Whispering Fragrance: Chamber Music of Steven Yip
Henry Chen, double bass; Yu-Chen Wang, guzheng;
Yu-Fang Chen, violin; Daniel  Gelok, saxophone;
Rudy Michael Albach, double bass; Andrew Schneider, piano;
Jiuan-Reng Yeh, guzheng;
Izumi Miyahara, flute; Masahito Sugihara, saxophone; Ben Roidl-Ward, bassoon;
Thelema Trio
Navona Records 6175
Total Time:  66:58
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

A quick glance at the instruments on this release reveals Hong Kong-born composer Steven Yip’s nod to Chinese traditional music with his use of an ancient zither, the guzheng.  The six works here merge these Western and Asian traditions across six recent works for chamber ensembles.  The titles each have their own connections to Chinese culture that are then explored in the resulting piece.

Such is evident from the intriguing opening work for string bass and guzheng, Ding (2015).  The title refers to ancient ritual bronze cauldrons.  Each of the nine sections corresponds symbols of the Zhou Dynasty’s rule over China.  The music has this rather interesting blend of jagged, almost marching string bass ideas that create a swath against the guzheng’s thematic development.  Sometimes a fragment will occur in the bass as well which adds an interesting dimension to this intense dramatic work.  The guzheng is the sole instrument in Ran (2014) which explores the range of this instruments techniques with contemporary approaches.  It is set in five interconnecting sections experimentally exploring resonance, connections between motives, discourse, virtuosic energy, and harmony.  Of the works on the album, it feels and sounds the most traditional.  The vocalizations help create this quality most in a rather fascinating piece that is one of the highlights of this new music.

Whispering Fragrance (2017) turns toward the exploration of the sounds of the violin which moves through lyricism and use of high harmonics and partials.  It stretches the soloist to explore tone colors through a variety of performance techniques.  The piece was premiered at last year’s 13^th Thailand International Composition Festival by the soloist here, Yu-Fang Chen.  The piece is an intriguing dramatic work.

More traditional instruments (saxophone, double bass, and piano) are used for In Seventh Heaven.  Yip toys here with small motives and looping with an eye toward jazz ensembles.  The end result is a dramatic work that feels like a blend of third stream jazz and a stark film score for an art-house Kurosawa-like film.  A similar exploration of sounds within traditional norms and from more contemporary, almost atonal Western realms, appears in Tranquility in Consonance (2016).  Yip explores the ways these unique combinations of flute, saxophone, bassoon, and piano can intertwine and connect at pitch and sound levels.  The final Peace of Mind (2014) continues to explore a combination of improvisational opportunities within unique colors of instrumental sounds.  Repetition helps to provide a link for the listener here.

Yip’s music has this sense of a modern Chinese watercolor.  Each aspect of line, image, and the whole scene is translated into music with the application of contemporary performance effects and harmony applied as brushstrokes.  This is a more avant-garde global classical style that is often intense listening but has many ethereal moments.  There are moments here that recall the experimental music of the 1960s (a la Crumb) with the extended serial techniques and sound explorations of Boulez.  The music has great dramatic flair and intensity that shifts between Asian artistic tradition and the modern Western avant-garde.  In the midst of this, one discovers how much the latter owes to the former in its sense of what constitutes melodic line, harmony, and overall color and expression.  The cerebral aspects of the music should not be underestimated though.

One at a Time: Instrumental Music of Douglas Anderson
Maureen Keenan, flute. Jill Collura, bassoon. Jin-Ok Lee, piano.
Debbie Schmidt, French horn. Gary Dranch, clarinet. Ina Litera, violin.
John Charles Thomas, trumpet and flugelhorn. Richard Cohen, bass clarinet.
Ravello Records 7992
Total Time:  64:59
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

When we think of music for a solo instrument, it often implies an additional accompaniment, usually a keyboard.  One at a Time implies here the way a composer can explore the possibilities of a single instrument exploring its unique timbre, registral qualities, technique and other possibilities through structural and compositional style.  The nine works on this new release are by New York-based composer-conductor Douglas Anderson and cover music composed between 1975 to 2011.  Along the way, we are treated to a sort of snapshot of American contemporary music as it informs the style of Anderson.

First up is “…increasingly physical…” (1980) for flute.  The piece has two four-note ideas that are introduced at the start and are fairly tonal in their shape.  This idea then is taken through a series of variations that move it across the instrument’s register as well as adjusting the rhythmic stresses of the notes and overall length.  A similar approach is also taken in the bassoon work “…procession, emerging…” (1984) with an emphasis on the instrument’s lyrical qualities.  Both works are good close cousins that explore similar stylistic qualities for each instrument.

There are two piano works on the album and the first of these is from 1979, Five Bagatelles and a Synopsis.  In this work, Anderson connects with his jazz roots in these works that move a bit more toward the dissonant worlds of atonal music though one can still hear the expanded harmonic underpinning of these pieces of written out “free jazz” from time to time.  The music begins to stretch musical ideas more as we move toward the longer fourth movement.  Anderson’s other piano work, “Abe’s Rag” (1981) is also from this period of American composers exploring jazz styles with modern compositional touches (a la Bolcom).

The piano work serves as a sort of buffer for the following five pieces that feature music for brass, clarinets, and viola.  In the French horn solo “…springing gradually…” (1988), Anderson opens with a mournful moment that then alternates with “pinched” notes before a grander statement begins to unfold.  Here the quality of the sound is explored as the soloist must make subtle alterations to the hand position and muting.  The 1970s are often an extension of the experimental edges of contemporary music especially in electronic music.  Anderson’s 1975 Piece for Clarinet and Tape is a perfect example of the sort of music being composed at this time.  The result is a more cerebral, edgy work with its intense variety of computer-generated qualities that serve as a foil to the clarinet.  From here we jump to 2007 and a work that falls back into these wafts of phrases to help set up the music for the listener.  The viola is the focus of “…mood, enough…”.  Double stops add a bit of harmonic exploration here with a piece that explores the lyrical qualities of the instrument fairly well.  In the Wedding Music, Anderson stays in a more traditional harmonic realm with some soaring lines for trumpet and flugelhorn.  He has structures this work with an opening “Prelude”, and two interludes (a chorale and a brief fanfare) bookended by a “Processional” and a “Recessional”.  The bass clarinet receives a real workout in the nearly 8-minute “…vikings, unless…” which explores the instruments upper register as well as its rich lower timbres.

Though the musical approaches may have similar launching points of motivic development, the resulting solo works here are all rather fascinating in their own way.  Listeners will likely gravitate to the ones that are closer to their personal preferences while also finding much to appreciate and explore in this interesting collection of chamber music.