by Audiophile Audition | Dec 31, 2016 | DVD & Blu-ray Video Reviews
Last Of The Mississippi Jukes (2016)
An interesting historical blues documentary finally gets released on DVD.
Performers: Alvin Youngblood Hart; Bobby Rush; Chris Thomas King; Vasti Jackson; Patrice Moncell; Eddie Cotton; George Jackson; The King Edward Blues Band; The House Rockers; Abdul Rasheed; J.T. Watkins & Levon Lindsey; Dennis Fountain & Pat Brown; Lucille; Greg “Fingers” Taylor; Sam Carr; Anthony Sherrod; Jesse Robinson; David Hughes & Virgil Brawley; Steve Cheseborough; Casey Phillips & The Hounds
Studio: MVD Visual MVD7127D
Director: Robert Mugge
Audio: PCM Stereo 2.0, DTS 5.1
Video: for 16:9 screens, color and black & white
Chapters: Saturday Night, Sunday Morning; Ground Zero For Blues; Subway Swing; Last Call; Subway Blues: End Of The Line
Length: 86 minutes
Rating: Audio: ***1/2 Video: **** Overall: ****
Blues has been an integral part of the American culture since its inception. The legacy of racism and brutality can never be ignored or changed by revisionist history. But this deeply felt musical genre has permeated African America and the mainstream with significant impact. Elvis Presley, The Rolling Stones, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Led Zeppelin, Carl Perkins, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Duke Ellington and Count Basie all share this musical roots genesis. One of the birthplaces of the genre is the Mississippi Delta. Between the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers are small towns that produced some of the greatest music in the world. Names like Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters Elmore James, Lead Belly, Mose Allison, B.B. King and Mississippi Fred McDowell (to name but a few) are proud denizens of this community. A key element of this phenomenon was the local clubs or “juke joints” that provided the only outlets for these legendary performers.
Eleven years after its theatrical release, Last Of The Mississippi Jukes has been released on DVD. Against a backdrop of spirited blues performances, director Robert Mugges tells the story of blues, encapsulated by two clubs. Ground Zero (owned by Morgan Freeman) is located in Clarksdale, Mississippi. This is the town in which legend has it, Robert Johnson went to the crossroads at Highway 49 and “sold his soul” to the devil. The other venue, The Subway Lounge, is located in Jackson (where O Brother Where Art Thou was filmed) and was the greatest of the original jukes. Through some vintage black & white film snippets, the historical context of the blues is established, with references to Sunday riverside gospel and steel-body National guitars. Like the region, this music reflects the ability to overcome the hard economic realities and celebrate the spirit of inclusive music.
There are a myriad of feel-good performances. But Patrice Moncell steals the show on her pair of numbers. She tears into “Stormy Monday” with a first-rate house band. Later, she recounts a hysterical r&b-laced sexual encounter that brings the house down. In addition to stage performances, there are intimate “live” ones with the director. Among them is the incomparable Bobby Rush on harmonica and vocal. The real star of this documentary is the Subway Lounge. Its enduring relevance to the community is detailed with affection and reverence. When it is revealed that the “original juke” got torn down, it is a gut-wrenching blow to the viewer. The financial realities of costly upkeep and competition by gaming casinos are duly chronicled. This venue is as important as The Cotton Club, Carnegie Hall and The Fillmore.
The video quality of the film is good and suits the purposes of the film. There is a DTS 5.1 mix (that is not very dynamic)) and a stereo one to experience. Anyone interested in musical culture would be entertained by Last Of The Mississippi Jukes.
—Robbie Gerson
by Audiophile Audition | Dec 31, 2016 | Jazz CD Reviews
Atmospheric guitar duo music in the tradition of early Pat Metheny with string quartet adornment.
Stuart McCALLUM & Mike WALKER – The Space Between – Edition 1082, 49:11 (11/25/16) ***:
(Stuart McCallum – acoustic guitar & electronics/ Mike Walker – electric guitar; (string quartet on tracks 1, 3, 6 & 7) Laura Senior & Gemma South – violins/ Lucy Nolan – viola/ Peggy Nolan – cello)
When the ancient seer foretold a year of evils, he may have had 2016 in mind. Averting from the geopolitical stage to the music scene, we must face that it has been a time of testing. It is not a good sign when a city with dozens of first-rate musicians sees its only jazz club close (a decade ago Portland, Oregon had three fine jazz clubs). All the more do we welcome glad tidings from abroad and look to any positive developments there as a good omen. One such sign is the fruition of yet more great independent labels in Europe. One of the finest of these, Edition Records out of England, has made a positive impression on this site. This label specializes in conceptually-driven music which breathes fiery inspiration and artistic commitment. The most common reference points are chamber jazz with a Nordic vibe, but there is lots of experimentation on this label and a predilection for a funky good time.
On The Space Between, a guitar duo as well as a string quartet present mostly original music with some electronic effects. Stuart McCallum has written or arranged the tunes. His acoustic guitar stylings are unabashedly romantic and accessible. There is plenty of delicate finger-picking and buoyant strumming of open chords. On the memorable Yewfield we recognize the terrain immediately: it is Wichita, Kansas in 1980 – the world of Pat Metheny. Thirdless chords, ascending melodies, and diatonic optimism prevail. When his partner enters on electric guitar, there is further proof that this is a tribute to the great American guitarist. In fact, Mike Walker’s ideas have the same joyous virtuosity as Mr. Metheny. It is a demonstration of an ideal duo working in a non-original idiom to be sure, but doing it very well. There follows an arrangement of a Debussy string quartet, featuring finger-style acoustic guitar. Surprisingly the actual string quartet sits this one out. Debussy’s acidulous harmonies are sweetened up a bit, but enough of the intricacy of the original is left for us to puzzle over.
And Finally, which opens the set, begins with burbling electronics and then introduces a simple melody, again sounding more like Pat Metheny then anything Pat Metheny ever wrote. We meet the string quartet, which does little more than thicken the texture. There is the inevitable Metheny swelling chorus, the first instance of this kind of bombast I’ve heard on this label. It reminds me of the wide gap between the legendary guitarist’s nearly supernatural playing and his larger artistic ambitions. A gentle and meditative take on Bacarach’s Alfie shows off McCallum’s beautiful tone on his instrument and his ability to express the essence of the tune while treating the melody obliquely.
The string quartet earns its pay on two tracks starting with the title track Space Between, which meanders in a New-Age vein across some minor chords, the strings contributing to a soundtrack feel. Not much happens on this tune; everyone has arrived in heaven in shimmering white, but there is really nothing to talk about except for the nice clouds.
On As the Trees Waltz features Mike Walker on electric guitar. He has abandoned the Metheny licks and noodles simply with bended notes blending with lush ensemble work. The final tracks pare down to the duo. By now we have to accept the terms of the project; we give up waiting for harmonic tension or disruptions of any kind. This is the new-age wing of Editions and, as such, is probably as good as it gets. The adroit playing of both guitarists sets a high standard for this style even if it stays within a narrow expressive range and is derivative of a certain shaggy-haired guitarist from the land of Oz.
TrackList: And Finally; Alfie; Moment Us; Yewfield; String Quartet in g minor; The Space Between; All The Trees Waltz; My Ideal; Sky Dancer
—Fritz Balwit
by Audiophile Audition | Dec 31, 2016 | Classical Reissue Reviews
Marston Records bestows a glorious boon on those who revere the great American virtuoso, William Kapell.
William Kapell – Broadcasts and Concert Performances, 1944-1952 = BACH: Suite in a minor, BWV 818; Nun komm der Heiden Heiland (arr. Busoni); Concerto in a minor for Four Klaviers (after Vivaldi); BRAHMS: Intermezzo in A-flat, Op. 76, No. 3; CHASINS: Tricky Trumpet No. 6; CHOPIN: Nocturne in b-flat minor, Op. 9, No. 1; Sonata No. 3 in b: Largo – excerpt; Mazurka in f minor, Op. 63, No. 2; Mazurka in c-sharp minor, Op. 6, No. 2; DEBUSSY: Children’s Corner Suite; Suite bergamasque; La Soiree dans Granade; FALLA: Miller’s Dance; GRANADOS: The Maiden and the Nightingale; LISZT: Hungarian Rhapsody No. 11 in a minor; MENDELSSOHN: Song Without Words in f-sharp minor, Op. 67, No. 2; MOZART: Sonata in C Major, K. 330; Sonata in B-flat Major, K. 570; NAPOLITANO: El gato; PALMER: Toccata ostinato; RACHMANINOV: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43; SCHUBERT: 2 Laendler from D. 783; SCHUMANN: Romance in F-sharp Major, Op. 28, No. 2; Piano Quintet in E-flat Major, Op. 44; SHOSTAKOVICH: 3 Preludes from Op. 34; R. STRAUSS: Burleske in d minor – William Kapell, piano/ Rosalyn Tureck, Eugene List & Joseph Battista, pianos (Bach)/ The Fine Arts Quartet/ NBC Sym. Strings/Milton Katims (Bach)/ Pittsburgh Sym. Orch./ Fritz Reiner (R. Strauss)/ Philadelphia Orch./ Eugene Ormandy (Rachmaninov) – Marston 53021-2 (3 CDs) 71:44, 79:23, 73:38 [www.marstonrecords.com] *****:
William Kapell (1922-1953), the volatile and intellectually ambitious American piano virtuoso, provided the firepower for my first broadcast on KZSU-FM, featured as he was in the 1953 Brahms d minor Concerto with Dimitri Mitropoulos from New York. Kapell’s name, according to the blurb from Marston Records, “still resonates with pianophiles more than 60 years after his tragic death in an airplane crash near San Francisco.” Marston offers Kapell performances that have never been issued on CD: “more than two thirds of the set had been previously unpublished in any form.
