Recent listening

I'm still digitizing LPs that have sat unplayed for thirty years. I have enough that I'll be doing this for another month, ten hours per day. This past week, I've recorded these gems:

• Hans Werner Henze: Streichquartette 1-5.
• Paul Hindemith: The Four Temperaments; Nobilissima Visione; Kleine Kammermusic, Op. 24, No. 2; Trauermusik; Kammermusic No. 5 for Viola and Chamber Orchestra, Op. 36 No. 4; Concerto for Viola and Chamber Orhestra, “Der Schwanendreher;” "Als Flieder jüngst mir im Garten blüht;" String Quartet No. 3, Op. 22;
• Jacques Ibert: Trois pièces brêves.
• Leoš Janácek: Mládí; Zápisník zmizelého (Tagebuch eines Verschollenen) Cycle on 21 Poems by Kalda
• György Ligeti: Ten Pieces for Wind Quintet; Chamber Concerto for 13 instrumentalists; Ramifications for string orchestra or 12 solo strings; Aventures for 3 singers and 7 instrumentalists; Nouvelles Aventures for 3 singers and 7 instrumentalists.
• Alan Hovhaness: Talin, Concerto for Viola and Strings; October Mountain.
• Oedeon Partos: Yiskor (In Memoriam).
• Michel Legrand: “Brian’s Song” Themes & Variations.
• Sergio Mendes & Brasil ‘66: Ye-Me-Le.
• Soundtrack for "Nashville."
• The Randolph Singers: Lament for April 15 and Other Modern Madrigals.
• Randy Newman: "Good Old Boys."
• Pepe Romero: guitar pieces by Tárrega, Villa-Lobos, Lauro, Albéniz, Sagreras, and Sor.
• Bernard  Herrmann: Soundtrack slections from "Journey to the Centre of the Earth," "The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad,' "The Day the Earth Stood Still," and "Fahrenheit 451."
• Virgil Thomson: Sonata da Chiesa, Praises and Prayers, Sonata for Violin and Piano.
• John  Williams: guitar pieces by Bach, Dowland, Batchelor, Paganini, Giuliani, and Sor.
• George Antheil: Ballet Mécanique.
• Ronald LoPresti: Sketch for Percussion.
• Carlos Chavez: Toccata for Percussion Instruments.
• Arnold Schönberg: Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21.
• Charles Ives: Songs; "Three Places in New England;"  Symphony No. 2; Symphony No. 3 “The Camp Meeting;” Symphony No. 4; Piano Sonata No. 1; "The Fourth of July;" Nine Chamber Works; Three-page Sonata for piano.
• Walter Piston: Concertino for piano and chamber orchestra.
• John Alden Carpenter: Concertino for piano and orchestra.
• Kelsey Jones: Songs of Experience; Suite for Flute and Strings.
• Aram Khachaturian: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra. 
• Ernst Krenek: Horizon Circled, Op. 196; From Three Make Seven, Op. 171; Von vorn herein, Op. 219; Four Pieces for Oboe and Piano, Op. 193.
• Zoltan Kodaly: String Quartet No. 1, Op. 2.
• Charles Wuorinen: Composition for Oboe and Piano.
• Lawrence Moss:  Unseen Leaves.
• Meyer Kupferman: Concerto for Cello, Tape, and Orchestra.
• Lou Harrison: Koncherto Por La Violino Kun Perkuta Orkestro.
• Vinko Globokar: Discours II für 5 Posaunen.
• Luca Lombardi: Proporzioni für 4 Posaunen.
• Mauricio Kagel: Atem für einen Bläser.
• Wolfgang König: KomSol für 5 Posaunen.
• Gustav Mahler: "Das Lied von der Erde;" "Das klagende Lied."
• Beethoven:  15 Piano Sonatas, 5 Concertos for piano, the Violin Concerto.

What's stuck with me through the hours I'm not playing LPs have been the pieces for oboe by Lawrence Moss and Krenek, portions of the Krenek chamber works (very mixed together), huge chunks of the Charles Ives symphonic works, and some of the Lombardi trombone piece. Of course, the Beethoven piano music wafts in and out, but I'm not sure that's merely from recording the LPs.

Next up: a dozen recordings of Mahler works!

Cleo Laine and Arnold Schönberg

I listened to Cleo Laine's performance of Pierrot Lunaire, the 1912 song cycle by Arnold Schönberg, whch was published as his Op. 21. I followed the score while listening through the playback and selecting the track divisions, thanks to IMSLP (the Petrucci Music Library), which has public-domain scores available for display and download. The score is a wonderful tool for dividing the tracks, especially in longer works that are less familiar. And the score helps reveal how accurately the performers relay the composer's intent.

