Tuesday 31 July 2007

Maxwell House

Some music from earlier in the career of Peter Maxwell Davies; then enfante terrible, now Master of the Queen's Music. The disk features two pieces, his First Symphony played by the Philharmonia Orchestra under Simon Rattle and Points and Dances From Taverner by the Fires of London directed by Maxwell Davies himself. The symphony wasn't originally conceived as such but evolved over some time in the late seventies. The sound world is what now seems to be a standard one for comtemporary orchestral music, stabbing chords, percussive effects etc. Maxwell Davies's own comments refernce many influences from Schumann, through Sibelius to Boulez. There is also a certain Catholic inspiration. Points and Dances are taken from incidental music in an early operatic work based on the carrer of the 16th century English composer Taverner. 16th century music seen through a prism, lightly scored but weirdly off kilter. It's strange how forbidding this music can still seem to people after being established for so many years.

Monday 30 July 2007

The Intimate And The Epic

Music from Luciano Berio, a large vocal work titled Coro performed by the Kolner Rundfunkchor and Kolner Rundfunk-Sinfonie-Orchester directed by the composer. The piece calls for 40 voices but they rarely sing as a unit. Each singer sits alongside one of the instrumentalists of the orchestra. The music evolves through various combinations; solo voice and instrument, chamber grouping of voices and instruments and the choir and massive orchestral chords. The texts set govern the forces used. Berio uses some folk poetry from several nations and languages and these are sung by the smaller forces. The full blown epic segments feature the poetry of Chilean writer Pablo Neruda. There is a recurring refrain, "Come and see the blood in the streets" which is finally revealed as the answer to the question "You will ask why this poem says nothing of dreaming, or of leaves or of the native land's great volcanoes". A major work which takes ome getting into but works on various levels.

Sunday 29 July 2007

A Sense Of A City

It gave me a bit of a jolt to read on the sleeve notes of this disk that when it was released in 1970, it placed second in the jazz albums of the year Downbeat poll sandwiched between Weather Report and electric Miles Davis. New Orleans Suite by Duke Ellington, the disk in question here, seems to belong to an altogether different era but arguably listening to it now, it has a timeless feel that perhaps the seventies fusion bands lack. This is wonderful late Ellington, made under difficult circumstances since Johnny Hodges died during the period of recording. There are four tracks called "Portraits" ( of Louis Armstrong, Wellman Braud, Sydney Bechet and Mahalia Jackson ) these are the ones recorded after Hodges's demise and those with perhaps the most obvious New Orleans feel. Many of the other tracks evoke more the atmosphere and mysterious feel of the city rather than reflecting any kind of strict dixie jazz form. Throughout the playing of the band is relaxed and flowing with a natural swinging blues feel. There is no sense whatsoever of any fading powers. It is the only Ellington album I have ( although I do have a tribute cd by other artists ) and I am happy with the choice which I would recommend.

Viennese Whirl

If ever there was a disk with a ring of authenticity, this could be it. Performances by the Wiener Oktett of the octets by Schubert and by Ludwig Spohr. Elegant civilised music played with total understanding. The Spohr piece is a most acceptable diversion, there was much of worth that was composed by these now lesser known Viennese figures ( Spohr was much more significant in his own time ) It can't be denied though that the Schubert is by far the more substantial work and a reminder that as much work was put into chamber pieces as into any symphony. Of course, it was also much easier for performances of smaller ensembles to be put on in the salons and drawing rooms. These performances from the late fifties do not sound at all dated, either in terms of playing or sound recording quality.

Saturday 28 July 2007

A Great Lost Talent

Wonderful music from Lili Boulanger; Psalm 24, Psalm 129, Vielle Priere Buouddhique and Du Fond de l'Abime ( based on psalm 130 ) for contralto, tenor, chorus, organ and orchestra. Performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and Monteverdi Choir under John Eliot Gardiner with soloists Sally Bruce-Payne and Julian Podger. Lili Boulanger's story is a tantalising one of what might have been because she very sadly died aged just 25 in 1918. Younger sister of the formidable 20th century teacher Nadia, Lili was a winner of the Prix de Rome and wrote these settings while in studying in Rome as part of the prize. They are wonderfully mature sounding works in which it is possible to hear some of Debussy and certain Russian orientalists but there's also much that is totally original and committed. Had she been spared she would surely have been a major force and who knows what kind of a role model for other aspiring female composers. The disk is rounded out by a performance of Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms which I've already talked about in the robert Craft recording I have. Suffice it to say that Boulanger's works do not suffer at all in comparison.

Friday 27 July 2007

You've Been Tango'd

Listening to this disk for the first time in a while ( as is the case with most of them and one of the main reasons for this blog )I was surprised by how familiar the music was. Which illustrates how ubiquitous the music of Astor Piazzolla has become on Radio 3 over the last five or so years. It's an excellent disk though and all I would ever need of Piazzolla. By the Orchestre Symphonique De Montreal under Charles Dutoit, it is titled Tangazo and that work features alongside Adios Nonino, Milonga del Angel, Double Concerto for Bandoneon and Guitar, Oblivion, Tres Movimientos Tanguisticos Portenos and Danza Criolla. Soloists are Daniel Binelli bandoneon, Eduardo Isaac guitar and Louise Pellerin oboe. Piazzolla's trail blazing to broaden the scope and appeal of the tango has been followed up in the world music field more than in classical circles, I haven't noticed Osvaldo Golijov incorporating much of a tmnago influence for instance. But even if it ends up being a bit of a dead end like maybe Villa Lobos in Brazil, the music seems set to have a continuing life of its' own. Dutoit is a bit of a Ravel specialist and some of the orchestral colourings sound similar here. Another of those coincidences thrown up by my random way of selecting these disks from the shelf is that the previous Adams disk had a guitar part in an orchestral setting and there is also one now here in the double concerto. There's probably only one other such piece featuring guitar and orchestra in my collection and you may be able to guess what that is.

Naive Or Knowing ?

Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic in music by John Adams. The headline piece on the disk is Naive and Sentimental Music and also featured are works titled Mother of the Man and Chain to the Rhythm. I think this is the first disk of John Adams that has found its' way off the shelf, I do have a few in my collection. These are recent works and are long past the minimalist phase that he still tends to get grouped with. There is a sparsness to some of the scoring, particularly in Mother of the Man, which could be called minimal but not minimalist in the sense of Reich, Riley and Glass. Mother of the Man incidentally features a guitar part played by David Tanenbaum. The packaging has the feel of a rock or pop music release ( even down to the length of the disk, barely 45 minutes of music ) Going back to the booklet notes, which I don't like to just repeat verbatim, I'm reminded that in fact, the entire disk is "Naive and Sentimental Music" and the "Mother" and "Chain" pieces are in effect second and third movements to what might be a symphony in all but name. The disk certainly hangs together as a unified whole that could be looked upon as a celebration of nature and nostalgia but with undercurrents of the threat posed by modern life.

Magyar Moves

One of my early posts on here concerned Dvorak's Slavonic Dances and now here is what preceded and inspired those, Brahms's Hungarian Dances Nos 1 - 21 played by the Budapest Symphony Orchestra under Istvan Bogar. Whereas Dvorak composed his own original materisl using folk influences, Brahms took many exisiting gypsy tunes for his arrangements with only three of his dances being original compositions. Obviously light hearted easy listening music produced for a fledgling mass market, the pieces retain their popularity and have a certain period charm without being ain any way vital contributions to Brahms's art. Not a de luxe performance by the Budapest band but they know the material inside out and it is perfectly acceptable on a budget label.

Thursday 26 July 2007

I Hope You've Got No Technical Problems, 'Cos I Only want To Do This Once

The last of the trilogy of John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers albums introducing guitar heroes to the world, Crusade might well be the best, the Beano album notwithstanding. This is certainly the most complete band album and it probably features the best performance by Mayall himself vocally and on harp. The guitarist introduced was the teenage Mick Taylor, a shy withdrawn figure on stage but playing with wonderful maturity and fire. The addition of horns filled out the band sound very well too, even if they were used very sparingly in any solo context. The concept of the album was to showcase songs by various blues originals that Mayall felt hadn't had their fair share of attention. Without being unkind to Mayall, the fact that most of the songs were covers and not originals strenghtens the material when compared to the previous Hard Road album. For those who see music in colours, Crusade is an altogether sunnier record despite the obvious melancholy behind songs like the Death of J B Lenoir. Like his two predecessors, Mick Taylor soon left the band to be the criminally underused replacement for Brian Jones in the Rolling Stones ( surely nothing to do with keith Richards being jealous of a much more technically gifted player ? )If you are wondering about the title of this post, Mayall utters that phrase to the recording engineers at the beginning of the album's final track, a harmonica heavy Checkin' Up On My Baby.

Not Quite Just a Pretty Face

Can't remember what frame of mind I was in when I got this album, When I Look In Your Eyes by Diana Krall, because it isn't really my thing. It is cocktail jazz that veers pretty close to easy listening. I think I was in the afterglow from a holiday in the Algarve where this album was an accompaniment to lazy late dinners in the sultry warm air. The album is mainly of standards with a few Krall witty originals. She is a decent jazz pianist but it would be idle to think that her recoding contract and record company push wasn't mainly because of her photogenic face and figure, witness the packaging of the cd. It is a predominantly minimalist album with either trio or quartet ( piano, string bass, guitar and optional drums ) and orchestral arrangements on a couple of tracks. Ok to dig out for a listen every now and again, I like to think of it as a reminder of the previous generation to myself before the onslaught and occasional arrogance of rock music.

Play This Record at the Highest Possible Volume

As opposed to the previous post, this nostalgia fest doesn't disappoint at all, in fact all the music stands up very well in the present day. An Anthology - The Elektra Years by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. A substantial double cd package containing 33 tracks, it details the various stages the band moved through. The first incarnation was as an archetypal Chicago blues band. Although a mixed black and white band, Butterfield was a native Chicagoan who had been around black blues artists from an early age and there was nothing affected about his performances. He possessed a strong blues voice but the main thing about him was his virtuosic harmonica playing which was from the tradition of Little Walter et al but which he took to an entirely different level bringing in many wider influences. I don't think there has been anything quite like it before or since. The band then had a period where the psychedelic hippy influence played a part, particularly with the land mark track East West where guitarist Mike Bloomfield really broke loose. Still a remarkable piece of India meets Mexico music. After Bloomfield's departure from the band, Butterfield recruited horns to replace the gap left by the guitar lead and the band entered more of a soul phase but still with a solid blues base and fine playing from the likes off David Sanborn. Both Butterfield and Bloomfield were destined to die relatively young but hre is some great music here to remember them by. The title of this post refers to the message on the sleeve of the band's first album and obliquely to the reaction they got when backing Bob Dylan at the famous Newport Folk Festival gig when he first went electric.

Wednesday 25 July 2007

Nostalgia Can Trip You Up

This is a rock album that I bought in a fit of nostalgia and which turns out to be relatively disappointing. The Very Best of Joe Walsh and the James Gang. I particularly remembered three standout tracks and they stand up well ( Rocky Mountain Way, Turn To Stone and Time Out ) There are two more with impressive string arrangements and a couple of funky workouts that groove along nicely but the remaining ten or so tracks don't really go anywhere. Walsh was a fine rock guitarist and had interesting ideas of incorporating folk and classical elements into his standard rock format ( he had an apparent liking for Ravel, quoting Bolero in one solo and prefacing another track with a synth version of the Mother Goose suite ) But any promise he may have had wasn't really realised when he joined the Hotel California era Eagles and disappeared into the hedonistic lifestyle that song and his own song Life's Been Good were supposed to satirise.

