Projections into special places

Nadia Shpachenko: The Poetry of Places, world premieres by Andrew Norman, Harold Meltzer, Jack Van Zandt, Hannah Lash, Amy Beth Kirsten, James Matheson, Lewis Spratlan, Nina C. Young

In his 1873 essay "The School of Giorgione" Walter Pater famously said "All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music," but of course his argument is much more nuanced than this sound-byte, as cool as it is. "Although," he says,

"each art has thus its own specific order of impressions, and an untranslatable charm, while a just apprehension of the ultimate differences of the arts is the beginning of aesthetic criticism; yet it is noticeable that, in its special mode of handling its given material, each art may be observed to pass into the condition of some other art, by what German critics term an Anders-streben — a partial alienation from its own limitations, through which the arts are able, not indeed to supply the place of each other, but reciprocally to lend each other new forces."

Those new forces are evident in each of these World Premiere works by eight composers, in this marvellous disc from pianist Nadia Shpachenko. Each of the works is about a special place, with music interacting with a wide range of human activities: fine and applied arts (architecture and design), the heritage arts and the natural world. "Part of my aim as an artist," says composer Amy Beth Kirsten, "is to project myself, through meditation and imagination, into another place so I might find the music that lives there." Between them, Kirsten and Shpachenko project us into the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, designed by Rebecca Swanston and Alex Castro. I happen to share a fondness for and a deep admiration of some of the architects of these special places, especially Frank Gehry and Louis Kahn. But each of these works is memorable, and beautifully played by Shpachenko on a Steinway grand piano and, memorably, on a toy piano, a Schoenhut 37 ­key Traditional Deluxe Spinet. As well she has excellent support from Joanne Pearce Martin in four-hand pieces, and percussionists Nick Terry and Cory Hills. This is a marvellous project, well worth exploring.

 

A stimulating music synthesis

Gernot Wolfgang's Vienna and the West: Road Signs, Passage to Vienna, Route 33, Windows, Impressions, From Vienna With Love

From Bill Evans' use of the Viennese Trichord (in "What Is This Thing Called Love?", from his 1960 album Portrait in Jazz) to Don Byron & Aruan Ortiz's latest album, Random Dances & (A)Tonalities, there has been a significant, consistent influence from the Second Vienna School on jazz. The harmonic and melodic innovation of Schoenberg and the stripped-down aesthetic of Webern meet jazz from the 60s and film scores since then, in this excellent new album from Grammy-nominee Gernot Wolfgang. Wolfgang brings his usual high-flying Los Angeles-based team of studio musicians, expert in both classical and popular idioms. For these fine musicians he's provided a diverse groups of pieces. "Groove-oriented chamber music" is an interesting term, but it doesn't *quite* capture the wide range of music included here.

We begin with the witty Road Signs, about Los Angeles's idée fixe: traffic. This features the bassoon, which so often seems to be having way more fun than every other instrument. Bassoonist Judith Farmer's touch is light when it needs to be, but she doesn't hesitate to stick the best jokes. The piano trio Passage to Vienna is a more serious work, dealing with the Old World/New World dialectic that has given us so many great works of art, from Henry James to Heitor Villa-Lobos. This is Anton Webern played late at night, after Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond have finished their final set.

The program concludes with a clever and touching piano quartet, From Vienna With Love, which is based on a theme from a sketch Gustav Mahler made for his Piano Quartet of 1876. There's a real tango feel to the piece, with contrasting aggressive and sentimental themes, though the folkloric content is Eastern European rather than Latin. Once again jazz-inflected passages alternate with more erudite ones, but in this piece especially Wolfgang achieves a real synthesis, I think.  It's a great end to a stimulating, and fun, album of music.