by Audiophile Audition | Jul 28, 2018 | Jazz CD Reviews, SACD & Other Hi-Res Reviews
Lionel LOUEKE: Close Your Eyes – Newvelle Records 015 – 45:46 (June 2018): ****:
(Lionel Loueke; guitar, Ruben Rogers;bass, Eric Harland; drums)
State of the art vinyl release by Newvelle Records which maintains the high musical standards of its predecessors.
Newvelle Records is in its third season of a unique project of producing new music, released on vinyl only, sold by subscription (only six records per year). These 180 gram LPs come handsomely-packaged with the inclusion of specially commissioned art and oblique literary works, which may or may not relate to the music. Their stated goal is to reconnect the jazz fan to the original thrill of the medium. Part of this may be considered the two-month drama of waiting for the next release. There is something special in unwrapping an LP and watching the dual-fold open with its potent suspense. And how much more rewarding it is to find a product pared down to an essential work of art. There is no plastic, no video-tie ins, no photos, bio, dedications, resumes. In short, there are two pieces of art (credited on cover) and an accompanying literary piece of uncertain description and a single disc of transparent vinyl.
Newvelle Records
Apparently, given the reports of this label’s ever-growing appeal, the production values of the label are nicely answering the recent contemporary thirst for ‘analog’ experiences. By which I mean not just the older technology but the idea of small scale, human-made products which are tangible, non redundant, made with care and commitment (and are expensive and scarce). Prospective members should be confident that one is entering a rarefied world of Analog unlike any other.
This is the 15th such record scheduled for summer of 2018 and features Lionel Loueke in a trio with bassist Ruben Rogers and drummer Eric Harland. There are eight tracks, adding up to about 46 minutes of music. Surprisingly, all the tunes are standards. Not surprisingly, the arrangements are fresh and varied, ranging from the kind of odd-meter funk of Dave Holland (Loueke is a prime member of Holland’s recent quartet) to edgy outside/ free jazz to infectious New Orleans Jump band grooves.
The first trembling moment of anticipation gives way to the immersion in the special acoustic space of the recording. Track one, Footprints, is in no hurry find its way into the swaying minor key waltz melody. In fact, it is not in 6/8 time at all–rather, there is a gathering of forces and probing of melodic and harmonic possibilities while the listener takes stock of the superbly detailed sound-stage. Loueke’s guitar is snappy; he came to the guitar late, having started as a singer/ percussionist. His style is among the most percussive and can also accommodate a vocalise/scat, which summons up his own roots in the popular music of his home country, Benin. Here he superimposes some dissonance on the well-known Shorter melody, which momentarily disguises the theme. Rogers’ bass is impressive and high in the mix. Like Dave Holland, Rogers walks powerfully, holding together the polyphonic storm of the other players, but then can just as deftly explore a wildly unmetered or odd time signature and make it fit. There is substantial feature for the bass on this first track, and one is deeply impressed with the playing and visceral communication of the performance. Meanwhile, Harland plays with gusto, transmuting the elemental metal and skin into scintillating details rather than a haze of percussive noise. His finest moments come on later tracks.
It Might as Well Be Spring, the elegant Richard Rogers ballad, follows. Here it is taken at a medium tempo with stable quarter notes from the bassist supporting a conventional statement of the melody. It is not one that should be tampered with. This straight-forward duo (Harland sits out) is far away from Loueke’s typical bag in either his afro-pop trio or his heady work with the Dave Holland Ensemble. It does not deviate though, from his essential lyrical mastery. Guitar and the bass balance perfectly without electrical enhancements of any kind.
On Moon River, Reuben Rogers takes a break and allows Harland to take on some lower end duties, which he does with the tom-toms, pounding out some notes to anchor down the guitarist, who employs his kit of electrical effects and some heavy reverb while skirting the melody. The feeling is one of distracted abridgement or ironic commentary. The clever drumming is the best thing on this experimental arrangement of a threadbear Henry Mancini tune.
Solar erupts into a threeway spirited interplay in uncertain time signature. This sort of thing is the staple of Dave Holland groups, and one could imagine how he would have stretched this vamp beyond the breaking point. But here, Loueke reigns things in, and the quick Miles Davis head arrives, with all hands ready to take it into a short but coherent improv by the guitarist. There is not much in the melody to hold the interest of the group, so they dust up the chords into a whirlwind and fade out leaving a feeling of exhaustion and exhilaration in the air.
Lionel Loueke
Side B begins with Blue Monk played as a straight blues. There is a bit of early Scofield in chorus on what is the least imaginative piece on the record. One imagines that these players would need no more than one take to pull this off. Loueke goes into the heart of blues playing without irony and to the edges of the Jazz idiom without strain, but can’t escape the plodding and over-determinative blues progression, which has been run into the ground by too many renditions of this tune. Body and Soul goes to the other extreme; the simplicity of the melody is belied by a most ingenious and complex harmonic progression. I listened to this piece from the bottom up and was deeply impressed by Reuben Rogers’ astute realization of the counterpoint. Loueke glides gracefully over a and b sections, buoyed up over however many flats and sharps without a care in the world. It is a resplendent treatment by a group that communicates at a deep level.
The title track Close Your Eyes (Bernice Petkere) is a standard that undergoes complete reinvention. There is a little of everything that the group does well. Above all, the joyful spirit of West African pop music shines through. There is some blustery raging towards the end, with Harland showing some vehemence with the stick and crash cymbal. It is the longest track, too at 7:46, a happy squall and a bumpy ride.
The oddest, and for me standout track, is the final Coltrane ballad Naima. Having worked for many hours on how to arrange this piece for guitar, I was most interested to hear Lionel Loueke take it on as a solo piece. Typically, the extremely simple descending melody is set against both a pedal point and a series of shifting dissonant chords which have the effect of being ‘harmonic inquiries’ in dialog with the affecting utterance of the saxophone. In this arrangement, Loueke relies on his click-laden Xhosa vocalise to help carry the melodic line. The thick harmonies in the middle register are switched out for funky riffs, which play in polyphonic dazzle against his singing. Meanwhile, and super-humanly, there is something like a bass line which is part vamp and part accent. For a 3:38 minutes, one is held spell-bound by this improbable display of virtuosity drawing so generously from music as diverse as Afro-pop, Bobby McFerrin, and John Coltrane. It is a most persuasive ending to a most rewarding musical experience.
At first, I puzzled over the lack of liner notes; The songs are credited in small print on the back cover. However, I came around to the idea that the music is so fresh and immediate in its effect that it doesn’t need any further context, nor do the players need to be introduced, consummate team players all, as individuals. On the other hand, the commissioned literary ‘work’ Bruit de Fond by Ingrid Aster made no impression on me whatsoever. Indeed, I would prefer an original poem or impressionist essay of some kind over the average puffery or liner note detail, but this one fails to come into focus for this reader. The striking abstract photographs on the album cover and inside the fold-out suggest water reflections seen through a crimson filter. At least it achieves a handsome neutrality. The packing in general is top-notch, the clear vinyl is a thing of wonder.
In short, Newvelle Records is trying to do something magnificently ambitious. I hope that word will spread that these records may very well be worth the king’s ransom that they demand.
—Fritz Balwit
Newvelle Records Home
by Audiophile Audition | Jul 28, 2018 | Streams and Podcasts
On Sunday, The Music Treasury is presenting cellist Dmitri Atapine. While Dr Gary Lemco oft-times presents recordings of artists, this week he will have Dmitri Atapine live in the studio at Stanford. More details of Atapine can be found below.
The show can be heard between 19:00 and 21:00 PDT on KZSU in the Bay Area, as well as its concurrent streaming at kzsu.stanford.edu.
Dmitri Atapine, Cellist
We have as our in studio guest this evening, Dmitri Atapine, who appears in this season’s Music@Menlo Festival, now ongoing, as he has during the past six seasons. Mr. Atapine brings with him music of contemporary composers Lowell Leiberman, Aldo Parisot and James Winn along with composers of earlier eras including Louis Spohr. He will also discuss great cellists of the recent past including Mstislav Rostropovich.
Dmitri Atapine has been hailed as a performer with “brilliant technical chops” (Gramophone), whose playing is “highly impressive throughout” (The Strad). As an avid soloist and recitalist, he has appeared on some of the world’s foremost stages, including Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, the Zankel and Weill halls at Carnegie Hall, the National Auditorium of Spain, to cite but a few. His performances have been broadcast on radio and TV in the USA, Spain, Mexico, and South Korea.
Dmitri Atapine
Highly in demand as a chamber musician, Mr. Atapine has appeared with such prestigious organizations as The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and his frequent festival festival appearances have included Music@Menlo (California), Chamber Music Northwest (Oregon), La Musica Festival (Florida), Nevada Chamber Music Festival, Cactus Pear Music Festival (Texas), Banff (Canada), Great Mountains Music Festival (South Korea), Malaga Clasica (Spain), Miguel Bernal Jimenez Festival (Mexico), the French Academy in Rome (Italy), Aldeburgh (England), Aix-en-Provence (France), and Pacific Music Festival (Japan). He collaborated with such eminent artists as the Tokyo String Quartet, St. Lawrence String Quartet, Wu Han, Ani and Ida Kavafian, David Finckel, David Shifrin, Cho-Liang Lin, Paul Neubauer, Bruno Giuranna and Peter Wiley, among many others.
As a soloist Mr. Atapine has performed as a soloist with the Asturias Symphony Orchestra, the Leon Symphony Orchestra, the Gijon Chamber Orchestra, the ‘Arche’ Chamber Orchestra, the Yale Philharmonia Orchestra, as well as with Michigan State University Symphony and Philharmonic Orchestras. Mr. Atapine’s multiple prizes and awards include the First Prize at the Carlos Prieto International Cello Competition and the Second Prize at the Vittorio Gui Chamber Music Competition. Other accolades include Top Prize and Yamaha Special Prize at the Florian Ocampo Spanish National Cello Competition, First and Second Prizes at the 2008 New England International Chamber Competition, the Grand Prize at the 2007 Plowman Competition, the 2005 Presser Foundation Award, the First Prize and Asturias Symphony Special Prize at the 2003 Llanes International String Competition (Spain), the Yale Woolsey Hall Competition, and the First Prize at the Sahagun International Music Competition at age 13.Mr. Atapine’s keen interest in contemporary music produced fruitful collaborations with several distinguished composers, among them Ezra Laderman, Jennifer Higdon, and Martin Bresnick. In collaboration with pianist Hyeyeon Park.
Mr. Atapine recently released a critically acclaimed world-premiere recording of Lowell Liebermann’s complete works for cello and piano on BlueGriffin label, leading to their presentation in Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall. Other recordings can be found on Naxos, Albany, Urtext Digital, and Music@Menlo LIVE labels.
Born into a family of musicians, Mr. Atapine began his musical education with his parents at the age of five and soon thereafter entered the St. Petersburg Conservatory School of Music. After his family moved to Spain, Mr. Atapine graduated with honors from the Asturias Conservatory under Alexander Fedortchenko. He came to the US and after receiving his bachelor’s and master’s degrees with high honors from Michigan State University under the tutelage of Suren Bagratuni, Mr. Atapine continued his studies with the legendary cellist Aldo Parisot at Yale University School of Music, where he completed the Master of Musical Arts degree, obtained the Artist Diploma, and since 2010 holds the Doctor of Musical Arts degree.
Currently Mr. Atapine is the cello professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. Since 2007 he serves as the Artistic Director of Ribadesella International Music Festival (Spain) and since 2010 he is the founder and Artistic Director of Apex Concerts. Currently he is a member of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s CMS Two program.
by Audiophile Audition | Jul 28, 2018 | Classical CD Reviews
A truly elegant “hour” of Romantic cello music comes to us via two instrumentalists in spirited kinship.
CHOPIN: Cello Sonata in G minor, Op. 65; SCHUMANN: 3 Fantasiestuecke, Op. 73; GRIEG: Cello Sonata in A minor, Op. 36 – Inbal Segev, cello/ Juho Pohjonen, piano – Avie AV2389, 70:13 (7/20/18) [Distr. by Naxos] *****:
This recital (rec. 4-6 October 2017), which represents the debut of cellist Inbal Segev on the Avie label, would seem to extend a career as meaningful as those of contemporaries Natalia Gutman, Sol Gabetta, Alisa Weilerstein, and the great precursor Zara Nelsova. The blazing sonority of Segev’s 1673 Ruggieri instrument, particularly as employed in the stunning Cello Sonata in A minor by Edvard Grieg, will electrify auditors from the outset, especially given the equally alluring keyboard collaboration from the Finnish virtuoso Juho Pohjonen (b. 1981), whose work at the Music@Menlo Festival I have followed with some dedication.
Chopin
Segev and Pohjonen open with Chopin’s 1846 Cello Sonata in G minor, Op. 65, created for the admired August Franchomme (1808-1884). After the piano, Chopin most revered the cello, and of his five concerted works, three are for that instrument. Chopin and Franchomme performed the piece together as part of Chopin’s last appearance in Paris, 13 February 1848. The intensified aspects of the late Chopin style predominate in terms of harmonic richness and audacity, a penchant for idiosyncratic polyphony, and a disarming simplicity of the melodic line, as in the secondary subject of movement one, Allegro moderato, which constitutes a mere ten-note tune in B-flat Major. Pohjonen’s piano begins the piece, quickly bounding up from a solemn march to a glistening flourish in high register. With the entrance of the cello, Pohjonen’s hands will often divide the melodic line, so that the cello adds what constitutes a three-part instrumentation. The writing often suggests a dramatic ballade as much as it embraces sonata-form structure. The lovely cantabile B-flat theme will come back unchanged in the recapitulation as something pristine, untouched by the (chromatic) turmoil the music often develops.
