Summer and Winter Songs
Maeve Hoglund, soprano.
Jean-Paul Bjorlin, piano, tenor.
Navona Records 6236
Total Time:  41:48
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

Mira J. Spektor may be better known as the founder of the Aviva Players.  The group, begun in 1975, focuses on chamber music and songs by women composers from the 12^th to 21^st Centuries.  As a composer, she has written several chamber operas and even music for film and television.  In this release, listeners are introduced to her music through eighteen different songs featuring some of her own poetry as well as classic poetry and even some from her granddaughter, Lily Nussbaum.

Spektor’s music is a blend of art song and musical theater (“Have Song Will Travel” is a perfect early example of this approach).  The tonal language is a more expanded romantic style with nice turns of phrases.  The piano provides both gorgeous harmonic support while also connecting to the melodic line of the soloist.  The texts move us through a sense of nostalgia that connects to the over-arching seasonal sequencing of the texts and songs.  Listeners will be enthralled by the engaging melodic writing and the way the music shifts from a classical romanticism coupled with a theatrical, classic Broadway style that is further informed by fun jaunts into jazz harmonies and rhythms.  Spektor’s music has a way of moving effortlessly to connect with the many moods of her texts that can illustrate intimacy, as well as big exciting moments.  A sense of wit also can be heard where this is appropriate.  “Sunday Psalm” is a more religious departure textually with a hymn-like musical style for the borrowed text which then moves on in beautiful reflections to the poetry of Phyllis McGinley.  Spektor is equally at home with German or French texts that have as natural an approach as her English songs on this album.  “Il Neige Dans Mon Coeur” might have been a perfect song for say Edith Piaf.  The music might reference these other influential styles, but Spektor’s style makes these unique and one begins to get a sense of her approach to text setting by the time the disc reaches its conclusion.  It is always inventive and communicative.

Texts for each of the songs accompany this release.  It is helpful for those looking closer at the structure and the way Spektor’s text settings flow with the poems.  Hoglund’s gorgeous voice navigates the moods of these pieces and is a real pleasure to hear as she nuances the texts and changes mood from one to the next.  Her high range is quite exquisite and her middle range has a rich, full sound.  Bjorlin is a perfect partner in these works and the balance between the two is handled well in the sound picture.  In some ways, Spektor’s music has its foot in art song and popular song and that will make this release a wonderful discovery for those who appreciate contemporary vocal writing.

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.