Remarkable music from Iceland

Atmospheriques: music by Thorvaldsdottir, Mazzoli, Bjarnason, Sigfusdottir, Gisladottir

I listened to these two discs one after another: the first is a normal CD, which I listened to to familiarize myself with this music. This is all definitely in my wheelhouse: Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s CATAMORPHOSIS, from 2020; Missy Mazzoli’s Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres), from 2014; Daníel Bjarnason’s From Space I Saw Earth, from 2019; Maria Sigfúsdóttir’s Clockworking for Orchestra, from 2020; and Bára Gísladóttir’s ÓS, written for the Iceland Centenary in 2018. It's beautifully played by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, directed by Daniel Bjarnason.

Only a few months ago I reviewed Missy Mazzoli's latest album, Dark With Excessive Bright, which also includes her Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres), with Tim Weiss conducting the Arctic Philharmonic. It seems like high-latitude orchestras are best situated to play this piece about the Music of the Spheres, situated as they are far from the noise of the world's cities, and closer to the light show of the Aurora Borealis. I prefer the performance of the Iceland players by the narrowest of margins in this important work, helped as it is by the sound engineering of Sono Luminus.

And it's the audio that brings us to the second disc: a Pure Audio Blu-ray disc with the identical repertoire, totalling just under an hour, in remarkable Surround Sound. As I've mentioned a few times in my reviews, I don't spend a lot of time worrying about the audiophile component of recording, but listening to this Blu-ray knocked me for a loop. This will surely become a demonstration disc for high-end Surround Sound systems.

Iceland is a small country, but its music, both classical and popular, has the huge scope and universal appeal of the Sagas. This is a distinguished addition to a long and distinguished artistic tradition.

The cover painting is "Water and Mist I", by Kristin Morthens, from 2022.
 

More outstanding orchestral music from Iceland

Concurrence: Music by Icelandic composers

Five years ago we moved from the Prairies to Canada's Banana Belt: Southern Vancouver Island. That means horrific cold weather and tornados are a thing of the past, but we don't live a worry-free life by any means. No one here can (or at least should) ignore the very good chance of a devastating earthquake happening at any time. Indeed, Victoria is right in the sweet spot for the coming Big One. So Páll Ragnar Pálsson’s Quake scared the bejesus out of me. It's performed here, by Daniel Bjarnason and the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, with such urgent presence that even someone on more solid ground is apt to feel at least uncomfortable. All four of these fairly long pieces present the primeval forces that made, and continue to re-make, this amazing island in the North Atlantic. Besides its outstanding physical beauty, Iceland is well known for an astounding range of world-class artists of all sorts, in the performing, literary and visual arts. The painter Gudrun Kristjansdottir is a good example; her 1999 painting "Red Hillside" is featured on the cover of this new 2-disc release, the second in Sono Luminus's ISO Project of Icelandic orchestral music.

The only composer I know of the four on this album is Anna Thorvaldsdóttir. Her Metacosmos was premiered by the New York Philharmonic in 2018, and was also featured in last summer's Proms. This new recording is another step on the way to its becoming a 21st Century orchestral classic. María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir's Oceans is a natural extension of Thorvaldsdóttir's schema into the vast seas. Finally, Haukur Tómasson's Piano Concerto No. 2 fits well with the other three works. The piano part has more of an obligato role than a virtuosic one, and the music textures have so much interest, which it shares with the rest of the entire hour-plus in this fascinating release.

With Love from Stewart Goodyear

Stewart Goodyear: piano works by Gibbons, Sweelinck, Bach, Brahms, Berg

On January 11, 1955 Glenn Gould made his New York debut (what he called his "Debutown") at Town Hall, and on the following day he signed a recording contract with Columbia Records. His 27 years in the recording studio before his untimely death in 1982 made him a legend around the world, but here in Canada he is especially admired and loved. One of those hero-worshippers is Stewart Goodyear, born and raised in Toronto, and an alumnus, like Gould, of the Royal Conservatory of Music. Goodyear has recently been playing in concert many of the works from Gould's audacious programme in New York, and in his American debut earlier that year in Washington DC.

Glenn Gould's debut concert at Town Hall, January 11, 1955. Library & Archives Canada

Now we have this new Sono Luminus disc with many of those pieces: music by Gibbons, Bach (Sinfonias from the 3-Part Inventions and the 5th Partita) and Berg (his Piano Sonata op.1). He's also included two Brahms Intermezzi and to close, the ultimate Gould tribute, the Aria from The Goldberg Variations. I love Gould's Brahms; those who think of him as a capricious and detached artist should listen to his 1961 recording of 10 Intermezzi, which he referred to as "the sexiest interpretation of Brahms’s Intermezzi you’ve ever heard". He also said it was "perhaps the best piano playing I have done." Goodyear's own Intermezzo in A major, op. 118 no. 2 is as rapturous and full-blooded as Gould's, full of a deep understanding of Brahms and a fitting tribute to Gould in the bargain.



It was surprising to notice how slow some of Glenn Gould's tempi were in his recordings of the early English masters. His 1971 recording of Orlando Gibbons' "Lord of Salisbury" Pavan and Galliard runs about the same length as Goodyear's in spite of the fact that the latter includes repeats that Gould doesn't. Goodyear's zippier version makes more musical sense, I think. Though I do love Gould's whole album A Consort of Musicke bye William Byrde and Orlando Gibbons, it's a bit out in left field even by the standards of its day, much less when looked at through any modern historically informed practice lens. 

