Duo Jalal Explores the Convergence of Indigenous Mid-Eastern, Modern Compositional and Improvisational Approaches on "A Different World"

We of course live today in a global village. We take as a matter of course that musical traditions that centuries ago would reach our shores solely in the form of immigrants now can be studied in depth via recordings and live concerts by world-class practitioners from every corner of the globe. We may only be on the edge of what this could mean for music in the world at large, but it is an exciting time for those who wish to reach out and explore what humanity has accomplished with their "second voice" in the widest sense.

Duo Jalal serves as a fine example of what we are seeing (hearing). It consists of violist Kathryn Lockwood and percussionist Yousif Sheronik. A Different World (Innova 793) devotes an entire CD to pieces that span traditional and compositional realms. Kathryn Lockwood combines classical technique, a ravishing tone, and a most definite feel for the mideastern musical mode. Yousif Sheronik adds his mastery of traditional mideastern and south Asian hand drumming (frame drum, tumbek, etc.). They tackle pieces that range from the more formal minimalism of Philip Glass to melodic frameworks that give room for improvisation within their form (such as David Krakauer's "Klezmer a la Bechet"), to the more through-composed modern post-classicism of Kenji Bunch.

Both artists show excellence in stylistic grasp and nuanced execution. Duo Jalal breathes a freshet of new wind into the sails of a form of music that goes back countless centuries. The composers represented do the same on their end.

A Different World, that. It is our world today. The maps we see have hard and fast borders. The music we hear transcends those borders, sometimes. Duo Jalal does just that with a very memorable album. Very much recommended.

The Kronos Quartet Performs "Uniko" with Kimmo Pohjonen and Samuli Kosminen

There are musical works that come along now and then that go beyond what categorical pigeonholing comfortably handles. Such music is all-the-more welcome in the sense that it expands the boundaries of possibility for music as we understand it in the present tense.

Such is most assuredly the case with the new Kronos Quartet offering Uniko (Ondine 1185-2), featuring the music of Kimmo Pohjonin and Samuli Kosminen. First of all, this neither sounds like or is a typical string quartet-chamber music suite (there are seven contrasting movements or segments involved). That is because the quartet is augmented by Pohjonen's accordion and voice and Kosminen's string & accordion sampling and electronic manipulation. What you end up with is something that sounds orchestral in texture, though with a quartet component that is central to the music.

Secondly, the music itself. It has some of the drive of rock, a minimalist element that does not rest on repetition so much as it makes use of it in passing as a way to flesh out structural moments (again sometimes in the manner of progressive rock, but also sometimes in the way of the more traditional classical use of ostinato). The variations that appear in parts of the work have a kind of fusionoid thrust meets dance-folk ornateness that gives the listener a new plane on which to hear the music. There are also (as implied above) Northern Euro-vernacular strains very much a part of the music--allusions to dance forms, folk melodies, etc. This is especially apparent in the accordion parts, but generally permeates the entire work on a number of levels. Thirdly there is a deeply resonant sound achieved in the electronic processing of the initial live signal and a sometimes attractively horizontal soundscaping that comes into play--not, though, in a consistently obvious or formulaic sense. That brings us to point four: the music most definitely eschews the formula as standard operating procedure. They throw out the book on what constitutes the expected way to do things today. Pohjonen and Kosminen meld all the various aspects together in ways that in no way sound rote or programmatic.

Finally, then, it is a musical experience that delights with unexpected juxtapositions, invigorates with the excitement and drive of the powerfully virtual ensemble in tutti overdrive, and brings in a wealth of musical content and continually varying sound color.

This is one of the most interesting and unusual bodies of music I've heard yet this year. It is like the Kronos Quartet to come up with unexpected syntheses that help define the 21st Century musically. They've done it once again, thanks of course to the considerable compositional and arranging talents of Pohjonen and Kosminen. It's one of Kronos's very best! That is indeed something.

The International Street Cannibals Deliver Their First, "Ballets and Solos"

When a new label emerges that is run by a group of composers of new music, it cannot but be a good thing. Especially if those composers are dedicated to realizing music that will benefit from the greater depth of coverage that such a cooperative venture provides. That's the case with Composers Concordance Records and their first release (COMCON001). This is a grass-roots NYC uprising of an iconoclastic bunch who have been influenced equally by contemporary classical compositional stances as well as rock and other modern-day musics.

