Jim Galloway

Voices on High  Hannaford Street Silver Band; Amadeus Choir Bramwell Tovey and Lydia Adams, conductors  Opening Day ODR 9342

The recording of symphony orchestras is in decline these days and the major labels seem to be afraid to touch anything that has the phrase "new music" attached to it. What then is the fan of large ensemble music to do? Get this CD!

Voices On High contains just five works, but they are significant ones indeed. Not only does the recording feature the HSSB and Amadeus Choir together, it also pairs the band with violinist Marie Bérard (in a concerto for the surprising combination of violin and brass band by Henry Kucharzyk), taped environmental sounds (J. Scott Irvine's Awakenings) and synthesized textures (in Harry Somers’ final work A Thousand Ages).

Awakenings opens the CD. I've come across a number of discs that use Irvine's works as openers, and it's easy to hear why. His writing is always attractive and fresh.

Reconciliation by Stephen Chatman is a musical setting of a Walt Whitman text. The work uses the male chorus of the Amadeus Choir and the sumptuous solo flugelhorn of Stuart Laughton to produce a hauntingly beautiful sound.

The centrepiece of the album is the six movement Requiem For A Charred Skull by Bramwell Tovey. The composer utilizes the full resources and colour available within the band and choir most skillfully.

Everything about Voices On High is absolutely top-notch. The sound quality is spectacular, the performances flawless. I highly recommend this CD!

Merlin Williams

Daniel Augusto D’Adamo is a 36 year-old Argentinian-born composer developing smoothly into France’s new music scene. Voices, his first monograph CD, clearly outlines the path through the music chain of Boulez to Manoury to D’Adamo, yet with shadows of additional and more personal rhythmic writing that gives the music its most interesting colours.  Not coincidentally, shadows figure prominently in his thinking and writing, as evinced by Artaud as quoted in his liner notes.  “Every true effigy has its shadow, its double; and art descends only once the sculptor giving it form thinks to free a kind of shadow, the haunting existence of which will now prevent him from any rest”. 

From the outset, Voices reveals the impeccable orchestration and high level of craft common on the Parisian contemporary music scene, albeit suffering at times from ineffectively directed harmonic rhythm. With Die runde Zahl (scored for Les Percussions de Strasbourg), D’Adamo begins to make his most vital musical statements.  Literally surrounding his public with relentlessly fluttering contrapuntal metal or wooden pitched percussion lines and trills, it evokes a sextet of shimmying hummingbirds. Cœli et terræ, for Double Bass and Bass Saxophone, bursts forth with similar rhythmic vitality, this time in the form of short, disparately bopping figures in relatively sequential variation. In these more acutely detailed rhythms, D’Adamo moves subtly beyond the expected stylistic boundaries. Composed at IRCAM, d’Ombra I, for Bass Clarinet and live electronics (processing of the clarinet part in real time) reviews D’Adamo’s ideas on the shadow and deformity.  Its successor, d’Ombra II, is perhaps the most elegant - both the conceptual counterpart of its predecessor, and a more comfortable implementation of the studied harmonic and sinewy gestural worlds of the opening work.

Paul Steenhuisen

There's a little something for everyone to enjoy in Americas, Lynn Harting-Ware's fifth recording for her husband Peter Ware's Acoma label.

A wide range of historical periods is represented, with the late Classical Grand Solo of guitar pioneer Fernando Sor to the timeless and familiar charms of Harting's own arrangements of four well-known Celtic melodies in her Folksong Suite and her affectionate set of seven Variations on O Canada!.

Music from the Renaissance and Baroque eras is well represented by the reflective guitar Fantasia by John Dowland and Harting's arrangement of the noble Prelude and Fugue in a minor (BWV 894-895) by J.S. Bach

The remainder of the album is devoted to more challenging fare from our own times. Clifford Crawley's fine Phantasia lends a delicate Spanish tinge to the theme of the album, while Aris Carastathis' Four Vignettes lends a bracing dose of international modernism to the proceedings.

Toronto Symphony violinist Jim Wallenberg contributes mightily to the success of the closing works on this disc. Peter Ware's contemplative essay, Chama 'The Eagle and the Plumed Serpent', originally scored for two flutes and piano, has been quite convincingly transformed here into duet form. Robert Rollin's American Variations is a valiant attempt to appropriate the rhythmic clichés of American popular music within an atonal context. 

Acoma is to be commended for recording as well as publishing these worthy contemporary additions to the guitar repertoire. Additional information may be found at www.Acoma-Co.com.

