Vanessa Wagner INLAND

 

INLAND

 

Melanie Pappenheim / School House 6 Ensemble / Howard Moody / Sophie Harris JULIAN MARSALL Out of the Darkness

OUT OF THE DARKNESS

 

Trio Mediaeval SOIR, DIT-ELLE

SOIR, DIT-ELLE

 

Trio Mediaeval A WORCESTER LADYMASS

 A WORCESTER LADYMASS

Sentieri Selvaggi plays GAVIN BRYARS & PHILIP GLASS

Sentieri Selvaggi, made up of some of the brightest young Italian musicians to emerge around the turn of the millennium, has devoted itself to a wide range of contemporary music, ranging stylistically from Glass to Stockhausen. The two eight-minute pieces recorded here are taken from the full-length 1999 album Musica Coelestis, which included 12 pieces. The outstanding sound is clean and the instruments are vividly differentiated. The performance of the Glass is a reminder of the variety of interpretations that can be brought to minimalist repertoire. Glass and his ensemble perform Façades with rhythmic strictness, but with linear expressiveness; in fact, it comes across as one of the composer's more overtly emotional pieces. Sentieri Selvaggi performs it with absolute strictness with both rhythmic and dynamic contours. This makes for a square-ish performance, but it works on its own terms. It also tends to be somewhat bass-heavy, which has the advantage of making Glass' subtle changes in the lower string parts clearly audible. Bryars' Sub Rosa, for an unusually quirky ensemble of timbrally disparate instruments, is something of a remix for live performers of "Throughout," a song from Bill Frisell's 1984 album, In Line. Sentieri Selvaggi's recording is superior to Bryars' own murky version largely because of the splendidly clear sound quality that allows the strangeness of the ensemble to be savored and wondered at. It's a short CD, but one that should interest fans of Bryars and Glass. (Stephen Eddins)

GAVIN BRYARS Vita Nova

Vita Nova includes four pieces by Bryars in which ECM appeared to be, at least partially, attempting to cash in on the new age-y vogue of the early '90s for the sort of quasi-medieval music made relatively popular by assorted singing monks, Arvo Pärt, and the Hilliard Ensemble with Jan Garbarek. Indeed, that latter group is on hand here to perform "Glorious Hill," and the results are as blandly attractive as the listener might guess given the following recipe: Take a mushily mystical text (in Latin), set to vaguely medieval sounding music, and spice with a dash of chromaticism and a pinch of minimalism. It's all handsomely produced and sung but terribly precious and overly palatable. How far Bryars had come from the rich reality of the tramp singing "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet" in his masterpiece from the '70s. Unfortunately, the remainder of the disc also fails to deliver much more than prettiness. The longest composition, "Four Elements," falls into the same gauzily impressionistic, rudderless rut of much of his '90s work, and the introduction of David James, the same countertenor used in "Incipit Vita Nova," seems tacked on just to fit in with the ostensible "medieval" feel of the album. The same applies to the use of a recorder on the final piece, "Sub Rosa." That work, however, does contain glimmers of the unique beauty and clarity of Bryars' earlier work as found on Hommages. But those instances are far too meager to be able to recommend this recording to anyone but listeners attempting to slowly crawl their way out of the new age morass.

(Brian Olewnick)

GAVIN BRYARS The Fifth Century

The music of English composer Gavin Bryars has long managed the distinction of being both “accessible and defiantly personal” (The New York Times). A deep yet unsentimental emotional resonance and a patient, contemplative view of time – whether relating to harmonic rhythm or human experience – are complementary characteristics that run through his instrumental, vocal and theatrical catalog like a red thread, the composer inspired by disparate spirits from Wagner and Satie to Cage and Silvestrov. The ECM New Series released multiple recordings of Bryars’ music in the 1980s and early ’90s, including the classic albums After the Requiem and Vita Nova. The first full ECM album from Bryars in decades is The Fifth Century, which includes the seven-part title work: a slowly evolving – yet immediately involving – setting of words by 17th-century English mystic Thomas Traherne, performed by the mixed choir of The Crossing with saxophone quartet PRISM. The album also features Two Love Songs, luminous a cappella settings of Petrarch for the women of The Crossing. (ECM Records)