Imaginary Bird: Music for Oboe & English Horn
Ling-Fei Kang, oboe; Charles Huang, English horn;
Andrew Knebel, viola. Annabelle Taubl, harp. Yu-Chen Shih, piano/celesta;
Kate Kennedy, cello. Mohammed Shams, piano;
John Birt, guitar.
Ravello Records 8006
Total Time:  45:27
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

Composer Phil Salathe teaches at SUNY Potsdam’s Crane School of Music.  His composition catalogue includes multi-movement orchestral work as well as “chip tunes” used in video games.  This collection features some unique music for oboe and English horn both as solo lines and duet partners.  He has collaborated with the two soloists featured here in these ornithologically-themed pieces.

The opening work, Mandarin Ducks (2011) is cast in seven brief descriptive movements that essentially give us a picturesque overview of the life of the animal.  From frolicking in the water, to arguing over food, teasing children, worrying about a mate and nesting, to leading the ducklings about before everyone flies away.  The dialogue aspects between the two instruments allows for their timbres to really come out well.  Ideas stream outwards becoming intertwined along the way.  There is a real sense of playfulness in the music as well.  The second movement introduces some avant-garde techniques that essentially simulate honking using multiphonics.  The piece also requires circular breathing technique.  One can hear a sense of the postmodern blend of atonality and more traditional harmony along the way.  The lines sometimes have a shape that suggests Asian melodic qualities.  Most attractive though is the general wit of the piece.

Charles Huang is featured on two shorter works that appear next.  Premiered in March 2007, The Heart That Loves But Once, takes its inspiration from a love letter written by Clara Wieck to her future husband Robert Schumann.  The celesta opens this striking work with its eerie and ethereal qualities further enhanced when the harp appears.  The music has this sense of longing and pain of trying to bring together the complex emotions of love that seems impossible to attain.  This piece is equally as dramatic as the first, though it is a far darker, and more sinuous work with a more dissonant palette.  Here oboe and viola become the two voices that search for one another in this intense music.  Huang picks up the English horn to explore the three miniature Imaginary Birds of the Frozen North.  The solo work explores the rich sound of the instrument but also includes additional sounds to lend voice to the different animals and landscapes of the piece.

The Wood Between the Worlds (2009) was commissioned for the Sylvanus Ensemble.  It consists of ten movements exploring different worlds with “The Wood” movement serving to bookend the work and also provide a momentary anchor at the center.  The two sections begin with worlds of desolation and shadow and gradually move toward worlds changed by war and wisdom.  Taking its departure inspiration from C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia, Salathe invents a world where both beauty and starkness can exist.  The style of the music also bears these shifts between more traditional harmonic and melodic writing, and a sparser style that focuses on sound and timbre of the instruments here.  In a sense it is also a sort of melting pot of the various influences and styles that Salathe has experienced making the work an intimate exploration of his compositional voice.

The album concludes with an arrangement of a popular Taiwanese melody by Teng Yu-Hsien.  Expecting the Spring Breeze is set for oboe and guitar and serves really as a nice encore to this entrancing program.

It is worth commenting about the cover of this album that somehow captures the descriptive music.  It depicts two ducks on one level wandering near water.  It is in the water where we see the “shadow” side of the animals holding their respective instruments.  This sense of turning things upside down can be heard from time to time in the accompanying pieces where the oboe and English horn can be heard in a more traditional way, but then also in their “shadowy” dark timbres and with unique sounds that might be as striking as the opening work’s humor.  Certainly any double reed player will revel both in the excellent performances and the new music for these instruments heard here.  The sound is stunning as well captured in these recordings made mostly last June.  The performances are equally compelling.

From the Valley of Baca: Chamber Music of David Carpenter
Rebecca Harris, violin. Myanna Harvey, viola. Cassia Harvey, cello;
Lawrence Indik, baritone. Charles Abramovic, piano;
Katelyn Bouska, piano.
Navona Records 6208
Total Time:  66:00
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

David Carpenter (b. 1972) is a Philadelphia-based composer whose music has been heard throughout the United States.  This release features examples of his music for string trio, solo piano, and a song cycle.

The first work is a String Trio (2014) cast in three movements.  The opening movement features a couple of key components which includes a small motive that recalls the musical signature of Shostakovich.  Carpenter admits his own fascinating with the composer’s music in his reflection on the work.  In particular, it is the eighth quartet that casts becomes submerged into this piece.  This can be heard in the somewhat modernist harmonic ideas and motivic development, but also in the penchant for long, intertwining lines that move across the three instruments.  A sixteenth-note pattern of this motive informs the central movement which also has some intriguing moments of dissonance with equally poignant lyricism.  The final movement features some more intense dissonance that seems somewhat more episodic at times.  But overall, the work has a very intimate quality that is held together by its consistent motivic references which help to unify the work.

At the center of the album is a song cycle for baritone and piano which lends its name to the release as well.  From the Valley of Baca (2016) features text by the Jewish poet Emma Lazurus.  Carpenter sets this poetry against the words of Psalm 84, sung in Hebrew.  The resulting work is a reflection on the plight of persecuted people and prejudice, here further inspired by the Syrian refugee crisis of 2015.  As a result, the work has this interesting shift of ancient problems that still plague the modern world.  The music is modernist in style with the vocal line providing a nice interpretive shape to the texts while the piano interacts and suggests mood and accents important aspects.  It is interesting to also hear how the music flirts with an almost Romantic sensibility for those moments when the hopes, dreams, and longings in the text are expressed.

The Sonata for piano (2015) is performed here by the person who originally suggested it.  It began as a rhapsody and was intended to accompany a performance of the b-minor Chopin piano sonata.  The little arpeggio fall of that work along with a sighing motive became the key components explored in this piece.  By extending the work to three movements, Carpenter has a chance to further explore the style of 19^th Century piano music by filtered now through a postmodern lens.  Like the trio, it too uses a motivic idea to help provide an overarching unity.  What is more fascinating are the sort of echoes of piano gestures one might hear in Chopin with new interpretations of what chromaticism in modern dress might do.

The release here gives a sense of some of Carpenter’s more intimate pieces and possible influences that inform his music.  In each case, one hears how these ideas are transformed and allow for reflection and reevaluation of contemporary directions post 1950.