Jesus Rueda and his Third Symphony

I am always glad to get a chance to hear music that I might have missed had I not been doing this blog, especially when, like today, the music really catches my ear. Jesus Rueda (b. 1961) is a not-yet-old Spanish exponent of modern music. His Third Symphony Luz (Light) (2004-7) forms the centerpiece of a magnetizing new release (Naxos 8.572417) with the Asturias Symphony Orchestra conducted by Maximiano Valdes.

Rueda's symphony is an orgy of sound in five movements. The movements are titled "Fire," "Water," "Earth," "Air," and "Towards the Light." Rueda gets a big, dramatic, very colorful sound from the orchestra, and it is clear he has mastered the capabilities and sound colors to be had. It's exciting music, so much so that my wife paused in her daily course of chores to ask me "who is that?" as she listened. My wife is usually a good test of my review fare, since she can get a bit blase with the constant bombardment of sound coming out of my music system.

And I must say my reaction was the same. This is a truly original symphonic voice. The fine performance ensures that we do not mistake that for something more eclectic. It brings out all the nuances of detail in a work that has plenty of that. It makes me want to hear more of his work. Highly recommended.

The Orchestral Music of Roscoe Mitchell and Richard Abrams

I recently read that the New England Conservatory of Music had at some point changed the name of their "Third Stream" department to the "Department of Improvisation." I don't suppose that is surprising. The former term, coined by Gunther Schuller to mark out a musical form that combines "classical" and "jazz," has seemingly fallen out of favor, though important and interesting confluences of the two musics continue to be created today.

Before listening to the new release Spectrum (Mutablemusic), which includes two substantial orchestral works, one each by Roscoe Mitchell and Muhal Richard Abrams, you might think that you were going to be exposed to music of a "Third Stream" sort. Well, yes and no. One of the factors to keep in mind is that "jazz" as we know it has been changed radically since 1960 by such innovators as Mitchell and Abrams. They've constructed new forms, new sound universes, with new freedom and new discipline. At the same time the world of modern "classical" has become so stylistically diverse as to embrace an almost infinite number of approaches. Classical orchestral music, in the bottom line of today, is music played by an orchestra. "Jazz" is music played by musicians who improvise, in whatever way they see fit, and usually does not include an orchestra.

Whichever way you look at it though, the distinction between composition and improvisation is meaningless on one level. The complete musician composes improvisations and improvises compositions, on whatever level and style the music exists within. Abrams and Mitchell happen to be two musical masters who do both in ways that we all will be exploring and discussing for many years to come, I think.

Spectrum in the end is simply music that has been composed by maestros Abrams and Mitchell. "Romu" starts out the program, a seemingly freely improvised duet by Roscoe Mitchell on the alto sax and Richard Abrams on piano. It presents part of their musical vision, and perhaps helps the uninitiated listener get a grasp of where they are coming from, which boils down to their own musical conception of melody, color and harmony. Rhythm too of course, though this piece starts with a freely rubato meditativeness and evolves into a turbulent maelstrom of tones that is non-rhythmic in a conventional periodic sense.

From there, we hear two orchestral works, well performed by the Janacek Philharmonic under conductor Petr Kotik. The first is Mitchell's "Non-Cognitive Aspects of the City," with baritone Thomas Buckner taking a prominent vocal role. The text is a poem by Mitchell's fellow Art Ensemble member Joseph Jarman. It was first heard in an early Jarman album on Delmark. The music from that recording is replaced by Roscoe Mitchell's score.

It starts with a pregnant quietude, which is almost immediately replaced by somber yet lyrical melodic invention. It's most certainly music that has the lyrical thrust of post-Ives, post-Ornettian music. It also most certainly bears the stamp of Mitchell's musical universe. The presentation of the poem, alternately spoken and sung by Buckner (and I might add he is quite convincing in his role here) is punctuated by richly layered orchestral writing, turbulent, declamatory and reflective in turn. The poem and the music express the difficulties of urban existence for those who cannot afford to live in the penthouse. There's an angst, a kind of refusal to accept the status quo, from a physical but also intellectual standpoint, and it all translates into very moving and very captivating music. Roscoe's handling of the orchestra, his orchestration, is complex, three-dimensional and quite masterful. It most certainly makes me want to hear more of his work in this configuration.

Muhal Richard Abrams' "Mergertone" concludes the program, and it too is captivating. The piece has a kind of concerted orchestra feel to it, without directly referencing traditional forms. The piece begins with some celestial synthesizer utterances, which quite rapidly are conjoined with suspended, mysterious and then somewhat agitated orchestral passages. Again, the orchestration is quite impressive and the thematic material is filled with invention and eloquent continuity. There is a syntax of endless variation that puts this music into the free expressiveness of Mr. Abrams' music as a whole. Not surprisingly, there is a prominent piano part in the composition, and it has an Abramian thoughtful density. Most of all though, this is excellently conceived music with sound-color mastery well in evidence. It flows, it builds and it moves the listener to a better place than ordinary life normally finds us.

Before I listened to this recording, I had great expectations, since to my mind maestros Mitchell and Abrams have created some of the most important American music of the past 50 years. I wondered if their many gifts would translate into an orchestral medium. They most certainly do. This is an important recording and it confirms my conviction as to the importance of these two composer-improvisers. It should expand the musical consciousness of all listeners, regardless of whether one comes out of the improviser camp, the orchestral camp, the all-music camp, or no camp at all.

