Sunday 30 January 2011

A Respectful Mutiny From Caine

Jazz pianist Uri Caine has made a succession of remarkable discs deconstructing pieces by classical composers and this "best of" compilation titled The Classic Variations is an ideal place to begin sampling them and a fine listening experience in its' own right. Composers given the Caine treatment here are Bach, Beethoven, Mahler, Wagner, Verdi and Mozart. Writing of the Caine treatment might imply some lack of respect from him but these are serious musical endeavours where the source music is thoroughly respected and used as a jumping off point for thoughtful expansion, as opposed to a vehicle for ego and empty virtuousic display . There is humour in some of the adaptations where humour fits into the context but in most cases the works have serious musical intent. The other notable aspect of these variations is the variety that Caine is able to impart. They are by no means simply piano jazz improvisations on his part. He does play very well on several tracks but there are also stellar contributions from clarinet and violin by Chris Speed and Mark Feldman among others plus lute, string quartet, viola, gospel vocals, organ and guitar and scratch turntables. The disc is summed up by the two lengthy closing tracks. Mozart's Turkish Rondo morphs from an Arabic call to prayer to a klezmer jazz workout while Mahler's famous Adagietto from Symphony No 5 is deconstructed and put together again in the most haunting yet respectful way.

Saturday 29 January 2011

A Life Well Travelled

Vincent Dumestre's ensemble Le Poeme Harmonique is very much a mainstay of the idiosyncratic Alpha label, especially since the defection to the mainstream of Christina Pluhar's L'Arpeggiata. This disc is typical fare, Carnets de Voyage by Charles Tessier. Tessier was active in the late 16th and early 17th century and was widely travelled, often leaving his native Languedoc region of France to seek fortune in England, Italy and the German states. The material featured on the disc is not entiirely by Tessier, there is a Dowland song for insance which reflects the influences that came to bear on Tessier. The songs are secular in the main and deal with that kind of chivalrous lovelorn subject matter that may have been on the verge of becoming antiquated by this time. The music similarly shows influences from various times as well as places as indicated by the "voyage" of the title. Tessier's Languedoc roots reflect earlier troubador songs, there is the Tudor English influence of Dowland and there are pieces which look ahead to the baroque era. Le Poeme Harmonique play in the most committed fashion throughout and the vocal contributions add much colourful characterisation to their parts, in some places even reminding of Orff's Carmina Burana.

Thursday 27 January 2011

Digging Peace Man

I remember as a kid in the sixties watching Jazz 625 on tv and being fascinated by the extreme playing posture adopted by pianist Bill Evans; one that made Glenn Gould look the epitome of convention. Now I finally have a disk of his, Everybody Digs Bill Evans. It's an original album with one bonus track rather than any best of compilation but I think it adequately distils Evans's work and it contains one particular track I have long coveted. It is a piano trio album with just a couple of solo piano tracks and the accompaniment from Sam Jones on bass and in particular Philly Joe Jones on drums is exemplary. The artistic drive is very much that of Bill Evans though. The vehicles for the trio workouts are mainly either compositions by post boppers such as Gigi Gryce and Sonny Rollins or standards such as Tenderly, Night and Day and Young and Foolish. Very much the playboy manifestation of what it was to be hip in the late fifties and early sixties. That one track which was the motivation for me getting this disk and no other by Evans is the remarkable solo tune that he wrote himself, Peace Piece. Peace as in calm and quiet, peace as in the opposite of war, peace as a forshadowing of "peace and love man." It is a Satie like concoction, in no way a virtuosic show off piece but creating a little nugget like gem where time is stopped and the world seems a better place. The bonus track, Some Other Time, almost replicates the mood and for once it is a bonus that adds something to the original vinyl album.

Wednesday 26 January 2011

A Concerto For The Don

Quite early in my classical collecting, I acquired most of the tone poems of Richard Strauss. They don't fit as well with my tastes as they have developed but I do still admire them and this disk fills in a notable gap with a performance of Don Quixote by the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich conducted by David Zinman. It marks the final volume of a survey they did of Strauss's orchestral works and it also includes the Romanze in F major for cello and orchestra and the Serenade in E flat major for 13 wind instruments. Don Quixote is a programmatic work wound around depictions of several of the major incidents from the novel but in another context it is virtually a cello concerto since the "part" of the Don is played by the cello throughout. at times it is a double concerto with the viola used to portray Quixote's sidekick Sancho Panza. There is also a minor part for oboe as the character Dulcinella. The principal soloists here are Thomas Grossenbacher cello ( also in the Romanze ) and Michel Rouilly viola. The Romanze and Serenade make enticing fillers and the main work tells the tale in an entrancing mix of variation, lietmotif and concerto form.

