Rolling Classical 2019

IT'S CRAZY

Slowly but surely catching up with my 2019 list before making my way back to everyone's suggestions upthread… Today I've got:

1. Wilhelmina Smith, works for solo cello by Kaija Saariaho and Esa-Pekka Salonen. I still consider myself a Saariaho fan despite how underwhelming most of her postmillennial output has been. With the exception of Dreaming Chaconne (paraphrasing Giuseppe Colombi's baroque Chiacona, also included here), Smith draws on Saariaho's overtly spectral mid-period (Petals, Sept Papillons, Spins and Spells), which makes for ever-fascinating listening. Salonen, on the other hand, whom I generally appreciate as a conductor, has never impressed me as a composer and none of the pieces on display here strike me as memorable in any way, shape or form: structurally they're easier to keep up with than those of Saariaho, but their neo-classical clarity only serves to underscore how utterly bland and middle-of-the-road the writing is. Nor does setting them beside Saariaho's do Salonen any favours. Ultimately, while Smith is a persuasive musician, I see no reason to pick up this disc over Alexis Descharmes's complete recital or, better yet, Anssi Karttunen's performances, disseminated across several Saariaho monographs.

2. Filigree, chamber music by Hannah Lash, with the composer herself (a harpist) and the JACK Quartet. I got wind of this one because the latter are ever-reliable guides when it comes to contemporary classical. I should probably spend more time with it before dishing out an amateur verdict, but overall I found these pieces quite intriguing. The controlled awkwardness of Frayed, for string quartet, brings to mind John Cage's String Quartet in Four Parts, whereas the Suite (Remembered and Imagined), also for string quartet, is a somewhat eccentric pastiche of polystylism (a pastiche of pastiche?) that variously evokes baroque music, Ligeti, Berg, Shostakovich, Julian Anderson (with whom she studied), and (of course) a pinch of Schnittke, minus the hopeless chaos. Then we have a final work for the JACK Quartet, Pulse-Space, a disquieting, expressionist take on minimalism that brings the disc's emotional heft out into the open. Lastly, Filigree in Textile, a quintet for harp and string quartet, borrows its melodic contours from medieval music. Tapestry metaphorically informs her writing throughout, reminding one of Morton Feldman, but Lash's impulses remain rooted – broadly speaking – in Romanticism: even when the work is at its most gnomic (the second movement, played pizzicato), a yarn is being spun into narrative rather than into an endlessly self-proliferating non-human object that appears to be subject to its own enigmatic laws. Anyhow, I very much enjoyed this and would love to hear more stuff by her.

3. Influences, a highly personal piano recital by the discreet and undersung Tamara Stefanovich (who is married to Pierre-Laurent Aimard, incidentally), featuring works by Bach, Ives, Bartók and Messiaen. As much as I admire Aimard's playing, which is unimpeachably idiomatic in Messiaen and Ligeti (among others), Stefanovich exhibits just as much precision and transparency without giving the impression that she's on the outside looking in. Her playing is a paradox (just the way I like it): ardent and dispassionate, mystical and analytical, Stoic and Epicurean, etc. This works especially well in Ives's First Sonata, which I'd never quite gotten before hearing her perform it, but Bartók's Eight Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs, Messiaen's Cantéyodjayâ and Bach's Aria variata alla maniera italiana also benefit from her impossible sense of synthesis. She makes the strongest possible case for these lesser-known works by well-known composers.

I really like Lash's Sonata for Harp, released on Bandcamp in 2016. I think we talked about it a bit at the time in the context of 'neo-Romanticism'. Just a well-crafted composition written solidly in a traditional form using a modern but tonal harmonic language and some asymmetrical metres, without any of the bombast that usually comes with 'neo-Romanticism'; she played it sensitively and the recording sounded beautiful. I'll definitely look out for this collaboration with JACK. Sounds like she might be pushing the envelope a little more with some of this stuff.

You're right, I'd completely forgotten. I'll have to listen to the Sonata for Harp again in light of the disc with the JACK Quartet.

Speaking of which, Saariaho's Harp Concerto is quite good. It's on a recent Ondine disc with True Fire, a decent song cycle for baritone and orchestra she wrote for the great Gerald Finley, and Ciel d'hiver, a rather more featureless tone poem that exemplifies most of what I dislike about her late style.

Oh, and on the subject of canonical contemporary Nordic composers, Whirl's World, Per Nørgård's latest Dacapo disc, showcasing four chamber works, including the Suite he drew from Babette's Feast, is top drawer stuff. But then again I love his music almost indiscriminately.

Listening to Jean Barraqué's Piano Sonata again for the nth time. I still have no idea why this work is supposed to be so compelling and important.

