Patrick Messina / Fabrizio Chiovetta SONGS

 

SONGS

 

Gould Piano Trio CLARKE - IVES - BEACH

 

CLARKE - IVES - BEACH

 

Los Angeles Philharmonic / Gustavo Dudamel CHARLES IVES Complete Symphonies

COMPLETE SYMPHONIES

Tamara Stefanovich INFLUENCES

On her first PENTATONE album, Tamara Stefanovich presents a highly personal selection of solo works by Bach, Bartók, Ives and Messiaen. “Influences” shows how these extraordinarily original and idiosyncratic composers let themselves be inspired by the exterior world, thereby demonstrating how authenticity comes from looking outside as well as inside. The repertoire spans from Bach’s embrace of Italian musical elements in his Aria variata alla maniera italiana, Bartók’s incorporation of folk elements in his Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs, and Messiaen’s use of Hindu rhythms in Cantéyodjayâ to the collage of marching bands, sounds of trains and machinery, church hymns, ragtime and blues in Ives’ first piano sonata. In all cases, the exterior influences lead to deeply original and personal sonic galaxies. In that respect, the pieces presented here underline how identity results from a constant dialogue with our surroundings, ever changing and enriching our perceptions of ourselves and the world.

Liana Gourdjia / Matan Porat CHARLES IVES

Since I remember myself, there were sounds of violin and piano. I must have been present during hundreds of hours of scrupulous work, when my grandmother was teaching my sister the violin, long before being aware of what it all really meant. Music was all around me. My mother played the piano. Often the violin students of The Moscow Conservatory came to rehearse chez nous, and that is how I became familiar with every microscopic detail of most violin pieces she had accompanied. My mother loved accompanying, she made everyone feel confident, even in most treacherous passages. We knew she would always wait, or, in any case, do just the right thing in order to support a player. Masterful accompanists are hard to come by; they must be cherished. (Liana Gourdjia) 

Between 1902 and 1916, Charles Ives wrote sonatas for violin and piano referencing more and more frequently popular or religious melodies he heard in daily life, as if to better link serious music and the daily lives of Americans. A rare repertoire, championed by the sparkling Liana Gourdjia, who trained in Moscow, and later studied in Bloomington and Cleveland.

Sonja Leutwyler / Astrid Leutwyler / Benjamin Engeli HYMNE À LA BEAUTÈ

Hymne à la beauté' brings together rarely heard gems of chamber music in delightful arrangements for voice, violin and piano, passionately performed by the aspiring and outstanding Swiss artists Sonja Leutwyler (mezzo soprano), Astrid Leutwyler (violin) and Benjamin Engeli (piano). This programme of discoveries features captivating works by Louis Spohr, Johannes Brahms, Charles Ives, Camille Saint-Saëns, Felix Petyrek, Czesaw Marek and Ottorino Respighi. On a special commission for this CD, the Swiss composer Martin Wettstein has composed the piece 'Hymne à la beauté (hymn to beauty)' for mezzo soprano, violin and piano after a poem by Charles Baudelaire.

Andrew Rangell FROM THE EARLY 20TH...

Andrew Rangell, who has previously recorded J.S. Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, and Eastern European folk music for the Steinway & Sons label, now turns his attention to composers of the early 20th century for his latest album release.

The centerpiece of the album is Charles Ives’ Concord Sonata, whose “monumental cussedness, tenderness, and imaginative daring epitomize the character and gifts of its Yankee creator,” in Rangell’s words. Rangell makes the work his own through several idiosyncratic executional decisions, including playing on piano the optional viola part at the end of the “Emerson” movement; using his own forearm instead of a block of wood for the black-key tone clusters in “Hawthorne”; and in “Thoreau,” whistling the optional flute solo. “I hope there may be, in this species of self-reliance, something of Emerson,” writes Rangell.

Framing the Concord Sonata are three shorter works from Ives’ contemporaries, including the final piano works of Arnold Schoenberg and Carl Nielsen; and George Enescu’s “Carillon Nocturne,” written at the same time as the Concord, and which Rangell sees as a spiritual counterpart to Ives’ “Thoreau” meditation.

