“The performances are terrific. Coordination between soloists in the Double is first rate, particularly in the outer movements. The fast movements are taken at a very fast clip, and both soloists are up to the challenge. The orchestra is also fine. A very desirable release, recommended to anyone who already has the standard Mendelssohn under his belt.”
Read the complete review at http://www.americanrecordguide.com/
By David Patrick Stearns
NEW YORK – The beat goes on … but with a German modernist sense of order.
One hallmark of the 1950s Beat Generation was word spinners like Jack Kerouac improvising for hours with the likes of composer David Amram on French horn – in a meeting of spoken word and jazz. Some 40 years later, starting in 1998, Austria-born but now Berlin-based composer Peter Ablinger (best known for electronic installations) began composing a projected cycle of 80 piano works using archival recordings of historic figures, from Ezra Pound to Nina Simone, alongside a pianistic response (as opposed to an accompaniment).
A less-obvious common ground between the Beat Generation practice and this experimental European composer was Steve Reich’s video opera The Cave, which had music tightly fashioned to the rhythms and inflections of pre-recorded speech. Unlike Reich, Ablinger embraces the fundamental atonality of speech in his music. It all made sense at the Austrian Cultural Forum on Jan. 28, when nine of Ablinger’s pieces – one of them brand new, most of them lasting five to seven minutes – were performed in a concert simply titled “Voices & Piano.”
In the Forum’s quirky sliver of a building on E. 52nd Street – it’s only 25 feet wide – the stage in the small, 90-seat theater had a large loudspeaker and a piano. Fellow composer Eric Wubbels (a radical minimalist) may have been an ideal pianist in what had to be a meeting of cutting-edge minds. As one might expect from an installation composer such as Ablinger, the music relied on nonfunctional harmony and, in some of the more complex chord structures, it had a passing resemblance to Olivier Messiaen in his best Visions of Amen mode.
The program’s final piece had Polish conceptual artist Roman Opałka (1931- 2001) counting numbers up around two million (he was trying to control time, and made it as far as five million) alongside piano writing that vaguely resembled some of the more spare moments of jazz master Bill Evans. But perhaps in a rebellion against the orderliness of number counting, Ablinger had 20 minutes of chords that projected no conventional pattern of musical thought.
The program’s other pieces didn’t do any one thing. Often, the music closely hugged the words, especially in the piece quoting Slovak poet Mila Haugová (b. 1942). Most often, the music started out close to the words but went its own way. Occasionally, the piano delivered an abstracted psychological portrait. The movement based around Pound (1885-1972) caught the poet during his delusional wartime years when his mouth was often offensively unfiltered. The music felt like a protest against Pound, frequently trying to drown him out, and with the kind of jangling manic activity of a mind that has melted down.
Abstract painter Agnes Martin (1912-2004), whose spare canvasses could be as simple as a series of horizontal stripes, was heard discussing her artistic identity while finely honed piano chords were sounded one at a time in various parts of the keyboard. Singer Simone (1933-2003) discussed Civil Rights while the wide-ranging piano writing conveyed the vast musical imagination that made her a great singer.
The one world premiere was a work written around a rant by notoriously abrasive performance artist Diamanda Galás. Due to technical problems, the click track that was only to be heard by the pianist was embedded in the actual tape of Galás, and thus was heard by the audience. But you know the old saying in the jazz world: If a mistake happens twice, it then becomes part of the piece. Here, the click track and Galás seemed made for each other.
How good is the music in the overall program? Hard to say in an initial exposure. But the music can be safely described as rather slight much of the time, always engaging, and sometimes fascinating.
SINGER LUCY SHELTON has had a long, distinguished career, with an emphasis on twentieth-century and contemporary music. On December 15, the seventy-five-year-old soprano gave a recital in Brooklyn’s National Sawdust featuring a cross section of works she has championed. The program was organized in the format of a formal, multi-course meal, in five sets. Given the difficulties of the various piano accompaniments, Shelton had a troupe of four pianists to share these duties, specifically, Jeremy Gill, Robert Fleitz, Yoon Lee and Sophiko Simsive. Shelton’s performances were impeccable throughout. Many of these works and their composers have faded from current concert life, and so a recital program offering any, let alone all of these pieces, is a rare treat, especially when offered by such a gifted performer. Many of these works have been either commissioned or recorded by Shelton.
The “Appetizer” set included two early works of Stravinsky, his wordless Pastorale (1907) and the “Counting Song” from his Four Russian Songs (1918-19). Both were warmly performed. Between these two songs were John Cage’s evergreen and lighthearted “The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs” of 1942, in which the piano is closed and the performer taps its outer surface in various places, and George Rochberg’s somber and mysterious “Black tulips” from his Eleven Songs (1969), a lament for his lyricist son Paul, who died at age twenty. In this number Yoon Lee performed almost exclusively on the interior of the piano, her hands moving with the grace of a dancer.
Read the entire review at OperaNews.com
Giorgio Koukl | 08 APR 2020
It is curious to note the geographical region of the two composers, Haydn and Hummel, who not only share the stylistic vicinity, the national provenance being both sons of the great Austro-Hungarian empire, but both worked for the Esterhazy family in the castle of Eisenach. Haydn stayed there nearly thirty years, Hummel managed to be fired for “neglecting his duties” after only seven years.
Thus a good starting point to fully understand their music is the image of their place of provenance, this “flat and grey land” dotted by a few lakes and isolated castles of local aristocracy, land which then, as it does now, produced a high quality of wine both composers reportedly appreciated.
But there the similarity ends and we can see the older of the two composers, Franz Josef Haydn, speaking of himself as “staying isolated, without real contact with other composers of my time, forced me to become original.” Haydn was able to make only few trips abroad, like London, but despite this was one of the most popular composers of the time in all of Europe. His interest in the concerto form was quite limited, certainly nothing to compare to his huge output of symphonies or quartets, but the natural flow of musical ideas is equally astonishing in this Double Concerto as it is in his more famous works.
Johann Nepomuk Hummel’s name was chosen by his Slovak mother to honor the great Slavonic saint Johan (Jan) Nepomucenus. Born in Bratislava, now capital of the Slovak Republic, but then a sleepy province “village” near Vienna, he soon began to show exceptional musical talent and his father exploited this trying to emulate the childhood career of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
At the age of only eight years Hummel took piano lessons with Mozart and a few years after toured England with great success, attracting interest of well-known composer and pianist Muzio Clementi.
After his return to Vienna and while still studying piano with Antonio Salieri, Hummel developed his famous technical skills allowing him to play passages on piano with dexterity never heard before no matter how difficult the score was, rivaled in this only by his fellow student Ludwig van Beethoven. This pianistic capacity is well reflected in his Concerto for Violin and Piano, Op. 17, and here I admired the ease with which pianist Antonio Pompa-Baldi deals with the endless cascades of sixteenth notes, remaining rhythmically perfectly steady but modelling the overall musical picture in a very convincing way.