Ballets & Solos is a product of the composer-driven ensemble International Street Cannibals, conducted ably by Dan Barrett. They juxtapose three chamber ensemble pieces with a number of solo compositions. The group pieces have in common a rock insistency, especially Joseph Pehrson's "Good Time" and Dan Cooper's "Dance Suite." The latter piece even begins with a kind of heavy metal riff transfigured and extended in a contemporary classical mode. Gene Pritsker's "A Challenge in the Dark" has a mellifluous quality combined with the contrapuntal complexity of a post-Stravinskian sound world.

The solo pieces provide interesting contrast. Pat Hardish's "Solo for Pete" gives Peter Jarvis and his drum set a rock workout. There are two pieces by Otto Luening, both worth hearing, well-performed and spiced with a bit of vernacular and dance-music qualities, so they fit in well with the rest of the music.

The album concludes with Greg Baker performing Gene Pritsker's piece for solo guitar, "Dead Souls." This too has some clear and captivating references to dance music, echoes of some ghostly fandango of a lost age.

So here we have an auspicious beginning for Composers Concordance. Ballets & Solos is an agreeable, provocative and ultimately quite enjoyable excursion into territories both well-explored and unfamiliar. It bodes well for future offerings and I wish all involved much success in this venture!

Neue Bilder: The Music of James Harley

James Harley composes in the now somewhat venerable tradition of classic modernism. That is not to say that he is some clone of Webern or Boulez. It's only to say that the periodicity and flow of his music has little of the droning insistency of minimalism or the lavishly applied impasto of the neo-romantics. It means he pays careful attention to sound color; he constructs complex, many-voiced aural tapestries that create a sonorous musical whole out of the comings and goings of the individual instrumental voices. The fact that he does this is not exceptional. It is the quality of the invention, however, along with the attention to the part writing that puts him in a good place as, to my mind, one of the most important Canadian composers active today.

The album Neue Bilder (Centrediscs 15010) gives you a good sampling of his music, well performed by the New Music Concerts aggregation under Robert Aitken. Two larger chamber ensemble works form the origin and terminus points for a concert that also includes three more intimate chamber works: for solo flute (very imaginatively performed by Aitkin); flute, cello and piano; and bass flute and percussion, respectively.

This is a winner. Recommended.

Mark Applebaum's "Sock Monkey" Goes Everywhere in Interesting Ways

From the very first listen to Mark Applebaum's CD Sock Monkey (Innova 706) it is clear that there is a stylistic restlessness somewhere lurking in the depths of the composer's being, and he makes very creative and credible use of it to cover a great deal of ground. There are some intriguing chamber ensemble and orchestral pieces in the modern classical mode, pieces for solo instruments, electro-acoustic ensembles, a solo for 18 prepared pianos (apparently one at a time in succession) based on a Mozart theme, there's a piece for several soloists plus live electronics, and on from there.

However it's not only that he isn't afraid to construct music for very varied resources, it's his success at doing so. There is an Applebaum sensibility, an original voice in operation throughout. So it's beyond eclectic and more in the realm of sonically extended original music. And it is indeed a hoot.

Applebaum manages humor, pathos, revelry, expressionism and parody all in various combinations in these works. Listening is a thorough pleasure. His is an avant garde that wears its approach lightly, yet quite seriously. It is a knockout disk.

Michael Pagan's Preludes and Fugues for Saxophone Quartet

Michael Pagan is a prolific composer. That's what I read. Before hearing his new recording of the 12 Preludes and Fugues (Tapestry 76014-2) I was not aware of him at all, I must admit. However a number of listens to this one makes me want to hear more of his oeuvre.

It's a lengthy work, well performed by the Colorado Saxophone Quartet. This is not exactly the sort of music you may have become familiar with via the Rova and World Saxophone Quartets, but no less interesting.

It's written, modern classical music that skillfully and appealingly combines neo-baroque counterpoint, jazz inflected lines and contemporary classical from the more conservative to the more advanced garde.

The point though is that the music has appealing memorability. And it is lovingly performed. Very much recommended.

Eli Keszler Combines Improv and the Compositional on "Oxtirn"

Eli Keszler has a new LP of his music. It's on ESP and sounds like it should be (in the positive sense). Keszler plays drums, percussion, prepared piano, guitar and a number of prepared found objects. He is joined by a brassman, a clarinetist and a second prepared pianist for the two longish pieces featured on Oxtirn (ESP 4061). The LP is a limited edition; a digital download includes one bonus track.

