Violinist Peter DeSotto’s stylish lyric tenor vocals are well suited to the hawking of a half dozen chestnuts, both old and new, from the 1958 chart topping “Volare” to cellist George Meanwell’s wistful “Words That I Want.”  The recording is beautifully produced and quite entertaining. 

Quartetto Gelato will perform at the opening gala of the new Stratford Summer Music festival on July 25 with further performances Aug. 2-5. 
(See http://www.stratfordsummermusic.ca/ or call 1-866-846-8742) 

Daniel Foley

WITH THE MOLINARI QUARTET’S Schafer recor-ding and several other significant contemporary releases, the ATMA label has established itself as an important player on the new music scene. Previously known for its fine recordings of predominantly baroque repertoire, the jewel in the crown of ATMA’s new direction is this Molinari performance. The ensemble, named for its association with the renowned painter Guido Molinari, seems a perfect match for Schafer, whose works often incorporate the visual, along with movement, drama and literature. 

The quartets reflect interests that extend far beyond the traditional concert hall, with direct links to Schafer’s research for The World Soundscape Project and his Patria series of music theatre works (the most recent of which, The Palace of the Cinnabar Phoenix, will be created at Wolverton Hills near Peterborough this September). The Molinari Quartet has worked extensively with the composer and this recording clearly reflects their understanding of his intentions and their attention to detail. 

Now entering his fourth decade of quartet writing, Schafer has just finished his eighth, a work that the Molinari Quartet will premiere on August 4 at the New Stratford Summer Music Festival. The current recording therefore serves merely as a testament to “the story thus far.” Well recorded with a warm sound that complements the able and often inspired playing of this young group, the only disappointment (due to time constraints of the CD medium) is having to move back and forth between the two discs to hear the cycle in its intended order. The resulting continuity is, however, well worth the bit of effort involved.

David Olds

ARRANGED AND  CONDUCTED by Glenn Morley,  “Fanfare” is a feast of vocal, choral and instrumental music that amply demonstrates the late Louis Applebaum’s masterful understanding of the intricate rhythms of Shakespearean poetry and the demands of the stage. 

Tenor Richard Margison lends a warm, intimate tone to the vocal settings from the 1988 Stratford production of “Two Gentlemen of Verona.” Celebrity voice-overs by the likes of Christopher Plummer and Colm Feore are to be heard amidst instrumental numbers portraying a wide range of musical styles, from the regal grandeur of the “Suite from Richard III” to the comic buffoonery of Barbara Fulton’s winning delivery of two delightful selections from the 1992 production of “Love’s Labour Lost.” Several of the performances involve the Elmer Iseler Singers, who are in top-notch form under the direction of Lydia Adams. Though the texts of the vocal selections are included, the liner notes might well have benefited from some explanation of the historical and musical contexts of the program, chosen by the composer himself shortly before his death. 

Throughout Applebaum’s long and distinguished career he demonstrated a passionate desire to, in his own words, “Make life better, especially for the musical world, especially for the composer’s world.” Lou’s selfless work on behalf of his colleagues included key roles at the Canadian League of Composers, the Ontario Arts Council, and Canada’s performing rights organization, SOCAN. As a composer he is best remembered for the scoring of over 250 films and for a succession of 75 scores during his years at Stratford. The festival will mark its 50th anniversary next season with the establishment of a competition for young composers in his honour, The Louis Applebaum Award in Theatre.

The Stratford Festival is now in full swing and runs until November 4. (See http://www.stratfordfestival.ca or call 1-800-567-1600) 

Daniel Foley

PIERRE BOULEZ, the reigning doyen of France’s modernist conductors and composers, has a unique grasp of Debussy’s music as the bridge between late romanticism and further shores. This mid priced Sony double disk set assembles 1969-71 performances of Debussy’s orchestral music under Boulez’s baton, a period when the conductor was in full swing as the père terrible of contemporary music.  They combine lushness with the bite that Debussy intended.  You can feel what late nineteenth/early twentieth century audiences felt as Debussy presented them with unprecedented intervals, sound sheets and nonwestern inspirations.  Boulez’s newer recordings of this repertoire for Deutsche Gramophone have accumulated wisdom and superior sound, but I like these old friends because they transmit the fire in Debussy’s belly. 

