Volume 24 Issue 9 - June / July / August 2019

DISCOVERIES | RECORDINGS REVIEWED
DAVID OLDS
From 1984 until 1991 I was the host of Transfigured Night on
CKLN-FM, a weekly contemporary music program that originally
aired in the overnight slot from 2am, but eventually moved to a
more civilized 10pm start. During that period I had the pleasure of
meeting and interviewing many of the important practitioners in the
field brought to town by the likes of the Music Gallery, New Music
Concerts, Esprit Orchestra and Arraymusic. One of the most
memorable characters was the pianist and erstwhile ballroom dancer
Yvar Mikhashoff, whose International Tango Project resulted in some
127 commissions. I met Yvar when he was in Toronto performing
selections from the project at the Music Gallery in 1987, and again
when he was the featured soloist with New Music Concerts at the
Premiere Dance Theatre in 1990, performing works by Henry Brant,
Alvin Curran and Nils Vigeland. As an aside I would mention that this
latter concert was the occasion of the now internationally renowned
soprano Barbara Hannigan’s first professional engagement, an
obbligato role in Brant’s Inside Track, for two mixed ensembles
and piano.
Mikhashoff, who died at 52 in 1993, left a
legacy that has been taken up by American
pianist Hanna Shybayeva on Tangos for
Yvar (Grand Piano GP794 naxosdirect.com).
Shybayeva has constructed a varied and
compelling program of 18 selections, mostly
written for Mikhashoff, but concluding with
her own arrangement of Astor Piazzolla’s
classic Libertango. Strangely, and without
explanation that I can find, she also includes Stefan Wolpe’s 1927
Tango. While this is a good match for the rest of the project in its
interpretation of the iconic dance form, and at three and a half
minutes falling midway in the duration range of the commissions, its
composition more than half a century before the project began surely
deserves some note. There is a vast stylistic range presented here, from
Chester Biscardi’s evocative Incitation to Desire, one of the earliest
commissions and one of the least overtly reminiscent of the tango’s
distinctive rhythm, to the serial approach of Milton Babbitt’s It Takes
Twelve to Tango, the minimalism of Tom Johnson’s Tango, the moto
perpetuo of Scott Pender’s Tango: Ms. Jackson Dances for the People
(referencing Janet Jackson’s What Have You Done For Me Lately)
and Frederic Rzewski’s rhythmic, lilting, Steptangle. Of local note is
Douglas Finch’s Tango, one of four Canadian works commissioned
for the marathon Music Gallery performance mentioned above, a fivepart
affair including 50 tangos and a slide show of Mikhashoff in full
splendour from his bygone ballroom days.
As satisfying as this collection is, it leaves me wanting more. I’m
very curious about what some of the composers mentioned, but not
included here, came up with in response to Mikhashoff’s challenge.
For instance, John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Oliver Knussen and
Canadian icon John Weinzweig (also commissioned by the Music
Gallery for the marathon). Dare I hope for a Volume Two?
The tango’s most familiar feature is the use
of accordion, or more accurately, the South
American variant the bandoneon, so it is
surprising to find such an extensive collection
as mentioned above without that
distinctive instrument. We make up for that
here with a disc of transcriptions for accordion,
violin and clarinet of mostly familiar
music from Eastern Europe, including such
staples as two Hungarian Dances by Brahms, a Chopin Mazurka
and Smetana’s Die Moldau in a very effective trio reduction. Tales
from the Dinarides features Michael Bridge, Guillaume Tardif
and Kornel Wolak and was released by the University of Alberta’s
Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies (WIR06
michaelbridgemusic.com/store). Recipient of the Lieutenant-
Governor of Alberta’s Emerging Artist Award, Bridge is currently in
the Doctor of Musical Arts with Performance Emphasis on Accordion
program at the University of Toronto, where for the second year
in a row he has won the Joseph and Frances Macerollo Accordion
Scholarship. He is no stranger to these pages where reviews of his
group, Ladom, have appeared previously. At time of writing, the
Bridge/Tardif/Wolak trio is on tour in Europe, having just finished
concerts in Ukraine and Poland.
The title of the disc is taken from a 2016 work by prolific Tartar-
Canadian composer Airat Ichmouratov which is the centrepiece of the
album and the only piece written specifically for this instrumental
combination. As with much of his work, the inspiration comes from
the Jewish folk traditions of Central Europe, in this case the traditional
singing and dancing styles of the Dinaric Alps region (Dinarides). The
notes tell us that “Using a water whistle, the composer first introduces
a bird in a call-and-answer episode with stunning ganga
singing from Croatia. The bird then flies over mountains and valleys,
observing neighbouring communities […] field songs and […] village
dances [from] Bosnia, Slovenia, Serbia and Albania, until the athletic
klezmer style animates everyone in a fast dance punctuated with a
cheering ‘Hey!’”
The disc also includes Bridge’s striking adaptation of Brahms’ Rondo
alla Zingarese and the trio’s transcription of Lutosławski’s Five Dance
Preludes based on Polish folk rhythms, originally scored for clarinet
and piano. The playing is animated throughout, although there is
room for a bit more nuance from the clarinet.
Three composers seemingly unfamiliar to
me populate the next disc. Produced by
the Polish Ministry of Culture, Wajnberg/
Tansman/Czajkowski (Accord ACD 247-2
naxosdirect.com) features the Wajnberg
Trio performing music by three Polish-born
composers active in the mid-20th century.
I said the composers were unfamiliar to
me, but in the case of the first, Mieczysław
Wajnberg, it is actually just the spelling that threw me. AKA Vaynberg
and Vainberg, it seems that the composer Weinberg (1919-1996) who
escaped the Nazis in 1939 and spent the rest of his life in Russia,
becoming a close friend of Shostakovich, was Wajnberg in his homeland.
His music has been recorded with increasing frequency in
recent years and has appeared here in review on numerous occasions.
Wajnberg is represented by the 1945 Piano Trio, Op.24, which like
much of his music is quite reminiscent of Shostakovich, especially in
its more boisterous moments. For anyone who enjoys this – as I do –
there is nothing here to disappoint.
Aleksander Tansman is actually a name I know as a result of
my New Music Concerts colleague Robert Aitken serving on an
Aleksander Tansman Festival competition jury in the Polish city of
Łódź one year when flute was the instrument in focus, but his music
was not familiar to me. Tansman (1897-1986) was born and raised
in Łódź during the era when Poland did not exist as an independent
state, being part of Tsarist Russia. After completing his studies, he
moved to France in 1919 and fell under the spell of Stravinsky, Ravel
thewholenote.com June | July | August 2019 | 85