Tacit-Citat-Ion
Melis Jaatinen, mezzo-soprano.
Rebecka Sofia Ahvenniemi, electronics.
BIT20 Ensemble
Silje Aker Johnsen, soprano. Ellen Ugelvik, prepared piano.
Hilde Annine Hasselberg, soprano. Manuel Hofstatter, percussion.
Joshua Rubin, clarinet. Yumi Murakami, piccolo.
Hans Gunnar Hagen, viola.
Ravello Records 8011
Total Time:  57:51
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

Ravello Records tends to bring a variety of contemporary music that explores unique approaches to composition.  Here is a chance to explore the chamber music of Finnish composer Rebecka Sofia Ahvenniemi.  Her work is a combination of acoustic instruments, voice, electronics, and fixed media that have their roots in the avant-garde experiments of the 1960s.  The music has this sense of deconstruction to primary elements of timbre, attack, and expression which are then reassembled to have the listener consider these components of music.  The pieces here include a host of vocal settings with several works for instruments in an eclectic collection of contemporary music.

There are several vocal works on the album.  The opening track, Dada-Aria (2016) is a striking exploration of pure vocal writing that references 19^th-Century opera, though here all the extraneous accompaniment support has been removed to focus on the sounds of the voice which is stunningly performed here by Melis Jaatinen.  Herze Beim Spinnrade (2013) takes its inspiration from a familiar Schubert song though reinterpreted here through a harsher, almost mechanical accompaniment enhanced with a prepared piano.  Vocal virtuosity that requires a full range of technique is also employed with an equally excellent interpretation by Silje Aker Johnsen.  It is another of the ways that Ahvenniemi’s music works to merge traditions from different musical eras.  One can hear this more in the very brief L’Operette D’Amor where the past and present collide with the use of looped electronics and percussion elements against the vocal aria.  The more extensive Det Osynliga Barnet (2013) is an opportunity for Ahvenniemi to use her compositional technique, with its own moments of ambiguity, in a text that is equally so.  Banalala (2014) connects with the composer’s philosophical and aesthetic intersections with another work for voice and fixed media.

Three pieces for solo instruments with electronics and/or fixed media display how Ahveniemi explores the qualities of these solo lines within this context.  The clarinet work, Ode to a Tree (2016), is among the eco-musical approaches where pre-recorded vocal sounds have a somewhat primal feel against the timbre of the solo instrument.  The piece was premiered in an area surrounded by trees making this larger connection to the woodwind and its surroundings.  Lucia (2009) is a work for piccolo that also employs electronic manipulation to amplify and alter the decay of this instrument as its own unique color is emphasized.   Finally, one of the composer’s more performed works, A Song for the Viola (2011) creates an equally intriguing, brief dramatic work inviting us to consider the multitude of directions an idea might take us.  Perhaps the most experimental piece here is Winds (2016) which focuses on breathing sounds imaged originally in surround sound.  The air moves through a melodica which adds some slight tonal quality to the music.

The album’s title comes from one of the two works for string quartet included here.  Wuthering Modes, Not Moods (2017) explores aspects of how music is being created with these methods of expression being stretched within the texture.  The idea here parallels that of the opening work as timbre and musical gesture become the key elements of Ahvenniemi’s creation.  Finally, Tacit-citat-ion (2013/2018) serves as a sort of summary of Ahvenniemi’s integration of the past and present which here also includes a reference to modern musical style, in particular that of Kaija Saariaho whose Nocturne for solo violin is the departure point.

Though one can certainly hear the distant experimental music of the 1960s and 1970s in her work, the eclectic collection here shows how Ahvenniemi has taken these approaches and blended them into a unique musical language that wants the listener to rethink and rehear the way our own expectations of sound and tone color are created.  In that respect, the album makes for an often fascinating listen with many fantastic, committed performances.

Beneath The Tide: A Collection of Concertos
Bruno Philipp, clarinet.  Mojca Ramuscak, Goran Koncar, violin.
Pedro Ribeiro Rodrigues, guitar. Charlene Farrugia, piano.
Croatian Chamber Orchestra/Miran Vaupotic
Navona Records 6186
Total Time:  74:16
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

A variety of modern concertos greets the listener in this new release featuring the Croatian Chamber Orchestra.  Works for clarinet, violin, guitar, and piano explore a variety of musical voices in this music for soloist and orchestra.