Among the highlights are two 1952 half-hour studio broadcasts from New York’s WQXR that have only recently come to light.” The first CD proffers selections from Carnegie Hall recitals, 1945 and 1947, preserved tenuously on 78 rpm discs. The disc concludes with a 1949 performance of Richard Strauss’s Burleske from Pittsburgh (1 February 1948) under Reiner, a broadcast for which Kapell had one week to prepare the piece. The second CD contains two half-hour broadcasts from station WQXR, unearthed by researcher and collector Eugen Pollioni. The Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini from Philadelphia (28 October 1944) documents Kapell’s earliest recorded version of this brilliant work. Disc 3 combines recitals from Connecticut College, a 1947 program, “Music Hall of Fame,” and a 1950 broadcast from NBC of Bach’s transcription of a Vivaldi concerto for four violins. Lastly, from Northwestern University (21 November 1951), we have a wonderful collaboration on the Schumann Piano Quintet with the Fine Arts Quartet. While the annotator, Bradford Gowen, cites the Schumann as “our only recorded opportunity to hear [Kapell] in a larger chamber ensemble, he is not correct: a version of the Mozart Piano Quartet in E-flat, K. 493 exists from the 1953 Casals Festival at Prades (on M&A CD-1113).
The general condition of these documents proves more listenable than the RCA “Kapell Rediscovered” CD album that appeared several years ago. Still, in the midst of a dynamic and athletic Mozart Sonata in C (21 March 1947) at Carnegie Hall, some intrusive shatter occurs. The opening Bach Suite in a, happily, reveals in better sound preservation a sober and carefully-inflected performance, clear and tastefully delineated. Kapell left eighteen mazurkas of Chopin in the RCA vaults, and his f minor, Op. 63, No. 2 here in recital enjoys a startling intimacy and inflection. Posterity has lost Kapell’s complete f minor Brahms Sonata, but the little Intermezzo in A-flat has the music-box sweetness and drooping nostalgia we expect from Gieseking. From 28 February 1945 Carnegie Hall Kapell opens with the lustrous Nocturne No. 1 of Chopin, played for its subtle harmonic shifts and top singing line. The middle section becomes poetic and passionate in the Kapell manner, but he controls his colors warmly and articulately.
Much in the style of Artur Rubinstein – or Olga Samaroff – the Schumann Romance, spread over three staves, unfolds as a mystical love song, and it makes us yearn to know what middle Scriabin sonatas by Kapell might have sounded like. Soft, alluring, tolling bells announce Debussy’s 1903 “stamp,” his tone-picture La Soiree dans Granade, here a passionate night of love accompanied by guitars and redolent vapors. The Moorish harmonies add to the exotics of the moment. Wit and concentrated drama mark Kapell’s three Preludes from Op. 34 of Shostakovich, of which No. 10 in c-sharp minor captures a grudging nostalgia, rife with trills. The No. 5 in D, a brief but demonic toccata, knocks the audience out. From his 1946 South American tour, Kapell retrieved a folk item, El gato, an Argentine setting by Emilio Napolitano, a tricky hat-dance for a spirited feline. Robert Palmer (1915-2010) provides Kapell with a contemporary rhythmic knot in the brief but punishing Toccata Ostinato, set in groups of eighth-notes and accented, asymmetric rhythmic groups worthy of Bartok. Kapell openly felt discouraged about his 1948 Strauss Burleske and had suppressed any dissemination of the recording – it has been the Kapell children who prevailed in the issuance of this historic document. Nevertheless, in spite of Kapell’s self-criticism, there explode moments of splendid drama and lyric poetry, with excellent assistance from Fritz Reiner and his Pittsburgh tympanist.
The WQXR Saturday series extends a welcome to Kapell on 9 June 1952 for his program of Mozart, Granados, Schubert, and Chasins. The recorded sound delivers the Kapell sound we crave: the late Mozart Sonata No. 17 in B-flat (1798) has gorgeous tone, supple phrasing, and absolutely secure landings. The Mozart counterpoint evolves unsmudged, robust, and direct. The brisk runs display a finesse and exactitude that untold hours of hard work produce. The E-flat second movement Adagio enjoys a resonant sonority, crystalline and supple, sober but warmly intimate. The final Allegretto, conceived in leaps and bold color display, receives a pert, acerbic energy from Kapell, witty as it is wise. The large Granados portrait form his Goyescas at first seems academic more than romantically sensuous, but harmonization and personal rubato soon supply the missing erotics. Those bird trills! Two Schubert laendler follow, in A-flat minor and major, and their Viennese lilt and shaded delicacy need nothing more from Lili Kraus or Alfred Brendel. The quirky Tricky Trumpet by Abram Chasins (from Piano Playtime for young pianists) casts a jazzy nonchalance that resonates with Gershwin and Americana. Kapell then begins the broad and arioso Largo from the Chopin Third Sonata, but announcer-actor Joseph Campanella cuts it short with closing remarks after 45 measures.
Debussy and Liszt occupy the June 16 appearance at WQXR, his third recital. The Children’s Corner Suite presents an immediacy of effect quite ravishing in the even character of the scales of Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum, a smooth continuity and erotic balance we would not hear again until Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli. “Jimbo’s Lullaby” and “Serenade for the Doll” reveal that Kapell already knew and preserved the delights of childhood. Pure, swirling magic and tiny bells ring in “The Snow is Dancing,” with its moments of plainchant embedded in the winter wonderland. Kapell seems to ally “The Little Shepherd” with moments from the “Footsteps in the Snow” prelude: perhaps they complement each other in companionship and loneliness. Finally, shades of Tristan appear in the course of the suave, sophisticated, music-hall “Golliwog’s Cakewalk,” strutted with acerbic accents and thumping feet. It was Kapell’s commercial record of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 11 that first made me a “believer.” Here, in the first of two performances at WQXR, Kapell realizes the faster of his tempos, profuse in the Kapell grand style, with liquid runs and lofty rhetorical figures and turns. The swagger and inflected control soon become electric, and we simply allow ourselves to be swept away. In his eight-minute interview, an ailing – with a cold – Kapell sees good opportunities for talented performers in the number of recording companies – particularly Decca – that meet high standards.
The word “unknown,” for Kapell, is becoming obsolete as radio and recording media make talented people’s names more available. When asked about significant musicians, Kapell names Schnabel, Landowska, and Koussevitzky. The Rachmaninov Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (28 October 1944) with Ormandy celebrates a piece Kapell found “remarkably simple to play,” which makes us awe his sheer dexterity and stamina, not to mention his self-assurance. But when we hear the supple fluency of his interpretation, we must bow to his thorough ease of execution and poetic utterance. How dire do the chords of the Dies Irae sound, knowing as we do the tragic fate that consumed dear William Kapell.
Bach’s chorale, Nun komm der Heiden Heiland BWV 659, opens Disc 3, the recital from New London, CT (17 October 1951), and we hear it in the same spirit as listening to Lipatti’s chorale prelude in Besancon, 1950. Bach’s influence carries into the opening “Prelude” from Debussy’s Suite bergamasque, limpid and suavely nostalgic. The last page flares with the rampant energy that Kapell has artistically suppressed until that point. The “Minuet” and the “Passepied” dance in kindly, generously lucent figures. “Clair de Lune” truly grants us a rarity in Kapell’s idiosyncratic, color mysticism. The coughs from the audience seem to juxtapose mortality and eternity in a single moment. Another, slightly more expansive, meteoric Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody No. 11 ensues, followed – after brief Chopin – by Spanish resolute fire from Manuel de Falla, whereby comparison to Artur Rubinstein appear spontaneously. So, too, the Artur Rubinstein – whose glorious tone Kapell always acknowledged – analogy invests Kapell’s Chopin Mazurka in c-sharp minor, national in color, impish and rife with tesknota (bitter-sweet nostalgia), at once. We then return to 1947, for the transcribed radio program, “The Music Hall of Fame,” wherein the announcer introduces Kapell’s rendition of the “Allegretto” from the Mozart Sonata in C. Kapell recounts two amusing incidents, one from Buenos Aires, the other in Huntsville, Alabama. The latter involves a Bach fugue whose 12 entries of the subject found accompaniment by Kapell’s sneezes from hay fever. The charming Song Without Words dispels any thoughts of human finitude. On 20 May 1950, NBC arranged a memorial broadcast for Olga Samaroff and the Olga Samaroff Foundation, at which four distinguished pupils perform the Bach arrangement of Vivaldi’s Concerto for 4 Violins, RV 580. The homogeneous keyboards never reveal Kapell’s individuality, but the event remains incandescently unique on all levels. Lastly, we have restored to us from Chicago, 21 November 1951 the Northwestern University Chamber Music Concert featuring Schumann’s masterly Piano Quintet. Commentator Gowen notes that Kapell had performed the work earlier in the year with the Budapest String Quartet. Further praise of Kapell seems to me redundant, so attend as well to the finely honed evocations from cellist George Sopkin in the course of a marvelous ensemble.
A personal note: my review for Audiophile Audition of the “Kapell Rediscovered” RCA set earned from Anna Lou Dehavenon, Kapell’s widow, an invitation to visit her at her New York City apartment. We discussed Kapell and his legacy, aspects of my review, and we enjoyed tea and cookies. Kapell had already died tragically well before I discovered him via his epic Khachaturian Concerto recorded with Serge Koussevitzky in Boston. That this current set result from combined efforts of Donald Manildi, Ward Marston, Gregor Benko, Jon Samuels, Seth Winner, J. Richard Harris and others testifies to the devotion Kapell’s art still inspires. The booklet design, with several rare pictures of Kapell, reinforces his image as the James Dean of the classical music world.
—Gary Lemco
by Audiophile Audition | Dec 31, 2016 | Classical Reissue Reviews
Piano virtuoso Nadia Reisenberg’s “personal elation” in making chamber music with gifted friends and colleagues.
