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.

The Plunge to The Depths

The Road to Paradise
Gabrieli Consort / Paul McCreesh
Deutsche Grammophon, CD 477 6605
Music of Britten · Byrd · William H. Harris · Holst · Howells · Robert Parsons · Richard Rodney Bennett · Sheppard · Tallis · John Tavener

***

I bought this back-to-back with the previously-reviewed Sixteen / Harry Christophers album, and as I listen from one to the other they almost seem at first like companion discs. Rather than concentrating specifically on virginal material, though, the unifying theme for the Gabrieli Consort CD is the trek made by medieval pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela (a subject also addressed in Joby Talbot's 2005 composition Path of Miracles). Conductor McCreesh has chosen pieces--again spanning several centuries--that express musically what religious pilgrims might have experienced during the perilous journey. Sonically, the two albums occupy some common real estate; both are fairly serious and somber and contemplative unaccompanied choral music (there is just a bit of organ on the Gabrieli Consort disc).

But that first impression of similarity does not hold up. There is a noticeable change of sonic setting moving from one disc to the other; that's one part of it. Paul McCreesh has chosen a much larger, more luxurious acoustic than that in which The Sixteen were recorded. But that acoustic plays a supporting role in what, after a couple listenings, comes across as a much more ambitious project. While we do have works of serenity and surpassing beauty such as Robert Parson's Ave Maria and Thomas Tallis's Miserere nostri, we encounter more depth and drama as we progress, in Benjamin Britten's treatment of the traditional A Hymn to The Virgin and John Tavener's Song for Athene and Gustav Holst's Nunc dimittis and others. It's all fairly buttoned-down, but the dynamics presented in this setting introduce us to deep waters.

The Gabrieli Consort was formed by Paul McCreesh in 1982 and, like The Sixteen, concentrate on mostly Baroque and Renaissance repertoire (though they are now venturing forward into the Classical). They were one of the first groups I encountered to concentrate on authentic period performance, and the value of the exercise is nowhere more evident than here. Intonation and blend are superb; no other word does the trick. Using between 8 and 32 singers on these various pieces, I cannot imagine getting more deeply into this music than these women and men have done here.

The Sixteen disc is excellent; but this offering from Paul McCreesh and the Gabrieli Consort is profound.

Highest recommendation.

Ghost Stories

A Mother's Love: Music for Mary
The Sixteen / Harry Christophers
Universal Classics & Jazz, UCJ 476 6295

• Grieg: Ave Maris Stella
• Cornysh: Ave Maria Mater Dei
• Josquin: Gaude Virgo Mater Christi
• Bruckner: Tota Pulchra Es, Maria (Antiphon)
• Saint-Saens: Ave Maria
• Britten: A Hymn To The Virgin
• Mendelssohn: Ave Maria
• Obrecht: Salve Regina
• Rizza: Ave Generosa (World Premiere recording)
• Anon: (Mediaeval) Alma Redemptoris Mater
• Faure: Ave Maria
• Palestrina: Sicut Lilium Inter Spinas
• Liszt: Ave Maris Stella
• Elgar: Ave Maria
• Durufle: Tota Pulchra Es, Maria
• Plainsong: Salve Regina
• Lassus: Salve Regina

***

Here is yet another of London's fabulous vocal ensembles, The Sixteen. Formed by conductor Harry Christophers in 1977, it draws for its members from the choirs of Oxford and Cambridge. They have concentrated over the years on English polyphony, but have also dabbled in a much wider range of music, from the Italian Renaissance up into the 21st Century.

This present release gathers together the musical thoughts of a range of composers about the maypole of the West's favorite matronly construct of mythology, the Virgin Mary. The emotional hand-wringing of the world's religions have incontrovertibly provided fodder--or at least a focusing mechanism--for musical art; truth be told, I was actually eager to see what variations on the theme of saintly motherhood were managed by some of these represented composers, as I had already in my collection a number of lovely pieces of the same cast. Brahms, Morten Lauridsen, Mendelssohn, Langlais and, especially, Gabriel Fauré were already onboard with some fabulous entries; and here was an opportunity to hear from Brucker, William Cornyshe, Britten, Saint-Saens and Liszt, among others.

The pieces, as one might expect, all have a certain relaxed quality, being all serenely tonal and not too militantly polyphonic. The earliest composers--William Cornyshe or Jacob Obrecht--sound antique to our ears, jagged and meandering. By the time we get to Fauré, Mendelssohn and Bruckner we find ourselves squarely in mainstream 19th Century Classical mode, and Margaret Rizza brings us right up to present day with the premier recording of her Ave Generosa, which sounds at times a bit like the tintinnabulum sounds of Estonian Arvo Part. The CD's organizing theme is not so structured as to guarantee absolute unity of style, but the album holds together as a concept reasonably well.

