Volume 21 Issue 2 - October 2015

Laredo, Yo-Yo Ma and Leon Fleisher.
To my very pleasant surprise, in a movement-by-movement
comparison, Magalhães
and the European-based string players
outdo the famous foursome in every way,
bringing much, much more punch and
passion to this punchy, passionate work, one
of three Korngold composed for pianist Paul
Wittgenstein, who lost an arm in World War I.
The balances here are much better, too, with
the strings as closely miked as the piano,
while on the Sony CD the strings seem muted,
lacking focus and presence. (The flaccid
Swedish performance on DG 459 631-2 isn’t
worth considering.)
The Piano Trio doesn’t sound at all like a
composition by a 12-year-old – but it is! –
and it’s filled with real music, late-romantic
Viennese gemütlichkeit laced with many of
the already-distinctive melodic and rhythmic
gestures that would remain with Korngold
all his life. It, too, receives a vigorous, upfront
performance, recorded live, as was the Suite,
with well-deserved applause at its conclusion.
The Korngold Project will focus on the
composer’s chamber music. This Korngold
enthusiast, for one, looks forward to Part Two
and beyond.
Michael Schulman
Nordic Sound – Tribute to Axel Borup-
Jørgensen
Michala Petri; Lapland Chamber Orchestra;
Clemens Schuldt
OUR Recordings (ourrecordings.com)
Danish & Faroese Recorder Concertos
Michala Petri; Aalborg Symphony; Henrik
Vagn Christensen
OUR Recordings (ourrecordings.com)
!!
August brought me
two CDs of modern
recorder concertos
from Denmark,
released on the Danish
label OUR Recordings,
and what a pleasant
smörgåsbord they are
(sorry, couldn’t resist that one).
Nordic Sound is a special tribute to Axel
Borup-Jørgensen (1924-2012), one of
Denmark’s most influential modern-era
composers, and four of the six works on the
program are for recorder and strings. Inspired
by the Danish landscape, Bent Sørensen
creates a mystical and spacious atmosphere in
Whispering, and the elegant pointillism and
rhythmic complexity of the Faroese composer
Sunleif Rasmussen’s Winter Echoes elicits
wonderful and virtuosic playing from all
parties. Mogens Christensen requests a
panoply of flutters, pips, chirps and multiphonics
from Michala Petri in his Nordic
Summer Scherzo, all of which makes for a
tour-de-force of bird imitation, and Thomas
Clausen’s four-movement Concertino
provides a tasteful shift to the neo-Baroque.
Two pieces for strings, by Pelle Gudmundsen-
Holmgreen and Borup-Jørgensen himself, are
beautifully played by the members of the
Lapland Chamber Orchestra under
Clemens Schuldt.
Danish and Faroese Recorder Concertos
also features Petri as
recorder soloist but
this time with the
excellent Aalborg
Symphony Orchestra
under Henrik Vagn
Christensen. A novel
by Italo Calvino was
the inspiration for Rasmussen’s four-movement
Territorial Songs, and his inventive,
multi-faceted use of orchestral colour and
depth of melodic expression is impressive.
Chacun son son by Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
begins with the whimsical combination of
bass recorder, bass clarinet, clarinet and
bassoon, and the various sections of the
orchestra are pitted against one another, as
one might expect given the piece’s title. The
recorder is well incorporated into the woodwind
section here, rather than being cast in
a more typical soloist’s role, and the instrument,
particularly the bass recorder, balances
well with the others, something unlikely
in an unplugged live performance. Thomas
Koppel’s Moonchild’s Dream is the third
contribution to the program and its lovely yet
unmistakable film vibe is no surprise, considering
that it was originally commissioned
for a video.
As always in this repertoire, Petri continues
to show why she remains a leading inspirer of
new repertoire for the instrument. I just wish
that the excellent solo clarinetist from the
Aalborg Orchestra had been credited, as the
violinist was.
Alison Melville
JAZZ AND IMPROVISED MUSIC
For One to Love
Cecile McLorin Salvant
Justin Time JTR 8593-2 justin-time.com
!!
American singer
Cecile McLorin Salvant
put the jazz world on
notice with her first
major release in 2013.
With a voice that is
at once fresh and
traditional, Salvant
won numerous accolades such as Female
Vocalist of the Year from the Jazz Journalists
Association, Jazz Album of the Year by the
Annual DownBeat International Critics Poll
and a Grammy nomination. Still only in her
mid-20s, the bar was set high for her sophomore
release – and For One to Love is a
continuation on the same fine musical path
she set for herself.
The impeccable pitch, diction and control
are still there, as are top-notch band mates.
The choice of material is similar to the first
release – a few standards wrought in interesting
new ways, such as The Trolley Song,
made famous by Judy Garland and which
includes a brief, amusing imitation of
Garland. Also, in what’s becoming a bit of a
trademark, Salvant takes a run at some low
down dirty blues – like Growlin’ Dan. These
aren’t my favourites, largely because Salvant’s
classically trained voice just doesn’t suit the
material, but they’re fun. And that’s true of
a lot of Salvant’s delivery – theatrical and
broad and a little flighty, never really landing
on one style or sound. I imagine she’s very
entertaining to see live. There’s also a sprinkling
of original compositions and the opener
Fog really exemplifies the whole album –
artful, skilled and not entirely certain what it
wants to be.
Cathy Riches
Cold Duck
S4
MonotypeRec Mono 096 (monotyperecs.
com)
!!
No relation to the
sparkling wine of the
same name, Cold Duck
is instead a series of
nine biting improvisations
by S4, an ad-hoc,
all-star quartet of
soprano saxophone
innovators – one British, John Butcher, and
the others Swiss: Urs Leimgruber, Hans Koch
and Christian Kobi, the last of whom is also a
member of the all-saxophone Konus Quartett,
which interprets notated music.
Designated by Roman numerals, Cold
Duck’s tracks, lasting from barely one
minute to more than 12, could be the auditory
sound track of an experimental ornithologist’s
laboratory. But unlike such trial
and error endeavours, the quartet deliberately
creates timbres that range from policewhistle
harshness to fipple-like songbird
echoes, with a goodly collection of tongue
slaps, tongue pops and snorts thrown in for
good measure. At the same time its skill is
such that III is harmonized as intimately as if
by a bel canto choir, but open enough so that
every strain, partial and split tone is audible
as the four work through tonal variations.
Severing and re-attaching with plasticinelike
continuity on VII, tremolo whines and
lip burbles maintain a shrill pitch until the
final moment when one sharp tone pushes
the other reeds into more comfortable interaction.
Then on the extended IV, S4 members
pump air bubbles through their horns with a
velocity that resembles electronic processing.
After the narrative is magnified enough, it’s
squeezed like a balloon, slowly deflating as
growls and yelps mix with puffs and squeaks.
Subsequently, united circular breathing leads
to an aural rainbow-like expansion of tonal
colours involving all four.
That climax may be one of the fundamental
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