A Personal Recommendation

Mahler: Symphony No. 2 "Resurrection"
The Philadelphia Orchestra
Christophe Eschenbach, conductor
Simona Suturova, Soprano; Yvonne Naef, Mezzo-Soprano
Ondine Records, ODE 1134-2D

***

I caught a commercial flight Sunday night into Philadelphia, where I'm spending the week working, and I noticed a sizeable group of mostly young-ish folks (early 30s, I'd say, most of them) walking about me as I exited the airport terminal. There were a lot of them, they were casually but nicely dressed, and there seemed to be a high proportion of Asians among them. And I noticed that they all had laminated plain white numbered tags on their bags and backpacks. Hmmm. As I waited for my ride downtown, I saw a Chinese-American-looking woman standing by a doorway. She was smiling and addressing group members as they walked past her, telling them that their bus was across the drive and down to the left. She clearly recognized the other group members by sight.

I finally walked up and inquired about the large group. "Yeah, there are 130 of us," she said (I believe that was the number). "Who are you?" I asked, "What is your group?" "We're the Philadelphia Orchestra," she said. They were returning from a three week tour. She was quite busy directing, so I did not get a chance to ask where they had been, but I did mention that I was just contemplating their new Mahler Second release. "You should get it," she said. "It's awesome!" That qualifies as a bona fide endorsement in my book, if a biased one.

And so I did. And so it is, awesome.

First played in 1895, the Second Symphony is one of Mahler's most enduring and popular works. Despite its nickname, it is not a religious piece. Mahler does grapple with the larger questions of human existence, using texts from his beloved Des knaben wunderhorn to ask the Big Questions, why are we here and does anything of us live on after death, etc. But these are really contemplations on the unknowable, and have nothing to do with resurrection (unless perhaps he was referring to his career after the grudging reception of his First Symphony). "Pantheism" might be a better moniker. Whatever we call it, it is a haunting and lyrically beautiful piece, one which, like so much of Mahler, seems to take on immense challenges of musical storytelling, and it delivers a correspondingly immense payoff 90 minutes later. I always feel at the end of a Mahler symphony (at least my favorites) as though some great planetary alignment has been performed before me, and I'm left with a sense of exhaustion and peace. There's something in the act of concluding a lengthy piece of music, at least as Mahler does it, that lays a very grand vision before us with eloquence and assurance. The man definitely found the right profession.

I bought the disc on iTunes (as is my wont lately, and I guess forever more), and typically there is no documentation. Also, I'm always reminded that the recommendations one finds at the iTunes Music Store are largely without merit. (I occasionally put in my two cents' worth there, so one can look at all this several ways.) Some dweeb said the recording had "weak brass." That was the whole review, actually, those two words: weak brass. Thanks, chuckles. Of course there is no such deficit, with the brass or anything else. This is top shelf playing from one of the world's great orchestras, and the sound quality is excellent. There was also some discussion about Christophe Eschenbach's brisk tempi, but I find them exactly right. There is not undue lingering, but nothing is glossed over, and conductor & orchestra luxuriate in all the appropriate moments to ensure the message gets across.

Indeed, I'm hard pressed to find much of anything to criticize. If I would register a complaint, it might be with the choice of soloists in the singing roles. Slovak Soprano Simona Suturova (say that several times swiftly) and Swiss Mezzo-soprano Yvonne Naef are enlisted for the final movement's solo parts, joined by the Philadelphia Singers Chorale, and the soloists didn't sit particularly well with me. I must insert my standard caution here that these musicians are very likely expertly chosen and perhaps even inspired--certainly, I could not make better suggestions; indeed, I can't really think of any singing in this period / style that I even like. Stylistically, I'm sure they are in complete synchronicity with what Mahler envisioned when he wrote the piece, and most appropriate to the style of music of this period. But I find myself rankling at the wide, ceaseless, operatic vibrato. We also hear it in the solo violin work, and the affectation is so unstinting that one wonders whether the singers snore with a strong tremulant. Does it ever shut off? Does one EVER sing a steady tone? But if you're not one to cavil about a singer's vibrato generally, I feel confident you won't bat an eye here.

My previous favorite recording of this symphony has been the really splendid late '80s EMI disc of Simon Rattle with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and I have a soft spot for Antoni Wit's unique vision with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra on Naxos. But this Philadelphia Orchestra recording will now join these at the top of the list. With a previously-recorded Mahler Sixth also in the catalog, one wonders if a full cycle is in the works.

Recommended.

Another Mix of Nationalities

French on the Flentrop
J. Melvin Butler, organ
St. Mark's Cathedral, Seattle, WA; 1965
Loft Records, LRCD-1013

Works by Franck, Tournemire, Messiaen, Clerambault, Daquin, Balbastre and de Grigny.

***

The organ building firm of Flentrop from Zaandam, Holland is one of the organ world's most venerable and important concerns. Founded in 1903 by Hendrik Flentrop, the firm became by mid-century an early specialist in the study and faithful restoration of historic instruments, with a pointed specialty in mechanical action (at a time when few modern builders, at least of large instruments, were employing this mechanism). Holland and Northern Germany had been a hotbed of progressive organ design in the 17th and 18th Centuries, advancement symbiotically reflected in the works of Dieterich Buxtehude and Bach, Georg Böhm and Samuel Scheidt, Johann Pachelbel and many others, and in our own time the Flentrop firm helped lead the way in recognizing the virtues and merits of traditional organ building.

Flentrop popped onto the radar screen in the US after the firm's 1958 installation of an instrument in the Busch-Reisinger Germanic Museum at Harvard University, a commission from Anglo-American organist E. Power Biggs who had caught the period instrument bug during his travels and recordings in Europe.



Widely recorded and featured on radio broadcasts, this instrument was a revelation for organ fans: it was a small instrument and had no orchestral imitation stops, featuring instead traditional indigenous organ sounds. Its design followed the German werkprinzip, a group of principles around which historic organs had been constructed: wind pressures were generally lower than those used in modern times, and pipes were voiced accordingly, often with great care given to how individual ranks blended together. Also, each division of the organ was located in, and its sound focused by, its own discreet case. And of course the instrument featured mechanical action--a physical link between keyboards and the pipe valves; no electricity was involved except to run the blower. And the result was very different from the player's perspective, certainly, but also for the listener: direct and intimate, the sound had a carefully-composed blend and a highly musical intensity that was all its own. It's hard to overstate the role this instrument played in reshaping public tastes in organ sound. Through these early efforts, the organ reestablished its place as an autonomous musical instrument (and not as a one-person "orchestra").

So much for background. The instrument on our current recording hails from the same shop, not quite a decade after the Harvard instrument was built, when the "neo-baroque" revolution was in full swing. The organ in St. Mark's Cathedral in Seattle was installed in 1965, and bears resemblance to the Harvard instrument on several fronts: it is also formed around werkprinzip ideas; it has similarly plain casework; it employs similarly unburnished facade pipes (as opposed to most organs, which have polished tin facades). And while the instrument is larger--as is the acoustic into which it speaks--it is voiced with the same attention and personality as the smaller Harvard instrument displays.

Biggs played the expected classic repertoire on his Flentrop, but he also stressed that the sound fundamental principles used in its design and construction would do justice to any music. And so in addition to recordings of Sweelinck and Gabrieli and lots of Bach, of course, we also got, for example, the organ sonatas of Paul Hindemith. Everything sounded brilliant: clear and lucid, and with a certain very musical intensity.

