November 4, 2014

  • Bittersweet Release of Amazing Works by Stephen Paulus!

     

    Paulus: Three Places of Enlightenment; Grand Concerto; Veil of Tears
    Jun Iwasaki and Carolyn Wann Bailey, violins.  Daniel reinker, viola.  Anthony LaMarchina, cello.  Nashville Symphony Orchestra/Giancarlo Guerrero
    Naxos 8.559740
    Total Time:  57:21
    Recording:   ****/****
    Performance: ****/****

    This new Naxos release arrives at a bittersweet moment.  It came with the news that Stephan Paulus had passed away after long complications following a stroke.  Paulus’ music has always had a great following in Minnesota, though his work is respected throughout the world.  He was a student of Dominick Argento and one of the cofounders of the Minnesota Composers Forum, now the American Composers Forum.  One of the best recent recordings of his work featured the Minnesota Orchestra’s recording of To Be Certain of the Dawn (2005) a massive oratoria-like work for mass choir and orchestra.  Part of the piece serves as a buffer between two concerti in this New Naxos release featuring the Nashville Symphony.  His very accessible musical language often explores interesting musical textures and contrasts and often fascinating blends of ideas that parallel some of Argento’s later music.  Though not quite part of the Neo-Romantic movement, it certainly can be perceived as part of non-minimalist, non-serial, modern music.

    The disc opens with a concerto for string quartet from 1995, bearing the title Three Places of Enlightenment.  Having completed by a violin concerto for the Cleveland Orchestra’s William Preucil in 1987, Paulus was asked to create a work for the former Cleveland String Quartet.  The result was this 1995 work that explores ways to combine the intimacy of a chamber ensemble with a full symphony orchestra.  The music is then further exhibiting different somewhat transcendental, or Eastern philosophy, revealed through Paulus’ titles for each of the three movements.  The first movement, “From Within”, explodes with a sense of inner turmoil as motifs are tossed from the orchestra and into the quartet.  Within the soloists a scale-like idea becomes a significant component that runs between the four voices as they pass the idea back and forth.  A series of unusual accents and changing meters help further convey this struggle.  “From Afar” begins with a very traditional warm setting of the hymn, “Sweet Hour of Prayer.”  The music has an almost Barber-like sound in its opening bars before turning to lines and harmonies more akin to Bartok.  The shadowy music utilizes the rhythmic pattern of the hymn and will also shift it into minor mode harmonies.  The intimacy of the quartet is also explored here in a movement whose length is the equivalent to that of the work’s outer movements.  As the movement comes to an end, there is an almost John Adams’-like moment with repeated harmonic ideas that are overcome by crashing piano chords.  The hymn returns with the hints of darkness still there.  The final movement, “From All Around and Radiating Ever Outward”, takes patterns from the first movement and the same intense energy, and begins to move the ideas toward a more optimistic conclusion.  This is rather intriguing work with gorgeous writing for quartet and orchestra.  The energetic moments are quite engaging and the work seems to move forward with musical connections that are easily grasped on the surface as well as which can be discerned with repeated listening.  Similar musical gestures help connect the movements as they are scored and presented throughout the work.  The Nashville players and soloists do an excellent job in this performance.

    The larger works are broken up by the inclusion of the “Veil of Tears” from 2005’s To Be Certain of the Dawn.  The piece for string orchestra comes at the center of the oratorio and is meant to allow for a moment of remembrance for loved ones, including an instruction for the audience to light candles.  The music is certainly most reflective and falls into that category of adagios a la Barber.

    The final work is a concerto for organ and orchestra commissioned by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in 2003.  Each movement has a descriptive adjective that gets at the emotional idea of the piece.  This newer work still maintains many of Paulus’ earlier compositional approaches of using short melodic ideas and motifs that are then tossed about the orchestra, often presented by the soloist driving the harmonic foundations of each movement.  The opening movement, “Vivacious and Spirited”, feels very much like it continues the thread of great American symphonic music of the 1950s (Harris, Creston, etc.).  As the second movement begins, it feels almost as If we are being guided along one of those American landscapes of the Midwest where “Austere; Foreboding” is perhaps indicative of these unique places.  Touching writing for winds against similar organ registrations is among the movement’s highlights with bigger orchestral brass statements adding a sense of majesty.  But, a storm seems to explode as the piece enters its final minutes with more impassioned, and very beautiful, long lyric lines soaring out of the texture.  The final movement, “Jubilant”, is an awe-inspiring modern work for orchestra and organ with hymn quotations, especially “O Waly, Waly” (“The Water is Wide”) which feels like a continuation of the exploration of a great landscape.  The piece is filled with exciting orchestral writing as it is propelled forward with wonderful colorful orchestral explosions as the organ lines are reminiscent of something out of a Widor organ symphony.  The result is a goosebump-inducing showpiece.

    The recording here is really stellar.  Made in October of 2012 and 2013, the matching of sound is managed quite well with the organ being well-balanced especially in the final work.  The crispness of the sound is something one has come to expect from the new Schermerhorn Hall in Nashville and the orchestra seems to really relish playing these pieces.  The CD is part of Naxos “American Classics” series which here brings to light music by an important composer of the latter 20th-Century whose music managed to carve out a distinct style that is accessible to audiences, and often quite captivating.  The two larger scale pieces here are easily some of the best ways to be introduced to the music of Stephan Paulus.  The sequencing of the release works equally well to introduce the musical style and as an overall program in a must have disc for fans of American music.