Dove: Tobias and the Angel

I've been unable to muster a lot of concentration and focus in my listening over the last few weeks. June was largely dedicated to travelling, including a week-long solo bicycle trek through France. On the road I happily limited myself to re-listening again and again to Autumn Chorus' The Valley to the Vale and the new Sigur Ros album, Valtari. These gently epic pieces resonated very well with the placid landscapes that unfolded before my eyes.

Also, it seems I have moved temporarily out of Debussy's orbit in which I have been thankfully circling for almost nine months. It's not that I'm feeling in any way tired of his music, but there is a faint urge to explore some new horizons. That isn't too difficult as I have literally stacks of CDs and LPs with unfamiliar repertoire waiting for a first audition. Recently I took advantage of a Presto Classical promotion of Chandos albums. One of the discs I purchased is Tobias and the Angel, a single-act opera by British composer Jonathan Dove. I listened to his Siren Song last autumn and was favourably impressed. I also have Flight in my collection, but haven't gone through that yet. With Tobias I have access to all of his stage works available on CD (his Pinocchio is only on DVD).

It took me a while to warm to this piece. Siren Song had charmed me because of the keen sense of drama, the compelling psychology and the fresh, humane vocal writing. Musically it is not an overpowering experience. Dove's ideas are cloaked in an attractive, accessible and discreet minimalism that doesn't seem to be interested in scaling Himalayan heights. Tobias and the Angel initially struck me as slightly too episodic to hold my attention. Siren Song had the advantage of a very limited cast. It's a chamber opera that revolves around essentially three characters. The claustrophobic quality of this setting significantly adds to the quality of the drama. Tobias is a church opera, written by Dove in the late 1990s for a Birmingham parish as a canvas for community participation. So it's conceived for a much larger and more differentiated cast, including multiple choruses. (The supporting instrumental ensemble, however, is as lean as in the case of Siren Song. It consists of a single violin, cello, double-bass, harp, organ, accordion, clarinet, flute, with percussion on top.) I must admit of listening the first couple of times without having read the libretto. As the the story is a rather caleidoscopic affair that shifts between locations and perspectives, this certainly contributed to my initial sense of disorientation. Given the setting for which it was composed the ambience is also less serious and introspective compared to Siren Song. At times it veers into Broadway. There is ostentatious reliance on Klezmer style

However, after having listened to the piece a couple of times (initially mostly in the car) and after having read the synopsis of the story I started to get the hang of it. I recognised that, as in the other work, there is a compelling triadic relationship at the heart of the piece. Here it is between Tobias, an insouciant youth, Sara, a possessed beautiful young lady and Raphael, an angel (sung by a countertenor). The latter has a mystical relationship with visible reality and hence the trees, rivers and mountains play a decisive and musical role. That is similar to Siren Song, where the omnipresent sea assumes a genuinely important dramatic persona.

The piece really comes up to speed after an initial part that is mostly dominated by the forces of darkness. Tobias and Raphael undertake a journey which turns out to be some sort of vision quest and puts the drama on an exalted footing. Dove is able to maintain and deepen that ambience of quiet ecstasy as the drama unfolds. This culminates in a finale that is showered by a heavenly blaze of compassion and joy.

The production recorded by Chandos seems to me exemplary on all accounts. Great and engaging singing from the large vocal forces involved (with a special mention of counter-tenor James Laing), an instrumental ensemble that is very much on top and everything firmly in the hand of American conductor David Charless Abell. The recording leaves nothing to be desired too.

Once I was into the piece it was difficult to get it out of my head. I think over time I will learn to love it more than Siren Song. This is contemporary music that is utterly accessible. There is nothing highbrow about it. But it inspires, fills our minds with light and makes us pause. I'm not asking for more.