What I didn't hear from that Flentrop was anything from late-19th & 20th Century France. That organ lacked the appropriate reeds and any kind of swell box, which made for quite a stretch with this repertoire. But I always wondered what, say, a Franck Choral would sound like on that organ; not authentic, surely, but perhaps compelling just the same. The 1965 St. Mark's Flentrop has no such limitations (especially after a careful 1994 rebuild by Paul Fritts). Here we have the resources for anything in the organ repertoire. And it demonstrates, as Biggs predicted, how far a solid foundation can go in making a persuasive case. In addition to having very French-sounding reeds for solo work and in the Pedal, the voicing is clear and bright, and the mechanical action gives a crisp, immediate response.

J. Melvin Butler is a specialist in French repertoire, and gives a fabulous performance. I confess my heart flutters for the Franck and Tournemire and Messiaen here; I'm less able to connect with the French baroque, which is my own limitation. Doubtless the de Grigny and Balbastre and Daquin and Clerambault are as well-treated in Dr. Butler's hands, but I just find it hard to sink my teeth into them.

The recording, as always from Loft, is brilliant and quite silent. St. Mark's is a pretty cavernous space--well-suited to much of this repertoire--and the recording captures the space very well.

The French Up North

Charles Tournemire
12 Préludes-Poèmes for Piano, Op. 58
Lise Boucher, piano
ATMA Classique, ACD22329
(October, 2004)

***

Charles Tournemire (1870-1939) was titular organist at the Basilique Ste. Clotilde in Paris, a post previously held by César Franck. Ste Clotilde is one of the municipal church posts in Paris from which, along with the Paris Conservatoire (now the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris, or CNSMDP), came a remarkable school of composers from the middle 1800s. Indeed, César Franck can be considered the Godfather of this school, a movement which produced so many luminaries: Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens, Alexandre Guilmant, Charles-Marie Widor, Louis Vierne, Gabriel Fauré, Joseph Bonnet, Theodore Dubois, Camille Saint-Saens, Maurice Duruflé, Jean Langlais, Jeanne Demessieux, Marcel Dupré, Pierre Cochereau, Philippe Lefebvre, Olivier Messiaen. What a list. And the tradition continues to the present day: Jean Guillou at St. Eustache, Daniel Roth at St. Sulpice, Naji Hakim at Sainte-Trinité, Olivier Latry at Notre Dame and Vincent Warnier holds the organ chair at St. Etienne-du-mont jointly with Thierry Escaich.

Charles Tournemire is an important figure in this movement, both in his role as titular at Ste. Clotilde from 1898 til his death in 1939, and also as an instructor at the Conservatoire. (Many of the great figures of this movement held both church posts and teaching posts at the Conservatoire. Thus did their ideas find both academic and popular audiences, a perfect setup for ideas to take root and foment and evolve.) I first learned of him as one of the teachers of my man Maurice Duruflé, who is said to have learned his harmonic language from Tournemire.

Tournemire is mostly known for his immense organ cycle L'Orgue mystique, a collection of 51 suites of five movements each, based around the church's catalog of gregorian chant tunes. Mystical and sounding highly improvisational, L'Orgue mystique is a massive work intended to supply organ music for an entire year of church services. But l'Orgue mystique is not all Tournemire wrote. In addition to other organ works, he also composed several symphonies and works for solo piano. This present release of Préludes-Poèmes for solo piano slots neatly between Debussy and early Messiaen aesthetically. His harmonies are impressionistic, and the pieces are not strongly tonal. They remind me of Debussy's Preludes, but are less descriptive and have a weaker tonal center. These sound like challenging pieces to play.

The performance is by French-Canadian pianist Lise Boucher, and is excellent. She has a sensitive touch, and also a fiery power as needed. The recording is fine. I recommend this recording to other who, like myself, revere Debussy and Ravel, but find Messiaen's later forays into birdsong a bit hard to follow. Tournemire provides us a bridge between the two.

An American in Berlin

Simone Dinnerstein
The Berlin Concert
Telarc, 80715
2008

Simone Dinnerstein is an American pianist who shot to prominence with a 2007 release of Bach's Goldberg Variations. Born and raised in New York (where she still resides), she studied under Peter Serkin at Julliard. With her first-release home run at age 35, it is not surprising to find a poised and mature artist tackling substantial pieces.

This present release is the follow up to that debut, a live recording from 11/22/07 at the Philharmonie in Berlin. In addition to her undisputed mastery of Bach, we are treated to a late Beethoven sonata, and the 12 Variations on a Bach Chorale by American composer Philip Lasser.

I discovered her on iTunes, and found a couple videos (from Telarc) on YouTube. I have to say that her manner at the keyboard (from video) is a bit off-putting to me, seeming a touch affected and theatrical in contrast to a pretty down-to-earth manner when speaking. But the proof is in the sound, and this recording shows Ms. Dinnerstein in a most flattering light.

Glenn Gould casts a long shadow, and it's difficult for me to listen to anyone's piano Bach and not compare their work with his. Gould was notorious for seeming to give equal treatment to each of Bach's contrapuntal lines, which makes for a challenge even for the listener. But there are a lot of ways to accomplish the task, and the great Bach pianists to follow Gould--András Schiff and Angela Hewitt come to mind--have found their own ways to do the works justice. Dinnerstein more readily invites comparisons to these latter two artists than to Gould. Her playing is pianistic; she does not attempt to imitate a harpsichord. But her technique is clean and confident, and one cannot but look forward to how she might tackle the Well-Tempered Clavier, say.

Philip Lasser's work is new to me, but it has the most auspicious foundation, Bach's haunting harmonisation of the Lutheran hymn Nimm von uns, Herr, du Treuer Gott, BWV 101, (a chorale tune also used by Mendelssohn in his Sixth Organ Sonata). It's clearly a contemporary work, but it stays comfortably tethered to the original tonality in a successful blend of the old and new. Dinnerstein plays it as though she wrote it herself.

The recording is fantastic. There is nary an audience sound, and the piano's image and the minute shadings and harmonic minglings are perfectly captured. Some of my favorite organ recordings are from Telarc, though they have been quiet for a while. It's great to see them back in the saddle so impressively.

The Left Hand Zig-Zags

American Beauty: A Ragtime Boquet
Gary Smart, piano
Albany Records, TROY 1029

***

Gary Smart is the Yessin Professor of Music at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, a broadly-trained musician, a versatile composer and an improviser across a stylistic range from American jazz to classical music to world music. This Albany Records release features Smart playing a number of his own piano rags interspersed with works by the classic ragtime composers of a century ago.

I've always been a wee bit frustrated at the selection of piano ragtime available in the CD era. The wonderful Dick Hyman released an authoritative full set of Scott Joplin's piano works three decades ago on a 5-LP set on RCA (I believe), but so far only a single disc of "favorites" from that effort has made its way to CD. Most every other recording I've come across since either has amateur playing or a disappointing instrument or recording, or the artist insists to some degree on treating Joplin's score as a rough template, a kind of jazz fake book for how the artists thinks the piece ought to sound. I suppose this is not nonsensical, given Joplin's position as one of the bedrocks of jazz, a genre which has a fundamental element of improvisation. Maybe my classical music background has tainted me--people don't "interpret" Chopin in this way--but I just prefer to hear what Joplin wrote rather than what each pianist has to say about what Joplin wrote.