Nadia Reisenberg – Live Chamber Recitals and Home Solo Performances = WEBER: Grand Duo Concertante, Op. 48; MOZART: Piano Trio in E-flat Major, K. 498 “Kegelstatt”; BEETHOVEN: Piano Trio in B-flat Major, Op. 11 “Gassenhauer”; Piano Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 16; MOZART: Pastorale Variee; LISZT: Spanish Rhapsody; DVORAK: Piano Quintet in A Major, Op. 81; GLAZUNOV: Valse Allegretto in D, Op. 42, No. 3; CHOPIN: Waltz in A-flat Major, Op. 42; Nocturne No. 20 in c-sharp minor, Op. Posth. – David Glazer, clarinet/ The Galimir String Q. (Dvorak)/ Members of the Budapest String Q. (Beethoven Op. 16)/ David Glazer, clar./ David Soyer, cello (Mozart, Beethoven, Op. 11)/ Nadia Reisenberg, p. – Romeo 7318/19 (2 CDs) 78:20, 74:50 [Distr. by Albany] ****:
Despite having virtually “retired” from the active concert stage in 1947 in order to fulfill her teaching duties and her parenting role, Nadia Reisenberg (1904-1983) once more commands our attention in a series of chamber (and solo) works organized by her son, producer and commentator Robert Sherman. With the help of archivist Donald Manildi and engineer Seth Winner, these concerts receive a new and often vivid presence, a marvelous addendum to the Reisenberg recorded legacy which, for my money, has always warranted expansion. I have a few personal stakes in this production beyond my merely reviewing it: I used to serve with Bob Sherman at WQXR-FM as a much-invited guest on “First Hearing’; I was a student at SUNY Binghamton while David Soyer and the Guarneri String Quartet enjoyed their residence there; and I had the major good fortune to be Budapest Quartet’s second violin Sascha Schneider’s breakfast guest in New York after having reviewed his concert (as conductor) of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.
As Robert Sherman explains, the recorded performance of Weber’s 1816 Grand Duo “replaces” an aborted – meaning the loss of the finished master copies – Columbia Records project that had evolved after the success of the Brahms E-flat Major Clarinet Sonata with Benny Goodman. The performance from Mannes College (8 May 1963) demonstrates the natural virtuosity of both principals, Glazer and Reisenberg; and intentionally so, since Weber conceived the piano part for his own hands, which could encompass huge spans. A kind of “loyal opposition” marks a great deal of the writing, dialogues between equals. The lyricism of the Andante con moto reveals Reisenberg’s own enthusiasm for the proposed recording, and the brisk interchanges and cascading runs that comprise the Rondo: allegro finale testify to a natural – perhaps elective – affinity for these artists to a bravura piece to which they can full justice.
Cellist David Soyer joins Glazer and Reisenberg for Mozart’s 1786 “Kegelstatt” Trio, again from the same Mannes College concert. Mozart’s fondness for clarinet virtuoso Anton Stadler motivated his generous creativity in the repertory, and the athletic Menuetto movement celebrates Mozart’s affection for the instrument, which he first heard in 1764 London. If Soyer only occasionally has an opportunity to shine in the opening Andante, he comes to the fore with his triplet motions in the second movement. The fluid playing of the last movement covers the fact that Mozart conceived a seven-part rondo in which the Glazer’s fluid tone and Reisenberg’s suave runs proffer an art that conceals art. The microphone placement, somewhat distant in Soyer’s part, still exhibits an elegant and briskly effective series of entries. We return to Mannes College on 8 December 1963 for a run-through realization of Beethoven’s Op. 11 Trio in B-flat Major, the so-called “Gassenhauer,” since its last movement melody derives from Weigl’s opera The Corsair and its famous “Street Song.” Beethoven will proffer nine variations on this popular tune in his Tema con variazione.
All three principals reveal their top-notch expertise in this jaunty work from the outset. The Allegro con brio no less asserts Beethoven’s harmonic audacity in the first movement, with his key change for the secondary theme. The Adagio permits Soyer his moments in the sun with the highly expressive tune with which the music opens. Glazer, of course, offers a melting version of the same tune, and the harmonization by all three plays we call magic. In the variation movement, Beethoven alternately major and minor versions of the theme, but at No. 6 he also uses imitation between Reisenberg’s hands and the two other instruments. The virtuosic trills and dancing allegretto at the last two episodes assert the kind of pianist Reisenberg will soon offer (on this disc) in her solo entries.
The first of the “home” recordings of 1951, made on a much-touted 1940s Brush Soundmirror reel-tape machine, begins with the apocryphal Pastorale Variee attributed to Mozart as K. 209B by Koechel. Reisenberg approaches this galant jewel with delicate clarity and aristocratic grace, Reisenberg calling cards. The sundry ornaments – especially lavish trills – and rhetorical flourishes come off as an instrumental piece of coloratura vocal music. The Liszt Spanish Rhapsody on “La Folia,” however, catapults us into another dimension, one occupied by the titans of Romantic keyboard gestures: Horowitz, Hofmann, Bachauer, Berman, and Cziffra. This kind of bravura lies only steps away from the more colossal of the Transcendental Etudes, and Reisenberg climbs this Matterhorn with one deep breath of oxygen. On the other hand, no less authoritative, come Glazunov’s lilting waltz from his “Three Miniatures,” Op. 42, the brilliant, wickedly knotty 2/4 Waltz in A-flat Major, Op. 42 of Chopin, and Chopin’s posthumous c-sharp minor Nocturne in a performance that rivals my personal favorite by Maryla Jonas in both its intimacy and its suave allusions to the f minor Concerto.
The two remaining large ensemble piece involve a number of illustrious names in chamber music, including Jac Gorodetsky, Boris Kroyt, and Mischsa Schneider from the Budapest Quartet and the Galimir Quartet (1929-1993). The Beethoven E-flat Piano Quartet, Op. 16 (16 November 1952) comes from a radio broadcast from WNYC. Everything about this performance glows with an open and intimate affection: the long Grave introduction soon transitions via Reisenberg in to a spirited Allegro ma non troppo, often symphonic in expression. The Andante cantabile offers us a rondo in variations, in which Boris Kroyt’s viola speaks especial warmth, as does Schneider’s cello. The last movement, sprightly rondo in 6/8 whose theme resembles the finale from Mozart’s Concerto in E-flat, K. 482, embellishes a kind of hunting motif that gains swagger and rarified energy from these participants.
The piece de resistance, for me, lies in the Mannes College Concert from 23 November 1980, when Reisenberg and the Galimir Quartet perform Dvorak’s lustrous Piano Quintet in A. The recording – made in stereo – captures an intensity and fluency of execution that will rival the best performances of the period and even before, such as those by Firkusny, Balsam, and Curzon, with their respective collaborative ensembles. The Curzon – with the Budapest Quartet, coincidentally – most resembles the musical decisions made by the seventy-six-year-old Reisenberg and her colleagues. While the first two movements sent me into raptures – Timothy eddy’s cello alone warrants the price of admission – the Furiant gave me chills, especially in the transparency of the Trio section. Then, before going on to the blazing Finale: Allegro, I thought about how much I had savored their rendition of the Dumka second movement, especially when the tempo becomes accelerated. So, I repeated it prior to forwarding to the last movement.
Finally, my sincere thanks to producer Ron Mannarino for his commitment to these Reisenberg restoration projects, thus giving us a pianist whose stylistic universality will now remain available to generations of musically-inquiring minds and hearts.
—Gary Lemco
by Audiophile Audition | Dec 31, 2016 | DVD & Blu-ray Video Reviews
Still Philip Glass’ most important work in a stunning production!
PHILIP GLASS & ROBERT WILSON: Einstein on the Beach, Blu-ray (2016)
Production: Chatelet Theatre, Paris
Performers: The Philip Glass Ensemble/The Lucinda Childs Dance Company/Antoine Silverman, Helga Davis, Kate Moran/Michael Reisman (cond.)
Robert Wilson (stage director)/ Don Kent (screen director)
Studio: Opus Arte (2 discs) [10/28/16] (Distr. by Naxos)
Video: 1.33:1 (4:3) color
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 5.1, PCM Stereo
Length: 263 min.
Ratings: Audio: ***1/2 Video: ****
Like it or not, Einstein on the Beach remains Philip Glass’ most defining work. It is what gave him a large amount of name recognition and – at the time – ‘word on the street.’ I first became aware of Einstein in 1976, mainly by reading new music journals. I quickly bought the vinyl set of the original cast recording on the now defunct art label, Tomato Records, which I still have to this day.
Einstein on the Beach is the work that paved the way for Glass’ work going beyond the small and somewhat sparsely attended concerts of his ensemble (of which I attended several) to his film scores such as the still powerful Koyaanisqatsi and the more “true” opera, Satygraha. It is not really fair for a listener to think of Einstein in particular as an ‘opera’ in the conventional sense. It is a series of visual tableaux, separated by what Glass called “knee plays” that depict in a very symbolic sense aspects of Albert Einstein’s work, his theories, his philosophies and even his violin playing pastime. There is no narrative and, therefore, no libretto as such.
It is also not correct at all to think of Einstein on the Beach as solely a Philip Glass work. In fact, it simply cannot be appreciated by listening just to Glass’ hypnotic, swirling, pervasive and very ‘minimalist’ score (stunning to those like me; perhaps tedious to others) without the visual component of this work; this production in particular. This opus is as much a monumental masterpiece by the visionary and minimal stage designer Robert Wilson; whose work I have seen and been transfixed by several times. It is also an absolutely virtuosic piece of dance – it is a “dance opera” really – by Lucinda Childs and her amazing dancers.
I had the very good fortune of seeing this same production by the Los Angeles Opera in 2012 and it was performed as Glass and Wilson intended – four and a half hours straight through. Audiences were allowed, not encouraged, to take breaks and wander in and out but the hard core (of which I am one, I admit) stayed admiring the sound, the sight, the virtuosity and the spectacle.