I have a number of recordings of The Sixteen, and their performances are always stylistically coherent and unimpeachably competent technically. In contrast to some other chamber choirs who specialize on this Renaissance and post-Renaissance material, The Sixteen sound to employ different singing styles depending on the exact period of the material. Early material will typically be sung without much vibrato (excepting the solo voices), whereas Romantic period pieces are often sung with a fuller texture. I cannot fault them for this approach--indeed, far be it from me to second-guess a scholar like Harry Christophers--but my own ear always recoils from the use of vibrato with singing except in very rare and special circumstances. Particularly with solo voices or the high soprano lines, the vibrato here can take on an almost operatic quality that, for me, throws a damp rag on things right quick. So my reservations here carry the caveat of my pointed personal preference; anyone not objecting to this use of vibrato in a choral setting will likely thrill at these performances.

The recording is fairly close and in a medium-dry acoustic.

State-of-the-Art Fisk

Organ Odyssey
Mary Preston at the Lay Family Concert Organ,
Fisk Op. 100, Meyerson Symphony Center, Dallas
Reference Recordings, RR-113
Music of Karg-Elert, Vierne, Mendelssohn, Widor, Ives, Messiaen, Widor, and John la Montaine.

***

This instrument has cropped up on this blog several times before in my reviews or talk of organ construction. A concert hall organ might be expected to represent a firm's ultimate effort, having talents ranging from the power to pummel all within a large space into a pudding of awe to the versatility necessary for playing a very wide range of repertoire; and this Fisk instrument is something of a torch-carrier for the current state of the art; it's the quintessential modern concert hall organ. It's the instrument to which Lynn Dobson's recent organ for Philadelphia's Kimmel Center will most naturally be compared (I'm still waiting for a solo recording of that new instrument.)

I've reviewed several recordings in this space made on Yale University's magnificent Skinner organ in Woolsey Hall; these recordings inevitably cause me to think of this particular Fisk, both because the two instruments are in pursuit of the very same goal, and because each is perhaps the most prominent organ of this type built in its own day. The Woolsey Skinner seems suffused to me with a kind of inner glow, a unified sonic genius that would ensure that Ernest M. Skinner went into the history books not only as an expert builder of first-quality large symphonic pipe organs, but also as someone who left a distinct sonic stamp on organ building in this country and around the world.

It might fairly be said that Charles Fisk's legacy is further-reaching, one that covers a much broader range of tonal and mechanical philosophy than Skinner's. Fisk built in a pretty broad range of styles, and his firm have branched out even further since Fisk's death in 1983; perhaps no single instrument can fairly stand for all that Mr. Fisk's ambitions encompassed.

So with the caveat that even a magnificent organ like the one in Dallas's Meyerson Symphony Center cannot speak for the totality of the firm, this is still an instrument which has gained a real prominence in the musical world. Built in 1991, the organ boasts over 4,500 pipes spread over four manuals and pedal, and ranks as one of the world's most important and ambitious organs built for this kind of setting.

Part of the reason this Fisk instrument comes to mind as I listen to Yale's Skinner is because this Skinner is so very distinctive--and so different sounding than this state-of-the-art Fisk. However immensely impressed I am by this Fisk, I would certainly not confuse it for the Skinner in Woolsey hall, nor would I be able to identify it as a Fisk instrument in a blind test. I can't say with certainty that I could do this for Woolsey's Skinner either, but I think I'd come much closer. I'm not sure if there's anything like a fair litmus test here, but all these things are pieces of a puzzle that I'm trying to assemble in my mind as to what sonic components comprise an organ's style, and what elements make some of these instruments more distinctive than others.

I think one of the things contributing to my inability to identify this organ blind is that this Fisk is attempting to give the organist maximum flexibility for a wide repertoire. We might even say the firm have done a fantastic job of executing other people's tonal preferences. Thus, there is a French-inspired Résonance division and an English-derived Tuba division, and the rest of the organ built to unify those two worlds. I daresay that Ernest M. Skinner seemed more apt to build an instrument that conformed to his own internal compass about what an organ should be--and he made quite a sales pitch about why his tonal ideas were correct--and that repertoire played on it would thus be "Skinnerized." And it was his genius that his ideas seemed sonically unified and viable. This Fisk, by contrast, seems to try and deftly straddle several lines of stylistic demarcation, all unified by skillful voicing and a kind of central guiding hand.

(Oh yeah, and it looks jaw-dropping amazing!)

Mary Preston is the organist of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and she is the Curator of this magnificent organ. She has now recorded several discs on the instrument, covering Duruflé's big works, a Widor Symphony, a couple compositions by Max Reger, and Reubke's Sonata on the 94th Psalm, among others. Now we have a recent Reference Recordings release featuring German and French works, plus a couple American compositions as well. All these recordings show Mrs. Preston as a highly-skilled virtuoso, and also a musician of pretty broad range. She knows her way around this instrument, and demonstrates its many colors most deftly. It does what a concert hall instrument ought to do: great justice to repertoire of different schools and periods.

The opening, majestic chords of Karg-Elert's March on "Nun danket alle Gott" start the recital, and we travel through, among others, a frothy Op. 55 Piéce de fantaisie of Louis Vierne, one of Mendelssohn's Sonatas, and the compelling stridency of Messiaen's Dieu parmi nous as we go (the Messiaen seems most persuasively presented). Ives's Variations on 'America' are a whimsical bit of youthful writing, easily accessible and based on the most familiar of tunes. She finishes the recital with the second most famous of all organ pieces, the final movement Toccata of Widor's Fifth Symphony, all played in exemplary fashion.

