Category: Tracks

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

Think of it as a sort of improvised Well-Tempered Clavier. Keith Jarrett’s rubric of 17 numbered improvisations, gathered here in this tomb-like collection dubbed Radiance, is a thorough investigation into the pianist’s own imaginative prowess. As always, these live recordings are punctuated by Jarrett’s grunts and vocalise which may provide further insight into the wiring of his brain. After nearly two and a half hours of riffs and grooves, well, it’s kind of like a pilgrimage to Mecca.

—RN

AFMM Orchestra conducted by Johnny Reinhard

Long considered the El Dorado or Shangri-La of American music, the Universe Symphony of Charles Ives was to be his magnum opus, a summation of all music that had gone before and a foreshadowing of all that was to come. History books tell us that Ives never finished it and it could never be completed, but Johnny Reinhard, the intrepid founder of the American Festival of Microtonal Music, thought otherwise, as usual, dug through Ives’s sketches, and came up with a completion of the work which he claims is 100 percent Ives. The resultant music sounds like no other except for moments that recall Ives’s last officially complete symphony, the Fourth, which was the precursor to this. “Pulse of the Cosmos,” sampled here, shows that totalism is nearly a century old.

—FJO

At the end of July, a movie theater around here screened Mary Ellen Carroll’s Federal, a 24-hour “movie” focused on the exterior of the Federal Building in Los Angeles—an observational twist, given that the structure houses offices of the FBI and CIA. In many ways, Miya Masaoka’s new release, For Birds, Planes & Cello, inspires a comparison (not to overlook Warhol’s Empire, of course). Though not as grand by the stopwatch, the gist is that Masaoka has taken a continuous, unedited field recording made in a canyon in San Diego that is heavy on the bird life and airplane traffic. She then invited cellist Joan Jeanrenaud into the studio to overlay the recording with all manner of sounds designed to accent the world captured on the tape. The cello line moves in and out of prominence over the course of the nearly hour-long presentation, but the birds musically steal this show. Lots of interesting sonic relationships to ponder while wandering about inside this piece.

—MS

Michael Parloff, flute; Jerry Grossman, cello; Kenneth Cooper, harpsichord

I’ve been saying for years that some of the newest sounding music is the music that contemporary composers are writing for older musical instruments. A new disc featuring the music by septuagenarian Chelsea Hotel-resident Gerald Busby, on which the main instrument is the harpsichord, proves my point once again. Busby’s 1980 Court Dances for flute, cello, and harpsichord might evoke the timbres of a Baroque sonata, but that’s where the anachronism ends. Written for the Joffrey Ballet, the score oozes a rhythmic vitality that is only possible in our own time that is made all the more visceral by the out-of-context sonorities.

—FJO

Ignore the PR machine behind Neo Camerata. According to the Svengalis, Neo C (their term, not mine) is hipper than cocaine circa 1977. Whether or not the group exudes that intangible rock band vibe, or—hold the phone—actually is hip, seems a little beside the point. In reality, it’s just a bunch of pretty chamber music dressed up with leather jackets and miniskirts in desperate need of attention. The music isn’t edgy or anything, on the contrary it’s actually rather tame. In fact, the pop song-length Dream on a Cirrus Sky is gushingly syrup-like, echoing a sort of radio-edit version of “Louange à l’immortalité de Jésus” from Messiean’s Quartet for the End of Time. If anything, the average consumer is going to use this CD to impress a date.

—RN

Lauten has plenty of large-scale compositions on her resume, but there is much to be said for looking to the intimate and often confessional quality of solo work performed by the composer, when it’s available, for a more complete vision of the artist. The stress of caring for her ill mother in Paris (during which the piece was developed) seems to have poured itself quite directly into this composition, an uneasy waterfall of notes which, poetically enough, includes reference to an old nursery rhyme. Lauten is no stranger to a keyboard, and her performance on this recording showcases that talent.

—MS

This CD instantly brought me back to my high school days, when I’d lock myself in my room with some primitive sequencer, MidiVerb II, and a Proteus 1 Plus Orchestral Expander and spend hours on end making fantastic soundscapes. Man, sound quality has really evolved in—my god, is it really?—17 years. Anyway, I can admit that on rare occasion, I actually get in the mood to hear synth orchestral timbres, especially when draped in reverb and juxtaposed with freaky electro-flourishes. If ever I was jonesing, Gabriel Yared’s early ballet score to Shamrock would provide the fix. We may have a new replacement.

—RN