This video is of the highest quality. The sound is just a bit reserved in places, especially some of the ‘stream of consciousness’ monologue; taken in part by Robert Wilson from the interviews and sessions he had with an impaired student, Christopher Knowles. The video is brilliantly clear and even Wilson’s characteristic monochromatic hues of blue seem vibrant. I think maybe it helps to know Glass’ music well enough to realize what a technically difficult score this is. Huge kudos to violin soloist/Einstein Antoine Silverman and to the chorus members who handle the long, repeated and punctuated syllabications of Glass’ music with amazing skill.
If you already know and love Einstein on the Beach this is simply a ‘must have,’ If you have never heard it or heard of it before, be adventurous and open-minded. Try it. It might make you a lover of Philip Glass and Robert Wilson’s artistry as it did me forty years ago.
—Daniel Coombs
by Audiophile Audition | Dec 30, 2016 | Audio News
The 2016 Year in Classical Music – Two of the most influential musicians of both centuries took their final curtain calls during 2016: Pierre Boulez (who blew minds in conservative classical music with his compositions) and Nikolaus Harnoncourt, the Austrian cellist, conductor, music researcher and founder of historic performance practice. Also deceased was Peter Maxwell Davies, Master of the Queen’s Music at the British court and composer of symphonies, concertos, operas, ballet and film music. South African tenor Johan Botha also died, a celebrated singer of Wagnerian roles. Terrorist and other attacks in other Bavarian cities affected the 2016 Bayreuth Festival. German conductor Hartmut Haenchen stepped in with little rehearsal time and was well received, but the same didn’t go for the new stage director Uwe Eric Laufenberg. The Salzburg Festival had a varied program, including works by Thomas Ades and Friedrich Cerha. The Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival revolved around the central theme of Joseph Haydn. Next year it will be Maurice Ravel. At Bonn’s Beethovenfest, director Nike Wagner present a program with the theme “Revolutions.”
A number of prizes were handed out: Greek-Russian conductor Teodor Currentzis got one, as did Cecila Bartoli and German conductor Thomas Hengelbrock. Turkish pianist/composer Fazil Say got the Beethoven Prize for Human Rights, Peace, Freedom, and Combating Poverty and Inclusion. The Leonard Bernstein Prize went to German-French horn player Felix Klieser. The Echo Klassik 2016 ward with to both the National Youth Orchestra of Germany its conductor, Alexander Shelley, plus rock singer Campino. Austrian pianist Alfred Brendel also won for his lifetime achievement.
Expert Reviews Recommends Wired Rather than Bluetooth Speakers – And on their Best Buy list are Google Chromecast, Epson’s Workforce WiFi, the Apple Watch, Dr. Dre Beats headphones, all the Amazon Kindles, the Dyson V6 Animal Cord, the Tap Alexa and the Nest Learning thermostat.
Many Changes in Video Surveillance Coming in 20177 – Role surveillance cameras, which have come down in price lately, have played major roles in distributed denial of service attacks. Trends such as lower cost of hardware, bandwidth optimization and improved resolution seem to show that improvements in video surveillance systems will be driven by software. The market is getting closer to full IP. Moving more data and computing to the cloud enables organizations to transfer a big piece of their cybersecurity risk to films with global teams dedicated to maintaining data security. Cyber vulnerabilities have become one of the major concerns of the industry. One expert says the best way to get an overview of the cybersecurity situations is to read the free Microsoft Security Intelligence Report which is issued twice yearly.
by Audiophile Audition | Dec 29, 2016 | SACD & Other Hi-Res Reviews
Amazing fidelity in this 45 rpm vinyl, though perhaps not the best performance.
HECTOR BERLIOZ: Symphonie fantastique – Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra/ Daniele Gatti – RCO/ Avotros 45 RPM vinyl (2 discs) ****1/2:
Gatti is the seventh conductor of the famed Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amserdam, and takes an unconventional version of the score which has astonished audience since its premiere in 1830. He has a sense of surprise and freshness based on the thorough knowledge of Berlioz’ score, and the joy of making music with the RCO member players who choose Gatti as their new chief conductor. This a masterful job of remastering at 45 rpm.
Unfortunately, the performance – while excellent – doesn’t seem to find anything new in this extraordinary work of Berlioz. It is also available on a fine RCO multichannel SACD (which I have not heard) but using the pseudo-surround feature on most preamps creates an absolutely enveloping music in surround effect with this magnificent 45 rpm remastering. One writer compared the SACD sonics to the SACDs of the ten Mahler Symphonies released a few years ago by the Concertgebouw. The warmth and ambiance of the acoustically-perfect concert hall come thru either way. You would have to have a really good turntable system to appreciate the value of this expensive vinyl set.
This is also offered on a DVD but the audio-only version – whether on SACD or vinyl – is to be preferred.
—John Sunier
by Audiophile Audition | Dec 29, 2016 | Classical CD Reviews
Just sit back and enjoy this wonderful ensemble and learn something.
“Hawniyaz” – Kayhan Kalhour, kamancheh/Aynur, chant/Cemil Qoçgirî, tenbûr/Salman Gambarov, p. – Harmonia mundi, 57:31 [Distr. by PIAS] (8/12/16), ***1/2:
Upon first seeing this album I honestly had no idea what I was in for. I have heard very little of contemporary classical music come out of the Middle East (an example of which this is not) and I have a rather limited appreciation for traditional ethnic music from any culture (an example of which this is not.) So the great surprise here is that this album is almost indescribable and quite good. It is sort of an ‘easy listening/world music/ethnic jazz’ experience and makes for very interesting and relaxing listening.
The first thing I had to learn was what these instruments are that this amazing ensemble uses. Thanks to very good booklet notes, I learned that a kamancheh is a “spike fiddle” played with a bow and/or plucking and strumming and is indigenous to fifteenth century Iran and is played to this day throughout Armenia, Azerbaijan and the larger region. A tenbûr is a kind of long-necked lute also originally from the Kurdish territories and still played much of eastern Turkey and Iran.
The album title, “Hawniyaz”, is also the name of this ensemble which is rounded out with pianist Salman Gambarov; who plays some very softly jazzy chords and improv moments against the more traditional whole, and by the singer Aynur, possessed with both good looks and a lovely voice.
There are but five rather extended cuts to this album, each of which seems to be almost an improv session around some traditional material. The music is attractive throughout and what kept me connected, for my tastes, was that each song, with titles such as “My Beauty” and “Ehmedo – I’m desperate”, hardly gets ‘too’ fast and rhythmic nor ‘too’ loud and invasive. While the moods seem to run from sad and plaintive to reflective and introspective, the overall feel is relaxed and quite beautiful throughout.
If you are like me and would not ordinarily gravitate to the straight-up “world music” bin this is a completely pleasant surprise. Hawniyaz, in Kurdish, apparently means something like “Everybody needs everybody, each of us is there for there for the other.” Their music certainly cuts across all listening preferences to somewhat symbolize this sentiment. Recommended!
—Daniel Coombs
by Audiophile Audition | Dec 29, 2016 | Classical CD Reviews
A fine tour of American choral music on 3 CDs.
American Psalmody of the 20th Century – Gloriae Dei Cantore/Richard K. Pugsley – Paraclete Recordings 8999 (3 CD set) TT: 3:11:00 (7/20/16) ****:
This new recording from Paraclete is a pretty complete tour of American Choral music based on Psalms from the Bible. The collection features 20th century music, and 23 of the works contained in this 3 CD set have never been recorded previously, making this set quite a musical treasure.
The composers represented include Charles Loeffler, Virgil Thomson, Kent Newbury, Samuel Adler, Charles Ives, Alan Hovhaness and more. The performances are by the Gloriae Dei Cantores, an internationally recognized choir with more than forty members who range in age from seventeen to seventy. This massive collection is conducted by Richard Pugsley. There are also instrumental contributions from brass instruments, a piano and the great organ at Methuen Memorial music Hall at Metheun, MA.
The collection is so large you’re not likely to get through all 3 CDs in one sitting, but wherever you dive in I think you’ll be pleased with the level of musicality. Taken together, the collection is moving and they are well performed. It was a thrill to hear works that have never been available, such as the Hovhaness Make A Joyful Noise and Virgil Thompson’s Three Antiphonal Psalms. There’s also a previously unheard work from Ned Rorem, Two Psalms and a Proverb.
Sound-wise, this is a fine rendering of these compositions, although I would have loved to listen in high resolution, especially since this label does offer some of its albums in the SACD format.
Because the selection is so large and varied, I’m including a complete track list. This is a really worthwhile collection of 20th Century religious music and is highly recommended!
TrackList:
1.Psalm of Dedication “Shout unto the Lord” by Samuel Adler
2.Psalm 90 “Lord, thou hast been” by Charles Ives
Written: 1894-1924; USA
3.Make a Joyful Noise, Op. 105 by Alan Hovhaness
4.Thou hast loved righteousness by Daniel Pinkham
5.Behold, how good and how pleasant by Daniel Pinkham
6.Thou has turned my Laments into dancing by Daniel Pinkham
7.Open to me the gates of Righteousness by Daniel Pinkham
8.O Lord, Thou Hast Searched Me and Known Me by Ronald A. Nelson
9.Psalms (2) of Woe and Joy by Robert Starer
10.How Excellent Thy Name, Op. 41 by Howard Hanson
11.The Lord is my shepherd by Randall Thompson
12.By the Rivers of Babylon by Charles Martin Loeffler
13.Antiphonal Psalms (3) by Virgil Thomson
14.De profundis by Virgil Thomson
15.De profundis, Op. 50b by Arnold Schoenberg
16.Sing to the Lord a New Song by Clifford Taylor
17.The eyes of all wait upon thee by Jean Berger
18.Psalm 150 by Kent A. Newbury
19.My song shall be alway of the loving-kindness of the Lord by Gerald Near
20.A Psalm Trilogy by Gerald Near
21.Hallelujah! Sing to the Lord a new song by Bruce Neswick
22.Give Thanks Unto the Lord by Robert Starer
23.Cantate Domino by David Ashley White
24.The God of Love my Shepard Is by Conrad Susa
25.Psalm 100 “Make a joyful noise” by Charles Ives
26.Psalms (2) and a Proverb by Ned Rorem Period: 20th Century
27.Make Haste, Op. 86 by Alan Hovhaness
28.The House of the Lord by Daniel Pinkham
29.Proverbs for a Son by Robert Starer
30.Psalm 23 by Samuel Adler
31.Cantate des proverbes, Op. 310 by Darius Milhaud
32.By the Waters of Babylon by Philip James
33.I will set his dominion in the sea by Bruce Neswick
—Mel Martin
by Audiophile Audition | Dec 29, 2016 | Jazz CD Reviews
Lee Konitz / Kenny Wheeler Quartet – Olden Times – Live At Birdland – Neuburg Double Moon DMCHR 71146, 78:31 ****:
Time has not diminished the astounding expressiveness of these two musical innovators.