This is also true of the bargain Philips Duo set by Bernard Haitnik and the wonderful Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.  This happens because Haitnik conducts Mahler, who was simultaneously driving music from late romanticism to modernism, as well as anyone in the world. 

Expect interesting specials on Debussy recordings as the August 10th opening date of the Bard Music Festival approaches. “Debussy and His World” is this year’s theme. The annual festival intersperses sterling performances of works by the selected composer and his contemporaries with multidisciplinary forums drawing eminent musicologists, historians and performers from both sides of the Atlantic. The 2001 festival proceeds over the August 10-12 and 17-19 weekends at Bard College’s Hudson Valley campus, a pleasant day’s drive or train ride from Toronto. 

(See http://www.bard.edu/bmf/ or call 845-758-7410) 

LAST MONTH Jukka-Pekka Saraste’s two triumphant SRO performances of Schoenberg’s “Gurrelieder” rang down the curtain on his seven years as Music Director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. There are now 15 different performances on CD of this mighty work, the last truly monumental cantata of the Romantic Era. The EMI version above was recorded live on 18 March 1968 in the Denmark Radio Studio in Copenhagen and remains one of the best, if not ‘the’ best, available. The forces are, as expected, immense. Martina Arroyo sings Tove, Alexander Young is Waldemar. Janet Baker, in magnificent voice, is an unforgettable Wood-dove and Julius Patzak is definitive as the Speaker. 

A memorable performance of Gurrelieder requires a great deal more than simply getting the notes in the right order. A conductor must realize the arch of the composition as a whole. Under Janos Ferencsik, who most certainly had the big vision, the entire 100-minute score, which concludes with the most dazzling and uplifting sunrise in all music, passes all too soon.

As a little bonus from EMI, The Suite for String Orchestra (1934), conducted by Norman Del Mar, brings the listener down from the dizzy heights rather well. 

EMI’s remastering was expected to be faultless. It is actually exemplary! The enormous tuttis are handled with ease and the finest details are clarified. This recording is quite a remarkable achievement from every aspect.

Bruce Surtees

ALTHOUGH THE  9 WORKS on this recording span 15 years of  Bashaw’s compositional output, there is a clarity of technique and idea which binds the music, developing chronologically through the seminal “Hosu,” for solo piano, to 1998’s “Music for Trombone and Piano.” Often involving short, fragmentary bursts of instrumental colour, the music shifts between florid, torrential passages, sparse, elegant gestures recollecting Japanese painting, and mechanical, tense textures in which different tempo streams move simultaneously.  Even with the fingerprints of Ligeti and Carter on his approach to rhythm and time, Bashaw maintains a solidarity and unexpected introversion throughout, notwithstanding the sometimes brutally physical piano writing.

“Seven spheres” begins with a sequence of slow elegiac canons, each successive movement building on the basic multi-pulse premise, and culminating in the compressed fourth (central) section before deconstructing the music with the pointillist, scalar and celestial spheres that complete the structure.  In “Hosu”, the cornerstone of his repertoire, Bashaw draws storms of swirling colour from the piano to create a breathing, poetic soundscape evocative of Liszt and Debussy. 

In “Music for Organ and Piano,” the characteristic piano writing of “Hosu” merges with some of the mechanistic preoccupations of “seven spheres” to create an engagingly peculiar, multi-dimensional piece with “live-electronics” associations.  In the elegantly placid “Eolian Braid” (1995) the composer grapples with the question “What is this spell that wind chimes cast so effortlessly on the ear?”, answering with intertwined rhythmic strands of great beauty.  Five other works complete this excellent portrait of Howard Bashaw’s music.

Paul Steenhuisen
 

Catalogues and review copies of CDs should be sent to:
The WholeNote, 60 Bellevue Avenue, Toronto ON M5T 2N4

For more information contact David Olds at dolds@interlog.com or call 416.535.7740.