Tuesday 24 July 2007

My Favourite Singing Voice

A joyous record titled Frottole from the Italian ensemble Accordone, comprising the magical voice of Marco Beasley with Guido Morini on organ and lutes and renaissance guitar from Stefano Rocco and Franco Pavan. There are guest lute contributions from Fabio Accurso and superb cornett colours courtesy of Bruce Dickey. The presence on any recording of the natural, sweet and mellow voice of Marco Beasley is recommendation enough to purchase it. This particular project is very much his. Frottole are "musical miniatures that sing of human passion with nobility and restraint" and originate from Italy at the turn of the 15th century when Italian composers influenced by humanist ideas wanted to produce a direct exprssive style different from the then current elaborate counterpoint. The works on the disk are by such names as Cara, Azzaiolo, Stringari, Caprioli, Fogliano, Tromboncino, Lassus, Giuggiola, Scoto, Dalza, Lurano, Borrono and coming off the substitutes bench the reliable anonymous. I think beasley has just about my favourite voice in any genre and I only wish all those who were persuaded to purchase Sting's Dowland disk could hear this one and compare ( not a sting bashing remark, just a statement of how much better this is and just as accessible to those with open minds )

Monday 23 July 2007

Elder Statesman Of Contemporary British Music

A cd of music from the British pianist and composer John McCabe. The featured work is his Piano Concerto no 2 played by Tamami Honma with the St Christopher Chamber Orchestra conducted by Donatus Katkus. Honma is an advocate of McCabe's music and I believe has played duet repertoire with him too. The St Christopher Chamber Orchestra are young musicians from Lithuania and they also play the remaining works on the disk; Concertante Variations on a Theme of Nicholas Maw, Six Minute Symphony and Sonata on a Motet. The variations do are self explanatory, as in fact is the symphony which is an exercise in miniature but does keep to a full symphonic structure. McCabe's music as represented here has modern influences and a certain dissonance but there are plenty of warm string sounds and evocative piano playing to reward the more conservative without there being any feeling of compromise. A noted teacher as well as performer and composer, McCabe has been awarded a CBE but that was over twenty years ago and he remains slightly off the radar of the more casual classical follower.

Sunday 22 July 2007

Marvellous Mahler

Mahler's 1st Symphony, performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra recorded by Pierre Boulez. With many composers, there is a sense of progression and development through their symphonic cycles, with the consensus being that the later works have more intrinsic worth than the first efforts. It is rare that the early symphonies of Schubert or Dvorak for instance are even performed. With Mahler however, I feel that his art remained on a more or less consistent level and the only things that seem to effect the regularity of recording or performance are considerations of length or the forces required by the score. Having said that, the first symphony is one of his most approachable with memorable themes for the listener to latch onto ( peasant dances, the frere Jacque funeral march ) and a manageable length to the piece. I have recordings of all Mahler's symphonies but not a complete cycle by the same forces. Boulez is a noted interpreter though and the recording here is of a very high quality.

Saturday 21 July 2007

It's Fate

The term romantic is the most apposite description of this glorious cd of Tchaikovsky music. There is a blistering performance of the fourth Symphony bu the London Symphony Orchestra and George Szell and a textbook Romeo and Juliet Romantic Overture from Herbert von Karajan conducting the Wiener Philharmoniker. As I mentioned on an earlier occasion when considering a Tchaikovsky disk, many hard core classicists tend to disapprove of the fact that his music is popular and somehow make it a fault that he packs in so many memorable melodies. But when the mood is right, these works are irresistable. The 4th symphony is called the fate symphony, with fate being the capricious undertone to what is on the whole a joyful work. The second movement andantino is achingly beautiful but there is so much else to appreciate in the other three movements. it isn't just about the tunes either, there is much musical interest and invention. The Rome and Juliet overture is also the possessor of a typical and well known "big tune" which in isolation seems the epitome of movie romance but taken in the context of the whole piece, there is that intrusion of fate again.

Friday 20 July 2007

Command Of Language

Very occasionally when revisiting these cd's I have thought "why did I buy this one". Conversely, it has been rewarding to find many more that are better than I remembered them to be. Such is the case with this one, a fine recital by mezzo soprano / soprano Magdalena Kozena. She displays her mastery of languages since there are songs in French ( Ravel ), Russian ( Shostakovich ), Italian ( Respighi ), German ( Schulhoff ) and English ( Britten ). The accompaniments vary too; the Shostakovich and Britten have just solo piano, the Schulhoff features violin and piano, the ravel songs have flute, cello and piano and the Respighi is accompanied by a string quartet. These players are Malcolm Martineau piano, Paul Edmund-Davies flute, Jiri Barta cello, Christoph Henschel violin and the Henschel Quartet. Kozena is equally at home in the bitter satires of Shostakovich, the languid Mediterranean feel of the Respighi, the off kilter lullabies of Britten, the Exotica of Ravel's Madagascan songs and the melancholy off her fellow Czech Schulhoff ( despite the settings being of German texts ). The accompaniments are committed and add greatly to the value of the performances.

Thursday 19 July 2007

New England Chronicles

Moving on to a generously filled double cd featuring the four symphonies of Charles Ives plus Orchestral Set No 1 ( Three Places In New England ) and Orchestral Set No 2. The performers are variously The Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra under Zubin Mehta, Christoph von Dohnanyi with the Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus and the Academy of St Martin's in the Fields conducted by Neville Marriner. Best sampled in chunks I feel, rather than ploughing through over two and a half hours of music in one sitting. I had just heard a performance of the fourth symphonby at the BBC Proms which wasn't the best balanced and it was good to go back to the clarity of the performance recorded here. The fourth symphony is the climax of ideas also expressed particularly in the second symphony and the Orchestral sets, with the use of popular brass band and church themes, clashing themes played by different sections of the orchestra etc. Ives never relied on his music and thoughout his life remained a successful business man in the insurance business. This may have helped preserve his individuality outside of the growing American music establishment. Since his death in the fifties, this outsider position has been cemented into being recognised, in fact, as the greatest exponent of American classical music in the 20th century.

Wednesday 18 July 2007

Orchestrating Debussy

Time for another of the BBC Music mag cover disks. This one is Debussy Orchestral Music by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales conducted by Tadaaki Otaka. A bit of a mixed bag which begins with some inconsequential music for King Lear and the orchestrations of Debussy's Children's Corner by Andre Caplet, piano pieces written to amuse children which really don't expand too well into a full orchestra. I would play the disk again for the Premiere rapsodie for clarinet and orchestra ( soloist here Robert Plane ) and Six Epigraphes Antiques, orchestrated by Ernest Ansermet, which both capture Debussy's dreamy impressionistic world very well. The disk finishes with a serviceable version of La Mer, one of three versions of the piece I have acquired and the closest that Debussy came to writing a symphony.

