Dennis Russell Davies / Bruckner Orchester Linz PHILIP GLASS Symphony No. 11

                                                               SYMPHONY NO. 11

Keith Jarrett / Stuttgarter Kammerorchester / Dennis Russell Davies MOZART Piano Concertos K.271, 453, 466 - Adagio and Fugue K.546

Pianist Keith Jarrett and conductor Dennis Russell Davies - musical collaborators for 20 yerars - have both singled out this second round of Mozart Piano Concertos as an exceptional experience in their recording history. Jarrett: 'I feel it's some of the best work I've done. There were things happening that were magic. The orchestra was taken by surprise, Dennis was taken by surprise, I was taken by surprise.' The emphasis is on communicative interplay between the soloist and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra under the inspired direction of Davies.

Dresdner Philharmonie / Dennis Russell Davies ALFRED SCHNITTKE Symphony No. 9

Composed shortly before his death in 1998, Schnittke’s ultimate symphony – actually his very last work – is a “Ninth” in a most unusual sense: Put down with a shaky left hand by an artist who had survived four strokes and was laterally debilitated, it is an impressive triumph of spiritual energy over physical constraints. The composer’s widow Irina treated the barely-legible manuscript as a testament and was long doubtful whom to entrust with the difficult task of deciphering and reconstructing the highly expressive three movements for large orchestra (some 38 minutes of music). She finally settled on Moscow-born Alexander Raskatov, who not only provided a thorough score but, convinced that Schnittke had intended to write a fourth movement, also developed the idea to add an independent epilogue, the “Nunc Dimitis” (“Lord, let thy servant now depart into thy promis'd rest”) for mezzo soprano, vocal quartett and orchestra. It is based on the famous text by orthodox monk Starets Siluan and on verses by Joseph Brodsky, Schnittke’s favourite poet. Both pieces were given their first performances in the Dresden Frauenkirche in summer 2007 by the musicians of this world première recording which feautures long-standing ECM protagonists the Hilliard Ensemble and conductor Dennis Russell Davies. (ECM Records)

Bruckner Orchester Linz / Dennis Russell Davies ISANG YUN Sunrise Falling

Uncompromising in his life as he was in his music, Korean composer Isang Yun (1917–95) held fast to his dream of a united Korea, even as he was unjustly accused of espionage for North Korea and sentenced to imprisonment and death. From a life of unimaginable oppression and torture emerges music of raw emotional power, heard on ISANG YUN: Sunrise Falling, a centennial commemoration of Yun’s life and music from the PENTATONE Oxingale Series. Maestro Dennis Russell Davies, a longtime collaborator and advocate for Yun, curates the program and conducts the Bruckner Orchestra Linz. A cellist himself, Yun’s fascinating, highly autobiographical Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra (1975/76) anchors the album. In a live performance, cellist Matt Haimovitz tackles the controlled chaos of Yun’s score, bursting with passion, despair, and new timbral textures, such as the use of a plectrum to emulate the Korean zither, the kŏmun’go. Yun’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra No. 1 (1981) features violinist Yumi Hwang-Williams, who reflects upon her own emotional return to Korea in 2015, where she performed the work at a Festival in honor of Yun. The double album also includes the orchestral Fanfare & Memorial, and additional illuminating solo works by Yun performed by pianist Maki Namekawa, Hwang-Williams, and Haimovitz. 100 years after Isang Yun’s birth, the two Koreas still teeter on a razor’s edge, with ever more global ramifications. His music opens the gate to a lost, united land, with Yun’s own heart bleeding but ever hopeful.

JOHN CAGE The Seasons

The first appearance of the work of John Cage on ECM is cause for celebration. This recording goes beyond the artistic-nihilistic gestures and the anarchic-Zen gags to get at the essence of Cage's musical thought. Cage's playfulness can't be - and shouldn't be - muzzled, of course, but here one also experiences the beauty and the sensuality of the compositions, thanks to the input of two musicians who worked closely with the composer: conductor Dennis Russell Davies and pianist Margaret Leng Tan. The album includes a premiere recording of 'Seventy-Four' which Cage wrote especially for the American Composers Orchestra. (ECM Records)

Who would ever dream of arranging John Cage's tinkly little Suite for Toy Piano from 1948 for full symphony orchestra? Probably no one but Lou Harrison, whose virtuosic arrangement provides the most surprises on this already surprising album. Harrison not only perfectly renders the toy piano's unique timbre through combinations of plucked strings and mallet instruments, but he veers far from the toy sound while retaining the suite's spirit: he opens the second movement, for instance, with a majestic fanfare of brass and gongs. His orchestration is so adept that you forget the extremely limited pitch range of this inventive suite. Pianist Margaret Leng Tan provides a poetic rendition of the original.
We hear a dizzying range of Cage here, from the Stravinskian palette of The Seasons to 1992's Seventy-Four (in two versions) which sounds like it could be a Mahler slow movement slowed down to the extreme. Dennis Russell Davies matches Tan's pointillistic precision in Cage's Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra, and invests each performance with kaleidoscopic brilliance and full-blooded conviction. (Sarah Cahill /Classics Today)

Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana / Dennis Russell Davies BRUNO MADERNA Now, and Then

Unlike many of his radical new music colleagues, Bruno Maderna (1920-1973) had a great affection for older music, especially that of the Italian Renaissance and Early Baroque eras. But his transcriptions had little to do with the orthodoxy of so-called ‘historically informed’ interpretation. In the belief that works of art can be removed from their original contexts, he used contemporary instrumental resources to discover new meaning and a new validity in the works of old masters. His transcriptions of Gabrieli, Frescobaldi, Legrenzi, Viadana and Wassenaer are vividly conveyed by the RSI Orchestra under Dennis Russell Davies in a programme which includes Chemins V by Maderna’s good friend Luciano Berio (1925-2003). Chemins V is itself a transcription of sorts, a chamber orchestra version of Berio’s Sequenza XI. Soloist Pablo Márquez references flamenco and the guitar’s classical heritage, while the orchestra engages with the guitar on levels of expanded harmony. Dialogue develops, as Berio said, “through multiple forms of interaction, from the most unanimous to the most conflictual and estranged.” (ECM Records)

Landestheater Linz / Bruckner Orchester Linz / Dennis Russell Davies PHILIP GLASS Kepler

This recording of Philip Glass' opera Kepler comes from the world-premiere production at the Landestheater Linz in 2009. Veteran Glass associate Dennis Russell Davies leads soloists and the chorus of the theater and the Bruckner Orchester Linz in the performance. Kepler, a treatment of the life and thought of the 17th century German astronomer, returns to the epic themes of the trio of great biographical operas that initiated Glass' career as an opera composer, Einstein on the Beach, Satyagraha, and Akhnaten, and the libretto in German and Latin by Martina Winkel has some echoes of the non-linear aspect of those works. The music reflects more recent developments in the composer's style, particularly a use of denser, thicker orchestral textures, more like those of The Voyage, which Davies recorded with the Linz forces after its 2002 European premiere. The music doesn't break any new ground (except for perhaps the increased prominence Glass gives to the large percussion section) and lacks the variety that made works like Einstein and Satyagraha so striking. Particularly in the first of the two acts, the music has a relentlessly anguished, roiling quality. The second act is more musically successful, with greater textural and tonal variety. For the most part, the higher voices, among both the soloists and the chorus, sound taxed and strained by Glass' demands for so much singing in the upper register. In the title role, baritone Martin Achrainer sings with warmth and security, and gives focus to a production that is not otherwise especially vocally gratifying. Kepler may not rank among Glass' most memorable operas, which include his first three and later works like La Belle et la Bête and Orphée, but it should be of interest to the composer's fans, and it's always valuable to have a recording of a major composer's large-scale works. (Stephen Eddins)

Kim Kashkashian / Stuttgarter Kammerorchester / Dennis Russell Davies LACHRYMAE

Lachrymae was my second exposure to the brilliance of violist Kim Kashkashian, after her ECM recording of Paul Hindemith’s viola sonatas. It has long been one of my favorites of hers, as its emotional and tonal complexities are high points of the New Series catalog. The program here is modest—consisting of only three pieces—but heavy. The opening strains of Hindemith’s Trauermusik paint a grave and darkening picture. Composed in a six-hour stretch of creative fervor in the afternoon following the death of King George V in 1936, the piece mourns the fall of the monarchical figurehead by describing a musical effigy in his place. Hindemith gave the premier performance that very evening in a special BBC live broadcast. And indeed, the music has that very quality: a lost message somehow regained and spread across the airwaves in a time of great sorrow.

The album’s title work comes from Benjamin Britten and is performed here in its glorious 1975 orchestrated version (for the earlier viola/piano version, check out Kashkashian’s Elegies, also on ECM). Britten has subtitled the work “Reflections on a Song of John Dowland,” thereby lending it a rather bold intertextual potency. And while it goes without saying that Kashkashian’s soloing is first rate here, the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra casts an even more enchanting spell as it binds each motivic cell with fluid grace.

Which brings us to Krzysztof Penderecki’s Konzert für Viola und Kammerorchester. The result of a 1983 commission from the Venezuelan government in honor of freedom fighter Simón Bolívar, the concerto marks a distinct shift in the composer’s aesthetic of virtuosity. Much in contrast to the density of his earlier concertos, here Penderecki cultivates a more intimate sound palette. Yet none of the color his work is known for is lost. We still get a meticulously constructed object adorned with all manner of timbres and percussive details.

In my opinion, Lachrymae showcases some of the most powerful music written for the viola. And who better than Kashkashian to wring out every last tear from this trio of captivating scores? This music is wrought in sadness and refined through a nurturing touch from its composers and musicians alike. It is not the spirit made manifest, but the manifest made spirit. (ECM Reviews)

Kim Kashkashian / The Hilliard Ensemble / Dennis Russell Davies / Stuttgarter Kammerorchester GIYA KANCHELI Abii Ne Viderem

My first exposure to the music of Giya Kancheli, with which the composer once said, “I feel more as if I were filling a space that has been deserted,” was through Exil, which remains in my opinion the finest ECM New Series release to date. Much in contrast to the tearful beauty of that most significant chamber album, the orchestral arrangements on Abii ne viderem—drawn as they are from the same thematic sources—lend extroverted articulation to essentially “monastic” material. This music may speak the same language, but in a far more distant dialect. The Life without Christmas cycle, from which two pieces bookend the present recording, is central to the Kancheli oeuvre. Not only is it his wellspring, but it also comprises, it would seem, the overarching worldview under which he musically operates. It is the gloom of a life of displacement, the full embodiment of what Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich calls “measured gravity,” which may perhaps be likened to the heavy emptiness of Tarkovsky’s Stalker. As in said film, every gesture makes a footprint, a remnant of human presence left to sink into the submerged wasteland of a silent future.