I have no such reservations about this CD. Dr. Smart devotes about half the recording to classic rag composers--Joplin, Joseph Lamb, James Scott, Robert Hampton and Clarence Woods--and the other half to his own compositions. He does the genre great justice, demonstrating a deep sympathy and understanding. Tempi are ambling (everybody seems to want to play rags too fast, and it's a delight to hear someone slow down and find the groove), the rubato restrained, and the performances get us right inside the pieces, in the process capturing (and revisiting) a rich moment in history.

Having said that, most of Smart's own works here sound right out of that classic rag period of a hundred-plus years ago. His Two Flowers Rag takes us right back to the turn of the last century (reminding me of the soundtrack for one of my favorite movies, Robert Altman's Gosford Park) and the Peanut Butter and Laramie Rags are quite traditional. By way of contrast, his Harlequin Rag offers a more modern variation on the theme, departing from the template a bit in both structure and tonality. And the delightfully jaunty Bell Rag also sounds smartly updated (sorry).

The classic works on the album make lovely additions to one's music library. James Scott and Joseph Lamb sit with Joplin at the top of the ragtime family tree, and it takes a devotee to realize these composers' works are not from Joplin's pen. Scott's Grace and Beauty especially sounds absolutely like a Joplin rag (and is in any event a delightful composition). And we get two Joplin rags, including my single favorite of the genre, Solace: a Mexican serenade.

The piano chosen for the recording sounds a touch tired, though not to the recording's detriment. The record is not particularly sharp, but clean enough to make out detail.

Church Without Talking

Bach: Epiphany Mass
Gabrieli Consort & Players
Deutsche Grammophon ARCHIV Produktion, 457 631-2
1998

***

Looking back on the short tenure of this music blog, I find that the previously-reviewed recording by Paul McCreesh and the Gabrieli Consort & Players, The Road to Paradise, stands out as my favorite recording of the year (at least so far). The more I listen to it, the more deeply impressed I am: profoundly conceived, flawlessly executed, stunningly captured; this disc is a rare, rare treat.

Well, the ensemble have been together for quite a while--since 1982, to be exact--and I'm the one showing up late to the party. So there's quite a catalog of recordings to explore. I've chosen next the group's 1998 recreation of the musical portions of a Mass at the St. Thomaskirche in Leipzig, where Bach was employed for the last half of his life. The intent here, it appears (there are no notes with the iTunes download), is to show Bach's purpose-made music in as close to the exact context as possible to what people would have experienced at the time. And as such, we find his composed mass included among some of his organ works, a cantata and a number of other pieces by other composers. All these disparate elements would have been skilfully integrated and managed to achieve the appropriate ecclesiastical experience (as it was judged at the time).

I am, I've often said, a stickler for precision and intonation, attributes present to the point of conspicuity in their Road to Paradise CD. Not surprisingly, the current disc proves that Dr. McCreesh and company did not suddenly stumble upon their skills just prior to that most recent recording. This one reminds me of the axiom that our elders were pounding into our heads when we were kids: through discipline comes freedom. By choosing ensemble members carefully and holding everyone to very exacting standards, the work produced blossoms before us as something more than the sum of its parts. This particular setting places our Bach and his work among that of other composers, most notably Johann Pachelbel, which, with the chants and other service-related details, gives us a sense of his modernity and his perfection of craft. It's a glorious and elevating experience.

I'm less disposed to respond to the efforts at replicating the church service per se, doubtless because the ecclesiastical functions and origin of this music are lost on me. So in that sense, this effort as a concept album doesn't hit its mark for me. That element of Bach's music, his piety, has never played a role in my love of his work. I'm taken with his miraculous mind, his singular genius for purely musical logic. There is all the mystery of the human experience right there.

Still, I would not grudge the believer their synergy with Bach's religious message, and McCreesh et al. have given us the best possible chance to find the wonder of this music, however we define it.

More from Phantasm

John Jenkins: Five-Part Consorts
Avie (AV 2120)
2007
Phantasm (plus Mikko Perkola)

***


I had my introduction to Phantasm, Oxford University's consort-in-residence viol group about four months ago with their 1999 disc of 4- and 5-part consorts by William Lawes. That disc made a strong impression on me, and I subsequently sampled their 2004 disc, The Four Temperaments, featuring works of Byrd, Ferrabosco, Parsons and Tallis. So far, the group seem incapable of mundanity. They have been together since 1994, and I'm thrilled to continue working through their existing catalog of recordings.

This disc dates from 2007 and features the music of English composer John Jenkins (1592-1678). The little-known Jenkins was a friend of William Lawes, and appears to have spent his career toggling between official royal music-making and as the private composer to several wealthy English families. On the strength of these pieces he surely deserves to be better-known. These consorts have a wonderful assertive quality, conveying the composer's deep and exhilarating self-confidence.

Once again Phantasm and Laurence Dreyfus, this time assisted by the Finn Mikko Perkola, display the very highest standards of musicianship, bringing these works absolutely to life for us. I note this with every recording, I realize, but I'm always struck: the inherent blend of the gut-stringed viols and Phantasm's flawless articulation and intonation convince me that this ensemble could render almost any period's music to advantage. (Admittedly, there's a big dollop of personal preference at work here, but the recent Emerson String Quartet disc of fugues from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier--really capital idea though it is--only reminds me how much better these works would sound to my ear on gambas rather than violins.)

Whatever the truth of my views, it seems improbable that someone could improve on these settings here. Once again, highest marks.

A Supernova Up Close

Ingrid Fliter plays Chopin
EMI Classics 5099951489953

• Piano Sonata No. 4, Op. 58
  
• Ballade No. 4, Op. 52
  
• Barcarolle Op. 60
• 4 Waltzes
• 3 Mazurkas
• 2 Preludes
• Impromptu in c sharp minor, Op. posth. (later the Op. 66 Fantaisia-Impromptu)
  

***

There is, for the piano as for many other instruments which are formally studied, a standard repertoire which an artist is expected to assimilate in order to be considered a master of their craft. With classical music, most all of this repertoire dates back from 100-300+ years, at least for most popular concert instruments--piano, violin, organ, string ensemble, etc. For pianists, probably first on that list is the Pole Frederic Chopin (1810-1849). Along with Beethoven, Chopin is considered the greatest composer for the piano, first on a list which contains Ravel and Rachmaninov and Liszt and (though he wasn't technically a piano composer) Bach. In part, Chopin probably owes his place on the list to the correspondence of his lifetime to the maturation of the piano mechanically. The early versions of the pianoforte which Bach experienced (and treated as a curiosity) were a world away from a modern piano, and even Beethoven was playing an instrument still very much under development. Chopin, on the other hand, wrote his pieces for a very close approximation to the modern Steinway.

Like Bach, Chopin wrote pieces of wide-ranging technical sophistication, pieces which are manageable for the aspiring pianist, and also great works with passages of diabolical difficulty. But emotionally Chopin is a pure Romantic, a composer with a miraculous gift for melody and urbane expression. Not surprisingly, many pianists have established themselves by way of Chopin's works, people like Vladimir Ashkenazy and Artur Rubenstein and Garrick Ohlsson and Martha Argerich.

