Cantata Contentment

Three Bach cantatas from my current favourite exponents of the form, Collegium Vocale Gent and Philippe Herreweghe. The disk is titled Weinen, Klagen...and features three cantatas BWV12, 38 and 75. These are relatively downbeat in content, making use of the texts of Psalms 22 and 130, the De Profundis, or deal with the "weeping, wailing, lamenting, fearing" that are everyday fare in the vale of tears. Being Bach though, even doleful is beautiful and the final tone is that of resignation and consolation, bringing succour to souls in torment. The playing of Collegium Vocale Gent and the production values of Harmonia Mundi are impeccable. I think that Herreweghe's cycle benefits from the fact that he has no intention of being a completist and so selects those cantatas that he feels a particular affinity for and takes his time over the recording and programming of those he chooses. The soloists are again of the highest quality; the soprano Carolyn Sampson and the tenor Mark Padmore are now regular vocalists of choice for this repertoire but counter tenor Daniel Taylor and bass Peter Kooy also acquit themselves very well.

Ry Decides To Take A Little Break

Get Rhythm was the final Ry Cooder solo album for about 18 years until the release of Chavez Ravine and My Name Is Buddy in the last couple of years and arguably those are concept albums that don't really sequence naturally from the earlier body of work. Get Rhythm is a quite a hard driving album on the whole with more aggressive and distorted guitar from Cooder than he normally played on disk. It still followed the by now familiar path of plucking obscure ( Chuck Berry's 13 Question Method ) and the not so obscure ( Presley's All Shook Up ) gems from the rock catalogue, disembowelling them and putting them back together in an idiosyncratic way. The latin side gets a look in with the calypso-ish Women Will Rule The World and there is a beautiful ballad homage to the Tex Mex region, Across The Bordeline. The Johnny Cash written title track ( again totally reworked ) and Going Back To Okinawa are irresistably danceable and Let's Have A Ball is a totally apt way to finish off a fifteen year solo journey through the byways of Americana, like an encore to the world's longest gig.

Run the Voodoo Down

Bubbling electric pianos, sharp stabbing guitar chords, low rumbling oddly sinister bass clarinet, funky bass and drums, occasional soprano sax wails and running trumpet arpeggios. It must be Miles Davis, it must be Bitches Brew. Strange how unremarkable it now sounds, not in any way to diminish the quality and playing of Wayne Shorter, Bennie Maupin, John McLaughlin, Chick Corea, Larry Young, Joe Zawinul, Dave Holland, Harvey Brooks, Lenny White and Jack DeJohnette but the revolutionary nature of the album has become faded with time. Is that because it was successful in spawning many imitators or conversely because it proved to be a blind alley ? As so often with these things, the truth is probably somwhere in between. But I would urge any gainsayers to put on Miles Runs The Voodoo Down at top volume and then still try to say that the fire, passion and committment was a waste of time. What is slightly sad I think is that the album didn't really have a lasting connection with the constituency for which Miles really recorded it, that of urban black American youth. I expected the album to sound dated but it is far less so than most of what immediately followed such as Weather report or Herbie Hancock's Headhunters. In many ways it sounds just as timeless as Kind Of Blue and has the same right to stand on its' own as a fine piece of music.

Tuareg Quo ?

Another act being pushed very hard by the world music cadre of the music biz are Tinariwen. I bought this album, Amassakoul, before the hype went into overdrive and I have to admit that my opinion of it has been coloured a little since then and I don't have much desire to purchase the latest release. That may be my problem more than Tinariwen's though, I have always tended to shy away from the more commercial tendencies in rock and pop music and it just seemed a shame to see them begin to infoltrate the world music scene ( Tinariwen are by no means the only example ) looking at the album dispassionately, it is an excellent example of the desert blues genre where instead of a shuffle boogie you get the camel lope beat. There is a certain sameness to the material though, especially when you can't understand the lyrics ( translations are thoughfully included but I don't tend to listen with the notes to hand every time ) I would also say that they lack a truly distinctive vocalist. They are a very tight band though and it is churlish to criticise them for not turning down support band slots for the Rolling Stones and the exposure that brings. as I said, I don't feel the need for more than one Tinariwen album but if you are going for only one, the latest effort has slightly better production values and a more spacious sound.

The Heart Of The Kora

In the two years before his death in 2006, Ali Farka Toure produced two albums that he wanted to represent a culmination of his musical life. His own final album Savane will be considered here another time but he also wanted to make a collaboration with the master kora player Toumani Diabate. That album was titled In The Heart Of The Moon. It is an exclusively instrumental album apart from some shouts of encouragement and inter track chat. The record company for understandable commercial reasons trumpet the participation of both legends but this is predominantly Diabate's album. The kora takes the melodic and improvisatory lead with understated accompaniment from Ali Farka Toure that is almost akin to the role of a continuo in baroque classical music. The kora has a long and deep tradition among the griots of west africa, the keepers of the oral tradition of the ancient Mande empire. The possible links from west African music to the blues is well known and often cited but listening to the kora, I am always struck by the resemblance that the cascades of notes seem to have to the pealing of church bells and how that has permeated northern European folk music. This is basically a duo album with low key input from percussion and a relatively pointless contribution from Ry Cooder's guitar on one track, again more or less used as a drone. A fine disk but one that should really be regarded as a Toumani Diabate solo effort.

Hallelujah

Handel's oratorio Messiah has tended to become linked inextricably with Christmas in the UK but in fact only part of the work concerns the Nativity and there isn't any real reason why it can not be performed at any time of the year. When I first began to explore classical music, Messiah was a piece that I had a prejudice against because I bracketed it with some of Elgar's works as a kind of bastion of the British establishment and old fashioned early 20th century values. Certainly there are some hideous versions with massive choirs and full scale symphony orchestras but as I grew to love other Handel works, I began to re-evaluate Messiah and now realise what a great work it is, on a par with the other oratorios. This version on a double cd is a pared down period instrument recording with modest forces and it brings out the detail in the work very effectively and plays to my tastes in baroque performance. The players are Les Arts Florissants under William Christie and there is a fine cast of soloists with sopranos Barbara Schlick and Sandrine Piau, counter tenor Andreas Scholl, tenor Mark Padmore and bass Nathan Berg. It is also a beautifully presented release with in hardback format with extensive notes and lavish illustrations.

Soulful Recital

A very soulful recital by cellist Truls Mork and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France conducted by Paavo Jarvi. The works on the disk are Schumann's Cello Concerto, Kol Nidrei by Bruch and Bloch's Schelomo. The Schumann concerto is a long elegiac monlogue for the cello with understated orchestral accompaniment responding to the inflections of the soloist and as such it fits well in recital with the two other pieces. The Bruch piece is informed by the solemn Jewish prayer Kol Nidrei which fascinated the Protestant Bruch. The form of the music similarly is coloured by Hebrew sacred music but is still steeped in a generalised romantic religious style. Bloch originally intended to set Schelomo to texts from Ecclesiastes ( Schelomo is Solomon ) as a meditation on the view that "all is vanity". He changed tack to entrust the "voice" of the preacher to the cello, backed by a big orchestra. There is a general soulful feel to the entire disk which Mork relishes and to which Jarvi provides apposite support.