Three releases from Navona bring a variety of new music for different chamber combinations from small ensembles to solo music.

The euphonium is an instrument that often gets relegated to the back of a wind or marching band and fills out the harmonic balance in the brass family.  It has a rich, mellow sound though that is fully explored in Sound and Light (Navona 6339) which features five new pieces for the instrument.  Noted euphonium performer and clinician Demondrae Thurman has commissioned the pieces included on this new release.  The album opens with Barbara York's "Child's Play" Sonata where references to French-Canadian folk song and American jazz come together with great wit to contemplate the joy of childrearing.  The central movement is quite lovely.  From here we move on to Doug Bristol's three-movement sonata (2013) which has some interesting interactions between soloist and piano in its opening movement and some fascinating improvisation-like segments before moving into an finale that has some angular writing and a funky second section.  There are some equally jazzy moments in the briefer Insinuacoes by Anne Victorino D'Almeida which would make for a fine finale in any program.  Patrick Schultz presents a number of technical challenges in his Roon Sonata which features some fun circus-like atmosphere and bluesy inflections in its opening music, a quirky waltz, and a reflective finale that shows off the versatility of the instrument well.  This work leads into a more impressionistic multimovement piece by Anthony Barfield, Mediations of Sound and Light.  Thurman is really a stunning performer whose lyrical playing makes so much of this music work and the technique is equally there to bring out the virtuoso moments with seeming ease.  This is a great demonstration of how this instrument needs more attention and a great collection of pieces to do so.  

If solo piano music is among your listening interests, then the latest volume of Sustain (Navona 6345) should also be on your radar.  This Spring release features twelve works mostly for solo piano performed primarily by Lucie Kaucka and Randall Hodgkinson and representing a host of different musical styles by quite diverse composers.  Many of these pieces could serve as brief openers or little encores.  For variety, the album includes a couple of brief pieces featuring violin and piano, and tenor sax and piano, and closes off with a brief piano trio.  Several of the composers featured here have released other music on the label and this is sort of a compilation of these various composers bringing a quick way to perhaps launch off to other releases of their music on the label.

The same can be said of the second volume of Fleeting Realms (Navona 6348) which pulls together six disparate works by as many composers.  Here is a way to whet one's appetite for contemporary music in this varied recital of pieces.  The are are string and wind trios, a brief one-movement string quartet, a duo for violin and cello, and even some vocal music with a seven-minute chamber opera, and a concluding song cycle on poetry of James Joyce.  It makes for a rather unusual set of pieces that will stretch the listener and provide exposure to different genres of chamber music along the way,

Bond: Instruments of Revelation
Chicago Pro Musica
Rufus Muller, tenor. Jenny Lin, piano.
Olga Vinokur,piano.
Naxos 8.559864
Total Time:  62:07
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

This new Naxos release allows listeners to explore some of Victoria Bond’s (b. 1945) more intimate works composed in the first decade of the new century.  Bond studied composition with Ingolf Dahl and Roger Sessions and early in her career assisted on some of Paul Glass’s film scores.  Some may know her from her Metropolitan Opera lectures.  There are four pieces on this album which includes two works for chamber ensemble, a work for tenor and piano, and a piano piece.

The two chamber pieces open the album featuring musicians of Chicago Pro Musica.  Instruments of Revelation (2010), from which the album takes its title, is a musical depiction of three Tarot cards.  “The Magician” opens with a rather appropriately mysterious quality that shifts between some faster slights-of-hand.  The central “The High Priestess” has a fascinating blend of semi-Impressionist ambiguity with repeating lyric lines that have a semi-Eastern quality.  All ends with a blend of intensity and wit for “The Fool”.  The music is a blend of accessible tonal language which may descend into more dissonant ideas and eventually even some more experimental techniques by the final movement.  The ancient city of Pompeii serves as the inspiration for the second chamber work, Frescoes and Ash (2009).  In this equally descriptive work, Bond moves us through a variety of scenes from street musicians, to comedic actors, to a visit to the Sybil, a glance in on Chiron teaching Achilles, and more.  The final movement is a reflection of death casting what has been heard as a calm acceptance of the inevitable.  Throughout, Bond’s ability to craft descriptive musical scenes serves for an engaging work that is equally dramatic with a post-modern classicism.

Leopold Bloom’s Homecoming (2011) is an exploration of a section from James Joyce’s Ulysses.  Rufus Muller, who premiered the work, performs it here.  The lengthy setting takes us through a variety of factual information as the character faces the death of his infant son.  The seemingly random aspects of the text invite the listener to also make some of the intellectual connections Joyce requires.  Here Bond interprets this as moments of silence which add to the dramatic tension in the music.  The soloist both sings some rather gorgeous lines but there are also straight moments of narration that are spoken to guide the listener.  Texts are provided to help aid the listener who wishes to follow this more closely.  The accompaniment here tends to provide both a melodic support to the voice as well as adding some of the connective tissue to create a sense of foreboding or other dramatic inference.  There are plenty of stunningly beautiful moments as the piece nears its final pages.

Finally, the album closes with Binary (2005) for piano.  Bond explores how one might interpret this concept more familiar perhaps to those in computer science where “0” and “1” are the underlying components of everything.  The two sections of the work tackle this in unique ways.  In the first movement, Bond sets up large block chords against single melodic lines all based on the interval of a second.  This is a strikingly visceral work that leans more towards a Bartokian dissonance.  The concluding movement then shifts to explore this concept as rhythm using a Brazilian samba as a structural device for a set of variations.  The music tends to be a bit more tonal with the rhythmic component working best to drive it forward.

The performances here serve the music quite well with some exquisite playing by the Chicago Pro Musica that help Bond’s often beautiful lyricism shine.  Articulation and attention to detail also help set up her crisp rhythmic ideas quite well.  There is good variety in this release which provides some appeal for those interested in chamber music, song cycles, or works for piano.  But really, it lends itself to an exploration of Bond’s more intimate writing for these forces and her sense of dramatic shape to her thematic inspirations for these works.