Now here's another: the Argentine Ingrid Fliter (b. 1973). A specialist in the works of Chopin, Ms. Fliter studied in Freiburg and Rome and Imola and has won or placed highly in a number of piano competitions.

To my ear, Ms. Fliter plays these pieces to perfection. In that mysterious world where abstract music makes for powerful communication, she seems to have lit upon exactly the right forum for her sensibilities. Her tempi and phrasing are exactly correct, and she has exactly the sense of drama and the commanding technique to make these pieces absolutely compelling. From the frenetic whimsy of the waltzes to the gravity of the b minor Sonata and the absolute drama of the Fourth Ballade (one of my very favorite pieces in any genre), she dances and muscles her way around the keyboard in thrilling fashion, creating a whole sonic landscape which the engineers at EMI Classics have captured perfectly.

As I've said before in other contexts, if these performances don't work for you, then you're simply never going to respond to this music, period. She is that good.

Here's a sample from YouTube:

Two Discs from Minnesota

Slavic Holiday: Legends from Ancient Czechoslovakia and Poland

Fire of the Soul: Choral Virtuosity in 17th-Century Russia & Poland

Both releases are on Rose Records, and are available on iTunes or from the Rose Ensemble's website or from Amazon.com.

***

I've enthused a good deal in these pages about London and its miraculous concentration of choral talent. There must be some critical mass beyond which a thing becomes self-sustaining, with the numbers of ensembles and the audience for them and the schools producing the new talent and the recording companies interested in them all following in symbiotic lockstep. Whatever the reason, there is an amazing concentration of talent in this one place.

But as I was reminded with the Kansas City Chorale / Phoenix Bach Choir recordings on Chandos, proximity can account for only so much. Musical talent is a distinctly human quality, not a geographic one, and there are talented people everywhere (something about which I'm reminded with organists; there are great organists everywhere of whom no one ever heard).

The Rose Ensemble hails from my home town of St. Paul, Minnesota, and specializes in early music from diverse sources. I lived in Minneapolis / St. Paul for 20 years, but I moved from the place about the same time as Artistic Director Jordan Sramek formed the group in 1996. Many of the group are instrumentalists as well as singers, and most seem to have some Minnesota connection, either family or education.

It strikes me that one of the advantages of hailing from a place without deep roots in original music is that one is free to delve into a wider range of styles without confounding anyone's expectations. These two discs feature Slavic composers, spanning from the 11th Century up to a present-day composition commissioned by the Rose Ensemble. The first of these discs, Slavic Holiday, concentrates on very early works from Poland and Czechoslovakia, and the earliest pieces especially are monodic, or feature very essential harmonies. Composition dates range from the 11th to the 17th Centuries. The other disc, Fire of the Soul, concentrates (apart from the contemporary Khvoshchinskiy piece) on the work of three composers: Poles Mikolaj Zielenski (ca.1550- post 1616) and Andrzej Rohaczewski (c. 1600s), and the Russian Vasily Titov (c.1650-ca.1715). Though not quite wearing the misty aura of despair which characterizes so much Russian music, the Titov does have a certain minor mode gravity about it; but the Polish pieces sound more Italian than Russian. I read a review snippet that compared some of this writing to Claudio Monteverdi, and that seems a good stab. I often play a little game with the radio of trying to figure out what I'm listening to before the announcer gives it away, and I would not have guessed Poland with these pieces. The disc finishes with the commissioned work--Rejoice, O Virgin Mary--by Russian Sergey Khvoshchinskiy (b. 1957). This piece is more layered and modern, though you could mistake it for something older if you weren't paying attention. It reminds me a bit of his countryman Gretchaninov, and it sounds identifiably Russian.

Overall, these are much more solid performances than I would have expected--world-class, actually. Pitch is generally excellent, and the male voices especially achieve a wonderful unity. There are one or two moments where the choir's pitch is not absolutely in lock step, but I'm admittedly being awfully fussy to even mention it. These two discs make us a splendid introduction to unknown repertoire (to me, anyway), and I see that the group has quite a number of recordings available. I shall sample some of the others soon.

Phantastick!

Four Temperaments - Byrd, Ferrabosco, Parsons, Tallis
Phantasm (plus Emilia Benjamin and Asako Morikawa)
Avie Records, AV2054 (2004)

Tallis: A Solfing song; In nomine I a4; In nomine II a4;
Byrd: Queen's Goodnight (Prelude and Ground); Pavan a6; Galliard a6
Parsons: A song of Mr Robert Parsons; In nomine III a5; De la court; Ut re mi fa sol la; A Song called Trumpets
Ferrabosco: Pavan a5; In nomine I a5; In nomine II a5; In nomine III a5; Fantasia a4; Sur la Rousée (Fantasia a6)

***

Another fabulous disc from the British gamba quartet, Phantasm, this time joined by Emilia Benjamin and Asako Morikawa. I've been on a bit of a mission to find more of the obscure Robert Parsons, and here are several more of his pieces, in addition to Byrd and Tallis and another fellow of whom I've not heard, Alfonso Ferrabosco (presumably the younger, though he comes from a long line of composers out of Bologna).

There's just something in this presentation--an intimate grouping of expertly-played viols--that brings this music to life. There is a palpable joy in the part writing, in the interplay between voices that bears the indelible stamp of its time and place. But rather than sounding archaic, the group's infectious vitality makes these compositions sound current and thrilling.

The pieces cover an emotional range from rollicking to funereal. The group's phrasing and intonation are spot-on, and the recording is excellent, though close and intimate (in keeping with the settings where this music might originally have been heard, perhaps?). Mr. Parsons shows a bit more playfulness than in the other brief exposures I've heard, and seems to write always with a confident hand.

Highly recommended.

Parsonic Boom

Music of Robert Parsons
Voces Cantabile / Barnaby Smith
Naxos Records, 8.570451

• First Great Service
• Responds for the Dead (Latin Service)

***

After my recent acquisition of the Gabrieli Consort's Road to Paradise, I searched through my music collection for other works by the little-known Robert Parsons. His five-voice Ave Maria culminates with an 80 second Amen that is the most glorious bit of music from the Renaissance I've ever heard. At least as it's presented to us by McCreesh & Company. And it turns out to be the only piece by Parsons in my whole collection.

So I searched online a bit for more of Robert Parsons, about whom quite little is known. The following is the entirety of Wikipedia's entry on him:

Robert Parsons (c. 1535 - January 1572) was an English composer.

Although little is known about the life of Robert Parsons, it is likely that in his youth he was a choir boy, as until 1561 he was an assistant to Richard Bower, Master of the Children Choristers of the Chapel Royal.

Parsons was appointed Gentleman of the Chapel Royal on 17 October 1563. His work consisted of a number of sacred and secular vocal compositions, including his Ave Maria, as well as some instrumental pieces. He is believed to have died in January 1572 when he fell into the then swollen River Trent and was drowned. He may have been a teacher of, or at least an influence on, William Byrd at Lincoln Cathedral. Byrd succeeded him as Gentleman of the Chapel Royal.

My favorite recording label, Naxos, has the only all-Parsons release I was able to find, a 2007 issue featuring the choir Voces Cantabile, under the baton of Barnaby Smith. Formed in 2003 of ex-choristers from Westminster Abbey, here is yet another young London-based choir taking advantage of the country's wonderfully rich choral heritage.