Daniel Foley
 

WORTH REPEATING
 
 

Great Conductors of the 20th Century:  Ferenc Fricsay Various Orchestras EMI 72435 75109  Great Composers of the 20th Century:  Bruno Walter Various Orchestras EMI 72435 75133

Great Conductors of the 20th Century is to be a series of 60 mid-priced, 2cd sets, each one devoted to a maestro of note, the first 15 of which are available now. 

Ferenc Fricsay (1914-1963) was born and educated in Budapest. In the early ‘50s his recordings with Berlin’s RIAS Orchestra attracted the attention of the music world. His many complete Mozart operas and Fidelio with a young Fischer-Dieskau remain fresh and his collaborations with Clara Haskil are treasures.

For me, this is the most interesting album of the initial offering in this outstanding series. Here are eight unreleased recordings. From Berlin, seven ‘live’ studio tapings: a ravishing Sorcerer’s Apprentice, a Shostakovich Ninth Symphony, Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphosis, Johann Strauss’ Kunstlerleben, Beethoven’s Leonora III and an arresting Eroica. The lone Vienna Philharmonic performance, live from Salzburg, is Kodaly’s Dances of Galanta. The sound on this desirable package is clean, dynamic and audience free. The stamp of a great conductor is on every piece.

Bruno Walter (1876-1962) enjoyed a recording career that extended from the acoustic era to stereo. Often criticized for wearing his heart on his sleeve, he was, nevertheless, responsible for a multitude of exciting recordings.

Here are nine works, including excerpts from Die Walkure with the VPO featuring Melchior, Lotte Lehmann, et al, recorded in 1935, Haydn’s Oxford Symphony and a VPO Pastoral from 1936. Walter’s personal connection with Mahler is acknowledged with the inclusion of the Adagietto from the Fifth Symphony (VPO 1938) and one song from Kindertotenlieder with Kathleen Ferrier. 

BUT the 1953 Brahms Second Symphony with the New York Philharmonic alone is worth the price of the whole album. You may never hear a version as exhilarating and focused.

Bruce Surtees
.

Turina: Danzas Fantásticas Alma Petchersky CBC Musica Viva MVCD 1123

Following her fine recording of Spanish composers Albéniz, Granados and Falla (ASV CDQS6079), Alma Petchersky, an Argentinian pianist now based in Toronto, tackles Joaquín Turina on her latest CD. Like his fellow countrymen, Turina sought to create a pure Spanish idiom using traditional folk rhythms and melodies.

This is apparent in Mujeres Españoles, where Turina uses songs and dances from various regions of Spain to create eight delightful portraits. The longest of these, La Andaluza Sentimental, features gorgeous Andalusian melodies and exquisite flamenco rhythms. These are filtered through impressionist harmonies and diaphanous textures, testimony to the composer’s years in France with d’Indy, Debussy and Ravel. Petchersky is particularly effective in expressing the constant shifts in mood, which range from vivacious to tenderly nostalgic.

The large-scale Sanlúcar de Barrameda is a terrific piece filled with mystery, passion, and exuberance. Petchersky conveys these sensibilities superbly. Her dramatic range of colours and textures makes this music throb with vitality.

Petchersky’s expansive phrasing and lyrical inflections in the two Danzás Fantasticas, tellingly entitled Exaltatión and Orgía, add a poetic dimension to these two movements, which became popular in Turina’s later orchestrations.

Turina, unlike his contemporaries, has not quite received his due. These compelling performances should go a long way towards rectifying that. 

Pamela Margles

DISCS OF THE MONTH

Canadian Composer Portraits: 
 

John Weinzweig Centrediscs CMCCD 8002 (3CDs)

Jean Coulthard Centrediscs CMCCD 8202 (2 CDs)

Murray Adaskin Centrediscs CMCCD 8102 (2 CDs)

Jacques Hétu Centrediscs CMCCD 8302 (2 CDs)

Harry Freedman Centrediscs CMCCD 8402 (2 CDs)

Ovation, Volume 1: Weinzweig; Coulthard; Adaskin; Hétu; Freedman CBC Records PSCD 2026-5 (5 CDs)

As you will know if you read part one of Paul Steenhuisen’s Composer to Composer interview with John Weinzweig in last month’s Wholenote, the CBC and the Canadian Music Centre (CMC) have joined forces to help rectify the appalling lack of music by senior Canadian composers available on compact disc. There are three aspects to the project: a series of hour long radio documentaries about each of the featured composers; multiple disc sets on the CMC’s Centrediscs label which include these documentaries and an additional disc(s) of selected works by each composer; and a companion set of discs on the CBC label which provide another hour (or more) of music by each of the composers. The projected series is to include as many as 30 composers. The first five volumes are now available.

