True gold, glittering

Berlioz: Les Nuit d'Ete, Ravel: Sheherazde, Debussy orch. John Adams: Le Livre de Baudelaire

When early in his career as a composer Maurice Ravel began to set some poems by Tristan Klingsor, he had the poet "recite his verses repeatedly in order to absorb their rhythms and tone," according to Paul Schiavo's illuminating liner notes to this new release. The result were the three Shéhérazade songs, sung beautifully here by Ian Bostridge, with the Seattle Symphony providing their patented exotic, shimmering, multi-Grammy-winning sound to back him up. Each of the works on this album demonstrate the special bond that music and poetry can share, when geniuses of each genre are matched up at the right time. Schiavo points out that Hector Berlioz's setting of poems by Théophile Gautier as Les nuits d’été was the first important song cycle for voice and orchestra. Bostridge's passionate, suave interpretation along with the support of Ludovic Morlot and his Seattle players, 100% in the groove with this music, helped me overcome a lifelong prejudice against Berlioz. It's hard to imagine a better interpretation of this gorgeous music.

The John Adams orchestral transcriptions of the Debussy settings of poems by Charles Baudelaire are as beautiful as a great painting by John Singer Sargent - The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit in Boston, let's say. In both the music and the painting there are profound meanings that are, paradoxically perhaps, hidden by the surface beauty.

In the words of another artist:

"If you want to know about Andy Warhol, then just look at the surface of my pictures, and there I am."

And John Singer Sargent himself:

"I don't dig beneath the surface for things that don't appear before my own eyes."

Which brings me to one of my favourite quotes, from that great aphorist Hugo von Hofmannsthal:

"Depth must be hidden. Where? On the surface."

The more gold that is mined, the more beautiful the surface seems, from Baudelaire's exquisite verse to Debussy's elegant melodies, to John Adams' sumptuous orchestral harmonies and textures. This true gold glitters most perfectly in this performance: Bostridge's lovely voice with a great American symphony orchestra at the top of its game.

Intensity and tranquility in music of genius

Berio: Sinfonia; Boulez: Notations I-IV; Ravel: La Valse

The Seattle Symphony under the direction of Ludovic Morlot perform Berio's Sinfonia, Boulez's Notations I-IV and Ravel's La Valse on this new disc from Seattle Symphony Media.  Though built on a complex maze of literary and musical allusions elaborately folded many times over upon themselves, it's the expressive power and intensity that strikes one about Luciano Berio's Sinfonia. This is especially true of the 2nd movement, O King, which makes reference to the April 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Sinfonia, written for the 125th Anniversary of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in 1968, is a work for 8 voices and orchestra, and it was the great Swingle Singers who performed the work at its premiere on October 10, 1968, under the direction of Leonard Bernstein. The raw emotion that is evident in the great Columbia Masterworks recording is perhaps somewhat muted in this new recording, made fifty years later, but I think the superb singing, whispering and murmuring of Roomful of Teeth, Morlot's conception of the work, and the expert playing of the Seattle Symphony musicians maybe result in an even more complex and convincing performance. Then there's the added bonus of the 5th movement, which Berio added to the work in 1969, after the New York recording was already in the can.

In a discussion between John Cage and the late art critic & scholar Irving Sandler, in his fabulous memoir A Sweeper-Up After Artists, Cage expressed a preference for Mark Tobey's White Writing paintings over the works of Jackson Pollock. "We would meet," Cage said, "and he always complained that I didn't like his work enough, and I didn't." Sandler said "But what about the intensity, the excitement?" and Cage replied:

Oh, none of these aspects interested me. They're precisely the things about abstract expressionism which didn't interest me. I wanted to change my way of seeing, not my way of feeling. I'm perfectly happy about my feelings. I want to bring them, if anything, to some kind of tranquility. I don't want to disturb my feelings, and above all, I don't want somebody else to disturb my feelings. I don't spend my life being pushed around by a bunch of artists.

What is fascinating about the programme Ludovic Morlot has chosen on this disc is the balance between intensity and tranquility, which coincidentally was the focus of my recent review of Mariss Jansson's Bruckner 8th Symphony from Munich. This is more than just a contrast between hot Berio and cool Boulez, though that's the obvious line to be drawn here between two vitally important works that in some way exemplify two major thrusts of 20th Century music. There are also ebbs and flows of expression in both of the Sinfonia and Notations. Berio added a fifth movement to make the "narrative substance" of Sinfonia more explicit. It's this story-telling device of adding a coda to bring better balance to the overall story which speaks to these expressive contrasts even within this work.