One of the things I particularly love about the instrument is the immediacy with which it speaks into what is still a pretty generous acoustic for a modern concert hall (pains were taken in the hall's construction to make it organ-friendly, including having concrete-lined resonance chambers which can be opened and closed according to preference). The organ's casework helps focus the sound such that every pipe is audible. The Fisk has a more developed (or at least a more prominent) upperwork than the Woolsey organ, and there is an engaging, almost shrill aggressiveness to the instrument's tutti which reminds me of some of the great French organs in Paris (though with quite different-sounding reeds).

Alas, I may wring my hands forever on this topic without quite finding the conclusion I seek. But so long as there are instruments like this one to raise the question, I'll be happy to consign myself to the endless trek.

The recording, as "Reference Recording" suggests, is excellent, which is the more impressive given the instrument's huge dynamic range.

Like Getting Married

Yes, yes; you're in the right place.

I just decided that "Ultrasonic Scattershot" was intolerably long. (Actually, at the time I simply wanted "Scattershot" or "Musical Scattershot" but both were taken.) I figured nobody would actually be typing in the URL anyway...

But I grew to dislike its clumsiness. And I thought it might be nice to have something without blogspot in the URL. What the hell, it's $10.

So, a new name. Same old product in new clothing. Like getting married!

And given how little of the musical mainstream I seem to cross paths with, a hint of snobbery seemed on point.

So with a clink of champagne glasses and some scattered rice, we're off and running!

Wisdom and Experience

Mark Knopfler
The Ragpicker's Dream
Mercury Records, 2002


***

Occasionally I'm surprised to go through my music collection and find myself with a bunch more individual performances of a single piece of music than I realized I had. Though I do have something of the collector in me, I only find myself drawn to collect in this way when I care deeply about the repertoire (as an example, I have but two versions of Beethoven's Symphonies--modern orchestra and period performance--because it's just not music I care much for; whereas I find myself with some 40 copies of Duruflé's organ music--virtually every performance I have ever come across). I think this is because, consciously or unconsciously, I'm searching for sublimity, for the ideal performance of works I know well.

As I have listened over the decades, I seem to have developed barely-subconscious mental musical templates, ideal specimens of varying genres that are just out of my reach but which influence my take of almost anything I hear. How I respond to a recording or performance will correlate directly to how closely the artist comes to these mental templates (how much of this is just an assembly of all the preferred details of these varied recordings I've heard and how much is of my own genesis I cannot say). Much more rarely a performer will either present me with an entirely new template or radically retool an existing one. People listen in different ways, I know; and I don't think that my interface with music is better or move valid than someone else's. But I think we're all influenced by everything we're exposed to, either in music or literature or film or art or ideas, and this seems like a rough model of how things work for me.

I've come over the past few months to regard Mark Knopfler as one of my standard-bearers for songwriting and acoustic folk-rock performance. Though I knew of him via a passing familiarity with Dire Straits, it was only when I stumbled upon his 2007 solo release Kill to Get Crimson that I really began paying attention. That deeply satisfying release led me back to his previous, 2004's Shangri-La, which continued in the same vein of evocative and laconic lyrics and very tasty, no-mindless-theatrical-pyrotechnical-bullshit playing by a small group of very competent musicians. I gravitate again and again to these CDs, finding in them a brilliant condensation of the songwriter's art, the essence of a troubador's craft with a light coating of period style. This is simply as good to my mind as this genre of writing gets.

Naturally, until he offers another new record, I'm compelled to go further and further back in his catalog. This time it's his release from 2000, The Ragpicker's Dream. And again we find Mr. Knopfler immersed in his personal vein, though I daresay in tiny increments over the half decade from Ragpicker to Crimson he has become even quieter and more contemplative. But it's the same great musical mind throughout, mature and settled, and the stylistic continuity could have these three albums stand as a trilogy. Speaking of style, though his instrumentation and essential approach are settled, he still covers a pretty broad range. Ragpicker ranges from the deliciously quiet, almost grief-stricken The Place Where We Used to Live, to Quality Shoe, which sounds like it was tapped directly from an airing of A Prairie Home Companion.

Lyrically, he has a wonderful ability to find the perfect few words that evoke a whole scene, to tell a three-dimensional story with just a few key points. And he delivers these lyrics so gently, with a cross between a whisper and a mumble, that the story threatens to go right past unless a little attention is paid. I love this, that attention and repeat listenings yield treat after treat; in lyrics, sure, but also (some might say especially) in his exquisite guitar playing. He simply never overplays--which seems the ultimate expression of confidence--and has a conspicuous talent for making less into much more. Again, all this brings us back to essentials.

There is (I might as well finish my hyperbolic gush) something of the beau ideal in this presentation, a quiet, deeply masculine voice singing songs of penetrating vision and sensitivity. Though he looks like a plumber, there is a distinct sex appeal here; there's something quintessentially male about him. For once I seem to have come across an unequivocal man who does not shame my sex, one that maybe even raises the average for the rest of us a little.