Hovhaness: Sonata for Harp, Sonata for Harp and Guitar - Autumn Chorus: The Village to the Vale

 I've been travelling and working intensely over the past two weeks so very little came of listening. The best I could do was to snatch a few bits in a train compartment or in a hotel lobby. Whilst travelling I'm unlikely to listen to unfamiliar or difficult music. This time I had two travelling companions in the form of a Hovhaness collection for harp I transferred from my father's collection to my iPad and the Autumn Chorus CD (The Village to the Vale) I downloaded earlier this year. The latter I find still a magnificent piece of work and an astonishing feat for a first recording. My favourite track is certainly the epic, 16 minute long Rosa. A gorgeous wash of sound, particularly when you are looking out of a train window whilst travelling through central Sweden on a bright midsummer evening ... Autumn Chorus produce a sound that is hybrid between the Moody Blues and Sigur Ros. I just love it.

The Hovhaness CD (a Telarc production from 2005) offers a mix of pieces for harp and various ensembles. There is a Concerto for Harp and String Orchestra (with the orchestra part played by I Fiamminghi) which I haven't really listened to yet. The excellent soloist is Yolanda Kondonassis. I keep returning to the Sonata for Harp solo and a Sonata for Guitar and Harp 'Spirit of Trees'. It's not particularly probing music, but the faintly orientalising harmonies and haunting sonorities offer a contemplative bubble to escape from the buzz of airports and planes.

I'll be leaving soon on an extended bicycle tour through France, as an opportunity to learn more about the future of Europe. I have my iPad with me, loaded with a number of new CDs. It remains to be seen to what extent I'll be in the mood for listening on this challenging tour.

Tsontakis: Ghost Variations - Weber: Fantasia - Copland: Piano Variations - Corigliano: Etude Fantasy

This CD I picked up from the constantly updated 'Please, someone, buy me' batch that Hyperion Records offers at deep discounts (at this very moment it is still available but it won't be for long). It's the kind of piano recital that inevitably tickles my curiosity: not so well known American 21st century works intelligently curated under a banner that promises urbaneness and metropolitan sophistication. Yesterday I played it through for the first time and I was not displeased with what I heard: a rather accessible (but not trivial) Etude Fantasy by Corigliano, Copland's famous and rather stern Piano Variations, a short Fantasia (Variations) (1946) by Ben Weber and, as pièce de résistance, a big and wayward work - Ghost Variations - by George Tsontakis (b1951). It was this last piece that intrigued me most, so I listened to it a couple of more times. It's a very substantial work, stretching over 30 minutes, that falls into 3 parts: a fantasia-like head movement culminating in a madcap set of Mozart Variations, followed by two scherzi. I don't think I have seen a piece in this kind of idiosyncratic layout before. From Tsontakis' wikipedia page I learned that Stephen Hough's premiere performance on this CD was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition and that it was the only classical recording among Time magazine's 1998 Top Ten Recordings. I'd need to spend a bit more time with this piece to get a better grip on it. For now I'd say that this reminds me of late Beethoven with a postmodernist twist. The writing is really resourceful and exhibits formidable drive. It's basically tonal so that's not where the difficulty is. It's the overall shape of the piece that eludes easy comprehension. Hough writes in the booklet notes that "there are two overriding, opposing psychological elements at work in the piece that could be described as obsessiveness versus dissipation, clear-sightedness versus hallucination, firm purpose versus aimlessness: a contrast between moments when everything matters, and moments when nothing matters (...). The search for enlightenment happens here either by obsessive repetition - as if trying to solve a problem by going over it again and again; or by an unravelling process, 'becoming muddled' or 'doodling' as the composer writes in the score." The first movement sounds like a tormented, disjointed fantasia in which a dark, chorale-like theme (reminding me of Liszt) plays a prominent role. But there are also many twists I would associate with ageing Beethoven. This leads up unexpectedly to a set of tongue-in-cheeck variations on a theme from Mozart's E flat major piano concerto, KV482. Astonishingly, the whole thing seems to work. The two scherzi - each around 9 minutes long - are complex compositions in their own right which fully demand the listener's attention. The piece ends in a wonderfully atmospheric way with a final variation on the Mozart theme played on the wood of the piano frame. I'm certainly going to spend more time with this work in the next couple of weeks. Kudos to Hyperion and Hough for the imaginative programming, the persuasive performances, the excellent recorded sound, beautiful packaging (with a suggestive painting by Ben Moore gracing the cover) and very informative notes by the performer himself. A great find!