(Lee Konitz – alto saxophone/ Kenny Wheeler – trumpet, Flugelhorn/ Frank Wunsch – piano; Gunnar Plümer – drums)
It would be futile to attempt to categorize the Lee Konitz / Kenny Wheeler Quartet re-release Olden Times. Both Konitz and Wheeler are unique players and have been associated with jazz categories as diverse as cool, post-bop, and avant-guarde. The music on this album probably fits all of these possibilities, and more.
The original release of Olden Times was originally in 2000, but for a variety of reasons never caught on with the listening public, disappeared without a trace, and rarely showed up in most discographies. This remastering has enhanced the listening experience and the music is filled with thought and vitality.
All of the tunes were written by the various band members, with Konitz and Wheeler carrying the bulk of the load. Konitz starts off the session with his own composition “Lennie’s” which begins abruptly with Konitz leaning into the number. Filled with long improvisation alto lines, it fits the inspiration of the tune, pianist Lennie Tristano. Wheeler then enters with several choruses of intense playing. The pianist is a German named Frank Wunsch who would not be well-known beyond the German border, but shows flashes of an interesting style. The piece closes out with a long section of stellar unison playing between Konitz and Wheeler.
Kenny Wheeler’s “Where Do We Go From Here?” is not a question, but rather a rapturous statement filled with insight not only from the front line but also pianist Wunsch, who is intensely centered. “Kind Folk” has a mystical quality that gives rise to some intriguing upper-register playing from Wheeler. The crafty Konitz ranges far and wide in an exploratory vein. Pianist Wunsch continues to astound with his thoughtful insight and makes one wonder why he never gained a wider audience.
The title track “Olden Times” is another Wheeler original on which he controls the composition in a solo effort that is a master class for the flugelhorn. His rumination bristles with creativity and exuberance. The final track of this session is “No Me” composed by the pianist Frank Wunsch, and was previously unreleased. The theme is established by some elaborate unison playing between Konitz and Wheeler, after which Konitz weaves his way through a thematic voyage. Wheeler is his usual proficient self and is energetically curious. Time has not diminished the astounding expressiveness of these two musical innovators.
TrackList: Lennie’s; Where Do We Go From Here; Kind Folk; Thingin’; On Mo; Olden Times; Aldebaran; Karys’s Trance; Bo So; No Me
—Pierre Giroux
by Audiophile Audition | Dec 29, 2016 | DVD & Blu-ray Video Reviews
A classic that has been seen by millions—now in your living room.
George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker, Blu-ray (2016)
TCHAIKOVSKY: The Nutcracker (Live from Lincoln Center)
Performers: The New York City Ballet
Director: Katherine E. Brown
Producer: John Goberman
Studio: C Major 738704 2016 [Distr. by Naxos]
Video: 16:9 HD Blu-ray
Audio: PCM Stereo 2.0, DTS-HD MA 5.0
Subtitles: Italian, German, English, French
No region code
Length: 100 min.
Extras: Behind the Stage (10 min.)
Rating: *****
Balanchine’s Nutcracker has been a staple for 64 years at the New York City Ballet. It’s seen by over 100,000 people annually, and countless versions of it have been given throughout the United States, popularizing the work in a way that Tchaikovsky could never imagine. It’s no secret as to why this particular vision of the piece has proved so enormously widespread—the fanciful delights of this rabidly gorgeous production, the inevitable deliberateness of the dance numbers that are perfectly executable yet still breathlessly entertaining, and the magical atmospherics add up to a production that is fully worthy of the accolades received over the years.
It’s about time we had this on Blu-ray, in stunning sound and superb color, with a bonus segment that takes us backstage into some of the intricacies of the production. This is from a December, 2011 performance that will warm your heart all through the year whenever you view it. This is about as good a Nutcracker you will find, and makes for an easy recommendation!
—Steven Ritter
by Audiophile Audition | Dec 28, 2016 | SACD & Other Hi-Res Reviews
A fascinating probe into one of the most brilliant minds ever to grace the earth.
“Ramon Llull – A time of conquests, dialogue, and disconsolations” = Hespérion XXI /La Capella Reial de Catalunya/ Jordi Savall — Alia Vox multichannel SACD AVSA9917, (2 discs) TT: 137:34 & book [Distr. by Harmonia mundi] ****:
Ramon Llull (1232-1316) was one smart dude—logician, philosopher, Third Order Franciscan, and author of the first major work of Catalan literature. He is also considered a martyr, having been stoned by an angry group of Muslims, and died the following year, though he has only been beatified to this point, in 1857 by Pope Pius IX.
Llull experienced a six-fold vision of Jesus Christ which led him to leave family and position for service to God and the Church. His greatest achievement was probably his Art, given lasting expression in The Ultimate General Art from 1305. His earnest desire was to produce a system that would facilitate the production of knowledge, always devoted to the principles of his faith, and which would give a common philosophical platform that the great monotheistic religions could agree on, thereby providing a stage for the conversion to Christianity.
He wrote no music, and therefore this SACD set presents music and improvisations of the time (and many of the pieces use Ramon’s texts), while interspersing readings of his work. In fact, that is my main criticism of the project, as there are a lot of narrations, none in English, which require attentive use of the texts in the as-always deluxe book that Savall provides. Recordings with a lot of narration bother and usually bore me, and though I admit that is a very personal observation, it is significant enough to alert a prospective buyer. The music is lively and profound as we find on almost all of Savall’s releases, and the storyline certainly interesting from an historical and purely linear perspective. Ramon’s tale is worthwhile and curiously pertinent to today’s world; whether you like hearing it read to you in a language you don’t understand versus a purely musical experience is something only you can decide.
—Steven Ritter
by Audiophile Audition | Dec 28, 2016 | SACD & Other Hi-Res Reviews
Beethoven as he was meant to be played.
BEETHOVEN: Violin Sonatas No. 1 in D, Opus 12:1; No. 5 in F, Opus 24, “Spring” – Arthur Grumiaux, violin/ Claudio Arrau, p. – Pentatone multichannel (4.0) SACD PTC 5186 235, 45:22 (8/26/16) [Distr. by Naxos] *****:
They don’t get much better than this—Beethoven violin sonatas, that is. Grumiaux is one of those special cases whose CDs I return to often. That meltingly creamy tone, whether in chamber music, Beethoven sonatas, or Bach Sonatas and Partitas, bends the will of the composer’s tonal suggestions, whatever they may have been, to the mind and technique of a very special performer. Indeed, Grumiaux’s sensitive touch graces any work of art that he saw fit to engage, and for those whom beauty of sound is something special, if not mandatory, this release will send you to the stars.
Alongside an equally dedicated and perspicacious partner like Claudio Arrau, it only gets better. Sometimes recordings that pair such talented and decidedly insightful performers like those here result in surly and surely misguided outcomes (one only needs to listen to the recording of the Beethoven Triple Concerto on EMI with Karajan, Rostropovich, and Richter to understand this), but here what we get is musicianship of the highest order.
The ten sonatas of Beethoven for piano and violin are not “late” works; they range from his late early to middle periods, but his innovations do continue what Mozart started in his later sonatas in terms of equality of instruments. From the very first sonata we are aware that the violin is announcing its presence as a leader of the activities, and this will continue on through the Opus 12 set. By the time we get to the eponymous “Spring” sonata (a title not given by the composer, though one is hard pressed to deny its intense relevance to the tone of the work), the integration is established and complete, a fully dichotomous and equal partnership.
Arrau and Grumiaux provide masterly interpretive finesse and brilliant emotion in a wonderful recording adorned by superb sound. Don’t miss it!
—Steven Ritter
by Audiophile Audition | Dec 28, 2016 | Classical CD Reviews
A terrific start to a new two-part series.
MONTEVERDI: Messa a Quattro voci et salmi of 1650 (Vol. 1); CAVALLI: Magnificat – The Sixteen/ Harry Christophers – Coro Cor 16142, 71:29 ****:
After Monteverdi’s death in 1643 at the age of 76, his publisher thought highly enough of some of his unpublished pieces to put them out in print. Though his two large collections of secular (Madrigali guerrieri et amorosi) and sacred (Selva morale et spiritual) music from the last five years of his life represent a major summing up of 30 years of work as the choirmaster of the Doge’s chapel at San Marco, this overflow of creative work that didn’t make it to the printed page is evidently as worthwhile and moving as anything he ever wrote.
The collection emanated from the composer’s own stock of manuscripts, and contain a variety of psalm settings, vespers, a litany, and a mass. You might notice that the very title of this collection is “mass”, and none is to be found on this disc; that’s because The Sixteen have committed to two discs from this collection, and the Mass will be available on Volume 2.
Many of these works include instrumental accompaniments, and some are purely choral. There are some fine works for three voices, and some for as many as seven. More than most Monteverdi collections, this one has a decidedly “chamber” feel to it, and the variety is striking, giving us a good indication as to how disparate the composer’s late works were, and his interest in many types of ensemble activity.
