London Sinfonietta / Geoffrey Paterson JOSEP MARIA GUIX Images

 

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Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts STRAVINSKY

                                    ESA-PEKKA SALONEN CONDUCTS STRAVINSKY

London Sinfonietta / David Atherton LOUIS ANDRIESSEN Anaïs Nin - De Staat

Captured at Queen Elizabeth Hall, Anais Nin/De Staat is the first release in Signum's planned schedule of three live recordings by the London Sinfonietta per year.

Anais Nin, an intense sonic psychodrama for solo soprano and ensemble of eight musicians in which composer Louis Andriessen explores the life and especially loves of Nin, certainly puts Cristina Zavalloni's voice through its paces.

Snipped from Nin's diaries. The libretto concentrates on her (in)famous lovers: actor/playwright Antonin Artaud; his (and then her) psychiatrist René Allendy; writer Henry Miller, and, most controversially, her own father, the painter and composer Joaquin Nin. Backed by some suitably 1930s instrumentation, the mood is modernist with a jazz twist and makes scandalous whoopie with Hans Buhrs' taped voice (which takes the male roles). The piece finishes wistfully, with some relief from a ghostly onstage gramophone playing papa's arrangement of a Basque Christmas carol.

De Staat explores the relationship between composition and politics, taking Plato's The Republic as its text. The braying chorale builds like the most gleeful of hyperdramatic soundtracks. Here, though, the effect is not that of a Bruckheimer epic—all faux emotion—but more the lusty avant-grandeur of the likes of Werner Herzog making an elliptical examination of the state.

But as with most party political narratives, by the end the orchestra has divided, its polyphonies tussling bombastically for predominance—with none ultimately victorious. (MUSO)

'Lou Reed and Metallica aren't the only ones delving into pre-war bohemian perversity: the Dutch minimalist Louis Andriessen offers a monodrama based on the diaries of Anaïs Nin, with the soprano Cristina Zavalloni recounting Nin's sexual liaisons with Antonin Artaud, René Allendy, Henry Miller and her own father. With clarinet and sax used to evoke jazz-era Paris, a cabaret- flavoured, sometimes comical Kurt Weill ambience captures the amorality and loneliness in Nin's writing. It is paired with Andriessen's most famous composition, De Staat, in which the vocal group Synergy offer ruminations on music from Plato's Republic, set to the reedy, methodical cycles of Andriessen's early minimalist style' (The Independent)

Paul Crossley / Peter Serkin / London Sinfonietta / Oliver Knussen TORU TAKEMITSU Quotation Of Dream

These are bountiful times for Takemitsu’s admirers. For those with bottomless pockets or unlimited overdraft facilities, endless shelf-space and an infinite amount of time and stamina, the Shogakukan label is issuing a complete edition: the last tranche consisted of two volumes of film scores, comprising 21 CDs. For everyone else these DG reissues should hit the spot. Between them they provide a pretty representative overview of Takemitsu’s work and feature a stellar gathering of performers who are among the finest Takemitsu interpreters.
Quotation of Dream (now issued as part of the Gramophone Awards collection) was recorded in December 1996 and March 1997, shortly after the composer’s death. It showcases late-period works from 1985 (Dream/Window) to 1993 (Archipelago S), an attractive and cohesive sequence, bracketed by two antiphonal brass fanfares, put together by Oliver Knussen. That last decade of Takemitsu’s life revealed more clearly than ever his fundamental Romanticism but he always avoided the overripe, self-obsessed excesses to which the Romantics were susceptible. Most of the late works eschewed the hard-edged purity of the compositions that made his reputation but they were certainly not soft-centred. Knussen, the Sinfonietta and the celebrity soloists do full justice to the gorgeous textures and colours while keeping the stark beauty of the structures in sharp focus.
A Flock Descends… and Garden Rain are nicely packaged from the 20th Century Classics series. The earliest recordings (Stanza I, Sacrifice, Ring and Valeria) were made in September 1969 but the earliest compositions date back further, to 1958-60 (Le son calligraphié). Each album takes us through to the mid-1970s, documenting the considerable development in Takemitsu’s style, yet demonstrating equally vividly that the essential inspirations for his music – gardens, the elements, dreams, the cycles of the natural world, Impressionism – never really changed. Some early works carry evidence of the influence of the Darmstadt circle in their surgical examinations of timbre (eg Valeria) or in the licence granted performers to choose the order in which to play the movements (Ring). Even to the end, I always felt that the legacy of Takemitsu’s early electronic experiments was discernible in the way he made mysterious sounds blossom out of nowhere, drifting in and out of the listener’s field of perception. It’s as if the music is always there, just waiting for us to tune in.
These are classic performances of riveting works by one of the most mesmerising composers of the 20th century. (Barry Witherden, Gramophone)