U.S.
Highball: A Musical Account of Slim's Transcontinental Hobo Trip
(1943) by Harry Partch. Kronos Quartet (David Harrington and John Sherba,
violins; Hank Dutt, viola; and Jennifer Culp, cello) with David Barron,
voice. (Nonesuch, 79697)
Lyric Suite (1926)
by Alban Berg. Kronos Quartet with Dawn Upshaw, soprano. (Nonesuch,
79696)
String Quartet No. 4
(1999) by Peteris Vasks. Kronos Quartet. (Nonesuch, 79695)
Cutting edge usually has
a limited shelf life, yet the Kronos Quartet always manages to fly in
the face of that maxim, having been on the edge of contemporary chamber
music for a good two decades and showing little sign of slowing. Its
latest releases (yes, plural) are a series of three mid-priced CD singles,
what might be called EPs in the pop world, each around half an hour
long, devoted to a single composition, and displaying Kronos' as-always
varied and adventurous repertoire, crossed with its usual fiendish virtuosity
and that caffeinated "Kronos" sound.
On one of these discs, Kronos
offers U.S. Highball: A Musical Account of Slim's Transcontinental
Hobo Trip, another of American iconoclast composer Harry Partch's
rail-riding epic American travelogue pieces, cast for quartet by Ben
Johnston and sung by David Barron. This new disc arrives a decade after
the 1993 Kronos release of Howl U.S.A., which features the bohemian
work "Barstow: Eight Hitchhiker's Inscriptions from a Highway Rail
in Barstow, California." Partch himself was something of a vagabond
and Highball is highly autobiographical—though later in
his life he revised it to be less so, it still reads as if taken directly
from the pages of his journal. And, indeed, the text does describe impressions
and snippets of conversations that Partch encountered during a 1941
rail trip from Carmel, California, to Chicago. From the strength and
detail of the performance, this is music for which the group has an
obvious affinity; perhaps it is the collective California connection,
Kronos being rooted in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is hardly a conventional
song cycle by any means, but it prefigures avant-rock figures Tom Waits
and Captain Beefheart by some four decades in its sparse-yet-somehow-dense
textures, abandon, and song-of-the-open-road texts. It's funny, it's
serious, it's trenchant, it's absurd, and on this disc it's all performed
with pitch-perfect spirit.
The Fourth String Quartet
of Latvian Peteris Vasks lies, in language, somewhere between Arvo Pärt
and the second Viennese school, Berg in particular. The piece is from
1999, and the composer writes of it: "When I think about contemporary
life it's impossible to realize that we are balanced on the edge of
time's end." Yet this is an optimistic spiritual piece, not an
exploration of annihilation or anxiety. Points of crisis arise, as in
the anguished "Tocatta II" movement, but are offset by the
relief of "Chorale" and "Meditation." Kronos is
certainly up to the task, achieving both feverish intensity and active
rumination as the piece requires.
Alban Berg's Lyric Suite
is something of a tragic opera redux. His now-famous anxiety over an
attraction to a woman, not his wife, inspired this subversive quartet.
The final movement, a setting of Baudelaire's spleen-drenched lovelorn
poem "De profundis clamavi" was even suppressed until after
the composer's death in 1935. Now, that epic final section, herein reconstructed
by composer and Berg acolyte George Perle, gets its day in court. (Kronos
claims it is the world premiere, but there is a recording, perhaps not
of this edition, released a year or so ago by the Prazak Quartet that
makes a similar boast.) This is likely the most standard piece of repertoire
that Kronos has released on disc in years, and proves that the quartet
is indeed the "real thing," an excellent, multifaceted classical
ensemble. Kronos does play it "their" way, which tends to
be a little colder than appropriate for this white-hot romantic score,
but its choices are always intelligent, careful, and downright musical.