A mischievous sensibility inhabits the D minor Scherzo, built upon short, thrusting phrases between the instruments, with Segev’s melodic, Trio waltz soaring in rapt bliss over Pohjonen’s arpeggios. The central Largo movement, incredibly brief (27 measures) provides a nocturnal gesture, sadly intimate. The deep tones of Segev’s cello play against the ariosi the middle-voice piano sings. The Finale: Allegro sports dotted rhythms at first, playful, in the manner of a rondo. Pojhonen’s part runs rife with triplet figures, the sonority well anticipatory of later Rachmaninov. Chopin’s lines weave a complex tapestry, sensuous and darkly galloping. Late in the movement the dotted rhythm dissipates, and the music gravitates to G Major, where sun and smiles can still exist in the late, often tragic, Chopin universe.
Schumann
Schumann wrote his Three Fantasy Pieces for Clarinet and Piano, Op. 73 in 1849. The transcription for the cello’s plaintive deep register is common currency, The opening work, marked as “Tender and with Expression,” proceeds in a glowing A minor, with a flowing accompaniment from Pohjonen in triplet arpeggios. The melancholy mood yields eventually to serene A Major. The A Major tonality extends into the second piece, “Lively and Energetic,” in which the syncopes of duple eighths in the cello line compete with piano triplets. The Trio section, in F Major, has the triplets become more chromatic, moving between both parts. Segev’s cello takes up a lyrical line that recalls the opening of the piece, though the coda seeks a quiet close. Quick on the heels of the middle piece, the last seeks a level of intense virtuosity, marked Rasch und mit Feuer, quickly and with fire, even demanding Schneller—more quickly—at the coda. The last page provides a mutual interchange of passion, a real surge of the Romantic temperament.
Grieg
Edvard Grieg’s only Cello Sonata (1883) came at a time of personal indecision and anxiety for the composer, who had abandoned any attempt to write a second piano concerto. He retreated to much of the harmonic and melodic style of his A Minor Piano Concerto, and he dedicated his Cello Sonata to his brother John. Commentators have quibbled that the central movement of the sonata borrows much from the Homage March from Sigurd Jorsalfar, Op. 56. To the music’s credit, the entire work abounds in melodic richness that its national character insures in girth, vitality, and staying power. The martial first movement, Allegro agitato, utilizes the same motif in varying harmonic guises, all of which feed Segev’s instrument—particularly its low register—with musical manna from Heaven. Pohjonen’s liquid figures and Segev’s ardent passions demand we repeat the whole piece moments after we finish listening to the original run-through. Segev mentions in her program note her happiness with the recording venue, New York’s Academy of Arts and Letters, whose warm acoustic provides the most elegant sonic cocoon for this endeavor. Of some “historical” interest, in their only recital together, Pablo Casals and Artur Rubinstein performed this melodious sonata, which, in the words of Percy Grainger—who in Grieg’s opinion, often discovered more in his scores than Grieg himself—expresses “Grieg’s soaring ecstasy of yearning wistfulness.”
—Gary Lemco
by Audiophile Audition | Jul 25, 2018 | Classical Reissue Reviews
For Godfrey’s 150th anniversary, Mark Obert-Thorn supplies us a generous bounty of classic recordings, immaculate in their restored sound.
Sir Dan Godfrey: A Sesquicentennial Salute = MOZART: Syphony No. 41 in C Major, K. 555 “Jupiter”; HANDEL: Largo from Xerxes; MEYERBEER: Coronation March from Le Prophete; WAGNER: Homage March; GERMAN: Three Dances from Henry VIII: SUPPE: Pique Dame – Overture; AUBER: The Bronze Horse – Overture; OFFENBACH: Orpheus in the Underworld – Overture; ALFORD The Two Imps – W.Byrne and W.W. Bennett, xylophone/ Symphony Orchestra/ Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra/ Sir Dan Godfrey – Pristine Classical PASC 534, 74:38[www.pristineclassical.com ****:
Restoration Engineer and Producer Mark Obert-Thorn turns his gifted spotlight upon Sir Dan Godfrey (1868-1939), who ordinarily does not occupy a prominent place in my personal pantheon of “the greats,” but whose 150th anniversary of his birth warrants artistic reconsideration. Obert-Thorn selects a number of significant works recorded 1927-1934 that reveal Godfrey—whom I had long associated with light music and a number of Gilbert & Sullivan moments—as a sensitive and authoritative musician quite capable of the virile showmanship we attribute at once to Arthur Fiedler and Malcolm Sargent.
Obert-Thorn speculates that the “Symphony Orchestra” employed in the 4 February 1927 rendition of Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony is the London Symphony Orchestra, the same ensemble who had rendered with furious mania the same work for Albert Coates some months prior, a reading that first took me by storm when it appeared on LPs issued by Thomas Clear. In Godfrey’s case, however, the reading proves sober but deeply etched and wonderfully articulate in the winds and strings. True, there occur moments of “Romantic” music practice, the slides and portamento; but the dramatic and lyric elements proceed with a loving gravitas. The opening of the fugal Finale: Molto allegro evolves with a slow but determined sense of formal direction, the interior voices wonderfully resonant. I judge this Jupiter as competitive with the best of the readings by Bruno Walter and Sir Thomas Beecham. Were I to guess the performance without notification, I should hazard the reading to have come from Hamilton Harty, which says a great deal. The restoration by Obert-Thron belies the age of the recording, given the bold, dynamic color that emerge, sometimes with explosive force: listen to the last-movement rocket-figures in the strings, horns, and tympani and try not to feel the blood rush to your extremities.
With an organ obbligato, Godfrey intones (22 July 1934) the Largo from Handel’s Xerxes, played by a wiry violin and luminous harp, here accompanied by Godfrey’s own, sumptuous Bournemouth Municipal Symphony Orchestra. The ensuing Meyerbeer Coronation March, from the identical session with Handel, constitutes Godfrey’s last recordings, and this Meyerbeer enjoys the scope and heroic resonance to rival the document left by Mengelberg. The more directly Teutonic piece, Wagner’s Homage March (for Columbia, rec. 23 March 1927) seems to combine elements from Tannhauser with more than a passing hint of counterpoint form Meistersinger. The LSO brass and battery emerge with force and resonance, with none of that tinny reverberation that acoustic recordings too often produce.
The music of Welsh composer Edward German (1862-1936) quite fits the spectrum mentioned earlier with regard to light music and Gilbert&Sullivan. The Three Dances (rec. 17 March 1928) from the 1892 Henry VIII proceed with buoyant, light heart, crisply rendered. The Morris Dance has all the energy and lithe ensemble we might ascribe to Constant Lambert. The Shepherd’s Dance enjoys an eminently persuasive lilt, comely and charming. The string line, singing and piquant, makes the dance irresistible. The Torch Dance concludes the group with dervish fervor.
The music of Franz von Suppe eternally commands an admiration for deft scoring, soaring melody, and infectious rhythmic vitality. The masters of his idiom, in my book, have been Constant Lambert, Albert Wolff, and Jean Fournet. Godfrey joins these exemplars with a virile rendering of the Pique Dame Overture (29 April 1928), articulate, witty, and occasionally volcanic on a true virtuoso level. If you still wear socks after the coda from Pique Dame, then sit back to savor the 29 April 1930 version of Auber’s The Bronze Horse Overture, another work in the slick, graciously scored Viennese-French tradition. Here, Godfrey equals the deft, light touch we might associate with Piero Coppola. Like the music of Rossini, that of Auber loves his wry, crafty crescendos. The set of three overtures in hearty performance concludes with Offenbach’s rousing Orpheus in the Underworld (18 March 1934), which calls upon the best from Godfrey’s winds, harp, cello principal and violin concertmaster. By the time we cavort and frolic to the Can-Can, we wonder if, had Godfrey the benefit of modern acoustics, he would not have surpassed anything in Karajan’s versions of light music.
Obert-Thorn select some “in-house” music to conclude, a “novelty” number, The Two Imps, by K.J. Alford (rec. 29 April 1928), featuring a pair of irreverent, bouncing xylophones. The music reminds me of the scene in the 1945 The Picture of Dorian Gray, when Dorian first visits the light vaudeville where he encounters Sybil Vane. This music, happily, spares us any sense of impending doom. This entire disc has been one of those “sleeper” offerings on historic labels that connoisseurs should not deny themselves.
–Gary Lemco
by Audiophile Audition | Jul 24, 2018 | Classical CD Reviews
The best performances of these works of the new millenium.
J.S. Bach: Sonatas for Flute and Harpsichord – Stephen Schultz (flute) Jory Vinikour (Harpsichord) – Music and Arts 1295 55:18, (3/2/18) *****:
This writer subscribes to the view that the Sonatas BWV 1017-1023 for violin and harpsichord obbligato by Bach are his finest chamber works. A new recording of these by Rachel Barton Pine and Jory Vinikour were recently and favorably reviewed on these pages. It seems only fitting to acknowledge a 2018 recording of pieces that are nearest rivals to these eminent works, the Sonatas for Flute and Harpsichord, BWV 1030-1032, (featuring, as it happens, the same harpsichordist, Jory Vinikour); They are part of the inspired innovation to realize a trio sonata with two instruments by asking of the obbligato accompaniment a division of hands. The left hand merrily chases around the soloist, now in imitative counterpoint and now in extravagant improvisations, each instrument with its own themes, which converse with each other. The left hand soberly performs the work of the basso continuo, carrying along the swiftly-moving harmonic progressions.
From a historical perspective, these sonatas were remarkable for the use of the transverse flute as a solo instrument, an innovation coming out of the French Court and new to German musical traditions. This instrument was at a crucial stage of its evolution, and Bach, a restless explorer of instruments from the medieval Serpent to the Lute-Harpsichord (Lautenwerk), was well positioned at Leipzig to test its possibilities in chamber and concert music. These works date from the exact years, 1722-23, of the more famous violin sonatas. However, a manuscript from 1736 shows what is most likely a revision of an earlier draft, testimony that these works continued to occupy Bach later in life.
It has been suggested that Bach wrote these pieces with a specific flute virtuoso in mind. This individual would have been in possession of formidable skill, for the technical demands are considerable. Practitioners of the baroque flute must come to these pieces with some trepidation but also with the exhilaration of scaling a mountain. In this recording, we are fortunate to have veteran Stephen Schultz demonstrate his peerless abilities and understanding on the instrument in a meticulous recording of the three sonatas plus a work of uncertain authenticity but great charm, the BWV Sonata in G minor.
I first encountered this musician on a most intriguing recording of Boismortier’s Concertos for five flutes, which takes on all the parts of the concerto. Apparently, Schultz was unable to rally four flute-playing colleagues to man the parts, so he recorded them all himself. These are sui generis works by a French composer who was a one-man industry with a verve for experimentation. Schulz does wonders with this music, which impresses both by the complexity of the part writing and by the haunting quality of the unisons. While strange enough, it is more than a baroque oddity and should be discovered anew, especially on Schultz’s 2008 Dorian recording, which will not easily be surpassed for elegance and pleasing sonics.
In this repertoire, the bench-mark recordings have always been those by Marc Hantai and Wilbert Hazelzet. I revisited those works with Grado professional level headphones to get as close to the music as possible, evaluating a host of musical values and and the even more important pleasure-index. Unfortunately, the older DHM recording by Hantai, pehaps the greatest ever on this instrument, is marred by suboptimal studio feng shui, specifically, a cranky harpsichord. Hazelzet benefits from the luxuriously sweet sound of Glossa recordings, which nicely balance his icy tone. Schultz comes in between: better sound than the Hantai recording and equal if not superior technique to Hazelzet.
The Music & Arts recording was made at Skywalker Sound in Marin County in 2016. The harpsichord (A= 415 Hz) is a John Phillips 2010 crafted after J. H. Gruber’s, Dresden 1722 model, as close to period authenticity as you can get. Microphones nicely catch every nuance of the flute, as well as the inhalations and the doppler sway of the flute from side to side. Vinikours playing definitely deserves note. It was only last year that I patiently absorbed his remarkable recording of the Bach Partitas, where I was struck by his freer play of time and his triumph of expressive joy over fussiness. Here he is at his best. The right-hand melodies concede no pride of place to the flute. They dance and swing. Ornamentation allows for a greater range of textures. If anything, the flute playing wears more than the accompaniment. Nor is the upper range of the harpsichord lacking in sweetness. It is a magnificent performance from start to finish. However, no amount of fiddling with knobs helped to bring out a sufficient bottom end of the instrument which is occasionally drowned out. One doesn’t know if it is a problem with the instrument or the choice of the engineers. It is the only flaw, and only intermittently noticeable, in an otherwise perfect recording.
The sonatas are not equal. By far the best known, and deservedly so, is the BWV 1030 work in B minor. The first movement alone is over 9 minutes long, an Andante made out of the same cloth as Bach’s gorgeous largos from the violin sonatas. The unabashed lyrical beauty is balanced against the thick harmonic tension of the harpsichord. Indeed, the keyboard provides a never-ending series of surprises, sometimes commenting on the melodies, at others investigating tangential harmonic landscapes like an over-curious hound on a zigzagging course over interesting terrain. After the sumptuous Andante, taken even slower than Hantai’s version, one does not expect a Largo, but that is what ensues. On this four minute excursion, the harpsichord behaves more conventionally, strumming along like a guitar to a floating melodic line, while the flutist allows himself the slightest vibrato. Again it is all sunlit calm, Bach filtering through his Italic pastoral lens.
The Presto and Gigue put the test to the duo’s ability to sprint together. Vinikours articulation keeps the whole thing from chaos, especially as the two hands go their separate ways on contrary motion jaunts. The Gigue is a lively waltz with just a bit of craziness to the accompaniment, reminiscent of Bach’s eccentric use of the instrument in the Brandenburg concertos. In fact, the spirit of the concerto is everywhere present; Paradoxically, this founding moment of the Trios Sonata for two instruments is also the apotheosis of the concerto.