Ludovic Morlot's own coda, as he tells a story in this programme, is Maurice Ravel's La Valse, a sad and savage reworking of the Viennese waltz, an avatar for the old world forever lost on the other side of the chasm of World War I. After two great works of immense complexity and beauty this is a superb end to a programme that explores and explains the beauty and horror of the 20th Century.

Mark Tobey, White Writing, 1959

Jackson Pollock, White Light, 1954, MOMA, New York

This disc will be released on July 20, 2018.

Marvellous Perle, beautifully played

George Perle: Dance Fantasy, 6 Bagatelles, Cello Concerto, Sinfonietta no. 1, A Short Symphony

The musical wars of the 20th century are beginning to seem to me nearly as insignificant as those of the 19th. Today I listen to a work by Berg or Stravinsky and worry as little about theoretical constructs as I do with Wagner or Berlioz. The music itself hasn't changed, of course, but with the newness rubbed off and the passions of the music wars on the ebb I hear good music or not, congenial to my taste or not. George Perle was interested as much in music theory and history as he was in composition, but I can happily forget that he was one of the key figures in presenting 12-tone music in America, and just listen to this marvellous music, beautifully played by the Seattle Symphony and Ludovic Morlot.

It's surprising how small the George Perle discography is; we need many more discs like this. Bridge has done some great work lately in presenting an important American composer, with their 2006 two-disc set George Perle: A Retrospective a landmark. This new disc is volume 4 in Bridge's series; it's especially nice to have so many orchestral works, since most of the recent Perle recordings are of chamber music (as good as that music is). Ludovic Morlot and the Seattle Symphony are the best possible advocates for this music, playing with passion, verve and control. Cellist Jay Campbell is superb in the Cello Concerto; it's not a really long piece, but it's by no means slight. Perle has concentrated a powerful mix of music into this piece, which deserves a place in the repertoire.

This disc will be released on February 16, 2018.

At the end of a tragic day

Ives: Three Places in New England; Orchestral Set no. 2; New England Holidays

Memorial Day weekend is a good time to listen to Three Places in New England, which includes an especially poignant tribute by Charles Ives to the sacrifice of American soldiers in battle. This is deeply moving music, written in such a bold and original way that even today it makes one sit up and take notice; I can't imagine the effect it had when it was first played. The first of the Three Places in New England is entitled The “St. Gaudens” in Boston Common (Col. Shaw and his Colored Regiment); this is Augustus Saint-Gaudens' Memorial to Robert Gould Shaw & the Massachusetts 54th Regiment. This elegy is sombre, with precious little light falling on the doomed soldiers and their commander. All the martial tunes which Ives quotes, designed in the first place to uplift the spirits before battle, are intoned in a minor key, in the darkest of orchestrations, in the most grief-stricken rhythms. Ives was, I believe, as distraught about the dire history of African-Americans after the Civil War as he was about their defeat at the Second Battle of Fort Wagner. There is also great beauty, though, and we should pay special attention to this quotation: "Music is the best consolation for a despaired man." It's by Martin Luther King, Jr.

Photo: Boston Globe

After this unalloyed gloom Ives turns to a much jollier subject, a July 4th celebration during Revolutionary War times. The mood is raucous, and Ives, as always quoting popular songs and anthems, really goes to town with his homegrown-modernist conflagration of rhythms and themes. The third Place is The Housatonic at Stockbridge, a gorgeous depiction of a riverside walk and a very personal moment with his wife Harmony. For those who didn't find sufficient solace in the beauty of the first movement, this might perhaps be of some help.

Harmony and Charles Ives in 1948. Photograph by Halley Erskine

The masterworks keep coming: both the New England Holidays and the 2nd Orchestral Set have the same mix of serious subtext, whimsical jollity and leading edge modernist composition. The most striking piece is the last movement in the Orchestral Set no. 2, entitled "From Hanover Square North, at the End of a Tragic Day, the Voice of the People Again Arose," whose theme is the sinking of the Lusitania by German submarines on May 7, 1915. This is music of great complexity, with ambiguity to match. Tolling bells and repeated choruses of The Sweet Bye and Bye are engulfed by discord until finally the music fades out, into the eternal Charles Ives question mark.

Ives is very well represented in recordings; there are many recordings of this music, some of which are good indeed. But only the best can keep the eccentricities from going over the top, and the sad bits from veering into the maudlin. We have in this new Seattle Symphony Media release one of the best. Ludovic Morlot walks this tightrope without seeming over cautious; indeed, the live recordings preserve a real feeling of occasion, while the SSM engineers provide life-like sound with real presence. Very highly recommended.

This disc will be released on June 2, 2017.