And what of the music? It is a blast of sound, thickly textured. The first piece sounds like an acoustic version of one of Xenakis' classic electro-acoustic pieces. Dense, rapidly articulated metallic percussion sounds contrast with long, bowed-sheet metal envelopes.

The second piece is less dense but once again creates the impression of altered sounds even though this is music made "live."

It's a fascinating set of sound poems. If you like MEV and AMM, this one will give you something similar yet distinctive.

Rued Langgaard and the Visionary "Music of the Spheres," 1916-18

Danish composer Rued Langgaard (1893-1952) never received his due during his lifetime. He lived in the shadow of his more famous compatriot Carl Nielsen. His native Denmark afforded him few performance opportunities and, so it seems, he was faced with hostility and incomprehension.

Ironically part of the contemporary audience incomprehension was because he was simultaneously somewhat conventional at one moment (romantic) and presciently ahead of his time, surely with the Music of the Spheres work for large orchestra and chorus.

A recent recording by the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and Choirs under Thomas Dausgaard (Da Capo 6.220535) brings together all the stylistic elements of this Langgaard masterpiece for our wonder and appreciation. This is music with a mystical vision at work. The massed forces of full orchestra, choir, soprano solo and a smaller orchestra playing at a distance make for some deeply varied tone colors and gargantuan potency, the latter of which is only fully unleashed 30 minutes into the work.

What is most startling about the piece is not the post-Mahler reveries and Straussian thickness of texture of the tutti orchestra (though it all makes for an exciting piece of music). It is rather when Langgaard seeks to express the more cosmic programmatic elements of the music. There are soundscape-like ambiances, proto-minimalistic repetitions, and bold strokes of musical impasto.

A full analysis would be beyond the scope of this review article. It is a one-of-a-kind work; Langaard did some later interesting, and apparently, not as interesting work after his Music of the Spheres failed to capture the Danish imagination. But he never approached this level of invention.

The performances are excellent, sound is good, and several bonus works are added to the the program to round out our perspective on the composer's overall style shifts. If you've never heard this work the CD at hand gives you the perfect opportunity to unveil its abundance to your listening cycle for many years to come.

Daron Hagen's Complete Piano Trios

American composer Daron Hagen (b. 1961) may not be universally recognized for his chamber music. The recent release of his Complete Piano Trios (Naxos 8.559657) may do much to rectify that.

There are four trios written between 1984-2007. Each has its own character. I must say I do quite like the third, based on the folk melody "The Wayfaring Stranger."

His music is lyrical, "neo" more than avant garde, idiomatic and well thought out.

It's the sort of music one knows will take quite a few listens to absorb fully and before such work-pleasure is complete, some ultimate or semi-ultimate judgement will not be on the personal program. At least that's how it is with me.

This is music that is "serious" in the same way that Aaron Copland's chamber music was. It is not given to pleasantries. There is a depth to these pieces I've yet to fully plummet. I will say that the performances by the Finisterra Trio seem marvelous to me. Detailed and passionate interpretations prevail.

I do recommend this recording. I reserve final judgement on the music itself however, until I've lived with it for a longer time. One thing is clear. Daron Hagen's Piano Trios are formidable works.

Ensemble Economique's "Standing Still, Facing Forward"

Composer Brian Pyle and his virtual Ensemble Economique give us something quite wonderful on their release Standing Still, Facing Forward (Amish 032). It's part of Amish Records' "Required Wreckers" series which, if this is a typical example, is presenting important work.

Maestro Pyle takes pre-existing recorded samples of orchestral and otherwise instrumental music along with other found sounds and field recordings, and puts them together in the studio to create unique compositions. Standing Still, Facing Forward is his latest and (apparently) most fully realized piece based on these methods, and it is something that brings to your ears a memorable sonic world.

The music functions as a soundscape at times, as a modern classical composition of a more organized sort at other times. It's a fully worthy CD that should be heard by anyone interested in the avant garde today.

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.

Harley Gaber Today: "Mount Fuji" Soundscape

Harley Gaber in my mind will always have the distinction of composing and recording one of the most extreme instrumental avant garde classical pieces I've ever heard. The Winds Rise in the North is a work for string group, originally released as a two-record set in the early-mid '70s. What made it rather extreme was his treatment of dissonance. The original 12-tone composers, the serialists and post-serialists dealt with dissonance generally in a pointilistic way. The bleep and bloop sort of music may have had no harmonically tonal basis or a very expanded one, but the music generally gave you dissonances as if they were tiny points of light on a screen or literally (with some of John Cage's piano music) as a representation of stars in the firmament. For audiences unaccustomed to hearing unresolved dissonance as part of their musical experience, the pointillistic presentation gave the listener some space between tones and also consonant intervals to relieve the tension, for the most part.

