Unsuk Chin's Akrostichon-Wortspiel

Unsuk Chin, Akrostichon-Wortspiel and other works, Ensemble Intercontemporain (2005)

As noted here last month, Korean composer Unsuk Chin's star is on the rise. Her recent opera, Alice in Wonderland, was a critical success in Munich this summer, and she was honored at the Musica Festival in Strasbourg. The world premiere recording of her first major hit, Akrostichon-Wortspiel, has since come across my desk. Chin began it in 1991, when she was only 30 years old and had only just recently completed a period of studies with György Ligeti. She has said that her music is a reflection of her dreams:

I try to render into music the visions of immense light and of an incredible magnificence of colors that I see in all my dreams, a play of light and colors floating through the room and at the same time forming a fluid sound sculpture.

That is as good an explanation as any for the phantasmagoric wash of sounds we hear in the seven movements of Akrostichon-Wortspiel. Written for stratospheric space soprano and chamber ensemble, the piece draws on texts from Michael Ende's The Never-Ending Story and Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass. While the latter work makes an obvious connection to Chin's Alice opera, the completion of a project that Ligeti had long contemplated, here the words are only the starting point for a wild voyage. This recording excels as it does largely because of the pure, laser-like voice of Finnish soprano Piia Komsi (those qualities reportedly work well in Baroque music, too). There are times that her forays upward merge perfectly with the flute, piccolo, or oboe: is that a wind instrument or Komsi's voice? Sometimes it is hard to tell. Much of the language is harshly dissonant and thick with complex rhythm, and Chin causes for microtonal mistunings of some of the instruments. Even so, in the fifth movement (Domifare S), the work opens into a lushly post-tonal quasi-Romantic style, as if Alice had suddenly fallen into the world of Korngold's Heliane or the realm of Keikobad. More and more this approach appears to be the way forward for modern composers, not to ignore serial techniques and dissonance but not to be enslaved by them either.

The rest of the recording features later pieces by Chin, none of them quite as immediately gripping as Akrostichon-Wortspiel. For five instruments, stretches of Fantasie mécanique sound unfortunately like a warm-up session, complete with the piano appearing to strike tuning notes for the trumpet and trombone. There are more engaging moments that emerge from its managed rigor here and there. Chin takes a turn working with electronics in Xi, a Webernesque exploration of spatialized Doppler-effect sounds, with the Ensemble Intercontemporain interacting with Chin's 12-channel tape. The most recent work is Chin's Double Concerto (for piano and percussion soloists), recorded live during its world premiere at the 2003 Présences Festival. Along with Akrostichon-Wortspiel, its varied palette of sounds -- including an incredible avian passage in the middle section reminiscent of Messiaen -- is what suggests itself for more extended listening on this fascinating disc. The EIC is on a tour of Mexico this month: too bad that they are not able to stop in the U.S. before returning to Paris.

Deutsche Grammophon 00289 477 5118

Feast of St. Cecilia

The vita of Santa Cecilia is difficult as far as concrete information goes, but her later veneration was widespread and devoted. Her relics are honored at the beautiful Roman church of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere (transferred there from their original location in the Catacomb of Callistus), where Stefano Maderno created a famous sculptural portrait, supposedly based on the position of the saint's body in its tomb when it was opened in the 16th century. The commemoration of her martyrdom, on November 22, is a cause of celebration not only for those named for her but for musicians, who claim Cecilia as their patron. Her connection to musicians is tenuous at best, however, since it comes from a misreading of a line in her vita. As the musicians played at her wedding to Valerianus (who was to become a Christian and live in chastity with his virgin bride), she ignored the worldly music and sang in her heart to the Lord alone (cantantibus organis illa in corde suo soli domino decantabat). She is often shown with musical instruments, especially the organ, as her symbol.