It’s a pleasure to see a former student of Bruno Canino reacting in this musically free manner, he must have made a lot of his own personal growth and I am confident he has some very interesting developments in front of his career. Equally valid is the violin soloist Solomia Ivakhiv. What gave me the best impression is their fabulous rhythmic precision they have together. Especially in the Haydn concerto the soloists have chosen extremely slow tempi, nothing to do with the Anush Nikogosyan and Andreas Froelich rendering which is on the exact opposite side. This decision serves them well in the slow movements, but is less adequate in the quick ones. The Hummel concerto is for me far more “daring” and shows the real potential of this duo. Let’s hope for a future collaboration, maybe in some 20th century repertoire?
The conductor Theodore Kuchar, well known for his Naxos series with Kiev symphony orchestra, delivers with mathematical precision what is requested, quite easy in Haydn, where the orchestra is reduced to a simple underlying carpet, but far more challenging in Hummel. Here, unfortunately, the Slovak National Symphony Orchestra is a little behind its otherwise immaculate reputation. Maybe it’s the forcedly reduced rehearsing and recording time, maybe it’s the unfortunate sonic image delivered by the sound engineer, but this orchestra is surely able to do better. Passages like the slow movement of Hummel, a series of variations, but without any indication of speed change, have some abrupt tempo fluctuations, probably a sign of no time to correct this. I would have wished Haydn, Hummel and the two soloists the grace of a first class orchestra, they would have deserved it.
For the relative repertoire rarity and for the genuine musical craftsmanship of the soloists this CD is easily recommended.
This is something unusual — a recording series spread across different labels. Violinist Solmiya Ivakhiv and pianist Antonio Pompa-Baldi wanted to record the double concertos of Haydn and Mendelssohn.
While preparing, they discovered two other neglected works. Johann Nepomuk Hummel, a contemporary of Haydn, had also written a double concerto for violin and piano. And Mendelssohn at age 13 had composed a seldom-performed violin concerto in D major.
There was enough material for two CDs. The Mendelssohn works were released on Brilliant Classics. The paired Haydn and Hummel concertos were released on Centaur.
Theodor Kuchar conducts the Slovak National Symphony Orchestra on both releases. As expected, the sound quality is fairly consistent across the two releases, as are the performances.
Ivakhiv and Pompa-Baldi bring the right measure of bravado and sensitivity to these works. These two artists seem to speak the same language, making their exchanges all the more engaging. Both play with crystalline clarity that is well-suited to these works.
Haydn’s Concerto for Violin, Piano, and Orchestra in F major is probably the best-known of the four works. Ivakhiv and Pompa-Baldi deliver performances that epitomize the elegant beauty of the score.
Hummel’s music leans more towards the Romantic era. His Concerto for Piano and Violin in G major is one of the influences for Mendelssohn’s early violin concerto. Hummel dedicated the concerto to Count Rasoumovsky, a talented amateur violinist and benefactor of Beethoven.
Hummel’s concerto has a fuller orchestral sound, with a more urgent sense of drama than Haydn’s. The solo passages, especially the piano’s, also seem more technically challenging.
Mendelessohn’s double concerto was written when he was fourteen. Ivakhiv and Pompa-Baldi discovered a revision Mendelssohn made late in life, expanding the string orchestra to a full symphony orchestra. This is the version they perform.
It’s an exciting work, and if you’re only familiar with the original version, an illuminating one. Mendelssohn makes the climaxes stronger, and the dynamic contrasts greater.
Mendelssohn’s D minor violin concerto is a good but not great work. His influences — Hummel, Kreutzer, and Weber — aren’t fully integrated. This gives the work a bit of a patchwork quality to it — still pretty darned good for a tween. Ivakhiv’s innate musicianship brings out the structure of the music, making the solo part more than just runs up and down the instrument.
Four concertos, two different labels, one set of performers. This is a great series, and I hope Ivakhiv and Pompa-Baldi find more to record.
Haydn and Hummel: Double ConcertosFranz Joseph Haydn: Concerto for Violin and Piano in F major. HOb. XVIII:6Johann Nepomuk Hummel: Concerto for Piano and Violin in G major, Op. 17Centaur
Felix Mendelssohn: ConcertosConcerto for Violin, Piano and Orchestra in D minorConcerto for Violin and Orchestra in D minorBrilliant Classics
Solomiya Ivakhiv, violin; Antonio Pompa-Baldi, pianoSlovak National Symphony Orchestra; Theodore Kuchar, conductor
In our brave new world of social distancing, live-streamed concerts are becoming the new norm and a prime source of cultural entertainment. With that in mind, Classical Music Communications is excited to share this collaborative database of concerts that are offered live on the internet. View the embedded document below, or visit http://bit.ly/livestreamconcerts2020 directly.
If you’re a musician, presenter, or just know of a concert that you don’t see included here, you can add the info on this form and it will automatically be added to the database: http://bit.ly/concertform2020.
Stay safe, healthy, and let’s flatten the curve!
The Canellakis-Brown Duo—cellist Nicholas Canellakis and pianist Michael Brown—have been playing together for ten years and it shows. Their concert Tuesday night at the Baruch Performing Arts Center was a superb display of the kind of assured, responsive, sincere playing that is a pinnacle of chamber music performance yet is more often heard in jazz and other music than in classical.
Canellakis and Brown are skillful instrumentalists and their frequent appearances in the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center attest to that. Yet beyond the technical demands, the duo showed great musical and personal thinking. Pieces like Grieg’s Cello Sonata in A minor—the most substantive work on the program—had tremendous shape, a chart of shifting experiences and levels of energy that grew organically and with the greatest logic out of the composition.
The program had a title, “Distinct Souls,” on which Canellakis and Brown hung the concept of music from different regions of the globe. It was generic enough to be both incontrovertibly accurate and fundamentally meaningless. If composers have souls (one hopes), they would by definition be distinct.
The music, through the duo’s playing, did all the explaining one needed. Besides the Grieg, the rest was a collection of rarely heard or surprising pieces—a recent work from Brown himself, and music by Alberto Ginastera, Reinhold Gliére, Sibelius, jazz musician and composer Don Ellis, and a traditional song related to Ellis’s piece.
The pair put great weight in the first half, opening with Ginastera’s Pampeana No. 2, Rhapsody for Cello and Piano, Op. 21. The immediate connection between Ginastera’s tango-tinged phantasmagoria and Grieg’s turbulent romantic journey was Canellakis’ wonderful tone production. He had a light touch in the tango parts of Ginastera’s Rhapsody, stretches that were a warm contrast to the convoluted inner landscape of the fantastical solo cello lines. This was music of many moods, distinct but not discrete.
The musical communication between the two was as relaxed and unselfconscious as a conversation between old friends at a bar—even in the toughest passagework, Brown’s playing sounded effortless and he himself had the manner of someone who was doing something he loved, and enjoying it in every measure.
After the mercurial Pampeana, the pair brought a poised gravity to Grieg’s Sonata. Their playing gave the music such presence and substance that the markers of form and style fell away before what felt like the essence of the works themselves. The first movement was so spirited that the audience immediately applauded, but even with that the sonata felt like a continuous communicative flow, not so much a formal structure of notes but a story.
Dark colors, and the sense of a brooding storm over the horizon, was the experience of the first half. After Brown’s neo-romantic Prelude and Dance—a companion piece to the the Bach Solo Cello Suites— opened the first half, that feeling was both cemented and tied off by the duo playing Sibelius’ Malinconia.
