Saturday, January 10, 2009
Other Music 2008 Pt 2
Ralph Vaughan Williams: Sym. No. 4 / Flos Campi; Paul Daniel, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra & Chorus (Naxos)
Debuted in 1935, considered VW's most "dissonant" it now sounds only more emotionally turbulent than most of his other works. The composer wasn't sure he liked it but said it was "what I meant at the time." I go with the critic who wrote that "nothing human was foreign to Vaughan Williams." The unanswered question about No. 4 is if the Klingon motif from Star Trek was deliberately or inadvertently lifted from the Scherzo. It comes as quite a shock. "Flos Campi," from 1925, a gorgeous piece for strings, ethereal chorus, & viola - the underrated fat violin, is what "New Age" music ought be & rarely is, as invented by the British early in the 20th Century out of their folk music, fine taste in poetry, French Impressionism, & 16th Century polyphony.
Also have Sym. No. 6 but haven't absorbed it yet.
***
Brahms: Complete Works for Violin & Piano. Ulf Waalin & Roland Pontinen. (Arte Nova)
3 sonatas plus two adapted for a friend by Brahms from clarinet sonatas. Beautifully performed by two younger musicians. Everything I love about a certain kind of classical chamber music; collegial, intimate, tuneful, composed to be performed for small gatherings & in homes, the reason chamber music became popular with the long player record. A familiar melody from one of these sonatas drove me nuts until I placed it in the soundtrack from Tom Jones.
***
The Essential Michael Nyman Band (Argo, 1992)
Selections from his "minimalist" film scores for Peter Greenaway (The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover). Nyman supposedly was the first to use the word "minimalist" in connection with music. Now we hear a certain kind of sound from certain composers who use few notes, or repetitive notes or motifs, or arpeggios, or lots of counterpoint & call it minimalism because we don't know what else to call it. But I think what Nyman does in many of the selections here qualifies as minimalism.
***
Steve Reich: Daniel Variations; Variations for Vibes, Pianos, and Strings (Nonesuch)
Reich is 72 & it's surprising how many people resist following this great composer beyond his music from the Sixties & Seventies. But then, a new recording of his 1976 "Music for 18 Musicians" by a Midwest college ensemble changed how I heard that masterpiece last year.
"Daniel Variations" is a marquee work premiered during Reich's big 70th birthday year concerts, in memory of Daniel Pearl, the journalist kidnapped & gruesomely murdered in Pakistan in 2002. It is scored for 2 soprano & 2 tenor voices, clarinets, four pianos, string quartet & percussion. Parts 1 & 3 use brief lines from the Book of Daniel, Parts 2 & 4 Pearl's own words. Part 4, "I sure hope Gabriel likes my music..." was Pearl's remark to a friend referencing a 1930's novelty jazz song by violinist Stuff Smith, from a record in Pearl's large collection. The 4th movement is about as "pop" as Reich gets, violins fiddling, pianos playing bell-like chords, celebratory for the most part. A lovely piece of music, fitting tribute, if a bit overlong at about 30 minutes. I hope it receives another recording.
A criticism I have of a number of Reich's vocal works also applies here: For a composer who chooses his texts, however brief or fragmentary, with such care, he rarely places his music in the service of the words. He doesn't mean to diminish them; it's just how they end up functioning in the context of his compositional methods.
***
& a nod to "Sampled Joe," a "smooth jazz" radio hit from the 90's by tenor saxophonist Michael Paulo, kicked off an otherwise uninteresting promotional jazz compilation giveaway. I have nothing good to say about the genre generally, but this slick instrumental, a witty homage to keyboardist Joe Sample, got into my head despite the typically anonymous backing group smooth jazz stars prefer to support their noodling. Looking over Paulo's discography & reviews, my guess is he probably never made another recording like this one, & I have no desire to explore his music further to find out.
