Quadrants
Altius Quartet
Navona Records 6239
Total Time:  76:59
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

The Altius Quartet formed at Southern Methodist University in 2011 and currently is the quartet-in-residence at the University of Colorado-Boulder.  This third release continues their exploration of new music for the string quartet by eight diverse composers both in single and multi-movement works.  For this release, Navona has paired them by similar explorative techniques or musical parallels.

Bruce Babcock’s tonal and engaging The Present Moment opens the disc.  A motivic idea is used as a unfying factor to provide a moment of reflection and commentary before it moves into a new expression and development in this 12-minute work.  A beautiful thematic line is featured in the beginning with an exciting more rhythmical idea to provide structural interest to this often gentle work.  First is a very brief three-movement work by Nora Morrow.  Rose Moon.  Like Babcock’s piece, it focuses on a specific motive that then blossoms outward while eploring the sonorities of the quartet across three movements.  The central movement features beautiful harmonic writing and an engaging thematic thread making it stand out a bit from its surrounding partners.  The final movement has a nice Baroque dance-like quality.

Next are pieces that explore American folk music.  First is Gary Smart’s Three Fantasies on African American Songs.  Altius likes to program music that crosses aesthetic and cultural boundaries and this more bluesy third stream-like piece is certainly in that category.  The outer movements incorporate more familiar melodies from the tradition.  These are morphed into new and interesting statements.  The central movement is a prison song originally recorded by ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax.  Here the sound of axes striking is imitated in the music against simple repeated phrase.  In Jonathan Newmark’s Tom Dooley Without the Fringe On Top provides a moment of lighter writing with references to Oklahoma! and the folk tune mentioned in the title, both somewhat deconstructed to create more modern, visceral energy.  It was part of a speedwriting contest.

The second half of the disc features slightly more abstract works.  Alistair White’s Two Panels is conceived around polar opposities related to the sense of chaos or line, as well as components of time and space (which may also connect to registral considerations).  Harmonically we move toward a more atonal expression which continues into Janice Macaulay’s intimate Three Pieces where ideas are transferred across the members of the quartet.  The central movement is quite lyrical with the final movement moving into a more intense transference of skittering motives.  The piece received the “Best of Category” prize for Chamber Music at the Delius Festival in 1983.  A bit of descriptive writing returns as Beth Mehocic gives musical voice to her African Grey parrot’s dreams of flying from his cage in Picasso’s Flight where one can almost here the fluttering of wings and moments of anxious wishfulness.  There is a bit of Stravinsky around the edges of this particular work.

The album concludes with Pheld Dean Witter’s String Quartet No. 4 (2014).  A weightier first movement features differing episoides that flirt with chromaticism as they move in unexpected ways.  After a calm central movment, the finale moves forward with great energy and makes for an exciting conclusion in modern harmonic dress.  It is a very accessible addition to the repertoire.

As with Altius’ concerts, and Navona’s releases in general, there is a little something for everyone here.  The folkish pieces are intriguing expressions of blues and folk influences that slowly move us from the tonal contemporary sound of the opening works to more intense atonal expressions as the program continues.  Certainly, this is another fine exploration of modern writing for string quartets that should be of interest to fans of this genre.  The music is certainly quite engaging throughout.

Alla Elana Cohen: Quaestiones et Responsa
New Works for Chamber Orchestra & Chamber Ensembles
(for a complete list of performers see Ravello’s website)
Ravello Records 8017
Disc One: Total Time:  43:54
Disc Two: Total Time:  41:22
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

A couple of years ago, Ravello released a collection of chamber music by the Russian-born composer Alla Elma Cohen.  Cohen teaches at the Berklee College of Music and is known for her explorations of sounds and combinations.  She likes to revisit material in new instrumentation allowing for a different aural experience of the music, much like the way a painter might repaint the same image with different colors or perspective.  To that end, the current two-disc set explores eight of her works with a couple of them similar in title, but different in instrumentation.  One of these, Inner Temple appeared on that earlier album as a string quartet.  Here it is transformed first into a work for chamber orchestra to close off disc one, and then a cello and piano work to close off disc two.  In each of these cases though, the title is more a reference to the conceptualization of the backdrop upon which Cohen paints her musical materials.