It seems the driving force behind this important initiative was Weinzweig himself through the campaign he has been waging for a number of years aimed at increasing the profile of Canadian composers on the CBC radio airwaves. It is only fitting then that the first, and most substantial, offering in the new Canadian Composer Portraits series is devoted to this “Dean of Canadian Composers”.

In the words of documentary producer Eitan Cornfield, “There was a time, not too long ago, when there wasn’t a single full-time composer in all of Canada, a time when no one was even teaching composition. John Weinzweig did more than anyone to change that. You could say that he established the profession of composer in Canada.” In the hour that follows this statement we learn a lot about the man who was instrumental in founding both Canadian League of Composers and the Canadian Music Centre. Along the way we learn much about the history of music in our country.

There are two discs devoted to the music of Weinzweig that accompany this documentary. One offers three diverse examples of his chamber writing, featuring the Orford String Quartet, the Toronto Woodwind Quintet and the Canadian Brass. The other disc features orchestral works of which highlights for me include the brooding Symphonic Ode and the Violin Concerto, a twelve-tone work that combines the angular rhythmic drive of Stravinsky with the lyricism of Alban Berg. I cannot understand why this showpiece is not more frequently performed. 

The other four composers involved in the initial release of the Canadian Composer Portraits series are the recently deceased West Coasters Jean Coulthard and Murray Adaskin, Ontario’s Harry Freedman and Quebecker Jacques Hétu. Hétu is sort of the odd-man-out in this set. At 64 he is Freedman’s junior by 16 years and three decades younger than the others. His music is perhaps closest to that of Jean Coulthard, in that they both produce unabashedly Romantic works, albeit in a distinctively modern language. Poetry plays an important part in Hétu’s oeuvre. He is represented by two orchestral song cycles and an a cappella setting, all utilizing poems by Emile Nelligan, and an orchestral work in memory of this important Quebec writer. Coulthard, who had to overcome myriad prejudices to establish herself as Canada’s first important woman composer, is represented by works in a variety of genres: a concerto, a set of piano pieces and a work for string octet. Highlights? Hétu’s Les Amîmes du rêve featuring the fabulous basso voice of Joseph Rouleau and Coulthard’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra with Robert Silverman.

Murray Adaskin was, until May 6, 2002 when he passed away several weeks after his 96th birthday, Canada’s oldest living composer. He is represented here by orchestral works written across five decades. The prominence of the bassoon in both his Diversion and Suite for orchestra suggests his fondness for the instrument, a suspicion that is confirmed by the inclusion of the 1960 Concerto for Bassoon and Orchestra written for, and performed by, George Zuckerman. The Divertimento No.6 for Solo Percussion and Orchestra and In Praise of “Canadian Painting in the Thirties” complete this excellent portrait. I only wish the producer had seen fit to include a work that was seminal to my own development, the Algonquin Symphony.

Harry Freedman, himself a painter and graphic artist, has often found inspiration for his music in the world of visual art. Two of the four orchestral works which comprise his Portrait reflect this: Tableau, inspired by a “brooding Arctic landscape” that hung in the foyer of the Winnipeg School of Art when he was a student there, and Town, a tribute to his friend the distinguished Canadian painter Harold Town. Curiously the titles of all four of the works included here begin with the letter “T”, the other two being Tangents, written for the National Youth Orchestra, and Touchings, commissioned and performed by the percussion ensemble Nexus with Esprit Orchestra. 

My initial impression was that Harry Freedman got the short end of the stick in this series because three of the four pieces included were already easily available on compact disc. My opinion changed however when I explored the contents of the CBC companion set Ovation. Here Freedman is the big winner, with two important pieces that had never before been available to the public in any format: Celebration and Suite for the Ballet Rose Latulippe. 

It is the first of these that is most significant. Jazz has been an important influence for Freedman and this major work represents the epitome of his form. It was written in 1977 for the renowned saxophonist Gerry Mulligan with a through-composed orchestral part but with the bulk of the soloist’s part left as improvisation. Freedman and Mulligan continued to “tinker” with the piece for a decade after its premiere. It’s unfortunate that the liner notes don’t reveal at what stage of the 10-year development the recording with the CBC Winnipeg Orchestra presented here dates from. 

The eleven discs that comprise the initial offering of five Canadian Composer Portraits and the five discs of the Ovation set provide a wealth of important and inspiring Canadian musical history and hours of great listening. The price is right too, with the Portraits selling for $10 a disc (i.e. $20-$30 a set) and the Ovation package at only $33. The producers have promised that this is just the beginning and that is good news indeed. The archive of our national broadcaster is a vast treasure trove of material and it is essential that we mine it for its gems before time takes its toll and the recordings themselves deteriorate beyond salvation. Bravo to the producers for making such a fine start, and to John Weinzweig for inspiring them to doing so. 

David Olds

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.