October 14, 2015

  • Rouse World Premiere Recordings of Late 90's Works

    Rouse: Seeing; Kabir Padavali
    Orion Weiss, piano.  Tavis Trevigne, soprano.  Albany Symphony Orch./David Alan Miller
    Naxos 8.559799
    Total Time:  63:36
    Recording:   ****/****
    Performance: ****/****

    After an earlier release this year of music by Alan Jay Kernis, the Albany Symphony Orchestra and their Music Director David Alan Miller turn to music by American composer Christopher Rouse.  Rouse’s music garnered attention back in 1993 when he received the Pulitzer Prize for his Trombone Concerto.  Since then he has created a massive and memorable body of work played the world over.  Here we get to sample two distinct works from 1998 receiving their world premiere recordings.

    The first of these is Seeing, commissioned originally by Emanuel Ax and the New York Philharmonic.  The piece is a sort of distorted integration of Robert Schumann’s own Piano Concerto.  The latter was a work Ax had decided not to play in concert, and so this becomes a bit of a private musical joke of sorts.  But also underlying the work is its conception of how psychosis can impact a person’s view both spiritually and psychologically.  It is something more obviously relating to Schumann’s own struggles with mental illness, but also here refers to music by Skip Spence, from whom the work takes its title.  In some ways, the Schumann is taken apart and reassembled sometimes quite recognizably, and others less so as the concerto’s four sections unfold.  After a rather manic opening, an unsettling and somewhat macabre slower section appears with an almost disenchanted solo line against dark orchestral textures.  The adagio music is reminiscent at times of film score depictions of unsettled characters.  The final scherzo section continues through this rather unusual hallucinatory process with direct quotation and a rather intense series of dissonant crashes and brilliant pianistic flourishes.  Sometimes the orchestra tends to be almost mocking the music itself.  The piece is intense, but the dramatic quality of the music allows for the listener to enter in to this unusual soundworld and the more ethereal moments are quite compelling.  It is a sort of concert Altered States in its thrust and style.

    The Minnesota Orchestra was behind the commissioning of Kabir Padavali with Dawn Upshaw the planned recipient of this song cycle for soprano and orchestra.  The Hindi texts are by the Indian poet Kabir (ca. 1398-ca. 1448) whose poetry has survived through oral tradition.  Six poems are used here.  They begin with two texts that use musical instrument imagery as their departure point.  The third song explores a sort of “peaceable kingdom” of animals.  Spiritual components help pull these threads together in the fourth and sixth song, bookending a text of love in these often allegorical texts.  Rather than utilize Indian ragas in the music, Rouse has instead created a more evocative atmosphere that provides its own sense of mystery.  Using an accordion and solo oboe he is also able to make the suggestion of the music against which the music unfolds.  Quiet string entries, making use of the Minnesota Orchestra’s string sound, also lend a dreamy atmosphere.  This is punctuated by brass before the vocal line appears to float above the texture adding another layer of sensuality.   The third song has an almost jazz-like rhythmic punch with equally interesting harmonies while the vocal line moves seemingly erratically amidst the fairly dramatic music.  A variety of unusual vocal sounds are also created in the often bizarre fourth song with its texts talking about a mad world and violence.  This is beautifully offset by the penultimate text of a woman at a spinning wheel connecting her thoughts to concepts of love and the threads she weaves.

    The orchestra is on great display in these performances.  Weiss manages to assert himself well in this piece and he is also a student of Ax giving him another unique connection to Seeings.  Soprano soloist Talise Trevigne is familiar to fans of contemporary opera as she has been in a number of Jack Heggie’s operas over the past decade.   Her performance here is certainly exquisite and well balanced against the orchestra.  Both performances date from 2013 and are just now making it to disc, the result perhaps of a number of these modern American Classics releases being ahead on the schedule.  These world premiere recordings are excellently recorded and will be a good introduction to Rouse’s music for many new listeners.  It is sort of odd that at least the concerto has not made its way to disc yet.  Might be worth pairing it with the Schumann at some point to further link the way Rouse’s work unpacks and reuses it.  The song cycle is equally interesting.