May 22, 2009

  • Best of May: New to the "Collection"--Early

    I know it is still a bit early, and heck there's a weekend yet when new things may appear for review here, but since I am about to take a few down days which will include soaking up 2 John Williams-conducted concerts, I figured I would post a little early.  It's been a little slow here on the "new" CD front.  It's a sign of how busy things are and how little good new music is probably being released.  That said, here are 5 favorites new this month to the "collection" as we like to call it here.

    I did not look back to see if Murray Gold's previous Dr. Who discs made it to the "best of the month" before, but my guess is they may have done so even in a crowded release period.  The latest Silva release featuring music from "Series 4" (reviewed here earlier this month) continues that fine series with still more amazing music that runs from action cues to gorgeous and heartfelt vocal tracks and even a little post-lounge era music.  It's all delicious fun and there is a lot of it too!

    As "Beatless Music" by Percy Grainger was playing, my significant other walked in the door to comment, "is this one of those review discs?"  No doubt the unusual sounds of the theremin made her wonder if I had lost my mind and wasted out hard earned shells on this stuff.  Spellbound: Original Music for Theremin I discovered in one of my browsing sprees.  It features Lydia Kavina who is the grand-niece of the instrument that bears his name, Leon Theremin (good thing he decided to use his last name, imagine playing the "leon!").  Kavina also worked with Howard Shore on his score for Tim Burton's Ed Wood.  For this recording, Shore selected and arranged 8 cues (all untitled in the booklet but which include the "Main Title") from that score, though they appear to be arranged without a sense of concert performance closure in the final movement.  The Ensemble Sospeso, from New York, provides a fine accompaniment under the direction of Charles Peltz.  This is one of two reasons the disc interested me.  The other is that the recording concludes with a chamber orchestra version of Rosza's Spellbound Concerto, a six-minute piece whose larger orchestral counterpart I recall may have appeared on a Silva composer compilation (though I could be mistaken).  Again in this smaller casting, one gets to hear the various intricate lines of the composer's ideas and these are in perfect balance with the other-worldly quality of the theremin.  Of musicological interest are the 3 Grainger pieces dating from the late 1930s and lasting about a minute each.  Two of them are titled "Free Music" and it is Grainger at his most experimental exploring a new instrument and what it can do.  They are fascinating little pieces in their own right (receiving I think their premieres here as well on CD).  The disc also features an odd experimental work from the old New York School of avant garde composers, Christian Wolff.  This is one of those intellectual exercises using interesting chamber combinations of unpitched music, the sort of thing popular in the 1950s in an era of deconstructionism.  This piece is from 2000 though and the composer has specially worked on this recording.  It is like so many of those works by Cage, Feldman, and Earle Brown, a theoretical exercise (it's actually titled "Exercise 28").  The other substantial music on the disc is by newcomer Olga Neuwirth, winner of the Krenek Prize (a clue that tonality is not going to be important and that over-experimentalism is).  It is a suite of sorts of music from her mini-opera "Bahlamms Fest."  One can appreciate this sort of thing I suppose, but as a composer myself, I wonder how it is that this stuff gets a recording while my own more accessible music still awaits its champion.  (Ok, enough of the shameless plug!)  The disc is well-recorded and well-performed and easily recommended to the curious.

    All that said, I am just soaking up the amazing piece, The Garden of Cosmic Speculation by composer Michael Gandolfi.  I last encountered his music in an Orpheus Chamber Orchestra piece.  It is sometimes difficult to discern the quality of a composer's music in terms of accessibility when it is cast in smaller forms as these can be quite intense works.  But this Telarc release is the sort of contemporary orchestral music that is a fascinating listen.  Inspired by the garden which gives the work its name, this is not quite a concerto for orchestra, though one can easily perceive it as such.  The style is quite tonal with flashes of minimalist, or post-minimalist, ideas, but is conceived in a more classically-constructed way.  There are free and arch forms present in the multiple movements here, but Gandolfi engages the listener by drawing them in to the sound world, incorporating jazz and other ethnic music elements (a la Bernstein) and is not afraid of a melody or two along the way.  The work is cast in three parts with the opening five moments being almost pops-like at times (especially "The Willowtwist").  Part Two opens with "The Universe Cascade" which a piece of quotation music that in essence traces the history of Western music through a series of specific quotations of music from early days up through the present.  A series of Baroque dances follows allowing Gandolfi to show off his skill in orchestration to the fullest.  It is all engaging music that must just be a great deal of fun to play as well.  The styles can feel Neo-Baroque, Neo-Classical, Neo-Romantic, and post-minimal at times, but these are less important than the sheer joy and engagement in this overall upbeat work.  Baroque fans will especially enjoy the incorporation of Bach in ways that make you all of a sudden realize that it is a quotation.  This 2008 release is highly recommended!!

    I must have walked past James Galway's O'Reilly Street disc plenty of times.  The RCA release features the Latin music group Tempo Libre with the eminent flautist in some works by the groups pianist as well as selections from one of the big classical crossover releases from the Columbia catalogue, the Bolling "Suite for Flute & Jazz Piano Trio."  Perhaps my initial hesitancy was the note about this being a "latinized" update featuring "selections from" both of the 2 flute suites.  But, this turns out to be alright.  Rampal recorded these pieces in definitive versions at a time when he was near the end of his life.  I say definitive because it was at least 10 years or more before another CD appeared that had either of these suites.  Galway, who is 69--how did that happen!, is just an amazing performer and you might think this was his debut release.  Articulation is amazingly clear and things really move in these performances which remain mostly faithful to the music while adding in improvisations that give the music a little different flavor from its more Gallic predecessors.  It makes for some relaxed and fascinating listening that whips along so quickly that the disc ends far too soon.  So, don't walk past this one if you are looking for a little something on the jazzy latin light side.

    Finally, we bring this column to a good arch by ending with a new film score.  Yes, it's Giacchino's music for the new Star Trek reboot.  I actually spent a week re-listening to most of the scores from the previous Trek movies.  Goldsmith always used his new theme (I don't recall even hearing Courage's in Star Trek-The Motion Picture).  Horner made use of the Courage TV theme, and cribbed a heck of a lot from Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky-especially the "Battle on the Ice".  Rosenthal also used Courage's theme and a more 80s style.  All the Next Generation scores kept Goldsmith's theme.  So I was at first disappointed when I heard the opening strains of the score in the film using a brass driven theme.  Trying to lower expectations, I tried to just enjoy the movie and not listen as much to the score (hard to do once you make this part of your movie watching experience).  For the most part, the score seemed to work.  And what Varese Sarabande's release of the score shows is that Giacchino did a fabulous job not only on spotting the film, but also creating one of the better new score albums in terms of listenability in some time.  The new theme turns out to be seemingly rich in allusions to both Courage and Goldsmith's themes.  You might hear this in the melodic contour, harmonic, ideas, or the way the theme finally gets to explode more fully in the end credits.  By wisely adding in Courage's music in the end credits, we get an updated orchestration of this classic theme and Giacchino gets to show us how his theme comes out of it and takes it in new directions.  This is quite fascinating.  I've loved Giacchino's music for some time, even back when he was working diligently on video game scores and though he may not feel like his rise in scoring is meteoric, he is definitely busy enough to suggest that his music is gaining some important notice.  He's got more coming "up" so let's hope this is just the first great score of more to come.