While I'm thrilled to find more of this composer, these performances don't quite reach the top-shelf level of the Gabrieli Consort (as is perhaps to be expected from such a young ensemble). The choir doesn't blend to the same ethereal degree, and they don't achieve the confident pitch solidity, especially in what seem like a couple less-than-ideal edits where the choir's pitch changes suddenly and noticeably. Pitch is a particularly sticky point for me, and not everyone may object to the same degree.

But for that, though, it's a fine, respectable effort, and it fills a void in the recorded repertoire of another of England's shining Tudor lights.

Two More of Naxos's Buxtehude Cycle

Buxtehude: Organ Works, Volume 3
Wolfgang Rübsam, organ
John Brombaugh organ, Central Lutheran Church, Eugene OR (1976)
Naxos 8.555991



Buxtehude: Organ Works, Volume 4
Craig Cramer, organ
Paul Fritts organ, Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma WA (1999)
Naxos 8.557195

***

Here are two more from Naxos's ongoing cycle of Buxtehude's organ works. I've been acquiring the discs rather in inverse order, starting with Julia Brown's fabulous later releases, Volumes 5-7, recorded on the magnificent Martin Pasi organ at St. Cecelia's Cathedral in Omaha. Now we have the two releases prior to Dr. Brown's involvement, Volumes 3 and 4, recorded by two different organists on yet two different organs. I'm always of two minds about this releasing of a composer's complete works played by several interpreters: on the one hand, it introduces a variable into the survey, which can be distracting to a new or fussy listener; but on the other, it ensures the whole cycle gets completed, and Naxos has been quite inspired in its choices. (Though for my money, I'd be very happy to have the whole cycle by Julia Brown on that Pasi organ!)

Volume 3 is from native German, and former teacher at Northwestern University outside Chicago, Wolfgang Rübsam. Mr Rübsam happens to have acted as producer for the other volumes in this set--as well as quite a number of other organ recordings from Naxos--and many of the performers on these discs have studied with him, including Julia Brown. Based on her glorious performances and a really excellent set of the six organ sonatas of Felix Mendelssohn by another student, one Stephen Tharp, Mr. Rübsam's involvement seems entirely welcome in any capacity. Rübsam himself released a complete Buxtehude cycle in the early '80s on the Bellaphon label, as well as Bach's complete organ output for Naxos (among many other releases).

His playing is characterized by extreme liveliness and virtuosity with a pointedly non-metronomic pulse. This makes for vibrant interpretations, reminding me at times of Glenn Gould, except that Rübsam is more concerned with authenticity than Gould was. Parts of his Bach are among my favorites, though often I feel aware of the artist as well as the composer, which is perhaps not to everyone's taste (in this he is like Gould or Horowitz; there are two geniuses in the room). But he's damn persuasive with his approach, and whatever I think going in he almost always wins me over. To my ear, his quite flexible time seems to work better with Buxtehude than with Bach, and this particular Buxtehude disc really comes alive under his touch.

His instrument of choice is a 1976 John Brombaugh instrument from Central Lutheran Church in Eugene, OR. It has a fairly mild non-equal temperament and makes a very appropriate and pleasing sound. This is really excellent Buxtehude.

Volume 4 comes from Craig Cramer, the Professor of Organ at Notre Dame University. As with Julia Brown, I fancy I hear some of Rübsam's irrepressibility and exuberance in Mr. Cramer's playing (the little devil sitting on the organist's shoulder saying "let yourself go a little!"), though perhaps turned down a notch or two. But if his approach is slightly less adventurous, this is still quite lively playing, and Mr. Cramer is solidly in control. His disc contains mostly chorale treatments, with a couple of Buxtehude's multipartite Preludes / Toccatas mixed in, and it's a wonderful disc.

The instrument is the 1998 Paul Fritts organ at Pacific Lutheran University, the same organ we've heard in George Ritchie's Bach cycle and the Joan Lippincott recording of Bach Preludes and Fugues (reviewed below). Again, it's a first-rate organ for the repertoire, and the recording quality is everything we've come to expect from Naxos.

Though their approaches are not precisely the same, they are both eminently worthy of the repertoire, and Naxos has done as good a job of pairing here as we have a right to expect. With Julia Brown's volumes, this shapes up as a cycle to have.

Two Recordings of Bach

Weimar Preludes and Fugues
Joan Lippincott, organ
Paul Fritts, University of Notre Dame, IN (2004)
Gothic Records G-49260 (2008)

• BWV #s 532, 534, 537, 539, 542, 543, 545

Preludes and Fugues
Joan Lippincott, organ
Paul Fritts, Pacific Lutheran University, WA (1999)
Gothic Records G-49202 (2002)

• BWV #s 541, 544, 546, 548, 572, 769

***

Joan Lippincott is the former head of the organ department at Westminster Choir College, where, along with the Curtis Institute, she undertook her own studies. She specializes in Bach, but has recorded a fairly broad repertoire. After a distinguished teaching career, she now makes her living as a concert organist.

These two recordings showcase Preludes and Fugues from two different periods of Bach's life: the youthful exuberance of his Weimar years, and the more polished weight of his Leipzig period. Care has been taken to select instruments appropriate to the resources which Bach had available when writing the pieces, in an effort to bring us as close as possible to the sound and spirit of Bach's creation. Both instruments are from the Tacoma, WA builder Paul Fritts and Company. For the Weimar disc Dr. Lippincott has chosen a well-developed two manual and pedal instrument from 2004, installed at the University of Notre Dame; and the Leipzig disc gets a larger (and much-recorded) three manual and pedal instrument from 1998 installed at Pacific University in Tacoma, WA in 1999. Both are beautiful, impressive instruments that give us the clear and vibrant, pure-organ sound representative of the state of organ building of Bach's day, and both are in sympathetic acoustics--the Notre Dame instrument particularly so.

Dr. Lippincott's interpretations remind me a bit of the late, great E. Power Biggs, in that they seem at their best like a spotlight trained on the score, a rare glimpse into the composer's brain. This is abstract music, written for the glory of its peculiar sound and for the joy of triumphing over the rules of counterpoint, and Dr. Lippincott has an obvious affinity for this repertoire. She finds the inspiration from within the pieces, rather than imposing it from without. On the whole, I think the CD of the Weimar pieces is the more successful of the two. The Notre Dame organ is not large (35 stops on two manuals and pedal) but the divisions are very well developed, and it produces an especially harmonious sound. The acoustic in the recital hall helps, being almost cathedral-like in its scope. Dr. Lippincott's performances here are spot-on, among the best of these pieces I've heard.

The other disc has some of my favorites of Bach's output, some really excellent pieces--BWV 572, 541 and 544 are among my most beloved music in any genre, and the Canonic Variations, BWV 769, come off especially well. The PLU organ (54 stops over three manuals and pedal) is similarly brilliant, another Fritts masterwork. But there are several rough edges among the selections, the occasional missed note and the like, and the disc doesn't hit its mark quite so squarely. The opening piece especially--the Piece d'orgue in G Major BWV 572--has several distracting moments. There is a rather glaringly misplayed pedal passage about halfway through, and a peculiarly absent-minded-sounding release before the final section. And in this piece particularly (though I must be careful not to declare an error something that merely grates on my personal tastes) my old nemesis flexible winding rears its head quite excessively. At times it sounds like a small child jumping rhythmically on the bellows.

