Between Worlds
Giovanni Piacentini, guitar
Gina Luciani, flute.
Fernando Arroyo Lascurain, violin. Stefan L. Smith, viola.
Navona Records 6224
Total Time:  45:23
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

Between Worlds features a host of new music by composer Giovanni Piacentini.  He is also a noted guitarist who studied with Eliot Fisk and has explored a variety of contemporary works for guitar while also being more drawn to composition.  The Mexican-born composer has a variety of musical influences that include nationalistic and folk music styles and rhythms as well as contemporary techniques.  These are on display in this collection of four of his recent pieces recorded here.

Icarus (2018) eases us in to Piacentini’s sound world.  The six-movement work incorporates electronics for sampled rhythmic ideas and sampling of other guitar sounds.  The brief “Prelude” is a more traditional-sounding moment that is followed by a serial line in “Daedulus Labyrinth”.  Listeners are then taken on this mythic story as motivic ideas are repeated in often traditional harmonic outlines as other looped ideas begin to appear.  In many ways, the piece is quite mesmerizing as it builds dramatic through “Rapture” and “The Fall” and pulls us back to the opening for the final, equally brief “Postlude.”  The way the music unfolds is reminiscent of a Pat Methany concept album.

The Six Preludes (2018) give listeners an opportunity to hear the composer explore various landscapes throughout his native country.  Here are the journeys through folk rhythms and imaginative storytelling that further explores the capabilities of his instrument.  The music fits quite well into contemporary guitar repertoire with often beautiful lyrical moments and traditional musical gestures that engage the listener both from the melodies and rhythms that inform the music.  It is certainly one of the highlights of this release.

The final two earlier works on the album also give us a change of color.  First is a work for guitar and alto flute inspired by a book by Juan Rulfo.  Los Murmullos (2015, rev. 2018) moves us through a variety of surrealistic and magical images exploring the journey between the living in the dead in this five-movement work.  There is an almost impressionistic feel at times, aided perhaps by the quality of the alto flute whose timbre adds to the dark mystery.  The music also references Satie along the way, but one can hear already in this music some of Piacentini’s own compositional language taking root.

Passacalia (2016) for violin and viola takes its running bass line from an idea in Ravel’s Piano Trio in a.   Piacentini uses this idea then to thread his own melodic ideas and harmonies while exploring this underlying structural device.  What follows ends up being a very intimate work.

Though brief, Between Worlds is an aptly-titled collection of new music for (mostly) guitar that explores a variety of musical colors that is quite engaging with a host of musical references that will be most apparent to those more familiar with classical guitar repertoire.  This is an excellent collection of music that should reward repeated listening and careful exploration of the varied influences that are an integral part of Piancentini’s musical language.  It also though is an excellent example of his technical skill as a performer too.

Imaginary Bird: Music for Oboe & English Horn
Ling-Fei Kang, oboe; Charles Huang, English horn;
Andrew Knebel, viola. Annabelle Taubl, harp. Yu-Chen Shih, piano/celesta;
Kate Kennedy, cello. Mohammed Shams, piano;
John Birt, guitar.
Ravello Records 8006
Total Time:  45:27
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

Composer Phil Salathe teaches at SUNY Potsdam’s Crane School of Music.  His composition catalogue includes multi-movement orchestral work as well as “chip tunes” used in video games.  This collection features some unique music for oboe and English horn both as solo lines and duet partners.  He has collaborated with the two soloists featured here in these ornithologically-themed pieces.

The opening work, Mandarin Ducks (2011) is cast in seven brief descriptive movements that essentially give us a picturesque overview of the life of the animal.  From frolicking in the water, to arguing over food, teasing children, worrying about a mate and nesting, to leading the ducklings about before everyone flies away.  The dialogue aspects between the two instruments allows for their timbres to really come out well.  Ideas stream outwards becoming intertwined along the way.  There is a real sense of playfulness in the music as well.  The second movement introduces some avant-garde techniques that essentially simulate honking using multiphonics.  The piece also requires circular breathing technique.  One can hear a sense of the postmodern blend of atonality and more traditional harmony along the way.  The lines sometimes have a shape that suggests Asian melodic qualities.  Most attractive though is the general wit of the piece.

Charles Huang is featured on two shorter works that appear next.  Premiered in March 2007, The Heart That Loves But Once, takes its inspiration from a love letter written by Clara Wieck to her future husband Robert Schumann.  The celesta opens this striking work with its eerie and ethereal qualities further enhanced when the harp appears.  The music has this sense of longing and pain of trying to bring together the complex emotions of love that seems impossible to attain.  This piece is equally as dramatic as the first, though it is a far darker, and more sinuous work with a more dissonant palette.  Here oboe and viola become the two voices that search for one another in this intense music.  Huang picks up the English horn to explore the three miniature Imaginary Birds of the Frozen North.  The solo work explores the rich sound of the instrument but also includes additional sounds to lend voice to the different animals and landscapes of the piece.

The Wood Between the Worlds (2009) was commissioned for the Sylvanus Ensemble.  It consists of ten movements exploring different worlds with “The Wood” movement serving to bookend the work and also provide a momentary anchor at the center.  The two sections begin with worlds of desolation and shadow and gradually move toward worlds changed by war and wisdom.  Taking its departure inspiration from C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia, Salathe invents a world where both beauty and starkness can exist.  The style of the music also bears these shifts between more traditional harmonic and melodic writing, and a sparser style that focuses on sound and timbre of the instruments here.  In a sense it is also a sort of melting pot of the various influences and styles that Salathe has experienced making the work an intimate exploration of his compositional voice.

The album concludes with an arrangement of a popular Taiwanese melody by Teng Yu-Hsien.  Expecting the Spring Breeze is set for oboe and guitar and serves really as a nice encore to this entrancing program.

It is worth commenting about the cover of this album that somehow captures the descriptive music.  It depicts two ducks on one level wandering near water.  It is in the water where we see the “shadow” side of the animals holding their respective instruments.  This sense of turning things upside down can be heard from time to time in the accompanying pieces where the oboe and English horn can be heard in a more traditional way, but then also in their “shadowy” dark timbres and with unique sounds that might be as striking as the opening work’s humor.  Certainly any double reed player will revel both in the excellent performances and the new music for these instruments heard here.  The sound is stunning as well captured in these recordings made mostly last June.  The performances are equally compelling.