The next two sonatas are smaller in scale, lacking in the solemnity and harmonic rigors of the minor key work. They are delightful, and the rapport of the two players is faultless, There is tremendous feeling of relaxation, at its most exquisite in the alert pauses and inflections of the Largo e Dolce of BWV 1032. The Sonata in G minor, attributed to Bach, seems to my ears to be echt Bach. For some reason it makes me think of evening entertainments at the Court of Frederick the Great, the most famous patron of French art in general, who raised the status of the flute to its highest ever level. The slightly hectic accompaniment of the harpsichord recalls C.P.E. Bach in one of his flamboyant moods. In the end, it doesn’t matter much who is the real author if this fine sonata.
To conclude, this is a very distinguished recording of Bach masterworks by two of the finest early music experts. It should find a huge critical and popular welcome. Congratulations to Music and Arts for yet another masterpiece. (I refer to their ongoing project of recording pianist Carlo Grante’s tour of the entire Parma books of Domenico Scarlatti on a Bosendorfer Imperial Piano, one of the greatest works of our time)
—Fritz Balwit
by Audiophile Audition | Jul 24, 2018 | Jazz CD Reviews, SACD & Other Hi-Res Reviews
More than five decades later, a live concert of a jazz legend is released.
Erroll Garner – Nightconcert – Octave Music/Mack Avenue Records MAC1142LP [7/13/2018] double vinyl, 79:34 *****:
(Erroll Garner – piano; Eddie Calhoun – double bass; Kelly Martin – drums)
Coming from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, it was understandable that Erroll Garner would be compared to another Steel City legend, Earl “Fatha” Hines. The diminutive Garner (who attended the same high school as Billy Strayhorn and Ahmad Jamal) developed a specific playing style. Utilizing right hand octaves and expanding the stride influences of Fats Waller and James P. Johnson, Garner channeled a frenetic virtuosity combing various cross rhythms and time signatures with melodic improvisations. His three decades of recording (Mercury, Columbia, Blue Note, Verve, London and Savoy) placed an emphasis on swing and bebop-like freneticism. Perhaps more amazing is that he never learned to read music (which became a subject of the documentary No One Can Hear You Read).
Many people are aware of Erroll Garner for composing the ultimate ballad standard, “Misty”, or for his numerous appearances on the Tonight Show (Johnny Carson was a huge fan). But his reputation was forged from his electrifying live performances in various trios. In 1955 he released Concert By The Sea which was the best-selling jazz album at the time. Garner also released a live performance from the 1962 Seattle World Fair (One World Concert). His technical expertise and inventive musical adaptations put him in the rarefied company of pianist like Oscar Peterson and Art Tatum. Garner received a star on the Hollywood Walk withFame and enjoyed a brilliant career that was cut short at the age of 53 in 1977.
Fortunately, jazz lovers and historians have formed the Erroll Garner Jazz Project to preserve his legacy. The first Garner reissue (on Octave Music) was The Complete Concert By The Sea in 2015, followed by Ready Take One (2017). Now a third gem has been uncovered, a 1964 previously unreleased live performance by Garner and his trio in 1964. Recorded at The Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Erroll Garner: Nightconcert is another shining example of jazz artistry. Backed by Eddie Calhoun on double bass and Kelly Martin (drums), Garner rips through a set of standards (some well known, others eclectic) and two originals. In signature Garner bravado, he opens the concert with a jazz abstraction that morphs into Rodgers & Hart’s “Where Or When” (from the Broadway show Babes In Arms). Eschewing the loping sentimentality, Garner cuts loose with swelling chords and precise notation while his bass player and drummer keep up. Cole Porter’s “Easy To Love” is not the least bit schmaltzy, full of syncopated rhythms, “vocalizations”, cool left hand bass and up tempo attitude with a moody ending. In 1958, Miles Davis reinvented the obscure film song “On Green Dolphin Street”. It subsequently became a jazz standard. Here, Garner chooses to follow a different interpretation with big time swing dynamics, punctuated stops and percolating solos.
In a change of pace, the self-written “A New Kind Of Love” (from the movie of the same name) is atmospheric and elegant, with trills and descants. Side B kicks off with another “mystery” intro that with the help of Calhoun and Martin glides into the “main” verse of Cole Porter’s “Night And Day”. Garner maintain’s the “uptown” Latin flair, but with percussive resonance and intriguing chords. His solos seem to intermingle bluesy left-hand chording with right hand runs. Porter’s compositions reflect transitions that are perfect for improvisational players. Without liner notes, the listener would never guess the identities of these songs (as they begin), which only adds to the spontaneous excitement of an EG concert. “Cheek To Cheek” (which many associate with Fred Astaire) has a complicated, low-key start, then Garner takes the Irving Berlin jauntiness to a potent acceleration. In the first of two Gershwin numbers, “My Funny Valentine” begins with the bridge and then Garner executes a complex time signature (especially on bass notes) that is inherently melodic and punctuated. The ability to use separate tempos in each hand is impressive.
Garner’s mixture of bluesy nuances and large flourishes make the obscure 1937 piece, “Gypsy In My Soul” compelling. The pianist’s furious swing vibe is on full display. Switching to an original, “Amsterdam Swing” turns near classical avant-garde exploration into a finger-snapping, tough medium swing with a classic fluid solo. “Over The Rainbow” is iconic and now it is jazz history in the hands of Erroll. On another Porter tune, “What Is This Thing Called Love?”, the dramatic context is hinted at in the first part, but a jazzy, up tempo arrangement takes over with chord changes and restrained flourishes. Movie audiences were mesmerized by the 1944 film noir, Laura, as well as the haunting theme song by David Raskin. Of course, the audience doesn’t applaud until after the initial improvisation when they finally recognize the melody. Garner envelops the song with his sophisticated technique and lilting touches.. “When You’re Lover Has Gone” is geared toward traditional stride and it sounds like Garner is having a ball with this one. With a deft touch for ballads, “No More Shadows” uniquely intermingles trilling runs with unusual chord exploration. His affinity for Gershwin is palpable on “’S Wonderful”. After a quick crescendo, Garner and the trio sprint to the finish line. His rhythmic ferocity (chords and individual notation) is inspirational and has a clever winding down. The finale, “Thanks For The Memory” (yes, the Bob Hope theme song) is under a minute and a rare touch of “goofiness”.
Octave Music and Mack Avenue Records have done a terrific job in resurrecting this rare live recording to modern vinyl (which includes a digital download). It is an historical document of a legendary jazz pianist. The double gatefold with stylish embossing is as classy as the performer. There is a full-size booklet with photos of Garner in a tuxedo. The liner notes are incisive and there is a reproduction of the original program with a hand-written note from Garner. As long as there are organizations like the Erroll Garner Jazz Project, the cultural impact of jazz will remain. Erroll Garner’s Nightconcert
TrackList:
Side A: Where Or When; Easy To Love; On Green Dolphin Street; Theme From A New Kind Of Love
Side B: Night And Day; Cheek To Cheek; My Funny Valentine
Side C: Gypsy In My Soul; That Amsterdam Swing; Over The Rainbow; What Is This Thing Called Love
Side D: Laura; When Your Lover Has Gone; No More Shadows; ’S Wonderful; Thanks For The Memory
—Robbie Gerson
by Audiophile Audition | Jul 23, 2018 | Classical CD Reviews
A Shostakovich cycle of special merit, the Nelsons performances of symphonies 4 and 11 bring the BSO to fever pitch.
SHOSTAKOVICH: Symphony No. 4 in C minor, Op. 43; Symphony No. 11 in G minor, Op. 103 “The Year 1905” – Boston Symphony Orchestra/ Andris Nelsons – DGG B0028595-02 (2 CDs) 64:24; 62:59 (7/6/18) [Distr. by Universal] *****:
The history of the Shostakovich Symphony No. 4 involves a tale of great frustration and upheaval in the life of the composer: soon after the Leningrad Philharmonic under Fritz Stiedry began rehearsals of this intricate and darkly apocalyptic work in August 1936, Soviet authorities cancelled the premiere on grounds of “elitist formalism,” that the aesthetic tenor of the work failed to conform to Party strictures about the “People’s art.” Already under a cloud created by Josef Stalin’s rebuke of the opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Shostakovich conceived the Fourth as a kind of aesthetic obstinacy of musical principles. The actual debut of this post-Mahler, mammoth symphonic work came on 30 December 1961, under the direction of Kyrll Kondrashin. Doubtless, the persistent sense of tension and fear that abides in this music corresponds much to the spirit of the times, when a failure to conform to Stalin’s edicts about “artistic realism” meant censure and possible extinction.
The sheer size of the orchestral forces required—125 musicians, recorded March-April 2018—for the Fourth testify to its “grandiosomania,” as Shostakovich put it. Even Otto Klemperer requested the number of flutes be consolidated from six to four players, but Shostakovich proved implacable in his artistic integrity. The music itself possesses a demonic willful vitality, often explosive to the point of controlled chaos. As a test of orchestral balance in the midst of explosive contrasts, this music exacts from the Boston Symphony a uniformity of sound and illuminated resonance it once achieved under Koussevitzky. Grim declamation alternates with sardonic vehemence in the course of the three sprawling movements, a result of the Shostakovich fascination with Mahler and Bartok, each a vigorous protestor against the spirit of political or spiritual compulsion. The last movement, Largo—Allegro, particularly, alternates between solemn determinism and cheery, flippant humor. Richard Svoboda’s bassoon in the last Allegro deserves honorable mention. Unlike the music of Mahler, the Fourth offers few emotional consolations or moments of serene nostalgia. The universe depicted here remains agonistic, a perpetual struggle of dark and less-dark forces. What sense of play exists seems gallows humor. The music ends with a long, sustained C in the basses, harps, and murderous tympani, an explosion dissonant and unforgiving, that will eventually yield to a combination from the celesta and tympani over a huge pedal-point that dies away. The rest is silence.
The Symphony No. 11 in G minor was composed for the 40th anniversary of the Russian Revolution of 1917, introduced originally by conductor Nathan Rachlin in Moscow, 30 October 1957. Set in four programmatic movements, the eminently “cinematic” score might have its forerunner in Tchaikovsky’s Manfred, except the tableaux depicted by Shostakovich illuminate tragic aspects of the oppressive Tsarist regime that Russia’s proletarian revolt overthrew finally, as if the 1905 political outbursts served as a dress rehearsal for the downfall of the Romanoffs. On 9 January 1905, Cossack horse guards savagely opened fire on a peaceful protest-procession outside St. Petersburg’s Winter Palace. Those who died on “Bloody Sunday” fell as martyrs to the cause of the workers. And thus, Shostakovich utilizes seven folk songs of revolt and two songs he had composed prior, for his “The Ninth of January,” from Ten Poems, Op. 88 (1951). Whether the events of Russia’s suppression of the Hungarian uprising in 1956 serves as sub-text or ulterior “agenda” for this work in the Shostakovich oeuvre remains controversial but entirely feasible.
The four movements of the Eleventh Symphony (rec. September-October 2017) play without a break, opening with the bleak desolation of “The Palace Square,” Adagio. The sustained low chords—open fifths, muted strings, harps, muffled drum, and solo trumpet—inhabit a misty, twilight world we know from both Mussorgsky and Mahler. By the movement’s end, the brass has assumed a funereal role, playing dirge or eulogy for a way of life. Shostakovich in the second movement, “The Ninth of January,” quotes the folk-hymn, “O thou, our Tsar, our Father?” The question will become strictly rhetorical once the violence breaks out. The Cossack assault gains an implacable momentum, having released both eddies of sound and a poisonous march. The BSO basses achieve a frigid, eerie resonance whose figures might recall harmonies in Boris Gudonov. A second folk song, “Bare your heads,” implies both the futile piety of the slain procession and a call for us to mourn the loss of Russian national ideals. Here, the BSO brass and battery proceed mercilessly. The similarities in harmony to militant points in the Leningrad Symphony (No. 7) become blatant and painfully obvious. The movement ends with the haunted sensibility of the opening movement, a beloved country’s having become a wasteland.
The third movement, “Eternal Memory,” Adagio, utilizes an actual funeral march, “You fell as victims” as its melodic impetus. A nation buries its dead, a moment of cosmic sadness Prokofiev had likewise captured in his Alexandre Nevsky oratorio. Shostakovich claimed that among the protestors that “Bloody Sunday” had been his own father. Set as a series of variations, the third movement provides the requiem which exploits a slow ostinato figure. The repeated four notes could easily be the Shostakovich equivalent of a “fate” motif. When the melody soars full force, the effect—given the drum beats underlining the crescendos—is Mahlerian. The last movement, “The Tocsin,” Allegro non troppo, sets four marching—even galloping—tunes in motion in remarkable combination and permutation. The Russian word for “tocsin,” Nabat, had been the name of a revolutionary magazine that appeared in 19th Century Russia. Songs such as “Rage, tyrants?” “Sparks,” and “Whirlwinds of danger” infiltrate the rousing texture, leaving us both viscerally beguiled and emotionally dubious as to whether we feel genuine triumph or that “forced gaiety” with which the Fifth Symphony likewise embraces.
There can be doubt, however, that Producer and Engineer Shawn Murphy has a real coup in these sound documents, as rousing testaments to the Boston Symphony as I have heard since the heydays of Koussevitzky, Steinberg, and Leinsdorf.
—Gary Lemco
by Audiophile Audition | Jul 22, 2018 | Classical CD Reviews, Classical Reissue Reviews
The sixth volume in the Spivakovsky legacy adds virtuoso color to an already seamless stylistic presence.