(I feel a digression coming on.)

Looking at the CD's notes, I see that the Professor of Music and Organist Emeritus of Pacific Lutheran University (and contributor to the notes) is one David Dahl. It strikes me now that I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Dahl during a cross-country motorcycle trip I took in 1982. I rode into Eugene, OR and went in search of the shops of the organ builder John Brombaugh. Not finding anyone at the shop, I was pointed in the direction of a recent Brombaugh installation in town, and went to the church to look around. There I found an organ lesson in progress, a student working on the Adagio of Bach's Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C Major, BWV 564, taught by none other than (I presume) this same David Dahl. When the lesson ended, Dr. Dahl--whom I'd never met nor heard of--was very kind to talk with me for quite a while about the Brombaugh organ. One of the items we discussed was the organ's prominent flexible wind supply (the degree of flexibility of which, if memory serves, could be adjusted with a switch or drawknob), which Dr. Dahl was quite a proponent of. I remember he asked me to sing a note, and then he shoved back on my shoulder and we noted the quaver in my voice. His point was that music-making is a living thing, and we all react to what is going on around us. Sounds sensible enough, and (honestly grateful though I was for his time and attention) it wasn't until a couple hundred miles down the road that it struck me that we don't push each other around during a choir performance! The analogy just didn't really hold water for me, and it still doesn't; flexible winding, beyond a certain minimal point, just sounds like a wind-supply defect--a result perhaps of technical limitations from antiquity--that has been mistaken for something sonically beneficial.

But I've carped about that quite enough, I think. It hardly stands as much of an impediment to appreciating these performances. I think the glitches I note (if indeed they are glitches) would only attract the attention of the devotee, and they needn't deter anyone sampling these recordings. I see that Dr. Lippincott has most of the rest of Bach's output available on the Gothic label; I look forward to hearing more.

There are many excellent CDs of this repertoire, and these are worthy additions to the catalog. They showcase one of our country's great concert organists and some really great and artistic American organs. With my small reservations noted, I'm happy to add them to my collection.

A 1/20th Full Cup

Scarlatti: Sonatas
Mikhail Pletnev, piano
Virgin Classics, 7243 5 61961 2 4 (2 CDs)

***

As promised, here we have a double CD set of Russian pianist Mikhail Pletnev playing 31 Scarlatti sonatas, providing us with a nice contrast to the Scott Ross harpsichord versions reviewed below. As I mentioned in that post, the suitability of the piano for all 555 of Scarlatti's sonatas is questioned, at least by some. And I'm certainly not knowledgeable enough to clear the air on these matters. But between the Hungarian Andras Schiff, Horowitz and now Pletnev, I must have 50 or more of the sonatas recorded on modern grand piano, and the pieces seem certainly not worse for wear for this instrument choice.

Which is not to say there is no difference. None of these artists seeks to make their piano sound like something other than what it is. Pletnev is of the first order of pianists, a top shelf technician with a broad repertoire. He uses his instrument's full resources to bring us these pieces, taking advantage of the piano's great dynamic range, clarity and expressive potential to shape lines and emphasize contrapuntal interplay, and indeed to differentiate emotionally between pieces. Some pieces, like K. #s 24, 386, 141 and 113 pass at a perilously fast pace; not gratuitously fast, but a pace which requires deft skill (and the piano's perfected double-escapement action) to pull off. Other pieces are presented more luxuriously, though never self-indulgently. Pletnev has chosen a number of more familiar sonatas (K. #s 27, 380, 96, the hauntingly beautiful K.87--a favorite of Horowitz's) mixed in with the inevitably lesser-known numbers.

It makes for a satisfying recital, and a great summary of Scarlatti on piano. It doesn't substitute for these pieces on their intended instrument, but Scarlatti, like Bach, translates very well to other media. I think a strong argument can be made that the piano is the dominant keyboard instrument of our times (harpsichords having become quite esoteric), and we exclude repertoire from it to our own detriment. Certainly I'd rather have Scarlatti's work become better known via the piano than not to hear him at all.

The recording, from 1995, is fairly close, natural and quiet.

An Embarassment of Riches

Domenico Scarlatti: The Keyboard Sonatas
Scott Ross, Harpsichord
Warner Classics, 2564-62092-2, 1986

***

In the process of updating some stuff in my iTunes, I threw out the MP3 files of Scott Ross's set of 555 Keyboard Sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti and re-ripped them into AAC format (slightly smaller files, and a bit better sound). This requires going back through and renaming everything, since I virtually never get correct titles off of the CD Database (and certainly not titles formatted to my taste). What really drives me crazy is that SOMEBODY bothered to submit these track titles to the database, and yet they have no consistency from one disc to the next, and are often a semi-intelligible scramble--no composer listed, artist's name listed as composer, instrument listed as piano, genre as rock or pop. And these are the only track name options available in the database (if there are several, they will prompt you to pick which one you want), so someone actually submitted them in this haphazard fashion! Why bother? Virtually anyone will have to reenter all this stuff in what is a fairly tedious and laborious process.

(I really shouldn't complain too much, as I've kind of developed my own formatting over the years, and so much of the typing would have to be done in any case. The words "major" and "minor" are omitted, replaced by upper or lowercase letters; the words "in" and "for" and other superfluities are dropped from titles; unless it's not obvious, the instrument gets deleted. So Piano Sonata No. 5 in c minor, Op. 5 becomes Op.5 Sonata 5c. Or Concerto for Harpsichord and Strings No.1 in F Major, Op. 77, First Movement: Andante becomes Op.77 Harpsichord Concerto 1F / 1--Andante. Takes much less space. But this means that I have a perpetually unfinished editing task facing me, as everything on my iTunes has to get the treatment.)

How easily I get off track. My point was to talk about Scarlatti. He's one of the Big Three born in 1685 (along with Bach and Handel), and is remembered chiefly for his huge output of sonatas for the harpsichord. Though Italian by birth, he became the official composer of the Spanish Queen Maria Barbara, and wrote his huge number of sonatas for the queen's tutelage (she was obviously a pretty accomplished keyboardist). Scarlatti himself seems to have been a spectacular player, even besting the brilliant Handel in a contest at the harpsichord (though Handel was judged the superior at the organ).

The fascinating thing is what Scarlatti accomplished with such a restricted palette. I love the sound of the harpsichord, but it's a limited instrument in its expressive capacities. It has some tiered dynamic control, but it's quite rudimentary compared with, say, a piano (harpsichordists would argue this, I'm sure; but the harpsichord's limited dynamic control is indisputable). The clavichord--said to be Bach's favorite instrument--is a much closer historic analog to our modern piano, but it was unable to produce the volume necessary for anything more than small salon performance. A larger room or concert hall required a more powerful instrument, and the harpsichord was the best the period had to offer. The comparatively thin sound produced by plucking the strings actually makes for great harmonic development, and harpsichords are almost always tuned to a non-equal temperament. So the instrument can produce a rich and very satisfying sound. But it's very much a sound of a particular era in music history, and the music written reflects the limitations of the instrument (nobody tries to play Chopin or Rachmaninov on a harpsichord).