Morning Prayers (1990) is immediately distinguished by an angelic boy soprano, whose taped voice is never fully grounded but which hovers throughout. The piano adds another haunting element, seeming to pull at the barbed ends of nostalgia even as it pushes the orchestra down a flight of descendent chords. Occasional violent moments startle us into self-awareness and only serve to underscore the power of the prayers that surround them. The most profoundly effective moment occurs when the piano echoes in a dance-like theme, the orchestral accompaniment slightly off center—a distant memory ravaged by time and circumstance.

The title of the album’s central piece, Abii ne viderem (1992/94), translates to “I turned away so as not to see.” The more one listens to it, the question becomes not what is being turned away from but what is being observed upon turning. Its paced staccato bursts are linked by a profound silence, escalating with every reiteration. This silence eventually opens into a full orchestral statement, italicized again by the piano’s audible pulse. We find ourselves caught in the middle of a larger web of sentiments, until we can no longer see ourselves for who we are but only for who we have been. Personally, I find this piece to be a touch overbearing, if only because the import of its ideas is easily crushed by the heft of its dynamic spread.

The presence of the Hilliard Ensemble rescues Evening Prayers (1991) from the didacticism of its predecessor. It is a more fully unified narrative, linked by a lingering alto flute. A gorgeous “ascension” passage marks a rare contrapuntal moment for Kancheli, while David James’s voice creates magic, ever so subtly offset by a skittering violin. Occasional bursts, some punctuated by snare drum, break the mood and ensure that our attention is held. Inevitably, the piece ends like a ship sailing into a foggy ocean, leaving behind only a blank map to show for our travels.

Don’t let any comparisons to Arvo Pärt lure you astray. Kancheli’s music, while transcendent, cannot be divorced from its rootedness in upheaval. And while this album may be filled with beautiful moments, I cannot help but feel that something gets elided in these grander arrangements. I say this with the gentlest of criticisms, and perhaps only because my first foray into this world was on such a small scale. The sound of Exil stays with me, and sometimes I just cannot hear it in any other context, and for those wishing to hear this composer for the first time I would recommend starting there. That being said, the scale of these pieces makes them no less evocative for all their historical understatements and sensitivity. And perhaps that is Kancheli’s underlying observation: that, in our current climate of convalescent ideologies, all we have to hold on to are those rare flashes of fire in which our communion with something greater has transcended the rising waters of sociopolitical corruption. (ECM Reviews)

Dennis Russell Davies / Stuttgarter Kammerorchester SHOSTAKOVICH - VASKS - SCHNITTKE

Russell Davies, who really feels his Eastern Europeans, contrasts Shostakovich's lament for Dresden and humanity with Yuri Bashmet's sensitive arrangement of Schnittke's elegiac String Trio and introduces us to a powerfully moving piece by Latvian Vasks ­ Musica dolorosa. It's a pre-glasnost work whose tonal dramas linger long in the mind. Benefiting from charismatically brilliant playing, poetic phrasing and spiritiually involving bass resonances, this is an anthology not to be missed.' (Alex Orga, BBC Music Magazine) 

'The lamenting climaxes of the Vasks make an unforgettable impression here, and the link with Shostakovich is even more pertinent in the Schnittke where memories of music of the distant past (Russian chant, Schubert, Mahler) are paraded before the listener like shadows in the night. Throughout the three works, the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra deliver highly charged performances, and the recording balances warmth of tone with admirable clarity of detail.' (Erik Levi, Classic CD)

'Among recent releases from ECM, the stunning label that records the works of Pärt and others, is Dolorosa, a collection of three works by 20th century dissident composers from the former Soviet Union. These works are profoundly moving testaments to the power of the human spirit to resist oppression. Vasks' title cut, and the recording's centrepiece, was written to both express and 'console' the suffering of the Latvian people. Admittedly bleak, at times very dramatic, it is also gorgeous ­ a near-perfect expression from a 'saddened optimist' searching for a way out of the crisis of his time, towards affirmation, towards faith. Music grounded in the mire of real life that can lift the soul toward the transcendent.' (Dwight Ozard, Prism) 

Kim Kashkashian / Dennis Russell Davies GIYA KANCHELI Vom Winde beweint ALFRED SCHNITTKE Konzert für Viola und Orchester

This powerful record brings together two of the most seminal works for viola and orchestra of the twentieth century. Although these pieces are as different as they are similar, together they form a distinct balance of sentiment and execution.