Jascha Spivakovsky: Bach to Bloch, Volume VI = BACH: “Italian” Concerto in F Major, BWV 971; MOZART: Sonata No. 5 in G Major, K. 283; SCHUBERT: Impromptu in E-flat Major, D. 899, No. 2; CHOPIN: Nocturne in F-sharp Major, Op. 15, No. 2; Waltz in E minor, Op. posth.; LISZT: Hungarian Rhapsody No. 15 in A minor “Rakoczy March”; SCHUMANN: Piano Sonata No. 3 in F minor, Op. 14 “Concerto without orchestra” – Jascha Spivakovsky, piano – Pristine Audio PAKM075, 71:40 [www.pristineclassical.com] ****:
Pristine’s Andrew Rose and commentator Mark Ainley collaborate to produce a sixth entry in the ongoing project to restore the immense talents of pianist Jascha Spivakovsky (1896-1970) to our musical present; here, in home and broadcast sessions, 1955-1966.
Spivakovsky opens with a 1962 broadcast of Bach’s 1735 Italian Concerto in F, a Weimar-period (1708-17) piece that originally exploits two manuals of the harpsichord to achieve the effect of a ritornello that advances between the tutti (large block chords with a deep bass) and the solo, whose range remains narrow and indulges in short-value notation. Spivakovsky focuses on both tonal articulation and rhythmic verve, a model of textural clarity. The Andante movement enjoys a fluid arioso line in thirds whose trills and thoughtful pauses contribute to a lyrico-dramatic effect, marked by long pedal notes. What we admire in the vivacious Presto, its nimble fleetness, derives from Spivakovsky’s innate impulse for speed, propulsion, and a pungently sonorous, fixed rhythm in the left hand.
Mozart conceived his Piano Sonata No. 5 in G Major, K. 283 (1774) on his last visit to Munich, mostly to prepare for his opera La finta giardiniera. Eminently vocal in character, the first movement Allegro has Spivakovsky (1966, Melbourne) in delicate from, but not precious with the sonority of the bass notes in parallel octaves to the treble, avoiding the effect of undue ponderousness. Spivakovsky concentrates on the galant character of the Andante in C Major, his staccati the soul of etched articulation, much a la musette. Accents and semi-detached chords run brilliantly in the final Presto, rife with humor and playful echo effects. Those who have long cultivated performances of this sonata from Clara Haskil will find a vigorous, fertile rendition in this concept by Spivakovsky.
Jascha Spivakovsky
From 1963, we now have the sole surviving moment of Spivakovsky’s Schubert, the E-flat Impromptu, D. 899, No. 2. So much of the texture resembles a Chopin etude, we must remark how the virility of the reading resembles the tensile strength we know from Lipatti’s last concert in 1950 Besancon. The martial element sings in resonant, resolute tones, but without any loss of harmonic or tonal, color subtlety. The digital force and stamina of line well reminds us of other virtuosos, Solomon and Michelangeli.
The two Chopin selections derive from 1966 (Nocturne) and 1955 (Waltz), respectively, and they conform to the rhetorical conventions of the Romantic sensibility, rife with rubato and luft-pausen, but never mawkishly sentimental. Each possesses the arioso character that permits even declamatory figures their bel canto effect. Much of the Nocturne rendition bears comparison with interpreters like Shura Cherkassky. The Waltz exhibits a highly subjective sense of tempo and line, voluptuous at moments.
Among Liszt’s nineteen Hungarian Rhapsodies, No. 15 in A minor (1853) treats the Hungarian march “Rakoczy” in the grand manner. Legend has it that Liszt could have published his treatment earlier, but that he indulged his friend Berlioz the privilege of using the work first, as part of his The Damnation of Faust. At his home, 1963, Spivakovsky produces a stellar performance, rife with alternating textures, tonal thickness, and variety of glossy color. The sheer delight in alternating touches and the presence of cimbalom effects adds to the colossal vitality of the reading. As “orchestral” a performance as we are likely to hear—and that includes from Horowitz—the capacity of Spivakovsky to unleash his purely bravura personality remains too good to miss!
This volume of Spivakovsky efforts concludes with the knotty Concerto without orchestra, Op. 14 by Schumann, performed by Spivakovsky in 1963. Schumann wrote his third “grand sonata” in 1836, revising it in 1853, with a dedication to virtuoso Ignaz Moscheles. Spivakovsky emphasizes the expansive nature of the opening Allegro, whose development section, built in melodic fragments, owes debts to Beethoven. Many of the galloping motives anticipate the large Fantasie in C, Op. 17. Still, even Spivakovsky’s tension cannot always hold the rhapsodic nature of the music together as an effective, dramatic whole that offers a true sense of closure. Schumann marks the second movement Scherzo—Allegro comodo, a “comfortable”playfulness. Spivakovsky treats the music like a stately but percussive minuet with third-beat accents. The tender Trio gravitates into D Major and D-flat Major and then B minor, the last affect’s assuming a vague organ sonority from Spivakovsky.
The Trio material appears to have generated much of Schumann’s response to a theme by Clara Wieck, his future wife, in the form of Quasi Variazioni for movement three. The original, martial tune begs for chromatic treatment in the harmony, and Schumann indulges this and adds his idiosyncratic counterpoint. He falling figure in variation three moves to a perfect fourth, a trait Brahms will exploit in his own variation technique. Both in pitch and rhythm the fourth variant echoes the Scherzo. Spivakovsky bass harmonies again rival the organ for potent sonority. Schumann always remains the master of through-composed works, exploiting early materials in later permutations, and so his Finale exploits early tunes in right-hand bravura figures and syncopations. Several of the dancing figures will easily recall both Kreisleriana and the Humoreske, highlighting Schumann’s delight in self-reference. For sheer delight in keyboard sonority and color combination, this reading of Schumann will invite repeated audition.
–Gary Lemco
by Audiophile Audition | Jul 20, 2018 | Streams and Podcasts
This week, The Music Treasury will be presenting works by Czech conductor Henry Swoboda. An active performer on various stages in Europe and the United States, he was also involved in the recording industry, capturing performances of many musicians now of historic value.
Dr Gary Lemco will be hosting the show, airing from 19:00 to 21:00 PDT on KZSU from Stanford University, and concurrently streamed at kzsu.stanford.edu.
Henry Swoboda, conductor and musicologist
Henry Swoboda (October 29, 1897 – August 13, 1990) was a Czech conductor and musicologist. He made many recordings for the Westminster label, including the first commercially available record of Bruckner’s Sixth Symphony. He worked from 1927 to 1931 for Electrola, Berlin and later as conductor for Radio-Prag. He was a Guest professor at University of Southern California between 1931–1939 and emigrated 1939 to the USA.
Swoboda’s pre-war career had involved administration and organization as well as conducting. Post-war he was one of the founder-members of the Westminster recording company in 1949. He recorded prolifically for Westminster in the early 1950s as well as for Concert Hall and its associated Musical Masterpieces Society and La Guilde International du Disque. On one slightly later recording (1959) he accompanied Ruth Slenczynska in Saint-Saëns’ second piano concerto, conducting the Symphony of the Air. This was issued on Decca.
Given Swoboda’s part-ownership of Westminster, this might look like a partly vanity career. If there was any element of this, he used it well. Of the works he set down for Westminster, several were first recordings and, apart from some concertos with noted soloists, practically none were easily obtainable in other versions at the time. Concert Hall, and in particular the Musical Masterpieces Society, were interested in making available cheap versions of repertoire works. Swoboda set down a number of popular items for them, in particular symphonies by Haydn and Mozart. Westminster also undertook—presumably under Swoboda’s influence—the promotion and preservation of the art of several conductors not otherwise well documented by the record industry, especially Hermann Scherchen. The Westminster recordings were mainly—and, in Swoboda’s case, exclusively—made in Vienna with the Symphony Orchestra or the State Opera Orchestra. Some of the earlier Concert Hall and Musical Masterpieces Society recordings use pseudonymous groups such as the “Concert Hall Symphony Orchestra.” Properly identified orchestras were the Winterthur Symphony Orchestra and the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra. The latter was a pick-up band using players from various Dutch radio orchestras, unrelated to the present-day orchestra of the same name.
Clara Haskil was not the only distinguished soloist happy to be accompanied by Swoboda. He proved an excellent collaborator in every case, especially with Louis Kaufmann and Peter Rybar.
Program List:
R. Strauss: Macbeth, Op. 23
Ibert: Capriccio
Saint-Saens: Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 22 (w/Slenczynska)
Smetana: Wallenstein’s Camp
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 3 in D Major, Op. 29 “Polish”
by Audiophile Audition | Jul 18, 2018 | Classical CD Reviews
Johann Sebastian BACH. The sonatas for violin and harpsichord—Rachael Barton Pine (violin), Jory Vinikour (harpsichord)—Cedille Records CDR 900000 177—99:45, **** :
While we can’t afford Bach the title as inventor of the sonata for violin and continuo, he did provide us examples of the first concertos for keyboard and orchestra. And in a form that would be continued since his time, he left us six sonatas for keyboard and violin. What makes these different from the scores of sonatas that first appeared in Italy after 1600 is that the keyboard part acts not as a “continuous bass” but as bass and a second voice. The result are pieces written predominately in trio texture, with the right hand and violin often intertwined in harmony or else chasing one another, as Bach is known to do, in counterpoint.
Jory Vinikour (harpsichord) and Rachel Barton Pine (violin) take the historical approach in their recoding of the six sonatas (BWV 1014-1019) using period instruments and saving left-handed vibrato for another day. Bach’s structure for the sonatas is unusually consistent, save for the last sonata in G, which survives with alternative pieces, wrought in five instead of four movements. Vinikour and Barton Pine offer us first the version with a central solo harpsichord movement, but also includes an alternative cantabile for violin and harpsichord, BWV 1019a, if we’re so inclined to program our player.
Barton Pine shares in her liner notes wanting to learn all these sonatas after having to learn one for a performance. The high quality of her playing reveals both her love for the music and long association with the pieces.
RBP is a versatile musician and not strictly a baroque specialist. Bruce Haynes, in his book The End of Early Music: A Period Performer’s History of Music for the Twenty-First Century, makes a distinction between different performing traditions, one in particular that approached the baroque repertoire with grounding in the romantic repertoire. Specifically when it came to phrasing, long phrases, played with a legato approach, was the norm. What the historically-informed movement did, in part, was have musicians re-evaluate their approach to the text by starting over. One result was a different approach to phrasing. Phrases became smaller and interpretation, in kind, changed as well. This distinction became apparent in my comparison of this recording’s version of the Vivace from BWV 1018 with other recordings in the historical tradition. Where Barton takes the short phrases as one larger arc, fusing the notes together, Stephano Montanari (in his recording with Christophe Rousset—Ambroisie) and Reinhard Goebel (in his recording with Henk Bouman—Archiv Production) articulate the line both with space between the notes and between the smaller phrase groups. The distinction too is illustrated in another comparison. In the Cantabile, BWV 1019a, the phrasing is less about the insertion of space, but how articulation is pronounced in one long arc versus smaller groups of notes. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, Barton Pine’s approach is to perform the line as one long string, as we might equate to a long, deep breath. Musica Alta Ripa (Anne Röhrig—Dabringhaus und Grimm Gold) and Goebel group their phrasing similarly. Their approaches are still an organic solution, but the musical breaths here and faster tempos are don’t conjure images of one’s face going blue. Finally, the opening of BWV 1016 would require giant gulps of air if Barton Pine’s rendition were sung. Monica Huggett’s phrases, playing with Ton Koopman (Philips Classics), is organized around smaller, tighter groupings. The long-form phrasing is alive and well in the 1976 recording of the same sonata by Jaime Laredo with Glenn Gould (Columbia-Sony).
Johann Sebastian Bach
These distinctions are made to frame the interpretive decisions made in this recording. There is room, as I often argue, for different approaches to the same repertoire. And while I want to highlight the disjunction in historical performance traditions (with a choice of instruments making up only part of this tradition), there is no question that both RBP and Jory Vinikour have approached this repertoire with open arms and generous hearts. RBP’s warm sound, lack of continuous vibrato, and clean technique are all admirable. JV is a suitable and sympathetic partner.
In the final Allegro of the first sonata, BWV 1014, RBP and JV are in lock-step, sparkling together. The balance between the right hand and the violin are near-perfect. The duo is likewise locked rhythmically in the Adagio of BWV 1018, an interesting texture with double stopping in the violin and the moving figurations in the harpsichord part. The result, however, was less satisfying for me. I wanted more of the fire from their collaboration in BWV 1014; for me this is one of Bach’s most intense chamber movements. The recording of this movement by Montanari and Rousset remains a favorite.
My only issue with the recording is the harpsichord’s sound, which is only made more apparent when comparing this recording to others. The instrument lacks the clarity in the mix. Further from the microphones, perhaps, its sound becomes duller in the lower range. JV uses a number of different registrations throughout which I appreciated, offering some variety in tone. The distinction is less problematic when you resign to live within their sound world for some time. To that same end, I liked the instrument itself, which offers a rich sound and weight, missing in some of the comparison recordings made above.
My reason for collecting so many recordings of these pieces is founded in not yet finding any one, perfect interpretation. It speaks to Bach’s original ideas and the variation in viable interpretations left possible. This new release is a celebration of affection for Bach’s music. I have found some real sparkling gems among the movements, all diamonds, sapphires, rubies. But this recording further contributes to my belief that we’re not done in our quest to further explore these pieces and find new things to admire about them. We should welcome these two new voices to the party.
—Sebastian Herrera
by Audiophile Audition | Jul 18, 2018 | Jazz CD Reviews
ECM reissues a brilliant Pat Metheny live concert album on vinyl.