Disc one opens with a nod to the Baroque in a six-movement Partita for chamber orchestra.  The work eschews the more traditional movement structure but does include aspects of sarabande, courante, and gigue along with a narrative second movement featuring flute and cello, a pastorale section, and a colorful modernist “Preamble” to get things going.  This helps set up the sense of irony and humorous play on these ancient forms that Cohen explores in the work.

The String Quartet (“Three Tableau Noir”) features material from Cohen’s opera Inheritance.  The work is based on the writings of the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore.  The three movements are taken from the opera’s prologue and two scenes revolving around an old man and a boy, Nitay.  The first movement gives the listener a sense of the tragic quality of the story.  The music has interesting little trill ideas that flit across the texture with sinuous lyric ideas that pop in and out of the texture serving more as different viewpoints from the players of the story.  The second movement provides two musical threads connected to first the old man, a more lumbering and reflective idea, and then Nitay, a more energetic and frantic idea.  The music though has an overarching sense of impending disaster.  The final movement comes from the final scene where the old man abandons Nitay in a vault and locks him in it.  It has a more intense quality as it opens which perhaps gradually builds on the horrific aspects of the story.  These movements end rather suddenly perhaps to further symbolize the brevity of Nitay’s life.

Querying the Silence, Volume 1, series 9 is a two-movement work for oboe and cello.  The piece explores the concept of musical echo effects both as counterpoint and as more traditional interaction between the two instruments of a particular motivic or thematic segment.  The first movement focuses on descending phrases while the second also has this sense of lament with references to the first movement.  The plaintive oboe is set in contrast to chilling cello effects as well as lyrical moments that seem to grasp at tonality.  The piece demands quite a bit from its performers technically.

The first disc then closes with a chamber orchestra version of the “Inner Temple” title.  Cohen’s intent is to invite the listener to explore our human connections to the Divine.  After a somewhat somber opening, the central movement gives us a glimpse of joy and love (a three-note motif becomes a unifying factor here) before we move into the final movement’s seeking.  The music has a modern atonal sensibility with often intricate texures that here separates out winds, brass and strings at first before they begin to blend into interesting combinations.  Percussion adds extra emphasis.  It is also interesting to see how these small cells of material are translated across the ensemble for dramatic effect.

Two works titled Prophecies appear on disc two.  The first of these is “Series 4, Quaestiones at Responsa.”  Both are four-movement works for chamber orchestra.  Series 4 is a more visceral work with statements between strings and winds that seem to become more violent as we move from the first into the second movement.  There are some rather gorgeous lyrical moments for flute which seems to play the role of the questioner but the responses tend to be intense clusters of strings.  The cello somewhat serves this purpose in the first movement.  Violins take on this role in the third movement and a clarinet does the same in the final movement.  Marimba also adds some additional color and interplay in the work.  The final movement has some references to the earlier ones in terms of texture as well.  The work has an episodic character of back and forth in a somewhat call and response like manner.   The Series 5 Prophecies follows a similar exploration again taking on new colors and overall a more serene interaction than its earlier counterpart.

The Piano Quartet features flute, oboe and clarinet in a three-movement work.  As contrast to the opening piece on this disc, the music has a more upbeat quality.  It continues along Cohen’s path of exploration of color and textural interaction with echoes between the different lines to help highlight these subtleties across the piece.  The final work on the album, Inner Temple—Volume 2, Series 3 is for cello and piano.  It bears a subtitle, “Sacred Diptych”, which suggests a meditative mood of a spiritual nature.  The opening has some of this same questioning attitude heard in the other pieces on this disc.  A set of double variations informs the structure of the second movement.  Cohen’s notes state she intends to expand this into a double concerto which should prove another interesting work as well.

The present set is a great introduction to Cohen’s music and its very dramatic and emotional style cast in intense harmonic writing.  There are some contemporary compositional techniques that also find their way into the music further enhancing the dramatic thrust of the music.  The orchestral pieces allow listeners to hear how Cohen’s color palette is adapted as well.  This becomes a key way to enter into her music and there is a lot here to explore.  Certainly worth a look for those interested in contemporary music.