A Living Composers Anthology, Volume 15

I have not sampled any of the earlier volumes, but I have been listening to Erm Media's Masterworks of the New Era, Volume 15. It's a three CD set at a budget price, which is a good thing. There are generous time allocations per disk, so that you get a great deal of music to hear. There are 22 composers represented, people you may not have heard of, and again, that's generally a good thing for the music. Do you know Arnest? Flinn? Kapson? Probably not.

Robert Ian Winstin conducts, alternately, the Kiev Philharmonic and the Prague Radio Symphony in performances that seem quite good and the sound staging of the recordings is quite excellent.

So what of the music? Here I have reservations. There is such a wide net cast for works by living composers that the range of styles and relative weight of each piece can vary considerably. There are modernist sorts of pieces, there are postmodernist works, there are works one can only classify as conservative, and all that is fine if done well. Then there are those that seem a bit on the light side. Worst of all there are a one or two that sound to me like they could have been used as soundtracks for Doris Day's 1950's comedies or something similar. In short there are a few works here that to me spoil the effect of the others. Masterworks? Some definitely not.

On the other hand what is interesting here is in the majority. For the good price I suspect it's worth your while to invest in the volume if you have a need to discover some new voices in the music. A little judicious weeding out would have made this set even better. But for all that there are still quite a number of works that are well worth hearing.

A New Recording of Messiaen's "Poems pour Mi"

Olivier Messiaen was an extraordinary composer by any standard. His was an exceptional talent; his music combined an extra-sensory sensitivity to the orchestrated potential of the music in his head with a harmonically and rhythmically unique stance that make his music immediately identifiable as coming from his pen and no other.

His music evolved over the many years of his career. There are the first works, which established his reputation and found him developing his musical vocabulary in a number of different directions simultaneously, from the highly contrasting modern mystical rhapsody meets music hall meets world music a la Messiaen of his Turangalila Symphony to the probing mysticism of Poems pour Mi. The second period corresponds to his intense interest in bird song and its transformation into brilliantly orchestrated, sublime stutters of sound. Then there is the final period, where he simply reaches an almost other worldly mastery of mystical utterance and achieves a gloriously terminal synthesis of stylistic traits with a complete command over the forces at hand. His orchestrations were always superb. In the end they have an almost uncanny presence.

Each period is totally worthwhile in its own right. With that in mind we turn to the latest Naxos release in their Messiaen series, Jun Markl conducting the Orchestre National de Lyon in a recording of the aforementioned Poems pour mi as well as Messiaen's first published orchestral work Les offrandes oubliees and a lesser known, rather brief later work, Un sourire.

Poemes pour mi has been recorded numerous times and there are many versions still in print. I am not familiar with some, but the Boulez/Cleveland version and the Messaien-conducted version are both definitive. On the other hand Markl's version is quite worthy. Soprano Anne Schwanewilms has an almost operatic intensity to her interpretation that puts this recording towards the top of the pile for me. The orchestral balance is very good and Markl brings out the mystical transparency of the score quite well. His Les offrandes oubliees revels empathetically in the alternatingly quiet rapture and turbulent outbursts of the score. Un sourire has meditative moments and some of that extraordinary blinding light of punctuated percussiveness typical of the late period.

In short these may not be the most definitive recordings out there, but they are close and offer prime Messiaen masterworks of the earlier period. The addition of Un Sourire and the Naxos price tag makes this volume especially attractive.

The Orchestral Music of Michael Daugherty

We live in a pluralistic world. In the visual arts today, for example, no one style holds absolute sway. Traverse the galleries this autumn and you'll find any number of post-, neo-, quasi-, appropriated or just plain straightforward work in the style of "x." So conceptualism, performance art, expressionism, abstract expressionism, neo-geo, representational, hyper-realism and any number of other styles rub shoulders indiscriminately. I suppose this is a healthy trend. I really am rather neutral about it, though.

In contemporary classical concert music the same thing might be said. There are the minimalists, post-minimalists, neo-romantics, post-serialists, noise artists, and any number of other avenues of musical composition. The days of "this style and no other" have seemingly passed. That brings us to American composer Michael Daugherty. He is not easily categorized. He writes music that shows imagination, exceptional orchestrational craftsmanship and a thoroughgoing eclecticism.

A recent Naxos release is a case in point. It contains three interesting works, performed with excellence by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra under Neeme Jarvi. The principal work on the disk, Fire and Blood for Violin and Orchestra, features Ida Kavafian as soloist playing a part that has distinct roots in the romantic era violin showpiece. Yet the piece itself combines a rhapsodic orientation with modern orchestral tone painting of a high order. The piece musically depicts artist Diego Rivera and his 1932 mural commissions honoring the auto industry. Subsequently the music in this piece incorporates Mexican musical folk elements, and not just in terms of the marimba part. It's a masterful work, and both Ms. Kavafian and the Detroit Symphony give a stirring performance.

Daugherty's Motor City Triptych, a work from 2000, gives the listener another half-hour of attractive tone painting. The third movement with its Villa Lobos-like writing for three trombones particularly stands out.

The CD concludes with Raise the Roof, an exciting piece for solo timpani and orchestra. It is one of the single most convincing vehicles for the solo timpani that I have yet to hear, a tour de force of kinetic energy with some wonderful playing by soloist Brian Jones.

Michael Daugherty writes a directly communicating music that has the straightforward qualities of some of Aaron Copland's best scores. The Naxos CD has brilliant sound and Neeme Jarvi gives us a precision rendering that does not eschew the passion Daugherty's scores contain. A most satisfying release is this, and highly recommended for anyone interested in what orchestral music is about today.