Available at Amazon: Henry Purcell, Ode for St. Cecilia's Day, Gabrieli Consort, Paul McCreesh (2002)

In Raphael's altarpiece for a church in Bologna, instruments are strewn at her feet like a pile of junk, with the organ about to slip from Cecilia's hands, as she raises her ears to the celestial music coming from above. The saints gathered around her are Paul, John the Evangelist, Augustine, and Mary Magdalen: in particular, I love how Paul looks down at the pile of instruments with bemused scorn. On this day of Thanksgiving in the United States, musicians have much to be thankful for: although a day off from work would be a nice thing, most of us will perform in church or elsewhere one way or another today. The holiday season is a musician's bread and butter, after all. As much as we love music and the sounds we make and hear, St. Cecilia, our patron, is reminding us that music is not an end unto itself. The music and the instruments we love will pass away just like everything else. The thought is depressing only if we do not, like her, listen for the concert above.

Photo image: Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio), Altarpiece (Ecstasy of St. Cecilia), made for the Church of San Giovanni in Monte, Bologna, 1514-15 (Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna)

UPDATE:
Soho the Dog has an update on the Saint Cecilia trope, both Raphael and Purcell.

Dautricourt and Plancade

This review is an Ionarts exclusive.

Violinist Nicolas Dautricourt, photo by Guy Vivien

For its latest contemporary music concert, on Monday evening, La Maison Française returned to the violinist who inaugurated the series (with Eric Le Sage in 2005), Nicolas Dautricourt. Partnering with his countryman Dominique Plancade, Dautricourt presented a fascinating survey of French music of the 20th century. Like the world premiere of Sanctuary at the National Gallery the day before, the concert was free and the embassy's auditorium encouragingly full. This shows the importance of what Cultural Attaché Roland Celette does by sponsoring these free concerts, exposing leading French performers and composers to American audiences. In his gracious introduction, Celette mentioned that the embassy is seeking to start an academy to bring together French and American musicians devoted to contemporary music.

Federico Garcia Lorca, Six Strings: The guitar makes dreams weep. The sobs of lost souls escape through its round mouth. And like the tarantula, it weaves a large star to trap the sighs floating in its black wooden cistern.

The three pillars of this delightful and innovative program were by the recognized greats of the French 20th century: Debussy, Poulenc, and Messiaen. The Poulenc violin sonata, from 1943, was the only example of the genre that survived the composer's rigorous self-editing, after he had destroyed two violin sonatas two decades earlier. This performance veered between a more dissonant, frantic tone and a calmer opposing theme straight out of the Parisian cabaret in the first movement. Reading from his score, Dautricourt recited the Garcia Lorca poem, translated into French, by which Poulenc, composing the piece during the Nazi occupation of France, expressed solidarity against fascism. The second movement, an evocation of Spain, was a muted and tragic cantillation. By contrast, the third movement was a rapid-fire toccata, ending with a slow melody tortured with dissonance.

At the end of the recital was the Debussy violin sonata, the 1917 work that was the last the composer finished (captured in a lovely recording recently by Dora Schwarzberg and Martha Argerich). As in the Poulenc sonata, this piece revealed the dazzling technique and control of dynamics on display from pianist Dominique Plancade, matching Dautricourt's fluid interpretation with murmuring arpeggiation at the embassy's Bösendorfer. The highpoint of the concert was at the end of the first half, however, with a revelatory reading of Olivier Messiaen's Theme and Variations for violin and piano from 1932. The theme is a fairly traditional miniature, with a simple accompaniment, leading to a set of driven variations, with the melody transformed by being splashed with bitonal chords and singing through clouds of shrieking birds, finally to emerge into a hall of bell-like, treble-dominated tonal chords.

