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.

Soul of a Nation: Portraits of Presidential Character
Frank Almond, violin. Henry Fogel, narrator;
Roosevelt University Chamber Orchestra/Emanuele Andrizzi;
John Bruce Yeh, clarinet. David Holloway, narrator;
Mark Ridenour, trumpet. Ray Frewen, narrator;
Gabriela Vargas, flute. Adrian Dunn, narrator.
Chicago College of Performing Arts Wind Ensemble/Stephen Squires
Albany Records TROY 1723
Total Time:  62:07
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

Pairing a narrator with a large orchestra has similar challenges to the use of any soloist and orchestra.  Often the spoken text becomes set aside with the orchestra then responding to these words or being subtly underscored as they appear.  Victoria Bond (b. 1945) takes her cues from one of the great examples of this in American music, Copland’s A Lincoln Portrait (1942).  The texts here are provided by Myles Lee and focus on four of the great American presidents, two that shaped the foundations of the country and two who moved and shaped the role of the country in the 20^th Century.  Bond studied composition with Ingolf Dahl and Roger Sessions.  Earlier in her career she worked with film composer Paul Glass on some of his scores.  Her work as a conductor though has been a significant one working early on with the Pittsburgh Symphony and Houston Orchestra.  She lectures often at the Metropolitan Opera.  Her compositions are now beginning to gain more attention as we move into the 21^st century that has gained a stronger foothold after the performance of her chamber opera Mrs. President (2001).

Each work incorporates important quotations by each President that help to explore the character of each man.  Each work explores unique musical sound worlds from contemporary style, to jazz, Ives and early 20^th-Century modernism, and patriotic musical quotations. The uniqueness though lies in the use of a solo instrument to also work as an additional catalyst to these pieces being subtitles concertos.

Thomas Jefferson is the focus of the opening, and longest of the works, Soul of the Nation.  This is a work for chamber orchestra and violin.  The soloist here introduces an important four-note motif that will be one of the unifying factors of the piece.  The modern writing helps create the sense of inner struggle and turmoil of Jefferson working to lay out the important foundational tenets of a new nation.  There is a rather beautiful, lyrical moment that moves us into the final third of the work providing a gorgeous, semi-tonal line in a sparser texture.  The piece ends rather quietly All told, a fascinating work with superb playing by violinist Frank Almond.

The remaining three pieces are all scored for wind ensemble making them important additions to concert repertoire band.  First is The Indispensible Man which takes on Franklin D. Roosevelt as its subject.  Perhaps no President became a visual metaphor for personal struggle with those facing the 20^th Century.  Bond’s music takes a decidedly different approach with an immediate nod to jazz with its excellent opening clarinet line (a start reminiscent of that used in the violin).  It stands as a distant relative of the concert works that melded art music and jazz written for Benny Goodman. The ensemble then enters with its own jazz-like big band style.  This stylistic approach then becomes the milieu upon which the text is layered.  The variations also explore important sections of the ensemble with a great little dialogue with the solo clarinet.  The ideas then run beneath the narrative.  Here too the interest lies in the ways Bond passes off her motifs through the ensemble handed off from narrator to soloist to ensemble and back.

In The Crowded Hour, the period song quotation lends the music a sort of Ives-ian quality and thus perfectly connects to this shifting period that marked the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt.  The sort of unbridled enthusiasm is thus captured by both soloist and wind ensemble as these tunes become fragmented and subtly altered as the piece progresses.  It tends to be a slightly sparser work with a brass band-like focus.  The music takes on a decidedly reflective quality as the story moves us into World War I with a nice lyrical trumpet idea.  The finale does bring us back to a fun period finale reminiscent of the band music of the time.

George Washington is the focus of Pater Patriae which closes the program.  The flute provides a nice fife-like reference here with a sort of martial like opening.  Yankee Doodle flits through the music as well and one gets the sense of a slight military parade in the opening bars.  The wind ensemble’s various ensembles are also explored here in delicate writing.  The music tends to be more traditional with less dissonance.  The lines tend to move in a thread that shifts from one color to the next in the sparser moments of the piece.  Brass signal the almost public side of Washington.  It is a rather fascinating piece equally as compelling and different from each of its predecessors on the album.  The final bars are a rather exhilarating blend of high winds and percussion (though it could use a final big chord to bring it to a close).

Each narrator brings their own unique style that works well with these texts that both tell the story of each person as well as include a variety of quotations.  The pieces themselves, with their exploration of different musical styles still create a consistent musical approach that illustrates Bond’s ability to shape the overall structure of these texts.  And yet, Bond manages to add distinct qualities that perfectly match these important historical figures in her music making this a rather engaging traversal of four significant Presidents.