Trilok Gurtu / Juan Manuel Cañizares / Marcus Weiss / Miquel Bernat / Musikfabrik MAURICIO SOTELO Wall of Light - Music for Sean Scully

 

WALL OF LIGHT - MUSIC FOR SEAN SCULLY

 

Sophie Schafleitner / Lorelei Dowling / Klangforum Wien / Peter Rundel / Stefan Asbury LIZA LIM Extinction Events and Dawn Chorus

EXTINCTION EVENTS AND DAWN CHORUS

John-Edward Kelly / Tapiola Sinfonietta KALEVI AHO Chamber Symphonies Nos. 1 - 3

The focus of Kalevi Aho’s output lies on large-scale orchestral works, and his work-list includes fifteen symphonies to date, composed between 1969 and 2010. Although the Finnish composer is famously lavish as an orchestrator, and often invites rare guests such as the heckelphone into his orchestra, the scores of Aho’s three chamber symphonies are much more economic in scale. But although composed for some twenty strings in all, and of more modest durations than for instance the 50-minute Eighth Symphony for organ and orchestra, they bear eloquent proof of the composer’s aim of exploiting to the full the expressive capabilities of a string orchestra. Consequently these works are highly demanding for the players; not because virtuosity has been an end in itself, but for reasons of maximum expressivity. For Chamber Symphony No.3, the composer decided to include a solo part for alto saxophone, written for John-Edward Kelly who also performs it here. In his liner notes, Aho describes the piece as ‘a hybrid of chamber symphony and saxophone concerto’ and relates how he was inspired by Arabic music, and more particularly by a certain ‘unique melodic heterophony’ resulting from different musicians playing the same melodic pattern, but each of them with slight differences. Performing these scores are the eminent strings of the Tapiola Sinfonietta, an ensemble which has earned high praise from reviewers around the world for its recordings, ranging from Arvo Pärt to Saint-Saëns and C.M. von Weber. The conductors Jean-Jacques Kantorow and Stefan Asbury are both close collaborators of the orchestra, and the presence of the composer during the recordings vouches for the authenticity of these performances. (BIS Records)

JONATHAN HARVEY – BEAT FURRER – GEORGES APERGHIS – UNSUK CHIN Sprechgesänge

"Sprechgesänge" – "Speech Songs" run throughout the program of the first CD in the new “edition musikFabrik” on WERGO: Voices try out their instrumental possibilities, and instruments savor their vocal potential.

In his “meditation on the nature of language as sound,” Jonathan Harvey alludes directly to the “inventor” of the Sprechgesang, Arnold Schönberg. Beat Furrer provides the protagonist of Arthur Schnitzler’s "Fräulein Else" with several different “language spaces” – like an encephalogram, he records the oscillations of an interior monologue. Georges Aperghis teaches a clarinet to “babble,” and Unsuk Chin gives an answer to a question from Georges Perec: What might it sound like to throw rotten tomatoes at singers of the species "cantatrix sopranica"? In dreamlike fashion, Chin causes multiple musics of various styles and periods to swirl through one another in a furious piece.

The live recordings document highlights from the concert series "musikFabrik im WDR", with noted soloists such as David Cordier, Salome Kammer and Anu and Piia Komsi, and the conductors Stefan Asbury, Sian Edwards, Beat Furrer and Peter Rundel. Two members of Ensemble musikFabrik, Carl Rosman and Peter Veale, provide evidence of the ensemble’s soloistic qualities. (wergo.de)

Ensemble Intercontemporain UNSUK CHIN Akrostichon - Wortspiel

In 2004, Korean-born composer Unsuk Chin pulled off what might seem impossible -- she won the prestigious Grauemeyer Award for her Violin Concerto with no more representation in terms of commercial recordings than a single electro-acoustic piece included on an obscure compilation more than 10 years old. Commonly, to be awarded such a grand distinction, at least some presence in terms of recording is necessary, but the inherent qualities of Chin's music prevailed. If Chin felt somewhat slighted before about the lack of availability of her music on disc, Deutsche Grammophon's Unsuk Chin: Akrostichon-Wortspiel more than makes up for it. Here are four of her works, Akrostichon-Wortspiel (1991-1993), Fantaisie mécanique (1994-1997), Xi (1997-1998), and the Double Concerto for piano, percussion and ensemble (2002), in splendiferous performances by the Ensemble InterContemporain under Kazushi Ono, Patrick Davin, David Robertson, and Stefan Asbury. 

Chin speaks the language of European avant-garde as to the manner born, but does something with it that sets her apart from her peers, demonstrating absorption of pertinent musical ideas long forgotten or abandoned by most of them. Akrostichon-Wortspiel, sung with uncanny virtuosity by Finnish soprano Piia Komsi, features a vocal line that combines a quirky approach to melody with the verbal concretism associated with Dada and sets it to an appropriately wacky instrumental complement. Chin stated, "my music is a reflection of my dreams," and indeed, Fantaisie mécanique is like a dream about a complex gadget made of innumerable gears and cogs taking itself apart, as in a Quay Brothers animation. Xi is scored for chamber ensemble and electronics, and is scored so lightly that it is impossible to tell where one starts and the other ends. The opening of the Double Concerto contains no electronics, but one would swear that they are there, so diaphanous and elusive is the texture. The tonal language of the Double Concerto is reminiscent of impressionism, and the sound of it, like that of Akrostichon-Wortspiel, is strangely "sexy" in a way that defies explanation. 

Unsuk Chin: Akrostichon-Wortspiel is not for those who turn to music to seek repose and relaxation. Yet for those who like a challenge and intellectual stimulation, this is like a seven-course meal. Let us hope this is not the last we will hear from Unsuk Chin. (Uncle Dave Lewis)