Swiss Chamber Soloists ELLIOTT CARTER La Musique

 

LA MUSIQUE

 

Astrig Siranossian / Nathanaël Gouin / Daniel Barenboim DEAR MADEMOISELLE

 

DEAR MADEMOISELLE

 

Pina Napolitano TEMPO E TEMPI

TEMPO E TEMPI

Sung-Soo Cho MAXIMUM | MINIMUM | MODERN

Korean pianist Sung-Soo Cho performs an intriguing recital of compositions by American composers that range from works with very progressive musical language to ones that integrate influences of folk and honky-tonk -- in other words, the full spectrum of modern American classical music. The oldest work on the program was written in 1967 and the most recent in 2015. John Corigliano, Michael Ippolito, John Adams, Lowell Liebermann, Steve Reich, Elliott Carter, and David Rakowski are all represented on this recording. These composers have a strong advocate in Sung-Soo Cho, who was awarded "Best American Contemporary Performance: at the Cincinnati World Piano Competition and "Best Performance of the Commissioned Work: at the Texas State International Piano Competition. An award winner of numerous international competitions, Cho has appeared as a soloist in Asia, the U.S., and Europe. A graduate of Seoul National University and Manhattan School of Music, he is currently pursuing his D.M.A. degree at the Cleveland Institute of Music. He is on the faculty at Notre Dame College.

Miranda Cuckson / Blair McMillen CARTER SESSIONS ECKARDT

Violinist Miranda Cuckson and pianist Blair McMillen have already proven themselves an estimable duo for works by American Modernists such as Shapey and Martino. Their latest outing features Elliott Carter’s Duo for Violin and Piano (1973), a formidable piece written in the midst of Carter’s most compositionally rigorous period. And while the twosome emphasize the brittle, cutoff phrases that frequently appear in the work, they also do a deft job of pointing up the places in which violin lines melt into the resonance of piano chords (and viceversa). Thus, theirs is a rendition that juxtaposes rigor and grace, violence and gentleness; this versatility makes it one of my favorite outings with this piece I’ve thus far heard.

Composed in 1953, Sonata for solo violin is one of Roger Sessions’ first large-scale attempts at 12-tone composition. Clocking in at over thirty minutes, it is a bear of a piece, demanding both virtuosity and considerable thoughtfulness from the violinist to bring it off: Cuckson has both in spades. I particularly enjoy her traversal of the work’s last movement, a brisk “Alla Marcia” with incendiary passagework and double stops aplenty. Cuckson brings laser beam accuracy to the numerous tricky to tune passages.

Jason Eckardt wrote Strömkarl to complement the other pieces on this recording. It is based upon a Northern European legend of violin playing sprites who took up residence near waterfalls; depending on the rendering of the story, either charming passersby with music or leading them to drown. Eckardt captures this mischievous ambiguity with pixellated altissimo violin writing and brittle pizzicati; the piano is also given an angularly terse role to play. My money is on Eckardt’s image of the sprite being a wicked little beastie, but either way the piece is vividly characterful and a real workout for the performances; one they assay handily. (Christian B. Carey)

Matt Haimovitz ORBIT

Orbit maps my musical journey since the turn of the millenium, a path travelled with my partner in life and music, composer Luna Pearl Woolf. Initially released on Oxingale Records as five thematic albums – Anthem (2003), Goulash! (2005), After Reading Shakespeare (2007), Figment (2009), and Matteo (2011) – Orbit encompasses nearly all of the solo contemporary works on these albums, along with two newly recorded tracks: Philip Glass’ “Orbit” and a new arrangement by Luna of the Beatles’ “Helter Skelter.” All but these two tracks were produced by Luna, and all have now been remastered for SACD HD surround sound. More than twenty composers are represented in the set, fifteen of them still living. Ten works receive their world premiere recording here. 

With the solo cello as our pilot, we steer headlong into the great musical debates of the past half-century: maximalist vs. minimalist; folk-rooted vs. abstract, absolute vs. narrative, tonal vs. atonal. In many ways, we live in a golden age of music, with a perspective rich in history and reference. We can look back at the 20th century’s Tower of Babel. We can embrace its boldness, diversity, complexity, and its return to the natural order of harmony. Leonard Bernstein’s words from his Norton Lectures, The Unanswered Question, ruminating on Noam Chomsky’s linguistic theory of universality, the collective wiring that connects us across borders and between far-reaching lands, resonates more than ever. He writes, “I’m no longer quite sure what the question is, but I do know that the answer is Yes.” (Matt Haimovitz)

