"New" Music Log

[Todd]

I've yet to amass a even a medium sized Palestrina collection, but I am familiar enough with his work that I thought I ought to go for something big and juicy in the form of the Cantica Salomonis, or the Song of Songs, expressed in twenty-nine motets.  Oh yeah!  Well, not really.  So, the music is most excellent.  The singing, however, is not.  One can probably find fault in many places, but for me, the high voices are the problem.  There's an unappealing nature to the high parts.  It makes listening a chore.  (I think the high parts are taken by women only, though perhaps some boy sopranos are used.)  The lower voices sound more tonally alluring, but also less than tidy.  The Palestrina Ensemble Munich is not the most accomplished ensemble I have listened to.  As a slight saving grace, the few extra encores sounds slightly more appealing.  But overall, despite the involvement of living Schuberts, the recording cannot be counted a great success.

[Todd]

Now here's a composer I didn't know that I really needed to hear.  This is the second Mayr to pop up in my collection – Rupert Ignaz Mayr is the other one – and this Mayr has a claim to fame, such as it is, in the fact that he was a noted instructor of Italian bel canto opera composers, including Donizetti.  He was Bavarian by birth, but he ended up spending a lot of time working farther to the South.  This recording of not one, but two Messa di Gloria, one in E minor and one in F Minor, reveals Mr Mayr to be a composer of no little accomplishment.  The best shorthand here is to describe the music as a perfect blend of Carl Maria von Weber and Gioachino Rossini.  And that is why I really needed to hear this music.  Both works are in minor keys, but the energy levels bubble and the pace stays taut.  Severe religiosity is out; theatrical gestures are in.  Vibrance, showy set pieces for the soloists, and multiple very Weberian horn blats permeate the whole undertaking.  Mix in superb singing and really quite fine recorded sound, and this here is a winner.  It turns out that Mayr wrote gobs and gobs and gobs of music, including literally hundreds of liturgical movements that could be dropped in any old place.  It also turns out that conductor Franz Hauk is most devoted to Mayr's music and has recorded a decent chunk of it for Naxos.  I think I should probably investigate a bit more. 

[Todd]

A couple years ago, I picked up the excellent Josquin & the Franco-Flemish School box on Warner, and it contained several new to me composers, including Adrian Willaert.  I thought to myself I should really try something else by the composer, and now is the time.  This now almost thirty year old recording of the Missa Christus Resurgens and some smaller works fit the bill.  Things kick off with the Christus resurgens by Jean Richafort, which serves as the basis of the main work, and it sets the tone of all that follows.  And that is an intimate, beautiful, not too dense, easy to follow and generally just soothing and musical-warm-blanket recording.  The high voices dominate the recording, which is all to the good, and the singing sounds lovely and otherwise blended nicely.  This is one of those hour-long recordings where one just presses play and lets the good times roll. 

[Todd]

For no good reason, I've never listened to either Dvořák's Mass in D or his Te Deum.  I've heard his Stabat Mater (under Kubelik) and Requiem (under Ancerl), but not these.  Well, now was the time, I thought.  That no less than Antoni Wit conducts all but guaranteed success.  And a success it is.  The Mass, evidently scaled up from the original, smacks of 19th Century grandeur, but having flowed from the pen of Dvořák, the tunes are simply gorgeous, and even with the scale, it sounds like a slightly beefier, definitely sunnier approach to liturgical music that Fauré later mimicked-ish, at least in the quieter sections.  Sure, one can hear whiffs of Wagner in the brass in some places, but it's tasteful, restrained Richie.  It really sounds just splendid, celebratory, and lovely.  The Te Deum sounds more identifiably Dvořákian, and it is entirely extroverted and often most showy, though never garish, even in the most over the top moments. 

[Brian]

The Te Deum is my "secret" favorite Dvorak, a true hidden gem from the opening polyrhythms to the glittering full circle conclusion. The Wit performance is up to his standard, but the piece can be a little faster, and I wish he was still paired up with his amazing Warsaw band.

Wit is also responsible for the only Dvorak Requiem I'd put up against Ancerl, if you get curious.