Throughout, though impressive, Dautricourt's technique strained slightly at the most demanding moments, with some imprecision in off-the-string passages and an E string that did not always glisten but pinched off its tone here and there. He is a forceful player, who sawed through a lot of horsehair over the course of two hours. The other selections included a piece for unaccompanied violin by André Jolivet and Nicolas Bacri's homage to Jolivet. Jolivet's Incantation "Pour que l'image devienne symbole", from 1937, was more varied, with some whispered, dream-like sul ponticello effects. A mirroring set of solo violin pieces by Karol Beffa and François Sarhan, from the 21st century, was found in the second half, with Beffa's neo-tonal style balanced by Sarhan's more dissonant approach. The second half opened with a piece for piano only, Maurice Ohana's Sonate monodique, a 1945 experimentation with extended writing for unisons and octaves, which again revealed Plancade's flair for the dramatic and intelligence in picking apart complicated forms. After the Debussy, the performers treated the audience to Jascha Heifetz's arrangement of Debussy's song Beau soir. A beautiful evening, indeed.

Opera Lafayette returns to La Maison Française for a concert called A Rococo Noël, with the Four Nations Ensemble and Julie Boulianne (December 2, 7:30 pm).

CONFRONTation Continues @ Katzen Center

I had meant to return to posting about my visit to the Katzen, but travel and spotty Wi-fi - in California no less - made that impossible, so here goes. In addition to the fabulous Botero exhibit the remaining two floors are no less remarkable. As you descend the stairs form the 3rd-floor Botero exhibit you are expecting a little reprieve, maybe a more positive spin to our times, but Irving Norman’s fantastical visions of the dark side of life won’t allow that. His large-scale canvases, which I first saw at the American Visionary Museum, are crammed with clone-like figures involved in any number of mechanical acts.

As a veteran returning from the Spanish Civil War in 1938 he started drawing and eventually painting through his horrific experiences, moving on to the general foibles and inequities of modern life. These big, extremely intense canvases, 25 in all, though very personal are also a mix of German expressionist and visionary comic book art, with a nod to the Mexican muralists. The latter is especially true of the 25’ tall Crucifixion: it’s three panels held together by door hinges, a fabulous piece.

Norman’s art is by no means easy: he slams you at each turn, but you’ll be taken by the wonder of it all and pleased knowing that there was, and thankfully still is, art being created with complete disregard for market values or auction results. Imagine making art about greed, depravity, and fear of the military industrial complex in our time: what could possibly inspire that? Dark Metropolis: Irving Norman’s Social Surrealism, part of the Katzen's Art of CONFRONTation trio of exhibits is all about the art and its message.

As I made my way to the first floor I could hear laughter coming from the staff offices. I knew everything was going to be OK: how horrific could Claiming Space: Some American Originators be?

Not at all, it’s actually a great flash back to much of the art being made by women when I was in art school (whooh, getting old). Claiming space is just what they were doing, proudly incorporating the materials and processes associated with women’s work and going head-on with the work being produced by men. The scales are still not even in the art world, but many of the materials and subject matters have been embraced.

Cynthia Mailman's large painting God (shown here) sums up the show best: hear her roar. We're all familiar with Faith Ringgold's book illustrations, but I was not aware, as I should have been, of her earlier work. The images in this show are big difiant statements and quite good, as with the painting The Flag is Bleeding.

Jane Kaufman's, Pearl Screen is an eye catcher, exploring the seductive and protective qualities of a woman's string of pearls. The one piece that may revive the chills of the previous exhibits is Judith Berstein's Five Panel Vertical, a penetrating series, pun intended, of five large paper scrolls, each with beautifully drawn and very intimidating phallic screws, ouch.

The three current exhibits will add up to an amazing 75 shows that the Katzen has produced in its first two and a half years of opperation! Under the direction of Jack Rasmussen, one of the smartest and nicest guys in art land, and his staff the Katzen Center is a prominent part of the Mid-Atlantic art scene. Congratulations, Jack -- more, more!

The Art of CONFRONTation runs through January 27 at the Katzen Arts Center, on the campus of American University.

Rome's Foundation

Digging inside the Palatine Hill, archeologists in Rome appear to have discovered the Lupercale, the cave sanctuary where, according to tradition, Romulus and Remus were nursed by a she-wolf. When they had grown up, Romulus killed his twin brother and became the founder of Rome.