Giya Kancheli: Vom Winde beweint (Mourned by the Wind)
Kancheli’s self-styled “liturgy” is an exercise in patience and surrender. Its opening slam of piano chords is a big bang in and of itself, and sets the stage for the soloist’s epic journey. Wilfred Mellers, in his liner notes, posits the viola’s emergence from such chaos as the “birth of consciousness.” And indeed, one can extrapolate from its startling abruptness the inklings of a life yet lived, fresh and devoid of self-awareness in the greater void of silence. The orchestra skirts the periphery, gradually uniting with the soloist. This contrast mimics the arbitrary stability of human values—at once sacred and mutable—so that moments of resolution always tread a downward slope. Luminous winds, a cosmic harpsichord, and trails of harmonics characterize the first movement. Brief horn blasts introduce the second, throughout which the viola wanders without fortitude into a minefield of piano and timpani, singing without carrying a tune. The harpsichord again works its galactic magic, feeding stardust into the viola’s arterial core. A passage of intense and sustained volume leads into an epic swan song. The third movement is brought forth on the strings of the harpsichord, the viola a mere flit of wings in the surrounding air. An oboe threads the hesitation like the beginning of an incomplete statement. The fourth movement is a violent implosion and balances out the first with its selfish gaze. As with seemingly every Kancheli composition, it ends as quietly as an evening breeze. One hears the rustling of leaves in the distance, only to find that it was a trick of the ears all along. Vom Winde beweint is rich with sharp dynamic peaks that are short-lived and sporadic, the hallmarks of an ode to process over progress.

Alfred Schnittke: Konzert für Viola und Orchester
For this monumental work, Schnittke has chosen to invert the standard concerto form, sandwiching an Allegro Molto between two Largos. The piece opens with a viola solo held aloft by shimmering orchestral waves. Every melodic line is like the root of an ever-growing tree of voices. In the second movement, the viola skips across a landscape of consonances and dissonances at the behest of a passively insistent harpsichord. Schnittke maintains the fascinating sense of rhythm and energy that distinguishes his faster turns, scratching at the surface of a larger unfathomable world. Harpsichord, flute, and viola congregate in a Mozartean danse macabre at the movement’s center. The strangely wooden pizzicato toward the end haunts as the piano jumps impatiently on its lower notes. The last movement gives the viola a demanding solo, which is eventually overtaken by horns and winds. A deep pause marks a change in intent. The harpsichord once again comes to the fore, the final cameo of a strong orchestral cast, before bowing to a beautifully dissonant double stop from the viola.

Schnittke would suffer a stroke just ten days after completing the score for his concerto.* Said the composer: “Like a premonition of what was to come, the music took on the character of a restless chase through life (in the second movement) and that of a slow and sad overview of life on the threshold of death (in the third movement).” Such narrative approaches to one’s own work speak of a pragmatic mind that seeks order in the flow of a creative life. Yet rather than a premonition, I experience the concerto as an affirmation of what one already knows. If Kancheli’s is an unanswered question, Schnittke’s is an unquestioned answer.

This is a profoundly emotional album, by turns confrontational and mournfully resplendent. Kashkashian brings her usual heartrending strength to even the subtlest gestures and is never afraid to betray the fragility of her pitch. The orchestras, under the direction of Dennis Russell Davies, are forces to be reckoned with that scintillate in a slightly distanced mix. A benchmark recording in all respects. (Tyran Grillo)

GIYA KANCHELI Caris Mere

I waxed lyrical, or tried to, about Kancheli’s Morning Prayers and Evening Prayers in April 1995. But I can’t compete with Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich’s booklet-essay for ECM’s companion disc containing the other two Prayers in the cycle. He claims a post-avant-garde historical significance for Kancheli which some may find hyperbolic, and which surely reads more into the music than the composer himself intended. Yet the high-flown imagery is not inappropriate: “In such trackless terrain, history seems to be arrested and sedimented in remembered traces of lost beauty, bygone battles, shattered happiness, and spent suffering... Like the Eskimos whose life experience has led to some three dozen linguistic descriptions of the all-pervasive white of their environment, Kancheli’s mournful expressivity gleans untold variations and nuances from the ‘white’ of his tonal environment.” That’s all well said, and though I can’t share the author’s apparent conviction that Kancheli’s recent work has the expressive power and innovative boldness of his remarkable symphonies from the 1970s, the new disc will certainly appeal to those who have already caught the Kancheli ‘bug’.
Midday Prayers and Night Prayers complete the cycle somewhat cryptically entitled A Life without Christmas. They are meditations on snatches of biblical text, as is the solo viola piece Caris Mere (Georgian for “After the Wind”). Night Prayers was originally composed for string quartet (are the Kronos Quartet, to whom it was dedicated, getting round to a recording?), and to my ears the revised arrangement, superimposing soprano saxophone, doesn’t sound entirely convincing. This may come as a disappointment to those expecting Jan Garbarek to emulate his wonderful collaboration with the Hilliard Ensemble on “Officium” (ECM, 10/94).
In Midday Prayers Kancheli’s familiar polarized extremes of near-hibernation and manic activity are faithfully captured by performers and engineers. So too, unfortunately, is a certain amount of traffic noise, which rather breaks the spell in passages of extreme hush. Kim Kashkashian plays her short solo piece to the manner born.
Not a top priority issue, then, but one which makes a valuable addition to the discography of a distinctive voice in contemporary music.' (Gramophone)

PHILIP GLASS / DAVID BOWIE / BRIAN ENO Heroes - Low Symphonies

The "Low" Symphony, composed in the Spring of 1992, is based on the record "Low" by David Bowie and Brian Eno first released in 1977. The record consisted of a number of songs and instrumentals and used techniques which were similar to procedures used by composers working in new and experimental music. As such, this record was widely appreciated by musicians working both in the field of "pop" music and in experimental music and was a landmark work of that period.