And its collective (and stylistically proper) anguish is aimed at, rather
than constant, so when the playing begins a little coldly or mechanically,
gradually it melts into the necessary fever, which is ultimately harrowing
by virtue of the contrast. Not that Kronos plays poorly, quite the contrary,
it's just that its sometimes-icy tone (part and parcel of the Kronos
sound) seems mapped out rather than a misstep. The use of soprano Dawn
Upshaw's sinuous vocal tone for the last movement is spot on; she "gets"
it, becoming a fifth member of the group rather than an accompanied
soloist.
The
Russian Seasons.
Gidon Kremer, violin and music director; Julia Korpacheva, soprano;
Kremerata Baltica, string orchestra. (Nonesuch, 79568)
Latvian violinist Gidon
Kremer enjoyed his greatest U.S. commercial success with the sublime
1999 recording Eight Seasons. That CD, reflecting Kremer's fascination
with a transcendent "global time," juxtaposed Vivaldi's famous
seasonal concertos with Argentine composer Astor Piazzola's less familiar
Cuatro Estaciones Porteños (the Four Seasons of Buenos
Aires), which was reworked by Russian composer Leonid Desyatnikov to
include quotations from Vivaldi's work. On this extraordinary new disc,
Kremer has commissioned Desyatnikov (b. 1955) and Alexander Raskatov
(b. 1953) to create new works based again on the global time theme.
The results are often complex though quite different.
The texts and melodies of
the collection Traditional Music from the Russian Lake District
serve as the foundation for the 12 movements of Desyatnikov's The Russian
Seasons, which is scored for string orchestra with obbligato solo violin
and a solo female voice. The work is inspired by the Russian Orthodox
calendar of religious events rather than the cycle of nature. The music
is multifaceted and marvelously imaginative. "Jagoryevskaya"
(Song for St. George's Day), for instance, is marked by rapid, yet seamless,
shifts from angular jazz rhythms (and sharp whistles) to plaintive folk
melodies to lush orchestral harmonies, all within the course of a minute
or so.
Raskatov's "The Seasons"
Digest is a reworking of Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's The Seasons, 12
meditations on the months of the year. In a supposed effort to avoid
cliches, the composer has infused this stunning romantic work with modern
devices—malevolent drones, giddy glissandos, crashing percussion,
and spooky chimes—that succeed in distracting the listener from
the beauty of Tchaikovsky's melodies, but do nothing to improve upon
the original.
—Greg
Cahill
Glimmer.
Sturla Eide Sundli, fiddle, Hardanger fiddle; Andreas Aase, guitar,
bouzouki. (2L, 2L17; www.2l.no)
While so many "world
music" releases fuse hyphenated ethnic forms with groovy multicultural
percussion, this disc offers pure, unadulterated Norwegian fiddling
and delightfully unfussy guitar and bouzouki playing. Recorded in the
Sofienberg church in Oslo, it's a joyous sonic experience. Sturla Eide
Sundli, 28, began fiddling at age seven, learning most of his music
by ear. He plays these tunes beautifully, some on standard fiddle and
others on Norwegian Hardanger, while Andreas Aase injects perfect accompaniment.
The result is 11 tracks that run the gamut from delicate storpolsdansen
to stately nuptial marches to sprightly springleik tunes, some
written down in the 1850s and two composed recently by the fiddler himself.
With a nod to multiculturalism, Sundli's own Celtic-flavored tune "Brittania"
is reminiscent of Irish-American fiddler Liz Carroll's originals. Another
medley simply entitled "Ril" sandwiches the ubiquitous "St.
Anne's Reel"—an Irish tune played first as a single reel,
then as a Norwegian reinlender—between two traditional Norwegian
numbers. Sundli says a childhood teacher taught "St. Anne's"
to him as a reinlender: "Often when I start digging into traditional
music and think I have just discovered something really genuine,"
says Sundli, "I later see huge links to other countries and cultures
and music styles. It's a small world!" And a wonderful recording.