Thank goodness we're finally beyond looking at Glenn Gould as the mere sum of his eccentricities. We have a much better idea of the whole person: his emotional responses to people as well as pianos, and the full measure of his mastery in so many dimensions of great artists like Bach and Brahms. It's this response to the complete artist that makes Goodyear's tribute so important; it's based on a study of the deep roots of Gould's art, and not the externalities. As well, it's obviously heartfelt. The best expression of this love is the last piece on the disc, the Aria from the Goldberg Variations. Goodyear's moving performance takes the middle ground between the bright, almost coltish first version Gould made at the beginning of his recording journey, and the solemn, heart-breaking one he made close to the end. What a marvellous way to celebrate our Glenn!

This disc will be released on March 23, 2018.

Less is more

During a career filled with as many failures as triumphs, and a life with an equal measure of pain and delight, Robert Schumann often seemed to be swimming against the flow. While the great virtuoso composers like Liszt and Paganini were creating a new concerto paradigm of the hero (soloist) fighting against the world (orchestra), Schumann in 1850 wrote his cello concerto as a "Concert piece for cello with orchestral accompaniment." This more organic, integrated music never caught on during his lifetime, and it wasn't until well into the 20th century that it became part of the standard cello concerto repertoire. Schumann himself suggested a chamber version of the piece, though he never had a chance to make it happen.

The idea of illuminating the inner structures and meaning and the outer textures of an orchestral work by subtraction has a long and honourable tradition. Liszt's own transcriptions of Beethoven's Symphonies for solo piano were like virtuoso x-rays. Meanwhile, Hummel's chamber reductions of Mozart's Piano Concertos were designed to bring the music from the concert hall to the middle class music rooms of Germany.  In those days such reductions were often a strategy to build markets and sell sheet music.



In his own reduction Schumann would have been mainly interested, I think, in exploring interesting musical issues relating to orchestral vs. chamber music textures and colours. In their outstanding version on this new Sono Luminus disc (to be released August 26, 2016), Zuill Bailey, the Ying Quartet and Julliard composer Philip Lasser, do just that. This outstanding collaboration seems to have been similar to a big band jazz arrangement: Lasser provided the basic charts, and the performers worked out a final performing version following significant give-and-take, and, I'm sure, some improvisation. This is an completely successful project: I've listened to this piece often in the past week or so, and it convinces me completely. It doesn't make one forget the orchestral version, but I rate it very close as a separate work.

Meanwhile, the Beethoven arrangement (an anonymous one from not too long after Beethoven's death) opens up the Kreutzer Sonata to emphasize its implicit concertante nature. This is a very interesting experiment, but it's not at the level of the Schumann. Still, there's no denying the fun in listening, which comes partially, I think, from the obvious fun these musicians are having as they play with each other.

Mission check

Matthew Guard's excellent chamber choir Skylark has a three-fold mission:

• Create innovative and meaningful programs of stunning vocal beauty
• Educate and inspire the next generation of choral artists
• Support the careers of the most talented vocal artists in America

This special new disc from Sono Luminus shows us the group is well on their way to fulfilling the first of these. The singing is indeed stunningly beautiful, and while I haven't had a chance to hear the 9.1 high definition surround sound Blu ray disc, the stereo recording presents the singers in an acoustical environment that matches the ethereal music.

The disc's program is of real interest and provokes some thought. Whether there's more behind the concept of the transition from life to death depends on your religious beliefs, but there's no denying the beauty of the music Guard has chosen. Daniel Elder's Elegy is a moving choral meditation on the bugle call Taps. I suspect this work by the promising young American composer will be a signature piece for Skylark for a long time to come. Another standout is Robert Vuichard's Heliocentric Meditation, based on John Donne's Meditation XVII. Vuichard, who made a big impression with The Camera Obscura of Jan van Eyck, has another winner in the Donne piece. Two composers to watch!

Other music of special interest comes from Iceland, with pieces by Anna Thorvaldsdottir and Jón Leifs, and from John Taverner, whose classic Butterfly Dreams cycle fits perfectly with the theme. Skylark will be touring with this program, and I'm sure will be inspiring new choral singers, conductors, arrangers and composers. In the meantime, be prepared to be inspired yourself.

Out from under Villa's shadow

From February 14, 2012:

Francisco Mignone is finally coming out a bit from the immense shadow of his older contemporary Villa-Lobos, and this CD from the Cuarteto Latinoamericano should help the Sao Paulo-born composer win some new friends. Though most of these pieces come from Mignone's nationalist phase, his string quartets, like Villa's, are about more than just the folklore, dances, and popular music of Brazil. Both the 1st and the 2nd String Quartets are elaborate and sophisticated works of serious music, with much the same solid structure and appealing forward movement of Haydn's or Bartok's string quartets. The program also includes a number of short, light, traditional Brazilian and Spanish dances, but also two abstract pieces of the highest quality and inspiration: the Two Essays for String Quartet from 1958. These dozen minutes of music demonstrate why Mignone deserves to be classed with South America's greatest composers.

In this new disc from Dorian Sono Luminus, the Cuarteto Latinoamericano make the same persuasive argument for Mignone that they did for Villa-Lobos in their 2009 recording of the complete String Quartets. There's that shadow again!