Tuesday 25 January 2011

Breath On Me Breath Of God

"A feather on the breath of God", Sequences and hymns by Abbess Hildegard of Bingen was a surprise best seller on its release in the early 1980s and it went a long way to ensuring the long term viability of the then fledgling Hyperion label. Performed by Gothic Voices directed by Christopher Page, guest soprano Emma Kirkby has prominent billing on the booklet but in fact the stand out soprano duties are more often undertaken by group member Emily Van Evera. The disk stands the passage of time since its' recording flawlessly and it is hard to think of a better performance of this repertoire. Hildegard was born on the cusp of the 11th and 12th centuries and spent all of her adult life in holy orders but she is most remarkable for her music and poetry, some of it inspired by visions. Her music illustrates the first opening out and expansion of basic plainchant but retains the profound spirituality and communication of that form. The commercial success of the disk no doubt owed much to a fashionable new age chill out mentality prevalent at the time but that was incidental to the production of the disk which did not forsee such success and was made without any concession to it. The music is primarily acapella but some tracks benefit from Robert White playing reed drones and Doreen Muskett playing symphony, which I think is a kind of hurdy gurdy.

Monday 24 January 2011

Gym But No Gymnastics

Three Gymnopedies and six Gnossienne are surveyed along with other piano works by Erik Satie on this disk by Pascal Roge. Satie's output was not large anyway but the Gymnopedies and Gnossienne are by far the most well known and they do inhabit this restrained miniature world that is so atmospheric and evocative. It is apparent that they share time and space with such as Debussy but the pared down minimalism of them is totally individual but thoroughly charming. Roge takes the Gymnopedies fractionally faster than some but not in a way to jeopardise their hypnotic effect and the playing of the Gnossienne is pretty well perfect. The other piano works included are given strong advocacy by Roge but they do suffer in comparison with the famous pieces, several showing touches of very early jazz and ragtime and of French music hall. If Satie achieved nothing else, with these two cycles he began an influence that resonated down through the 20th century to figures as diverse as Cage and Bill Evans and their followers.

Sunday 23 January 2011

Never Yet You Heathen Dog

Given access to his entire back catalogue, I might have been able to come up with a slightly better selection of tracks for Martin Carthy The Definitive Collection. But this one is pretty good to be going on with. One of the problems, if problem it is, is that Carthy has revisited many of the songs most associated with him several times over the years and made different versions. These versions might be solo, as a duo with Dave Swarbrick, as joint leader of the ensemble Brass Monkey or with Waterson : Carthy ( no mention is made of the time in the original Steeleye Span )And it is a matter of subjective preference as to which version of the song might be the best and whether one prefers the more mature Carthy voice to that of the younger firebrand. I don't have too many issues with the selections, though would have preferred a couple more songs / versions from the Swarbrick era. But it is good to have such perennials as Sovay, Prince Heathen, The Maid and the Palmer, The Bows of London and Jolly Tinker all in one place. It complements very well the other Carthy and Waterson: Carthy disks that I have. I have already mentioned in earlier posts concerning these the pivotal place that he holds in the English folk revival / post revival / nu revival !

Saturday 22 January 2011

Young Turks

Although not a youth orchestra, there are some similarities between the Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra and the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra. Both are from countries perhaps not previously noted for being in the forefront of classical music and both are intent on making a major international reputation for themselves ( with the Bolivars admittedly having a head start ) But what really brought the comparison to mind when listening to this first recording by the Borusan orchestra is the way in which they have decided to feature pieces with what might be termed a Turkish feel, in the same way as the Venezuelans have championed South American music. Though none of the composers are Turkish, there is that kind of Arabian, middle eastern orientalism apparent in much of the music here. They may not have included Sheherazade but Respighi's ballet Belkis, Queen of Sheba owes a fairly large debt to Rimsky, while also incorporating elements of typical Respighi bombast but all displayed with superb orchestral colouring which helps show off the ensemble under conductor Sascha Goetzel. Much of what I have said about Belkis could also be applied to Florent Schmitt's ballet music The Tragedy of Salome which concludes the disk and occupies the same sound world. Not quite so oriental but still a fine orchestral showcase, Hindemith's Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes by Carl Maria von Weber lies sandwiched between the two ballets. This is the second recording I have of this piece and the Borusan Istanbul Phil do not suffer in comparison with the LSO under Abbado.

