Today another quick attention-calling discussion of a host of new chamber music appearing from Navona Records.

Composer Jan Jarvlepp's music has appeared quite a bit on the label and on High Voltage (Navona 6366) listeners are treated to four works for mostly "traditional" ensembles each with somewhat similar movement structures.  First up is the string Quintet 2003.  The three movement work opens with a delightful folkish Hungarian feel that has a great deal of energy and excitement.  As it moves along, there is almost a little folk-band like feel.  A contrasting lyrical central movement provides a moment of intimacy.  The nervous energy still hovers in string tremolos under the lyric lines.  The harmony is not as stark as one might find in Bartok as the third movement returns us to the stylistic approach of the opening, but there are certainly moments that lend a nod to that 20th Century master.  The Woodwind Quintet (1995) is a fun blend of jazzy rhythmic ideas with intriguing coloristic writing for the ensemble.  The central slow movement features some gorgeous lyric writing for bassoon against shifting harmonic ideas from the ensemble.  The final "Pyrotechnics" bring back all of that exciting energy with little swirling motives kicking off a jazz-inflected set of syncopations.  The work requires a great deal of virtuosic playing which the Arcadian Winds handle well here.  For the adventurous there is Bassoon Quartet (1996) which uses a contrabassoon in its outer movements.  In the central movement, Jarvlepp explores the expressive quality of the instrument.  The movement, "Reaching", does imitate this sense of outstretching gestures that move into the tenor register of the instrument from unisons to branching out to create fascinating harmonies as it develops.  A delightful English "Jig" serves as a great finale to this engaging work.  A more traditional string quartet, his first (2010), finds some of these same opening energetic motives that lay the ground work in the opening movement.  Jarvelepp does do some exploration of writing for this genre through the use of open strings.  A couple of intervals form the primary musical focus, one with a decided bluesy quality.  "Contemplation" feels more like both a reflection as well as a moment of inner angst that starts deep down inside and then suddenly becomes more agitated.  There is a bit more dissonance here that creates a poignant sensibility to the music.  The "Skating" movement brings things back to an upbeat mode with slashing motions that have a country folk feel.  The harmony shifts between popular music and more modernistic dissonances.  Each of these works has a similar overarching construction that one can hear applied to these different ensemble types.  They certainly would stand well on their own amongst other contemporary repertoire and do feel like they would be equally fun to play.  Highly recommended!

In September, the next volume in Navona's Pinnacle series (Navona 6368) brought another survey of contemporary chamber music from 8 different composers, many whose music has appeared on other releases from the label.  The album provides a fine introduction to new voices in contemporary music with a variety of pieces that are for solo instrument with piano; solo piano; string quartet; and solo piano.  The album is a digital only release available from a variety of streaming services (YouTube, Amazon, Spotify) and can also be downloaded.

Heaven to Earth Border House (Navona 6018) is a new release featuring music by Bruce Crossman.  There are two longer works on this release.  Crossman is an Australian composer who blends Western musical instruments with Asian traditional musics along with aspects of improvisation.  Shy Like Blushing Flowers is a series of three larger works with sung texts separated by brief interludes.  The music blends avante-garde piano writing with percussion.  What is intriguing is that Crossman's piano writing and the sparse textures that appear are quite in keeping with dramatic Asian music.  The piano feels more like a bridge between those two cultures as it provides some harmonic gestures (some feel almost Impressionistic) against the different percussive sounds.  These set the backdrop for the text setting.  It is also interesting to hear the vocalises emerge from some of the bell percussion as well.  It creates a quite ethereal experience in music that is indeed quite dramatic.  The album takes its title from the final work, an 18-minute piece for taegum and sanjo gayageum with an underlying connection to Korean architecture.  The concepts of space are perhaps best experienced in concert and may not quite come across in a recording, but one gets some sense of this with the imaging of the music.  The piece blends aleatoric improvisational material with contemporary techniques applied to these traditional instruments for a rather unusual work that attempts to merge the differing musical aesthetics.  The music here is in many ways an extension of music like that of George Crumb with a more specific interest in Asian aesthetics and gestures.  An album that will be of interest to the adventurous.