Canellakis introduced the music by pointing out that it came after the death of the Sibelius’s infant daughter. Rarely heard, this is one of Sibelius’ masterpieces. It has hints of music that would later be heard in the Fourth and Fifth Symphonies. Even more than the Fourth, it is full of dark turmoil, not just despair but rage. Canellakis and Brown were just understated enough that one felt the energy one needs to keep going through such an incomprehensible tragedy, and the stretches where the music climbed into sunlight felt fully earned.
Three of Gliére’s 12 Pieces for Cello and Piano, Op. 51—Cantabile, Con tristezza, and Con moto—let the ripples of anguish die away, then the pair finished with two exciting bits of Balkan music, Ellis’s Bulgarian Bulge and the traditional “Gankino Horo,” both arranged by Canellakis. The meters alone—the latter had 11 beats per bar, the former an astonishing 33—made this exciting, and the duo’s rhythms were terrific, fleet and fluid and with the right kind of bounce off of each accent.
The encore was Paganini’s Variations on a Theme by Rossini. Canellakis joked that the arrangement was by “some jerk” (it was the great cellist Pierre Fournier), because it requires the cellist to play all the music on the A string. Here is where Canellakis’s harmonics were so impressive, and the pair had great fun showing off their considerable chops.
On April 2-4, 2020, the Talea Ensemble performs Manos Tsangaris’ immersive and multidisciplinary work Love & Diversity at the Baruch Performing Arts Center. In this Insider Interview we spoke to Mr. Tsangaris about his work, the integration of theatre into his music and more. More info online at Baruch.cuny.edu
Love & Diversity and some of your other works are immersive, theatrical and multi-media experiences. What about your background in composition and other creative arts inspired you to work outside the “box” of concert music?
There are always different reasons for something like this, several reasons. But one is certain that our reality, our experience, has changed fundamentally. Music comes out of the loudspeakers or earphones, doesn't it? And today I can download or stream 5 million tracks anywhere. Already in the 1970s, I noticed this extreme decontextualization. The sound detached from the process of making it. So I re-contextualized. God, it all sounds so intellectual and academic. But it means we're being ripped out of our lives and catapulted into another, doesn't it? If only as a permanent soundtrack.
The other thing that is connected to this is the change of public, also of the political public. In the past we had to physically gather in the theatre, in concert, in political rallies. The public sphere was a cavity, in other words convex. Today it rather visits us. The smartphone is calling us. Our nervous system is flashing. The public functions have become tentacles, convex. And very active (look here, buy this, think like this and so!) That's why, because of our so radically changed perception of public life, I started very early to reverse the directional functions of a performance. There is only one person in the audience in a room that is not yet defined as a theatre space, but then an ensemble that plays live, blanketing this person with a kind of natural “surround sound” (appropriately quietly of course), completely redefines the space.
The first piece of this kind is from 1979, and after that I have written and directed such things again and again. But it is also the longing for a very precise, singular, quasi homeopathic practice, with the human being in the middle.
The term “Music Theater” is different than other art forms in which music is combined with theater – such as Opera or Musical Theater. What does the term mean to you?
It is the compositional approach to new formats that has become necessary. The word theater comes from theatron and means "that which makes visible", is perhaps the only instance with a laboratory function that can, for example, reinvent our realities, right?
Describe the plot, or narrative arc, in Love & Diversity?
Well, the drama, as so often, lies in the little things. Or in their sum. Love & Diversity is based on the setting of speed datings, a now-obsolete form of systematic dating, which was allegedly invented in Pete's Café in Beverley Hills in 1996. Some people sit behind the café tables and every 5 minutes they meet another new person, who changes from table to table. So after a few hours, many new potential partners have been seen and talked to. In Love & Diversity this is of course pointed and stylized. The musicians of the Talea-Ensemble sit individually behind the tables. The audience wanders from table to table in very small groups and is offered a solo performance each time. Thus the piece gradually adds up. "Would you like to have dinner with the bass player?" "Do you believe in love at first sight?" "Family"? "Are you rich?"
How did you come up with the dialogue in the piece?
See above: the longing for love and diversity, and the dispositive of speed dating - in the age of the Internet - a form of getting to know each other that is already obsolete again. But theatrically still relevant in any case.
Love & Diversity requires the instrumentalists to do so much more than simply play their instrument. How do you and/or the director coach them to recite lines, perform physical movements, and interact with individual audience members?
This is a very interesting point. Because such a theatrical situation (and this is what it is) is composed of different languages, or let's say linguistic levels. This is of course already apparent in the score, which is a mixture of musical notes, small drawings, verbal instructions, etc. All of this must of course be easily readable for the musicians/performers and must be implemented as quickly and easily as possible. A musician who has to speak, play and manipulate the light at his table at the same time will see the real challenge in exactly this combination. The whole thing then naturally merges into this one performance.
How have performances of Love & Diversity differed from one another? How much does the notation allow for individuality of each instrumentalist and of the director?
There is a substantial core of the work. If you play that which is written there, i.e. breathe life into it, the piece will always remain recognizable. Moreover, it lives very much from the different people and how they interpret it. But also, by the way, by the distinctiveness of the small audiences. One wonders how differently people can react to such an intimate artistic situation.
What do you hope audiences will get from their experiences at a performance of Love & Diversity?
One learns something about oneself as the interface of this performance. But not in a psychological sense, but by gradually forming the actual piece in my perception. I experience one small performance after the other. And I listen to the last one and the following one already before it. Only in me do these experiences accumulate. And I register very precisely how the performance and my "system" interact with my consciousness.
Roland Colton
Forever GentlemaneBook
Available on Amazon
Romance experts report that their readers expect a lot more than romance. Roland Colton delivers this in his novel Forever Gentleman.
This engaging novel has several novel twists. It tells the tale of Nathan Sinclair, an architect and sometimes concert pianist of first-rate talents in both disciplines. When we meet him, he has been introduced to a good woman who deeply attracts him. He vows to settle a debt to a loan broker. He has incurred the debt because a client has been unable to pay up. One thread in the story is a Dickensian tour of Victorian debtor courts and jail in 1869. Colton is able to lead us through this tortuous path with vigorous, clear writing.
The main threads of Forever Gentleman have to do with romance. This comes in two forms. One of them is an unexpected tale of love of a good woman, who Sinclair prefers to the wealthiest, most beautiful woman in England, who wants him desperately. Winding our way through this part of the story is one cliffhanger that keeps us turning pages.
The other is the introduction of the performance of music which Sinclair is performing. Here is a list of the pieces one can hear during the course of the book by pressing an arrow.