The Sixteen are marvelous as usual, and these radiant performances will confirm Monteverdi addicts (of which I am one) in their dedication to the art of one of the greatest composers ever, and surely solicit newcomers willing to take the plunge. The wonderful acoustics of St. Augustine’s Church in Kilburn, London, make the experience complete.
TrackList:
Cavalli: Magnificat
Monteverdi: Dixit [Dominus] Primo; Confitebor tibi Domine, SV194; Lauda Jerusalem a 3, SV202; Nisi Dominus I à 3 voci & duoi violini; Laudate pueri Primo à 5 concertato; Laetaniae della Beata Vergine a 6 voci; Beatus vir a 7, SV195
—Steven Ritter
by Audiophile Audition | Dec 27, 2016 | Classical CD Reviews
“The Clarinet in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries from Solo to Quartet” – Music of ERNESTO CAVALLINI, DOMENICO SCARLATTI & others – Stark Quartet – Tactus TC890001, 62:14 [Distr. by Naxos] (11/11/16) ***:
Very nice playing in this collection for the true enthusiast.
There is a decent amount of repertoire (well, pretty large actually) for clarinet ensembles. However, most of it lies in the transcriptions category or is to be found in the pre-twentieth century realm. The reasons for this are understandable in that many composers found the advances in clarinet making since the work of Klosé and Buffet quite intriguing. This, combined with the portability of these ensembles, often gave composers an attractive alternative to the standard string quartet sound or the very unique declamatory timbres of brass ensembles, so popular in the late Baroque.
This album goes to show that there are some very nice works from the mid-nineteenth century to be sure but also some examples from the early to mid-twentieth century. (The advent of the true virtuoso player and extended techniques playable on very advanced instruments has given rise to more concerti and solo rep than any ensembles like this the past fifty to seventy years, though.)
None the less, the present music and much like it remains a bit of a niche attraction for the true enthusiast. The composers represented here include the fairly well known Ernesto Cavallini and Domenico Scarlatti (in a keyboard transcription work) but also others that are truly obscure; Raffaele Gervasio, Valentino Bucchi, Henghel Gualdi, Giuseppe Gherardeshi, Guglielmo Cappetti and Bernardino Lanzi. All of these composers are Italian by heritage or have worked mainly in Italy.
As to the music, I confess I did not care too much for the solo clarinet works included, although the Concerto for Solo Clarinet by Bucchi had some interesting riffs. I greatly preferred the ensemble works, especially the Quartets by Cavallini and the charming Petite Suite by Lanzi.
The Stark Quartet (containing no one named Stark; nor any booklet information on this group, I am sorry to say) plays very well with a lovely ensemble sound. This may be one of those albums that appeals mostly to clarinet players in search of some good but largely unknown repertoire. For very fine performances though this offering does succeed.
—Daniel Coombs
by Audiophile Audition | Dec 27, 2016 | Classical Reissue Reviews
The Argerich legend continues in potent and sometimes manic performances from 1966.
Martha Argerich: Live Broadcasts, Vol. 5 – MOZART: Piano Concerto No. 20 in d minor, K. 466; BACH: Toccata in c minor, BWV 911; SCHUMANN: Fantasy in C Major, Op. 17; CHOPIN: 3 Mazurkas, Op. 59 – Martha Argerich, p./ Sym. Orch. of the North German Radio/ Reinhard Peters – Doremi DHR-8048, 78:27 (11/18/16) [www.doremi.com] ****:
The Doremi label continues to release previously unpublished sound documents from the volcanic performance career of Martha Argerich: here we have two 1966 concerts, from Hamburg and Milan, respectively. These interpretations testify to the then-twenty-five-year-old Argentinian’s fiery approach to her repertory, although the Schumann no less reveals the dangers of a temperament’s having become manic. The Mozart concerto (16 June 1966) displays Argerich at her best: she has a true sense of the Mozart style, attested to here and also in her collaboration with Eugen Jochum in the Concerto No. 18 in B-flat Major, K. 456 from Bavaria. Her fluidity and grace bespeak careful coaching from both Friedrich Gulda and Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, “classicists” in their own right.
I did not know conductor Reinhard Peters (1926-2008), who had a significant career in operatic performance, quite fitting in this work which alludes in emotional tenor to Don Giovanni. Peters manages the first movement sturm und drang aspects of this often demonic concerto with the resonance and explosive gusto that often contrast with the ingenuous simplicity of the keyboard line that consistently evades or defies the orchestral tissue. When the musical momentum increases, the sheer power of Argerich’s upward runs alone warrants a ticket price. The phrases and period landing remain clean, the articulation executed without sentimental distortion. The dialogue between oboe and bassoon increases the richness of the instrumental colloquy. If ‘romantic’ passion seems to have eluded this movement, the Argerich cadenza should compensate. The overlapping trills and suspended harmonies achieve a tension that conductor Peters releases with razor sharp accuracy.
The B-flat Major Romanza proceeds with a noble clarity and inner serenity, at least until the intense middle section, where Mozart’s passions and sense of mortality flare up. The last movement, like the first, assumes a mood of personal, spiritual agitation, and we recall the Beethoven supplied the cadenzas for this work that Mozart performed but allotted only his improvisation he left unwritten. The chromatic fever of the movement has a matched pair of participants, with Peters’ tremolos and stretti sounding the ‘bat out of Hell’ imagery. The turn of screw in this rondo-sonata movement comes in the form of the D Major modulation that dispels storms, stress, and the misery of the world. The bubbling of the Hamburg Radio Symphony woodwinds contributes no less to the glow of this miraculous music than does Argerich’s inspired, seamless playing.
The three solo works that complement the Mozart concert belong to a Milan recital of 14 March 1966. The Bach Toccata in c minor (c. 1710) derives from his encounter with Dieterich Buxtehude, whose improvisatory organ style Bach deeply admired. Bach’s first rush of notes covers three octaves, then assumes an air – in E Major – of religious contemplation. With the elongated fugue, Bach engages us in an epic, harmonic journey, one that introduces the main subject seventeen times. The result offers us a piece for hands and mind of extraordinary breadth and variegated colors. Argerich applies a variety of bravura touches in this piece in the course of a vital, flexible tempo, and many of the affects float in an especial aether. The passion of divine numbers informs her playing of the fugue, destined to return to the figures of the opening, to land heartily, even divinely, on low C.
Argerich approaches the monumental C Major Fantasie of Schumann with a tragic rigor and broad, poetic palette. Aware of how much of Clara Wieck – and the “unhappy summer of 1836” – infiltrates this music, Argerich deliberately nurtures an intimate, potently intense affect, especially in the first movement, with its allusions to Beethoven’s “distant beloved,” the rolling ninth chords, and avoidance of the home key, in the (anticipatory) manner of Wagner’s Tristan. The “legend,” as such evolves in intimate polyphony, becoming ever more thick in texture and chromatic harmony. The episodic character of the movement virtually defies one’s ability to maintain a common emotional thread throughout, but Argerich manages a fluid, tragic logic. The second movement, a massive, fiery march in punishing syncopations, spells danger for the most seasoned keyboard players: Clara (Wieck) Schumann confessed, “It makes me hot and cold all over.” A bit pesant, Argerich attacks the constant welter of dotted notes with a passion that means to incinerate the score. Argerich insists on perpetual speeding up, almost as if she were attending to Kreisleriana, until, inevitably, the leaping coda simply falls apart. Undeterred by finger slips and a slight memory lapse, Argerich proceeds to the poetic reverie of the last movement, with its homage to Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. Once more, Schumann lulls us into his patented ‘nostalgia for the dream.’ That the heroic dream has had its dark side should come as no surprise to initiates of the Davids-League. The audience applause suggests all has been forgiven.
Argerich concludes with the Three Mazurkas, Op. 59 of Chopin, from 1845. Like her mentors Michelangeli and Nikita Magaloff, Argerich contains the left hand elements in strict tempo under a fluctuating, resilient upper line. Then a minor Mazurka proves flirtatious and piquant, its chromatic lines in constant, mercurial flux. The moments of rubato scurry in between the notes, almost imperceptibly. The trills extend the line in fluid, operatic bel canto style. The A-flat Major conveys the character of a national dance and lament, simultaneously. Though relatively brief, the piece from Argerich reveals its harmony and metric density, concentrated into a paean for former glory. With resolute aplomb, Argerich delivers the f-sharp minor oberek, which playd in the manner of the second of the impromptus. Argerich takes its secondary period at a furious presto, then relents only slightly to convey the willful tragedy inherent in the explosive contours of this melancholy dance.
—Gary Lemco
by Audiophile Audition | Dec 27, 2016 | Jazz CD Reviews
A blend of passion and cerebral coolness…
Art Pepper & Warne Marsh – Unreleased Art: Volume 9 at Dante’s, April 26, 1974 – Widow’s Taste APM 16001 – 3 CDs 58:44, 60:03, 57:22 ****:
(Art Pepper – alto and soprano sax; Warne Marsh – tenor sax; Mark Levine- piano; John Heard – bass; Lew Malin – drums; Bill Mays – piano on “Cherokee”)
I’ve had the pleasure of listening to all nine volumes of previously unreleased live recordings of Art Pepper issued by his widow, Laurie Pepper under her own label. They cover the later years of Art’s career and display his urgency in sharing his vision even when he was in ill health and fully aware that he did not have long to live. If at all possible, Art’s playing became even more vibrant as he poured out his guts and love for the music that had sustained him when drugs and incarceration sapped his strength and well being.