Pierrot is scored for speaker-singer (Sprechstimme), piano, flute (or piccolo), clarinet (or bass clarinet), violin (or viola), and cello—page 32 is shown here.  The music is relatively complex, although seldom do all the instruments support the voice. Some portions are just one or two instruments with the speaker-singer. The speaker-singer is given a musical line that indicates the relative pitch of each syllable, and in only 6 locations is the line to be sung on exact pitches (pp 7, 9, 10, 14, 26, and 34 of the PDF).

You might think that "speaking" a vocal line would be easy. Cleo Laine proves that assumption wrong. She was 47 years old at the album release, but her performance has the wobbly support of an 80-year-old. (Perhaps she attempted to provide a vibrato to her speaking voice? If so, the affectation is not appropriate for this work.) Worse yet, she doesn't control very well the approximated pitch of the line as written. I suppose that some changes might be good for singing the text in English translation, but the excellent work by poet Cecil Gray takes special care to reproduce meter, line length, and line repetitions of the original. Laine's album was nominated for a Grammy in classical music that year, which perhaps proves that the Grammy Award is no less political and topical than an Academy Award.

The performances by The Nash Ensemble (Crayford, Marcia (vln, vla); van Kampen, Christopher (vc); Pearce, Judith (fl, picc); Pay, Antony (cl)) and Clifford Benson (pno), though, are top-notch. Unfortunately the producer, Ralph Mace for RCA/Red Seal, could have done better on the instrumentalists' behalf.

This recording is LRL1-5058, released in 1974.

Four Percussion Works

This very moment I am listening to an old Urania recording (UR 134) of four works for percussion ensemble. One is a touchstone of avant-garde music, two are by composers who are well known for many orchestral works though not for specific percussion works, and one is by a composer who seems almost forgotten today.

• Ballet Mécanique (17:56) by George Antheil, 1900-(1923)-1959.
• Sketch for Percussion (3:50) by Ronald LoPresti 1933-(1955)-1985.
• Toccata for Percussion Instruments (7:58) by Carlos Chavez, 1899-(1910)-1978.
• October Mountain (10:46) by Alan Hovhaness, 1911-(1936)-2000.

George Antheil was known, through his own marketing plan, as the bad boy of music. Ballet Mécanique begins in a particularly tribal mode with pentatonic scales and many parallel intervals (mostly fifths), which is interrupted by a propeller. More than one segment has received flavoring from Stravinky's Rite. perhaps to further the feeling of indigenous musicality. The score was originally meant as soundtrack to a film by Fernand Léger, Dudley Murphy, and Man Ray); however, it wasn't joined to the film in a screening until 1935. The work was substantially revised in 1952-53, and that is the version on the LP.

Carlos Chavez is most associated with collecting aboriginal music of Mexico, with an early interest in electronic music, and with the development of melody and texture as derivatives of previous statements without returning to the exact source. His oeuvre include six symphonies, six concerti, and many pieces for piano, through which he developed his theories of composition. This performance of the Toccata does not seem an equal to the works on this album by Antheil and Hovhaness.

Alan Hovhaness was recognized during his lifetime as a prolific symphonist (having written more than 70) and composer of ballet scores. The direct rhythmic influence of Armenian folksong inspires even his October Mountain. Each sonority is given a chance to perform a solo segment, and gradually the texture becomes complex as pairs and trios combine their original segments.

Ronald LoPresti was born October 28, 1933 in Williamstown, Massachusetts and died October 25, 1985 in Tempe, Arizona. He studied music under Louis Mennini and Bernard Rogers at the Eastman School of Music and received a Bachelor's degree in 1955 and a Master's in 1956. He taught at Texas Technological College and was named a composer-in-residence at the Winfield public schools of Kansas from 1960 to 1962. He was appointed assistant professor of music at Indiana University in Pennsylvania and from 1964 professor of theory and composition at Arizona State University, Tempe. The Dictionary of American Classical Composers cites 17 orchestral works and 8 larger choral works, as well as some opera, ballet, and instrumental music. The 8-page score for Sketch is available through Google Books, which indicates it was published in 1959. LoPresti is represented on YouTube almost solely by many videos of Elegy for a Young American for wind band.

The paper and vinyl of this album will be recycled, not of quality for sale.

© 2015.05.26, Thomas Kohn

Virgil Thomson: Strict music

I've just recorded three works by Virgil Thomson that Composers Recordings published on their LP CRI 207. I believe only an autographed version of the LP recording is available, at a stiff price. (Of course, each track is available for download.)