Trio No. 1 G Major, Mozart; Quatrieme Ballade No. 52, Chopin; Impromptu in G-Flat Major, Schubert; Etude Op. 25, No. 4, Chopin; Pastoral Sonata, Op. 29, Beethoven; Mazurka in C Sharp Minor, Op. 50, No. 3, Chopin; Etude in G Flat Major, Op. 10, No. 5, Chopin; Six Pieces for Piano, Ondine; Scherzo in F, Muller; Winter Wind Etude, Chopin; Sonata for C Major, Mozart; Hungarian Rhapsody No 2, Liszt; Italian Symphony, Mendelsohn; Symphony No. 6, Beethoven; Concerto in D Flat, Liszt; Pathetique Sonata, Beethoven; On the Beautiful Danube, Strauss; Symphony No. 1, Beethoven; Symphony No. 9, Beethoven; Concerto in A Minor, Schumann; F Major Nocturne, Bizet; Moonlight Sonata, Beethoven; Piano Trio No. 2, Schubert; Scherzo No. 2, Chopin; Song without Words, Mendelsohn; Tempest Sonata, Beethoven; Symphony No. 7, Beethoven; Surprise Symphony, Haydn; “La Campanella” Etude, Liszt; Wedding March from Midsummer Night’s Dream, Mendelsohn. There are many interesting original excerpts related to the story. One is Nathan’s Despair.
At one point, the beautiful pseudo-love interest provides an orchestra to surprise Nathan. She is giving him every pianist's dream.
Ours might be to sit back and hear the story without resorting to the disruption of YouTube. You click, and listen to the music as you read. The device may prove an inviting addition to books about music in the future.
Colton’s book belies that notion that all romance begins with a kiss and everything changes thereafter. He is forced to choose between true love and the fulfillment of his wildest dreams. He backs into the solution. He is less flawed than he is weak.
Remember too that pianists are often perceived as sex symbols. Long before Ken Russell produced the film “Lisztomania,” the swaying hips, tossed back head and fingers ripping up and down the keyboard turned listeners on. Roger Daltry, who played Liszt in the film, was surrounded by hard-to-forget groupies and mistresses. Although Colton does not take the opportunity to describe the sexual elements of pianistic performance, one imagines them reading the text and listening to the musical excerpts.
The story is told from Nathan’s point of view. It used to be that male romance writers used women’s pseudonyms. Colton does not. He provides a truly different perspective on love outcomes in a very-well written tale. We are catapulted back into the Victorian era not simply as a romantic story, but with well-devised mystery and suspense, sprinkled liberally and surprisingly with Beethoven and Chopin.
On Tuesday, March 10, 2020 at 7:30 pm, the Baruch Performing Arts Center presents the Canellakis-Brown Duo. In this Insider Interview, we spoke with Nicholas Canellakis and Michael Brown about the history of the duo, the inspiration behind their BPAC program, and more. More info online at baruch.cuny.edu.
How did you first meet?
We met in 2008 as students at the Ravinia Festival’s Steans Insitute outside of Chicago. After some initial skepticism with each other, we soon became best friends and musical collaborators with a desire to explore the cello/piano repertoire.
What was your first gig together, and at what point did you realize that this would be a long-term collaboration?
Our first gig together was playing the Shostakovich Piano Quintet and the Debussy Cello Sonata at Ravinia.
This year marks your 10th season playing together. Can you tell us about some Duo highlights over the past decade?
We have played recitals all over the country, and had wonderful international trips to the Baltics, Cuba, the Greek Islands, and Italy. I have written four pieces for Nick including a collaboration we did called Self-Portrait where I wrote the music and Nick made the film. He has arranged several works for us, including the Gershwin Preludes and Bulgarian folk arrangements.
What was the inspiration for your upcoming program at BPAC? Is there a “heart” to the program, a central piece that you wanted to do that inspired you to add the other works, or is there a theme bringing the repertoire together?
We love creating eclectic programs that combine old and new repertoire. Grieg’s monumental Cello Sonata speaks to us deeply, and that is certainly the main course on this program. The recital also features two not so frequently played 20th century works—Ginastera’s sizzling Pampeana No. 2 and Sibelius’s heart-wrenching Malinconia. We also will play Michael Brown’s Prelude and Dance, written for our duo, and an array of dazzling salon pieces including Canellakis’s virtuosic arrangements of Bulgarian folk tunes.
You frequently combine “old classics with your own arrangements and new compositions”, and this program is no exception, including a work by Michael, and an arrangement by Nick.
- Nick, how did you discover this traditional Bulgarian song that you arranged? What was the source you used as a base for your arrangement?
I discovered these Bulgarian folk tunes, including Don Ellis’s brilliant creation Bulgarian Bulge, just by scouring YouTube looking for wild and fun folk music to play. I fell in love with their insanely irregular rhythms and propulsive virtuosity, I couldn’t resist arranging them into encore showpieces for cello and piano.
- Michael, tell us about Prelude and Dance, which you wrote in 2014 for Bargemusic's "Here and Now Labor Day Festival" and revised in 2017. What kind of revisions did you make?
The work began as a suite for solo cello for Nick inspired by Baroque dance suites. After hearing him play it, I felt left out and decided to write another version of the piece for cello and piano. Check it out on YouTube https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9HAWkwkrGKU.
With 10 years of performing together under your collective belts, what do you hope the next decade brings to the Canellakis-Brown Duo?
We have lots of stuff in store for the next ten years—recording projects, new works to write, concert tours, and repertoire to discover. We are always searching to explore the truth in our art and deepen our collaboration together. And we are certainly are not bored of each other, and are looking forward to the next creative adventure full of laughter, playful(?) antagonism, and pour over coffee.
Danish cellist Jakob Kullberg performed an interesting, at times moving, and thoroughly eclectic concert at National Sawdust in Brooklyn with pianist Jeremy Gill and clarinetist Chris Grymes on Feb. 2, 2020. The latest event in Grymes’ Open G series highlighted music by Nordic composers. Some of the pieces are closely associated with the cellist himself; all were U.S. or world premieres.
Kullberg proved in concert what he indicated in our recent interview: that he is always exploring and pushing boundaries, in both genre and technique.
“You do not understand, you are not from here,” he sang in the last of four “Country Songs for clarinet, cello, and piano” by Niels Rønsholdt. This world premiere of pared-down elements from an in-progress cello concerto epitomized both the genre-merging and experimental sides of Kullberg’s interests. Here and elsewhere he sang lines of poetry in a pleasant but untrained tenor, and with little affect. The idea is that adding untrained vocalizing to music played by trained instrumentalists can add a degree of expressivity.
That sometimes held true, but elsewhere the deliberately affectless singing created a sense of distance, with a hint of sadness but also a separation of the audience from the emotion produced by the abstract sounds of the instruments. “You are not from here” indeed. Nonetheless without a doubt it was, as the cellist surely intended, food for thought.
Kullberg demonstrated an unusual technique in several works: holding and playing the cello like a guitar, complete with finger picking and strumming. He showed his adeptness at this in the “Country Songs,” sounding a little like a Spanish guitar in the sweetly sad “Island,” and in other works too, including his own “Song: Lullaby for clarinet, cello, and piano.” There, his gentle picking and singing, Grymes’ airy clarinet, and Gill’s playing the inside of the piano combined to create a true “song” that sounded more heartfelt than experimental despite the unconventional techniques.