Tuesday 17 July 2007

Trance Blues

If you don't know Otis Taylor, then try to remedy that as soon as possible. One of the most original and interesting characters working in roots music. His style has come to be known as trance blues; if you have to label things then that is a label that kind of works. His songs tend not to have a verse, chorus, solo structure but just hit a groove and keep going. The songs are not lyric heavy but what words there are, are hard hitting and to the point. And the instrumentation is refreshing, with trumpet, banjo, mandolin, cello and fiddle frequently augmenting the standard guitar, bass, drums and organ. Occasionally, drums are done away with and the instruments carry the rythmic drive. Otis Taylor is far from being a typical blues man. Scholarly and articulate, he aims to bring to light some of the forgotten stories from the byways of black American history. he also brings a musicological view to bear on aspects of rural black music outside the blues mainstream, hence the original instrumentation of the band on this album ( called Below The Fold by the way ) Other unusual elements are his base in Boulder Colorado, not noted as a hotbed of blues, and his time working away from the music business in academia and managing a pro cycling team.

Concerto Or Concertante

This one is an impressive disk of music by Prokofiev from cellist Han-Na Chang. There are two works on the album, the Sinfonia Concertante for cello and orchestra with the London Symphony Orchestra under Antonio Pappano and the Sonata in c for cello and piano with Pappano on piano accompanying Chang. The Sinfonia Concertante was originally a conventional cello concerto but in this form it had been unsuccessful, partially for musical reasons and partially because of the tortuous minefield of Soviet era politics. With advice and encouragement from Rostropovich the work was revised although the original cello concerto was never formally withdrawn by Prokofiev. The cello sonata is an equally substantial work. On the surface, it is an uncomplicated energetic work and was certainly welcomed as such by the Soviet authorities who lauded it as an antidote to neurotic individualised compositions. I would prefer to look beyond such conjectures and welcome a fine piece of chamber music that is given a fine performance by Chang and Pappano. Shostakovich's music is forever entwined with the nightmare of coping with the Soviet era but Prokofiev's case is even sadder in many ways since he voluntarily returned to the lion's den from the comparitive comfort of the west.

Monday 16 July 2007

He's Scottish You Know

Music from contemporary Scottish composer James MacMillan by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by the composer himself. The pieces are Britannia, The Beserking ( which features a solo piano part played by Martin Roscoe ) and Into The Ferment. MacMillan's music always seems to be considered in terms of his Scottishness and his Catholicism. The works on this cd concentrate more on the former, although Britannia broadens out to cover the whole of the UK. A bit like some of Charles Ives's pieces, it throws in numerous quotations from folk and old time popular song; Roll Out The Barrel, Knees Up Mother Brown, God Save The Queen, Liliburlero can all be discerned amongst an orchestral riot. Elements of that approach also infect The Beserking with its' football song influences. I'm not sure this piece hangs together too well, the soft quiet piano interludes interspersed with loud dissonant orchestral interruptions sounds wilful rather than thought through at times. Into The Ferment is based on some Robert Burns verses, although it is an instrumental work. For me this works better than The Beserking while demonstrating many of the same traits.

Sunday 15 July 2007

Symphonic Sibelius

This is a disk of two Sibelius symphonies, nos 2 and 3, by Simon Rattle with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Maybe not the first choice combination for Sibelius but very workmanlike and reissued as a coupling at a budget price. The second symphony shows Sibelius still in the romantic tradition and came after a trip to Italy, which may account for it not feeling so wintry and bleak as is often the case with his music. The sense of place is just that little bit different, although it is always there in Sibelius. The third symphony can even be seen as looking back beyond romanticism to a more classical format. Sibelius stated variously that writing a symphony was like collecting together small pieces of mosaic and puting them into a whole, or like a river gathering in tributaries and flowing on to an ultimate destination. These two works illustrate either of those approaches.

Saturday 14 July 2007

Modern Offering

The violin concerto Offertorium is perhaps the most famous work of contemporary composer Sofia Gubaidulina. This cd features a performance by the work's dedicatee Gidon Kremer with the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Charles Dutoit. There is another substantial piece on the cd, Hommage a T. S. Eliot for octet and soprano with kremer leading the octet that also includes the likes of Tabea Zimmermann on viola. The soprano is Christine Whittlesey. Offertorium has Bach's Musical Offering hidden at its' core along with aspects of Berg's violin concerto. Gubaidulina oresents these in the style of Webern with clear overtones of Russian Orthodox chant. There is the distinctive clash between serenity and short sharp vbiloent passages before the piece moves to a kind of religious conclusion. The religious feel is also evident in the settings of Eliot's Four Quartets and the theme of spiritual renewal. Not a conventional song setting, the sung and instrumental parts seem quite seperate at times. Close listening reveals the appropriateness of the musical interludes to the preceding texts, however.

Friday 13 July 2007

Three Generations Of Russians

A concerto showcase cd by the violinist Nikolaj Znaider and the Symphonieorchester Des Bayerischen Rundfunk conducted by Mariss Jansons. The disk features Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No 2, Glazunov's Violin Concerto and the short piece Meditation by Tchaikovsky as a filler. Glazunov was the director of the St Petersburg conservatory when Prokofiev was studying there and the two did not see eye to eye. With the inclusion of the Tchaikovsky piece, the disk is really encompassing three generations of Russian composers. Now it is Prokofiev who is the more famous but in his day, Glazunov was looked upon as a Russian master. His violin concerto has remained as the one work of his that holds a regular repertory place, a romantic, slavic work. Prokofiev's second concerto is a piece firmly of the 20th century with a conflicting mix of lyricism and more trenchant modernism. The Danish Znaider does all three works more than justice, no doubt assisted in finding an authentically Russian idiom by his conductor.