• Sonata da Chiesa. I Chorale (5:54);  II Tango (4:12);  III Fugue (5:00). 
• Thomson, Virgil (cond); Fuchs, Lillian (vla); Simenauer, Peter (cl); Mills, Fred (tpt); Ingraham, Paul (hn); Erwin, Edwin (tbn)
• Praises and Prayers.  I From the Canticle of the Sun (St. Francis of Assisi) (5:42);  II My Master Hath a Garden (1:53);  III Sung by the Shepherds (from “Hymn of the Nativity” by Richard Crashaw) (3:49);  IV Before Sleeping (1:57);  V Jerusalem, My Happy Home (4:03). 
• Allen, Betty (mezz); Thomson, Virgil (pno)
• Sonata for Violin and Piano.  I Allegro (3:39);  II Andante nobile (3:17);  III Tempo de Valtzer (1:40);  IV Andante: Doppio movimento (6:07).
• Fuchs, Joseph (vln); Balsam, Artur (pno)

This is one of the many LPs that went through the tornado in 1974, and it is in pretty good shape, although the album cover didn't survive. I'll be recycling the vinyl, as I have some 50 other LPs already.

I found both of Thomson's sonatas to be unpersuasive. His melodic invention is not memorable, even for the purposes of gathering the themes for a formal organization in each work. Much less for something to happily hum when the spirit moves me. Thomson was a proponent of minimalist music before Philip Glass and Steve Reich began to take the appellation into the realm of exploding tme signature and reinventing the concept of development. Thomson's minimalism was content with simple theme, simple structure, and simple performance. Neither the Sonata da Chiesa nor the Sonata for Violin and Piano disappoint if you seek the original minimalism.

But Thomson struck gold when he set existing melodies to his accompaniment in Praises and Prayers! Much like Benjamin Britten's settings of English folk songs, Thomson leaves the melodies almost intact and focuses his attention on the accompaniment. The result is a fresh and inspired look at material that has lain too long on the shelf.

© Thomas Kohn, 2015.05.25

Vinyl heard once again, and now ready for sale

I've had a small library of LP recordings sitting around for that day when I would again have an audiophile setup. Remember those days long gone? An RCA Vicotr phonograph wasn't enough. Nor just a good turntable, since its output couldn't be fed directly to any speakers. No, you needed a pre-amplifier, which fed into an amplifier (or tuner, if you wanted to listen well to radio broadcasts too), which in turn connected to those pieces of furnture that produced BIG sound. And collected vases, books, sometimes drinks (sometimes on coasters).

For 34 years the LPs have stood there, waiting for that day I would again visit the antique technology. Collecting dust. Perhaps mildewing, never to be heard again in glory. Now we're diminishing our householdings. Going through memorabilia, tossing the chaf from thick binders of lecture notes, reminding ourselves of our past appearance in snapshots long forgotten, listing unwanted books for sale on our Amazon storefront, donating the less valuable books to our local book fair that benefits Planned Parenthood, placing many belongings in garage sales.

In the "many hours of free time," I've decided to digitize a good portion of my LP library. I acquired a good turntable, connected to a converter to USB input, and monitor the resulting WAV files in transfer software. It's time consuming because of three parts of the activity:

• Recording the LP in real time. There's no alternative, no shortcut to playing the recording on the turntable. If the record is in lousy shape, I can decide to end the recording in the middle of things. (My house was hit by a tornado when I lived in Kansas, and I tried to salvage many LPs from the debris. Some survived well. Others...well, I wasn't so lucky.)
• Dutifully listing in my database the composer, performer, and track titles. I admit to being obsessive-compulsive here!
• Photographing the covers and any text inserts. (This portion takes the least time, with my camera on a tripod, a stable frame for the album position, and even lighting from studio lamps. The digital photos are detailed and sharp, much better than any existing images on Amazon.com or other sites that sell CDs.)

Occasionally, as time allows, I'll enter a few comments about the music I'm rediscovering. My collection is wide-ranging, but a primary component is classical music of the late 20th Century. For example, the latest LPs I've offered for sale on Amazon:

• Bach: Goldberg Variations $18.95
• Chopin: Etudes Op.10 & Op.25 $5.45
• Chopin, The Poetry of the Piano; Ivan Moravec, piano $39.95
• RUTH SLENCZYNSKA CHOPIN WALTZES vinyl record $9.95
• Boulez Conducts Boulez: "Le Marteau Sans Maitre",... $18.99
• America Sings V: Contemporary American Choral Music After... $18.99
• Ralph Kirkpatrick Bach The Well Tempered Clavier vinyl... $39.97
• Johann S. Bach: Werke Fur Laute ~ Works for Lute $25.49
• S Gideon: Nocturnes (Demain, Da Capo Chamber Players);... $28.00

The future listening excites me, returning to music that formed my tastes when I was in my 20s.