—Elisa
M. Welch
Auerbach:
Twenty-Four Preludes for Violin and Piano, Op. 46; T'filah (Prayer);
Postlude. Vadim
Gluzman, violin; Angela Yoffe, piano. (Bis, 1242)
Lera Auerbach, born in the
Ural Mountains in 1973, has the makings of an international cultural
celebrity. She's reportedly a remarkable pianist and an award-winning
Russian poet and prose writer. From the evidence of this CD, she is
also quite attractive (helpful to the marketers) and, most importantly,
a compelling, accessible composer. Think Shostakovich stripped of his
studied banality and given a thin varnish of Schnittke. Auerbach can
make even C major sound spooky.
Written in 1999, the Twenty-Four
Preludes cycle through all the major and minor keys following the circle
of fifths. These miniatures could be excerpted, but together they constitute
a harrowing hour-long journey, mainly at low dynamic levels. This is
haunted, sometimes rather addled music, ranging from a fearsome little
E-minor storm to an eerie cradlesong and a balalaika-like pizzicato
movement. After some fearsome rumbling, the final bars are stark and
barely audible. True closure comes only with the fillers, the cantorial
T'filah and the tender Postlude.
Israeli violinist Vadim
Gluzman and Latvian pianist Angela Yoffe, both about Auerbach's age,
premiered the Preludes, which are dedicated to them. Gluzman and Yoffe
leap the technical hurdles fearlessly, turning in dynamic, emotionally
harrowing accounts of music that deserves to be on every violinist's
CD shelf and music stand.
—James
Reel
Mark O'Connor: 30-Year
Retrospective.
Mark O'Connor, fiddle; Chris Thile, mandolin; Bryan Sutton, guitar;
Byron House, double bass. Two CDs. (OMAC-5; www.markoconnor.com)
Arguably no one has done
more than 41-year-old Mark O'Connor during the past three decades to
bring fiddling into the musical mainstream. When the Seattle-born string
player moved to Nashville in 1985—at the height of the Urban
Cowboy country-rock and
pop craze that quickly segued into NashVegas—fiddle music was out
of vogue. That didn't stop O'Connor from becoming a blue-chip session
player and launching a solo career that has won him bluegrass, jazz,
and crossover classical fans. This two-CD set captures the Grammy-winning
O'Connor celebrating a major milestone in his career—30 years on
stage—in a sometimes spry, often elegant instrumental set recorded
in 2002 over three days in concert in Nashville. Fellow virtuosi Chris
Thile (mandolin), Bryan Sutton (guitar), and Byron House (double bass)
join him on 29 tracks that showcase O'Connor's impressive genre-jumping
command of his instrument. The CDs span a wide range of material, from
the bluegrass tune "Jerusalem's Ridge" to his own Caprice
No. 4 in D Major (from O'Connor's 1998 classical album Midnight on
the Water) to the moving "Appalachian Waltz," from his
1996 collaboration of the same title with Yo-Yo Ma and Edgar Meyer.
This collection leaves no doubt that O'Connor can do it all. It's a
great introduction for the uninitiated and a welcome addition for longtime
fans.
—G.C.
Shapero.
Lydian String Quartet (Daniel Stepner and Judith Eisenberg, violins;
Mary Ruth Ray, viola; Rhonda Rider, cello) with Edwin Barker, double
bass. (New World Records, 80569-2)
In the middle of the last
century, Harold Shapero was one of the most promising composers of his
generation. But fashions changed, dogmas took hold, and Shapero and
his Stravinsky-adoring neoclassical colleagues found themselves lost
in an overnight obsolescence. This disc, on the always fearless New
World Records, offers a sampling of Shapero's string music, played excellently
by the underrated Lydian String Quartet. These dense, well-crafted works
are fascinating: brimming and alive with musical ideas. From the epic,
five-movement Serenade in D (written when Shapero was 25) to the more
compact, elegiac String Trio, these World War II-era works show a young
composer at the height of his powers. This is a long-overdue disc of
20th-century music worthy of wider dissemination.
—D.F.
Arriaga Cuartetos.