Hilary Hahn RETROSPECTIVE

On January 19, Hilary Hahn releases Retrospective, an album showcasing all of her recordings for Deutsche Grammophon, along with new, unedited live performance recordings, which provide the full immediacy of the concert experience.

The collection includes at least one track from each of her 12 Deutsche Grammophon albums and live recordings from Hahn's Meistersaal concert in Berlin, an event especially dedicated to her fans. The recording includes the live performance of Mozart's Sonata KV 379, in addition to Max Richter's “Mercy” and Tina Davidson's “Blue Curve of the Earth,” with pianist Cory Smythe, from In 27 Pieces: the Hilary Hahn Encores.  

Hahn made her first record at the age of 17: Hilary Hahn Plays Bach. She has gone on to release sixteen more albums on Deutsche Grammophon and Sony, in addition to an Oscar-nominated movie soundtrack and an award-winning recording for children, and win three Grammy awards. This latest release Retrospective references Hahn’s latest decade and a half of recording activity, from age 23 to the current day. 

For many years, Hahn has received unsolicited works of art from fans of all ages at concerts, which she features on her website and social media. To include her fans in this retrospective and acknowledge their longtime presence in her career, Hahn decided to use fan art for both the cover and the internal booklet. She chose pieces by professional and amateur artists in Turkey, Switzerland, Canada, and the U.S., and the artists will be compensated for the use of their work.

Christine Fraser, who drew the cover art says, “Fan art seems like a way to honor a person and to visually say, 'thank-you.' In Hilary's case, she has provided me with such a wonderful array of music that I frequently listen to while drawing or painting, I wanted to show her my appreciation by creating something to convey that message. For me, it's exciting to see an artistic exchange like this, as music has always been a huge influence in my own creative process. I am both honored and inspired by this opportunity and it is an incredible feeling to be part of a collaboration that includes artists of different age groups, with different styles, and from various locations around the world.” 

Herbert Henck CHARLES IVES Piano Sonata No. 2 "Concord, Mass., 1840-1860"

Charles Ives' "Concord" Sonata has come to be recognized as perhaps the greatest of American piano works. Largely composed over the years 1911-1915, it contains some of the most radical experiments in harmony and rhythm of its time. Pianist John Kirkpatrick, long associated with the music of Ives, gave the work its historic first performance at New York's Town Hall on January 20, 1939.

While working on the initial publication of the sonata in 1919, Ives wrote his Essays Before a Sonata, in which he discusses the genesis and content of the work. He described the sonata as his "impression of the spirit of transcendentalism that is associated in the minds of many with Concord, MA, of over a half century ago,...undertaken in impressionistic pictures of [Ralph Waldo] Emerson and [Henry David] Thoreau, a sketch of the Alcotts, and a Scherzo supposed to reflect a lighter quality which is often found in the fantastic side of [Nathaniel] Hawthorne." Ives' interest in American literature, pursued during his student days at Yale, was reawakened by his wife Harmony (whom he married in 1908) and became integral to the sonata.

The monumental, dissonant beginning of the "Emerson" movement creates the impression of a vast struggle. The famous four-note motto from the opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony emerges (as it does elsewhere in the work), representing, according to Ives, "the Soul of humanity knocking at the door of the Divine mysteries." Thick, almost orchestral sonorities dominate this longest of the sonata's four movements. Toward the end a viola makes a ghostly two-measure appearance. Ives never felt this movement to be entirely finished; numerous variants exist, and he later created a new work, Four Transcriptions from Emerson, which develops some of its ideas further.

The "Hawthorne" movement acts as a scherzo, with wild flurries of notes, a couple of brief lyrical episodes, and hints of hymn tunes and a country band. At one point, Ives directs the pianist to use a 14 3/4" piece of wood to sound an enormous tone cluster. All this is meant to evoke what the composer called Hawthorne's "wilder, fantastical adventures into the half-childlike, half-fairylike phantasmal realms."

