Angèle Dubeau IMMERSION

 

IMMERSION

Vanessa Wagner INLAND

 

INLAND

 

Jess Gillam TIME

 

TIME

Jeroen van Veen THE BEST OF MINIMAL PIANO MUSIC

 

THE BEST OF MINIMAL PIANO MUSIC

 

Iestyn Davies / Fretwork IF

MICHAEL NYMAN - HENRY PURCELL

Silas Bassa OSCILLATIONS

OSCILLATIONS

Simon Ghraichy 33

After his successful debut album “Heritages”, the French pianist Simon Ghraichy is back with a new album: “33”.

The 33 year old has a reputation of being “the craziest” of all French pianists. He shakes his life in all directions and now presents his personal selection of music, including two world premiere recordings, commissioned by Simon himself: Chilly Gonzales’s Robert on the Bridge and Jacopo Baboni Schilingi’s HUGE.

The central piece of his new album is the Humoreske, op.20, by Schumann: a series of seven short sections, whose musical texture and emotional tones vary widely and differ greatly between the sections. In the second part of the piece Schuman opened up the typical double-staffed score to include a third staff, the middle of which contains a solo voice marked “innere Stimme” (inner voice). Schumann intended this “internal/inner voice” to be seen but not played by the pianist, to appeal not only to the ears, but the eyes as well!

Gerard McChrystal ARIA

This brilliantly devised CD from Gerard McChrystal is a deeply personal album; at times mystical, the music is always beautiful and captivating. Indeed 'Aria' has similar qualities to Jan Gabarek's 'Officium' (which sold 1.4 million copies) and will appeal to this fan-base. Featuring soprano and alto saxophone with a colourful array of different ensemble accompaniments — string orchestra, choir, guitar, piano, solo, string quartet and electronics. Baroque music blends seamlessly with contemporary; Handel resolves into Michael Nyman, Debussy's Syrinx morphs into Ravel's Piece en forme de habanera. All the tracks lead to the next by key or by starting and ending on the same note. Other works include Philip Glass Façades, Faure Les Berceaux, Bozza Aria, as well as original works by Billy Cowie, Karen Tanaka, Andy Scott and Michael McGlynn (from the vocal group Anúna who featured in Riverdance). Accompanying Gerard on this album are some of the UK's finest classical musicians including the Smith Quartet and the No. 1 best-selling classical artist, guitarist Craig Ogden. Gerard McChrystal is a multi-award winning saxophonist who has performed as a soloist in over 30 countries with many of the World's leading orchestras and ensembles.

FHR13 booklet

Silas Bassa OSCILLATIONS

Oscillations. Conceived for a series of concerts, this album was recorded in a single élan. It includes twenty pieces, united by a precise and deliberate order, the result of distinctive experiments by young pianist and composer Silas Bassa. In constant artistic progression, Bassa proposes to open new doors for the role of the performer, by developing a personal musical path via creative programme building.
Oscillations: between vibrations and silence, between gentleness and anger, between trance and dance, between oneself and the other…to become but one.

“Argentinean pianist Silas Bassa certainly has ideas, and the concept for this CD is fully working, as do the performances. The recorded sound is gorgeous”. (Remy Franck)

MICHAEL NYMAN Acts of Beauty - Exit no Exit

Michael Nyman wrote his song cycle Acts of Beauty for Italian singer Cristina Zavalloni. Zavalloni, whose background is in jazz, but who branched into new music and early music, has an extraordinary instrument: powerfully primal, smoky, and supple. The texts, from sources ancient and modern, have at least some tenuous connection with the idea of beauty, but little else in common. Nyman, who frequently shows a real gift for lyrical vocal writing, is off his game here; the blocky text-setting doesn't give Zavalloni much opportunity to demonstrate the expressiveness at which she excels. The music for the accompanying instrumental ensemble is far more interesting than the vocal line (except that the first movement, with its quirkily contrasting sections, remains something of an enigma). The other movements, though, sound like four beautifully shaped minimalist pieces for chamber ensemble, with an added part for voice, whose text has little to do with the musical mood or structure and which had to be awkwardly squashed out of shape to accommodate itself to the accompaniment. Exit No Exit for bass clarinet and string quartet is far more successful. It is oddly proportioned, with 10 movements lasting from one to two minutes, with a penultimate 10-minute movement. The playful miniatures prove to be a good size for Nyman's whimsical ideas. The longer movement sounds like a string of brief contrasting movements played without pause, but some of its sections are gorgeously lyrical. The sound is clean and present, but weighted a little strongly toward the instruments. (Stephen Eddins)

Katia & Marielle Labèque MINIMALIST DREAM HOUSE

To be musically avant-garde in the 1950s meant to be difficult. Not by the end of the 1960s. That decade saw a group of American beatniks overthrow the musical givens of postwar Europe. In a series of disobediently straightforward compositions La Monte Young, Terry Jennings, Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Philip Glass declared that music could be clear, honest, pretty and experimental. Turning their backs on the conventional centres of musical power, the earliest minimalist works got their first public audience in La Monte Young's 1960-61 Chamber Street Series in Yoko Ono's New York loft. Through the 1960s in art galleries and alternative spaces, the minimalists slowly demystified, democratised and Americanised European modernism. They rejected the angst (what Philip Glass would call "crazy creepy music"). They rejected the invisible games. They rejected the theatricality. "I don't know any secrets of structure that you can't hear," wrote Steve Reich in his 1968 minimalist manifesto, Music as a Gradual Process. Minimalism claimed that there was enough interest in the sounding process itself and enough new territory to be explored in rhythmic patterning to sustain a work. If one removed the Baroque complications - the harmonic story-telling and thematic cleverness - that were obscuring the natural beauties of rhythm and sound, what would be revealed and discovered could provide classical music with a new lease of life. They were right. Minimalism was the last great musical revolution of the 20th century. And it became the most influential and successful ism of them all. In the spirit of the loft concerts we also present new works by David Chalmin, Raphael Seguinier.