The richest music and most compelling performance from the trio, though, came in Bent Sørensen’s “Schattenlinie for clarinet, cello, and piano.” This mostly very quiet piece began by suggesting wind through trees, drops of water and ice, and moves through fascinating unexpected harmonies. A rhythmic dance with a sense of danger gave way in the third movement to ethereal harmonies, which then fall apart, the instruments crying out with swells and trills as if in pain. The musicians achieved a lovely melding of timbres in the fourth movement, and made the conflicting keys of the fifth both eerie and touching, searching for unity and at last, led by the piano, finding something like it.
Non-traditional techniques also drove a strong performance of Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho’s interesting “Im Traume for cello and piano.” Noisy clatter and pained gestures with occasional lapses into traditional harmony made it a dramatic listen and a theatrical event to watch, too. In a more interior way, Per Nørgard’s “Solo Sonata No. 3,” What! is the Word,” which opened the concert, told a soulful story as well. It gave Kullberg on his own a chance to unleash the richness and varied expressivity of his arco tone: icy, then deeply resonant, then luxuriating in long dissonant sighs.
All told, the program featured music by six Nordic composers, including Kullberg himself. These challenging works allowed the three fine musicians to focus on one cellist’s ongoing search for new ways to build on the past century’s musical traditions while forging his own path. Follow Jakob Kullberg’s touring and recording career on his website.
Cellist Jakob Kullberg will be performing pieces for cello, clarinet, and piano by Nordic composers, some of them world premieres, at National Sawdust in Brooklyn on Feb. 2, 2020. The noted musician, recipient of two Danish Grammy Awards, will be joined by clarinetist Chris Grymes and pianist Jeremy Gill. Kullberg spoke with us about his career and the upcoming concert.
Many American listeners won’t be familiar with some of these composers. Can you tell us a little about some of the works and how they’re meaningful to you?
The music of Nørgård, Saariaho and Sørensen has a special place in my heart.
I have been working very closely with Per Nørgård for more than 20 years in a myriad of constellations and roles. Recently I recorded a work for violin, cello and orchestra with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra in Norway that stands as a particularly good example of the creative and collaborative way we have developed.
The work, called “Three Nocturnal Movements,” had its premiere at the Bergen International Festival in 2015 and has an unusual creation story. The second movement is my composition on Nørgård’s piano fragments, meaning that I have chosen sketches and unfinished fragments from a recording I made of Nørgård playing the piano.
After making a selection of material I decided on the form of the movement, composed connections, superimposed material from the surrounding movements so as to make a coherent whole and finally orchestrated it.
In general I find that Nørgård, Sørensen and Saariaho represent some of the best Nordic music from their generation. I felt I understood Saariaho’s orchestration better after experiencing the Finnish summer nights where the sun never really goes down but instead creates a flamboyant spectrum of purple, red and blue hues.
Both Nørgård and Saariaho feel a connection to the music of Sibelius and for me [their music] has a profound quality. It represents both traditional cello playing and new invention and so fits me like a glove.
Eivind Buene and Niels Rønsholdt are both contemporary classical composers who have begun composing music that connects with contemporary music but also with popular music. In this sense I feel a natural connection to what they do as I myself am interested in many different styles of music such as jazz, blues and indie-pop.
I feel I have an opportunity to explore a less classical side of myself through the collaboration with them.
Read the rest of the interview at this link.
On Tuesday, January 28, 2020 at 7:00 pm, the Austrian Cultural Forum New York presents pianist Eric Wubbels performing selections from Peter Ablinger's ground-breaking "Voices and Piano" series. In this Insider Interview, we spoke with Mr. Wubbels about his past experiences working with Ablinger, his approach to learning this music, and so much more. More info online at acfny.org.
What drew you to the music of Peter Ablinger?
His music really stands out for me in the world of composition – in the visual arts there are all kinds of major artists whose work is first and foremost concept-driven, but among composers until very recently it's hard to name more than Cage, Lucier, and one or two others. I'd put Ablinger in with them.
The breadth of his practice is pretty extraordinary (everything from concert music to installation to opera, text scores, electronic music, and “trees planted according to acoustic criteria”...), and yet once you're familiar with his basic artistic personality everything is so clearly related back to a very small set of core concerns and principles. The simplest way I could say it is that his music is about listening.
And yet for me it's the furthest thing from dryly conceptual in its treatment of those concerns. It's incredibly sincere, humanistic, spiritual, and politically engaged, unpretentious and alive to beauty. And, I love the sounds...
And can you share any anecdotes from your experiences working with him?
In 2009 he agreed to come to New York to work with my ensemble on a concert of his music. We had basically no reputation in Europe, so we were amazed that he was willing to come over at all. And then, he refused to be put up in a hotel (he slept on my couch in Brooklyn for the week), and refused to be paid a commissioning fee that was any more than what any of the musicians who would play the piece would be paid for playing it. I really admire him.
In this work “Voices and Piano”, the pianist is performing along with recordings of voices or speech – as the performer, how does the electronic/recorded part of the work influence/affect how you approach your part?
As the piano part is derived completely from the sound of each recording and voice, part of the initial work is trying to hear what Peter heard in the quality of the voice (or sometimes the noise artifacts of the recording itself) so that you can create the overall sound and affect of each piece. I think arriving at an interpretation involves making decisions primarily about sonority and the overall dynamic structure – I'm trying to achieve something relative to the voice which is not quite “accompanying,” not quite “blending,” but finding a kind of balance-point where the combination of the parts allows them to be experienced simultaneously so that something new is revealed through their comparison.
My initial impulse when I first worked on the pieces was to try to match the piano part to the voice as closely as possible (rhythmically, dynamically, etc.). After working with Peter I appreciate the ways in which the alignment between the two elements is less “realistic” and more “pixellated” – the piano is basically an equal-tempered grid of an instrument, while a voice is totally fluid. So the relationship between the two has something in common with Chuck Close's portraits, or earlier pointillist/divisionist approaches to representation in the visual arts, where we see the “reality” of what's seen simultaneously with the “grid” of our own perception.
You will be performing this program in Chicago as well as in New York – in a work like this with a static electronic part, how much variety do you try to bring to your own part from performance to performance?
Another thing that I really value in Voices and Piano is the form, which is one that very rare in the music world – it's an archive. There are currently over 50 pieces, and as a result the cumulative duration is far too long to be played in a single concert. As a performer, then, your first responsibility is actually curatorial: you choose which voices to present, and thereby which individuals, communities, and points of view to represent in a given performance.
For that reason, I feel like there are all these voices already present in the piece, and I'm not really trying to draw focus away from them onto myself. I think I'd feel compelled to generate variety for myself only if I were bored with the music, and on the contrary, given the difficulty of the task, I'm completely immersed in it and it takes the entirety of my focus. Every performance is naturally different without my having to intend the details of that in any way; it's great like that!
How does your experience as both a composer and performer influence how you interpret the music of Ablinger?
It helps me put my performer ego aside and so that I can try just to serve the idea. As a composer, I see what he's going for, and I see and value the beauty of it, and I recognize that it's likely best served by a performance that's neutral, by and large. If my presence in the room dominates over the recorded voice, the balance between the elements that's necessary for them to blend into a third, composite structure would be lost. And so I have to resist the impulse to be “expressive” or dynamic in traditional ways, as that will actually make the piece as a whole less expressive.