I've taken themes from three of the instrumentals on the record and, combining them with material of my own, have used them as the basis of three movements of the Symphony. Movement one comes from "Subterraneans," movement two from "Some Are" and movement three from "Warszawa."

My approach was to treat the themes very much as if they were my own and allow their transformations to follow my own compositional bent when possible. In practice, however, Bowie and Eno's music certainly influenced how I worked, leading me to sometimes surprising musical conclusions. In the end I think I arrived at something of a real collaboration between my music and theirs. (Philip GlassNew / York City, 1992)

Heroes, like the Low Symphony of several years ago, is based on the work of Bowie and Eno. In a series of innovative recordings made in the late 70's, David and Brian combined influences from world music, experimental avant-garde, and rock and roll and thereby redefined the future of popular music.

The continuing influence of these works has secured their stature as part of the new "classics" of our time. Just as composers of the past have turned to music of their time to fashion new works, the work of Bowie and Eno became an inspiration and point of departure of symphonies of my own. (Philip Glass)

Dresdner Philharmonie / Dennis Russell Davies ALFRED SCHNITTKE Symphony No. 9 - ALEXANDER RASKATOV Nunc dimittis

Composed shortly before his death in 1998, Schnittke’s ultimate symphony – actually his very last work – is a “Ninth” in a most unusual sense: Put down with a shaky left hand by an artist who had survived four strokes and was laterally debilitated, it is an impressive triumph of spiritual energy over physical constraints.

The composer’s widow Irina treated the barely-legible manuscript as a testament and was long doubtful whom to entrust with the difficult task of deciphering and reconstructing the highly expressive three movements for large orchestra (some 38 minutes of music). She finally settled on Moscow-born Alexander Raskatov, who not only provided a thorough score but, convinced that Schnittke had intended to write a fourth movement, also developed the idea to add an independent epilogue, the “Nunc Dimitis” (“Lord, let thy servant now depart into thy promis'd rest”) for mezzo soprano, vocal quartet and orchestra. 

It is based on the famous text by orthodox monk Starets Siluan and on verses by Joseph Brodsky, Schnittke’s favourite poet. Both pieces were given their first performances in the Dresden Frauenkirche in summer 2007 by the musicians of this world première recording which feautures long-standing ECM protagonists the Hilliard Ensemble and conductor Dennis Russell Davies. (ECM Records)

Stuttgarter Kammerorchester / Dennis Russell Davies WITOLD LUTOSLAWSKI - BÉLA BÁRTOK Musique Funèbre

Conductor Dennis Russell Davies leads the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra in a program of music by, and dedicated to, Béla Bartók. The disc opens in the latter vein with Witold Lutosławski’s Musique funèbre, composed between 1954 and 1958 for the 10th anniversary of Bartók’s death. The title, often erroneously translated as “Funeral music,” is better rendered as “Music of mourning,” and connotes homage to one of Lutosławski’s greatest inspirations, if not the greatest, for he never dedicated a work to another composer. Although the piece’s overarching development resembles Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, the opening cellos closely prefigure the robust, overlapping memorial of Henryk Górecki’s Symphony No. 3, even if they do chart a vastly different geography, from collective to individual landing. That initial feeling of density and weight gives way to a dark airiness. Motives bend and sway—at moments pliant, at others sharply angled. Darting violins bring us closer to a sense of inner turmoil and bold reckoning. The Bartókian flavor is clear yet faged, and falls back where it began: in the solemn cellos. Ashes to ashes.

As Wolfgang Sandner observes in this album’s liner notes, for Bartók the music of Hungary’s peasants “was the source of a radical new musical system, not material for reverting to a nostalgic transfiguration of the original sounds.” In light of this, we might reckon his Romanian Folk Dances of 1917 not as an archival storehouse but, more like Estonian composer Veljo Tormis’s choral arrangements, as an experiment made fresh by extant impulses. While for me the reference recording by Midori and Robert McDonald (1992, Sony Classical) gets to the core of the music in ways I’ve not since heard, the Stuttgarters’ soaring performance of this 1937 arrangement for string orchestra by Arthur Willner articulates the orbits of its moons with surprising precision. A delicate piece of nevertheless sweeping proportions, it moves by a hand unseen. The solo violin stands out like a red rose among a field of black, its changes organic, even a touch mournful, in the present setting. As the mosaic evolves, it gives light to the translucent cells of its becoming. The flute-like strings in the enlivening finale give us reason to rejoice in the shadows.

