing symmetries that offset what might otherwise seem unremarkable material. The final Allegro duly renews the animated dialogue between soloist and orchestra in what could be termed an equable meeting between Gershwin and Ligeti, with Prokofiev putting-in an unexpected appearance toward the decisive and effervescent close. This is not the radical departure from Adès’s previous concertante pieces as might be supposed, though neither is this merely a triumph of concept over content. Whether it manages to revitalize a genre which has had precious few additions during the past half-century remains to be seen.

Certainly, the Concerto makes a telling foil to Totentanz. This is a setting of an anonymous 15th-century commentary to a frieze (destroyed in wartime) where Death visits a succession of those representing the medieval social strata and their responses thereof. Despite utilising male and female voices, it is not a song-cycle so much as a dramatic scena in which loss is considered in the context of a ‘dance of death’ that motivates the greater discourse. Each of those visited is allotted a specific musical expression, though the initial call-and-response is gradually blurred as vocal parts are overlaid in an intensifying activity towards the seismic orchestral culmination.

Characterisation of the remaining protagonists risk losing focus, yet there could be no mistaking the plaintive sensuousness of the encounter with the Maiden or the disarming naïveté of that with the Child as the music wends a weary Mahlerian way to its close. Each encounter is interpretable from different and even competing perspectives which extend the range of expression, while making it ambivalent to the point of disingenuousness.

Does it all work?

Yes, given that both performances meet the challenges of each work head on. Kirill Gerstein sounds unfazed in this world premiere of the Concerto, aligning himself to the orchestra with well-nigh perfect synchronization. The composer secures a truly virtuosic response from the Boston Symphony here and in Totentanz, during which Christianne Stotijn brings a decidedly fraught pathos while Mark Stone responds with burnished intensity. Adès has been lucky in the exponents of his music throughout his career and both these occasions were no exception.

Is it recommended?

It is – not least because these works, markedly different in themselves, suggest a continued desire to bring the flippant and the earnest into unlikely though productive accord. Whether they constitute a surrender to, or a critique of, the zeitgeist remains part of their fascination.

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You can listen to clips from the recording and purchase, either in physical or digital form, at the Presto website

Víkingur Ólafsson – studying Philip Glass

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Víkingur Ólafsson (photo: Ari Magg)

Last year, Arcana defined Víkingur Ólafsson as a true classical music entrepreneur. We explored his introductions to classical music, and talked about the two festivals he helps administer – Sweden’s Vinterfest and the Reykjavik Midsummer Festival. We also covered his friendship with composer Philip Glass, 80 this year. Olafsson professed his admiration for the composer and his creative energy, an admiration he has now transferred to disc in the form of his first recording for Deutsche Grammophon. Time, then, for chapter two in the interview!

When did you first encounter Philip Glass’s music?

It’s quite a specific memory. I was 13 years old, sitting with my two sisters in the back seat of our car on a family vacation. Dad was driving on the highway, heading from France to Switzerland and as we were bored and quarrelling in the back seat, he handed us this recording of Philip Glass Violin Concerto No.1 with Gidon Kremer (on DG as it happens) which we listened to on our Sony Discman players. It was unbelievable to discover this new sound world while passing by the French landscapes on 150 KM per hour.

Some of the Etudes on this album feel like extended meditations. Do you get into a kind of trance when you play them?

Not really, I’d rather have my audience in a trance… I just try to listen intensely and explore the possibilities of the instrument and acoustics, looking for the right proportions of sound and time.

Do you think the Etudes are actually much more emotional than the titles suggest they should be?

What is emotional for one person can be completely impersonal to the next. To me there is a nostalgia to the slow ones, but it’s emotions revealed through the filter of time. Etude means ‘study’, but one can also write etudes on emotions, just as well as on finger dexterity.

What technical challenges does the music present for you?

It’s relatively easy to learn the etudes and play them at an average level. But what I find difficult – as with any music – is to play them in the most specific way, when it comes to rhythm, texture, sound…

To get the clockwork fine tuned in a piece like Opening is extremely delicate and difficult, to take one example. And of course playing a piece like Etude No.6 is quite difficult, and the repeated notes make me feel as if I’m playing a late-20th century Scarlatti.

Etude No.20 requires intense layering of texture and pedal sensitivity and No 15 demands an orchestral palette on the piano. The etudes can be extraordinary when played well, but, like almost all other music, they can also be rather bland when played in a bland way. But blame the performer in that case.

Are you working closely with Philip on any new material?

We’ve discussed briefly a new work, but it’s too early to say more…

Aside from the piano music, what is your favourite piece by Glass?

I saw Einstein on the Beach in Berlin two years ago. It blew my mind to experience it live. I will also mention his Violin Concerto No.1, as it was the first piece I heard by him. And I have to mention Koyaanisqatsi. It’s actually on Youtube, I recommend spending a Sunday afternoon watching and listening to the great work.