Ginastera: Piano Sonata nr. 1 - Ravel: Gaspard de la nuit - Brahms: 3 Intermezzi - Beethoven: 32 Variations - Constantinescu: Joc Dobrogean

I've been listening quite often to his CD over the last couple of weeks, maybe even months. I have been seeking out performances by the young Romanian pianist Mihaela Ursuleasa since I heard her take, in partnership with Patricia Kopatchinskaja, on Enescu's wonderful Violin Sonata nr. 3. This recital did not disappoint my expectations. It's an epic affair that starts with Beethoven's rowdy C minor variations (WoO 80), then moves to late Brahms's introvert Intermezzi op. 117 as a base camp to tackle the Everest of Ravel's scintillating Gaspard de la nuit. Ursuleasa ups the ante with Ginastera's fabulously kinetic Piano Sonata nr. 1, op. 22 and finally closes with a white hot encore in the Romanian style. All in all a tremendous achievement for a pianist in her early 30s. The recital is composed as a personal narrative in which each piece is associated to life stations or key relationships of the performer. For Ursuleasa, the Ginastera sonata conjures up the image of her father, a jazz pianist. The Beethoven variations she played already at the age of 10. Brahms she discovered and fell in love with when she took up studies in Vienna. In relation to Gaspard she reminisces about the fairy tales that coloured her earliest years. And the Constantinescu toccata is inextricably linked to her South-Eastern European roots. In all these pieces Mihaela Ursuleasa displays a gripping, muscular virtuosity, supported by a keen sense of architecture and an appealing clarity of contour. For me the highlight on this disc is most certainly the Ginastera sonata. Sure, it may not plumb the existential depths of the Brahms Intermezzi, but it reveals a very accomplished composer with, say, the fire and dash of the young Prokofiev. The opening Allegro marcato is a rambunctious dance as they also feature prominently in his symphonic ballets. The ensuing Presto misterioso is a wonderfully atmospheric, shadowy movement played almost pianissimo throughout. Then follows an expansive, nocturnal Adagio molto appassionato. It opens with a mysterious theme quite extraordinaly played, it seems, by directly plucking the strings of the piano. A beautiful movement, accesible and modernistic. The finale - Ruvido ed ostinato - is a predictable return to Ginastera's most obsessively kinetic mood. Party time, indeed! All in all a great CD to which I will often return.

Dohnanyi - Symphony nr. 1

These days I'm not very much tuned into music. And certainly I'm not in the mood for the kind of grand, laborious symphonic concoction such as this First Symphony by Ernö Dohnanyi, the most conservative of the batch of Hungarian composers that took over the baton from Liszt at the beginning of the 20th century. This symphony was written at an early stage of Dohnanyi's career as a composer (it's an op. 9, and dates from 1900). It stretches over 55 minutes. Stylistically it's a safe mix of Brahms and Dvorak without the intellectual cogency of the former and the magnanimity of the latter. There was very little for my mind to latch onto in this interminable and undifferentiated symphonic tapestry. There's also an American Rhapsody, written by a mature Dohnanyi (1953!), which sounds like a watered down version of Dvorak's New World. I really got bored listening to this one. Didn't really feel compelled to give it another hearing. 

Sigur ros: Valtari - Paul Buchanan: Mid Air

We are living in times of crisis and these two new releases betray the spirit of the times in their mood of withdrawal and melancholia. Both albums have been long in the offing. Sigur Ros last dates from four years back and Paul Buchanan and The Blue Nile didn't release anything new since High in 2004.

I immediately connected to Valtari's strangely melancholy atmosphere. It's a very contemplative album, suffused with an autumnal, post-apocalyptic glow. In a way, the music feels almost liturgical. I'm reminded of Saramago's wonderful Stone Raft in which a group of people traverses the Iberian peninsula on foot after it has dissociated itself from the European mainland. The small band is suffused with a state of grace, the sheer gratefulness of being alive in this weirdest of worlds, and yet there is also a dark undercurrent that speaks of something lost for good, of inadequacy and imperfection. That, for me, captures Valtari's expansive feel, supported by interminable lines on synths and strings, Jonsi's luminous falsetto and the occasional children choir.   