Ancient texts say the grotto, known as the Lupercale-- from "lupa," Latin for she-wolf -- was near the palace of Augustus, Rome's first emperor, and was decorated with a white eagle. That symbol was found atop the sanctuary's vault, which lies just below the ruins of the palace built by Augustus, archaeologist Irene Iacopi said. [...]

Most of the sanctuary is filled with earth, but laser scans allowed experts to estimate that the circular structure is 26 feet high and 24 feet in diameter, Croci said. Archaeologists at the news conference were divided on how to gain access to the Lupercale. Iacopi said a new dig would start soon to find the grotto's original entrance at the bottom of the hill. Carandini suggested enlarging the hole at the top through which probes have been lowered so far, saying that burrowing at the base of the hill could disturb the foundations of other ruins.

Holy cow! As I am planning to be in Rome again this summer, I am hopeful that there will be something to see by then. Read the rest of the report from the Associated Press.

UPDATE:
See this video of the excavation put online by The Guardian.

My Ears Need Sanctuary

The world premiere of Sanctuary, a new work for amplified, computer-modified percussion ensemble by Roger Reynolds (b. 1934), took place at the National Gallery of Art on Sunday evening. It was an event, the sort of concert that gets noticed by Alex Ross: alas, the element that would have sealed its place in history, an angry riot by perturbed listeners, did not happen. The mistake that caused the failure to obtain a true succès de scandale was in allowing the audience to hear the concert for free. Only paying listeners can really get outraged enough to hate challenging music. True, a number of listeners left before the full 80 minutes of the work had played itself out, often walking right past the performers toward the doors, but the only thing lost was part of their Sunday night, not $50.

An encouragingly large and interested audience filled the East Building's auditorium to hear the composer try to explain what the piece is all about and how it came to be. He credited his granddaughter with the initial idea, when during a game involving impersonation of scary monsters, she proclaimed a room to be a sanctuary where "monsters can't come in." The idea is to transform the magnificent space of the East Building atrium with sound, initiated by the musicians striking traditional percussion instruments as well as all kinds of junk, impulses which are then processed by a computer and amplified through speakers placed around the space. There is a half-baked, quasi-mystical side to the work, in which the players pose questions to a waterphone made from parts of an old clothes dryer, called with self-belittling irony The Oracle. It has all been explained in Stephen Brookes's preview article for the Post and in the program notes (.PDF file). Hearing the performance adds surprisingly little to one's basic appreciation of what Reynolds was trying to do. The theory is more interesting than the practice.

Available at Amazon: Jules Verne, Paris in the 20th Century (Paris au XXème siècle, trans. Richard Howard)

Did Jules Verne really predict the future in his "lost novel" Paris au XXème siècle? The book, written in 1863 but not published until 1994, presents a dystopian view of the future, specifically Paris in 1960. The protagonist, Michel Dufrénoy, confronts a world that no longer cares about art and music, unless they are in some way connected to science. In his discussions about modern music with the composer Quinsonnas, we hear about pieces inspired by science, depicting chemical reactions and so on. He even attends a concert of electronic music (my translation):

Far away he still saw something like an immense light; he heard a powerful noise that could not be compared to anything. Still, he went on; finally he arrived in the middle of a terrifying, deafening sound, in an immense room that could easily hold ten thousand people, and on the pediment could be read the words, in letters of flame: "Electric Concert." Yes, electric concert! and what instruments! Following a Hungarian procedure, two hundred pianos put in communication with one another, through the medium of electric current, were playing together guided by a single artist's hand! A piano with the strength of two hundred pianos.

This came to mind because Reynolds received a degree in engineering, a background evident in the way he notates his scores (as seen in a video shown during his presentation), with a straight edge to rule every stem, beam, and bar line, as well as his use of blueprint-like flow charts. In the first movement of Sanctuary, percussionist Steven Schick struck a range of objects with sensor-bearing coins taped to his fingers. Wires running through his clothes connected the sensors to the computerized sound system. In the second and third movements, the four percussionists of red fish blue fish, the resident percussion ensemble of the University of California at San Diego, traded places at four percussion stations (and eventually at peripheral stations, too). Basically, guys hit stuff with sticks, and the computer echoed and reconfigured the sounds they made.