Reto Bieri CONTRECHANT

Reto Bieri’s New Series debut is a brilliant recital for solo clarinet that looks at new developmental possibilities in the ‘language’ of the instrument in modern music. Bieri quotes with approval Heinz Holliger’s statement “My entire relation to music is such that I always try to go to the limits”. Here the Swiss clarinettist has brought together pieces from the border regions of compositional exploration, as well as the pathways that link them. Under examination here are, for instance, the border region “between silence and the birth of sound and noise, a magical region”, touched upon in the music of Salvatore Sciarrino, Heinz Holliger and Gergely Vajda. Then there is the juncture of speech, sprechgesang and melody (referenced in Holliger and Luciano Berio), as well as the border region linking gesture, dance, ritual and game – as in Holliger, Elliott Carter and Péter Eötvös.

In Holliger’s “Contrechant”, the piece that gives Bieri’s album its title, all the regions are illuminated, calling for “a new kind of virtuosity from the player”, a challenge to which Reto Bieri rises. With the exception of the late Luciano Berio, the clarinettist has worked closely with each of the featured composers to realize optimum performance of these pieces. What a fascinating group of composers it is, too: from Elliott Carter – at 102, America’s Grand Old Man of new music – to Gergely Vajda, former student of Eötvös, who wrote “Lightshadow-trembling” when he was only twenty.

Paul Griffiths, in his liner notes, emphasizes the ‘singing’ quality of the performances: “Song. Some of the titles nudge us in that direction – Lied, Contrechant, Rechant – but what makes the conclusion inescapable is the fluency, the nuanced variety of Reto Bieri’s playing. This is indeed song: song without words … song in which sound alone sings”.

Bieri views the choice of pieces for the present album as an extension of the ideal repertoire suggested by the 1995 ECM solo clarinet recording “dal niente” by Eduard Brunner, with music of Lachenmann, Stockhausen, Stravinsky, Boulez, Scelsi and Yun. (Both solo clarinet discs were recorded at Propstei St Gerold, with Manfred Eicher producing). “Contrechant” is destined to prove no less influential. (ECM Records)

Ensemble Intercontemporain / Matthias Pintscher NEW YORK

The Ensemble intercontemporain is a contemporary music ensemble  of 31 soloists dedicated to the performance and promotion of music from the 20th and 21st centuries.
For over 30 years, this permanent ensemble of highly professional musicians has been performing a demanding repertoire of orchestral music in all its diverse forms. Under the artistic direction of Matthias Pintscher  they are united by a shared passion for new music. They accompany composers in the exploration of new musical realms, nourished by inventions (new performance and extended techniques, computer music, etc.) and encounters with other forms of artistic expression such as dance, theatre, video and visual arts. 
In residence at the Philharmonie de Paris, The Ensemble intercontemporain performs in France and abroad as a regular guest at major international festivals. The Ensemble also organizes a range of outreach activities ( educational concerts, school music workshops, master classes, etc.) serving a diversified public (conservatory students, professional and amateur musicians, general audience, etc.)

Kim Kashkashian / Robert Levin ELEGIES

Kim Kashkashian is easily one of the finest violists to ever place her bow on the instrument. She shines just as effervescently in the company of an orchestra as she does solo or here alongside Robert Levin, a trusty accompanist with whom she shares a palpable musical bond, and puts the range of her talents on full display in this fine chamber program of mostly rarities.

On the whole, this album is very warmly recorded. Levin pulls from the piano an almost gamelan-like quality, while Kashkashian luxuriates in the plurivocity afforded to her. She interacts with her instrument as would fingers upon a spine and her tonal depth often breaches cello territory. For anyone who is curious to discover what her playing is all about but who is wary of her penchant for the contemporary, this is an ideal place to start. (ECM Reviews)

Tamsin Waley-Cohen SOLI Works for Solo Violin by BARTÓK, PENDERECKI, BENJAMIN, CARTER & KURTÁG

There is nothing like the experience of being completely alone on stage, just with my violin. It is the ultimate soul-baring communion both with myself and with the audience. And it is no coincidence that many of the works written for solo violin explore the depths of our shared human experience through this intense medium.

For musicians, composers and performers alike, sound is our medium. Through sound we must express everything we wish to communicate. The works on this disc take the violin to its expressive limits. The technical demands on the performer are always in the service of heightened expression, whether of ecstasy, pain, doubt, loneliness, desperation, or acceptance and peace. For me, this is at the heart of why I play the violin, and why I play music, to explore our inner life through the language of sound.

Each composer on this disc displays a great depth of knowledge and understanding of the instrument, not only how it can be played, but of how natural resonances interact, uniting or jarring or distorting, often using the open strings as building blocks. Although there are moments when the writing is at the edge of what is playable, it is always possible, and the struggle can even add to the content.

