Among this generation of piano virtuosos, Jeremy Denk might be the biggest intellectual. That's not just because he writes for the New Yorker and maintains a prickly-smart blog: Evidence of his genius is also alive in this unlikely but perfect pairing of Ligeti's piano etudes and Beethoven's final piano sonata -- the one where the moody composer-in-winter hit a mood-shift and happened upon the future of ragtime. Denk doesn't try to "solve" for this jagged pivot; he just revels in it. Beethoven nuts will want to hear this version, and perhaps give Ligeti's witty, bold miniatures a new hearing.
Noise nuts, metalheads and experimental techno types, take note: A young "classical" composer is raiding all your scenes. Built completely from his electronic kit and heavily processed guitar playing, in seven cuts Mario Diaz de Leon leaves behind the chamber ensembles he normally writes for in favor of ambient-doom electro-metal. The slow three-chord stomp in "Hypnocaust" is a highlight. And the arpeggiated synths in "Faithless" are almost danceable, until the bottom drops out and the aggro part comes in. This is the extreme-music/classical crossover album of 2012, surely.
Did this 2005 release need a reissue? Probably not. But on the merits, Deutsche Grammophon is right to include this title in its set of 20th century masterpieces released under its famed yellow label. For decades, Pierre Boulez had the last word on Luciano Berio's "Sinfonia," for orchestra and eight amplified singers -- but this recording is brisker and has greater bite. The third movement is Berio's version of a sampler's paradise (Debussy, Stravinsky and others are mixed with Mahler). Jaw-dropping upon its premiere in the late '60s, it's still a dizzying display of orchestral postmodernism.
In the 1930s, Hitler's Third Reich labeled the music of Viktor Ullmann entartete -- or "degenerate" -- just as it did with works by other composers of Jewish origin. Ullmann's music wouldn't have to be any good for us to curse the Nazis for this plain evil. Yet his music is brilliant: Check the first piano sonata here, from 1936, which moves nimbly from a funereal tribute to Mahler and onto some high-spirited fireworks. Ullmann completed six more sonatas before his later murder at Auschwitz. Jeanne Golan's playing does them justice on multiple levels here.
The Radiohead guitarist turned classical composer has established a consistent tone for his film scores -- in which shimmering, gorgeous chords start to quake and shimmer as individual instruments start to slide off into strange places (as on the opening track). It's certainly recognizable, even if this collection of cues for Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master lacks the instantly memorable set pieces from There Will Be Blood. Still, this is a sturdy, attractive album of new chamber pieces -- including "Alethia," with its odd-but-perfect pairings of woodwinds and organ.
Hurtling in from the wilder horizons of the avant-music landscape comes this intriguing release from the violin-based imaginations of Tony Conrad and ex-Throbbing Gristle member Genesis Breyer P-Orridge. Hints of outsider rock, modern classical and drone intrude -- but it's too heavily indebted to pulse and improvisation to totally boot it from the free-jazz tent. Recorded at a live date in Brooklyn, the album's percussion is handled by Morrison Edley; though his playing throbs aplenty, it stays out of the way of the two legends, both of whom scrape, shimmy and whip up a free-improv storm.
Hilary Hahn loves to upset expectations, which is why she's recorded both Bach and Schoenberg. But her improvised collaboration with composer and prepared-pianist Hauschka -- who often plays to indie crowds -- could surprise those who think they know the violinist's range. Rehearsing off-and-on for two years before this recording, they developed a language that keeps the jam sessions from being free-for-alls; the payoff of "Adash" and the suite-like "Godot" could pass for composed. Still, there's a hint of wildness throughout this, one of the more striking instrumental albums in recent memory.
The Stalin Terror of '33 kept Shostakovich from finishing Orango, a tragic-satiric opera about a human/ape who falls from newspaperman to circus attraction. But a piano score of the prelude survived, was orchestrated, and then premiered in 2011 -- resulting in this live recording. What a find! Even without any Russian, you can hear the sleaze of the "entertainer" (Track 3), and the absurdist pandemonium of Orango's rampage through a gawking crowd (Track 8). Paired with the composer's intense 4th Symphony and played by an energized L.A. Philharmonic, this is must-hear music.
Here, Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood pays back a debt to the composer who has shaped his non-pop compositions more than anyone. As Penderecki's "Threnody" prefigured Greenwood's "Popcorn Superhet Receiver" (which was excerpted for the There Will Be Blood soundtrack), so does the Polish composer's "Polymorphia" inspire the other Greenwood piece here. AUKSO Orchestra does both composers proud. Even if you know Penderecki's pieces, you'll want to hear Nonesuch's engineering (lush in its savagery). This is the go-to album for Greenwood's classical side; it proves he's the real deal.
Irish composer Donnacha Dennehy wrote all the pieces here; the title-track work is scored for piano "and soundtrack" -- in which the soundtrack is comprised of piano samples retuned "to provide a massive harmonic spectrum of 100 overtones based on a fundamental low G#." This manages to be both grave-sounding and dreamy. "Reservoir" is based on one of video artist Bill Viola's slow-motion works, and its two-part structure recalls one of the artist's diptychs. Pianist Lisa Moore's performances are authoritative -- and her taste in choosing which composers to commission remains unimpeachable.
When Gustavo Dudamel leads his hometown orchestra, he tends to make a statement. After turning in an idiosyncratic read of Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring,” now they take on the heroics of Beethoven’s Third Symphony. And it’s a long Eroica; the funeral march is a luxurious 17 minutes, in which every detail is milked for sadness and grandeur. It sounds great, even if that means the following scherzo feels out of balance (players can only take it so fast). If less satisfying than Ricardo Chailly’s recent take, Dudamel still oversees many fine moments here. Hear it for the funeral march alone.
Lindberg wrote his finest piece of chamber music yet -- the gorgeous but steely "Trio for clarinet, cello and piano" -- in 2008, before taking a gig with the New York Philharmonic. In between seasons, he recorded that piece with some similar items, and played all the piano parts himself. His tone has a rough-hewn grandness that suits the two opposing influences in his writing: the spectral harshness of his youth and a more recent romantic turn. "Santa Fe Project" -- for his piano and Anssi Karttunen's cello -- is another stunner. A surprise disc from the orchestral writer, but a welcome one.
Reworking Brian Eno’s ambient music for regular instruments and live performance may seem like a quixotic idea. But listen to what happens after all the reverb and back-masking of tones is stripped away: His music is revealed as gorgeous when the attack of each note is rendered more clearly. Woojun Lee was selected by Eno to orchestrate Apollo, and they could hardly have found a better ensemble to play this music than Icebreaker (who are joined by pedal steel expert BJ Cole on five countrified cuts). It may sound more earthbound than the original, but this Apollo is still cosmically fine.
American David Del Tredici started out an atonalist, and then pivoted toward the then-unnamed "neo-romantic" movement in the 1970s. But he never fully removed toughness from his palette, as these pieces attest. There's chromatic harmony in the fugue section of the otherwise sumptuous "Aeolian Ballade," and what the composer himself calls the "pianistic terror" of his "S/M Ballade." This release is the first of three promised surveys of Del Tredici's piano works on Naxos; this volume, played by Marc Peloquin, whets the appetite for more.