So, too, does the Divertimento. Composed 1939 in dedication to Paul Sacher (who commissioned the work) and the Basler Kammerorchester, it achieves novel balance of spiritedness and restraint under Davies’s direction. Its unmistakable beginning lures with its insistent rhythm but would just as soon fragment into multiple galaxies of melodic thought. There is a smoothness of execution in the tutti passages and a paper-thin delicacy to the solo strings. While one might expect that energy to be sustained, it waxes and wanes in a most natural, thought-out-loud sort of way that lends especial insight into Bartók’s compositional process. The second movement proceeds slowly at first, but then, with the coming of dawn, stretches its gravity. The lower and higher strings forge an implicit harmony, an acknowledgment of the invisible forces connecting them both. The contrast between double basses and violins is one not of tone but of purpose: the lowers an unstable fundament, the uppers a firmament in turmoil. This chaos they share as if it were blood. The final movement returns the promise of that dance with wit. There are, of course, intensely lyrical and slow-moving parts, with the violin carving surface relief, but always returning with that whirlwind of fire.

In the wake of this dynamism, selections from Bartók’s 27 Two- and Three-Part Choruses (1935-41) come as something of a breather. They are not adaptations of folksongs, but were composed in such a style at the behest of Zoltán Kodály. With evocative titles like “Wandering,” “Bread-baking,” and “Jeering,” each is a vignette of imagined life. A snare drum pops its way through the choral textures, by turns martial and lyrical, adding colors of interest throughout. And while these pieces hardly hold a candle to his a capella choruses (the orchestral writing feels at points superfluous), they provide welcome contrast to the veils that precede it with gift of vision.

Keith Jarrett / Dennis Russell Davies MOZART Piano Concertos K. 467, 488, 595 - Masonic Funeral Music K. 477 - Symphony in G minor K. 550

Keith Jarrett evidently has carte blanche to do anything he wants at Manfred Eicher's ECM label -- and thus encouraged, he takes ample risks in a field that is swamped with able and formidable competitors. Mozart's piano concertos may be relatively easy to play but they are notoriously hard to interpret -- that's where the true music-making comes in -- and brave intentions aside, Jarrett cannot do very much with this music beyond playing the notes accurately and cleanly. He brings nearly nothing of his own to the "Concerto No. 23"; much of it is precious and monochromatic, though he finally does generate some animation in the "Finale." Jarrett's tempo for the opening movement of the "Concerto No. 27" isn't out of line, it just seems much slower than it actually is due to his stolid, doggedly literal playing; the larghetto is actually a bit fast, and the rondo lacks point and wit. The adagio movement of the "Concerto No. 21" has the tune that became famous after being used in the film Elvira Madigan yet Jarrett resists poetry of any kind, pounding out the chords in the left hand stiffly. Next to Artur Schnabel's old yet still-treasurable recordings of pointed, imaginative eloquence -- or Daniel Barenboim's renderings of expression and depth -- Jarrett is simply a non-starter in numbers 21 and 27. Another problem is the way Jarrett's piano is miked; it sounds distant, with little in the way of dynamic contrast, surrounded with a slight halo of reverb. One wonders if the engineering is actually fighting Jarrett's sporadic attempts to characterize the music. Dennis Russell Davies and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra come off somewhat better in the deal, with streamlined, flowing, somewhat soft-focused introductions influenced ever so slightly by period-instrument bowing practices that became prevalent in the late 20th century. But at least they use modern instruments, for which many now turned off by grating period-instrument recordings should be thankful. The two-CD set is filled out by Davies leading sturdy, moderately paced, very well-played performances of Mozart's magnificent "Symphony No. 40" and the dolorous "Masonic Funeral Music." (Richard S. Ginell)

Keith Jarret SAMUEL BARBER Piano Concerto Op. 38 - BÉLA BARTÓK Piano Concerto No. 3 - KEITH JARRETT Tokyo Encore

For much of the 1980s, Keith Jarrett balanced his improvisational activities with performances of classical music and contemporary composition. On this disc, with concert recordings from 1984 and 1985, he is heard playing Samuel Barber’s Piano Concerto op. 38 and Béla Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 3, and rising to the challenges of these major works. The New York Times praised Jarrett’s playing of the Barber with Dennis Russell Davies in this period (“a sinewy, vigorously lyrical performance … both sensitive and strong”), and the Bartók with Kazuyoshi Akiyama was most enthusiastically received in Japan. After the Tokyo Bartók performance Jarrett returned alone to the stage of the Kan-i Hoken Hall to play a touching improvised encore, also documented on this recording. The album includes liner notes by Keith Jarrett and Paul Griffiths. (This historical album of music by Barber, Bartók and Jarrett is one of two albums issued on May 8th, Keith Jarrett’s 70th birthday, the other album being Creation with new recordings of improvised solo piano.)