The latest issue from Laurie documents a full evening at Dante’s, a jazz club in North Hollywood. Recorded in late April, 1974, from tapes of an unknown source, Art was sharing the stage with tenor saxist, Warne Marsh. Pepper had recorded with Warne back in the mid 60s but it appears that their paths did not cross often before this chance meeting, when Marsh was subbing for Jack Sheldon. Their styles would seem to not really mesh as Warne was out of the Lennie Tristano school of a cooler more cerebral sound than Pepper’s “hotter” blues based passionate playing. The liner notes make mention that there would be a meeting point between the two reed men, as both Lester Young and Charlie Parker influenced both musicians. When you have two jazz musicians of the stature of Pepper and Marsh, they have the innate ability to intuitively blend well. It is a testament to the skills of Warne Marsh, however, that he probably sacrificed more of his style/vision that evening to meet the steam roller of Pepper. Listening to the nearly three hours of music recorded that evening, Marsh certainly holds his own with Art, and often matches him in intensity (Art’s forte) chorus for chorus.
The vast majority of tunes (largely standards) exceed ten minutes and provide a chance for both gentlemen to stretch out and explore their creativity. They spar with each other, and it spurs on their improvisations to make these well known compositions “theirs” for the evening. They often mix a sweet and sour blend as Pepper brings a funky blues driven approach while Marsh, still swinging, goes in a profound, less blues based direction. Both can explore more “out” playing, and each seems up to the challenge to go where the other leads.
Based on my tastes, I thoroughly enjoyed the ballads a bit more than the off-to-the-races heaters. “What’s New” was like a contemplative walk between two soul mates as the horns play off each other. “Donna Lee” is hot bebop and Warne’s creative improvisation had Pepper on his “A” game when he sensed a challenge. Warne matched Pepper in the passion department which is a real accomplishment.
“Walkin” features Art on soprano sax, and he brings to mind a snake charmer with his keening tone. Warne’s tenor solo here is quite the opposite of the cool icy reputation of a Tristano influenced reed player. On “Lover Come Back” the saxes are like slot cars on the track in a mad sprint. “Good Bait” is another free for all, beginning loose and funky but opening boundaries as it progresses.
I will never tire of Art Pepper emoting on “Over the Rainbow.” I have heard it on most of the Unreleased Art issues and I am convinced that Art owns this classic tune. He pours out his heart each time, and this night Marsh is just as passionate. Incredible…
Other signature tracks include “Here’s that Rainy Day,” “Broadway,” and the mournful “Round Midnight,” where there is a bit of role reversal as Art explores the “bottom” of his alto while Warne takes on the upper range of the tenor. On an extended “Cherokee” Bill Mays sits in on piano and his three minute solo at the twelve minute mark is memorable.
The live recording has been digitized, edited, and mastered by Wayne Peet and it meets present acoustic standards well enough to highlight the strengths of all the musicians. The bass and drums are set back a bit but the piano skills of Mark Levine are on full display. It’s the two iconic sax men, however, whose chance meeting epitomize why we love this music so much. Thanks to Laurie Pepper for sharing the magic.
TrackList:
Disc 1: All the Things You Are, What’s New?, Donna Lee, Band Intros, Walkin’
Disc 2: Over the Rainbow, Lover Come Back to me, Good Bait, Here’s that Rainy Day, Rhythm -A-Ning
Disc 3: Broadway, Yardbird Suite, ‘Round Midnight, Cherokee, Closing Comments
—Jeff Krow
by Audiophile Audition | Dec 27, 2016 | Classical CD Reviews
Pianist-director Uchida instills both pomp and poetry into her latest survey of the Mozart concertos.
MOZART: Piano Concerto No. 17 in G Major, K. 453; Piano Concerto No. 25 in C Major, K. 503 – The Cleveland Orch./ Mitsuko Uchida, piano and cond. – Decca 483 0716, 67:23 (10/28/16) [Distr. by Universal] **** :
Piano virtuoso Mitsuko Uchida (b. 1948) has systematically been re-examining the Mozart selected-concerto cycle, a project she embarked upon years ago with conductor Jeffrey Tate and the English Chamber Orchestra. This present combination of the concertos in G Major and C Major completes her current project, the recordings made 11-13 February 2016 in live performance in Severance Hall, Cleveland. We have had excellent Mozart from Cleveland prior, under George Szell, with such distinguished soloists as Rudolf Serkin and Robert Casadesus. Auditors may find Uchida’s latest renditions somewhat precious and lacking in spontaneity, but the clarity and fluidity of ensemble remains undeniable. The two concertos, written for Mozart’s own use for a series of Vienna premieres between 1784-1786, gives us music which allowed Mozart to show off his keyboard virtuosity while he expanded his notion of concerto procedure, experimenting, for example, with the stile brise in the G Major Concerto and modal shifts in the huge C Major Concerto.
Uchida has a happily “singing” concept of Mozart’s keyboard style, and so the development section of the G Major Concerto first movement assumes a luxurious patina with the piano’s upward rocket figures and within the interplay with the Cleveland wind section. We often note how often Mozart favors wind ensemble textures for his piano concertos, with their concomitant chamber music textures. After just five bars in the Andante movement, Mozart breaks off the string sound so that the flute, oboe, and bassoon may indulge in an operatic trio. Here, the various “broken” melodic lines ask the piano to transition into the minor mode twice, before the piano has freer range to mount scalar passages that cover over two octaves. My own teacher, Jean Casadesus, held an exalted opinion of this movement, which he often quoted in his Piano Literature class. The wind trio dialogues with the keyboard late in the movement, ending with the piano’s trills and the suspended cadence for the intimate cadenza, the latter of which resembles several of the Mozart solo fantasies. The last movement, Allegretto – Finale: Presto, displays Mozart’s fertile imagination in variation form, often in the manner of opera buffa. Mozart writes out the repeats to add to the colossal dimension of his ironic wit, in which the bassoon has its share of the humor. Variation four descends into a haunted minor that hovers between Don Giovanni and the Masonic Funeral Music, only to be cast off rudely by an energized tutti. The extended coda emerges in the manner of Papageno/Papagena duet, all aflutter and in brilliant filigree, aided by clever wind figures. A series of false cadences permeates the close, as if Mozart were unwilling to part with such a clever, rambunctious child of his unique genius.
I owe my love for the 1786 Concerto No. 25 in C Major to Professor Waldbauer and his Form-and-Analysis class at SUNY Binghamton, in which he provided us a rubric for the piece, based on the aesthetic theory of affects: risoluto, espesssivo, dolce, and scherzando, each of which appears in exactly this sequence in the course of the epic first movement. Uchida softens the militant character of the opening theme, whose trumpets and drums soon yield to a tendency to declare c minor as the dominant mode of expression. The repeated four-note riff on G marks a new series of tunes that evolve – without the solo’s uttering the march theme in its own exposition. At moments, Uchida’s sonority plays alla musette, adding an especially delicate color to an otherwise majestic pageant and panoply of ideas. The strict polyphony that intertwines the several moods and contrasting emotions of the movement testifies to Mozart’s synoptic vision, that same capacity for a contrapuntal paradigm that dominates his Jupiter Symphony. The extensive discourse of the first movement has a tender reprieve in the Andante, with its penchant for long-held chords and pedal points, especially in the horns. The movement proceeds in the manner of an aria that soon becomes a timeless notturno for piano and various winds. The piano part from Uchida, too, comes in long notes that skip along two octaves. The processional element returns for the Allegretto, a pomposo gavotte that serves for a rondo with an uncanny middle section in F Major. Here, Uchida has the support of the Cleveland cello line. Uchida milks this sequence for its Romantic content, abetted in her intensity by the woodwinds, particularly oboe and flute. The transition to the main rondo tune comes fluently and without affectation, a royal excursion into the pomp and circumstance of an aristocratic temperament. Once more, Mozart’s capacity to make scales sing comes to the fore in the tutti, and the Everest of piano concertos ends with decisive energy.
—Gary Lemco
by Audiophile Audition | Dec 27, 2016 | Audio News
Alexa Control4 Home Automation Setup – Control4 is smart-home-as-a-service company which specializes in custom-installed connected entertainment setups. Fairly high end, the master receivers start at $600 and go as high as $2000, and to that must be added costs of your smart home gear. But it offers seamless, dealer-installed integration of all home AV needs, along with the lighting, climate and security gadgets. In one test, Alexa replaced a two-switch control setup for the gas fireplace with a single switch that controlled the lights, ceiling fans, fireplace, and even toggled pre-programmed scenes. It includes stuff that most people never thought of automating.
Epson Powerlite Home Cinema 3700 – at $1499, gives the wonderful feeling when the lights go down and movie starts in your home theater. It is the mid-level projector of three models in the Home Cinema line, and does not lack for brightness or sharpness. It also makes 3D look good, and can be easily connected to better speakers than those built into the unit. The image is very adjustable, and the projector need not be placed directly in line with the screen. It can project a 100” image just ten feet away from the screen.
Biggest Works of Bach Recreated in Minuties via A.I. – DeepBach is an AI employing an agnostic machine-learning approach to produce music that would intrigue Bach himself. It can “compose” Bach-style polyphonic choral music indistinguishable from the 18th-century counterparts. The Deep-Learning algorithm is trained using 400 chorale sheets of Bach’s original music. DeepBach quickly learned the style and rhythm of Bach. The user can then impose notes, rhythms or cadences in order to re-harmonize the melodies. But when it comes to creativity, the human still reigns superior. Machines do not have the high level of cognitive abiliy required to be creative, says a professor in machine learning at the University of Oxford. “Creativity is arguable the most difficult human faculty to automate.”
Sony’s SRS-FG1 Speaker Punches Above Its Weight for Size – It is just a small rectangular box that comes in five different colors, but it uses two 35mm drivers and a passive radiator for bass sound and sounds like a much larger speaker. Altho of course Bluetooth, it also has an audio-in stereo jack allowing for hi-res content to be streamed from a player or smartphone. it has a built-in S-Master HX digital amp delivering hi-res sounds and reducing noise level. There is also a circuit to upscale and restore compressed music files to a level close to hi-res audio. (Those things usually don’t work, however.) (About $260 U.S.)
by Audiophile Audition | Dec 26, 2016 | SACD & Other Hi-Res Reviews
An excellent performance of Ravel & Franck violin & piano sonatas, plus extras.