Friday 21 January 2011

Heaven and Hell And The Earth Between

An atmospheric and almost completely acapella disk from Gothic Voices ( director Christopher Page plays medieval harp on one track ), The Marriage of Heaven and Hell presents motets and songs from 13th century France. I was expecting a mix of the sacred and the profane, plainchant and troubadour airs. But I learned from the booklet notes that it was a much more intertwined situation and that motets, a term I had associated purely with church music, could also encompass more wordly subject matter. The songs often seem to take the form of a round, passed among the voices of the group who appear on the disk in various groupings of five comprising alto, three tenors and baritone. The notes also explain the differences between the motet world and that of the troubadours from further south in France but the lyrics tend to occupy that same region of courtly love, with the object of desire worshipped from afar. The eroticism sometimes spills over into the Marian settings too. The singing throughout is beautifully rich and the polyphony and dissonances in the music constantly stimulating.

Thursday 20 January 2011

Mozart Marathon

The first 12 days of 2011 on BBC radio 3 were devoted to programming that would play the entire works of Mozart. Every note that he wrote. There were worthwhile programmes and fine performances contained within this marathon but the concept was a banal one and gave rise to the real danger that a force fed diet would ultimately lead to indigestion. Nobody would have been able to listen throughout the 12 days, no matter how much recording and time shifting was attempted. I wonder about the point of all those juvenile operas being broadcast in the early hours of the morning. Anyway, the reason I am bothering to comment on this is that the latest edition of BBC Music magazine was a tie in with the Mozart fest and the free cover disk contains performances of the Mass in C Minor and Symphony No 40. I happen to have both of these works on disk already and so don't propose to comment on the music. Suffice it to say that both pieces receive very competant performances. The mass is played by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus conducted by David Robertson and with soloists Jeremy Ovenden ( tenor ) James Rutherford ( bass ) and sopranos Laura Aikin and Emma Bell. Both are live recordings, the symphony from last year's Proms by the BBC Philharmonic and Gianandrea Noseda.

Wednesday 19 January 2011

Completing The Trilogy

The final disk in the Californian trilogy that marked Ry Cooder's return to recording solo albums after such a lengthy gap goes by the somewhat gnomic title of I,Flathead. The theme this time seems to revolve around a fading drag racer and there are various automotive references but these tend to pass me by since I am no kind of petrol head. The sub title, the Songs of Kash Buk and the Clowns, is similarly impenetrable and the packaging is less lavish than on the two previous releases. All of this is of no consequence to the music of course and the disk contains a fine set of songs. The styles range through Tex Mex, western swing and country with a touch of early rock 'n' roll and pop thrown in and as on the two other disks in the trilogy there is a cocktail jazz track. I think that it is fairly clear now that there is to be no sentimental return to the slide guitar blues that marked the very early first stage of Cooder's career. The guitar here is strictly at the service of the songs, to complement and embellish but not to overwhelm. On the whole, the disk seems less angry and political than the other two with much sardonic humour. The pervading sense of melancholy for a passing age remains however, especially evident on two of the standout tracks which bookend the album, Drive Like I Never Been Hurt and the gently poignant 5000 Country Music Songs.

Tuesday 18 January 2011

Riley's Rainbow

Released as a vinyl album in 1969, A Rainbow In Curved Air by Terry Riley was a cult hit with those whose normal listening might have encompassed the lengthy psychedlic jams and meanderings of such as the Grateful Dead and the Quicksilver Messenger Service and it came out of the same Californian ambience. It also had a lasting influence on rock musicians of the more adventurous ( pretentious ? )kind. But fewer of the listeners at that time, amongst whom I include myself, were aware of the founding father status of Riley within the minimalist movement. What set Riley apart and on this album in particular, was his status as composer / performer. The title track features him playing electric organ, electric harpsichord, a hydrid christened a rocksichord, and percussion. Not a synthesiser in sight but it presaged many of the synth experiments that were soon to follow. The piece has an irresistable forward momentum that never completely loses control and is in fact meticulously put together. The companion work on the disk, Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band, is a piece for soprano saxophone and electric organ and incorporates a Coltranesque sax style with oriental and middle eastern modes and drones. Whereas Rainbow powers forward relentlessly, Poppy just seems to emerge and hang around in a timeless static fashion before taking its' leave. Enough time has now passed for this to be called a timeless album.