Cuarteto Casals: Vera Martínez and Abel Tomas Realp, violins;
Jonathan Brown, viola; and Arnau Tomas Realp, cello. (Harmonia Mundi,
987038)
Three cheers for this promising
young Spanish ensemble, which has created a delightful collection of
string quartets by Juan Crisóstomo de Arriaga (1806–1826),
aka the Spanish Mozart, who penned a handful of scintillating works
before his untimely death at age 19. The Casals, formed in 1997 at the
Escuela Reina Sofía in Madrid, presents the only three Arriaga
quartets (in D minor, A major, and E-flat major) published during the
ill-fated composer's short life. The Casals captures all the delicacy
and beauty of these brilliant works, which show the influence of Cherubini
and Rossini but reveal tantalizing hints of the romantic sentiment that
would not sweep European music until several years after Arriaga's death.
—G.C.
Ethel.
Ethel (Todd Reynolds and Mary Rowell, violins; Ralph Farris viola; Dorothy
Lawson, cello) with Evan Ziporyn, bass clarinet. (Cantaloupe Records,
CA21017)
It is little wonder that
Ethel, the hardest working band in chamber music, would release its
first recording on Cantaloupe, the house label for New York's merry
pranksters Bang on a Can. On this disc the band is in especially rare
form: They shake, they sing, they rock, all with downtown panache, classically
trained precision, and Dionysian abandon. This is a collection of Ethel's
"greatest hits," music by some the band's favorite contemporary
composers, including Evan Ziporyn, John King, Phil Kline, and Ethel's
own fiddler Todd Reynolds, whose piece "Uh . . . It All Happened
So Fast," is a charming, multimood extravaganza, playful like Milhaud,
but hard-edged like Hendrix. Get this disc just to be able to say you
knew them when.
—D.F.
Boccherini
Cello Quintets—2.
Vanbrugh Quartet (Gregory Ellis and Keith Pascoe, violins; Simon Aspell,
viola; and Christopher Marwood, cello) with Richard Lester, cello. (Hyperion,
67383)
With the exception of the
last movement of Boccherini's Quintet in C major, Op. 28, No. 4 (G310),
the bouyant rondo familiar to so many young cellists, none of these
four works has ever been recorded. The other quintets are C major (Op.
42, No. 2), B minor (Op. 42, No.
3), and D major (Op. 43, No. 2). And what a discovery! While Luigi Boccherini
(1743—1805) has languished for centuries in the shadows of Mozart,
Haydn, and Vivaldi, these striking and often stunningly beautiful works
find the Vanbrugh Quartet and Richard Lester (playing the first-cello
parts) taking a giant step toward righting that wrong. The graceful
Grave of the Quintet in C major (Op. 28, No. 4) alone is worth the price
of admission. And there is so much more here that is equally as fulfilling.
Highly recommended.
—G.C.
Universal
Syncopations. Miroslav
Vitous, double bass; Jan Garbarek, saxophones; Chick Corea, piano; John
McLaughlin, guitar; Jack DeJohnette, drums. (ECM, 440 038 506-2)
Albums by bassist Miroslav
Vitous have been few and far between since about 1985, so this new disc
from his ever-patient label, ECM, is something of an event. It's also
a bit of a surprise. Vitous, a founder of the group Weather Report,
is best known for his electric fusion/post-bop approach to jazz. On
Universal Syncopations Vitous remains progressive but now he's
sidestepping the fusion label and playing unplugged. Still, there's
no shortage of electricity in this set. He and his celebrated partners,
most prominently saxophonist Jan Garbarek, take a freewheeling approach
to the nine Vitous compositions here (the last three co-written with
either Garbarek or Jack DeJohnette). Vitous is a buoyant presence, almost
always in the foreground even when handling conventional rhythm-section
duties. Most often, as in "Tramp Blues," he takes a strong
role in establishing the melody and carrying the development of a piece,
although he often prefers duets with Garbarek. Central to this disc
is "Beethoven," which begins with eerie, dissociated sonic
fragments, but then delivers a luscious tune that would fit into Debussy's
Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun. It's typical of Vitous, who thrives
on the atypical.
—J.R.