Valentina Lisitsa MICHAEL NYMAN Chasing Pianos

Ukrainian pianist Valentina Lisitsa has taken an unusual path toward career development: she posted her Chopin performances to YouTube, gained a strong following there, and then hired the London Symphony Orchestra for a set of Rachmaninov concerto performances. The gambit seems to be working: Lisitsa's performances of late Romantic repertoire have been reasonably well received, and now she's earned the right to implement what one imagines was the point of the whole exercise in the first place: the pursuit of the crossover audience centered above all in Britain. There is no denying that Chasing Pianos works well. British composer Michael Nyman has made a long specialty out of minimalist music that shades in the direction of melodic pop. Although Nyman has stated that opera is his favored genre, the style is ideally suited to film scores, and his music for The Piano (1993) is a classic of the genre. That score, adapted for solo piano, is heavily featured here, along with music from other scores that is artfully chosen to give just enough contrast to avoid sheer repetitiveness without disturbing the basic calm surface. Lisitsa's style, flawlessly precise and slightly mechanical, fits this music in a rather eerie way, and fans of Nyman's music will doubtless find a fresh and exciting take on it here. Those coming to the music from the film The Piano or from one of the other soundtracks represented should also be pleased. The sound, from the concert hall at Britain's Wyastone Estate, is unusually well suited to the project: dreamy and soft without being overly gauzy.(James Manheim)

Balanescu Quartet MICHAEL NYMAN String Quartets 1-3

Dedicated to the memory of musicologist Thurston Dart (or “Thruston Brat” as one of my university lecturers fondly referred to him), Nyman’s First Quartet takes as its basis a piece by the English composer John Bull (a set of variations on the tune Wallsingham ). Yet it is also influenced by the tendency of some quartet music to struggle against the boundaries of its instrumentation (specifically, the point of inspiration was a performance of Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge by the Arditti Quartet). Other quotations, including from Schoenberg’s Second Quartet, litter the score in an attempt to make the piece a summation of the string quartet medium this far, all within a minimalist aesthetic. So, huge ambitions for a work that lasts shy of 26 minutes. The movements all have titles, along the lines of “John Bull I,” “Arnold Schoenberg 2,” “Michael Nyman I,” and even “John Bull meets Arnold Schoenberg.” All this is fascinating, and what comes across is a delight in the musical cryptography from the composer, and a reciprocal excitement from the Balanescu Quartet.
The First Quartet is heard third; the Second is heard first. The Second is based on a dance piece, Miniatures . The performer of that dance piece, Shobana Jeyasingh, put down the rhythmic elements. It begins in an expansive, lyric mode. As with much of Nyman, he will present his musical ideas early on, if not immediately, in a movement, and then stick to his trajectory. The music is heartfelt, although the innocent ear might be hard pressed to find Indian influences.
The Third Quartet (1990) centers on beauty. The easeful accents that open it present the musical ideas for what is to come. The control of the performers in the slower second movement is beyond reproach, and they bring about the gradual crescendos with consummate ease. Based on music for a BBC documentary called Out of the Rains , it too owes something to Dart, as it was Dart who had sent Nyman to Romania on a music-finding expedition. Material from that trip is heard layered onto music form the documentary: the composite result is never less than fascinating, aurally.
These quartet recordings were recorded in 1991 and first released on the Argo label. Both discs under review here are impressive in the extreme and fully worthy of investigation. (FANFARE: Colin Clark)

Fidelio Trio MICHAEL NYMAN Piano Trios 1992 - 2010

MN Records is aiming to record the complete chamber works of Michael Nyman. Here are the first fruits, two volumes that help provide a portrait of this fascinating figure. The first is subtitled, “Piano Trios 1992–2010.” Originally written for the Michael Nyman Band and the film of the title’s name in 2000, this 2010 version of Poczatek is given here in a version prepared specially for the Fidelio Trio. The film was commissioned by the Polish Cultural Institute to accompany the composer’s own choice of excerpts from Polish film. The performance here positively sparkles. Rhythmically skipping unison lines are full of vitality. An objectivized element to the performance only serves to make the listening experience of this sequence of vignettes all the more refreshing. The piece is beautifully varied, and finds Nyman painting in principally primary colors.
The Photography of Chance (2004) was commissioned to celebrate the landscape of Utah and is dedicated to the British disc jockey John Peel. As in the case of Poczatek , this disc presents the premiere recording. There are some tremendously poignant long lines, contrasted with more active, gestural sections that seem to link to Messiaen. It is a tremendously interesting, involving score whose inner vitality is supremely rendered here by the Fidelio Trio. Nyman plays on the contrast of the two planes of expression effectively. It sustains its 20 minute duration with ease. The 2002 piece Yellow Beach is described by the composer as a “transfigured version of Come Unto Thee Yellow Sands performed by the Michael Nyman Band in Prospero’s Books. ” Engaging and yet at times massively expressive, Yellow Beach emerges as a masterpiece of concise writing (it lasts 6:23). Finally for this disc, the 20-minute Time Will Pronounce , its title taken from lines of a poem by Joseph Brodsky that concerns the deaths in Bosnia in 1992. Nyman divides the instrumental group into piano as one unit and strings acting together as another unit. It sounds like there is some sort of rhythmic powerhouse generator enlivening the performance, such is the intensity of the players. There is much beauty here also (try the section around nine minutes in), and instrumental effects are used tastefully. This piece also holds the most purely minimalist music, and it seems perfectly placed. The sense of timelessness of the work’s closing section is quite mesmerically done here. (FANFARE: Colin Clark)