Veil: Chamber Music of Greg D’Alessio
William Bender, viola. Robert Nicholson, cello.
John Perrine, alto saxophone.
Gunnar Owen Hirthe, clarinet. Victor Beyens, violin.
Ars Futura Ensemble/Pablo Devigo
Navona Records 6181
Total Time:  65:29
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

Greg D’Alessio teaches at Cleveland State University.  His work there extends to courses in electronic and computer music.   For this release, the composer has chosen five works that represent his own development as a composer from the past two decades.  The pieces here move from an early work, Veil (2001) to one composed specifically for the Ars Futura Ensemble.  The group performs in the Cleveland area and works to bring new music from living composers to the concert hall.

The first three works are all single-movement pieces.  Veil has an almost pointillistic feel at times with its small motivic ideas being explored by individual instruments.  A flute appears and has a shakuhachi quality with its attack and general shape of its line.  Each instrument takes on these ideas as comments that then slide and weep.  The final bars come together with a gentle harmony, not without regret.  This connects to D’Alessio’s intent in the music to reflect upon the loss of recent family members.  Some people may be familiar with Grainger’s The Immovable Do where a single pitch seems to “leak” behind the music.  In Thread (2002), the approach is to use a single pitch through a variety of musical textures where it can seem to disappear only to return later.  D’Alessio continued here to also explore timbre and some contemporary techniques (most noticeable are playing inside the piano).  Attacks to and from the primary pitch are also part of this musical essay that grows seemingly more disparate as it progresses.  This makes it sound perhaps fare more cerebral than the end result which has experimental qualities but dramatically draws the listener in to its argument.  Sono Solo (2011) begins with a piano idea that will then become the material that is further explored by the ensemble.  This idea begins as like a Debussy-like Impressionist line with harmony exploring the timbre of the piano.  Additional instruments begin to pick up on these lines, pitches and harmonies and continue to explore how they differ from one another yet maintain some inherent connection in this more restrained, and reflective work.

The final two pieces each consist of two movements.  First is a work composed for John Perrine, the alto saxophone soloist on this recording.  Charlie Parker’s Now’s the Time is the inspiration for this 2015 sonata for piano and sax that marked a return to exploring concert music.  As one might expect, the harmonic ideas here take their cues from jazz.  These move under a florid solo line that has an improvisational feel.  A reflective second idea then appears in the opening movement with some very gorgeous writing.  After this relaxed opening, we move into a more virtuosic second movement.  Now’s the Time thus becomes an important addition to modern repertoire for the instrument.

After ending (2017) takes its cues from the previous solo work.  Here too, D’Alessio uses a two-movement structure to first set up a more lyrical and reflective opening that is followed by an exploration of rhythmic drive.  The music tends toward a bit more dissonat that floats between the addition of different instrumental timbres here.  Linear ideas float through these often sudden accompanimental harmonies or flurries of sound.  The final bars of the first movement stretch out these ideas of pitch between different instruments becoming more diffuse as it progresses, almost too long.  The second movement then builds back up with a rhythmic repetition that helps create more energy as the piece moves forward.

The progression of the works has at its core a somewhat careful, and reflective style that allows the listener to follow the musical motives and concepts clearly.  This measured approach is balanced in the larger pieces with a gradual increase of rhythmic interest.  One might feel like these works have a sense that contemporary concert music struggles forward only to be overcome and be silenced.  At some subconscious level, that may be what D’Alessio has inadvertently suggested, at least in the opening pieces.  However, it is clear that there is a bit more hope for this being overcome in the final two works.

Reizenstein/Goldschmidt: Cello Concertos
Rafael Wallfisch, cello.
Konzerthausorchester Berlin/Nicholas Milton
CPO 555 109
Total Time: 56:06
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

Raphael Wallfisch has embarked on a series of recordings for CPO called “Voices in the Wilderness”.  The project is focused on bringing to light music for cello and orchestra by Jewish composers silenced by the Third Reich.  Wallfisch’s own parents were survivors of the Holocaust (his mother is one of the surviving members of the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz, where she had been sent) and eventually settled in England.  They knew both the composers represented on this new release, Franz Reizenstein (1911-1968) and Berthold Goldschmidt (1903-1996).  Both escaped Berlin before the Nazis imposed immigration restrictions.  They were two of many Jewish refugees who ended up in England.