The Winds Rise in the North pretty much did none of that. Gaber approached the use of tone in blocks. The string group generally started softly with ever crescendoing complexes of often boldly dissonant sound. The music seems to have represented the build-up of wind currents in some rather extreme weather event, or alternately, some sort of cosmic apocalypse. When those blocks reached their various climaxes, the sheer intensity of continuous dissonant sound (albeit of much interest as sound color) was exhilarating for some, excruciating for others. I still consider it a masterpiece of the era, but perhaps one that many would find hard to sit through.

His latest recording, I Saw My Mother Ascending Mount Fuji (Innova 231) is quite another story.This hour long work, composed between 1968-2009, involves a combination of a piece for multi-track violin and one for processed flute, inserted into an electronics matrix devised by the composer.

Like the Winds Rise in the North, Mount Fuji sprawls throughout its hour-plus duration using long-toned, gradually evolving, wind-like sound-color events as its way of proceeding. Unlike the Winds piece, the music here is much less dense, much less dissonant, and makes for an entirely pleasing listening experience. It's a soundscape of some delicacy, with sustained long-form utterances of a kind of frozen beauty. As much as I appreciate his earlier masterpiece, Mt. Fuji is far more listener friendly. It is a mysterious mountainous essay that speaks as much through omission as commission. And it sounds rather stupendous coming out of the speakers.

Guarnieri's Piano Concertos Give Your Ear A Workout

"The most important Brazilian composer after Villa-Lobos" the liner notes for today's CD tell us. Mozart Camargo Guarnieri (1907-1993) may well be that. I have had the misfortune to miss a decent performance of any of his works over the years. I still have a few recordings, made in the pre-stereo era, sounding like the orchestra was trying to play inside a soup can. (Or desperately trying to get out of that can!)
Suffice to say that I didn't get the full impact of his music. Until now.

Guarnieri's Piano Concertos Nos. 4, 5, and 6 (Naxos 8.557667) as performed by Thomas Conlin conducting the Warsaw Philharmonic with Max Barros, piano, gives you full-throttle music, excellently executed.

This is exciting, dynamic modernism, alternately brash and pellucid. Its motor-sensory insistence suggests early Prokofiev or middle period Stravinsky. The melodic invention and overall orchestration suggest nobody.

The generous inclusion of the last three concertos (composed 1968-87) gives us an extended look at the composer in a sort of international modern framework. It's not music overflowing with South American folk strains. They are not well-known works, at least in the States, but they should be. No. 6, in fact, enjoys its world premier performance here.

If you love the modern style, this one will be a real treat. Bravo Guarnieri!

Pascal Dusapin's Masterful "7 Solos Pour Orchestre"

Pascal Dusapin was born in 1955. That doesn't make him exactly a youngster, but considering, say, Elliot Carter (who has been productive for very many years), Dusapin (one hopes) has a good time to come where he can continue to extend his music. As it is, the Pascal Dusapin of the Seven Solos for Orchestra is a composer fully matured and extraordinarily eloquent in his orchestral writing. The seven solos were written over a period between 1991-2008. The gathering together and performing of the entire cycle for the first time on disk makes it clear that this is important music.

Unlike Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra, here we have music where sonority takes precedent over group virtuosity.

The compete set of Solos we've been discussing is out on a 2-CD set (Naive 782180), with Pascal Rophe conducting the Orchestre Philharmonique de Liege Wallonie Bruxelles. It is concentrated, focused music and the performances are quite exciting. Maestro Dusapin writes music that has a kind of inexorable logic. The music is very modern and uses melodic-intervalic-harmonic cells as ideas that unfold with a kind of linear reasonableness. Like Varese before him, Dusapin creates a musical syntax that has movingly expressive content but also flows out if itself with speech-like clarity. The music-speech we hear is his own. Very much so.

Each of the fairly short pieces is a gem; together they make a marvelous impression on this listener. Dusapin crafts inspired music. Listen to this one and I think you'll agree. Most highly recommended. . .

Alvin Curran's Remarkable Musical Collages

Alvin Curran is one of those composers-performers-improvisers that should be heard by anyone with designs on a complete understanding of modernity (whatever that will turn out to be when looking back 200 years from now).