The recording process was extraordinarily intense, not only because I was alone in the hall. The emotional rawness of the material took its toll each day, so in the evening, to play a Kurtag miniature was a wonderful balm.I would like to say an enormous thank you to Nick Parker and Mike Hatch who produced and engineered this disc, and for the invaluable support they gave during the recording sessions. (Tamsin Waley-Cohen)

Peter Eötvös ELLIOTT CARTER / PAUL GRIFFITHS What Next?

“What Next?” Carter’s first opera, written in 1997 and 1998, begins with a car crash and follows, obliquely, the development of six survivors crawling from the wreckage. The chain of events has a dreamlike quality. “The survivors are five adults and a child. Mama (a dramatic soprano) is the most insistent of them: as she understands things, the adults were all on their way to the marriage of her son, a clownish baritone who calls himself Harry or Larry, to Rose, a self-absorbed performing artist (a lyric soprano). The glib guru-like tenor Zen is Mama’s former husband, and the astronomer Stella (a contralto) is his current girl friend. The sixth figure, Kid, a twelve-year-old boy alto, is a mystery to Mama, who repeatedly tries to focus everyone’s attention on their joint predicament. While the others generally concede that Mama’s assessment of their relationships may be correct, they have other agendas. Zen seeks to maintain his status as ‘a teacher, a master.’ Rose doesn’t really care who the others are; she is still grooving on the triumph of her last performance, and expects the others to be similarly appreciative. Stella thinks she was on her way to work at her astronomical observatory. Harry or Larry doesn’t care. Eventually, two Road Workers arrive and poke around in the percussive wreckage, initially ignoring the importuning of the crash victims, who finally walk away, still disputatiously engaged.”(David Hamilton, in the CD booklet notes).

“Carter's music, from the opening crash of the prelude, remains active throughout the entire single act - in the spasms and splinterings of the percussion, where the coalescing of the sounds are continually being torn asunder again... So the central interlude of the work provides a great surprise: the lost characters abandon the stage, the dreamlike scenery becomes even more unreal, the wrecked car seems to explode in slow motion. Here Carter suddenly develops, in extraordinarily skilfully constructed music, a powerful sense of poetry, whose magic is sustained through soft sounds and melodic lines. It is the sound of transformation...” Wolfgang Schreiber, Süddeutsche Zeitung

Alisa Weilerstein / Staatskapelle Berlin ELGAR - CARTER Cello Concerto

In 1972, Virgil Thomson wrote that Elliott Carter was America’s “most admired composer of learned music and the one most solidly esteemed internationally,” an appreciation that was still accurate when Carter died, last month, at the age of a hundred and three. It is in the realm of chamber music that Carter’s work will most likely endure, not only because of its inherent excellence—his cycle of five string quartets is perhaps the finest since Bartók’s—but because his orchestral pieces are expensive to rehearse and challenging for an audience to digest: the complexity of his musical language is best experienced on an intimate scale. But the Cello Concerto (2000), a fabulously inventive product of Carter’s astonishing Indian summer, may be an exception, an impression confirmed by the rapidly rising cellist Alisa Weilerstein’s new album, “Elgar / Carter: Cello Concertos” (Decca), recorded with the Staatskapelle Berlin orchestra, conducted by Daniel Barenboim.

For many listeners, the entry point will be the Elgar, and, while this is a dramatic, big-boned performance, connoisseurs won’t be tossing away their copies of the work’s greatest recording, which the phenomenal Jacqueline du Pré and the conductor John Barbirolli laid down for EMI in 1965. Barbirolli came at the piece through the prism of Italian opera and the English pastoral tradition, and the result shivers with life. Barenboim—who once recorded the piece with du Pré, to whom he was married—approaches the concerto by way of his beloved German classics: any passage that hints at Wagner is boldfaced and underlined, with sometimes leaden results.

Weilerstein is an exuberant performer in public, but she seems muted here; not so in the Carter, where she relishes the composer’s bristling passagework and insistent personal voice. The work’s first recording (on Bridge), by Fred Sherry, with Oliver Knussen conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra, will always be the reference version; Sherry worked intimately with Carter for decades, and the crystalline purity of his interpretation seems incised for the ages. But Weilerstein and Barenboim’s generously expressive alternative makes this craggy and mysteriously compelling piece seem vulnerably human. Thomson, going out on a limb, once linked Carter’s working method to that of Poe, a comparison that, in a recording like this, seems apt: the piece is a clearheaded exploration of the “grotesque and arabesque,” the warring spaces of the human soul. (Russell Platt / The New Yorker)