Do you play music by any of the other so-called ‘minimalists’?

Yes, but they’re really not minimalists… at least not since the early 70s! I’m playing John Adams‘ Piano Concerto in Leipzig in June and I’ve played a bit of Steve Reich as well. I love these composers but I’ve played far more Glass than either of those.

What is it like being signed to Deutsche Grammophon, and do you have any plans for future releases on the label?

We are meeting in Berlin in March to discuss next albums. We have roughly three different ideas on the drawing board and they are all very different from one another – and from the Glass album. I don’t want people to know what to expect too much, I’d love for each of my album to tell its own story, independent from the previous ones.

I love working with Deutsche Grammophon as we have a mutual love of listening to, exploring and discussing music. And of course I’ve listened to so many DG records in my life and gotten to know so much great music and so many great performances through the label. It’s both a privilege and pleasure to work with them.

You can find out more about the Midsummer Music festival in Reykjavik here, while you can also discover Vinterfest here. For more information on Víkingur himself, head to his own artist website

On record: Víkingur Ólafsson – Philip Glass: Piano Works (Deutsche Grammophon)

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Summary

Deutsche Grammophon have taken the opportunity to celebrate Philip Glass’s 80th birthday with their new signing, Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson. He has already performed the piano etudes with the composer himself, and has recognised the depth of invention and emotion that sits beneath the surface of what initially seems to be repetitive, mechanical music.

‘My approach to each of the etudes is to enable the listener to create his or her own personal space of reflection’, he says in the DG press release – and we will get more of his thoughts in an interview given to Arcana shortly.

What’s the music like?

Ólafsson is true to his word. The Etudes – even in Glass’s own performances – can seem a bit dry and difficult to approach. Not so with Ólafsson, whose incredible control means he can play with unexpected grace, using the pieces as reflections but also catching the nuances of Glass’s rhythmic writing. The quality of the DG recording helps here too.

The contours of the Opening piece are caressed and beautifully phrased, proving to be much more emotive than if played straight, as Glass so often is. In No.5 he is slow and lost in thought, and in no.14 too, but by contrast the Etude no.9 is quite punchy. Etude no.15 has a powerful surge in D major before adopting a dance-like profile, while the nervous energy of No.3 puts the performance more on edge.

Quite how Ólafsson plays the repetitive notes of the Etude no.6 is a complete mystery! His performance of no.2 brings both sides of Glass together, beginning in sombre and reflective mood but building to something pretty substantial. Here he is joined by a string quartet, an arrangement by Christian Badzura that proves effective at breaking up the sound of the solo piano and introducing some more colours to the mix.

Does it all work?

Yes, thanks to Ólafsson’s sensitivity and Glass’s awareness of the different colours the piano can offer him. Much of the music here is typical Glass, arpeggiated and with subtle but lasting twists to the harmonies – and it works really well in this context.

Is it recommended?

Without hesitation. So much so that this is probably the best album we are likely to encounter in Glass’s 80th birthday year.

Ben Hogwood

Listen on Spotify

On record: Max Richter – Three Worlds: Music from Woolf Works (Deutsche Grammophon)

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max-richter

Summary

For his follow-up to the extraordinarily successful SLEEP, Max Richter turns his attentions to the works of Virginia Woolf. He has been working on a Royal Ballet production with Wayne McGregor, and this full length album documents his responses to Woolf’s novels.

The resultant soundtrack features Woolf’s own text, read by Sarah Sutcliffe, Gillian Anderson and the author herself, her only surviving recording, where she reads Craftsmanship to the eerie backing of Big Ben. Anderson reads her suicide note, a deeply felt letter to her husband to which Richter responds with the extended meditation Tuesday.

What’s the music like?

Richter shows his versatility as a composer throughout this album, drawing on his legacy as an electronic composer but showing also how he continues to effectively exploit analogue instruments.

The music for Mrs Dalloway is incredibly intimate and has a small-scale setting to go with it. Utterances like Words and In the garden are simplicity itself and are subtly scored, while War anthem features a resonant cello, beautifully played by Hila Karni, that soars in the spirit of John Tavener.

Orlando contains a varied selection of shorter pieces. Morphology has a lovely, open texture, and like a few of the numbers here it would have been nice for the music to have longer to open out and present itself fully. Perhaps because of the constraints of the director, some of Richter’s music adopts more of a sketch form here.

That is emphatically not the case for the final, heartrending Tuesday, Richter’s response to the suicide note that makes up the whole of the Waves section. It is a powerful meditation, deliberately written to connect with Zen Buddhism, and comes close to Hans Zimmer’s music for Interstellar in mood. Richter’s musical development is subtle, the elegiac motif generating a deep and lasting power that leads to a final, exhausted coda.

The Waves, Woolf Works from Ravi Deepres on Vimeo.

Does it all work?