The same might also be said of the two-disc release featuring music by James Dashow.  Synchronies (Ravello 8060) provides a sort of overview of the composer's work that spans from the 1980s to 2008.  Dashow is an early pioneer in the composition of computer music and the pieces here include blends of electronic sounds with traditional instruments, with a septet, A Sheaf of Times, being the exception.  The integration of these electronic ideas as they blend with the other instruments is rather fascinating to hear.  Using timbres that are equally unusual (like bass clarinet, bass flute, harp, alto flute), Dashow is able to add another layer to explore sounds and pitch as well as manipulation.  Each of the works here provides a window into the composer's more complex compositional components as well.  With nearly two hours of material, listeners are able to discover how electronics and computer music can provide a whole new way of thinking about sound.  

Heard Again For the First Time
Paul Cohen, alto saxophone.
Eastern Wind Symphony/Todd Nichols;
Roger Nye, bassoon; Rebecca Cypress, harpsichord;
Kathleen Nester, flute; Lynne Cohen, oboe; Allison Brewster Franzetti, piano;
Brett Deubner, viola; Kaoru Hinata, flute.
Ravello Records 8057
Total Time:  70:06
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

Ravello records has pulled together several performances by alto saxophonist Paul Cohen for this release of rare works for the instrument.  The music here is an interesting collection of mostly 20^th Century works with a more recent piece by Steve Cohen (1954-) helping to round things off.

Of particular interest to many will be the opening work on the album, Ingolf Dahl’s (1912-1970) Concerto for Alto Saxophone.  Dahl revised this work several times but this recording gives us a chance to hear it in its original version for wind band.  Composed for Sigurd Rascher between 1948-49, the piece would receive a number of performances but Dahl would then tweak the piece.  First, he changed up the orchestration and simplified the solo part, and later would come back and cut seven minutes of the piece which is the version in publication today.  Cohen unearthed the original version and has brought it back to make this world premiere recording of the piece.  It does indeed feel like a quite involved work to play presenting a variety of challenges both technical and interpretatively.  A good sense of rhythmic precision is needed as well as a careful balancing of the different sections of the band against the soloist.  The recording here is a bit dry acoustically which actually aids the music and lends it a bit more clarity.  The high altissimo register of the instrument can seem a bit harsh, but Cohen manages to overcome this with some rather touching lyrical playing.

Swiss composer Marguerite Roesgen-Champion (1894-1976) is perhaps less well-known but was an early champion of the harpsichord and wrote a number of works for the instrument.  She was one of the most highly-regarded performers on the instrument and equally respected as a composer.  Her Concerto No. 2 (1945) shows off some of the Neo-Baroque interests that were resurfacing mid-century with equal touches of post-impressionism.  The work is for alto sax, bassoon, and harpsichord which makes for a rather fascinating collection of sonorities to explore across the four brief movements.

Though well-respected as a composer in his lifetime, Charles Martin Loeffler (1861-1935) was overshadowed by the shift of musical tastes after his death.  His music tends to be quite colorful and brilliantly orchestrated.  His Ballade Carnavalesque (1903) is one of the earliest chamber works to include the alto saxophone which makes it of historical interest.  It is a rather episodic 13-minute work also apparently receiving a recording premiere (?) here.  Loeffler never published this piece and actually reused some of it for his A Pagan Poem, so we have Cohen to thank for dusting off this unique work that is like a piano quintet for winds where the sax takes over the role from the clarinet. Also included is the brief The Lone Prairie (c. 1930) for viola, sax, and piano.  One can see here that Loeffler continued to be quite aware of current interests in Americana which makes this a fascinating curiosity.

The final work on the album is Steven Cohen’s Trio (2018) which Cohen commissioned for one of his students.  Cast in three movements, the work pairs the sax with flute and piano.  There is an interesting arch-like opening movement.  The central movement is a “Slow Blues” exploring song form and interesting duet between the wind soloists.  The finale provides for an exciting conclusion with its incorporation of Afro-Cuban music.

There are plenty of things to recommend this release beyond the repertoire itself, though that should be enticement enough.  Cohen’s performances are all quite engaging.  The Dahl is not an easy work, but he certainly convinces us otherwise.  The balance in the chamber pieces also helps further illustrate the versatility that these composers recognized in the alto saxophone.