Volume 25 Issue 9 - July / August 2020

instrumental effects, grunts, all in classic
Oswald plunderphonics bravado.
Oswald has also been releasing reissues on
Bandcamp. Highlights include Grayfolded
“radio edit” (1994), his infamous groundbreaking
reworking of music played by the
Grateful Dead. Discosphere (1991) is a cross
section of Oswald’s “soundtracks for dance.”
Kissing Jesus in the Dark is a 1970s “found
sound” release by Pause Pirate – Oswald,
Marvin Green and Miguel Frasconi.
Timeless fun music by a great Canadian
musician!
Tiina Kiik
New England Trios
Joel Pitchon; Marie-Volcy Pelletier; Yu-Mei
Wei
Bridge Records BRIDGE 9530
(bridgerecords.com)
! With the release
of this exquisitely
produced, recorded
and performed
disc, the skilled
trio of John Pitchon
(violin), Marie-Volcy
Pelletier (cello) and
Yu-Mei Wei (piano)
have explored the New England connection
between iconic American composers Ronald
Perera, Walter Piston and Leonard Bernstein.
All three of these seminal, 20th-century
artists found common ground in their mutual
New England upbringings and their education
at Harvard University in Boston. Written
at the age of 19, Bernstein’s 1937 trio is a very
early work by the genius who would ultimately
blur the lines between classical, jazz and
ethnomusics, which led to the very definition
of contemporary American musical theatre.
Interestingly, recordings of the other three trios
(the two by Piston from 1935 and 1966, and
the Perera from 2002) have not been available
in recent years, making the disc an especially
important addition to the catalogue.
Highlights of the ambitious CD are Piston’s
Allegro from Piano Trio No.1, a vivacious, intense
and passionate interpretation, punctuated by
strong, sinuous, unison lines and deep, throbbing
cello work from Pelletier, and Bernstein’s
aforementioned Adagio non Troppo – piu mosso
– Allegro Vivace, which is almost unbearably
romantic, and yet rife with dark references to
all-consuming passions, creative obsession and
an all-too-brief creative euphoria. How prophetic
those unguarded motifs are when viewed in
context with Bernstein’s life and work.
In Perera’s Incisivo, Pitchon shines with
appropriate incisor-like attack and intonation,
and all three trio members move through
this piece as an unstoppable single-celled
organism. Of special mention is Piston’s
Allegro con Brio, which is a technical thrill
ride, with pianist Wei dynamically clearing
the path through the mysterious pizzicato
forest. On this composition, Piston, being the
senior of this composing triumvirate, displays
his joy of experimentation that would echo
generations into the future.
Lesley Mitchell-Clarke
Heard in Havana
Third Sound
Innova Recordings 990 (innova.mu)
! In 2015,
the American
Composers Forum
sent a delegation
of musicians and
composers to Cuba.
Their mission: to
present a program
of contemporary
classical American music at the Festival de
Música Contemporánea de La Habana. It was
the first such concert to take place in Cuba
since the Cuban Revolution.
The ensemble chosen to perform was the
newly formed New York City-based quintet
Third Sound, comprising some of NYC’s top
chamber musicians. In preparation, ACF and
Third Sound held a national call for scores for
flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano. Heard
in Havana showcases the ten works chosen,
the product of a diverse group of composers
from across the USA reflecting the variety of
American classical composition today.
I admire much of the music of the truly
international Kati Agócs. Though born in
Windsor, Ontario and a JUNO Award winner,
she retains three citizenships, American,
Canadian and Hungarian (European Union).
Her work embraces both her North American
and Hungarian parental and musical lineages.
Agócs’ elegant and elegiac 2007 Immutable
Dreams II: Microconcerto [in memoriam
György Ligeti] on this album is no exception.
Writes the composer, it is a “miniature piano
concerto… a tribute to my Hungarian roots
and to György Ligeti’s influence.” I also hear
multiple echoes of the music of another great
20th-century Hungarian: Béla Bartók. Agócs’
Microconcerto concludes with a haunting,
musically enigmatic and gentle metacrusis.
Summing up the album, there aren’t
many common threads among the ten pieces
chosen. But perhaps that’s the point. An
abundant variety of artistic expression is a
core value I can also get behind.
Andrew Timar
Chinary Ung Vol.4 – Space Between Heaven
and Earth
Various Artists
Bridge Records 9533A/B
(bridgerecords.com)
! American-
Cambodian
composer Chinary
Ung began his
career writing
music highly
inspired by
20th-century
modernist techniques in what was typical
in the post-Second Viennese School climate.
After a ten-year hiatus from composing
to help with the Cambodian genocide and
resultant refugee crises, Ung re-emerged to
write in a new and highly personal compositional
voice exploring cross-cultural practices.
This is doubtless a by-product of Ung’s
efforts to preserve Khmer traditional music
during the Cambodian crises. In an effort
to create a substantial document of Ung’s
mature style, Bridge records has committed
to a series of recordings of the composer’s
mature works.
In Volume 4 we receive a two-disc collection
of five vastly original and accomplished
chamber works. Ung has created a world of
highly ritualistic gestures and mysterious
auras. In the Grawemeyer Award-winning
composer’s own terms, his mature style may
be summarized as “futuristic folk music”
– a term that aptly describes Ung’s use of
quotation and evocation in a truly contemporary
landscape. Throughout each piece, we
as listeners are surrounded with entwined
modal intricacies, suggestive drones, and
shimmering percussive magic – all creating
the elixir of undiscovered, and yet familiar,
cultural scenery. This, together with worldclass
performances from the musicians,
transports the listener to a place where time
seems lost, and instead, sound pervades a
sense of instance.
Adam Scime
PBO & Caroline Shaw
Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra &
Chorale; Nicholas McGegan
Philharmonia PBP-12 (philharmonia.org)
! Listen to this:
an unexpected,
lush, open-hearted
triumph of a
record featuring
an oratorio and
song cycle, written
for period instruments
by the
singular, esteemed, Caroline Shaw (USA,
b.1982). Recently, the Philharmonia Baroque
Orchestra established a “New Music for Old
Instruments” initiative, aimed at creating
fresh works expressly for period instruments.
The fruits are already being born, as radiant,
alluring music by Shaw proves on this disc,
featuring extraordinary artistic talents such as
Anne Sofie von Otter.
Opening with a song trilogy, Is a Rose, this
album immediately transports the listener
to a vibrant, fantastical soundworld fashioned
from bygone Baroque molecules, now
re-energized anew. The terrific musicianship
of the PBO and its longtime director, Nicholas
McGegan is on full display here. Glorious
sonorities complement von Otter’s soaring
vocal lines. (This will be McGegan’s final
recording with the orchestra.)
And it just gets better: The Listeners, a
52 | July and August 2020 thewholenote.com