Byrd Song

An unusual jazz album from the early sixties by Donald Byrd called A New Perspective. In many ways it is a typical Blue Note blues influenced groove session. Trumpeter Byrd leads a very solid band who are all on good form including Hank Mobley on tenor sax, Herbie Hancock on piano, guitarist Kenny Burrell and Donald Best on vibes. What gives it a different feel is the addition of arranged voice parts for a gospel style group of singers. Personally, I could have done with the singers being a bit more gritty, on a couple of occasions they do tend towards sounding like the Pearl and Dean theme or a sixties Martini advert. It does lend a novel and interesting perspective though as the title implies. And there is one stand out track, Cristo Redentor, which is a very moving and inspiring track featuring some fine playing on a timeless spiritual kind of tune.

Thursday 12 July 2007

From Film Score To Symphony

In one of the coincidences of the way I am taking these disks "off the shelf" ( I've been going from alternate ends of different shelves to give a bit of variety ) it is a quick return to the cd player for Vaughan Williams. This one is the Sinfonia Antartica by Bernard Haitink with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir and soprano soloist Sheila Armstrong. Regarded as Vaughan Williams's 7th symphony, Sinfonia Antartica began as film music written for the the movie Scott Of The Antarctic about the doomed attempt to be first to the South Pole. As that would imply, it is a programmatic work and doesn't contain any of the characteristics of his earlier work ( not surprisingly, the Antarctic isn't exactly a pastoral landscape and I doubt if the explorers found much time for singing folk songs ) The conversion to a symphony does more than just reprogramme the film music into a performing suite however. It's an often bleak but majestic work with the voices used to represent the keening ound of the wind at crucial points in the score.

The Spanish Court

A lavish production, Music For The Duke Of Lerma, by Paul McCreesh and his Gabrieli Consort and Players. Spread over two disks, this presents music for the translation of the blessed sacrament into the collegiate church of San Pedro in Lerma ( Spain ). It is a recreation of first vespers and the Salve Service as it was celebrated in October 1617 in the presence of King Philip III and the Duke of Lerma. McCreesh has made a number of such painstaking recreations of historical pageants and celebrations. This was a particular occasion when the Duke of Lerma cemented himself as a coming man in Spanish politics by managing to get the King to include his northern district in the royal procession around Spain. The disk was recorded in the church in Lerma where this original service took place and it is a fine acoustic for the music. The music is carefully reconstructed from archives of the time. The singing is mainly unaccompanied, interspersed with instrumental interludes on organ, brass and occasional strings. The playing is on instruments faithful to the period. An altogether successful project.

Wednesday 11 July 2007

Part Work

This cd, Orient and Occident, features music by Arvo Part. The performers are the Swedish radio Symphony Orchestra and Choir conducted by Tonu Kaljuste. There are three works on the disk, the title piece is the most recent and is an instrumental work for string orchestra. Slow, gentle and contemplative with various musical strands converging and diverging through the piece. Pilgrim's Song is based on psalm 121 and is for men's choir and string orchestra. There is a clear orthodox chant influence but Part's own slow understated language is also evident. The final work, Como Sieva Sedienta for soprano ( Helena Olssen ) women's choir and string orchestra sets words in David's psalm and again has a slowly unfolding repetition of themes. Part's music is dismissed by some as holy minimalism or pseudo chill out music but I think that is unfair to his obvious sincerity and careful listening is repaid by more than a simple calming effect.

Job Done

More music from Vaughan Williams but not a symphony this time. No need to discuss further the stature of VW as a composer, I've already done that in earlier posts. The main work on this cd is Job - A Masque For Dancing. The performers are the English National Philharmonia conducted by David Lloyd-Jones. Job is based on the biblical story of Job but more specifically, it was inspired by a series of watercolours by William Blake portraying the tale. Programmatic in form, there are lengthy descriptions of what each of the nine parts is about. The style ranges from what might be thought of as a typical pastoral theme to start but then develops a much more violent form in places and there are also hints of an oriental tinge to the woodwind parts in particular. Whenever it is now performed, it is as a concert piece only but it was commissioned as a theatrical Elizabethan style masque with with elaborate, scenery, masks and choreography by Ninette De Valois. The other piece on the disk is The Lark Ascending with the violin part played by David Greed. Regularly voted the most popular piece of classical music by listeners to the commercial radio station Classic FM, it might suffer from over exposure but since I don't listen to the kind of radio that would play it every day, this was the first timew I had heard it for ages and it scrubs up very nicely. Nothing wrong with peace, sentiment and nostalgia occasionally.

Tuesday 10 July 2007

Transition Album

Following on from the Beano album, A Hard Road was the next release from John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers. Eric Clapton had left the band by this stage and been replaced by Peter Green. The album has a more rushed feel, probably released before the band's live set had really settled down. Green was also in the process of becoming fully developed as a player. A very uneven record, the Peter Green instrumental The Supernatural is an obvious standout and an early indication of how he would on occasions move away from a strict blues base. Another track that grabs hold strongly with a blistering guitar solo is Another Kind Of Love. Some of the tracks that are based more around Mayall are distinctly average and the record also contains what must be the worst ever recording of Dust My Broom. A transition album for Mayall and a work in progress for Green.

Beach Life

An album that still defines the sound of Brazil for many people even after forty years, Getz / Gilberto. Stan Getz and Joao Gilberto with the significant participation of Antonio Carlos Jobim and of course Joao's wife Astrud roped in to warble the Girl From Ipanema. The album was considered to be a Stan Getz album outisde of Brazil but listening to it now, it almost seems that he is a guest musician for the Brazilians. Which is to compliment Getz rather than to belittle him, since his mellow contributions fit seamlessly with the gentle bossa nova feel. He was notorious as a firey and difficult character but that would be hard to guess from his style on this record. Not really a jazz album, it is much more song driven with the brief solos an integral part. Contempoaray music in brazil is now much more hard edged but this is reflects a gentler time.

Druidic

The next one off the shelf happens to be an album by Led Zeppelin. The one with no name, the runes album, was it the third ? Anyway, the one with Stairway to Heaven. Not much I can add to the world's knowledge of Led Zep. Will just say that they were a much more subtle band than often given credit for and the crassness that followed in heavy metal wasn't their fault. This album stands up pretty well. There are times when Robert Plant's vocals veer perilously close to Minnie Mouse, Stairway to Heaven has worn a bit thin simply because of over familiarity but the other acoustic flavoured tracks work well. And the powerhouse riffing of Black Dog and Rock 'n' Roll still bring out the old air guitar urge. My favourite track though has to be When The Levee Breaks, a fine example of how to rework an old blues standard and recently regaining the resonance of topicality.