GIYA KANCHELI Diplipito

“If you can imagine a flower that makes its way through asphalt, that’s exactly what you find in my compositions. In my works I’m always trying to get the flower through the asphalt.”
Giya Kancheli

The present disc features premiere recordings made – as has been the case with all of Kancheli’s ECM recordings – with the participation of the composer. “Valse Boston”, written in 1996, bears two dedications, one to its conductor and pianist Dennis Russell Davies, the other to the composer’s wife (“with whom I have never danced”). If Kancheli has made a point of avoiding the dancefloor he has created a piece that moves uniquely, if not in ¾ time, and makes sometimes devastating use of the abrupt dynamic contrasts that have become almost a trademark. Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich in the liner notes:

“The metaphor of ‘dancing’ should be interpreted less as a profound than as an ironic comment – but it is also an allusion to the vast distance that separates Kancheli’s music from the apotheosis or demonic fury of the dance. The Boston Waltz is generally associated with the louche, slightly faded realm of urbane entertainment; for Kancheli this is at most a ‘distant echo’ buried beneath the rubble of the ages.” Kancheli has, however, said that he was inspired, in writing this piece, by the visual image of Davies conducting this piece from the piano stool, half standing, gesturing with a free arm or nods of the head while playing; this was also a dance of sorts. Jungheinrich: “Three-quarter time is never used as the vehicle, elixir and essence of dance-like energy. What does occur at the beginning is a slow triplet movement; but instead of introducing spirited movement, the consistently gentle sonorities retain a heavy, clinging, glutinous quality. The first violins seem to want to counter the persistent, grinding slowness of the tempo with their own abandoned song, a mercurial line in the highest register.”

Davies and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra have included “Valse Boston” in their touring programmes on both sides of the Atlantic. The Chicago Tribune wrote, “Don't let the innocuous title fool you: Giya Kancheli's ‘Valse Boston’ is a powder keg of a piece. It is a secular prayer veering between extremes of dynamics, tempo and mood. One moment the piano is goading the strings to produce angry, stabbing dissonances. The next moment, it is quieting the orchestra with tiny fragments of waltz-time, deceptively merry. Nobody conjures troubled landscapes in sound like Kancheli. He has given us a bleak, very Eastern view of modern existence, but the effect is cleansing.”

“Diplipito, written in 1997, is named for the little, high-tuned Georgian drums – in the range of the darbouka or the bongos – that are frequently used to accompany dancing. And the percussive syllables that Kancheli gives to American countertenor Derek Lee Ragin are a kind of concrete poetry inspired by the drum’s rhythm patterns. Giya Kancheli was greatly impressed by Ragin in 1999 when he sang the world première of the composer’s “And farewell goes out sighing”, alongside Gidon Kremer with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra under Kurt Masur and the countertenor was an essential choice for the recording of “Diplipito”, where he is partnered with Thomas Demenga. Ragin makes his New Series debut here while Demenga has been a mainstay of the label since its inauguration.

Jungheinrich: “The vocal part in ‘Diplipito’ finds an equal partner in the solo cello. The orchestra rarely play tutti, there are no winds or brass at all, and the guitar, piano and percussion come in individually, functioning alternately as solo and secondary presences. The terse, tentative figures in the cello contrast with the cluster-like chords typifying the piano line. For long stretches, the sonic space is chromatically measured – often in small, careful interval steps…. The mood of tranquillity, even latent immobility, that dominates the first half of the piece is suspended by the entry of a vigorous ornamental figure on the guitar (which is immediately picked up by the cello), followed by several explosive fortissimo passages. The soft murmur of a bongo rhythm increases the restlessness. This is the preparation for the final phase, the disembodiment of sonic materiality.”  (ECM Records)

Dennis Russell Davies / Radio Symphonieorchester Wien GIYA KANCHELI Trauerfarbenes Land

Giya Kancheli's fifth album for ECM New Series is the first to be devoted exclusively to the Georgian composer's orchestral music, and features two extended pieces of often volcanic power that bear out the judgement of Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin: "Kancheli is an ascetic with the temperament of a maximalist, a smouldering Vesuvius."

The writing of Trauerfarbenes Land was the direct outcome of the highly successful initial collaboration between Kancheli, Dennis Russell Davies, and the orchestra Davies then conducted, the Orchester der Beethovenhalle Bonn, a recording documented on "Liturgy: vom Winde beweint" (ECM New Series 1471). At the end of that session the Bonn orchestra commissioned a new work from Kancheli, and Trauerfarbenes Land was subsequently given its first performance in Bonn in December 1994. Davies, one of the most ardent champions of Kancheli's music, now presents the premiere recording of the work with the Vienna Radio Symphony, the orchestra for which he has been chief conductor since 1996.

"A combination of sensuality and artistic precision, vitalism and rigour pervades every fibre of Kancheli's work," writes Wolfgang Sandner in the CD booklet notes. And if the composer's choice of titles invites extra-musical associations – critics have found it hard to resist the temptation to interpret his work geopolitically – the music itself "like Beethoven's is 'more an expression of feeling than painting'...These are self-contained works of art, not agitprop." They are, moreover, often named after the event. Kancheli found the title Trauerfarbenes Land ("Country the colour of mourning"), for instance, in a newspaper article about Georgia while he was putting the finishing touches to his score.