The peaceful third movement, "The Alcotts," serves as a respite. Here Ives meditates on the calm of Concord's streets and the "trials and happiness of the family." Beethoven's Fifth reappears, this time transformed into a nostalgic tune, as Ives imagines one of the Alcotts playing on "the little old spinet-piano Sophia Thoreau gave to the Alcott children."

For the closing "Thoreau" movement, Ives creates a portrait of "an autumn day of Indian summer at Walden." The constant use of the piano's pedals creates an almost impressionistic atmosphere as the slow, enigmatic music unfolds, only raising its voice on a couple of occasions. An ostinato bass line pervades much of the second half of the movement. Thoreau's instrument, the flute, appears briefly with a lyrical melody symbolizing "a mist heard over Walden Pond." The movement ends quietly. (Chris Morrison)

Joanna MacGregor IVES Piano Sonata No. 1 BARBER Piano Sonata - Four Excursions Op. 20

This is tremendous reading of the First Piano Sonata. MacGregor's playing is thrusting, rhythmic, dynamic, and beautifully shaded. It's something special. The recording quality is fantastic too. Unfortunately, it is out of print, as are all recordings on the Collins Classics label. If you find, buy it! (The Barber couplings are outstanding as well.) If you can't find MacGregor's recording, look for Nalley's CD or one of Masselos's LPs. But MacGregor is still my top choice. (Musicweb International)

Anne Akiko Meyers / André-Michel Schub THE AMERICAN ALBUM

RCA Victor's The American Album is the most daring and ambitious program undertaken by violinist Anne Akiko Meyers for RCA Victor and features some of the most challenging and invigorating music to be found among her early playing. The showpiece here is Meyers' rendering of Charles Ives' Sonata No. 4 "Children's Day at the Camp Meeting," in which she transits seamlessly from the elementary, student-like playing at the opening through the fierce transcendentalism in the middle section to the whimsical, scherzo-like final movement. Meyers' playing matches Ives' rub-your-head-while-you-pat-your-tummy requirements without losing her sense of line or even tonal beauty. Both of these elements are very much in play in Aaron Copland's Nocturne, an early piece combined in a set of two along with Copland's quaint Ukulele Lullaby, but held out separately here; Meyers exercises supreme poise and control over the whole movement. Her reading of Copland's Sonata for violin and piano likewise emphasizes continuity and tonal beauty, but when she needs to throw off fireworks, such as in the Allegro section of the first movement, you can practically see them sparkle. Walter Piston's neo-classic Sonatina for violin & piano -- intended for, but interchangeable with a harpsichord accompaniment -- is equal parts rugged Americana and puff pastry, and Meyers interlocks with accompanist André-Michel Schub and pulls it off with aplomb. Blues, composed by respected Indiana University professor and jazz musician David Baker, provides Meyers a chance to show off some soulfulness in material in more of a let-your-hair-down mode than the more serious and rigorous fare found elsewhere on the disc. 

The packaging of this CD should not deter the listener from enjoying what was an extraordinarily brave program for a young, major-label artist want to say something about American music minus all the flag waving and bombast. Folks, never mind the cover; it's what's inside Anne Akiko Meyers' The American Album that counts. (Dave Lewis)

