Veil: Chamber Music of Greg D’Alessio
William Bender, viola. Robert Nicholson, cello.
John Perrine, alto saxophone.
Gunnar Owen Hirthe, clarinet. Victor Beyens, violin.
Ars Futura Ensemble/Pablo Devigo
Navona Records 6181
Total Time:  65:29
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

Greg D’Alessio teaches at Cleveland State University.  His work there extends to courses in electronic and computer music.   For this release, the composer has chosen five works that represent his own development as a composer from the past two decades.  The pieces here move from an early work, Veil (2001) to one composed specifically for the Ars Futura Ensemble.  The group performs in the Cleveland area and works to bring new music from living composers to the concert hall.

The first three works are all single-movement pieces.  Veil has an almost pointillistic feel at times with its small motivic ideas being explored by individual instruments.  A flute appears and has a shakuhachi quality with its attack and general shape of its line.  Each instrument takes on these ideas as comments that then slide and weep.  The final bars come together with a gentle harmony, not without regret.  This connects to D’Alessio’s intent in the music to reflect upon the loss of recent family members.  Some people may be familiar with Grainger’s The Immovable Do where a single pitch seems to “leak” behind the music.  In Thread (2002), the approach is to use a single pitch through a variety of musical textures where it can seem to disappear only to return later.  D’Alessio continued here to also explore timbre and some contemporary techniques (most noticeable are playing inside the piano).  Attacks to and from the primary pitch are also part of this musical essay that grows seemingly more disparate as it progresses.  This makes it sound perhaps fare more cerebral than the end result which has experimental qualities but dramatically draws the listener in to its argument.  Sono Solo (2011) begins with a piano idea that will then become the material that is further explored by the ensemble.  This idea begins as like a Debussy-like Impressionist line with harmony exploring the timbre of the piano.  Additional instruments begin to pick up on these lines, pitches and harmonies and continue to explore how they differ from one another yet maintain some inherent connection in this more restrained, and reflective work.

The final two pieces each consist of two movements.  First is a work composed for John Perrine, the alto saxophone soloist on this recording.  Charlie Parker’s Now’s the Time is the inspiration for this 2015 sonata for piano and sax that marked a return to exploring concert music.  As one might expect, the harmonic ideas here take their cues from jazz.  These move under a florid solo line that has an improvisational feel.  A reflective second idea then appears in the opening movement with some very gorgeous writing.  After this relaxed opening, we move into a more virtuosic second movement.  Now’s the Time thus becomes an important addition to modern repertoire for the instrument.

After ending (2017) takes its cues from the previous solo work.  Here too, D’Alessio uses a two-movement structure to first set up a more lyrical and reflective opening that is followed by an exploration of rhythmic drive.  The music tends toward a bit more dissonat that floats between the addition of different instrumental timbres here.  Linear ideas float through these often sudden accompanimental harmonies or flurries of sound.  The final bars of the first movement stretch out these ideas of pitch between different instruments becoming more diffuse as it progresses, almost too long.  The second movement then builds back up with a rhythmic repetition that helps create more energy as the piece moves forward.

The progression of the works has at its core a somewhat careful, and reflective style that allows the listener to follow the musical motives and concepts clearly.  This measured approach is balanced in the larger pieces with a gradual increase of rhythmic interest.  One might feel like these works have a sense that contemporary concert music struggles forward only to be overcome and be silenced.  At some subconscious level, that may be what D’Alessio has inadvertently suggested, at least in the opening pieces.  However, it is clear that there is a bit more hope for this being overcome in the final two works.

Frank Ezra Levy: Concertos, Divertimentos, etc.
Hana Gubenko, viola. Barbara Jost, cor anglais. Andreas Ramseier, clarinet. Timon Altwegg, piano.
Toulousse Chamber Orchestra/Gilles Colliard
Guild GMCD 7809
Total Time:  73:38
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

Ernst Levy (1895-1981) was a Swiss born composer and educator who taught at MIT, the University of Chicago, and the New England Conservatory before retiring to live in Switzerland.  He was known as an excellent pianist with powerful performances that were often linked to the Liszt-school of playing.  This new Guild release though turns its attention to his equally prolific son, Frank Ezra Levy (1930-2017).  Levy was a professional cellist (performing with the St. Louis Symphony, among others) having studied with Leonard Rose and Janos Starker.  To say he was a prolific composer is a bit of an understatement with some 239 published works that include 15 symphonies and 20 string quartets.  Some of his music has appeared on an earlier Naxos release orchestral music in their American Classics series.  There is an aura of bittersweetness surrounding the present release as Levy passed away shortly after the final masters for release were made.  He was at least able to hear these performances before his death.  Of the five works on the album, two of them are concerti and three are “divertimentos” for solo instruments.  The concertos serve as bookends.  As a composer, Levy tended toward more tonal compositional style eschewing more avant-garde techniques.  This tends to make his music more communicable to broader audiences.  The pieces here were all written within the past five years.