Epic in scope – maximal music indeed, to use Shchedrin's term – Trauerfarbenes Land emphasises Kancheli's penchant for extreme dynamic contrasts as it "unfolds like an austere musical procession", building in intensity until "single colours and contours can no longer be recognised." The words of the Los Angeles Weekly in praise of Kancheli's Caris Mere album are applicable here, too: "This is thrilling music, mysterious and distant at one moment, erupting with an astonishing blaze of sound the next. If you treasure the films of Andrei Tarkovsky, the late quartets of Shostakovich, or the great works of Ligeti, this is your music as well."

...à la Duduki is named for the reed instrument of the Caucasus whose piercing, wailing tone is basic to the Georgian folk tradition, but the inspiration for the piece is traceable to a trumpet player, Karlen Avetisian, who contributed his "duduki-esque" trumpet sound to a piece Kancheli wrote for radio in the mid-1960s. Avetisian wasn't a professional musician, he played mostly at weddings, but Kancheli liked his sound, and enticed him to the studio. The old man made several passes at the written notes but the essence of his sound seemed to disappear when confronted with a score. Finally he asked if he could try to improvise, and the music came alive. The trumpeter's playing had an emotional persuasiveness that Kancheli never forgot. When asked to write a piece for the orchestra of Mannheim's National Theatre, he went back and listened again to his tapes from 30 years earlier and rescored that trumpet solo for five brass players, reintegrating it in his new composition. The intermingling of brass and strings in this composition also brings out quite clearly Kancheli's affection for jazz; there are, intentionally, some parallels here with Gil Evans's orchestral arrangements for Miles Davis, always a touchstone for the Georgian composer. But there is much more to be heard. Wolfgang Sandner: "The dialoguing of brass quintet and full orchestra in ...à la Duduki is playfully reminiscent of the Baroque tradition. [Elsewhere] melisma follows melisma, recalling beautiful oriental script. No note is attacked directly, as it would have been in Trauerfarbenes Land: appogiaturas, sighing motifs and ornaments continually obscure the direction of the melodic flow."

David Geringas / Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien / Dennis Russell Davies ERKKI-SVEN TÜÜR Flux

ECM follows up its astonishing debut of Estonian composer Erkki-Sven Tüür with a program of further deconstructions. With his architectonic shovel, Tüür burrows out an idiomatic hovel for himself in the sands of today’s placid musical shores. Every motif is its own voice, building to powerful fruition from the smallest of sparks. To start, the Symphony No. 3 (1997) clicks its tongue with a delicate cymbal. Like the corona of a jazz dream, it wavers through a swarm of failed bass lines and reeds. The lower strings ascend in a brief march before being drowned by a vibraphone. The ensuing cloudbursts recall the composer’s wintry Crystallisatio. Percussion becomes more pronounced as stuttering rhythms break the first movement into pieces. In the second movement, a glockenspiel ruptures the high strings as a snare hit unleashes a brass menagerie. The flute emerges for a solo passage as strings process gently in the background. The string writing recalls Tüür’s Passion, albeit transposed to a different key. The symphony ends with a single note from the vibraphone, dripping like a water clock into mortal darkness.

Tüür’s aesthetic is so fractured that the concerto would seem an anachronism, but his Concerto for Cello and Orchestra (1996) epitomizes the very essence of his craft, planting as it does a single generative seed firmly in the soil of introspection. His background as a rock musician comes through noticeably in his bold rhythmic choices, while the piece’s single-movement structure ensures that its signals remain explicitly contained. The vibraphone reprises its vital role, oozing like plasma from an open wound. It is not the soloist that arises from within the orchestra, but much the reverse. And as the vibraphone weaves its way deftly through the orchestra’s open spaces, a single note on strings hints at relaxation. Tüür gravitates toward higher notes here, so that even in descending motifs the apex gains precedence as pedal point. He ends with a celestial cluster, a galaxy spinning out of control until it implodes.

Lighthouse (1997), for string orchestra, is one of Tüür’s most cinematic pieces, which, if we are to take the title literally, would seem to render its eponymous structure from the outside in. We track its light first, and the afterimage it leaves on the screen, only to be given view of the mechanism that turns and amplifies its voice in the night like a siren to the dark ships of its surrender. The lush scoring painfully picks apart and rebuilds the lighthouse, turning it inside out, so that its column is now made of light and its reassuring beam becomes the mortar of its foundation, sweeping its potent arm through the air and knocking everything in its path. This is not a violent piece but a purposeful one, sustained by architectural consciousness. It tells its story in hefty chunks, if always through the fog of recollection. Its agitation enacts a sort of tragedy, a body descending from its topmost rail, flailing its appendages helplessly before the sand engulfs its last breath. Yet the music is anything but morbid, only mournful in the realization of its own complicity in the ending of a life, and the beginning of a new one.

Tüür’s aphasic approach has made him one of the most sought-after composers of our generation, and not without good reason. His stable foundations allow him to build teetering creations that never quite tumble. His music works very much like thought, constantly rationalizing its decisions in hindsight. The most transcendent passages are always stirred so that they become muddled without obscuring individual colors. Despite the seemingly disparate elements of these mosaics, Tüür’s is not a process that imposes itself upon the elements at hand. Rather, it recognizes and values its inner life and the varied ways in which one can externalize it.