Monday 9 July 2007

Lycanthropy

This is a very useful cd featuring 24 tracks by Howlin' Wolf, basically taken from two old vinyl albums, one just called Howlin' Wolf the other called Moanin' At Midnight. The compilation just seems to be called Two on One. It includes Wolf's most famous material such as Smokestack Lightenin', Spoonful, How Many More Years, Evil, The Red Rooster, Moanin' For My Baby. Real name Chester Burnett, Wolf was the big rival to Muddy Waters in late fities Chicago blues. A unique gravel voice, Wolf was a huge imposing individual who ran his band with a rod of iron. There are many stories about a violent past and Wolf did nothing to discourage these; a reputation was useful in the Chicago of those days. His material has been much covered but nothing compares to the raw power of the originals. This compilation does the man justice and conjures up a dark mysterious and slightly forbidding world.

Sunday 8 July 2007

The Age of Chivalry

A lovely cd of early music entitled Chansons de Troubadours et Danses de Jongleurs by the ensemble Millenarium, consisting of voice and harp, organetto and percussion. The music originates from south west France in the Middle Ages in the age of chivalry and platonic love. True love was deemed to be incompatible with sensual pleasures but human nature being what it is, there are ambiguities in the philospophy. The music is beautiful, slightly melancholy which is not surprising given the chivalric concept. It is far enough removed from our own time to sound alien and mysterious but comfortingly human. As mentioned before with this very early repertoire, it seems to fit more with the modern concept of world music than with the classical tradition. Highly recommended if you can track it down.

Hungarian Tradition

Music from the influential father figure of 20th century Hungarian music, Zoltan Kodaly. Played by the RIAS Symphonie Orchester Berlin under the Hungarian conductor, Ferenc Fricsay, so totally in tune with Kodaly's music. Kodaly taught composition at the Liszt academy in Budapest for over thirty years and influenced generations of Hungarians. He advocated and advanced a national Hungarian style with folk and gypsy influences. otherwise, his musical language was conservative, more in Keeping with a Brahms / Dvorak axis than the Schoenberg / Berg school. there are four pieces featured on the cd. The Hary Janos Suite is a tone poem about the exploits of a legendary Hungarian patriot, in concept similar to some of Richard Strauss's tome poems. Marosszeker Tanze and Tanze aus Galanta most clearly reflect folk influences ala Brahms / Dvorak. The final piece Psalmus Hungaricus sets a sacred text to another folk influenced background and the orchestra are augmented by their choir, a children's choir and the choir of St Hedwig's cathedral, together with tenor soloist Ernst Haefliger. The disk is an obvious labour of love by Fricsay.

Saturday 7 July 2007

Zapped

This cd has a somewhat cumbersome title; Ensemble Modern Plays Frank Zappa, Greggery Peccary and Other Persuasions, a Selection of Works. back in the vinyl days, I had three or four albums by Zappa and / or the Mothers of Invention but they have gone the way of all vunyl and it is maybe a little odd that the only Zappa music I have now is this cd which is not by him. I suspect that might have pleased Zappa himself though, who I think would have been more gratified to be remembered as a composer than as a performer. Particularly more than as a rock star. Hearing Ensemble Modern is interesting, they don't quite swing in the way that the originals often did when Zappa was using rock or jazz musicians but Zappa always kept a very tight control of the arrangements and allowed little if any jamming. So coming at it from a different performing tradition as Ensemble Modern do is in many ways truer to the spirit of the music. My only gripe with the cd is spending twenty minutes of its' hour length on the rather tiresome Greggery Peccary. Zappa was as interesting a musician as he thought he was but just maybe he was not as funny.

Friday 6 July 2007

Symphony of a Thousand

Finally a Mahler symphony finds its' way off the shelf and it happens to be the 8th. Performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra and Guiseppe Sinopoli with the Southend Boys Choir and solo singers Cheryl Studer, Angela Maria Blasi, Sumi Jo, Waltraud Meier, Kaziko Nagai, Keith Lewis, Thomas Allen and Hans Sotin. Massive seems to be a word often associated with Mahler's symphonies and in this case it is apt. The premiere is said to have had 858 singers and 171 instrumentalists, truly a symphony of a thousand which the 8th is now often called. Slightly smaller forces here but impressive enough. The symphony sets two texts in long movements. The first movement is drawn from a 9th century hymn for pentecost and is sung in latin and the second movement sets the close of Goethe's Faust, sung in German, where Faust receives his undeserved salvation. There's so much to absorb and consider in a work of this ambition; the juxtaposition of the texts and what sort of vision it represents, the place of the work in german culture, the timing in Mahler's life when he only had a matter of months left to live. Of necessity, the recording stretches over two cd's and they also decided to include a performance of the adagio from Mahler's unfinished tenth symphony. I have a seperate recording of the completion of an entire attempt at the tenth by Deryck Cooke and so will post about that when that disk takes its' turn. Suffice it to say that it seems a little unnecessary to have it with this release, the 8th is more than enough to be going on with by itself.

Da Dum

Two notes, da dum, and everyone knows what it is. What is it ? The theme from Zorba The Greek. This is a disk of music from Mikis Theodorakis conducted by Charles Dutoit with the Montreal Symphony on the Zorba suite and the Philharmonia orchestra on the other two pieces, Adagio for Solo Flute, Orchestra and Percussion and Pieces From Carnaval. Theodorakis is one of the most famous Greeks of the 20th century, for both his songs and his politics. He did compose a lot of symphonic music too though. The Suite from his music for the Zorba film is the main thing here. Yes, it does include the famous dance but orchestrated in a more interesting way and undeniably thrilling as it works up to a climax. There are also songs sung by soprano Ioanna Forti in a slightly folky style. Listening again, I'm not convinced of the greatness of the music, except in the way that it has become synonymous with an entire nation. It is interesting for an occasional listen and the two minor pieces also included retain what we have now come to think of as a Greek feel but which may just simply be a Theodorakis feel.

