Rouse: Seeing; Kabir Padavali
Orion Weiss, piano.  Tavis Trevigne, soprano.  Albany Symphony Orch./David Alan Miller
Naxos 8.559799
Total Time:  63:36
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

After an earlier release this year of music by Alan Jay Kernis, the Albany Symphony Orchestra and their Music Director David Alan Miller turn to music by American composer Christopher Rouse.  Rouse’s music garnered attention back in 1993 when he received the Pulitzer Prize for his Trombone Concerto.  Since then he has created a massive and memorable body of work played the world over.  Here we get to sample two distinct works from 1998 receiving their world premiere recordings.

The first of these is Seeing, commissioned originally by Emanuel Ax and the New York Philharmonic.  The piece is a sort of distorted integration of Robert Schumann’s own Piano Concerto.  The latter was a work Ax had decided not to play in concert, and so this becomes a bit of a private musical joke of sorts.  But also underlying the work is its conception of how psychosis can impact a person’s view both spiritually and psychologically.  It is something more obviously relating to Schumann’s own struggles with mental illness, but also here refers to music by Skip Spence, from whom the work takes its title.  In some ways, the Schumann is taken apart and reassembled sometimes quite recognizably, and others less so as the concerto’s four sections unfold.  After a rather manic opening, an unsettling and somewhat macabre slower section appears with an almost disenchanted solo line against dark orchestral textures.  The adagio music is reminiscent at times of film score depictions of unsettled characters.  The final scherzo section continues through this rather unusual hallucinatory process with direct quotation and a rather intense series of dissonant crashes and brilliant pianistic flourishes.  Sometimes the orchestra tends to be almost mocking the music itself.  The piece is intense, but the dramatic quality of the music allows for the listener to enter in to this unusual soundworld and the more ethereal moments are quite compelling.  It is a sort of concert Altered States in its thrust and style.

The Minnesota Orchestra was behind the commissioning of Kabir Padavali with Dawn Upshaw the planned recipient of this song cycle for soprano and orchestra.  The Hindi texts are by the Indian poet Kabir (ca. 1398-ca. 1448) whose poetry has survived through oral tradition.  Six poems are used here.  They begin with two texts that use musical instrument imagery as their departure point.  The third song explores a sort of “peaceable kingdom” of animals.  Spiritual components help pull these threads together in the fourth and sixth song, bookending a text of love in these often allegorical texts.  Rather than utilize Indian ragas in the music, Rouse has instead created a more evocative atmosphere that provides its own sense of mystery.  Using an accordion and solo oboe he is also able to make the suggestion of the music against which the music unfolds.  Quiet string entries, making use of the Minnesota Orchestra’s string sound, also lend a dreamy atmosphere.  This is punctuated by brass before the vocal line appears to float above the texture adding another layer of sensuality.   The third song has an almost jazz-like rhythmic punch with equally interesting harmonies while the vocal line moves seemingly erratically amidst the fairly dramatic music.  A variety of unusual vocal sounds are also created in the often bizarre fourth song with its texts talking about a mad world and violence.  This is beautifully offset by the penultimate text of a woman at a spinning wheel connecting her thoughts to concepts of love and the threads she weaves.

The orchestra is on great display in these performances.  Weiss manages to assert himself well in this piece and he is also a student of Ax giving him another unique connection to Seeings.  Soprano soloist Talise Trevigne is familiar to fans of contemporary opera as she has been in a number of Jack Heggie’s operas over the past decade.   Her performance here is certainly exquisite and well balanced against the orchestra.  Both performances date from 2013 and are just now making it to disc, the result perhaps of a number of these modern American Classics releases being ahead on the schedule.  These world premiere recordings are excellently recorded and will be a good introduction to Rouse’s music for many new listeners.  It is sort of odd that at least the concerto has not made its way to disc yet.  Might be worth pairing it with the Schumann at some point to further link the way Rouse’s work unpacks and reuses it.  The song cycle is equally interesting.

Ligeti: Violin Concerto; Atmospheres; Lontano; San Francisco Polyphony
Benjamin Schmid, violin.  Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra/Hannu Lintu
Ondine 1213
Total Time:  68:22
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

Gyorgi Ligeti’s (1923-2006) music consists often of highly-organized ideas that are then intricately laid out resulting in often intense, or exhilarating, textures.  The music can be devilishly difficult to play as it requires intense concentration by performers whose parts are often placed in the extreme ends of their registers.  The music also makes demands on musicians to fully explore dynamic ranges as well.  On top of this, tempos tend to move at extreme ends of the spectrum as well being either very slow or amazingly fast.  Some of his works actually include passages that are impossible to play.  At first glance, all of these traits together would often be composition issues torn apart in a burgeoning composer’s style, and yet these seemingly intellectual and academic pieces managed to grab many advocates for Ligeti’s music over the past few decades.  In some respects, his work is the antithesis of the sort of 1960s minimalist styles of composers like Terry Riley, with the resulting “trip” just as fascinating for the listener.  It may have been this quality which attracted Stanley Kubrick to use Ligeti’s music, along with other contemporary works, for his classic science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey.  One of the pieces used in the film, Atmospheres, is included on the present release.