One aspect of Bach's musical genius is his ability to produce really profound things while working within the restrictive contrapuntal forms. It's as though he needed some obstacle to overcome for his expression to take wing. And there's an element of this in Scarlatti's achievement. His Sonatas are virtually all written for the harpsichord, almost all are bipartite, and they fall stylistically within a fairly narrow range. Well, one would think that the limits of this formula would be quickly reached. And yet he managed 555 of them! That's an unbelievable number of a single type of composition. There seems to have been no limit to his ability to find new themes and fresh ways to assemble them. And each one is a gem unto itself.

Thanks to Horowitz and others, these sonatas are heard more and more from pianists. (I remember the CD notes of a perfectly horrid recording of Scarlatti Sonatas by the pianist Alexis Weissenberg wherein he wrote that only 15 or so of the 555 are suited to the piano. I have considerably more than 15 recorded on piano, and they sound great, thanks.) But the harpsichord does have its charm and an undeniable correctness with this repertoire, and the late Scott Ross is a most persuasive proponent of the literature. He uses several different instruments in the course of the cycle, so that one's ear gets a bit of variety. Just the same, one is unlikely to sit down for all 555 of them; this set--on 34 discs--takes a day and a half of continuous play to run its course! So the "variety" angle is a bit moot. (I read that the whole recording enterprise required over 8,000 takes!)

I bought the original release of these CDs on Erato Disques 20-some years ago, but I see they're still available from Warner's catalog as a budget release. If you're a collector, I simply can't imagine anyone topping this effort and I highly recommend the release. I have a number of other very persuasive exponents of this music--Andras Schiff and Trevor Pinnock, both on some older recordings; and I've ordered a more recent Mikhail Pletnev recording that shows great promise--but Mr. Ross holds his own on a case-by-case basis, and offers exhaustive completeness to boot.

The recordings are almost 25 years old now, but they could have been recorded yesterday. The sound is excellent.

So I've hours of work at my computer here to re-input all the information for this release. At least I've got some really engaging music to keep me company.

Livin' the High Life

Steve Winwood
Nine Lives (2008) (plus Back In the High Life--1986)
Sony Records

***

I remember Steve Winwood from my college days. He was pretty prominent on radio at that time, and with his past group affiliations it seemed like he might already be in the latter part of his career. It wasn't that he didn't sound current, but there was something old style about his singing. He was a rock update on a horns and Hammond rhythm and blues style. I never owned any of his music, but I knew of the guy, at least while he was current. And then there was no more new stuff, and I came to feel that his career was maybe over or he had moved on to executive matters, like producing other artists or some such.

Not so fast, it seems. With Nine Lives, he gives us a fine studio recording, his first in five years. Since I had no other music by him, I decided in picking up his new CD to also snag an album from when he was more prominently in pop culture's radar, and chose 1986's Back In the High Life.

The new album does not stray too far from the blue-eyed soul sound for which he is renowned (though he is an experienced keyboardist in jazz and other genres). His voice is immediately recognizable, sounding like the back-of-the-throat belting of an older black man--kind of like Bill Withers: soulful and rich and from the street. I'm reminded (though not stylistically) of the first time I heard Christina Aguilera, whom I was convinced could not possibly be white: I just didn't think skinny British white guy when I heard Winwood sing.

He seems always to be surrounded by able musicians, though one of the banes of an iTunes purchase is that there are no CD notes accompanying. And finding the roster of musicians online has not proven very easy. (Allmusic.com has a listing of musicians, but it's so unspecific that it's of little use). So I'm kind of in the dark about who helped him on his albums.

Nine Lives sounds more relaxed than his older material, maybe as befits someone older and wiser. Winwood's voice is older, but it's clearly the same musical mind attached, and there's a more acoustic sound to the new album. Back In the High Life, though polished and professional, sounds much more processed. Nine Lives begins with the basic R&B wail I'm Not Drowning, basically just the singer and his guitar, and proceeds from there through a range of moods, from the dreamy Fly to the grittier Dirty City, which prominently features Winwood's former Blind Faith bandmember, Eric Clapton. This is a good, honest record from a journeyman musician whose command of his craft lets him not work so hard at it.

But my real revelation is with that earlier album. There are four or five songs on Back In the High Life that still receive regular airtime, songs with which I've been more or less familiar for years. But to hear them in good fidelity and collected into a group--and to pay close attention to them--makes the album seem a more impressive accomplishment than I realized. From some inspired playing from all corners (by whomever--thanks again, iTunes), to really delicious soul grooves, the album just delivers the goods in a satisfying way. If you weren't a fan of this kind of music, here is the album that will make you into one. As a drummer, I'm especially taken with the really fabulous turns on the title track (with sections played in the style almost of a military march) and the utterly infectious Freedom Overspill. Add in a remarkable turn by vocalist Chaka Kahn in Higher Love, and the unmistakable backing vocals of James Taylor (also on the title track--something I had felt sure of for years, but only confirmed with some web digging after buying the album), and the result is an album which most pop artists dream of: a collection of feeling songs, brilliantly played, which stand the test of time.

Together, these two make an impressive pair of releases. The musical world is better for having Steve Winwood in it.

A Lawes Unto Themselves

William Lawes: Consorts in Four and Five Parts
Phantasm (plus Sarah Cunningham)
Channel Classics CCS 15698

Works for Five Voices:

• Set in a
• Set in F
• Set in c
• Set in C
• Set in g

Works for Four Voices:

• Fantazy in c (VdGS #108)
• Aire [Fantazy] in C (VdGS #111)
• Aire in c (VdGS #109)
• Aire in C (VdGS #112)
• Aire in c (VdGS #110)
• Aire in C (VdGS #113)

***

Phantasm are a quartet of viols comprised of Americans Laurence Dreyfus and Wendy Gillespie, the Scot Jonathan Manson and Finn Markku Luolajan-Mikkola. Founded by Laurence Dreyfus in 1994, the group have been the Consort-in-Residence at Oxford University since 2005, and have won numerous awards, including a Grammophon Award for Best Non-Vocal Baroque Performance with their very first CD, 1995's recording of Purcell's Complete Fantasies for Viols (Simax - PSC 1124). They now have 11 recordings to their credit, including works by Byrd, John Jenkins and Orlando Gibbons among others.

This present release dates from 1999, and is one of two discs featuring music of William Lawes (1602-1645). This disc covers Consorts written for both four and five voices (for which the quartet is supplemented by Sarah Cunnningham).

There's a magnetism in the plaintive, organum-like sound of a group of gambas, something that taps into the foundation of musicality itself. After the human voice, these instruments provide about the most basic example of a sustained, blending tone, which then leads to an essential exposure to harmony and the fundamentals of counterpoint and voice leading. I find the gamba family sound much more appealing in general than the violin family, not because of its period-correctness but because it's a purer tone with a more interesting articulation. And it doesn't escape me that many of these pieces would translate very well to the organ (just as Fretwork so beautifully translated Bach's organ works to a gamba ensemble). Some of the sets are lugubrious and solemn, while others are quite rollicking, and would be fun to play (and see played). Belaboring a point I've made on numerous occasions before, here is yet another specialized niche musical concern based in or around London, a place which already sports the aforementioned Fretwork. You gotta love the place.

These pieces are perfectly played. I'm eager now to look into both their companion volume to this one of Lawes' Six-Part Consorts, as well as a couple volumes of John Jenkins. High marks on this one.