Mendelssohn’s success in the concerto form is much clearer: his two piano concertos and E minor violin concerto are repertoire standards and quite deserving of the admiration they receive. But even though Mendelssohn was a child prodigy almost on Mozart’s level (and considered on Mozart’s level in his own time), these concertos did not simply spring into being, any more than a piano concerto such as Mozart’s No. 9, K. 271 (“Jeunehomme”) appeared without predecessors. If it is intriguing to hear Boieldieu’s piano concerto to realize the direction in which he did not develop, it is even more interesting to hear early Mendelssohn concertos for the light they shed on the direction in which he did go.
A new Brilliant Classics CD featuring Solomiya Ivakhiv, Antonio Pompa-Baldi, and the Slovak National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Theodor Kuchar, offers a rare and most welcome chance to explore two Mendelssohn concertos that are almost never heard in concert, and only rarely in recordings. The D minor violin concerto dates to 1822, when Mendelssohn was all of 13 – he really was a prodigy – and the concerto for violin and piano was written only a year later. Both are remarkably assured works, and in both there is already the easy melodiousness for which Mendelssohn was known. These pieces date to the same time as his String Symphonies, which show equal assurance and similar qualities of engaging tunes and well-crafted developments.
The heart of the violin concerto is its central movement, which is more expressive than its Andante tempo indication might lead one to expect. And as in the later E minor concerto, Mendelssohn here has the finale begin attacca after the slow movement’s conclusion. Ivakhiv does not overstate the concerto’s importance or overplay it in any way: it is basically a concerto strongly indebted to those of Mozart, but with some Mendelssohnian characteristics, and Ivakhiv and Kuchar present it with just the right light touch.
The violin-and-piano work has grander ambitions, and in it Mendelssohn somewhat overreached, based on his command of individual instruments and the orchestra at this time. The piece lasts a full 40 minutes and does not really sustain at that length. Here the first movement is the primary focus – it takes up half the work’s total length – but, again, it is the lyrical and often quite lovely second movement that is really the concerto’s heart. Yet there is a strange element to it: the highly affecting middle portion of the movement is for violin and piano alone, without accompaniment, and it almost sounds as if Mendelssohn meandered into chamber music as this section continues – until he eventually resumes the orchestral portion. Later composers were to do something similar, as Tchaikovsky did in his Piano Concerto No. 2, but in this Mendelssohn concerto there is a combination of creativity and awkwardness that is one of the few ways in which the composer’s youth seems retrospectively evident. Again, soloists and conductor approach the music with care and perform it with fine balance and without making too much – or too little – of the material. These concertos are not works of genius, but they are works of genius-in-development, and that in itself is more than enough reason to hear them.
In November of 2019, the violinist Solomiya Ivakhiv releases a recording of “Mendelssohn Concertos” on Brilliant Classics (95733). In this Insider Interview we spoke to Ms. Ivakhiv about how she started playing violin, the inspiration behind recording these particular concertos and more.
How old were you when you started playing the violin? Tell us some of your first memories of your interest in music.
According to my mother, who is a piano teacher, I sang in tune since I was 2 years old. Mom says I would repeat melodies upon hearing. At the age of 6, my parents sent me to audition at the Special Music School for Children with Extraordinary Abilities in Lviv (that is the name of the school dedicated to training very young musicians).
I thought I was auditioning to enroll as a piano student. But the auditioning committee decided the violin will be a better fit for me, so I was assigned to this beautiful string instrument. At first, my mother was upset and wanted me to switch to piano, but then decided to let me try the violin. It was a lucky coincidence and I can’t imagine my life without the violin.
Your education path was fairly unusual: raised in the Ukraine, undergraduate studies at Curtis, earned your master’s degree at the Music Academy in Lviv in Ukraine, and back to the US for your doctorate at Stony Brook University. What differences are there between European and American pedagogy methods? What takeaways do you have from studying in these two diverse cultures?
My parents are both educators and wanted me to be exposed to both European and American schooling systems. (I also think they wanted me to have an excuse to come and visit them when I was coming to the Conservatory to take exams.)
I am very grateful for my education at Curtis and consider myself American trained. Studying with the luminaries such as late Joseph Silverstein, late Rafael Druian, Pamela Frank and Philip Setzer shaped me as a musician and made me who I am today. Also, at Curtiswe were exposed to phenomenal faculty (Gary Graffman, Ida Kavafian, Otto Werner-Mueller to name a few) as well as supremely talented fellow students. The whole atmosphere made the education at Curtis priceless, learning equally from both faculty and guest artists, as well as our peers.
My parents instilled in my brother and I the importance of higher education and reaching our furthest potentia. My father has a Doctorate and he was thrilled when the opportunity came up for me to pursue a doctorate at Stony Brook. Pamela Frank brought this idea to me and I was thrilled to continue my studies with her. It was a great way to continue my education and further my experience – it’s where I met and studied with Philip Setzer, Gilbert Kalish, Ani Kavafian and Colin Carr. Coming from a small boutique conservatory (Curtis) to Stony Brook was a shock at first. I was not used to a large campus and felt lost and out of place. But it prepared me for the University life I lead now. The Stony Brook experience was priceless and I am very grateful for it!
You lead a dual life as a concert violinist and a college professor. How do these two aspects of your career inform one another?
I enjoy teaching very much and learn so much from my students. I feel a strong responsibility to share the knowledge I gained from my teachers and pass it on to a new generations.
I demonstrate while teaching and try to apply what I preach into my own playing. My students appreciate the fact that I am a performing artist and they often attend my concerts. My students are also aware that performing is like breathing to me. It is a way to express both myself and the ideas and feelings the composers intended to be shared. I will admit it does get challenging at times combining performing and teaching on the scale I do. But I do like a challenge…and both are very important to me.
For your latest CD, you recorded Felix Mendelssohn’s double concerto for violin and piano in its later arrangement by the composer, with winds and timpani added to the original string orchestra version. How did you discover this arrangement, and why did you choose it over the original?
I performed the Double Concerto a number of times over the course of the past few years. I love the work! But for all of these performances I played with the string orchestra, not the full orchestra. I only learned about the existence of the full orchestra version two years ago from my colleague, the conductor Theodore Kuchar. Ted is known for finding treasures and obscure and forgotten works. Somehow he came across the score of the full orchestra version and brought it to my attention. After doing some research, I was able to find only 3 recordings of the full orchestra. Perhaps there are more now, but at the time there were only three. So making a record with the orchestra version seemed very appealing. It does sound much fuller and richer with the full orchestra. It is a beautiful piece and I love performing it!
The other work on your new CD is an early violin concerto by Felix Mendelssohn. What drew you to this work?
I was looking for pieces written for solo violin and chamber orchestra because I wanted to have a few pieces in my repertoire that I could perform with my students in run-out concerts. Maestro Kuchar brought that piece to my attention and suggested I make an album with this violin concerto and the double concerto on it.
Inviting Antonio Pompa-Baldi to be a part of the project was suggested by Ted as well, since Antonio and Ted have collaborated many times. A few years back Iplayed chamber music with Antonio, and I remember admiring his musicianship and talent very much. I think the three of us had a good chemistry while working on the album.