The Piano Concerto No. 6 (2014) is scored for strings and timpani.  The three-movement work opens with a rather somber thematic statement which begins to gain a bit more rhythmic interest as the music continues.  There is some contrapuntal interplay between strings and piano that develops.  The motivic idea is then more fully explored.  The second movement has a more sinuous melodic idea that wends its way through some interesting harmonic shifts.  The finale allows for some virtuosic display and is in the form of a rondo.  The music here is parallel to the post-Les Six and Neo-Classical blended styles (it is like a hybrid of Martinu and Bartok).  There are many sections of the work that feature ideas that work linearly between the soloist and a section of the orchestra.

There are two works here for viola.  The Divertimento Concertante for Viola, Piano and String Orchestra (2013) is in six movements.  Levy’s approach here recalls the Bloch concerto grossi that explored a sort of Neo-Baroque style of form and modernist harmony.  The first movement does open with a burst of energy with great solo ideas for viola that begin the interplay with piano of smaller cells of material.  There is a rather gorgeous lyric line in the center of the movement.  As the piece continues, it does a nice job of creating interplay between the soloists.  The rhythms throughout tend to have an almost cutting, jagged interjection against the seemingly spun-out melodic lines.  The slower segments do have some rather moving lyrical ideas.  The second movement introduces some skittery harmonics in the strings that adds a brief ethereal aspect to the elegiac movement.  A bit more energy moves us forward in third movement which features a more extensive piano solo.  The viola is given a more lengthy solo moment at the edges of the fourth movement which has a more romantic tinge.  The lyrical writing continues into the fifth movement with some slightly darker qualities and things are wrapped up nicely in a fugal finale.  There are some interesting harmonic and rhythmic moments in this work which seems slightly stronger than the opening concerto.  The Divertimento for Clarinet and Piano (2013) follows some similar lines described as a “reinterpretation of the Baroque concerto.”  It also is in six movements with some flirtations with a more romantic sensibility.  The third movement is a bit unique as it is cast in 5/8 creating some variety and interesting interplay with clarinet and violins.  This movement also has plenty of fugal and contrapuntal devices.

The Dialogue for cor anglais and Strings (2016) was composed specifically for this release.  The more soulful and mournful sound of the instrument lends the piece its unique character here.  The music is in a single movement with seven identifiable sections that allow for interesting interchanges.  The notes also state the piece can be played on French horn which would give the music a unique character as well.  This somewhat points to Levy’s interest in creating music that is accessible and transmutable for performance.

The final work on the album is the Viola Concerto No. 2 (2013) composed for the soloist on this album, Hana Gubenko.  Cast in four movements, it too feels like a reimagining of the Baroque solo concerto.  The first movement has an interesting opening “Adagio” that creates a nice contrast to the interesting rhythmic vitality of the following 5/8 section.  The second movement is a bit more intense with some interesting recurring exploration of the opening material.  Expressive writing for the soloist follows in a brief “Adagio” that ends abruptly before the fugal ideas of the finale.  In some respects, then the piece feels more like a two-movement work with the slow adagio sections serving the sort of function one finds in Baroque concerto grossi.

The performances here are committed.  For some, the different pieces here will tend to blend together as they seem to be exploring similar techniques and can create a sort of sameness that is hard to overlook as ideas tend to be explorations that can feel rather fragmentary.  Perhaps the most successful piece here is the Divertimento concertante for viola and piano followed by the concluding Viola concerto.  The writing seems well poised to be good entries for college orchestras to be introduced to this modern tonal writing with interesting harmonies.  Each work certainly has its merits as it stands fine on its own.  In this case, one can certainly see how the prolific Levy managed to continue writing new works for friends and colleagues.  The anachronistic quality of the music with its 1920s modernist styles will be the first striking thing for some listeners but the dramatic flow of the pieces is mostly engaging.