A vital Dutilleux Centennial project

Henri Dutilleux's centennial year in 2016 is coming along nicely. There are four BBC Proms concerts this summer that include works by the great French master, plus some major recording projects this year and in last year's run-up, most notably the Erato 7-disc Dutilleux Centenary Edition. But the undertaking I'm most excited about is this 3-disc collection of the Orchestral Works with the Seattle Symphony conducted by Ludovic Morlot, on the Symphony's own label, Seattle Symphony Media. Back in 2014 I gave the first disc in Morlot's series a very positive review. While I somehow missed the second disc in 2015, it too got nothing but raves from the critics, especially for the violin concerto L'arbre des songes with Augustin Hadelich, and it won a Grammy Award that year. The third disc is due, along with this compilation, on August 12, 2016.

Hadelich is back for the final disc in the set, playing the Nocturne for violin & orchestra "Sur le même accord". This is amazingly accessible music, with almost cinematic effects: shifting atmospheres, dramatic outbursts and always a wide range of virtuosic effects that Hadelich manages with aplomb on his 1723 Kiesewetter Stradivarius violin. The highlight, though, is a live performance of the great Timbres, espace, mouvement. Morlot ensures that scrupulous attention to detail doesn't interfere with the long arcs of this music; the virtuosity of the orchestral players, and their musicianship, is obvious.

From my balcony I can see sometimes just the tip of Mt. Rainier peaking out, but only on the clearest of days (not lately because of haze from wildfires on the Olympic Peninsula). It's somehow a comfort to know that not too far that way there's an orchestra that can play this great music of core French repertoire as well as any in the world. I need to hop on the ferry soon, and often, to hear it play live!

Drama in the New World

From July 15, 2015:

The Seattle Symphony’s house label is one of the best; they’re pretty much batting 1.000 with their releases since Seattle Symphony Media was launched in the spring of 2014. This welcome new disc provides more of the same: sparkling orchestral playing under the inspired direction of Music Director Ludovic Morlot, with high production values and an appealing package. I love the juxtaposition of the great modernist work Ameriques and a towering work of the previous generation, Dvorak’s powerful 9th Symphony. Both are presented as dramas of exploration and discovery of a new world, and each work illuminates the other. Bravo!

An outstanding rookie class

From August 29, 2014:

Eventually Seattle Symphony Media, the organization’s new record label, will release a dud, but it sure hasn’t happened yet. This new disc, generously packed with orchestral works by Gabriel Faure, is as strong as the previous three (by Dutilleux, Ravel/Saint-Saens, and Ives/Carter/Gershwin), with the same splendid playing, superb engineering, and deluxe presentation. This is an outstanding rookie class!

Highlights include the choral version of the Pavane, the Pelleas et Melisande suite, and Masques et bergamasques, but even the trifles are played with honesty and impeccable musicianship. Conductor Ludovic Morlot and his orchestral players get strong support from cellist Efe Baltacigil, flutist Demarre McGill, violinist (& concertmaster) Alexander Velinzon, and the splendid Seattle Symphony Chorus. We’re anxiously awaiting the next bunch of CDs from the Pacific Northwest!

Great release from a new label

From May 19, 2014:

The 31-year old Henri Dutilleux renounced all of his music written before his Op. 1 piano sonata in 1947-48. His 1st Symphony followed in 1951, so it can be considered a piece of his early maturity. His writing for orchestra is, however, completely assured. There is a feeling that not a single note is out of place, and that the Symphony is unfolding in the real world exactly as Dutilleux imagined it.

The work has a simple and logical structure, slowly fading in to a Passaglia in the first movement, quickly gaining momentum in a Scherzo, extending this forward momentum in the 3rd movement Intermezzo, and fading out at the end of the Finale with variations. The orchestration is meticulous, and the sound world seems French to me - Ravel and Messiaen come to mind. Dutilleux’s symphonies are well represented on disc, with excellent versions from Tortelier/BBC and Graf/Bordeaux. Ludovic Morlot and the Seattle Symphony don’t let down the composer at all in the first symphony; I hope they’ll follow up with the second soon!

A cello concerto in all but name, Tout un monde lointain from 1970 has even more excellent versions on CD, including recordings by Lynn Harrell, Martyn Hill, and the cellist who inspired the work, Mstislav Rostropovich. Xavier Phillips has the measure of the piece in this performance; his playing is controlled but not too careful, and the orchestral support from the Seattle players is excellent.

Conductor Ludovic Morlot completes an outstanding recording by leading the orchestra through a dramatic and inspired live recording of the 1997 piece for orchestra and children’s voices, The Shadows of Time. The excitement of this work is enhanced by the lifelike, transparent sound provided by the engineers of the new Seattle Orchestra Media label. This Dutilleux disc is one of three discs in the inaugural release from the label. I look forward to listening to the other two (Ravel/Saint-Saens and American composers), and future recordings as well.