As is the case with many of the emigre composers of WWII, age and experience was everything.  Goldschmidt was already a mature composer in 1935 with compositional successes and with professional experiences of note (he was Erich Kleiber’s assistant in the premiere of Berg’s Wozzeck).  Reizenstein left in 1934 at the age of 22 and was still developing his own musical voice and connections.  He would study with both Hindemith (in Berlin) and Vaughan Williams.  Both composer’s work would be premiered by cellist William Pleeth, but both also had the playing of the great Emanuel Feuermann very much in mind.  Goldschmidt had written a sonata for Feuermann and Reizenstein’s work was dedicated to one of the great cellist’s students, Mosa Havivi, who never played it.  Both composers were also caught in that intriguing musical transition that was struggling to avoid completely atonal style with outh being overtly Romantic or Expressionistic.  But, Goldschmidt’s career sort of wallowed in the background of British musical life while the younger Reizenstein was able to secure a teaching post and numerous commissions.  There stories are parallel versions of so many emigrant realities of the time, and in the present day.

Reizenstein’s work was completed in 1936 but went through several revisions before its final premiere with Charles Groves conducting the BBC Norther Orchestra in 1951.  The opening certainly has distant echoes of Hindemith, but most interestingly recalls the opening of Holst’s “Mars” from The Planets.  It is the driving, martial rhythmic material here that perhaps brings this to mind.  The cello enters with passion and then begins the outline of the primary thematic thread.  Most fascinating is the way the soloist and orchestra must interact.  It is almost like a person up against the world but the finale is an exhilarating major mode victory.  Michael Haas’ fine notes liken the moving slow movement as a node to Hindemith’s Trauermusik.  One can certainly hear this in its somber opening and plaintive solo line.  The emotional quality of the music is quite engaging.  After this pause, we enter into a somewhat dramatic and episodic finale.  A dance-like quality eventually appears with a Hindemith-like harmonic style and linear outlines that shift fascinatingly between soloist and orchestra.  There is plenty for the soloist to do here to pull the music forward with ever-increasing energy and excitement.

Goldschmidt’s concerto (1932) seems to appear every once in a while but has not quite gained a repertoire foothold.  The piece was one of his last before he left for England.  Cast in four movements, the music has a decidedly more modernist quality at times.  You can hear this in the resulting harmonies from the polyphonic harmonies that flit a long against the cello’s line.  There is a sense here as well of Baroque-like connections that will carry forward in the second movement’s interesting dialogue between soloist and sections of the orchestra in a caprice that is essentially a motif and variations form.  The third movement is a “Quasi Sarabande” allowing more interaction between woodwinds and soloist with a finale that brings us a “Tarantella”.  Within the work itself we move to a more intellectual-like style that is a series of dialogues within an almost chamber music-like orchestral quality closer to the likes of Berg with a slight touch of the modernist Prokofiev of the 1920s-1930s.  It makes this an equally fascinating contrast to the opening work on the album.

A couple of decades ago, Decca/London’s own “banned composers” series featured an excellent collection of Goldschmidt concerti with the Montreal Symphony.  Yo-Yo Ma was the soloist there and that is an equally fine performance.  Another recording explores equally rare works so one is bound to be able to compare all three if interest in the period and this work are part of one’s musical taste.  In the present recording, there is a different historic sense at play with Wallfisch’s own personal connections to these works lending it a different aura of authenticity.  He tackles these works with a sort of committed dedication that shows a real appreciation and understanding of these important 20^th-Century works.  The orchestra too makes for an apt accompaniment here achieving the rich textures and sudden shifts of tone so perfectly shaped.  The Reizenstein is the real find here in what appears to be a premiere recording, at least it is the only one currently in the catalogue.  I would be fascinating to hear Pleeth’s original performances if the BBC happened to record them in the day.  Still, anyone interested in 20^th-Century music will want to consider this excellent new release.