More Youthful Splendor

Heavenly Harmonies
Stile antico
Harmonia Mundi, HMU807463
2008

Music of Thomas Tallis and William Byrd

***

This is the second release by young British vocal group stile antico. Their first, 2007's Music for Compline, heralded the arrival of a spectacular group of young singers specializing in the great choral works from England's Tudor period.

This present effort builds on every success of that first thrilling release, contrasting the simple hymn tune settings of Thomas Tallis with the more elaborate contrapuntal essays of William Byrd. It's an excellent contrast, though I find I'm especially taken with these very direct tunes of Tallis. Like Bach's fantastic harmonization of the Lutheran hymns with which he worked daily, there's a sense here of Tallis reaching out across hundreds of years, bridging time and style and circumstance to make an eternal musical statement. The Byrd is lovely too, of course--and as flawlessly presented--but his manner is a bit more ornate and, like the floridness of Shakespeare's language to our modern ear, takes a bit more acclimation. This is meant as no criticism, and the toggling between the two styles seems most effective.

The group seems a bit more closely recorded on this CD. The room is there, but in a supporting role. The benefit is that of being able to hear the individual voices--the singers sound almost as though they were collected in your music room for a private concert; but this intimacy comes at the cost of a touch of mystery and atmosphere. But in the Tallis especially a chamber sound seems very appropriate.

As with Music for Compline, I cannot but note how beautifully these young men and women blend together, and how mature and searching their interpretations are. In that they work without the guiding vision of a conductor, this sense of unity seems even more impressive.

I look eagerly forward to their next offering.

CSO / Haitink's Continuing Mahler Cycle

Mahler: Symphony No. 6
Chicago Symphony Orchestra / Bernard Haitink
CSO Resound

***

Here's a CD to remind you that Chicago is home to one of the world's truly great orchestras. And this pairing of Bernard Haitink and the CSO seems inspired, especially in this grand repertoire like Mahler or Bruckner or Vaughan Williams.

I was particularly happy with their earlier release of Mahler's Third, and this present CD will likely bubble to the top as my favorite Sixth. Chicago have long been famous for having one of the best brass sections of any orchestra, and this release shows that feather still firmly in their cap. Certain passages here will part your hair, assuming your audio setup is willing. But every section of the orchestra carries their weight and the result is a marvelous thing.

The recording itself is spectacular. There is a distinct soundstage and the recording is quiet enough to hear the corners of the room.

Thoughts on Electronic Music

I think this is the first time I've put up the same post on both blogs. But I couldn't figure out where it made more sense to put it. So.

***

(A very simple Moog synthesizer, without any of the mixing or recording apparatus. Carlos's studio from the '70s was much more involved than this.)

I have a project in mind.

As I have written elsewhere, I have a distinct soft spot for the recordings of Wendy Carlos. And also of Isao Tomita, who was active in similar fashion about the same time. Carlos's early "Switched-On" recordings of Bach on the Moog synthesizer, and Tomita's recordings of synthesized Debussy (and others) were one of my entry points into classical music--we might even call them the spoonful of sugar that caused me to linger over something that might otherwise have required too much concentration from my teen-age brain. It doesn't hurt, of course, that they were fiddling with really amazing source material; it's one of the reasons these recordings have stood the test of time.

But another reason is that they document a fascinating period of history. This was the point at which purely electronically-created sounds officially entered the mainstream. I love the idea of this, I love the steps required to make it happen, and I love the sounds themselves.

Mine are not the most versatile of tastes, I know. I listen to a broader range than some, but my music collection still consists of a handful of pockets, a few distinct genres that constitute my core enthusiasms. Within my favorite genre of organ music, I love all manner of sounds and all the mechanical stuff involved in making those sounds. My exploration of organ tone and pipe construction and voicing and the assembly of an ensemble over the years helped me to become more aware of musical tone and of the nature of sound generally. And I've come to be in love with sound itself. So how could I not love the Moog synthesizer and all the electronic permutations that have followed it? It's more versatile than just this, of course, but I think the synthesizer is ideally suited to organ music.

Somewhere along the line, the synthesizer has been co-opted by popular and dance music almost exclusively. There is a field of modern composed electronic music (though I've struggled to find much of a portal into that community), but like much of the rest of modern intellectual music it seems to have raced far ahead of public acceptance or understanding or appreciation. And no one seems to be using the synthesizer as Carlos and Tomita did 30 years ago, as a set of unique sounds and capabilities to be applied to the existing musical canon. I find this odd, since we have not deemed the repertoire itself to be irrelevant; we're still interested in triad-based Western tonal music from the last five hundred years, but nobody seems to be seriously interpreting this music electronically.

So there is the nub of my "project," an idea that has been bouncing around my head for a decade. There is a hole that needs filling.

In the 20 years since I was playing drums in a band in Minneapolis, the world of sound production and recording has undergone really radical, fundamental changes. So fundamental that it has taken me some time to even figure out what questions to ask. What used to be a matter of acoustic (or even early electronic) instruments played real-time and captured on magnetic tape in a dedicated recording studio by a team of professionals is now something an individual can accomplish quite easily in his bedroom on his laptop. All of it--the whole business. (I struggle to get my head around the details and implications of this.)

All this change seems actually to work in my favor, as much of the technology is specifically suited to someone who does not fluently read music (me) or is not highly accomplished on the instrument in question (me again). Working from a score, I should be able to assemble pieces a line at a time--or even a note at a time--and then edit and tweak the details so that I end up at the performance I desire. This is not an approach which celebrates the spark of spontaneous creativity, I know, which is a big part of at least some types of music. But my own tastes have always leaned toward the considered and deliberate. If I were more adept at reading music, I might find my purest appreciation by studying the score. So my carefully-assembled and -tweaked computer music might understandably not appeal to everyone. But I can think of a hundred pieces which might benefit from this perspective.

What remains to figure out is... well, everything (and this is where the rubber of my formulation of questions meets the road of my ignorance of the new paradigm). How to produce the actual sounds? What exact software--and how to decide on one program over another? If I use my computer to do the digital sound synthesis (a sensible step), how do I ensure compatibility between the actual synthesizing software and the sequencing and recording programs? These things can be gotten as a bundle, even having all elements as lobes of a single program; but that convenience / compatibility may force compromises in sound input material; and presumably we'll eventually be dealing with more than just a single source of sound material. And that leads to another question: at what point does one "record" the sounds produced? Is the tweaking to be done in the editing phase? Do I perfect a given line or phrase and put it in the can, assembling a piece from the best takes of the myriad parts? Or is most of the work to be done in the editing after the fact, programming the MIDI instructions so that the piece plays--generates in completed form--at the touch of a button? Does one tweak and tweak the MIDI file and then record the final product when there isn't any more tweaking to do?

I feel a bit like a cave man stumbling upon a Vespa scooter in the woods. There are plenty of people swimming with perfect comfort in these waters presently, people for whom my questions may not be entirely sensible (or who realize that my aspirations are misguided or ill-informed). It's like my in-laws who find the use of a cell phone intimidating and incomprehensible, even though it doesn't differ much from their cordless house phone. Everyone's knowledge and comfort zone has a boundary somewhere.

All this by way of introduction. It will take me a while to figure out the details, but I may put up continuing posts detailing my progress or lack thereof.

Thoughts or suggestions are welcome, natch.