October 17, 2016

  • New Chamber Music by Michael Slayton

     

    Sursum: Music by Michael Slayton
    Yarn/Wire: Laura Barger, Jacob Rhodebeck, piano; Ian Antonio, Russell Greenberg, percussion.
    Amy Jarman, soprano; Melissa Rose, Jerome Reed, piano.
    Kreutzer Quartet; Evan Mack, piano;
    Joshua McGuire, guitar. Jennifer McGuire, piano;
    Atlantic Ensemble
    Navona Records 6062
    Total Time:  73:25
    Recording:   ****/****
    Performance: ****/****

    Michael Slayton teaches composition at Vanderbilt University.  The present disc brings together 6 diverse chamber works exploring the composer’s musical style.  The center piece is a three-movement sonata, but there is music for string quartet, and piano quartet as well.

    The first work though is scored for an ensemble used in a Bartok sonata for pianos and percussion.  The group Yarn/Wire is featured in Slayton’s own 2002 work which explores music from the Bartok sonata in the first movement “Fantasy” and then features a reworking of the fugue from the composer’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta.  In the first movement, the idea is to explore some of Bartok’s rhythmic ideas from his sonata.  This less familiar work will be harder to discern, but it mostly serves as a compositional departure point for this more dissonant opening movement.  It features intriguing block harmonies and a variety of percussion ideas as the movement progresses.  There is some dialogue between the piano soloists which is rather fascinating here and the percussion then serves to comment and occasionally pickup on a rhythm or motif.  The handling of the fugue is really quite compelling.  It is will be more so for those familiar with this Bartok work.  One might say that of this Hommage a Bartok all around.  The more familiar one is, the more one can appreciate what Slayton is up to here.  What makes it work is that the first movement’s bluster is removed to more subtle explorations of this idea whose subtlety creates intensity of its own.  The piece makes for an engaging opening work on this CD.

    An example of Slayton’s vocal writing appears in Le Soir Tombe commissioned by the French scientist and poet Therese Planiol.  The piano writing here is reflective more of an impressionist nightfall.  Perhaps one might think of it as a modern symbolist exploration with dark shades of Ravel.

    The album title work comes from the string quartet titled Sursum.  Latin for “upward”, the music explores this expression of reaching for something more vital.  The lines here do work their way upwards in somewhat angular lines while the accompanying instruments have sighing figures that gain a sense of lift with fast crescendos.  The effect is rather fascinating.

    The three-movement Sonata Droyβig takes its name from a village near Leipzig.  The piece was originally commissioned by pianist Ulrich Urban who lent the composer the use of his father’s home in 2004 to focus on writing the piece.  Each movement explores an aspect of the landscape.  The forest is the focus of the opening movement and lends a sense of movement and discovery of the character of the woods themselves.  The music has a kind of Ives-ian quality.  The central movement depicts a castle in dark lower register statements and stark harmonic blocks of sound.  Finally, we move into a movement that incorporates allusions and quotations to depict summer.  Whether these images connect specifically with the listener is perhaps not as important as the sense of musical imagery that can be individually interpreted by this music that flirts with modernist style with often early 20th-century musical echoes.

    A brief set of Six Miniatures for the Sea (2007) is written for guitar and piano.  These are brief brushstrokes depicting various moments spanning a day contemplating the sea itself.  It is not surprising to see such a work here given some of the semi-impressionistic sensibilities heard in earlier pieces on the album.  The mix of the two instruments is handled beautifully and recorded well to help create an intimate setting.

    Finally, we come to another personal exploration of nature in the piano quartet Dreamers’ Meadows.  The three-movement work begins with a more dreamlike moments and then traverses through the wilderness and the crumbling remains of surrounding homesteads.  Again, the somewhat descriptive music features a modernist harmonic quality with accessible qualities that make it easy to be drawn into the music.  The sense of moving through a landscape that is part of many of these pieces is also handled well in this setting.

    Slayton’s music has a fascinating blend of 20th-century harmonic writing that seems to have roots in a variety of modern expressions across the century.  And yet, it still feels new and unique with something to say in new ways.  It would be interesting to hear these works against other literature which can get a further sense of their compositional approach and the composer’s own voice more, but this is still a worthy album to track down.