William Brittelle follows his art-rock song cycle Television Landscape with something more like pure chamber music. The results bring his compositional talents into sharper focus; the melodies are all the more remarkable for mostly not feeling pop-derived (though moaning synths on "Acid Rain on the Mirrordome" bring to mind Brittelle's love for Purple Rain). Great post-minimalist instrumental writing is the focus here. When the virtuoso strings of the ACME Ensemble collide with distorted percussion thumps on "I," listeners -- whether "classical heads" or not -- will be intrigued.
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.
Initially conceived as a multimedia chamber opera about early 20th century renaissance woman Isabelle Eberhardt, this piece proves its mettle as an audio-only experience. Composer Missy Mazzoli has a post-minimalist streak, which means she's quick with a memorable hook (try the piano line on "Interlude," and the bass clarinet that opens "The world within me is too small"). But she can also plot a dramatic arc within a movement, with moments of spareness leading to clamorings. The NOW Ensemble was literally born to play music like this. An important document of the New New York classical scene.
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.
The tenor made a fine debut in 2011 with a take on an obscure Benjamin Britten song cycle, so it makes sense for him to try another. This time it's "The Heart of the Matter," written with poet Edith Sitwell after the composer used her work in his third Canticle, "Still Falls the Rain" (which was snuggled back into "Matter" afterward). Confused? Don't be: Once again, Phan's earnest voice makes the case. Helping him out is actor Alan Cumming; freed from the bounds of TV, he lets his Scots accent run in a winning way through the spoken parts. Out of left field, sure -- but a cool odd shot.
Kaija Saariaho's reputation has been built around her orchestral pieces and operas. Inevitably, her spectral, shimmering harmonies are presented in a different way on a chamber album. Mostly, they connect. And in the case of the instrumental, five-movement "I Feel A Second Heart" (Tracks 7-11) --inspired by her rape-during-wartime opera Adriana Mater -- Saariaho's writing for trio proves some of her best ever. The violent parts -- "Ouvre-moi, vite!" and "Il faut que j'entre" -- are made bearable by the transfigured beauty of the finale. It's heart-stoppingly dramatic: atonal music with soul.
Our understanding of John Cage's value -- he was more than just "4'33" -- would be much poorer if not for Mode Records, which has invested in producing important albums of the composer's works for decades. Their latest project is a comprehensive survey of Cage's percussion pieces. The second effort in this series features Third Coast Percussion, and their virtuoso playing is as crisp as you'd expect. But more importantly, they've taken care to engineer these pieces properly in a studio: The grinding prepared-piano tones of "First Construction (in Metal)" have never sounded so fine.
These two concertos, though vastly different, amount to harmonizing, big statements from a young talent. The Elgar is a pained, late-romantic reflection on the horrors of World War I (and one that critics think Jacqueline du Pré nailed half a century ago). It looks for uplift through tonality, distinguishing it from Elliott Carter's approach. (Even late Carter has a snarl to it.) Weilerstein likely chose the pairing to prove she can invest the hardiest modernism with her lavishly elegant sound. That she makes a persuasive entry in the Elgar sweepstakes on the same release is truly impressive.
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.
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.
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.
In which an up-and-coming cellist on the contemporary classical scene plays a series of challenging pieces composed with her in mind. On Andy Akiho's "Three Shades, Foreshadows" -- a piece that employs three different digital playback parts alongside live cello playing -- Roberts' command of extended techniques (including clothespin-on-cello usage) and more traditional requirements proves breathtaking. "Formations," written by the young composer and one-bit-electronics fetishist Tristan Perich, is the longest piece on the album, and also the most arresting.
This pianist doesn't worry about goosing the profundity or poetry in these pieces -- a good thing. Played properly, the music takes care of that stuff all on its own. What Andsnes and the chamber ensemble (which the pianist also conducts) take care of is speed and power. Though the respective largos in each concerto are both lent an appropriate grandeur, it's the outer movements where these players shine -- offering blinding tempos without sacrificing clarity. It's all enough to justify the somewhat haughty title of this "Beethoven Project." Time for Andsnes to bring on the other concertos.
Another new-music group -- a vocal ensemble, this time -- gets a debut recording via New Amsterdam Records. Many label-mate names come up in the list of composers: Judd Greenstein's "Aeiou" and Sarah Kirkland Snider's "The Orchard" are among the familiar talents. But the big story here is two new compositions by Merrill Garbus (better known as Tune-Yards). It shouldn't surprise us that a vocalist of her gifts can write so well for other voices, but it's still startling how both her contributions -- "Quizassa" and "Ansa Ya" -- connect every bit as strongly as her indie-rock work.
In opera-singer album showcases, there are stunts, and then there are insights. (Occasionally a release can be both, but it's rare.) This mezzo-soprano's tour through baroque favorites and obscurities falls squarely in the latter camp. DiDonato can bring thrilling coloratura to a showstopper (check the selection from Handel's "Alessandro"), and also remember to interpret less technically demanding pieces (like "Disprezzata Regata"). The ensemble backing provided by Il Complesso Barocco would be a delight to hear on its own: It's both dramatic and daring. The partnership here is hard to resist.
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.
Do you think the Americans just don't "do" classical music properly? Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony have been on a multi-decade campaign to push back against that idea. Henry Cowell's work is idiosyncratic, sure -- he helped pioneer the tone-cluster -- but his Piano Concerto follows a familiar three-movement form. And with Jeremy Denk as soloist, the underlying piece is revealed as something that deserves elite players. Varese's Ameriques is also a specialty of this orchestra, and it's good to have their muscular approach to the piece on a recording. An outstanding album.
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.
This famed conductor's metamorphosis into a top composer continues with scary assurance. The steely opening of a four-movement violin concerto holds traces of his sterner school-chum influences, Magnus Lindberg and Kaija Saariaho. But by the time we get to "Pulse II," the rock-groove percussion driving us through a ride in a fast machine is indebted to John Adams' post-minimalism. This icy-hot mixture isn't derivative: It registers as pure Salonen. "Nyx," a 19-minute orchestral essay, is a nice bonus, but the violin concerto as fronted by soloist Leila Josefowicz can't be outdone.
Recorded in the 1970s at Bell Labs, Laurie Spiegel's The Expanding Universe is a Rosetta Stone uniting American minimalism, early computer music and the chiming harmonies of Appalachian folk in sumptuous, electronic fantasias in which seemingly repetitive structures slowly unspool in unpredictable ways. First released in 1980, the album's four original tracks ("Patchwork," "Old Wave," "Pentachrome," and "The Expanding Universe") are accompanied here by 15 sketches from the same period; they range from the droning "Wandering in Our Times" to the unexpected proto-techno of "Drums."
