Matthew Burtner: Glacier Music
Rivanna Quartet, Albemarle Ensemble
Brandon Bell, Trevor Saint, percussion.
Ravello Records 8003
Total Time:  74:11
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer (b. 1933) was among the first of composers creating soundscapes in the natural world in what he would come to identify as schizophonia.  The idea being that sound itself becomes split from the source.  He often integrated the natural world into his works where one might play across a lake at different times of the day with the sound being shaped by nature itself.  Along those same lines were experiments by other composers that used taped environments as backdrops to be manipulated or incorporated with other instruments.  Alaskan-born composer Matthew Burtner is to some extent the contemporary expression of these late-20^th Century aesthetics that redefined our concepts of sound and the natural world.

Glacier Music features music that moves us outdoors with field recordings from various glaciers or snowscapes being used as formative for the resulting music.  This enviro-acoustic music challenges us to explore sound as Burtner uses interactive software to create aural perspectives through manipulation of these various locales.  Two larger works bookend this album.

The opening piece features sounds recorded at the Matanuska Glacier located in the Chugach Mountains of Alaska.  Composed for the 2015 GLACIER Conference, the piece blends sounds of the glacier, which includes a running water motif to represent melting.  Against this layer of sound, Burtner then adds in slow-moving string quartet lines in simple harmony that slides in and through slight dissonance.  The addition of flute and clarinet are also incorporated into the texture along with horn.  The result is a rather melancholy sound through the opening half of the work.  As this fades away, we hear some additional sounds, most likened to “found” percussion ideas which moves us into a new section where it feels like larger droplets add a thudding sound of gradual collapse.  The final section brings back a sweeter, Americana-like quality with added horn to the ensemble now.  Here there is a gradual sense of outward growth with the harmonies recalling those of the opening.  Ripping sounds add to an overall sense of deterioration that is also communicated through the breakdown of the instrumental sounds as well.  It is a rather compelling work.

At the center of the album are three briefer works.  Sonic Physiography of a Time-Stretched Glacier features percussionist Brandon Bell.  The piece uses interactive software to coordinate a slowing down of the sounds of the Root Glacier’s melting.  Burtner uses the sound frequency to center pitch with the performer’s own response linked to how the piece stretches out.  By incorporating pitched mallet percussion we hear how these sounds and lines create blurring harmonies and then decay on their own.  This concept is further explored in Threnody which was part of an installation at the Anchorage Museum of Art.  There, Burtner’s sounds were embedded into a large block of ice.  It uses sounds recorded from the Aialik Glacier.  Popping sounds add a unique flavor to this particular work.  A more chilling experience is perhaps part of Syntax of Snow.  This is a more eco-acoustic work that finds a glockenspiel player using the sounds of the instrument and snow.  The latter being explored as an instrument all its own.  Trevor Saint, who commissioned the work, performs it here.

The final, larger-scale work on the album is Muir Glacier, 1889-2009.  The idea of the piece, commissioned by the Anchorage Museum of Art, was to depict the gradual 120-year decline of this glacier that was captured in an 1889 painting by Thomas Hill.  The music here uses sounds of water and glacial movements through a variety sonic manipulations and edits to lend a sense of the gradual retreat of the glacier.

Though some may approach this album with skepticism, it can be said that the works here provide fascinating blends of natural sounds and invite reflection about the global issues of planetary warming that are impacting the glaciers.  The pieces are like an eco-minimalism with repeated motifs of sound reimagining concepts of ostinato, pedal points, and other familiar concepts by incorporating natural elements into the textures.  The central pieces are perhaps more complex harmonically, but even here the sounds invite a reflected response to what is being communicated.  It is certainly one of the more unique releases in Ravello’s catalogue that will haunt the listener far after it has completed.

The Music of Dennis Kam
Pedroia Quartet; Sirius Quartet
Mia Vassilev, piano; Amy Tarantino-Trafton, piano.
Navona Records 6179
Total Time:  47:01
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

Composer Dennis Kam (b. 1942) was the Chair of the Composition and Theory Department at the University of Miami, Coral Gables where he taught for some 36 years.  He is currently composer in residence and associate conductor of the South Florida Youth Symphony.  He studied at the Oberlin Conservatory, the Salzburg Mozarteum, the East-West Center at the University of Hawaii, Toho Gakuen (Japan), and at the University of Illinois.  Salvatore Martirano was one of his composition teachers.  The present recording includes his first two piano sonatas and string quartets.  It allows for an exploration of the composer’s style from an early, middle, and later period of his life.

Some twenty years separate the two string quartets on this album.  The String Quartet No. 2 (1986) opens the album and features the Pedroia Quartet.  The three-movement work was originally written for the Composer’s String Quartet.  The work is constructed along the lines of focused pitches and tonal relationships that are thus implied due to the use of repetition.  This also impacts the overall form.  The ideas are spread across smaller motives which are repeated across the ensemble.  Arrival points on tremolo accents in the first movement help provide some formal signposts for a seven-note idea that is transformed and inverted throughout the movement.  The central movement slows things down slightly with the more angular line sometimes being smoothed out for lyrical moments.  The final movement continues this exploration of motives with a few cadential moments allowing for vertical alignment of the music which otherwise features these motives tossed about the quartet in an intricate, and interlocking manner.

The aspects of the second quartet have slightly softer edges in their angular writing.  One can hear these ideas explored in Kam’s earlier string quartet (1966) which is performed by the Sirius Quartet.  It is a single-movement work that comes from Kam’s early explorations of post-Webern atonal writing and explores extended sonics available on strings.  Tight pitch constructions are part of the compositional structure here in the often sparse texture.  Kam explores the way tone is produced on the strings both with hard accents and a variety of pizzicato and bowing techniques. The ideas tend to be more linear in this work.

The two piano sonatas, both about ten minutes in length, are more recent works.  The pieces were composed for the very artists performing here.  The first sonata (2002) would become the basis for additional instrumentation, first for clarinet, and then violin and cello.  This is the solo piano version showing the initial genesis of the musical materials of rhythm and pitch.  The opening thematic line is a long, and somewhat sinuous one that is laid out sparsely after a brief chordal opening.  After this slow introduction, a burst of energy begins to pick things up as the smaller motives of the line are explored and move us to the opening chords again.  From these ideas, Kam then works to construct this piece with repeated lines helping to provide aural signposts.  The middle portion of the sonata has an almost romantic thrust within Kam’s contemporary musical language with grand gestures and traditional expanded harmonies.

The second sonata (2010) is a more mathematically precise work that takes inspiration from an opening motive from Kam’s aria “The Lovely Octave” (in the brief opera Opera 101-Opera Spoofa).  It is an exploration of how time and proportions can be structured to create a tight organizational structure related to Fibonacci proportions.  One hears in this work the same sort of semi-angular melodic lines that are spread across the keyboard here with specific patterns moving along and repeated for emphasis.  This does help provide an aural connection for the listener in this rather interesting modern work.  Somehow, even though the music is essentially “atonal”, the harmonic results are really not as dissonant as one might otherwise anticipate.  Instead, the motivic ideas become the dramatic glue that helps provide shape to these alternating patterns.  The central portion piles these into some rather rich extended harmonies.  Both elements are then explored as the sonata progresses.

The works here are good examples of Kam’s compositional style.  The quartets show the way his approach has evolved somewhat over time.  The sonatas see a few more touches of traditional harmony that make them slightly more accessible, but those interested in the string quartet genre may wish to explore his work here.