Pat Metheny Group – Travels – ECM Records ECM 1252/53 (1983/2018) 180-gram stereo double vinyl (distr. by Universal Music Group), 96:28 ****1/2:
(Pat Metheny – guitar, guitar synthesizer; Lyle Mays – piano, synthesizer, organ, autoharp, synclavier; Steve Rodby – acoustic bass, electric bass, bass synthesizer; Dan Gottlieb – drums; Nana Vasconcelos – percussion, voice, berimbau)
Jazz takes on another dimension when it is played live. The Pat Metheny Group released Travels in 1983. It was the group’s first live album and won the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Fusion Performance. Travels climbed to #3 on the jazz charts and cracked the top 100 in pop. Recorded in Philadelphia, Hartford, Sacramento and Nacogdoches, the setlist is comprised of previously released and unreleased material. The tour was in support of the studio album Offramp and featured Metheny (guitar, guitar synthesizer) Lyle Mays (piano, organ, synclavier, synthesizers), Steve Rodby (bass, bass synthesizer), Dan Gottlieb (drums) and special guest Nana Vasconcelos (percussion, voice). ECM has reissued Travels on 180-gram double vinyl album.
As the group initiates the familiar pulse-driven rhythm of “Are You Going With Me?”, the crowd erupts with applause. The low-key pulse refrain draws the listener into a hypnotic groove. On the first solo, Mays executes a note-bending performance on synclavier that has the aesthetic tonality of a harmonica. Metheny handles the 2nd solo in a mind-blowing synthesized colossus of sound. The musical intensity swells to an orchestral texture and volume. There is a modulated chord change, and a big “live” finish. PMG continues the Brazilian vibes with “The Fields, The Sky”. This never-recorded song features the signature, melodic Metheny lead with more discernible atmospheric nuance. A slight waltz-time shift and the Pat/Lyle instrumental cohesion are intriguing and accessible. What feels unique to this group, is the ability to create internal cohesion with percussive instrumentals (fierce strumming on guitar) and “wide open spaces” (ethereal keyboards and guitar effects). Special guest Nana Vasconcelos adds vocalese to “Goodbye”, but the understated lower-volume singing does not rise in the mix.
The band steps up on “Phase Dance”. Recorded on the auspicious 1978 ECM debut Pat Metheny Group, this track epitomizes the core of the Metheny and Mays collaboration. Infused with a tight Latin jazz rock cadence, the fluid guitar lead (with subtle rhythm punctuations by the band) is awash in prominent flourishes and articulated by precise fingering. Mays (who is always so effective with his synth accents) answers with a delicate solo on piano, but with bluesy attitude. Metheny returns to the lead before the show-stopping climax. “Straight On Red” (another song originating on Travels) is a crowd-pleaser with a propulsive drumming intro. There is a transition to some airy synth and guitar improvisation. Then Mays rips on an extended, percolating run (on piano) that is complex with agile right hand notation. It is memorable. On another “new” song (“Farmer’s Trust”), Metheny immerses himself in an elegiac ode to Americana. With minimal percussion, this lovely meditation is a staple of PMG live shows.
“Extradition” (one of several Metheny/Mays co-writes) opens with synthesized guitar, syncopated time and a gentle piano in the background. Metheny pushes the tonality and Mays’ synclavier adds winsome resonance. In a rare solo effort “Goin’ Ahead” is a breathtaking performance (as it was on the 80/81 ECM album) of guitar technique. Metheny explores the emotional sentiment of the ballad, while keeping a single note bass pulse driving the song. This composition and its musical inflections would be an integral part of the guitarist’s future projects. Amazingly, the group (with some cymbals and voice electronics) shifts effortlessly into the epic fusion suite, “As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls”. This cut opened the same-titled 1981 ECM release, and took up a full side. The abstract, unconventional Metheny/Mays number represents the zenith of their successful partnership. Even with ambient surroundings of synthesized music, the melodic coherence is palpable. A warmer middle section leads into one of several Mays’ “floating” synthesizer riffs. Like Pink Floyd, they use highly proficient engineering (Jan Erik Kongshaug) that provides structure to unusual electronic instrumentation. Mays’ interlude church organ is like a hymnal, and Metheny closes the deal with a denser, rock-like guitar.
Side IV begins with the title track. In a different arrangement, Pat executes soulful hooks with Mays harmonizing on piano. The band joins in softly, as Metheny creates a slow-dance framework with his agile, succinct runs. “Song For Bilboa” (a PMG encore specialty) kicks off with a hard-driving tempo and piercing guitar synth (Turn this one up!). There are jazzy chord changes and a long, spirited solo by Mays on piano that has a variety of swirling dynamics, trilling and crashing chords. It seems to bridge traditional jazz forms (like hard bop) with global, technological-based jazz. Metheny’s “big sound” distorted guitar is a nice counter to the acoustic piano. The finale, “San Lorenzo” (from Pat Metheny Group) is joyful and melodically exotic. Steve Rodby’s double bass is supple and Metheny mixes loud echo with hushed notation. There is a slow-burning groove with rhythm upticks. Mays has perhaps his best solo with inspirational crescendos, a Bill Evans reverie and a gospel-inflected finish.
Travels is a near-perfect match between an artist and label. This 180-gram vinyl is compelling. The pristine engineering reflects the meticulous arrangements. All of the raw unfiltered acoustics of a live performance are captured, but so is the expanded layered sound. Small details like a faint cymbal or double bass are not buried in the mix. The synthesized sounds do not have a lot of distortion and Metheny’s guitar simply glows.
Kudos to ECM for reissuing 180-gram vinyl jazz at competitive pricing. (most single LPs cost about $20, and double LPs start around $25 ).
TrackList:
Side I: Are You Going With Me?; The Fields, The Sky; Goodbye
Side II: Phase Dance; Straight On Red; Farmer’s Trust
Side III: Extradition; Goin’ Ahead; As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls
Side IV: Travels; Song For Bilbao; San Lorenzo
—Robbie Gerson
by Audiophile Audition | Jul 18, 2018 | Classical CD Reviews
SCRIABIN: Preludes, Etudes, Sonatas, and other works = 6 Preludes, Op. 13; 5 Preludes, Op. 16; Sonata No. 4, Op. 30; Sonata No. 5, Op. 53; Poeme tragique, Op. 34; Poeme satanique, Op. 36; Eight Etudes, Op. 42; Vers la flamme, Op. 72 – Vadym Kholodenko, piano – Harmonia mundi HMM 902255, 72:01 (7/13/18) [Dist. by PIAS] ****:
Vadym Kholodenko (rec. 1 September 2017) celebrates Alexander Scriabin’s “imaginative, fantastic, musical world,” citing his teacher Vera Gornostaeva, with a diverse selection of “poems” which trace the iconoclastic composer’s evolution—via Chopin and Liszt—into a self-proclaimed visionary of light. A master of concision, Scriabin penned for the better part of a decade various series of “poemes,” distilled miniatures —some 34 of them—that, like the paintings of J.W.N. Turner, increasingly become infused with light; if they are indeed poetry, then their obvious kinship lies in William Blake.
Scriabin conceived his sets of Preludes, Opp. 13 and 16 (1895), as extensions of his Op. 11 set, meant to complement his appreciation of the Chopin oeuvre, Op. 28. The opening C Major Prelude, Maestoso, from Op. 13 has a Lisztian cast, diatonic in harmony and moving in dotted rhythm as a march. The ensuing Allegro in A minor calls for quick eighths in the right hand, the scales running rather feverishly. We follow Chopin’s circle of fifths to G Major, Andante, a rocking moment of melancholy. The last three preludes prove to be studies in five versus triplets, sixths, and octaves, with big spans for the left hand. The E minor seems subdued, meant to charm, with the hands’ alternating the melodic line. The Allegro in D, No. 5, plays like an etude in sixths. The No. 6 in B minor provides an emotionally wrought Presto, whose grand climax Kholodenko makes shine before the piece dissolves in a manner that adumbrates the late sonatas.
Scriabin’s Op. 16 set eschews virtuosity and bravura for keyboard lyricism. The B Major Andante creates a lovely duet for the middle voice and high register. The following Allegro in G-sharp minor opens with moments of pianissimo that call in ff affirmations. The Andante cantabile in G-flat Major has a meditative atmosphere, enigmatic in the parlando manner of Debussy. Even more subdued, the Lento in E-flat minor seems subjective and hymn-like. The final Allegretto in F-sharp Major, plastic and refined, lasts but 40 seconds but makes a laconic moment of closure.
Scriabin wrote his Sonata No 4 in F-sharp Major, Op. 30 (1903) in two movements, much like those sonatas in Beethoven’s late-middle period. A sonata-poem, the piece intimates—especially through the use of the trill—an exalted mysticism, the expression of exhilaration in pursuing one’s personal star. The shimmering quality of Kholodenko’s keyboard in the Andante gravitates to both Liszt and Wagner, especially the latter’s Tristan. The ecstasies erupt, Prestissimo volando, in bursts of energy, frenetic, convulsive, but whose emotional violence finds tempered finesse in Kholodenko’s Fazioli instrument, recorded sonorously by Brad Michel.
Alexander Scriabin
The volcanic 1907 Sonata No. 5 in F-sharp Major came about in three or four days, mostly as a keyboard complement to the symphonic Poem of Ecstasy, especially when Scriabin marks “caressingly.” A blaze of punishing sound opens the work, which in his dire opinion, Rachmaninov characterized as “a wrong turn” in Scriabin’s creative output. Built on progressions of leaping fourths, the music often tempers into meditation, marked Languido. But then Kholodenko must jolt us forward into eddies of intoxicated sound, marked as Allegro impetuoso con stravanganza, Allegro fantastico, Leggerissimo volando, Presto giocoso, ecstatico, and other such flights of fancy that really wish to remain ineffable. As much as they figures fly and dance in syncopation, they also tend to melt into textures that indulge in extremes, much as in the music of Liszt, who, too, saw F-sharp Major as a key of transcendence. Kholodenko stamps out chords or eases out diaphanous tissue as required. Scriabin’s “program” of “mysterious forces” call forth “the dark depths of the creative spirit.” The entire, one-movement sonata must emerge from a single block of Promethean clay, a metamorphic plasma, a sonorous tonal system that refers only to itself and for itself, the solipsism of the artist the only arbiter of reality. Out of the identical Promethean impulse arises the 1914 Vers la flamme, among the composer’s final efforts. Opening in relatively static terms, the music gives birth to itself, blossoming into lit colors based on trills, rapid percussive chords, tremolos, syncopes, and a throbbing bass line. The evolution must become apocalyptic, as Scriabin’s intended, last opus meant to be, his never-completed Mysterium.
The two poems of 1903, the Poeme tragique and the Poeme satanique, alternately project tumult, the first in hammered chords and broad arpeggios in the left hand. Scriabin asks that the middle section be played irato, fiero, removing any sense of rest or respite in the mortal storm. Perhaps Scriabin wished to “answer” Liszt’s Mephisto series of waltzes and polkas, but his own “satan” seems liquid and skittishly elusive, asking for a riso ironico, a derisive laugh that we know from Eine Faust-Sinfonie. The broken-chord play becomes increasingly agitated and enigmatic, at once.
While Scriabin had published a set of Etudes, Op. 8, his 1903 set of eight Etudes, Op. 42 reveals a new depth and intricacy of expression. The first in D-flat Major, Presto, sets a chord of nine notes against five in the left hand. The moods, quite mercurial, shift in velocity, metrics, touch, and texture. The No. 2 lacks any tempo indication, set in F-sharp minor. A dotted rhythm in the right hand flows over quintuplets in the left. Marked Prestissimo, also in F-sharp minor, No. 3 moves in shimmering triplets, quite the child of Chopin. No. 4, Andante, in F-sharp Major, returns to the world of Scriabin’s nocturnal reveries, liquid silver from Kholodenko. No. 5, Affetuoso, in C-sharp minor, remained a favorite of the composer. It subscribes to the Promethean ethos, building an obsessive theme over agitated arpeggios. Elemetns of No. 5 and No. 2 infiltrate the Etude No. 6, Esaltato, in D-flat Major, has the subdued character as Ravel’s valley of bells. The condensed Agitato, No. 7 in F minor, proffers triplets against eighths, utilizing big stretches in the hands. An Allegro (E-flat Major) in ternary form, the last etude plays as an improvisation in ripple effects, but it suddenly breaks off into a nocturne whose message seems solemn against the otherwise fleeting motion of the outside sections.
—Gary Lemco
by Audiophile Audition | Jul 17, 2018 | Classical CD Reviews
Steven Osborne extends his prodigious gifts into the two sets of Etudes-Tableaux of Rachmaninov.
Rachmaninov: Etudes-Tableaux, Op. 33 and Op. 39 – Steven Osborne, piano – Hyperion CDA68188, 61:39 (7/27/18) [Distr. Harmonia mundi/PIAS] ****:
When Rachmaninov composed his first set of Etudes-Tableaux in 1911, he still felt the influences of Chopin, Schumann and Liszt, especially in their mastery of small forms that could convey, as Schumann remarked, “the import of whole symphonies.” In his 1930 letter to composer Ottorino Respighi, who intended to orchestrate several of the pieces, Rachmaninov admitted as to having some “program” in mind, but he wished the public to “listen to the music absolutely.” Originally, Rachmaninov composed nine of such tonal-pictures, but he would withdraw three of them: the C Minor would furnish material for his future G Minor Concerto; No. 5 in D Minor would appear posthumously in 1948; the A Minor became transposed to the Op. 39 set of 1917 as No. 6.