***
2008 was an embarrassment when I took year-end music inventory. Easy enough to rectify in 2009, I have wish lists. I'm already ahead of last year in "new" music. I considered setting some "goals" for this year, like five odd 20th century classical organ albums, but I've already ordered one & found three more possibilities, so that might not be a challenge.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
Debuted in 1935, considered VW's most "dissonant" it now sounds only more emotionally turbulent than most of his other works. The composer wasn't sure he liked it but said it was "what I meant at the time." I go with the critic who wrote that "nothing human was foreign to Vaughan Williams." The unanswered question about No. 4 is if the Klingon motif from Star Trek was deliberately or inadvertently lifted from the Scherzo. It comes as quite a shock. "Flos Campi," from 1925, a gorgeous piece for strings, ethereal chorus, & viola - the underrated fat violin, is what "New Age" music ought be & rarely is, as invented by the British early in the 20th Century out of their folk music, fine taste in poetry, French Impressionism, & 16th Century polyphony.
Also have Sym. No. 6 but haven't absorbed it yet.
***
Brahms: Complete Works for Violin & Piano. Ulf Waalin & Roland Pontinen. (Arte Nova)
3 sonatas plus two adapted for a friend by Brahms from clarinet sonatas. Beautifully performed by two younger musicians. Everything I love about a certain kind of classical chamber music; collegial, intimate, tuneful, composed to be performed for small gatherings & in homes, the reason chamber music became popular with the long player record. A familiar melody from one of these sonatas drove me nuts until I placed it in the soundtrack from Tom Jones.
***
The Essential Michael Nyman Band (Argo, 1992)
Selections from his "minimalist" film scores for Peter Greenaway (The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover). Nyman supposedly was the first to use the word "minimalist" in connection with music. Now we hear a certain kind of sound from certain composers who use few notes, or repetitive notes or motifs, or arpeggios, or lots of counterpoint & call it minimalism because we don't know what else to call it. But I think what Nyman does in many of the selections here qualifies as minimalism.
***
Steve Reich: Daniel Variations; Variations for Vibes, Pianos, and Strings (Nonesuch)
Reich is 72 & it's surprising how many people resist following this great composer beyond his music from the Sixties & Seventies. But then, a new recording of his 1976 "Music for 18 Musicians" by a Midwest college ensemble changed how I heard that masterpiece last year.
"Daniel Variations" is a marquee work premiered during Reich's big 70th birthday year concerts, in memory of Daniel Pearl, the journalist kidnapped & gruesomely murdered in Pakistan in 2002. It is scored for 2 soprano & 2 tenor voices, clarinets, four pianos, string quartet & percussion. Parts 1 & 3 use brief lines from the Book of Daniel, Parts 2 & 4 Pearl's own words. Part 4, "I sure hope Gabriel likes my music..." was Pearl's remark to a friend referencing a 1930's novelty jazz song by violinist Stuff Smith, from a record in Pearl's large collection. The 4th movement is about as "pop" as Reich gets, violins fiddling, pianos playing bell-like chords, celebratory for the most part. A lovely piece of music, fitting tribute, if a bit overlong at about 30 minutes. I hope it receives another recording.
A criticism I have of a number of Reich's vocal works also applies here: For a composer who chooses his texts, however brief or fragmentary, with such care, he rarely places his music in the service of the words. He doesn't mean to diminish them; it's just how they end up functioning in the context of his compositional methods.
***
& a nod to "Sampled Joe," a "smooth jazz" radio hit from the 90's by tenor saxophonist Michael Paulo, kicked off an otherwise uninteresting promotional jazz compilation giveaway. I have nothing good to say about the genre generally, but this slick instrumental, a witty homage to keyboardist Joe Sample, got into my head despite the typically anonymous backing group smooth jazz stars prefer to support their noodling. Looking over Paulo's discography & reviews, my guess is he probably never made another recording like this one, & I have no desire to explore his music further to find out.
***
2008 was an embarrassment when I took year-end music inventory. Easy enough to rectify in 2009, I have wish lists. I'm already ahead of last year in "new" music. I considered setting some "goals" for this year, like five odd 20th century classical organ albums, but I've already ordered one & found three more possibilities, so that might not be a challenge.
Labels: music