This Mendelssohn album, along with your next, forthcoming recording of works by Haydn and Hummel is part of your Singles and Doubles project. Tell us how you came up with this project, and how both of these albums figure in to it.
Ted Kuchar, again, was the source – he suggested the Hummel and Haydn Concertos to me. Ted has a talent of finding the pieces that are not overplayed and will be fresh and interesting to the listener. The combination of the instrumentation: solo violin, solo piano and orchestra was very appealing to me.
Lately I had been playing other double concertos with Dutch cellist Joachim Eijlander and American cellist Sophie Shao, and I must admit it is nice to collaborate with another instrument in concert and make music with another soloist on stage (besides the orchestra and conductor). Antonio, Ted and I recorded Haydn and Hummel on the same trip as Mendelssohn Concertos, and the Haydn and Hummel Album will be released on Centaur in spring 2020.
Words: Amber Evans
On December 15, the legendary soprano Lucy Shelton will present a “tasting menu” of composers with whom she has worked extensively over her decades of performing, including Elliott Carter, Jacob Druckman, Miriam Gideon, Shulamit Ran, and George Rochberg, as well as composers of whose works she provided the first major or complete recordings—songs by John Cage, Ruth Crawford, and Igor Stravinsky.
Now in her 75th year, Shelton is a direct link to many of the most important creative minds of the 20th century. She continues to be a proponent of musical and vocal experimentation through her performances and her extensive teaching and coaching in New York City and throughout the world.
In advance of Shelton’s performance, National Sawdust Log invited Amber Evans – an exciting young Australian soprano, conductor, and composer presently blazing her own trails as an entrepreneurial singer, collaborator, and curator in New York – to talk with Shelton about her career and the program she assembled for her recital, presented as part of a series National Sawdust hosts in collaboration with Open G Records.
NATIONAL SAWDUST LOG: My first question to you is whether you would mind giving Log readers a little bit about you that isn’t so easily found on Google?
LUCY SHELTON: Well, I think I’ve known from a very early age that my life would be in music. It was what gave me the most pleasure. It was a community. I discovered in high school, at music camp, that it was the way I best communicated: not having to find my own words, but being expressive with the music that composers had written down. I played the flute, and it was through playing the flute that I discovered. this. Plus, singing has just always been something I’ve done with my family. I come from a big family. My parents met at an amateur music camp in the ’30s. Music for all of us kids… there were five of us, and we all took piano lessons. we all had an instrument, we did a lot of family music making. So it’s always just been a fun way to be with people. [Laughs]
I’ve always loved the challenge of the newer music—I mean, it was never a separation of, “Oh, golly, now I’m going to do some new music.” It was all just a continuum. And actually, the first professional job I had was early music, with [Chorus] Pro Musica.
So, from first your first professional job being in early music, but new music always being integrated throughout your life, and it being like a gorgeous marriage – between not only the two, but also art song and opera and whatnot – how has that culminated in your National Sawdust program on Dec. 15? What inspired you to curate a program of vocal classics?
I actually asked by Jeremy Gill – who’s the partner, for this series, of Chris Grymes – to bring a program of 20th century rep. I went to my beginnings at Pomona College; there’s a reference to Pomona because Karl Kohn was the composition teacher, and on my senior recital I did songs of his. And he’s the one who introduced me to Stravinsky’s music.
You also have [Elliott] Carter on there, and Ruth Crawford Seeger….
Well, I thought of pieces that I know well. All of this is music I’ve done before, except for the Miriam Gideon selections, which are miniatures – the four songs are less than four minutes long – and the Druckman. And there’s a story behind the Druckman: I studied with Jan DeGaetani and I knew Jacob Druckman, and Jan knew him, and had premiered a lot of things of his. And I got this score, The Sound of Time, a voice and piano piece. A year after its premiere, in 1964, he orchestrated it, and so it was soprano and chamber orchestra, and that was the only version available. But I have the original piano/voice version, which was a Naumberg Foundation commission, and I think it only had the one performance in 1964, at Town Hall. I’m really excited to be doing it. It’s a fabulous piece, texts by Norman Mailer from a book of poetry that evidently wasn’t a big hit, but had some really interesting lines from his published book, Deaths for the Ladies (and other disasters).
I’m actually finding, in preparing this program, that doing pieces I’ve done before is a huge challenge, because I remember how I used to do them, when I’d kind of hear it that way, and my voice is not the same. It doesn’t sound the same, and it’s harder work to find the way to sing them now. Whereas the new pieces, I’m just doing it fresh and meeting the challenges. So it’s actually easier to work on the really difficult Druckman piece than it is to do the little “Pastorale” of Stravinsky—things that are deep-seated in me, but vocally, I’m a different age.
It’s very interesting to think about, because even I will sing pieces that I first sung 10 years ago, and not necessarily like knowing what I used to sound like then, but it’s amazing how muscle memory can just sew itself into your larynx when you come back to a piece. And having to work around that, as opposed to being able to have the advantage and the privilege of looking at something completely new and completely fresh. That’s kind of the beauty of new music, in the sense of there isn’t an integral recording tradition to associate with a lot of pieces. There isn’t necessarily a strict vocal style or idiom. And the individuality of that can be really, really great.
Yes, it’s very freeing to be doing something for the first time. I’ve always thought.
Mendelssohn Concertos
Brilliant Concerts, 2019
8/10
Spearheaded by violinist Solomiya Ivakhiv, this installment features Mendelssohn’s ‘other’ Violin Concerto and the Double Concerto for Violin, Piano and Orchestra.
Concerto for Violin and String Orchestra in D minor MWVo3 starts with “Allegro”, where string acrobatics in the elegant yet adventurous opening keeps our attention for entire 9+ minutes of sweeping melody, and “Andante” follows with a calmer setting of graceful beauty. “Allegro” then ends this portion with plenty of skilled interplay between the instruments as swift playing aligns with a strong orchestral backdrop.
The 2nd portion of the disc, Concerto for Violin, Piano and Orchestra MWVo4 starts with “Allegro”, where nearly 20 minutes of lush, cinematic sounds dance around the respective instruments with intimacy and allure, while “Adagio” trims the volume back to quaint, lovely setting where twinkling keys add much to the formula. “Allegro Molto” ends this chapter with skittering piano on the quick paced and emotionally forceful exit.
Amazingly, these pieces were penned by Mendelssohn when he was just an early teenager, and Ivakhiv, along with Antonio Pompa-Baldi on keys and Theodore Kuchar conducting the Slovak National Symphony Orchestra, interpret the classics sublimely with their respective talents.
Travels well with: Solomiya Ivakhiv- Ukraine: Journey To Freedom; Joseph Silverstein- Roman Carnival
Review by: Jed Distler
Just about everything in this husband-and-wife Mozart concerto collaboration is ideal. For starters, the microphone placement captures Orli Shaham’s beautifully regulated Steinway and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in perfect balance, where both full-bodied tuttis and fleeting solo-instrument details clearly emerge. Secondly, and more importantly, the chamber-like sonic perspective extends to the music making.