Even with the forthright opening of No. 1 in F minor, Osborne projects its resolute affect akin to aspects of Chopin, its martial gait and pianistic confidence, marked alternately by diaphanous clouds and Russian bells. The ensuing C Major proffers a nocturne, whose right-hand melody soars much in the style of the equally lovely Op. 32, No. 12 Prelude. The No. 3 in C minor presents a grave elegy in a relatively large canvas. Its middle section, sad and wistful in C Major, Osborne makes heart-breaking. The D minor (No. 5, replacing the transposed No. 4), Moderato, moves staccato, in the manner of a brilliant touch etude, set to a Russian, funereal gait. A study in audacious harmony and metrics, the No. 6 in E-flat minor benefits from long study of Liszt’s complicated figurations, cross-fertilized by Scriabin. A healthy, vigorous optimism saturates No. 7 in E-flat Major, “a scene at the fair,” which Osborne plays with relish. The next, in G minor, presents a lyrical nocturne possessing two cadenzas. The “melting” chords mix with baritone and bass harmonies to produce a voluptuous song. The ambiguities of major and minor harmonies mark the last, the C-sharp minor Etude, for a boldly declamatory piece that exudes both tragedy and triumph, a virtual “symphonic poem” for the keyboard.
Sergei Rachmaninov
The second set of Etudes-Tableaux indicates a deepening of Rachmaninov’s harmony, and the pieces are generally longer than those from Op. 33. It would difficult find the “poetry” of No. 1 in C minor, a driving etude with monster spans and demands for the player. Osborne negotiates the repeated chords with colossal security. Tragic in tone, the Etude in A minor, Lento assai, says Rachmaninov, depicts “the sea and seagulls.” But the main tune in the course of this extended study becomes the ubiquitous Dies Irae chant in increased, thundering tones. Agogic shifts mark the F-sharp minor, since the triplets move in irregular beats. The unsettling, brilliant sensibility of the piece allies it much to Scriabin. The D Major/B minor Etude offers no time signatures; instead, it demands a martial tempo in staccato chords and repeated notes in delicate textures. The No. 5 in E-flat minor again displays Rachmaninov’s capacity to create an epic in condensed form. Marked Appassionato, the piece moves in tremolo triplets and later via a theme stated in broad arpgeggios. Its fervent emotional tenor corresponds to the famous D-sharp Minor Etude of Scriabin. Rachmaninov claimed “Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf” as “visual” inspiration for No. 6 in A minor. Exciting in its sixteenth notes and staccato chords, the piece makes as effective a vehicle for Osborne as it had for my first “acolyte” into its brazen charms, Beveridge Webster.
No. 7 in C minor, Lento lugubre, develops slowly into a huge elegy, moving from descending thirds, lamentoso, to a martial section, building to a potent climax in furious church bells and then relenting into quietude. We wonder if the Chopin Op. 60 Barcarolle does not inspire much of the lovely No. 8 in D minor Etude, Allegro moderato. The melodic interest maintains itself through a repeated motive, but it seems spare when compared to the supporting harmonies around it. The melody returns at the end, staccato. The last of the two sets is marked Tempo di marcia, D major, Allegro moderato. Its syntax and affect resembles the lat prelude from Op. 32, likewise recasting material heard earlier in the set. Declamatory and pompous, the piece exploits the purely percussive quality of the keyboard, here, Osborne’s brilliant Steinway, recorded with lush resonance by Recording Producer Andrew Keener.
—Gary Lemco
by Audiophile Audition | Jul 17, 2018 | Jazz CD Reviews
An up to date version of gypsy jazz
The Django Festival AllStars – Attitude Manouche – Resilience Music Alliance 54:18****:
(Samson Schmitt – lead guitar; Pierre Blanchard – violin, string arrangements; Ludovic Beier – accordion, accordina; Philippe “Doudou”Cuilerier – rhythm guitar, vocals; Antonio Licusati – double bass)
In the book Django Reinhardt and the Illustrated History of Gypsy Jazz by Michael Dregni, we learn that Reinhardt was a “Manouche Gypsy” from the Romani gypsy’s of Eastern Europe. During the height of his popularity in the 1930s and 1940s in the jazz world of Paris, gypsy jazz was considered a pariah well outside the mainstream of what was regarded as jazz during that time period. That this style of music has survived and to some extent thrived, is due in no small measure to groups like The Django Festival AllStars and is exemplified by their latest release Attitude Manouche.
In this frothy session of gypsy-styled music, ten of the compositions are by band members, with only one from another source and that is John Williams Main Theme from “Schindler’s List”. Their treatment of the number is in keeping with the gravity of the Stephen Spielberg film and is wonderfully evocative with starkly delineated passages.
The title track “Attitude Manouche” gives full meaning to the style of gypsy-music as it is filled with hot and rich sounds as each of the main players shows off the command of their instruments as they swoop and dive through their solos. “Troublant Romeo” is a change of pace as it has an easy swinging tango flow. Guitarist Schmitt, violinist Blanchard, and accordionist Beier rattle off their solos with splendidly configured flair.
Django Reinhardt
The Django Festival AllStars is modelled after the famous Quintette Du Hot Club De France , which during its heyday in the 1930s and 40s was mostly an all string based ensemble with Django Reinhardt on lead guitar, Stephane Grappelli on violin, bassist Louis Vola, and rhythm guitarists Joseph Reinhardt (Django’s brother) and Roger Chaput. Although Reinhardt was a prodigious composer, none of his compositions are represented in this session, as the band has chosen to use their own material, which is very much in the Django mode.
“Around Toots” by accordionist Ludovic Beier is a tip of the hat to the late Belgian harmonica player and guitarist Toots Thielemans who was inspired by Django to take up the guitar in the 1940s. The number is filled with energy and purpose and requiring quick instincts by the front line players as they push the number along at a torrid pace. Another number by Beier along the same lines is “Tsigane (Gypsy) Fantasy” which dashes along in blistering style with the principals tearing into their instruments.
The album closes with “Viens Chez Django” (Come to Django’s Place) which features a vocal by Philippe “Doudou” Cuilerier, some of which is done in the French version of scat singing. It exudes the atmosphere of a cellar Parisian bar, filled with beret wearing men, smoking Gitanes and drinking pastis.
TrackList:
Attitude Manouche; Troublant Romeo; Late Train; Lovely Wife; Laugh With Charlie; Balkanic Dance; Around Toots; Nocturne; Schindler’s List-Main Theme; Tsigane Fantasy; Viens Chez Django
—Pierre Giroux
by Audiophile Audition | Jul 17, 2018 | Jazz CD Reviews
More than just tribute.
Steve Hobbs – Tribute to Bobby [TrackList follows] – Challenge CR73433, 65:10 [1/5/18] ****:
(Steve Hobbs – marimba, vibes; Adam Kolker – tenor and soprano saxophone; Bill O’Connell – piano; Peter Washington – bass; John Riley – drums)
Vibraphonist Steve Hobbs’ 65-minute album Tribute to Bobby did not start out as a homage to Hobbs’ mentor and friend, famed vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson. But the 13-track CD was turned into an accolade when Hutcherson passed away the day before this session was taped. While there are no Hutcherson compositions, listeners can feel Hutcherson’s palpable personality in the music and performances. In other ways, Tribute to Bobby also pays respect to other musicians, some who are still alive (Bob Dylan) and others who are gone (Consuelo Velázquez, Horace Silver, Thelonious Monk). Essentially, Tribute to Bobby honors many aspects of modern music, jazz and otherwise.
Hobbs came to prominence in the late 1980s, and has performed with trumpeter Tom Harrell, Jazz Crusaders drummer Stix Hooper and continues to record with artists such as Kenny Barron. Hobbs has issued several solo records. Tribute to Bobby is the third with Hobbs’ current group, which comprises saxophonist Adam Kolker (he’s backed John Hébert, Rick Margitza, Bruce Barth and others); pianist Bill O’Connell (a long list of releases and has worked with Dave Valentin, Charles Fambrough and Emily Remler); bassist Peter Washington (see also Hutcherson, Art Blakey, Lee Konitz, the Bill Charlap Trio and Barron); and drummer John Riley (credits include John Scofield, Gary Peacock and John Patitucci). This stellar quintet tackles 10 Hobbs originals and three covers. The material encompasses post-bop, Latin, funk, calypso and other influences.
Bobby Hutcherson
The Latin jazz commences on Velázquez’s standard “Besame Mucho,” a mid-tempo and exquisitely-paced number with a mesmerizing O’Connell piano improvisation. Washington and Riley keep up a propulsive rhythm and Hobbs showcases his talents as well. “Besame Mucho” concludes with a brief coda which adds to the arrangement. Hobbs’s “Tres Vias” (basically ‘three ways’ in English) is arranged into three sections. Kolker utilizes his soprano sax in outstanding fashion, Hobbs brings in his marimba and O’Connell contributes more of his piano soloing. Hobbs’s swaying “El Sueno de Horace Silver” (English translation: “The Dream of Horace Silver”) is a Latin-tinged encomium to Silver, who was no stranger to Latin jazz. While the arrangement has plenty of Latin jazz cadences, it also has moments of mid-tempo bop connotations. Hobbs heads to another region on the Caribbean-flavored “Let’s Go to Abaco!,” named after a set of islands which are part of the northern Bahamas. Washington slips in a nuanced bass solo, O’Connell swings and rolls across his keyboard, and Riley digs deep into a steely percussive tone.
Hobbs’s groove-flecked “Thelonious Funk” was written to honor Hutcherson because Monk was one of Hutcherson’s inspirations. The intermediate pulse helps push the music along without overdoing the tune’s rhythm and groove. It is fair to say O’Connell’s piano runs venerate Monk. Meanwhile, Kolker’s sax maintains an oscillating verve. Two notable covers are must-hears. Hobbs provides a reverent and reflective approach to Dylan’s folk classic “Blowing in the Wind.” There’s enough re-arrangement to Dylan’s melody that some may not immediately recognize the piece. Hobbs’s vibes are masterful, while the rhythm section supplies a relaxed but not necessarily laid-back intonation. On the other hand, the quintet’s rendition of Rodgers and Hart’s “Where or When” is all up-tempo and quick-striding. The vibes, piano and rhythm players sustain a fast groove and acceleration. Snap your fingers throughout this 3:41 tune and you’ll probably sprain your thumb. Other highlights include the leaping “Into the Storm” and equally rapid “New Creation” and the lengthiest cut, the ballad “Millie,” a thoughtful musical portrait. There’s even an RnB/gospel track, the positive “The Road to Happy Destiny,” a hopeful piece which partially includes singers Marvin Thorne, Carol Ingbretsen and Maurice Myers. If you need a touch of church, try this. If you missed out on Hobbs’s Tribute to Bobby when it was released at the beginning of 2018, it’s time to discover this top-drawer album.
TrackList:
The Craving Phenomenon
Into the Storm
Besame Mucho
New Creation
Tres Vias
Millie
Thelonious Funk
The Road to Happy Destiny
Blowing in the Wind
El Sueno de Horace Silver
In from the Storm
Let’s Go Abaco!
Where or When
—Doug Simpson
by Audiophile Audition | Jul 15, 2018 | Classical CD Reviews
In a brilliantly clean recording featuring trombone and piano, Peter Moore and James Baillieu make beautiful music.
Life Force — Peter Moore (trombone), James Baillieu (piano)—Rubicon Classics RCD1028—66:31, ****1/2 :
The trombone speaks by amplifying the buzzing of the player’s lips into a small, diminutive cup. Notes are differentiated by either extending the length of tubing through which this vibration travels, or else by traversing the harmonic series, as a bugler does. Tone is changed by limiting the amount of air, or else, by re-directing the direction of the stream of air within the mouthpiece. Hearing a trombone without all the mechanical fuss that’s part of playing, from sloppy movement of the slide to imprecision in the focus of the lips within the mouthpiece, betrays the amateur from the professional. What I admired most about Peter Moore’s recital is his technical perfection and clarity.
The recording is pristinely lucid to also capture the depth of feeling from pianist James Baillieu. Coupled here are two expert musicians. Moore made his mark at the age of 12 as the BBC’s Young musician of the year. He now plays for the London Symphony Orchestra, appointed at age 18.
The recital is an eclectic mix of mostly romantic pieces, from Fauré, to Schumann, to Gräfe, Brahms, among others. Moore explains he chose favorite pieces for his debut solo album, including those originally written for different instruments.
Peter Moore
In Rachmaninoff’s Andante from the Cello Sonata, op. 19, Moore convinces me, at least, that the piece works idiomatically for the trombone. His sensitivity and dynamics support the music and show but one of many times how his sound is so controlled as to not dominate the duo with piano, until he wishes to push that relationship just so. The ability for a trombonist to hide behind the piano, especially so when the piano is sympathetically quiet, is a real gift. Coupled with that is Moore’s continual excellence with intonation, even when stressed through quiet dynamics.
Equally impressive is Moore’s ability with faster parts demanding crisp intonation, as in one of the two longer pieces included, Gräfe’s B-flat concerto for trombone. He’s consistently tight in his reading of Arthur Pryor’s Thoughts of Love.
What I heard as I went from track to track was a consistency in Moore’s sound in longer-held notes: the sound of the instrument is to be admired, warmed by the addition of a very narrow vibrato. My only want in terms of technique would have been for more variation in this timbre. There is some variation, as in the opening of the Mahler track, number 12. My own background in baroque repertoire, especially of violin repertoire and the performance practice of introducing vibrato as an affectual element, had me wanting for Moore to employ vibrato in this way.
This criticism is but a nitpicking of an otherwise mature musician, who, despite his age, continuously demonstrates supreme command of his instrument.
To be fair, the trombone is not a typical solo instrument. And while there is solo material written for it, this music is not at front loaded in the canon of high art music. The most famous pieces of trombone repertoire are orchestral pieces. Moore manages to bring to light an interesting mix of literature, across a period in excess of one hundred years.
