Butterfly Effects and Other Works by Elizabeth Vercoe
Peter H. Bloom, flutes/piccolo. Mary Jane Rupert, harp/piano;
D’Anna Fortunato, mezzo-soprano;
Patricia McCarty, viola; Ellen Weckler, piano;
Boston Musica Viva/Richard Pittman
Navona Records 6196
Total Time:  66:06
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

Four chamber music works are featured on this release of music by Elizabeth Vercoe (b. 1941).  Vercoe studied with Ross Lee Finney, Leslie Bassett, and Gardner Read and her work has been widely performed and recorded.  This Navona release includes two more recently-recorded performances, a concert recording and another intended for radio. Broadcast.

The album opens with a multi-movement work for flutes and harp, Butterfly Effects (2009).  Across the seven movements, Vercoe explores the qualities of different instruments in the flute family: alto flute, bass flute, concert flute, and piccolo.  The music has a slight impressionistic quality to it, aided by the harp’s material.  Against this is first a rather dreamy, dark opening movement (“Mourningcloak”); a faster-paced flitting “Banded Blue Parrot”; a tango (“Common Jezebel”); intriguing effects like beat-boxing (“Question Mark”) and blues riffs (“Karner Blues”); and a palindromic compositional technique (“Monkey Puzzle”).  The flute lines allow for registral exploration and often features some sinuous lines.  Some are sultrier than others, but it is as if these are all like watercolor brushstrokes that tend to be somewhat introspective in this often stunningly beautiful work.  Recorded a decade earlier, Elegy for viola and piano (1990), is one of the composer’s more acclaimed works.  It is one of five introspective solo works and is a perfect counterpart to the early flute and harp work.  The music here has a decidedly harsher edge with dark colors and dissonance that add to the devastation of the intense solo line.

This is my letter to the World (2001) separates the two instrumental works on the album.  The song cycle uses six Emily Dickinson poems with texts addressing nature, loss, marriage, and the thrill of writing.  Across these settings, Vercoe sets up the flute and voice in such a way that the former serves like an almost interior emotional connection to the words.  It adds some text painting, but often serves as a bit of the poet’s, and perhaps by extension the composer’s, consciousness.  The music shifts well from quietude to more declamatory and impassioned moments.  The other song cycle here is one of several Vercoe has composed that focus on texts by women.  Herstory I (1975) is the first of these collections that focuses on the expressive poetry of confessional poets (Anne Sexton, Adrienne Rich, Sylvia Plath, and Pam White) that explore the modern woman’s experiences.  The six texts here moves us from madness and fear of safety, relationship, reaction to a child’s nightmare, life stages, and a final lullaby.  This fascinating work would win a competition sponsored by WGBH radio and was performed by the forces captured here for the radio broadcast.  In many ways this is a perfect example of 1970s compositional style that blends a sense of the avant-garde styles of serial technique and vocal effects (not quite as extreme as say George Crumb).  It is still not quite as experimental as some pieces already exhibiting Vercoe’s strong sense of line, though here the music is a more intense experience.

Vercoe has an excellent sense of dramatic shape that comes through in each of these works spanning some 35 years of her creativity.  The music maintains a more commonly tonal realm with extended, denser harmonies used for dramatic effect.  Each line is shaped in such a way that the color it creates evolves with the accompaniment harmony.  It blends aspects of impressionism, modernism, and a touch of new romanticism.

Kamyar Mohajer: Pictures of the Hidden
The Ives Collective
San Francisco Wind Ensemble
Raeeka Shehabi-Yaghmai, soprano. Karolina Rojhan, piano.
Alexander String Quartet
Navona Records 6180
Total Time:  62:21
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

Composer Kamyar Mohajer embraces aspects of his personal and musical influences in this new album of chamber music.  His Persian roots appear through applications of modal musical qualities and exploration of and the poetry of Hafez (1325-1390).  His composition teachers have included Behzad Ranjbaran and Giancarlo Aquilanti.  A song cycle and a string quartet are the primary larger works on this new Navona release.

Three smaller pieces give us a flavor for Mohajer’s writing for strings, winds, and piano, respectively.  Prelude (2013) is an intimate work for string trio and takes its inspiration from Bach.  The work is a microcosm of how the Persian melodic contours and harmonies are intertwined with the three independent lines that weave through the work.  The woodwind quintet, Reng (2008, rev. 2017) is another way to transfer these different lines across a slightly broader palette.  Here they come together for some larger harmonic punctuations while the florid line flits along in this fun little dance-like piece.  Motifs are tossed between the different instruments with a variety of their own momentary interjections causing the whole group to respond and interact.  The album concludes with a Ballade in C (2013) which brings us a sense of the romantic tradition in more dissonant modern dress coupled with modal harmony.  It is a denser work than the others in this collection but no less fascinating a journey.

The album gets its title from the bookended poem used in Five Songs, Based on Poetry of Hafez (2014).  Here one gets a real sense of the ancient lullabies of Mohajer’s childhood that he reflects upon in the accompanying notes.  The work is set up with three poems used to create a sense of structure where the outer two movements are halves of the same poem and the central, third movement, its own textual focus.  The piano tends to add slight backdrops at first.  The style seems to blend a little Bach with modernist and Eastern modal qualities.  It tends to be almost like the transitional reflection on the vocal line with a style that is tied to 19^th-Century Art Song.  This helps lend the vocal writing a further ancient quality that moves toward a more modern feel at its center.  All told, it is a fascinating set of songs.

The string quartet (2012) is a four-movement work.  The opening “Andante” has a real emotionally-wrought thematic idea that has an almost reflective sadness.  There is some quite stunning writing here in a tonal language.  A more angular line opens the second movement with its folk-like modal qualities connecting to the composer’s heritage as well.  Things then take off in what is the scherzo movement of the larger structure with a style that has a slight Shostakovich edge.  The third movement “Adagio” returns us to this emotionally intense, and intimate reflection which seems to glance back to a happier time.  The long line has a warm quality with interesting turns that add interest as the harmony too shifts in subtle, unexpected ways.  The tempo picks up slightly with a faster-paced accompaniment that lies in contrast to the rich, beautiful thematic idea that soars over the top.  The fire-y last movement explore more fully the accompanimental rhythmic motifs that appeared earlier in a fascinating blend of rhythmic accents and modal writing that together has an almost post-Bartok quality.  When all is said and done this is a strong addition to the quartet literature.

Across these five pieces, one gets a sense for Mohajer’s embracing of his own musical tastes and influences which all come together in often dramatic fashion.  These are pieces that land in the modernist styles of today with strong thematic development and music that communicates great emotional depth and excitement.  The string quartet, woodwind quintet, and song cycle are the strong works on this album which makes this something to explore for those interested in 21^st Century music.