Mostly, and it presents Richter as a multifaceted composer who can work on the small scale of chamber music but also a larger orchestral stage. Tuesday is a really impressive piece of work, showing how he can command the attention of an audience over a longer structure – which SLEEP did of course, but in a very different way!

The music for Mrs Dalloway is very simple – too much at times – but at its best is also deeply effective. The sensitive use of speech around the music is effective.

Is it recommended?

Yes. Not always the cheeriest album, Three Worlds does nonetheless become both a restful and emotionally powerful piece of meditation, a heartfelt response to the works of one of Britain’s finest 20th century novelists.

Ben Hogwood

Listen on Spotify

Francesco Tristano – Mixing it up

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francesco-tristano
Picture by Marie Staggat

Francesco Tristano has a number of musical specialities. You may know him as a pianist, partner with Alice Sara Ott in recent concerts revealing the percussive power of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. Or you may know him as a pianist who has shown his worth in improvisation, playing alongside Carl Craig – and showing his love of techno in a pioneering arrangement for piano of Rhythim is Rhythim’s Strings of Life.

If you know him for this, you are likely to be aware that Tristano also DJs regularly – and has added his voice to the already illustrious crowd who have mixed an instalment of the Get Physical label’s Body Language series. Tristano’s own brand of body language consists largely of his own work, either through originals, remixes or collaborations, but it is clear from this interview he is far from self-centred. Though of course we had to ask him a few things about himself…

How long have you been DJing, and how did you start?

I got in touch with the DJ world when I was living in New York City in the late nineties. By the end of my NYC stay, in the year 2003, I was DJing in a bar/lounge downtown. But I knew my thing was to play live. So I didn’t really DJ publicly except for one party at the Rex club in Paris and I recorded a DJ set for BBC Radio 1. Body Language isn’t really a DJ mix either – it’s more like a produced session with many live elements such as live synths playing.

I gather you had a shortlist for Body Language of several hundred tracks. How do you go about choosing a selection for commercial release from that list?

It was important for me to find a common thread of melody and harmony throughout the mix. It was mostly about listening to which collection of tracks would make sense harmonically together.

You included the Joe Zawinul track The Harvest, which really stands out early on in the compilation. What made you want to choose it?

Zawinul is arguably my greatest inspiration, and from a very early age. I guess I just had to have one of his tracks on the album. The Harvest is taken from his 1985 solo album Dialects – that’s just after the break-up of Weather Report.

Would you say some of the pieces here – Amnesie with Luciano, for instance – are more about rhythm and atmosphere than out-and-out melody?

We actually made the track for a film, Barbet Schroeder’s Amnesie which, you guessed it, takes place on the island of Ibiza. In accordance with the script I was working with cello samples, and also a vague harmonic relationship to the film’s main theme (which is also played by the cello). The rhythmic programming is Lucien’s, and provided a great drive for the minimalistic cello figures.

Does the mix tap in to your own clubbing experiences?

Sure. I like techno which is not limited to kick drum and high hats. Bring in some vintage synths please.

Why do you think the piano is so important both in club music and in your own music making?

The piano has been my companion since I’m five years old. I can always count on it. It doesn’t even need power. . . As for the piano in club music, I am not entirely sure. Chicago house made ample use of piano samples, but it wasn’t really using live pianos. Maybe piano is present in electronic music symbolically because it is the ancestor of the synthesiser…

Would you say constructing a DJ mix is similar to constructing a larger-scale piece of classical music, in terms of key relationships and development?

Sure. Beat-matching is not enough.

Can you remember your first encounters with classical music?

There was a piano at my house. My mother listened to Bach, Wagner, but also Pink Floyd and Vangelis all day long. It was only a question of time until I touched the keyboard.

How does your work with Alice Sara Ott, playing Bach and Stravinsky, complement the work you do as a DJ?

Since I don’t work as a DJ (live sets only) it’s pretty much the same. Music is like cuisine: you have ingredients, and you can create very different dishes with the same set of ingredients.

Do you think dance / electronic music and classical music have a lot more in common than we realise?

I wish we would loosen up these denominations. Who decides if a given piece is classical? Detroit techno classics are called classics for a reason. Mozart never thought of writing a ‘classical’ sonata. It was the contemporary (‘techno’) music of his time.

What does classical music mean to you?

The same as techno ¬ i.e. nothing. Music is one long, universal continuum of which we are all part.

What are you listening to at the moment, and what piece of classical music would you recommend Arcana readers go out and find?

I am listening to Bach’s St. John Passion and I can only recommend it. But I would also recommend Starlight by Model 500. . .

Francesco Tristano’s contribution to Get Physical’s Body Language series is out now. The series includes mixes by DJ Hell, Modeselektor and Dixon. Meanwhile Scandale, his piano duet album with Alice Sara Ott, includes Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and Ravel’s La Valse. For more information click here – it is available now on Deutsche Grammophon