Lament For The Destruction Of a Culture

More Richard Strauss from the specialist combination of the Berliner Philharmoniker and Herbert von Karajan. The two pieces featured on this cd are Metamorphosen and Tod Und Verklarung. Although Tod Und Verklarung deals with death, it is a transcendent death in which there is hope and succour, whereas Metamorphosen remains an altogether bleaker work. This contradiction is explained by when they were written, Tod Und Verlarung ( Death and Transfiguration ) in 1899 when Strauss was still a young man who could take the optimism of the faith at face value, whereas Metamorphosen was written during and immediately after the disaster of WW2. It is written as an elegy for string orchestra and is a sustained lament. Some find it hard to take because of Strauss's ambivalent relationship with the Nazis and because of his statements that the despair was brought on by the destruction of opera houses, which although much to be regretted pale into insignificance when compared to other horrors of that time. That's being unfair to an eighty year old though and it is an indisputably moving work that the Berlin strings make sound exquisite. Tod Und Verklarung is scored for a full orchestra and is more in the vein of the other tone poems. The programmatic work traces the dying man's journey to the next world with taste and close attention to detail.

Proms From The Past

Another of the BBC Music magazine cover disks, this one from about six years ago. It features live performances from the Proms, so was presumably the one on that year's Proms edition. Two pieces of music, Falstaff by Elgar and Symphonic Variations by Dvorak. The Elgar is by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Martin Brabbins and the Dvorak is the BBC SO with Jiri Belohlavek. To be honest, I normally find the cover disks featuring chamber music to be more memorable than the orchestral ones, the BBC orchestras can be a bit pedestrian at times. This one's ok though. Falstaff is a programmatic piece based on the Shakespeare character and scenes from the plays. I had half assumed that it was from some sort of incidental music to a theatrical performance but it is purely a symphonic series of sketches. And it sounds...well...Elgarian I suppose. Dvorak's variations on a sort of waltz theme are an expert series of variations, interesting to follow but a shame that the theme itself isn't a bit more engaging. I found it outstayed its' welcome a little by the end of 20 minutes or so.

Thursday 5 July 2007

Bar Band Blues Par Excellence

Another award winning cd but in a totally different field to the last string quartet post. This is an album from last year by bluesman Charlie Musselwhite called Delta Hardware. Performers like Musselwhite born and bred in Mississippi transcend old arguements about whether white men can sing / play the blues. He's now of an age where he has life and music experiences to impart soul and authenticity into the songs but is still at the height of his powers. His harmonica playing has graced many records as a sideman and dominates the soloing here although guitarist Chris Anderson is allowed plenty of space too. The music has a Texas feel as well as that of the delta. Standout tracks are Black Water, another of those post Katrina epics that many perormers felt moved to write, and Clarksdale Boogie which is an irresistable take on that regular boogie form. Even the tracks that might be taken as being routine develop into a nice steady hypnotic groove and the whole album is very atmospheric and reeks of the south.

Playing From Memory

This cd was awarded the disk of the year title in 2003 by Gramophone magazine and I can see why. Robert Schumann's string Quartets Nos 1 and 3 by the Zehetmair Quartet. The Zehetmairs are a unique ensemble. They are not a permanent group, each member has several other committments. Leader Thomas Zehetmair for instance is director of the Northern Sinfonia at the Sage Gateshead, as well as being an in demand soloist. But each year, they commit to learning a small concentrated repertoire. This programme is then performed from memory without the score. I presume it is this policy which meant that the disk only contains two of Schumann's three string quartets, despite there being room physically to fit the other one on the disk. There is no sense of being short changed, however. The music is vital, fresh and life affirming, as are the performances. Playing from memory gives a sense of shared exploration and an almost improvisatory feel. The players are really listening to each other with total concentration. These are probably the last pieces of music written by Schumann before his descent into clinical depression which could add a certain poignancy but to me this disk is just about my favourite in the string quartet cattegory.

Wednesday 4 July 2007

Father And Son

The record label Chandos have released an enterprising series of cd's called the Berkeley Edition, featuring the music of the British composer Lennox Berkeley and that of his son Michael. Lennox was of the generation of Britten, who was in fact godfather to Michael. Michael is still active as composer, broadcaster and arts administrator. I believe there were five volumes to the Berkeley Edition and I have one of them, Volume 3. It is a fruitless exercise to consider which of the pair is the better composer but on this particular disk it is I think the son who makes the greater impression. The Lennox piece is his Symphony No 4, his final symphony written in the late 1970s. I suspect that by that time it was looked on as a little old fashioned, very well crafted and perfectly good music but somewhat lightweight. The two works on the disk by Michael Berkeley are as would be expected, sparkier and more contemporary. There is a cello concerto that remains easliy accessible and a tougher more dramatic piece called the Garden of Earthly Delights, scored for orchestra with featured violin, soprano sax and trombone and sundry percussion effects. The performers are the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under Richard Hickox, with Alban Gerhardt the soloist in the cello concerto.

Not Homer But Still An Odyssey

A very impressive piece of late 20th century British music, the 96 minute orchestral piece Odyssey by Nicholas Maw. This release is on two cd's, there's also a smaller scale piece, Dance Scenes. The recording of Odyssey is a live recording by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Simon Rattle and funded by the Arts Council. Dance Scenes is performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Daniel Harding. It is a striking piece that would make a change to be programmed in the concert hall instead of something like Britten's Sea Interludes, it did remind me slightly of Britten, if not that piece. Odyssey is an altogther different kind of beast and stands as a very important work. It gets a fine performance from Rattle who is at home with this kind of repertoire. It is one of the longest unbroken spans of orchestral music ever produced and works on that scale bring comparisons with Mahler or Bruckner and it is the latter that probably is most closely associated. There's nothing derivative though and harsher dissonances creep in at intervals through the piece. Despite the title Odyssey, there's nothing outwardly programmatic about the work, it's sections being called Intoduction, Part 1, Part 2 etc. A work that deserves to be much more widely known but the length must make it difficult to accomodate both as a recording venture and in concert. As a composer, Maw now seems more appreciated in the US where he now lives, than back home in Britain.