Image courtesy of the Sanctuary Project, University of California at San Diego

Other Articles: Andrew Lindemann Malone, Steven Schick and red fish blue fish (Washington Post, November 20) Stephen Brookes, Beating a Path Forward In New Music's Realm (Washington Post, November 18) Andrew Lindemann Malone, Q&A: Contemporary Music Forum's Steve Antosca (Express, November 15)

To be sure, the performers of red fish blue fish are skilled musicians, and they gave an intense reading of this overlong, inscrutable work. The predominant sonic quality of the piece is quite literally "rhythm atomized," as John Adams described this compositional trend in modern music. With all the focus on tremolos and fluid pace, a regular pulse never appeared (which is where most of the fun of an all-percussion piece comes from, as in Music for Pieces of Wood), and a glance at Reynolds's score, left on the stand afterward and littered with irregular and ever-changing time signatures, confirmed that perception. Are we really to think this kind of music has a future? Reynolds, who has won a Pulitzer Prize, is clearly a major voice, but this work goes in the same category as the last time we reviewed a Reynolds piece. Of interest, but more on paper than in sound.

The next two concerts on the free Sunday series at the National Gallery, both recommended, will feature the ArcoVoce Ensemble in music of Leonarda, Pergolesi, A. Scarlatti, and D. Scarlatti (November 25, 6:30 pm) and a performance of John Musto's new opera, Later the Same Evening (December 2, 6:30 pm).

New Musto Opera a Striking Success

Later the Same Evening, Maryland Opera Studio, 2007, photo by Cory Weaver

The outcome of the landmark collaboration between the National Gallery of Art, the Clarice Smith Center, and the University of Maryland School of Music in the commission of an opera from the John Musto-Mark Campbell composer-librettist team is remarkable. Later the Same Evening is inspired by five paintings of Edward Hopper: Room in New York (1932), Hotel Window (1955), Hotel Room (1931), Two on the Aisle (1927), and Automat (1927). The set features the five paintings in a row with each painting highlighted with increased lighting for its respective scene. Each scene begins with singers in the exact dress and pose as the painting, which allowed for the painting to come to life onstage. The absence of complex recreations of the paintings’ sets onstage was a true virtue – thanks to Director Leon Major and Scenic Director Erhard Rom – in that the medium-sized projections of individual paintings for their respective scenes high on the walls allowed Hopper's works to be the cost-effective set. Always visible, the paintings were integral to the production.

Librettist Mark Campbell interpreted the five paintings as set in an early New York City evening in 1932. The thread that first connects the diverse characters of each painting is that they are all questioning their realities and facing loneliness or discord. The brilliance of the production is in how the five stories are gradually connected. The wife from the first painting must go alone to a show because her distant husband rejects her and goes instead to the bar called Clancy’s. She later finds herself in the same theater with the lady from the second painting and her beau she had been awaiting, in addition to the soon-to-be-dumped and stood-up boyfriend of the failed ballerina about to return to Indiana from the Hudson Hotel for Young Women in painting three, and the posh couple from painting four. The usher from the theater ends up being the young lady in painting five who somewhat resembles Degas’s Absinthe Drinker, though has finished her harmless “cup-a-joe” in the Automat café. These connections were reinforced musically by having most of the characters sing together the fugal “rain pouring fast from the sky” as a chorus after meeting on the rainy street after the show let out.

Other Reviews: Cecelia Porter, Maryland Opera Studio (Washington Post, November 17) T. L. Ponick, 'Evening' of Paintings (Washington Times, November 17)

Musto’s score was most expansive at this point and very emotional, since at that point everyone had come to the realization that they were not alone. Musto did not have as much text to set to music in this production compared to the comedy Volpone and thus was seemingly better able to let the music outweigh and uplift the text; the experience of the 85-minute production without intermission was complete and unrushed.