The release will be of object interest to fans of brass music, specifically the trombone, but Moore’s gifts should extend to melody-focused admirers of the romantic literature too.
The sound quality is first rate.
—Sebastian Herrera
by Audiophile Audition | Jul 15, 2018 | Streams and Podcasts
This week, The Music Treasury will present piano music performed by Tatiana Petrofina Nikolayeva. Nikolayeva was raised in a musical family—her father a string player, her mother a professional pianist. Tatiana Nikolayeva was particularly noted for her interpretation of works by Bach; her performance inspired Shostakovich to write his own set of preludes and fugues for her.
Dr Gary Lemco hosts this week’s show, airing between 19:00 and 21:00 on 15 July 2018, PDT. It can be heard from its host station KZSU in the SF Bay Area, as well as its live streamed simulcast from kzsu.stanford.edu.
Tatiana Petrovna Nikolayeva, pianist, teacher and composer
Tatiana Petrovna Nikolayeva, pianist, teacher and composer was born in Bezhitza, Russia 4 May 1924; twice married (one son); and died San Francisco 22 November 1993.
It is difficult to imagine anyone forgetting the experience of hearing Tatiana Nikolayeva play. She was one of those rare artists who had the ability to win over an audience before even reaching the keyboard. Rotund, and frequently wearing a rather startlingly bright dress, she would make her way to the front of the piano, give the audience a heartwarmingly big smile, and then settle her ample frame on to the stool. Everything radiated humility, generosity of spirit and, above all, happiness.
Born in the small town of Bezhitza, near Bryansk, roughly half-way between Moscow and Kiev, Nikolayeva came from a musical family. Her mother, a professional pianist, had studied at the Moscow Conservatory under the celebrated pedagogue Alexander Goldenweizer (1875-1961), and her father was a keen amateur violinist and cellist. Tatiana Petrovna began piano lessons when five and started composing at 12. In the following year she was admitted by competitive examination to the Central Secondary School of Music in Moscow, a branch of the Tchaikovsky Conservatory, where she had instruction from her mother’s teacher, Goldenweizer – and she continued with him once at the Conservatory proper. The professor had been a friend of Scriabin, Rachmaninov and Medtner, and inculcated into his students the need to develop the highest proficiency in contrapuntal playing. Bach was very much the order of the day. Amongst Goldenweizer’s other students who reached the top of their profession were Grigori Ginzburg, Samuil Feinberg, Dmitri Bashkirov and Lazar Berman.
Tatiana Nikolayeva
She was, above all, a Bach player and had won first prize at the International Bach Competition in Leipzig, inaugurated to commemorate the bicentenary of the composer’s death in 1750. Dmitri Shostakovich had been a judge at the event and was so impressed and inspired by the 25-year-old pianist’s playing that he had written his 24 Preludes and Fugues for her. She would visit his apartment to play them over to him almost one-by-one as they were composed. The Opus 87 set became one of the most important works in Nikolayeva’s repertoire, taking up a whole recital programme. Indeed, it was while she was performing the big B flat minor fugue at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco on 13 November 1993 that she suffered a massive brain haemorrhage and soon lapsed into a coma.
Despite the raucous sound quality of her Melodya LP of Tchaikovsky’s Second Piano Concerto, recorded in the early 1950s, one immediately became aware of a pianist whose technical accomplishment was imperially comprehensive and yet who also possessed a rarely developed ear for polyphonic writing.
Graduating from the class in 1947, Nikolayeva then studied composition with Yevgeni Golubev. The fruit of this course was a cantata Pesn o schast’ye (‘Song about Happiness’) and a piano concerto in B, the latter a piece that she later recorded with the USSR State Symphony Orchestra under the eminent conductor Kiril Kondrashin. Ultimately, though, her best-known works are a set of 24 Concert Studies, firmly polyphonic in style, and a faithful and unfettered transcription of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, a recording of which has been released by RCA Victor in Japan.
Though she had made her official debut in 1945, it was not until after the Leipzig Bach Competition that Nikolayeva’s career really took off. Appearances, however, were very much restricted to Eastern Bloc countries, and she never achieved the ‘favoured artist’ status that was the prerequisite to enable any Soviet musician to play abroad during the Cold War years. Nikolayeva started teaching at the Moscow Conservatory in 1959, and from 1965 was a professor. It was her standing as such that led her to be invited to sit as a jury member for various different international piano competitions; she was at the Leeds Competition in 1984 and 1987.
Nikolayeva’s career in Britain resulted from contacts made during the course of these visits. By this stage there was a dearth of older Russian pianists playing in the West: Emil Gilels had died, and Svjatoslav Richter’s concert-giving was becoming, at best sporadic. Probably, however, no concert promoter in Britain guessed at the extent of the success Nikolayeva was to enjoy. Her appearances at the Proms were greeted with terrific enthusiasm and in 1991 Hyperion’s CDs of the Shostakovich Preludes and Fugues were given a Gramophone Award.
It is only to be hoped that several of her earlier Melodya discs will be reissued. She had a colossal repertoire and specialised in playing cyclical works. Aside from the Shostakovich, though, Tatiana Nikolayeva will be remembered as a Bach player who flung stylistic considerations to the winds and played the music with an irrepressible musical intelligence and knowledge of the resources of her chosen instrument. [quoted from Ms. Nikolayeva’s obituary, by James Methuen-Campbell, 27 November 1993, in the Independent]
Program List for 15 July 2018
Bach: French Suite No. 4 in E-flat Major, BWV 815
Shostakovich: Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87: Nos 1-3
Bach: Klavier Concerto No. 1 in D Minor, BWV 1052 (w/Rozdestvensky)
Beethoven: Sonata No. 25 in G Major, Op. 79: Andante
Bach: Ricercare a 3 Voci from The Musical Offering, BWV 1079
Bach: Partita No. 5 in G Major: Praeliudium
Bach: Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring from Cantata No. 147 (arr. Hess)
Shostakovich: Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87: Nos 14, 7, and 15
Tchaikovsky: Concert Fantasy in G Major, Op. 56 (w/Kondrashin)
by Audiophile Audition | Jul 14, 2018 | Classical CD Reviews
The neo-Romantic piano music of Josef Suk has an ardent acolyte in Jonathan Plowright.
SUK: Spring – Suite, Op. 22a; Summer Impressions, Op. 22b; Piano Pieces, Op. 7; Moods, Op. 10 – Jonathan Plowright, piano – Hyperion CDA68198, 76:38 (6/29/18) [Distr. by Harmonia mundi/PIAS] ****:
Like most auditors of Czech music after Smetana and Dvorak, I found the music of Josef Suk (1874-1935) via his lovely Serenade for Strings in E Major, Op. 6, courtesy of a performance at Atlanta’s Fox Theatre by a Taiwanese, youth chamber ensemble under the direction of Helen Quach, a pupil of Nikolai Malko. His keyboard music has until now remained obscure in my experience; but Jonathan Plowright (rec. 6-8 September 2017) of the Royal Academy of Music makes Suk’s essentially lyric, salon style thoroughly accessible in this recording.
We begin with the collection of six Pieces, Op. 7, composed 1891-93 and published in 1894. Given their overtly romantic, even courtly, character, they depict emotionally the composer’s affection for Antonin Dvorak’s daughter Otilka, whom Suk married in 1898. The opening Love Song declares itself passionately, the manner more resonant than that of Schumann, more sultry in character than the brief pieces of late Brahms. The two Little Idylls—originally designated as “waltzes”—capture the lovers in the rain, while the fifth piece, an expansive—at first, almost funereal—Dumka, may describe a brief lovers’ spat that ends in reconciliation. Here, Suk follows the style of Dvorak, whose own dumky alternate slow and fast tempos. The most Schumann-inspired piece would be the Humoreska, Allegretto grazioso, a nervous waltz which well recalls something of Chopin. The Memories (“Recollections”) section harbors waltz or nocturne like intentions by way of its arpeggiated, modal syntax. The middle section, on the other hand, assumes a more vigorous, virtuoso character. The final selection, Capricetto, begins with a hearty swagger but later becomes more introspective.
Josef Suk
Suk composed five Moods between 1894-95. Already expressive of his personal emotions, the suite combines a narrative sensibility with the composer’s efforts to synthesize elements from the Prague Conservatory. First-beat accents and syncopes typify the Czech style, as well as a tendency to flatten the seventh degree of the scale to effect a mixolydian mode. The two-part writing avoids polyphony but delights in thirds and sixths. The opening Legend (in D-flat Major) has a robust Lisztian fervor. A kind of polka, the Capriccio (in E-flat minor) sways and lilts whimsically in the manner of gypsy Brahms. The heart of the set, Romance, expresses ardor in a broad melody supported by angular harmonies, much resembling Liszt. The Bagatelle seems thoroughly meditative and understated and could be attributed to Grieg. The last piece, Spring Idyll, Vivace, exudes youth and bravura energies, playing via Plowright as a brilliant etude in the manner of Anton Rubinstein.
The two sets of “seasonal” pieces, Spring, Op. 22a and Summer impressions, Op. 22b (c. 1901-02) testify to Suk’s desire to master what scholars call “the time of large forms.” Suk had written a four-movement Suite, Op. 21; but here, in these character pieces devoted to the seasons, he returned to the ternary form of the Czech lied. The beginning of the century provided Suk much happiness, with the birth of son Josef in December, 1901. The five movements of Spring celebrate the old conceit of new life, new possibilities, and new directions (to allude to Schumann). The opening, exuberant “Spring” motif (in E, evolving from an inversion of D) unifies the entire suite. The intervals of the major second and perfect fourth also find their way to variation and embellishment. The designations dolce and dolcissimo indicate the tenor of Suk’s love of nature, solidified in Plowright’s bell-tones. The breeze is in C Major and favors modal, irregular syntax established in Debussy. The jumpy character of the piece could invoke The Prophet Bird in Schumann. In Expectation simply retains most of the “Spring” structure, here a ballade or nocturne, with an ascending motif in free, often voluptuous, variation. The spirit of Grieg haunts the unnamed, asterisk (Andante) movement contrasts in dark, harmonically threatening gestures in A minor, and some read into this one-page tone-poem a hint of wife Otilie’s heart disease, especially since the Asrael Symphony is set in this key. A sense of ardent triumph infiltrates Longing in D-flat Major. Plowright emphasizes the return of the “Spring” fanfare in its transposed tranquillo guise, a sweet remembrance of happy days and youthful optimism. By the way, Artur Schnabel was fond of performing this suite.
The idiosyncratic sonority of open fifths announces “At noon” from the 1905 suite Summer impressions, Op. 22b, another Schnabel favorite. The chime effects—especially those which exploit the upper register of Plowright’s Steinway—and melodic directness carry homage, it would appear, to Debussy. The second movement, Children at Play, reinforces the “children’s corner” sensibility. The last piece, Evening mood, provides an extended, transcendentalist meditation in modal harmony, the neo-Romantic music reminiscent of that of Czech composer Vitezslav Novak. The music rises in the manner of an exalted hymn, similar in spirit to Dvorak’s Slavonic Dance No. 12 in D-flat. The alternately soft and muscular tones of these works has been graciously preserved thanks to Recording Producer Jeremy Hayes.
—Gary Lemco
by Audiophile Audition | Jul 13, 2018 | Jazz CD Reviews
The many dimensions of cool explored with elegant style
Eddie Henderson – Be Cool – Smoke Session Records SSR-1802 76:56****:
(Eddie Henderson – trumpet; Donald Henderson – alto saxophone; Kenny Barron – piano; Essiet Essiet – bass; Mike Clark – drums)
The 77-year old trumpeter Eddie Henderson, has a backstory quite unlike most jazz musicians of his generation, or any other generation for that matter. His mother was a dancer at the original Cotton Club in Harlem. His father sang with Billy Williams and The Charioteers, a well-known singing group. Growing up he received an informal trumpet lesson from Louis Armstrong, and later on ( age 17) he played a gig with Miles Davis who was one of his early influences .
He graduated from Howard University in 1968 with a medical degree. He continued his medical education as well as starting a general practice in San Francisco from 1975-85 In the early 1970s he was part of Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi band. This musical and life journey continues as Henderson explores the many dimensions of cool in his newest release Be Cool.
The band that Henderson has assembled for this adventure is filled with suppleness as exemplified by saxophonist Donald Harrison, pianist Kenny Barron, bassist Essiet Essiet, and drummer Mike Clark. Opening the album is Barron’s tune ‘Smoke Screen” which has a perky funky vibe laid down by the rhythm section. After a couple of choruses of union playing between Harrison and Henderson, they each successively provide solos, that are filled with enthusiasm, which is then followed by Barron with a down the centre solo.
Henderson’s wife Natsuko wrote the title track “Be Cool” which is an admonishment that Henderson follows in his approach to playing. Taken at moderate tempo, it is a fairly straightforward line, but structured in such a way as give all the participants a chance to say their piece with Henderson leading the way in a “cool” fashion. Barron chips in doing his bit with a slinky solo.
Ballads can be a tricky bit of business for jazz musicians as false and incorrect notes are easily picked up all the more so in a recording environment. A consummate profession such as Eddie Henderson is not deterred by this potential trap as he so ably demonstrates on “After You’ve Gone”. In a tour de force performance, with his mellow and elegant sound he delivers a mournful story of loss.
John Coltrane’s “Naima” takes center stage in 3/4 time as the rhythm section lays the groundwork with Henderson’s trumpet delivering the theme with scintillating intensity and Harrison’s tenor is in full Coltrane mode on his solo. Not to be outdone, Barron’s roguish voice swings inventively.
Finally, with a nostalgic glance back on his time with Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi band, Henderson takes one of Hancock’s prominent compositions “Toys” using a rhythm chart prepared by one of his students at Oberlin College, where he now teaches. While certainly some of the elements of the composition still remain, Henderson has given the number a facelift to convey a very different feel.