Music That Launched The Cathedral

Very early music on a cd by The Harp Consort directed by Andrew Lawrence-King. Titled The Miracles of Notre Dame, the music of Gautier de Coincy ( 1177 - 1236 )sets poems in praise of the Virgin to medieval popular songs. Following on from the music of the troubadours of southern France, the church in Paris seemed to take the view why should the devil have all the good songs. The settings are fresh and lively and although not exactly for partying, they haven't yet taken on a solemn ecclesiastical feel. The singers of the Harp Consort amend their vocal style accordingly, being slightly more nasal and folk oriented. The instrumentation features vielles, bagpipes, shawm, cornettomuto, citole, medieval lute, harp, psaltery, organetto and percussion. There are similarities with the Italian disk from acantus that I recently posted on but whereas that was anonymous music performed in small village communities, there is an increased sophistication here from the participation of one guiding hand, de Coincy, and from the emerging power of the cathedral at Notre Dame. Such very early music hardly seems to fit the category of classical music. In modern day marketing terms, it might sit happier as world music.

Tuesday 3 July 2007

Reworking Themes

Aaron Copland's Third Symphony is an imposing orchestral work. Written in the late 1940s, it isn't a particularly radical work but the sound world, while tonal, is clearly of the 20th century with that spacious "american" feel and hints of folk melodies. The final movement is particularly impressive, built as it is around Copland's famous Fanfare For The Common Man theme. This recording is by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by James Judd. This orchestra has become something of a work horse for the budget Naxos label and the performances are always perfectly serviceable. that isn't meant to damn them with faint praise. The cd is rounded off with the Billy the Kid Suite, which I've talked about in an earlier post about the other Copland cd I have in my collection. The symphony is the meat of the release, however.

Beware The One Track Syndrome

I was slightly mislead into buying this cd titled Impish by Britsh jazz guitarist Phil Robson. I heard a track when it was selected on a radio show best of the year programme and the track they played, Gone Fishing, was a beautiful Indian influenced piece featuring both guitar and saz. I expected a few more pieces in a fusion vein but in fact the rest of the album was pretty much straight ahead conventional jazz workouts, the other possible exception being the freer structure of Reptilian. Nicely played by Robson and his trio, augmented on four of the nine tracks by the piano of John Taylor. So all in all, very pleasant but not exactly essential. I wonder why the interest in Indian forms wasn't followed up at all, even if not for the entire album. That track does stand out like a sore thumb.

Monday 2 July 2007

That Number Nine Again

This is a pretty straightforward kind of disk, Vaughan Williams Symphony No 8 and Symphony No 9 by the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Bernard Haitink. these are Vaughan Williams's last two symphonies, recorded in the late fifties when he was in his eighties ( yet again the ninth symphony is a composer's final one ). There is no indication whatsoever of any diminution of his powers. The eighth symphony is the lighter work of the two, VW was beginning to experiment with more exotic instrumental combinations and there are vibraphone, xylophone, glockenspiel, tuned gongs and tubular bells. The scherzo is scored for wind instruments only. The slow movement has string writing that is quinessentially Vaughan Williams, however. It is always tempting to try to read more into a fina symphony than is there, particularly since the ninth was completed only months before his death. There isn't any conscious intimation of mortality however, even if the overall mood is a little sombre. There are shards of light that keep on breaking through. Maybe the listener does have extra musical thoughts about final statements and so on but the work doesn't need it, it is a fine symphony. Not in any way "modern" in the sense of fifties and sixties "modern music" but unmistakeably of the 20th century.

For Fans Of The Diva

This is another cd which has me slightly puzzled as to why I bought it. Not that it is bad, just not the sort of release that I would usually go for. It is The Art of Cecilia Bartoli and as the title suggests is a selection of various performances from over her career thus far. It is very lavishly packaged, lots of airbrushed glamourous photos and obviously aimed at fans of the singer with a capital "F". And I'm not into that kind of devotion. There's no denying the quality of the music but it is another of those sort of releases that you would put on to have a pleasant noise in the house while going about some chore or other. It includes pieces by Handel, Vivaldi, Gluck, Mozart and Rossini which are her kind of material, plus short snatches of Donizetti and Verdi. Luciano Pavorotti, Bryn Terfel and David Daniels make duet appearances and the maestros include Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Chailly and Christopher Hogwood.

Sunday 1 July 2007

Holy Minimalist

It's easy to give John Tavener a bit of a kicking. Eccentric ( some might say affected ) persona, relatively successful in terms of contemporary classical music and so open to jealousy from his peers, writes almost exclusively on a religious theme but is then magpie like in his allegiance to any doctrine. And I certainly wouldn't claim to be a big time supporter. Having said that, I do have a couple of cd's of his music and enjoy them both. This one has as the main item The Protecting Veil for cello and orchestra with a makeweight of In Alium for soprano, tape and orchestra. The performers are the Ulster Orchestra under Takuo Yuasa with Maria Kliegel on cello and the soprano Eileen Hulse. The Protecting Veil is mainly a long solo lament for cello with only occasional pointed orchestral interjections. It portrays the story of Christ from his mother's viewpoint and weaves a convincing atmosphere. Certain segments sound a little oriental in influence and it is a hard sustained play for the cellist, not flashy but concentrated. The elctronic tape work in the soprano piece is a field that Tavener seems to have abandoned but here it creates an interesting sonic effect.

Songs Of The People

A short note on the cd cover sums this one up, sacred songs of the people from medieval Italy, a passionate fusion of ethnic folk music and gregorian chant.The performing group and the album have the same title, Acantus. The concept is to take early church music from Italy but to sing it in the style that can still be heard in ethnic folk music in remote regions of Italy, rather than in the mainstream western church choral tradition. It seems a reasonable conjecture that this is how the polyphony would have been sung in small rural places of worship away from the splendours of Rome, Florence, Venice etc. The singing is not artless but contains a raw soulful edge that fits very well. There is sparse instrumental accompaniment on some tracks using lute, viella ( a kind of early viola ), organ drone and early flute. One track that stands apart, O Crux Fructus, has tambourine and bagpipes and develops into a wild joyful dance welcoming the resurrection. It could just as well serve as a pagan rite welcoming spring. I'll have to do a search for Acantus, this cd was recorded in 1999 and is the only music of theirs I have ever come across.