Shaham’s enlivening inflections in the G major K. 453 concerto’s first movement interact with the woodwinds with fetching conversational flow. While Robertson minimizes string vibrato in the Andante, he avoids eliciting the kind of threadbare tone and mincing dynamic exaggerations that are stock-in-trade mannerisms of the period performance movement. Both conductor and pianist happily render the finale variations in a fluid alla breve tempo, as opposed to the relatively regimented four-beats-to-a-bar feeling evoked in the Robert Casadesus/George Szell stereo traversal.
Like Casadesus, Shaham favors Saint-Säens’ flashy yet effective cadenza for the C minor K. 491’s first movement, but plays it with more authority and force. The Larghetto conveys an appropriately tender and lyrical mood while showcasing Shaham’s masterful finger legato. Here one might argue that her phrasing is controlled and calibrated to the point of being foursquare, in contrast to the shapely variety that Alfred Brendel brought to his reference recording with Charles Mackerras. Yet Shaham more than compensates in the finale, where variety of tone and expression most definitely characterizes her detaché articulation: For example, note the uncommon urgency of the first variation’s descending chromatic patterns, or the tension informing Shaham’s ever-so-slight elongations in the coda.
The booklet contains an extensive discussion with Shaham, Robertson, and scholar Elaine Sisman that delves into fascinating performance-related issues and historical perspectives. Strongly recommended.
On Sunday, December 15 at 7:00 p.m. Lucy Shelton performs a ‘tasting menu’ of 20th century songs at National Sawdust (80 N 6th St, Brooklyn, NY). Tickets available here. This is a special opportunity to hear Shelton perform an entire recital of works that made her the legendary soprano she is. In advance of the show, presented by Chris Grymes’ Open G Series, here’s what the legendary soprano has to say about the menu.
When first asked to bring a program of mostly twentieth-century song to National Sawdust, I was flooded with sound-bites of Carter, Babbitt, Wuorinen, Schwantner, Harbison, Mamlok, Cage, Stravinsky, Ives, Rochberg, Baley, Druckman, Persichetti, Hindemith, Goehr, Henze, Knussen, Messiaen, Gideon, Laderman, Kohn, Rorem, Del Tredici, Albert, Primrosch, Crumb, Benson, Britten, Dallapiccola, Rehnqvist, Saariaho…to mention just a few, ha!! Gracious me — how on earth could I ever make the choices? But with the help of a few discussions and reading sessions with Jeremy Gill, tonight's program began to find its focus. Putting it into a MENU format gave me the opportunity to play with grouping the many short works into meaningful juxtapositions as follows:
AMUSES BOUCHES
Here are the “teasers” to the meal. Stravinsky’s Pastorale is a vocalise, with a charming open-air feel, which I sing as an invitation to join me in tonight’s event. It is followed by two works which signal that this program does not shy away from the unusual: John Cage’s unique work where the pianist never plays on the piano keys, but only on the lid and the frame; and the first of the George Rochberg selections, Black Tulips, where the pianist plays inside the piano as well as on the muted keys. The vocal writing is mostly “non vibrato” which adds to the eerie sound world of the piano writing. With Stravinsky’s Counting Song we are abruptly reminded of the “normal" piano sound, with repeated notes and glissandi, which underscores the simple setting of the lyrics (a traditional nonsense rhyme for a children’s game). I get to shout at the end - but the pianist gets the last word, playing a sweet refrain.
SOUPES
In this set the tastes become more emotionally complex. Stravinsky’s Spring (At the Cloister) is the longest song of his output [a total of 19 songs - all of which I recorded, paired with Elliott Carter’s complete songs, in 1997 on a KOCH International Classics CD no longer available] and offers time to reflect on the scene at the monastery. The ringing of bells is brilliantly depicted in the piano writing preceding the daughter of the bell-ringer’s heartfelt confession of unhappiness. The following sequence of Rochberg songs (with texts by his son, Paul - who cut his life short) opens with a defiant “I am baffled by this wall”, a more contemporary look at unhappiness. Spectral Butterfly and All my life are miniatures packed with coloristic detail for both singer and pianist. In the closing Sacre du Printemps all boundaries are removed, allowing primitive energies to be fully expressed - picture the ballet!
SALADES
Calm is restored with Elliott Carter’s Voyage. [My first performance of this was in 1972 when studying with Jan De Gaetani at Aspen.] There is a nobility and tenderness in this setting of Hart Crane which I find comforting. But not wanting to get too serious just yet, it is followed by Stravinsky’s very last song,The Owl and the Pussy-Cat, written for his wife Vera in 1965. The charming text is set in 2-part counterpoint with the piano always playing in octaves, resulting in a sophisticated simplicity. Another animal song, Pig is by Karl Kohn, [the composition faculty member at Pomona College when I studied there]. This animal reference has to do with a need to lose weight, or else be compared with the sacrificial pig at the Catalan St. Martin’s Day feast! The final song is also from Kohn’s Resplendent Air, [a cycle of 5 songs dedicated to me], and is a sublimely delicate setting about women sleeping.
ENTRÉES
And now for the protein course! Jacob Druckman’s The Season of Time was a Naumburg Foundation commission written in 1964. I suspect that the piano part was considered un-playable, because Druckman orchestrated it immediately and it has only been heard in that version since. [I believe this performance will be only the second performance of the soprano and piano original! My copy of the score (unavailable from the publisher) was from my mentor Jan De Gaetani’s library, and has beckoned to me since the 1980’s.] It is a spectacular continuous song cycle inspired by nine short segments of Norman Mailer's only book of poetry. The Two Ricercare by Ruth Crawford which follow are also rarities seldom performed. [I recorded them in 1997…] They are settings of political protests written by a Chinese immigrant in 1931 which Crawford read in a newspaper. They are hard-core in both text and music, being aggressive soap-box fare. The messages are clear, and important to hear...
DÉSERTS
Sweets are needed at this point in any meal, but especially after such a hearty main course! The Miriam Gideon miniatures gently bring thoughtful texts to life after which the sensuous Love’s Call by Shulamit Ran serves us molten chocolate cake! [This work was a 2016 commission from SongFest.] And finally we come full circle back to Stravinsky and childhood, with a hushed lullaby and Three Children’s Songs- all about birds. I hope you are not over-stuffed, and found pleasures in this feast of song!!
On December 15 at 7:00 PM, Chris Grymes’ Open G Series at National Sawdust presents the legendary vocalist Lucy Shelton. Ms. Shelton's performance features a ‘tasting menu’ of short works by composers with whom she has worked extensively, including Elliott Carter, Jacob Druckman, Miriam Gideon, Shulamit Ran, and George Rochberg; as well as composers whose works she provided the first major or complete recordings of — songs by Ruth Crawford Seeger and Igor Stravinsky.
In advance of this performance at National Sawdust, Lucy Shelton spoke to Ross Amico of WWFM about the repertoire she chose for what Ms. Shelton is calling her “Feast of 20th Century Song” recital. In this clip Ms. Shelton discusses the timely issues of racial identity that are dealt with in Ruth Crawford Seeger’s “Two Ricercare”.
National Sawdust
80 North 6th St in Brooklyn
Tickets are $29 for general admission, and are available at nationalsawdust.org or (646) 779-8455