FRANCK: Sonata for violin & piano; Melancolie, Andantino quietoso Op. 6; RAVEL: Sonata for violin & piano No. 2; Tzigane – Kirill Troussov, v./ Alexandra Troussova, p. – MD&G Recital multichannel SACD 903 1984-6 (plus 2+2+2), 65:28 (Distr. by Naxos) [1/13/17] ****:
A really wonderful violin and piano recital in hi-res surround. Troussove has a lovely sound on his violin and the German Steinway of Troussova’s sounds (built in 1901) excellent in this hi-res recital. And Troussov plays a 1702 Stradivarius on which Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto of 1881 had been performed.
Troussova is the brother of Troussov, and both have performed thruout Europe at various concerts, and they have made many recording for the EMI Classics label.
Franck was most important to French music during his lifetime, and strugged to promote French music after the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1871. He was the organist at various churches in Paris until his death and during the last decade or so of his life concentrated on chamber music, of which his Sonata for Violin and Piano is an example.
Ravel intended his Violin Sonata in G major (1923-27) to highlight the contrast between the piano and the violin. It’s second movement shows the composer’s interest in jazz, especially with its title, Blues. This sonata is the last of Ravel’s chamber works.
—John Sunier
by Audiophile Audition | Dec 26, 2016 | Classical CD Reviews
Music that sounds both ancient and modern and beautiful throughout.
GAVIN BRYARS: The Fifth Century; Two Love Songs – Prism Quartet/The Crossing/Donald McNally – ECM New Series ECM2405, 50:58 [Distr. by Naxos] (11/18/16) 50:58 ****:
I have always found Gavin Bryars’ music to be beautiful, mysterious, unique; sometimes a bit disturbing – but always worth investigating.
Known for its often slow-paced and quiet kind of minimalist-inspired sound, his music continues this effect with The Fifth Century, a song cycle after the seventeenth-century English poet and theologian Thomas Traherne. The title is actually also the name of a treatise on the “essence of God” by Traherne.
While the texts are steeped with imagery of the infinite, of the heavens and of eternity, the real attention-getting aspect of this piece is Bryars’ rich, yet sparse, chord progressions and voicings and the beauty they produce. The other aspect of this score that cannot be appreciated until heard is the use of a saxophone quartet to accompany the otherwise a capella choir.
One would think that saxophone quartets in such a context would drown the vocals or be given some oddly out of place chordal progressions or exposed moments that sound very stereotypically “saxophone-like.” However, in Bryars’ vision, the saxophone quartet; in this case the very talented Prism Quartet, sounds nearly like an organ; at times like a string quartet. At nearly forty minutes this seven-movement work; all extracts from Traherne’s very heady writings, never gets dull. The beauty carries us right to the end. Additionally, this amazing work was written in memory of The Crossing’s singer and co-founder Jeff Dinsmore who died suddenly at the young age of forty-two. This Philadelphia based vocal ensemble produces a rich sound and with the requisite emotion throughout Bryars’ softly moving score.
The Two Love Songs, for female a capella choir (drawn from The Crossing) are short and lovely Sonnets by Petrarch. Bryars admits being attracted to Petrarch’s “scattered rhymes” organizational scheme and their somewhat madrigal-like quality. These are also simply beautiful little works that couple very well with The Fifth Century.
These works also serve to illustrate Gavin Bryars’ versatility and evolution as a composer. While The Fifth Century has as much emotionally in common with Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet or The Sinking of the Titanic; his style has developed so that the present works really do not sound much like the “early” Bryars – yet it all remains wonderful in my opinion.
—Daniel Coombs
by Audiophile Audition | Dec 26, 2016 | Jazz CD Reviews
Patrick ZIMMERLI – Shores Against Silence – Songlines 1619, 38:38 (11/4/16) ****:
(Patrick Zimmerli, tenor sax/ Kevin hays; p./ Larry Grenadier. bass/ Tom Rainey, drums, Satoshi Takeishi, percussion)
Previously unreleased quartet music from 1992 by heady classical/jazz composer Patrick Zimmerli.
Given the technical mastery and expressive range of tenor saxophonist Patrick Zimmerli, it is surprising that he is not better known among the jazz cognoscenti. Perhaps that is because, by choice, he has never had both feet inside jazz. In an interview with Evan Iverson, he explained how his childhood circumstances account for his unusual path in life. Patrick’s older brother was a child prodigy at the piano. When the younger sibling (by three years) was still romping around on his hobby-horse, the older was playing the Well-Tempered Clavier in the nursery. A few years later, instead of making mischief around the neighborhood, the boys studied the scores of the Beethoven Sonatas together. His brother having already claimed it, the piano was off-limits, but the young Pat took up the saxophone and soon learned to play by ear and to improvise, two bids for autonomy. As his passion in music took over, he dedicated himself to imitative mastery of the great players–Bird, Rollins, Coltrane, Brecker–a fairly typical progression in becoming a jazz adept. But his early exposure to classical music informed a predisposition towards composition and innovative design. A fruitful period at Columbia, immersed in the heady modernism of Milton Babbitt, Stockhausen and other musical radicals, broadened his musical horizons considerably. There followed inevitably a rapprochement between the local culture of improvised music and the heady world of the avant-garde as represented by academia.
In the New York of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, the downtown scene was starting to mark itself off from the ascendent mainstream (uptown) revival. Whereas the neo-conservative jazzers, young and old, played in a recognizably jazz idiom and affirmed continuity and legitimacy, the downtown musicians played hard music in small places for little money. It was a time of experimentation and cross-fertilization, but also of contentious debates about who authentically represented the jazz tradition.
It was into this scene that Patrick Zimmerli found his way. He encountered like-minded young players who were sympathetic to his project of fitting the content of jazz into the exacting forms of modern classical composition. It might seem a bit odd to some readers that it was in the area of rhythm that jazz might be informed by white academics with horned-rim glasses. Not that the enormous intricacies of mixed time and new-fangled notation were the missing ingredients needed to make this new music more popular. In fact, they would push it even further towards impenetrability for the mass audience. Indeed, Mr. Zimmerli found an ingenious way of combining the rigors of two kinds of hard music.
Still as a young musician, though, he did have an experience that was nothing if not legitimizing; He entered the Thelonious Monk Competition for jazz composition. His piece “Paws,” played by his own band, won first prize. Apparently, panel judge Herbie Hancock, eyes popped open pretty wide, pulled him aside and asked to see his score with a flattering “let me look at that.” Indeed, it is possible to see sketches of many of the composer’s pieces on-line, and they look forbidding. It is always a bit scary when a composer has to devise a new notation system.
So by the early ‘90s, Patrick Zimmerli had a head full of dense, knotty, highly formal compositional notions. He had scarcely any limitations to his technique. He had friends and collaborators from the downtown scene such as Kevin Hays, Brad Mehldau, Larry Grenadier, and Tom Rainey. He set in motion his plan to compose music for jazz ensemble. What we have in this recording under review is the first iteration of this classical/jazz crossover. As it happens, it was not released in 1992 and lay around for 25 years as a DAT tape while Zimmerli, always on the move artistically, went from one project to the next. It is a most curious time-capsule reissue of a composer and band working on an idea that hardly less strange in 2017 than it was in 1992.
The first track, “The Paw,” sets a jagged melody against a oddly or freely metered accompaniment. It sounds like a through-composed piece. Somehow it combines the feeling of free jazz with the austerity of a formal design. Tom Rainey busily works his drum against the reprise of a subject that lurches against a non-swinging and unstable meter. There is no lack of conviction in the group’s mastery of the intricacies of the composition. It is hard to credit that Mr. Hancock and the other judges saw this as a recognizably “jazz” composition, not to mention a prize-winner. “Three Dreams of Repose” follows with Satoshi Takeishi on percussion. It likewise seems through-composed and is immediately more compelling. There are elements of serialism in the melody, a subject Mr. Zimmerli studied seriously at Columbia. Again the rhythmic complexities prevail but are worked out in a spacious floating time in which a piano dialogues with the dice thrown whole notes of the sax, with a non-linear series of its own. The textures and effects from the drummers are entrancing. I would think that this piece nicely achieves the artistic goals of the project and sounds no less fresh for having languished for quarter of a century.
Suddenly with “Hephaestus,” we are back on familiar ground. It is a tempestuous and swinging piece; One is left doubting how much is improvised, but it certainly sounds like the music of today in its post-bop restlessness and assertiveness. The aptly named “Conceptualysis,” features more devilish counting, shifting meters, and melodic angularity. On the dime, the group collects itself into unison passages and then disperses, each to his own punitive meter tasks.
“Athena” continues the melodic unfriendliness, and we are for the first time not sorry to see that, at a mere 38:38, the time-capsule recording has almost delivered its entire message. While the bass of Larry Grenadier and the superbly-recorded drumming of Tom Rainey are impressive in managing the higher-order demands of the rhythmic concept, the piano of Kevin Hays and the sax of Mr. Zimmerli seem overcommitted to one single formal idea, and that not a particularly communicative one.
“Soft Blues” swings easily, and the melody unfolds in the most recognizable language of all, the blues. The band plays magnificently; the fattest quartet notes ever by Larry Grenadier and delightful blues stylings of Kevin Hays. There is nothing at all original here, but this is as good as it gets. What this piece shows is that Mr. Zimmerli and this band could have been the Uptown marquee jazz quartet back in 1992 if they had worked in this idiom. This piece represents the path not taken.
In fact, Zimmerli stayed true to his muse as a composer. His career, nicely outlined in the long interview with Iverson, sought completely original formulations for a music that is only limited by the descriptive labels we use. Finally, this release can be enjoyed without reference to questions of jazz history or style, at least by those who have somewhat stretched out ears and like a musical challenge. For those interested in what composers might aspire to in terms of expanding the jazz language, this recording has much to show.
TrackList: The Paw; Three Dreams of Repose; Hephaestus; Conceptualysis; Athena; Soft Blues;
—Fritz Balwit