Hilary Hahn / Valentina Lisitsa CHARLES IVES Four Sonatas

In addition to fine program notes by our former colleague Robert Kirzinger, Hillary Hahn writes about her and her duo partner’s experiences learning and playing Ives sonatas. In two pages, Hahn says more about learning and performing Ives, and about performing music in general, than I have seen in any book. I would quote her entire essay, except that you are going to buy this disc and so can read it yourself. “A piece of music eventually has to get onstage, in front of audiences, for its performers to see its true colors.” After taking the Third Sonata around the world: “The more we played it for various audiences, the more the details and refinements Ives wrote into his score became ingrained into our musical consciousness, and the freer we became to explore additional expressive possibilities.”
I think of Hahn as a very “classical” artist, although she plays and has recorded everything from J. S. Bach to Jennifer Higdon. Her tone here is very clean and a touch dry, without a drop of romantic syrup—which would not be out of place in Ives’s sonatas. Her playing suggests the word “honesty,” fully appropriate for Ives, the Yankee traditionalist/iconoclast. Kirzinger this time: “Combining the classical tradition of Brahms and Beethoven with the vibrant, self-reliant spirit of an optimistic, growing, still-young United States …” Hahn and Valentina Lisitsa lean toward the masters but do not shortchange the Americanisms; they just make sure that the popular elements do not take over. At first hearing, these performances sound a bit conservative, but they wear well, no doubt for just that reason.
Returning to a favorite set by Gregory Fulkerson and Robert Shannon, we find more emotion, more heart-on-sleeve playing, and it works very well. But Fulkerson’s intonation is inconsistent and his tone runs to edginess. It is Shannon who provides the depth and clarity on that Bridge set; he emerges as more than a full partner. Lisitsa is by no means a cipher; she and Hahn have obviously come to full agreement—they play as one, each taking the lead as the music requires. Fulkerson’s tempi sound just right (well, I am used to them); Hahn is considerably faster in all but one of the 12 movements (a total timing of 66:24 to Fulkerson’s 79:52), and yet her performances never seem rushed. Deutsche Grammophon provides fine sound from Clubhouse, a recording studio in Rhinebeck, New York. While I won’t discard Fulkerson/Shannon, I have no hesitation recommending Hahn/Lisitsa as a first choice for this wonderful music. (Arkiv Music)

American Festival of Microtonal Music Ensemble CARRILLO - PARTCH - IVES - SCELSI - XENAKIS - HARRISON Chamber

Want to stretch your ears? This disc is one of the best introductions to the world of microtonal music. The program consists of six works, each with its own approach to defining and using tones outside standard notation and keyboard configuration. To many listeners some of these pieces will seem simply out of tune, but others will find them merely strange-sounding. Just a touch of music theory to explain things: You can get microtones by slicing the equal half-step intervals of a piano scale into narrower equal fractions. Since the equal half-steps are really a slightly-out-of tune compromise to accommodate our modern system of equal temperament, such "quarter-tone music" exaggerates the out-of-tuneness but creates remarkably tangy harmonies.
This is best illustrated here by Julian Carrillo's Prelude to Columbus, a work for voice, flute, guitar, harp, and string quartet. Carrillo, one of the true pioneers of this kind of music, uses quarter-tone (and narrower) intervals both as ultra-expressive passing tones and to create fresh, dark harmonies.
Another approach to enlarging the palette of notes is to refuse to accept the compromise of equal half-steps and instead use scales whose notes coincide with "natural" overtones. Harry Partch was the pioneer of this approach and is represented by his Finnegan's Wake songs. Soprano Meredith Bordon is the able soloist in both Partch's and Carrillo's compositions. Her recital-style voice is accurate and strong. Lou Harrison, a follower of both Partch and Charles Ives, contributes a typically attractive Tombeau for Ives, using his own adaptation of Partch's ideas.
But the stand-out performance on the disc is Ives' own Second String Quartet. Harmony Ives once instructed a copyist not to "correct the spelling" of her husband's scores. (For instance, not to turn an E-flat into D-sharp, for these notes, identical pitches in standard notation, are different pitches in a "natural overtone" scale.) She went on to explain how Charles perceived the relationship of such putatively identical notes. AFMM leader Johnny Reinhard realized that she was describing a natural-overtone scale system of 21 notes, and this is billed as the first recording to play this great string quartet in this manner. A valuable alternative to great standard readings, this performance reveals a softer, dreamier, less satiric affect.
The music discussed so far is all tonal. In Anaktoria, Iannis Xenakis writes atonal music, so all the notes are equally valid and nothing sounds out of key; that is to say it is consistently dissonant. Xenakis' sound is bold, generally harsh, without melody or traditional rhythm, but conveys a sense of power and monumentality that is exhilarating (assuming it doesn't send you running for the door instead of listening!). This is an excellent performance, aided by the precise intonation of the experienced AFMM players. Along with the Ives, Anaktoria is a primary reason for my strong recommendation to daring listeners. Giacinto Scelsi's eight-minute piece also is atonal and uses micro-steps--but like most of Scelsi's work it fails to reveal anything of real musical value. Obviously producing a labor of love, Reinhard and his musicians give exciting, committed readings. Sound is slightly studio-bound, but clean. In sum: The disc is well worth acquiring, even if you decide to skip Scelsi on subsequent playings. (Joseph Stevenson, ClassicsToday.com)

