Musical America Blogs

A Thousand Thoughts

Kronos Quartet

Nonesuch CD

Kronos Explorer Series

Kronos Quartet

Nonesuch CD Boxed Set

To celebrate their fortieth year of activities, Kronos Quartet has two releases on the Nonesuch imprint. The first, A Thousand Thoughts, is a single CD compilation of previously unreleased and newly recorded tracks. All of the group’s cellists from throughout its history –  Joan Jeanrenaud, Jennifer Culp, Jeffrey Zeigler, and Sunny Yang – appear on the disc, as do a host of guest artists. The music is abundantly varied, including everything from a new piece by minimalist composer Terry Riley to arrangements of Asian folk music to a rousing rendition of “Danny Boy.” Thus, A Thousand Thoughts does an excellent job demonstrating Kronos Quartet’s versatility and catholicity of taste.

The Explorer Series boxed set goes deep into Kronos’s back catalog, reissuing five albums that helped to put the group, and their arranging aesthetics, on the map: Pieces of Africa (1992), Night Prayers (1994), Caravan (2000), Nuevo (2002), and Floodplain (2009). Taken as a collective listening project they help one to realize how formidable and far reaching Kronos’s influence has been. Today, many classical labels consider the incorporation of music from a number of ethnicities on their releases to be smart marketing. Composers of concert music feel liberated to explore their roots – or the music of other places and cultures. While many performers have advocated for classical music to be more inclusive in this way, the releases contained in the Explorer Series box helped by example to make it more possible. Forty years into the Kronos Quartet project, there’s a lot worth celebrating.

Another wonderful composer has passed away: Elodie Lauten was a talented, adventurous artist supremely dedicated to her work. Kyle Gann has more here.

The Rite of Spring

Stravinsky

performed by the Bad Plus

Sony Masterworks CD

It has long been a touchstone and signifying landmark for Twentieth Century, but particularly around its centenary (2013), Stravinsky’s Sacre du Printemps (Rite of Spring) provoked much conversation, reevaluation, and reinterpretation. One can imagine a jazz trio translation of the piece falling flat, exchanging riffing for structure and exploiting ostinatos instead of shaping them. However, this is not the case on the Bad Plus’ rendition of the work. Pianist Ethan Iverson, bassist Reid Anderson, and drummer David King have created a transcription that is quite faithful to the original. And, despite some electronic adornments, where the piano trio loses some of the “oomph” that a full orchestra brings to bear on Stravinsky’s energetic climaxes, the leaner format neatly underscores other details in the music: time changes, polyrhythms, linear interaction, and piquant harmonies. After hearing this, one wants to go back to the full score with these details firmly in mind; but one also wants to return again to the Bad Plus’s thoughtful homage to this totemic work.

Sacred Songs

James Primosch

Susan Narucki, soprano; William Sharp, baritone;

21st Century Consort, Christopher Kendall, conductor

Bridge Records CD 9422

Whether you are a spiritual seeker or confirmed secularist, James Primosch’s affecting settings of sacred texts, and poems seeking the sacred or spiritual, can prove a balm for the soul and food for thought. On the Bridge CD Sacred Songs, this is doubtless assisted by the extraordinary talents brought to bear upon the material. Soprano Susan Narucki displays impressive range, diction, and dynamic control throughout the three song cycles she assays. Likewise, baritone William Sharp provides an intensity of declamation that is required by the song cycle Dark the Star. At the same time, his instrument retains its lyric timbre and suppleness.

Primosch is quite fond of Rilke, and both Dark the Star and From a Book of Hours spotlight the poet’s work. Dark the Star also features fetching settings of poems by Susan Stewart. The juxtaposition of Rilke and Stewart supplies us with a postmodern vantage point on what it means to be seeking the sacred in art (John Harbison’s liner notes also gracefully illuminate this sometimes thorny subject). Four Sacred Songs deals with older texts and, in the case of Cordes Natus ex Parentis, a most familiar hymn tune. Yet Primosch’s distinctive scoring, filled with sumptuous textures punctuated by percussive tintinnabulation, make them his own. The 21st Century Consort, conducted by Christopher Kendall, have engaged in a long term collaboration with Primosch and it shows here in their incandescent and carefully prepared playing. (There are also elegantly arranged voice and piano versions of the songs – singers would do well to seek them out and program them).

The earliest set represented here, Holy the Firm, is also one of Primosch’s most striking cycles.  Once again we hear from Susan Stewart, alongside Denise Levertov, two poems by Annie Dillard, and a text from the 7th century AD by John Climacus. Usually, when dealing with a group of songs with poetry by multiple authors, one uses the term cycle judiciously and selectively. But Primosch has selected texts that speak to one another, about the sacred found in nature, about the bridge between temporal existence and eternity, and about the sense of meaning, transcendence, and poetry one can find every day, even, as Annie Dillard points out, on one’s deathbed. Not every composer’s music can support such weighty themes, but I find myself returning again and again to Primosch’s songs. Recommended.

This is a big week for ECM — the label is releasing four new CDs of concert music, including CDs featuring Duo Gazzana, Erkki-Sven Tűűr, and Tigran Mansurian. All of these discs are worthy of scrutiny, but the one that I have spent the most time with is a recording of chamber music by English composer Harrison Birtwistle. It includes his recent Trio for Violin, Cello, and Piano (2011), a piece that combines pointillism, expressionism, and Birtwistle’s fascination with corruscating, out-of-sync clock-like rhythms. Violinist Lisa Batiashvilli, cellist Adrian Brendel, and pianist Till Fellner give a taut, highly charged reading of the piece. Elsewhere, baritone Roderick Williams and soprano Amy Freston supply controlled, nuanced, and often ethereal performances of settings of Niedecker and Rilke, all from the nineties and aughts. These pieces show a tendency towards concision, lithe linear writing, and, in places, an affecting lyricism that one does not always find in Birtwistle’s earlier music. Recommended.

Vocalist Yeahwon Shin is appearing in New York City, Philadelphia, and Baltimore this week, performing material from her ECM recording Lua Ya. Joined by versatile pianist Aaron Parks and accordionist Rob Curto,  Shin crafts elegant lullabies (many of the pieces incorporate Korean children songs) that are one part classical music, one part free improvisation, and one part folk music. There is a delicate elegance to the music on Lua Ya that prevents the material from ever feeling cloying or sentimental. On the contrary, the long lyrical lines and supple interplay explored by these musicians leave a most favorable impression.

In addition to the “Forty Years of Renaissance Polyphony” advertised for this Saturday’s appearance by the Tallis Scholars at Midtown Manhattan’s Church of St. Mary the Virgin, the group will be premiering a new work by Michael Nyman. Two Sonnets of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz is tailor made for the current Tallis forces, with ten-part divisi forming arcing lines pitted against punctuated declamation. In honor of the Tallis Scholar’s fortieth anniversary, it was commissioned by Miller Theatre, who sponsors the early music series at Church of St. Mary the Virgin. Also on the program are works by Tallis, Desprez, John Sheppard, and a mass by Cipriano de Rore.

Tallis Scholars
Saturday, April 5 at 8 PM
Church of St. Mary the Virgin
More info here