This is the Saariaho harp concerto?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0LbM7Y9P6Y
https://saariaho.org/works/trans/

Yep.

As expected, Aki Takahashi's recording of Morton Feldman's For Bunita Marcus is perfectly idiomatic.

Oh, I've seen that piece performed live at the Music Gallery in Toronto in the early to mid-00s. (Don't remember the pianist.) I remember it being a lovely, meditative experience.

I saw Takahashi perform it in New York in the early 2000s sometime. It was pretty amazing.

A quick ilx search revealed who the pianist was:

I just got back from seeing Brigitte Poulin play Morton Feldman's For Bunita Marcus at the Music Gallery. It was a very serene 90 minutes contemplating the complexities of life while picking out patterns of light and shade in the stained glass in my doped-up haze while the sparse piano tones rang into each other. I listened to a Derek Bailey/Evan Parker concert from 1980 too today BTW. Also Sonny Sharrock, the Beatles, Funkadelic, De La Soul, and Beck
― sund4r subramanian (sund4r), samedi 24 mai 2003 21:20 (sixteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Sund4r, what do you make of this stuff? I'm curious…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBaXl3xuumE

I''ll listen tonight!

I liked that a lot. Pretty impressive how they managed to sustain my interest over 18 and a half minutes of noise. I found Prins's sounds really appealing and there was a lot of very effective variation and development in timbre, texture, and dynamics. Dramatic. Interesting that, judging by how intently they seem to be reading their scores, I'm guessing it's fairly strictly notated? I'd be interested to know more about what the score is like and what sorts of processing are going on. Looks like Deutsch might be using the same Behringer MIDI foot controller I have.

I'll give it another shot then. I listened to it yesterday as part of Prins's Kairos monograph and while I really admire his sense of texture, I struggled to make out even the least iota of a continuous form, although I wasn't listening very intently, either. I don't get that as much with, say, Richard Barrett, of whom he reminds me in some ways.

Continuous form = rockist

Seriously, if I hadn't seen them reading sheet music, I would have guessed it was a free improvisation (and I enjoy a lot of free improv). It definitely doesn't have the kind of evident sectional form that you find in Barrett's transmission (which, possibly ironically, does include improvised sections). However, I felt like the guitar and live electronic parts were conversing effectively. I also have a pretty high tolerance for guitar/electronics, though.

lol then this can only mean one thing: Stefan Prins is an arch-poptimist.

Speaking of music for guitar, you may also be interested in this album (which I haven't heard yet):

http://hundredyearsgallery.co.uk/refracted-resonance/

Oh, thanks. Tellur is a great piece.

I take it back. Not I was really compelling the second time around, no less than the rest of that Kairos disc. I need to watch the accompanying DVD as well.

Started reading Marilyn Nonken’s The Spectral Piano. Really good so far.

That sounds interesting.

I'm still listening to Gann's Hyperchromatica all the time in the van. It's starting to turn into comfort food.

Thanks for the heads up, Jon. I've added it to my reading list.

As expected, Aki Takahashi's recording of Morton Feldman's For Bunita Marcus is perfectly idiomatic.

― pomenitul, Thursday, August 15, 2019 11:00 AM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

really love this, thanks.

apparently my jam is lengthy motionless piano works

Check out Musica Callada by Mompou in that case

cosign!

wow otm. I uh, might have to try n play some of these.

On the topic of Spanish composers, I saw an interesting and provocative talk by Stephen Goss on Sunday titled "The Guitar and the Politics of Nostalgia: the mutability of history through an
Arcadian retrotopia." He began by talking about how right-wing political movements (MAGA, "Taking Back Control") often construct myths of a glorious past (an "Arcadian retrotopia") and then connected this "politics of nostalgia" to the history of the classical guitar: first, its anachronistic presence in 19th c English and French literary and artistic depictions of medieval Spain (apparently weirdly regarded as exotic, 'Oriental', and primitive at the time) and then, the way it became reappropriated as a symbol of Spanish nationalist identity in the 20th century, especially in the Franco regime after the Civil War. Rodrigo in particular was discussed as a (hyper-conservative, neo-Romantic) composer whose work was used this way. The whole Segovia project was also examined: the way he virtually constructed a 'classical' repertoire for the instrument by commissioning this stable of conservative Spanish (sometimes Latin American) composers to write neo-Romantic music, in which he was highly interventionist, and commissioned transcriptions of canonical works for other instruments. A quick search afterwards did reveal that we now know Segovia to have privately been a strong supporter of Franco, something I might have figured out if I'd thought about it for 10 minutes: https://books.google.ca/books?id=ORsxDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA92&dq=andres%20segovia%20politics%20franco&hl=fr&pg=PA92#v=onepage&q=andres%20segovia%20politics%20franco&f=false

Speaking of reactionary neo-Romantics, I tried listening to Rolf Martinsson's latest BIS monograph, Into Eternity, and was tempted to post about it in the rolling worst 2019 music thread. Tbf, the works themselves range from 2012 to 2015 and Martinsson studied under Brian Ferneyhough – neither of which you'd guess based on the sub-Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer orchestral writing and programmatic attempt at erasing the 20th century from living memory (except for Strauss and Mahler and maybe Florent Schmitt). I'd be curious to hear some of his earlier works, which are reportedly arch-modernist in idiom.