Anna Prohaska / Eric Schneider BEHIND THE LINES

Judging from the photos used to publicise Anna Prohaska’s new album – one of them is dancing merrily above this review – this gorgeously gifted soprano should have been singing this spin-off recital wearing an army great coat. She compromised with a severe black tunic and trousers with military references and a slight science-fiction cut: she could almost have been a futuristic soldier from the old Korda film Things to Come. In her case the things that came were the complete tracks of her Deutsche Grammophon CD Behind the Lines: songs from around Europe and America about war and the pity of war; songs of drummer boys, valiant grenadiers, mothers, ghosts. Joan of Arc made an appearance too, via Liszt’s dramatic scena Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher. As she launched her programme’s European tour I wondered if Prohaska’s voice – bright, lightweight and magically lyrical – would actually suit a repertoire marked with male bravado, bitter ironies and intense cries of pain. I need not have been bothered. Supported by Eric Schneider’s always conscientious piano accompaniment, she was magnificent, and very penetrating in her top register. When she sang Liszt’s repeated line about saving France I’m sure France heard her. Lower down, if the notes sped by fast, the sunshine of her voice did, it’s true, get a bit clouded over. Hugo Wolf’s Eichendorff setting "Der Soldat" certainly needed clearer projection for the words to carry their full zing. But, whatever the register traversed, Prohaska’s emotional identification and acting skills always helped fill out the song’s picture. No characterisation was better than the child thrilled with her mother going off to war in Eisler’s typically trenchant "Kriegslied eines Kindes". The grisly abandon of the child’s drum imitations; the relish when Kaiser Wilhelm’s name was intoned; the white calm that descended when the child visualised the mother wounded in hospital: every line of this wonderful song delivered a sharp sardonic kick. What joy, too, to find two artists creating a concept album and recital that actually makes musical and intellectual sense. The 25 songs about the dreams and realities of soldiering often involved big jumps in style: another of Eisler’s firecracker songs, from the Hollywood Liederbook, exploded right after one an exquisite meringue by Roger Quilter, "Fear No More the Heat o' the Sun". But in this year marking the anniversary of the First World War, every juxtaposition, sometimes bridged by songs sharing the same key, made the audience think and feel. Prohaska and Schneider’s most stunning coup was to follow the high romance of Schubert’s "Ellens Gesang", to flowery words by Sir Walter Scott, with the Expressionist screams of a poem by Georg Trakl, belligerently set by a young Wolfgang Rihm. I needed the interval to recover. Along the way, Prohaska suggested that she was impressively fluent in every language, not perhaps surprising given her own mixed family background (Austrian, English, Irish, Czech). In Rachmaninov I felt the Russian earth move. French vowels fluted impeccably in Poulenc’s "Le retour du sergent" and the peaceable encore from Fauré. American English bobbed up too in a button-holing trio of Charles Ives, including the marvellous "In Flanders Field", and the concluding duo, less musically satisfying, from Weill’s settings of Walt Whitman. But German remained her chief meat and drink, with the emotional peak probably reached in Mahler’s Wunderhorn song about the girl visited by her soldier sweetheart’s ghost: a song indeed heard many times before, but rarely with Prohaska’s degree of lyrical tenderness, or so much of the art that conceals art. Even if she’d sung this recital wearing bright pink, we’d still have been left heartbroken, lying at her feet. (Geoff Brown)