Whilst Sigur Ros' music evokes the vast expanses of a primeval landscape, Paul Buchanan withdraws with us to the late night intimacy of his own studio, with only a piano and a simple synth as companions. Mid Air is composed of fourteen short and simple ballads, wrapped in the most discrete accompaniment. Although the album has since its recent release met with rapturous response, I am personally less convinced. I'll take a Blue Nile album any time. Buchanan knows hows to create and sustain a mood with his wonderful, soulful voice. Taken individually, the songs are nice enough. But stringing fourteen of them together makes the album tilt towards the dull side of simplicity. As all songs are cut from the same cloth, there is very little contrast: same slow tempo and humdrum rhythm throughout, hardly any sense of development, and after a while the accompaniment becomes rather monochrome (not a nice piano he is playing on, or it's badly recorded). So, likely it's an album that has to be savoured in small dosages, two, three songs at a time. Time will tell whether I'll warm to it.

Mozart: Grabmusik KV 42 - Requiem KV 626

On Thursday I was kindly invited by DD to the Bozar to attend a performance of the Mozart Requiem KV 626 by Anima Eterna Brugge and the Collegium Vocale Ghent, led by Jos van Immerseel.
The choir was was a mere 16 head strong and the orchestra’s 40-ish members were standing (but not the celli, of course). It took me some time to get used to the sight. But ostensibly the musicians weren’t bothered at all by this unusual practice. The Bozar hall was rather well filled and there hung a pleasing ambiente of attentiveness and awe over the audience.

Before the break the Grabmusik KV 42 was played, an Italianate, oratorio style composition that Mozart wrote at the tender age of 11. I don’t think I ever heard such a low Köchel numbered composition before, but it was against my expectations still rather interesting. I was particularly struck by the fresh voices of the American soprano Andrea-Lauren Brown and the German bass-baritone Thomas Bauer.

The Requiem was the obvious attraction of the evening. It’s a piece I used to listen to a lot in the early days of my musical explorations. The buzz surrounding the Amadeus movie and an excellent French-German TV series on Mozart I remember seeing certainly contributed to my attraction. In those days I also had a somewhat morbid fascination for that typically Viennese brand of death cult and necromancy. The mysterious circumstances in which the Requiem emerged fitted nicely with this. Apart from that it’s a masterpiece, of course, that hasn’t lost anything of its doom-laden freshness.

Despite the modest forces on stage, Van Immerseel presented us with a sternly monumental reading. Tempos were brisk, and the different movements crashed into one another as ice floes on an arctic sea. It was effectively Caspar David Friedrich’s glum painting of ‘Das Eismeer’ that constantly floated before my mind’s eye. It was all angular movement and tectonics, hardly any colour. No place for Biedermeier emotions here. But that doesn’t mean the music was devoid of life. It did breathe, in a clenched teeth sort of way. During the Dies Irae (‘quantus tremor est futurus’) I had to think how this piece was written at a time of momentous social change (the French Revolution) that in Europe would herald at least two centuries of almost uninterrupted carnage. Again Andrea-Lauren Brown provided some respite from the pervading rigour. This soprano comes with a lovely, lyrical but firm voice and a most endearing and poised stage presence. Also the other soloists proved their mettle. The Collegium Vocale, despite their modest forces, produced an piercingly powerful sound. As the piece progressed I was under the impression that van Immerseel was relaxing just a tad, allowing for a flourish and a splash of colour here and there. Or was he just spotlighting the stylistic differences of Süssmayer’s contribution? After the concert I briefly spoke with the maestro but he denied he wanted to put the different sources in relief. It couldn’t be done as there is no autograph to tell us where Mozart stopped and his colleague took over. The performance was met with a rapturous, grateful applause.