Michael Cunningham’s Clarinet Concerto, Op. 186 appeared in a collection of the composer’s orchestral music last year.  The performance by Bruno Philipp is a committed one for this rather dark work.  The first movement opens with a burst of nervous energy that then shifts into a rather virtuosic display by the soloist against the dark textures of the orchestra.  Hindemith feels very much in the background of this work as well with Cunningham’s tendency to use a similar harmonic approach that supports his long thematic ideas that build and build like extensions of a Baroque motif stretched to the breaking point.  The central movement, “Lithe”, moves us into a suave moment of relaxation in tempo but the undercurrent of the music still maintains a sort of sinister quality.  Hints at the musical motives of the first movement flit into the texture adding a sort of twittering unease.  “Charivari” means essentially a “bunch of noise” often in folk mock parades intended to either celebrate a marriage or make fun of an unpopular person which informs the final movement.  The style here certainly suggests such an intent with the fast-paced four-note motif that opens the work (an almost Prokofievian approach) with the serenade qualities reflected in the lyrical second idea.  The first movement motif returns as the piece moves towards a gradual piled-up harmony, last statement by clarinet and final cadence.

There are two works for violin and orchestra.  The first is Rain Worthington’s In Passages.  This ten-minute emotional work has the soloist emerge from the string texture with poignant modern lyric lines.  The soloist and orchestra have some interplay here as the primary idea works across the strings.  The latter provide as sort of sounding board to the soloist in this piece.  Violinist Mojca Ramuscak finds just the right tone and balance for this intriguing work.  Bruce Reiprich’s brief Lullaby (2002/2018) was written to celebrate the birth of a friend’s son.  It is a lush and romantic work beautifully performed here by Goran Koncar in what would make for a really gorgeous encore number.

Ssu-Yu Huang is a Taiwanese composer who has received numerous commissions for guitar.  Her first concerto for the instrument is a single-movement affair.  The structure is rather fascinating though.  There is an opening guitar idea that move us into a folkish idea inspired by an actual Hengchun folksong (“Nostalgia”).  Using a modified rondo structure, this idea is placed alongside more astringent modern and atonal works.  The style of the music has a rather cinematic quality (aided by a fairly dry recording) to it as if we are experiencing a suite of music from a dramatic film with an Asian setting.  It is interesting to hear how the guitar line itself morphs in and out of these ethnic inflections.  The piece features a committed and excellent performance by Pedro Ribeiro Rodrigues.

The album concludes with a piano concerto that was one of composer’s Beth Mehocic’s earliest compositions.  This is a more traditional work which was not quite supported when she first began her academic studies in the mid-1970s.  Fortunately, the concert world has realized that accessible new music is vital to their survival as well and she revisited the piece for a more recent performance.  For the more recent performances and subsequent recording she has made a few tweaks to the orchestration.  Having had previous work recorded for PARMA, this became a more viable recorded possibility and has led to the present recording.  The opening movement has a blend of Copland-esque open harmonies in the orchestra with a more romantic piano style laid against this style.  A more reflective idea opens the central slow movement that explores a repeated motif.  This builds towards the third movement rondo which is transitioned into by percussion and somewhat martial idea which will run through this final movement.  There are parts of this work that feel like a continuation of the mid-century symphonists like Paul Creston.  Overall, the piece has a nice dramatic flow with an accessible style.  The piano gets to have a few pyrotechnics along the way, but stays balanced well with the orchestral writing and it gets a little cadenza as well.  The sound here is a bit forward for the piano which leaves the orchestra seeming a lot drier and further recessed in the sound picture.

The music here features a great variety of approaches that introduce listeners to these contemporary composers.  By choosing a variety of solo combinations, the album widens its appeal with a little something for every taste.  What is more fascinating is that each of these pieces are equally captivating and receive an excellent set of performances well supported by the Croatian orchestra.