Category: Listen

San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas

Charles Ives wasn’t the only American whose true passion, despite extreme success in business, was to compose music completely not of its time. Son of billionaire oilman J. Paul Getty, Gordon Getty went into the family business to please his father, but what he really wants to do is compose music, which is principally vocal and in a willfully 19th century tonal language. “Passion and ideals are what move me, and they were central to the pre-modern ethic,” Getty explains in the notes contained in the lavish booklet that accompany a new CD devoted to his music. Young America, a 2001 cantata for chorus and orchestra to texts by Stephen Vincent Benet and the composer, here performed by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, shows all bets are off when trying to make generalizations about 21st century American music.

—FJO

Sometimes, CDs take all the fun out of my favorite artists. It’s as if the studio mic and the repeat take drain all the life out of music that when it’s heard live rips your heart right through your ribcage. Jenny Scheinman and co. quite successfully skirt that inclination to strangle the music, and instead relax into spinning tales through melodies rather than words. The sleeve art by Molly Barker sets the listener up for a world of comforting sound and, like rereading a favorite novel from childhood, the music does not disappoint. Even when things sound like the road is a little scary ahead, there’s always the hint that better times are coming soon. The band all comes together to close the disk with “June 21” and plays us out into the sunset. From the sound of things, these guys had a very good summer of the sort even Huck Finn would approve.

—MS

The primordial sound of flute and percussion is the subject of this CD which ranges from traditional tunes and J. S. Bach to Lou Harrison, here represented by his Concerto No. 1 for flute and percussion. Whatever preconceived notions you may have about concertos are best ignored when considering this sensual stripped down utterance. The melismatic flute lines snake through the delicate percussion accompaniment with a ritualistic feel. The perfect soundtrack for your next séance.

—RN

Manhattan School of Music Opera Theatre conducted by Steven Osgood

Lee Hoiby is still very much with us; he turns 80 next year and is still going strong as a composer. Yet listening to the first-ever complete recording of his 1964 Turgenev-inspired opera A Month in the Country, featuring a libretto by legendary San Francisco theater director William Ball, is a total blast from the past. A protégé of Gian Carlo Menotti, Hoiby matured as a composer in a directly communicative pre-“everything is ironic” era when a large-scale musical work could be considered a major newsworthy event. The notes even describe a review of the opera’s premiere by the Woman’s Wear Daily! (Could you imagine such a thing nowadays in an era where the only music stories in the media seem to be Britney had a boy or Madonna fell off a horse?) Hoiby’s mid-century neo-realism perhaps explains the opera’s lack of an overture. But how then to explain the intense octet near the end of the opera which Paul Hume, the critic who once incurred the wrath of Harry S. Truman, called “a supreme moment in opera” and something of “overwhelming beauty.” Times indeed have changed.

—FJO

Ron Blessinger, soloist

Hang around one of those blue Yves Klein paintings long enough and you’ll eventually hear a fellow museumgoer say, “a four year old child can do that.” Robert Kyr’s second violin concerto might elicit the same response. With pentatonic melodies that rise and fall over a ground bass with the regularity of ocean tides, the work is deceptively simple. Swathes of canonic counterpoint constantly shift hues between an orchestra of Western instruments and a Balinese gamelan, adding a deeper geographical dimension to Kyr’s extended title “On the Nature of Harmony.”

—RN

If you needed proof that artistically and intellectually interesting new music can make you want to sway your hips, too, Uri Caine’s latest is sure to be a welcomed addition to your collection. Caine (keyboards) with Zach Danziger (drums and percussion) and Tim Lefebvre (bass and guitar) update ’70s schwank with a host of new electronic beats and the contributions of an impressive list of guests. On “Murray,” Bootsie Barnes (saxophone) and Ruben Gutierrez (clarinet) enter the fray, and the group lays down a track that boasts a palette of sexy city energy without losing its head. Things wind down to blend seamlessly into after hours chill of “bE lOOse,” featuring vocals by Barbara Walker.

—MS

A 12-tone equal temperament purist listening to Chris Murphy’s disc of solo violin compositions might gasp at what sounds like horrible intonation, but a microtonalist like me just blisses out on hearing all these off-intervals in even more off contexts. Sure, there are Middle Eastern-inspired riffs where microtones are completely idiomatic, and a gospel inspired track where Murphy’s pitch inflections make his solo violin performance of what is typically vocal music all the more convincing. But microtonal mambo is either downright kooky or just plain out of tune. I think it’s cool!

—FJO

This new Bridge release collects three of George Crumb’s evocative orchestral works. Fully of dark timbres and ambiguous tonalities, A Haunted Landscape also exhibits moments of serene beauty. Lushly orchestrated string chords and tenuous melodic fragments combine with aggressive outbursts and Crumb’s signature textural pallet, this time packed full of percussion and amplified piano. Too bad it hasn’t yet become the classic concert opener that it deserves to be. Leave it to Crumb to compose a piece that mostly gets played on Halloween.

—RN

Albany Symphony Orchestra conducted by David Alan Miller

Last year in Philadelphia I was delighted to discover a plaque dedicated to Vincent Persichetti, who in my book is one of the most under-rated of American composers. One of the few composers to write substantive music for beginning and mid-level pianists, Persichetti has found a niche in the hearts of many a beginning musician. (I wrote him a fan letter when I was in high school.) But Persichetti also penned more imposing works which are finally getting some circulation. Earlier this year, the always seminal First Edition Music re-issued the Louisville Symphony’s historic recordings of his 5th and 8th symphonies, and now comes David Alan Miller’s commanding performances of the 3rd, 4th, and 7th, making all the symphonies he acknowledged later in life available on commercial recordings. (Though to the best of my knowledge, the 9th, performed with pride and gusto by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Ormandy for RCA has yet to make it to CD. Wake up BMG!)

The finale of the 3rd, appropriately marked “fast and brilliant” is an appropriately soaring conclusion to Persichetti’s euphoric end-of-World War II statement, the long lost cousin of the equally celebratory Copland 3rd.

—FJO

The “Prelude: Distant Fanfares” title did not prepare me for the strong yet muted tones of the opening movement of Donald Crockett’s piano quartet The Ceiling of Heaven. To my ear, this choice translates the distance as not one of miles, but more of internal repression. The pose of emotional restraint and blunt declaration is not held onto for long, however, before Crockett opens up the musical line, inspired by the natural world and a Kenneth Rexroth poem which includes the image: “the hawks scream,/Playing together on the ceiling/Of heaven.”

The disc is intended as a celebration of the 60th anniversary of The Chamber Music Conference and Composers’ Forum of the East, where Crockett was in residence in 1999 and since 2002 has been the Conference’s senior composer-in-residence. The Ceiling of Heaven was commissioned by the Conference.

—MS