Peace, Nature, and Renewal: The Music of Mark Dal Porto
Tracy Carr, oboe. Mark Dal Porto, piano.
Vox Futura/Andrew Shenton
Arcadian Winds
Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra/Petr Vronsky
Navona Records 6220
Total Time:  49:36
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

Mark Dal Porto teaches at Eastern New Mexico University.  His work has received wide recognition in a variety of genres, several of which are represented on this new collection of his music.  The current release includes two of his orchestral works, a woodwind quintet, music for oboe, and several choral pieces creating a varied program to introduce his music to a broader audience.

The two orchestral works frame the other material.  The opening Song of Eternity takes its inspiration from an ancient Chinese text.  After an almost Copland-esque opening, the music begins to take shape as a more Neo-Romantic tone poem with some striking orchestral writing that grows slowly until it nearly explodes from the orchestra.  The final moments bring us back to a more reflective quality in this quite evocative work.  The concluding Mystic Mountain is a nature postcard following a hiker who climbs to discover the great panorama in what is likened to a spiritual experience.  This too has a Copland-esque quality with a touch of romanticism that lends the music a more cinematic quality.  Both these pieces are quite strong orchestral works.

Three works for chorus are also included on the album.  They each explore specific musical realms.  Modal harmony inflects the Middle Ages in the first piece, I Seek Rest for My Lonely Heart.  This connects to the opening work as it also is inspired by an ancient Chinese text.  “When Your Song Rang Out to Me” uses a text by the romantic poet Clemens von Brentano.  The music here stays more closely to a more American modern style with extended harmonies.  The final choral piece on the album is a choral rondo set to a Renaissance text, Spring, the Sweet Spring.  The style here builds a bit on the previous work with a sense of more infectious joy with bright harmonic ideas.  In some respects, it feels a bit like a Vaughan Williams setting.

The two works for winds are equally interesting.  First is a Romance for Oboe and Piano.  This is a very moving work that has a more romantic feel with moments of plaintive solo work against a more modern harmonic language that adds a sense of darkness at times.  There is a rather beautiful harmonic progression that recurs at times adding a bit more romantic touch to the music.  The music has these beautiful moments of more tonal harmony that move out of the more dissonant sections in a way that really captures the ear.  The other wind piece is a quintet.  The Exotic Animals Suite is cast in three movements that explores first birds, then reptiles, and finally, cats.  The suite gives listeners a chance to hear some of Dal Porto’s more experimental and humorous explorations.  The bird calls here are created using a variety of crowing techniques from the various reeds.  Additional techniques such as multiphonics and using key slaps for rhythmic ideas along with slides and glissandi add to the descriptive quality of the music.  In the central movement, a more sinuous idea snakes about and is given a fugal treatment with a variety of techniques added to accent the subject as the five voices explore the idea.  The final movement allows for a a faster-paced scherzo.  The music works as a more intense piece for quintet exploring the interesting timbres of the instruments in a descriptive language.

As an introduction to Dal Porto’s music, this release gives listeners a good overview of stylistic approaches and technique.  His orchestral music is going to be a real plus for many as are the choral works.  There is a lot of fine music here with strong performances here.  Despite the different recording dates and venues, the album is equally well-engineered and equalized.

Parallel Realms
Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra/Petr Vronsky
Navona Records 6217
Total Time:  48:23
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

Sergio Cervetti’s music has appeared on a number of Navona releases.  The Uruguayan-born composer studied with Ernst Krenek and first gained critical attention at the 1966 Venezuela Music Festival.  Over the course of his long career his music explores the sorts of aesthetic and creative shifts of the latter 20^th Century from serialism to minimalism.  Two of the three orchestral works on this release were composed more recently with one being a revision from a piece earlier in the composer’s career.

First is the symphonic poem Et in Arcadia ego (2017.  The music here capture a blend of meditative reflection and a sense of awe at the natural wonders of an island off the coast of Uruguay, Martin Garcia.  One might discern references to bird calls in the texture which is built around the interval of a minor second.  This idea connects throughout the piece, in an almost ongoing pattern that is a blend of ostinato technique and minimalist qualities.  As it transfers through the orchestra, different sections respond with their own interpretation and expansion of this motive moving us gradually away from this to a more postmodern style.  The music is atonal but has an almost Romantic style of orchestral imagery and color which eventually gives way briefly to a traditional criollo tune.  This floats into the texture and tries to overcome the overarching pillars of dissonance.  Soon the more atonal realms and bird calls return to lend an over-arching shape to the piece.

Consolamentum (2016) takes inspiration from the persecution of the Cathars during the Inquisition.  The music takes their experience of martyrdom and waiting for death as they try to unite with a deeper religious plane and experience.  Cervetti expands his primary motive to the tension created between two chords.  In this non-tonal setting, they serve as an anchoring harmony and another where the music moves toward and from on a structural level.  The music here tends to focus on an exploration of this modal-sounding harmony and resulting lines.  As they come together, it begins to lend a sense of the intensity from a meditative to more overwhelming experience.  In this respect, Messiaen’s serio-religious orchestral works come to mind of which this is a very distant cousin.  The two primary harmonic ideas help provide an idea for the listener to grasp onto while the other material seems to swirl around it and add a dramatic narrative to the experience.

Cervetti returned to one of his early works, Plexus, which he composed in 1970 and revised in 2016.  The semi-graphic score originally incorporated radio and TV slogans that were spoken by orchestra members.  This early piece reveals some of the tension the composer was exploring in his own work and what directions he might take.  Total serialism was not an answer and while minimalism was still a new development, he seems to have taken a collage approach.  Using a sense of ideas branching ever outward until they eventually dissipate.  The music manages to embrace an expanded tonality that can then explode into a variety of clusters and cacophonous sounds.  While it continues to move outward, one feels as if music itself is being stretched outward until we must contemplate where we are headed in the resulting silence.

For those interested in contemporary orchestral music, Parallel Realms is an excellent way to become familiar with Cervetti’s music.  The canvases are large and the music shifts between these aleatoric and minimalist realms as both consonance and dissonance are used to serve the dramatic imagery or concepts of the music.  Each work has much to reveal upon further exploration and listening as well.