TrackList: Smoke Screen; Be Cool; After You’ve Gone; Loft Funk; Fran Dance; The Moontrane; Naima; The Sand Castle Head Hunters; Nightride; Toys; Easy Living; Dia Juzi
—Pierre Giroux
by Audiophile Audition | Jul 11, 2018 | Jazz CD Reviews
Vinyl reissue of jazz guitarist landmark ECM debut is terrific!
John Abercrombie – Timeless – ECM Records ECM 1047 (1974/2018) 180-gram vinyl (distr. by Universal Music Group) 43:36 ****1/2:
(John Abercrombie – guitar; Jan Hammer – organ, synthesizer, piano; Jack DeJohnette – drums)
John Abercrombie approached his life as a jazz guitarist like many of his 60’s contemporaries. Initially drawn to the classic 50’s rock and roll sound, he was introduced to jazz, in this case specifically to Barney Kessler. He attended the Berklee School Of Music and aspired to the likes of George Benson, Wes Montgomery and Jim Hall. Abercrombie became a session guitarist, playing with Gil Evans, Gato Barbieri and Barry Miles. He joined the Brecker Brothers in the popular jazz rock group Dreams. Along with his work in the Billy Cobham band, he caught the attention of record labels. One of these was ECM Records, headed by Manfred Eicher. In 1974, he formed a trio with Jan Hammer and Jack DeJohnette (who worked with Miles Davis on Bitches Brew) and recorded his ECM debut, Timeless. Abercrombie maintained a long, productive career with ECM, (nearly four decades) including a pair of trio recordings with Dave Holland and DeJohnette, Gateway and Gateway II.
ECM has reissued Timeless on 180-gram vinyl (which includes a digital download). The signature ECM simple, organic (very few studio effects) engineering is given a modern technology upgrade that maintains the musical vision of Abercrombie and producer Eicher. The opening track, “Lungs” (written by Hammer) takes off with a hard-charging Hammond organ by Hammer. Abercrombie alternates lead with an ever-changing jagged electric guitar. Whether it’s called fusion, avant-garde or free jazz, the high-energy improvisation is explosive. DeJohnette’s rhythmic sensibility is amazing, keeping the trio in an impromptu lockstep. But at 3:20, the jam changes with a spacey interlude as Hammer executes atmospheric organ and synthesizer in background to Abercrombie’s meditative riffs. DeJohnette keeps up his propulsive drumming. A 3rd transition comes in about the 7:00 mark. With a distinct funk vibe, the trio sustains an hypnotic pulse. Abercrombie unleashes airy guitar and potent rock-like riffs.
John Abercrombie
“Love Song” (one of four Abercrombie compositions) is a contrast, wistful in a duet of piano and acoustic guitar. Both Abercrombie and Hammer connect with a melancholy resonance. Hammer delivers restrained flourishes and Abercrombie’s phrasing is also understated, but with glowing imagery. “Ralph’s Piano Waltz” is in the great tradition of 3/4 jazz time signature. There is no piano, but Hammer injects many textures on organ, shading the guitar and handling a nimble solo at 2:20. DeJohnette’s stellar timing is ever-present. Abercrombie plays counter, lead and meshes seamlessly with his band. There are subtle tempo changes that showcase the cohesive strength of this trio. On Side 2, “Red And Orange” (Hammer song, all the rest are Abercrombie material) explodes back into the fusion mold. There is a kinship to Mahavisnu Orchestra (especially Birds Of Fire) with the frenetic instrumentals by all three players. Abercrombie’s solos are blistering and screech with intensity, and Hammer percolates on organ. DeJohnette drives them through any potential momentum pauses. The polyrhythmic dynamic is palpable and the commitment never diminishes. “Remembering” feels more structured as the duet of acoustic guitar and piano is revisited. With deft nuance, a graceful, melodic interpretation is rendered. The title finale is a bookend piece to the first cut, because of the 12:00 length. A brooding synthesizer and guitar build with controlled swelling, aided by the faintest of cymbals for percussion. Organ is accented on a layered approach, as Abercrombie takes an exquisitely phrased lead. The hushed aesthetics create a haunting moodiness. In this environment, Abercrombie expresses his fluency effectively. As DeJohnette adds a supple undercurrent of tempo, Hammer’s church-like organ and synthesizer make the arrangement glow with warmth.
The ability of these musicians to interact with such fluency and agility is stellar. ECM sets a high standard for low-key studio engineering that allows the spontaneous elegance of the instrumentals to be featured. It has the feel of a live session. The hymnal church organ has an ethereal ambiance, and the the wide array of guitar tonalities (from tender acoustic to piercing electric sound) sound natural in this mix. The vinyl pressing is impeccable without any detectable surface noise. The original cover design by Rolf Liese is beautiful. Fifty years after the inception of ECM Records, it is reassuring to see that artistic integrity is still front and center.
TrackList:
Side 1: Lungs; Love Song; Ralph’s Piano Waltz
Side 2: Red And Orange; Remembering; Timeless
—Robbie Gerson
by Audiophile Audition | Jul 10, 2018 | Classical CD Reviews
Franz Josef HAYDN: Piano Sonatas, Volume 2 — Anne-Marie McDermott, piano — Bridge 9497, 69:00, (5/27/18) ****1/2:
The love comes across in this recital of Haydn sonatas by an experienced artist
Anne-Marie McDermott presents four sonatas by Haydn in her second volume of his piano sonatas: numbers 48, 39, 46, and 37. I already knew McDermott for her technical abilities with fleeting fingers alongside her panache for crisp articulation. Despite my personal preference for a period piano and a chamber acoustic, this album presents an honest recital that’s chock full of love for this music by an experienced and capable artist.
Haydn would have known the earliest pianos and harpsichords as the keyboard instruments in his time. The modern piano offers a significantly wider dynamic range and more significant sound. The modern performer on the piano has decisions to make: do I limit my playing to limit the dynamic range and volume, or, perhaps, see what the modern instrument can offer the music?
McDermott takes the latter approach, employing the full capabilities of Yamaha’s top-tier concert grand to Haydn’s music. A profound example of this approach is the slow movement of the 37th sonata, marked Large e sostenuto. Complete with the flourishes of, say, a French overture, McDermott lets the sonority of her piano sing and relishes in Haydn’s harmonic progression of embellished chords. The sustaining power of the modern piano, too, is tapped to fully realize the sostenuto called for in the opening indication. The finale is made from different cloth, starting polite and precise, and dynamically changing to employ the full force of the piano—all in good taste.
Franz Joseph Haydn
The liner notes remind us that Haydn never felt he had virtuoso status on any one instrument. That is difficult to believe with the well-known 48th sonata. McDermott presents the second Presto movement with technical perfection. Her lightness of touch is captured in the acoustic afterglow, revealing not only her technical prowess, but her heart. She isn’t afraid to apply subtle rubato to capture the natural character of the phrasing, revealing Haydn’s tongue-in-cheek personality portraying humor, delight, and restrained breath-holding.
Haydn’s ability to take the simple and embellish is to into high art is on display in his A-flat sonata, #46. It’s less of the virtuosity of the instrument, but that of the pen, that we relish. McDermott’s ability leaves us without worry or concern: she seems so well connected to the music. In the development section of the same movement she maintains supreme control of the line, allowing the flirtation of notes in the melody to tickle us as the harmonies provide gravitas.
I am left with the belief that Ms. McDermott loves this music. Haydn makes it possible to maintain a laser focus on the music throughout these sonatas: his periods are not extremely long. Whether or not you play the album as a complete recital, or instead opt, as I have, for miniature sessions at one sonata per listen, there’s nothing left in wanting from this performance on modern piano.
A first class presentation.
—Sebastian Herrera
by Audiophile Audition | Jul 10, 2018 | Jazz CD Reviews
Jazz with significant subtext.
David Ake – Humanities [TrackList follows] – Posi-Tone PR8180, 60:29 [3/16/18] ****:
(David Ake – piano; Ralph Alessi – trumpet; Ben Monder – guitar; Drew Gress – bass; Mark Ferber – drums)
Humanities are academic disciplines which study aspects of human society and culture. The humanities include ancient and modern languages, literature, philosophy, geography, history, religion, art and musicology. It’s no accident pianist David Ake titled his latest effort Humanities. The 12 tracks (11 originals by Ake and one cover) generate an instrumental landscape which focuses on the context of what it means to be human (including Ake’s personal struggles) as well as the current tragedy and travesty of America’s political and social situation. Humanities also centers on the joy and hopefulness which people can feel or display via mutual trust, respect and openness. This type of philosophical posture fits Ake well as composer, musician and scholar (he is Professor and Chair of the Dept. of Musicology at the Univ. of Miami’s Frost School of Music).
David Ake organized quite a quintet for his project. The band comprises trumpeter Ralph Alessi (who has worked with Uri Caine and Jason Moran and released albums on ECM); guitarist Ben Monder (see Theo Bleckmann, Lee Konitz, Kenny Wheeler and many more); bassist Drew Gress (who has previously collaborated with Monder and Alessi; and played with Caine, Dave Douglas and others); and drummer Mark Ferber (credits include Konitz, Fred Hersch and Alessi). While some group members have performed together, this fivesome got together only one prior time, a quick run through these tunes the day before the six-hour session.
The opening title cut and the second piece, “Hoofer,” encompass some of the set’s nicest and nuanced interaction. During the title track Alessi offers an emotional expression which in turn is followed by Ake’s aligned piano lines, while Ferber and Gress deliver nimble percussive elements. “Hoofer” has a slight quirkiness which showcases Ake’s ability to pen lightly off-kilter arrangements. During “Hoofer” Ake provides poignant, cycling chords and the rest of the group maintains a spirited characteristic and passion. Alessi’s solo is the highlight, which is accentuated by Ake’s terse chords and Ferber’s single sticks and feathery drum rolls. Along with the title track, there are others—“Groundwork,” “Resource Center” “Rabble Rouser” and “Walter Cronkite”—which emphasize the overall theme. The lengthy “Groundwork” is Monder’s showpiece. He presents a stimulating, nearly dissonant tone matched by the others, particularly Ferber’s animated rhythm and Alessi’s trumpet. “Groundwork” has many meanings but here it probably refers to how those in the humanities create root moments for critical thinking to push students to become analytical and diagnostic. As the composition implies, “Rabble Rouser” is inciteful, awakening and harkens toward jazz-rock via Ferber’s rolling percussion and drums, and Monder’s distortion-tinged electric guitar. “Resource Center” (named after a place where students can get specific instruction or academic assistance) is the opposite of “Groundwork.” Here, the quintet lays a foundation of gradation and mid-tempo consideration. The album-ending “Walter Cronkite” is a lithe musical sketch and tribute to the famed broadcast journalist who was deemed one of the most trusted figures in the United States. Significantly, Ake incorporates a clip of the newsman’s voice into the arrangement, where Cronkite says, “Perhaps the ultimate lesson is that in a democracy, we the people are responsible for the actions of our leaders.”
Other notable tunes are also worth mentioning. On the stinging “The North,” Gress and Ake mesh into concentrated and cadenced accents while Alessi supplies supple and strengthened improvising. Monder also contributes fiery guitar excursions. Despite some illustrious solos, “The North” is a good example of how this quintet is a unit, not performers who try too hard to demonstrate specialized expertise. The lone cover is a marvelous version of the Grateful Dead’s “Ripple,” where Monder recalls Bill Frisell’s atmospheric ambiance and Alessi uses a muted trumpet. The group magically evokes Robert Hunter’s ephemeral lyrics, “Ripple in still water, when there is no pebble tossed, nor wind to blow.” David Ake’s Humanities can be enjoyed without a thematic context—the jazz is superb and superbly played—but understanding and being cognizant of the larger picture adds so much more.
TrackList:
Humanities
Hoofer
Groundwork
Ripple
You May Have Already Won
Drinking Song
The North
Stream
Resource Center
Narration
Rabble Rouser
Walter Cronkite
—Doug Simpson
The opening title cut and the second piece, “Hoofer,” encompass some of the set’s nicest and nuanced interaction. During the title track Alessi offers an emotional expression which in turn is followed by Ake’s aligned piano lines, while Ferber and Gress deliver nimble percussive elements. “Hoofer” has a slight quirkiness which showcases Ake’s ability to pen lightly off-kilter arrangements. During “Hoofer” Ake provides poignant, cycling chords and the rest of the group maintains a spirited characteristic and passion. Alessi’s solo is the highlight, which is accentuated by Ake’s terse chords and Ferber’s single sticks and feathery drum rolls. Along with the title track, there are others—“Groundwork,” “Resource Center” “Rabble Rouser” and “Walter Cronkite”—which emphasize the overall theme. The lengthy “Groundwork” is Monder’s showpiece. He presents a stimulating, nearly dissonant tone matched by the others, particularly Ferber’s animated rhythm and Alessi’s trumpet. “Groundwork” has many meanings but here it probably refers to how those in the humanities create root moments for critical thinking to push students to become analytical and diagnostic. As the composition implies, “Rabble Rouser” is inciteful, awakening and harkens toward jazz-rock via Ferber’s rolling percussion and drums, and Monder’s distortion-tinged electric guitar. “Resource Center” (named after a place where students can get specific instruction or academic assistance) is the opposite of “Groundwork.” Here, the quintet lays a foundation of gradation and mid-tempo consideration. The album-ending “Walter Cronkite” is a lithe musical sketch and tribute to the famed broadcast journalist who was deemed one of the most trusted figures in the United States. Significantly, Ake incorporates a clip of the newsman’s voice into the arrangement, where Cronkite says, “Perhaps the ultimate lesson is that in a democracy, we the people are responsible for the actions of our leaders.”