Volume 23 Issue 5 - February 2018

DISCOVERIES | RECORDINGS REVIEWED
DAVID OLDS
In recent months I’ve written about Elliott Carter and George
Crumb, two giants of 20th-century composition whom I had the
opportunity to meet through my position as general manager of
New Music Concerts and my association with founding director
Robert Aitken. Over the past two decades, I’ve also had the
opportunity to meet innumerable outstanding mid-career and
emerging composers. Further on in these pages you will find Michael
Schulman’s review of two new releases by a Dutch composer recently
featured by New Music Concerts, Robin de Raaff, who celebrated his
49th birthday while in Toronto. De Raaff’s star is definitely on the rise,
with numerous significant commissions in recent years in both
Europe and North America, including the upcoming premiere of a
chamber version of his Second Violin Concerto “North Atlantic Light”
at Carnegie Hall in June. It is rare enough for any composer to have
two recordings released in a single year, but in fact de Raaff has had
three. The one I kept for myself is the latest of four etcetera discs
devoted to orchestral and operatic works of
this outstanding composer. Jaap van Zweden
conducts Robin de Raaff (KTC 1593
etcetera-records.com) – includes his Violin
Concerto and Symphony No.1 “Tanglewood
Tales” performed by the Radio
Filharmonisch Orkest. The violin soloist is
Tasmin Little, for whom the concerto
was intended.
Reclassified as Violin Concerto No.1 “Angelic Echoes” to reflect
the fact that de Raaff is currently at work on a second concerto, I
am actually pleased that this recording did not include the subtitle
because I like my first listenings to be unencumbered by programmatic
references or musicological explanations. So I was listening
blind, so to speak, when I first encountered this work. Right from
its opening notes I had the distinct impression that I was hearing an
homage to one of the great concertos of the past century, and one of
my favourite works, Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto – “To the Memory
of an Angel.” Reading the comprehensive notes (from two different
recordings) later confirmed this for me, and further explained how de
Raaff had accomplished this by mirroring Berg’s composition without
directly referencing his melodic material. Where Berg had used a
Bach chorale, de Raaff composed one of his own and then treated it
in a similar fashion. In both works the notes of the open strings of
the violin – a cycle of fifths – play an important role, and by stacking
these (G-D-A-E) de Raaff takes the interval of a sixth thus created (G to
E) to derive much of the material for his piece. Open strings also play
another important role in that he has the second violin section of the
orchestra tune a semitone below the pitch of the first violins (F-sharp-
C-sharp-G-sharp-D-sharp), giving eight (instead of the usual four
open pitches) and increasing the overtone possibilities accordingly.
Inspired by techniques from Gregorian Chant, de Raaff uses these
overtones to create “angelic” countermelodies which seem to arise out
of the orchestral textures. In another parallel to Berg’s iconic work –
dedicated to the memory of Manon Gropius, daughter of Alma Mahler
and Walter Gropius – de Raaff uses his work to eulogize a close friend
who died during its composition. Saxophonist William Raaijman is
immortalized with the unexpected entry of two alto saxes towards
the end of the concerto. Like its forebear, this is a gorgeous work, and
beautifully played.
De Raaff has had an ongoing relationship with Tanglewood – the
summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra – since his first
residency there in 2000. There have been five subsequent visits, most
recently in 2015. Symphony No.1 began as a single-movement work
titled Entangled Tales, premiered by the BSO at Koussevitsky Shed,
Tanglewood’s premier venue, in 2007. He later added an introductory
prequel Untangled Tales in 2011 and ultimately a brief coda was
added in 2016. The title refers to a book by Nathaniel Hawthorne,
Tanglewood Tales for Girls and Boys, which he wrote while living
in a cottage near Tanglewood in 1853. Hawthorne retells several
Greek myths but de Raaff’s tales are more topical, depicting the site
of the summer music festival before and during public performances.
The quiet opening portrays the landscape of the estate during
which we hear fragments from various rehearsal studios, providing a
preview and in a sense an “untangling” of the material which will be
developed in the second movement. The subsequent “tangled tales”
are livelier, more energetic and complex. The coda returns to the
overall sensibility of the first movement, but with a somewhat heightened
sense of colour and light.
I treasure the time that I spent with Robin de Raaff during his
recent visit to Toronto, especially an evening of socializing at which I
got to share some of my own music-making. It was also enlightening
to experience the extensive preparations involved in advance of the
performance of de Raaff’s extremely complex Percussion Concerto
with soloist Ryan Scott and the New Music Concerts Ensemble under
Aitken’s direction. This work has had numerous previous performances
and has entered the canon of contemporary repertoire, but de
Raaff assured us that the Toronto performance was the best yet.
Having had the opportunity to get to know one of his more recent
pieces so intimately, it was a great pleasure to get to know some of his
earlier work on this very fine CD.
I Remember, featuring University of Toronto
Schools Alumni Musicians and Friends
(Cambia CD-1247 cambriamus.com), showcases
performers, composers and teachers
associated with the independent secondary
school (Grades 7 through 12) affiliated with
the University of Toronto. The music is a
range of chestnuts by the likes of Scriabin,
Brahms, Dukas and Dvořák, along with
premiere recordings of original music by Canadian composers
Alexander Rapoport (composer-in-residence at UTS), Ronald Royer
(alumnus and UTS music teacher), Sarah Shugarman (UTS music
teacher), Alex Eddington (UTS alumnus and TDSB teacher) and Billy
Bao (who graduated UTS in 2014 and is now doing a major in Music
Performance and a minor in Psychology at Wilfrid Laurier University).
Bao is featured as both composer and performer. Other performers
include outstanding current UTS students and recent graduates,
plus two of Canada’s most distinguished musicians, alumni James
Sommerville (horn) and David Fallis (singer, conductor, and in this
case, narrator).
I Remember is a charming mix of music new and old, performed
with precision, passion and aplomb by these fine (mostly) young
musicians. Of course the classical selections are beyond reproach,
but the highlights for me are the new works: Shugarman’s Carousel,
a canon-like piece for three violins, two cellos and bass; Rapoport’s
dark but lush Walberauscht for horn and piano, which he says means
“intoxicated by the forest;” Danzon by Royer, a movement from the
larger suite Dances with Time in an arrangement for two violins, cello
and piano; Eddington’s playful Bubblegum Delicious (on poetry by
another UTS alumnus, Dennis Lee) for soprano and small ensemble
with narrator; and Billy Bao’s virtuosic Dance, a brief but thrilling
duet for violin and cello. Although there is nothing here that would be
considered cutting edge or challenging new music, it is important that
the curriculum at UTS is emphasizing to the students that “classical”
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