He was the co-founder of Musica Elettronica Viva, one of the very first (and best) groups to combine live electronics and improvisation. They did things then that were so influential that improv groups are still trying to follow in their footsteps. He's since done a great deal of improv per se with some of the luminaries of the field.

It's his solo collage-like work that we look at today. The John Cage of "Fontana Mix" and "Variations IV" is a precursor, certainly. Sliced, diced and transformed snippets of sound, noise, musical excerpts of high. low, middle, folk, jazz, electronics, vernacular and what have you form the raw material. Where Cage had a kind of anti-structural, aleatoric stance, Curran perhaps is more sensitive to dramatic impact, the audience if you will, and there is more of a sense of structure and immersion in the distinctive sensuality of sound to what he does.

Songs and Views from the Magnetic Garden was one of his earlier masterpieces in the collage idiom. If you haven't heard it, you should. Today, though, we're concerned with his work Toto Angelica in its realization released in 2005, I believe (i dischi di angelica). The CD release has this fascinating version of the piece, plus several shorter works. It is a continuous barrage of various vocal, instrumental and extra-instrumental sounds, and if you listen a number of times it really starts to make sense. Well, more than that. Mr. Curran is one of the most creative musical minds at work today.

Silvestre Revueltas, Mexican Composer of Brilliance

In the would-be pantheon of immortals, lined up one by one with those pretentious busts especially popular more than a few centuries ago, Silvestre Revueltas (1899-1940), the composer from Mexico, probably would not be an obvious choice for inclusion. His reputation was not especially strong in the LP years. The CD era, however, has seen a number of good releases of his music. Today we look at a new one.

Naxos has just released a three work collection of Revueltas's orchestral music, with conductor Gisele Ben-Dor ably leading the English Chamber Orchestra and the Santa Barbara Symphony. What's remarkable is that the main work, a ballet, "La Coronela (The Lady Colonel)" (1940), has never been recorded before. Why? I don't know. The score somehow disappeared. What matters is the music, which is filled with the vivid orchestral colors, heightened rhythms and Mexican folk strains with which Revueltas's music excels. It may not have the somewhat more strident modernisms of some of his more well-known works, but it is nevertheless a delight.

The other two works on this disc, "Itinerarios" and "Colorines" have a bit more of that.

Revueltas should not be taken for granted. His music still speaks to us if we listen. This collection, made doubly important by the addition of a significant unrecorded work, makes for essential listening.

Contemporary Wind Band Music

From Naxos' Wind Band Classics Series comes a disk of three contemporary compositions, all written between 2006-2007. For some reason it took me a few more listenings than usual to find my way into the music. It's not that it isn't accessible, far from it. It demands some attention, which all good music does, and it may be that the first few times through I was distracted.

Be that as it may, the Frost Wind Ensemble of the University of Miami under Gary Green give it their best shot, and that's quite good. These pieces are not squarely in the avant realm, though the final work is a bit more edgy than the other two. The pieces are basically tonal and well-wrought. It's far from the marching-band-sitting-down-in-a-more-serious-way that some of the classic Hanson Mercury wind disks sounded like. It's more like orchestral music without the string section. And that certainly works with these pieces.

We've discussed Michael Daugherty's music earlier in this blog (see postings for October 23 & 26, 2009). His "Ladder to the Moon" on this release has charm. It's a lyrical, sometimes mysterious sort of tone poem in a neo-romantic vein. There's a concerted violin part, well played by Glenn Basham.

David Maslanka's "Concerto for Trombone and Wind Ensemble" features some expressive trombone realized by Tim Connor. The ghost of Wagner lurks somewhere behind the scenes, though he never quite gets on stage. There are moments, too, that seem like the music is about to break into the "Dies Irae" part of Berlioz's "Symphony Fantastique," but it never happens. The music is very good; not especially original, though.

Finally there is Christopher Rouse's "Wolf Rounds." This has some real spunk to it. There's a driving, almost rockish-jazzish quality to the opening lines, some menacing predatory sounds from the lower horns and timpani. An elaborate contrapuntal passage follows in what is the most modernist sounding of the three pieces. Towards the end there is an even more insistent contrapuntal tutti that includes some Latinesque rhythms from the percussion section. The finale gives you a great send off: exciting music that shows Christopher Rouse a composer that continues to deserve our full attention.

All in all Wolf Rounds (the CD) gives you three different takes on what the wind band can be today. At the Naxos low price, it is quite worth investigating.