[Todd]

Thirteen bass drum and bell thwacks open Thierry Lancino's Requiem.  After that sparse, hard entry, uncompromising blats of sound emerge, as does a singer singing lines of the Sibyl.  It's all terribly modernist, hard-hitting, uncompromising, ugly.  As it happens, I can and do enjoy such music, even when dealing with religious themes.  Last time I had a similar hankering for religious themed new music, I ended with the far less compromising and far more radical Mars: Requiem by Helga Pogatschar.  This is not that.  This is more traditional modernist music, rather conservative in comparison.  Think Ligeti (definitely) mixed with Berlioz (definitely) mixed with Bruneau (probably), infused with a little bit of art house movie aspirational serious film music, and of course some French avant-garde, and one gets the idea.  I don't mean to make light of the work, because it is indeed very serious, but it gives off something of a Barenaked Ladies vibe, because it's all been done.  The blended text, mixing the Requiem text with other pieces in other languages, works well enough, and the orchestral colors and sounds, and the bracing modernism, and the at times really quite excellent soloists (Skelton and Murphy earn their paychecks), and the really rather fine choral work make for a fine overall listen.  Indeed, this more or less typifies what I think of when I think of large-scale modern choral works.  That's a good enough thing.  Turns out there's a decent enough batch of recordings of Lancino's works, with the one by Paula Robison and Pavaali Jumppanen the most immediately appealing.  I suspect I shall be hearing more from Mr Lancino.  In the meantime, this recording works well, is in good enough modern sound, and shows that sometimes big(gish) names can and do deliver.

[Brian]

This starts with "Seven Capricci" by Jörg Widmann, who is becoming every cool artist's go-to guy for a short piece to add to their recording. The seven miniatures total up to just 12 minutes but they encompass a wide range of styles, from a relatively straight-laced, pretty waltz to a chorale full of pauses and hesitations - to a 30-second movement called "Noises" that is exactly that, nothing but funky blowing and buzzing effects. "Keys" also includes a drum-roll style moment where everyone...taps their keys.

The rest of the disc blends arrangements of works by Felix and Fanny and Johann Sebastian. Given the relative non-fame of the works chosen - the most well-known would be two Songs Without Words and the Passacaglia in C minor - I had hopes that they'd all be chosen because of a genuine affinity for the saxophone quartet medium. Yup. For one thing, fugues sound really great played by four saxes. For another, Felix Mendelssohn's bustling energy and often excessive accompaniments lend themselves well to contrapuntal quartet treatment. We know this from his string quartets; now we have more proof. Fanny is saved for last, with two song transcriptions serving as encores, the last an Italianate saltarello with a nice bouncy rhythm.

A short disc, but things can be short when they're fun. 53 minutes of pure entertainment. Kebyart, the saxophone ensemble, sounds great throughout and they are very well recorded. Only at certain moments (outside the Widmann) can you hear clicky keys, and there's a nice amount of space around the players, too.

[Todd]

About twentyish years ago, I purchased my first and only disc of Antheil's music, the Ballet Mécanique on Naxos.  Every once in a while, I give it a spin and enjoy the relentless, giddy drive and absurdity of the whole thing – and that's the version for orchestra.  So, after much ado, a follow-up purchase in the form of the Violin Sonatas.  Hot shots Tianwa Yang and Nicholas Rimmer, both so well known to my ears, including for their knockout recording of Wolfgang Rihm's works for violin and piano, made the decision to go for this an easy one.  The listener can expect and gets tip-top quality playing.  I mean, Yang's glissando and Rimmer's repeated notes alone are worth asking price – and those are merely the first things that make the listener think "Neat!". 

The first three sonatas date from the hot house Roaring 20s, and the influences are obvious.  Think Stravinsky (including near/actual quotations), Bartok's folk music (including near/actual quotations), Schulhoff's filtered jazz, ragtime, Spanish piano music, and, well, Antheil, and that's what one gets, a pastiche-meets-unyielding-invention glob o' music in three works ranging from the taut, eight-minute and change single-movement sonata (with bass drum added), to the more than twenty-four minute, four movement behemoth that is the first.  The Fourth sounds less intense and frantic, with some lovelier melodies emerging, but it retains something akin to a stream of consciousness feel informed by a plethora of influences. 

Recorded sound is fully up to snuff, and playing is hot shot quality.  A treat of a recording.