My curiosity didn't really last more than 3m into a Youtube of the piece "Into Eternity" (and I like Rodrigo). Listening to the new Hannah Lash now.

I like Rodrigo too btw.

Also on the neo-Romantic end of things and very much within the Vaughan Williams tradition of British pastoralism (although Bryars and Skempton spring to mind as well), for which I usually have little to no patience, Edmund Finnis's The Air, Turning, his debut disc for NMC, is really quite gorgeous, as though Richard Skelton were no longer an outsider, able to thoroughly draw upon the institutional resources that be (a full orchestra, various well-known chamber ensembles, the inexplicably trendy Víkingur Ólafsson, etc.). Late Sibelius also pointedly looms in the background (the UK really has the hots for him, not that I mind), including his less facilely sublime moods (the 7th Symphony, The Tempest, etc.), which I love best. And the solo violin piece Elsewhere wouldn't be out of place on a recital featuring Sciarrino's Sei capricci, all frayed threads and reverberating glissandos, so there's no outright rejection of modernism here, just a single-minded commitment to Beauty via less old-fashioned means. Amping up the tension a wee bit would probably suit my preferences better, but this is a fine beginning.

inexplicably trendy Víkingur Ólafsson

nothing inexplicable, he's a cutie

Heh, fair enough.

Maybe it's just me but Terry Riley's Sun Rings (for the Kronos Quartet) is fucking awful despite its appealing premise. Meaningless gesture after meaningless gesture ad infinitum. At least Salome Dances for Peace had some memorable movements.

Tbf the final two episodes, 'Venus Upstream', played con moto perpetuo, and 'One Earth, One People, One' are at least somewhat salvageable.

Maybe it's just me but Peter Mattei's recording of Winterreise with Lars David Nilsson is fucking incredible.

Gave a good listen at a high enough volume to Lash's "Frayed" from the JACK quartet disc this morning and it sounded really striking.

I like Winterreise a lot so I'll listen to the one you recommend.

I love Winterreise but it's another month or so before I allow myself to listen to it. Bookmarked tho

Mattei's Winterreise isn't the grimmest or most frostbitten (barring a handful of nameless self-parodic attempts, I'm tempted to grant that title to Matthias Goerne's first recording with Graham Johnson) but it's quite theatrical and isn't afraid to go for broke. Mostly I just love Mattei's voice – his disc of Mahler's orchestral Lieder with the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra also blew me away when it came out four years ago. But yeah, Winterreise in any way, shape or form just guts you.

I saw Roderick Williams and Christopher Glyn performing an English translation a couple of years ago and altho I have my doubts about lyrics in translation this was really well done, it worked for and Williams is a lovely, intimate singer

I've come around – there's no cause to shoot such attempts down on principle. Looks like a recording is available, so I'll check it out soon.

You're not wrong about Mattei's voice. I'm liking this a lot four tracks in. The recording is also very pleasant-sounding.

Don’t forget Hans Zender’s ‘composed interpretation’ of Winterreise when you really want to flip your wig.

All rankings are worthless and arbitrary, etc., etc., no doubt about it, but it's still an amusing exercise that contemporary classical isn't often afforded:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/sep/12/best-classical-music-works-of-the-21st-century

16 of the 25 greatest classical works of the 21st century were written by anglophone composers. 🤔

I was scrolling through the list getting angrier and angrier that they left off 'Let Me Tell You'... Which of course was also written for, and after an idea by, an anglophone performer.

Thanks: stuff to check out. But omg their critics love vocal music. The top 7 are either operas or song cycles (and I think six of those are operas)!

That might partly explain the anglophone slant (?), although tbf a 64% anglo share is much lower than what you would find on a list of greatest pop or jazz releases in an English-language paper. Tbh, the majority of the contemporary composers I like probably are anglophones, tbh. Always happy to learn more.

But an even greater percentage of the new notated music I see consists primarily of solo or chamber music (or of makeshift versions of larger ensembles, e.g. guitar orchestras). Who tf writes operas??

I think a lot of people write chamber operas? I liked the discussion I saw recently of what was the best long full orchestra piece, 45 min+. It was kinda hard to make a list (though Andrew Normans Play is obviously missing from the Guardian list).