Swarmius Return with New EP

We took a look at Swarmius's first CD a few days ago (see listing below). Today it's time for their EP follow-up, Also Normal (Aleppo), and it's another good one. Jozefius and company create orchestrally conceived music that does not fit easily into the ready-made categories. There's a modern classical component but the drive of rock and the electronic wizardry of the best of hip-hop. They conflate genres the way Zappa and Zorn do, but in ways that distinguish them as original.

The thirty-some-odd minute EP ranges over wide and relatively uncharted territory. "Cali' Karsilama" is a wild romp through the mid-east-near Asian-Semitic zone and it has a joyous quality."Orpheus is a Tiptoed Steamhorse" has lively contrapuntal passages that punch through all obstacles and communicate with widely varied textures and timbres in ways that will not leave you somnolent. "Moonlight Beach Chaconne" adds voices to the mix and some really captivating solo violin for a choral opus that plays out its musical cards in a poker game where Swarmius's hand takes all the chips.

In short, this is another intriguing offering and well-worth your listening time. What's next for them? I look forward to whatever it is, and I suspect there are more surprises in store for all of us.

Swarmius Defies Categorization

Swarmius is a four-man unit. Their music combines industrial, modern classical, world influenced music and a bunch of other things for a mix that has its own trajectory.

Heading up the band is Jozefius (Joseph Waters) who composes the music and uses a laptop to stretch, alter and augment the sounds created. Todd Rewoldt plays reeds, Felix Olschofka is on violin (quite adeptly so), and Joel Bluestone is the percussionist.

Their first, self-titled album (on Aleppo) has some rather startling musical content. Think of Zappa in his most ambitious vein. But don't think of his music; Swarmius does something different. There are driving pulses, exotic timbres, somewhat traditional sounding violin concerto pyrotechnics juxtiposed with rather untraditional accompaniment, and on from there.

The results are rather marvelous. Swarmius respects no rules about what goes with what. And that is most refreshing. Highly recommended.

Go to www.swarmius.com for more info.

Rochberg's Profoundly Interesting "Circles of Fire" for Two Pianos

American composer George Rochberg (1918-2005) had his period of "high modernism," where stylistically unified works were carefully crafted using expanded tonality-atonality in the various ways that twelve-tone and serialist methods worked themselves out in the American new music scene of the '50s and '60s. He composed some very sonoristic, almost lyrical high-modern music and gained some amount of recognition in the first phase of his career. Then beginning I believe sometime in the late '60s he began circling back to earlier musical styles, the more tonal echelons of musical practice, from the Euro tradition of music through the late romantic period as well as American vernacular idioms. He combined any number of stylistic references in a work, including the "modern." Most importantly he did this with a kind of synthetic inventiveness where the wholeness of each piece was never in doubt.

This leads us to 1996-97, and his sprawling opus for two pianos, Circles of Fire. Naxos has embarked on an extensive release cycle of Rochberg's works for solo piano. The first CD is a recording of the above mentioned work, by the Hirsch-Pinkas Piano Duo. The performance is ravishing.

The music? It models Rochberg's later musical aesthetic by means of an intricate musico-cosmic metaphor. Circles of Fire is a massive, spiralling set of 15 movements, which Rochberg likens to the circling cycles of fire that create the principal bodies of the universe, then subject those bodies to the physical-temporal loops, symmetries and recurrences that comprise the playing out of intergalaxial systems.

Rochberg here conceives of, and realizes music in this manner, as a circling back to earlier musical styles and a cycling through to the returning "modern" present.

And so Circles of Fire makes alive this idea through a long symmetrical loop of musical movements, beginning in a "modern" style, on to "pan-tonal," rhythmically archaic sounds, almost ragtime, then onwards through musical forms that suggest older classical styles, romantic tone poems, impressionist color sketches, and other reference points as well, eventually coming full circle to the beginning point of the cycle.

This would all be well and good and rather pointless if the music itself did not have some inner compulsion and inter-relatedness. This music does. It is music that revels in each moment with memorable movements that cycle from forte stridency to the most pianissimo tenderness, all the time showing Rochberg's uncanny knack for incorporation and transformation. Everything is up for utilization, but it is the manner of going about it that shows Rochberg's substantial compositional gifts.

I'm not sure if it would be fair to say that Rochberg has gotten his due, that his reputation is quite what it deserves to be. Anyone who listens closely to this beautiful performance of Circles of Fire will find an entire universe (literally and metaphorically) of enchanting music to be savored sensually and to be understood cognitively. His reputation can only be forwarded by this release. The fine art of modern pianism appears in all its manifold glory on this disk. Need I say more?