Recording these works can be equally problematic as once you are off and running it is difficult to stop and pick back up at the same tempos and dynamics.  Often, Ligeti’s music is thus recorded in concert to become a testament to that particular moment in time (another trait of 1960s musical philosophy).  There are other recordings of these pieces and each will certainly be unique though the present recording allows for a better overview of Ligeti’s music.  Hannu Lintu’s new recording is an opportunity to explore Ligeti’s style as it evolved from the 1960s into the latter 20^th Century.  While the program itself is not organized chronologically, the notes suggest listening to the album that way in order to hear how Ligeti adjusted his compositional approach over time.  Listeners unfamiliar with Ligeti’s music will still find themselves drawn in to these often mesmerizing and intense works all the same.

The album sequence places three works around the more substantial Violin Concerto.  The opening work, Lontano, was composed in 1967 and is the orchestral parallel to the choral work Lux Aeterna.  The music features an intense energy and though has a sort of micropolyphonic approach, the use of imitation occurs on a larger scale across the piece’s playing time.  The music focuses on a variety of unisons that help move the work through an f-minor triad essentially beginning on Ab, moving to C, and then eventually F.  As different instruments approach these pitches one is intended to come away with the myriad ways even a single pitch can have different meanings dependent on register and the instrument playing the note.  Some rhythmic intensity is also added to help lend the work its forward motion.  Overall, though, dissonance is mostly avoided as the slow movement to pitches comes across as delayed special passing tones.  The work also is a good example of Ligeti’s exploration of extreme registers of instruments from low bassoons and even a contrabass clarinet to high flute tones.

As composers struggled to find an engaging musical voice beyond minimalist and post-minimalist styles at the end of the 20^th Century, many began exploring quotation of earlier familiar classical works as a basis for launching new material.  Some composers also began including historical references to earlier musical periods that in a sense “reviewed” and borrowed ideas placing them in more contemporary musical language.  This trend was perhaps the middle ground from composers who moved into more accessible musical language and rediscovered Romanticism.  Like Penderecki, Ligeti occasionally fell into that historical glancing back approach and this is what makes his Violin Concerto (1989-1993) an interesting work.

On its surface, the five-movement work appears to be rooted in the Baroque suite with movements labeled “Praeludium” (#1) and “Passacaglia” (#4).  Music from the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and even Romanticism will all be referenced as the work progresses.  Among the more contemporary techniques used in the piece are the use of microintervals and retuning based on the overtone series taken from the double bass.  The violins are being tuned sharp and the violas a quarter tone lower while the soloist and other strings are all tuned normally.  The opening movement introduces this effect by almost giving the effect of the strings tuning while an angular melodic line, with pitched percussion, is outlined.  The soloist might be said to playing an almost Baroque-like improvisation with some echoes in brass feeling like a Renaissance response.  In the midst of the unusual tunings, there are still hints at traditional harmony and the quick interchanges between soloist and orchestra are rather intense.  The second movement, “Aria, Hoquetus, Choral”, begins with a rather traditional long, lyrical line for the soloist that has its roots in folk and Romantic styles.  The result is an often moving musical contrast to the opening movement.  The central section introduces unusual wind sounds and picks up in tempo with an almost Medieval sound at times.  A very brief “Intermezzo” brings the lyrical line of the second movement crashing into more intense orchestral ideas and contemporary gestures before we move into the “Passacaglia” which shifts into a more ethereal atmosphere with references to earlier movements.  The final “Appassionato” movement has moments of intensity as the contrast between orchestra and soloist continues with the solo continuing its lyrical voice against almost pointillistic commentary.  The work is a fascinating piece overall exhibiting Ligeti’s various musical stylistic approaches while also proving to show off the soloist quite well.  Benjamin Schmid’s performance is certainly amazing and intelligently performed with the slower sections proving to be quite beautiful.  There are several recordings of the work, one with Boulez closer to the piece’s completion which would also be worth checking out for comparison.  But this new release is certainly well played and fascinating.

The most familiar work on the disc is Atmospheres (1961) having been used in Kubrick’s classic aforementioned film.  The work is an early example of Ligeti’s use of micropolyphony where small cells of material are repeated in canon between groups in short periods of time and with little space between their iterations.  The textures seem to thus swell and evaporate over the course of the piece creating unusual shifts in depth and orchestral sound.  Performers have no idea what aspect is most important as all things are essentially equal.  The result is quite fascinating lending no indication at the intensity of the design and demands placed on the large orchestra.

The final work on the album is San Francisco Polyphony (1974).  Here the orchestra is run through its paces in a series of ideas and unusual rhythms that focus on contrasts.  As the conductor focuses on one tempo, instruments and sections begin to break away into their own pulses creating a sort of controlled chaos that pushes forward until the final spasms have taken the tempo beyond control.

In order for Ligeti’s music to work the textures really must be crystal clear and the instrumental extremes must cut through in the sound picture.  Ondine has managed to perfectly capture this in a recording that provides enough ambient warmth to the sound so that ideas are not too dry.  The orchestra manages to make these works seem quite effortless and the result is an always engaging musical experience that grabs the attention and does not let go throughout the course of the CD.  Tuning is also critical and is spot on throughout this recording.  For those looking for a great introduction to Ligeti’s orchestral pieces, Lintu’s new release is a highly recommended affair that may have some exploring this great 20^th Century composer’s music further.