Sheldon Segal (tenor Eric Sampson) from painting four in the theater and Ruth Baldwin (soprano Onyu Park) from painting three had enough resonance and diction to clearly fill a large hall. The rest of the cast more or less fell into the trap of undersinging due to performing in a smaller hall for chamber opera at the Clarice Smith Center. Those singers needed to match and lead the superb National Gallery Orchestra under conductor Glen Cortese. The orchestra's playing during the show-within-a-show in painting four (when the orchestra accompanied the audience's facial expressions while facing the actual audience) was very enjoyable. The work peacefully ends with all characters facing their respective paintings and backs to audience, in a way re-entering their canvases.

Later the Same Evening will be performed again, in a special free concert at the National Gallery of Art (December 2, 6:30 pm).

Dip Your Ears, No. 86 (Sudbin's Scriabin)

I create the world through the play of my moods,
With my smiles, my sighs, my caresses,
My anger, my hopes, my doubts.

A.Scriabin, Works for Piano, Y.Sudbin BIS

What Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin said about himself does apply in equal measure to Yevgeny Sudbin – a pianist I have yet to hear in recital but one who has achieve the highest acclaim on account of just the handful of his (SA)CD releases on the BIS label. Gramophone Magazine is throwing Editor’s Choice awards at him and David Hurwitz seems to have fallen in love, and when I listened to his premiere recording of Scarlatti sonatas I was deeply impressed, too. Anyone who can hold a candle to Mikhail Pletnev’s supreme Scarlatti earns my immediate respect and admiration. Now Mr. Sudbin has arrived at Scriabin – via Rachmaninov and Medtner – and he convinces again on an intellectual and emotional level.

It is so, even if you don’t have “visions of light, golden ships on violet oceans, and bolts of fire” during his or anyone else’s Scriabin performance (I don’t). Of course I don’t subscribe to the (pseudo-) synæsthete Scriabin’s vision-fuel of choice – LSD, which may explain that. But anything that’s as exciting in combination with Irish Breakfast tea already does not seem to need additional substance abuse to become a thrilling ride through the wafting and swirling, climaxing and relaxing soundscapes that Scriabin creates and Sudbin so enigmatically puts down.

Not so much for comparative but ‘paired’ listen I pulled out Pletnev again; his CD being the ideal complement to Sudbin – and not only because there is no overlap between them. Both couple a few sonatas with other, miscellaneous works. Sudbin plays sonatas nos.2, 5, 9, Valse op.38, Étude op.8, no.12, and various other excerpts from Scriabin’s sizeable non-sonata output.

The best known work is undoubtedly the Ninth Sonata – “Messe Noire”. (Scriabin did not give that name to his sonata – it was attached by Alexei Podgaetsky in reference to its baleful nature as compared to the open, light mysticism of the 7th sonata that Scriabin had dubbed Messe Blanche.) At 8’09, Sudbin is not anywhere near as fast as the (somewhat banging) Michael Ponti (VOX, 7’05), nor as tempered as Alexei Lubimov in his reading sated with insightful calm and relaxed muscularity (ECM, 8’45 – a recording I am happy to see having been equally thought of as one of the gems of recorded pianism there are by Colin Clarke in his review). Bold and powerful playing is combined with frequent Messiaen-like touches here, but perhaps not achieving the fleeting ‘light and shadow-sodden’ atmosphere of Håkon Austbø (Brilliant, 8’20), or the disquieting storm that Sviatoslav Richter conjures (Richter, e.g. Music & Arts, BBC Legends). The investment with which Sudbin takes to this sonata is evident in his growling and panting during the most vigorous parts. Sudbin leaves the sonata to run out in the most inconclusive of ways, which is of course apt. The liner notes, written by the fiercely learned young man himself, suggest that this is no accident.

Compared to the sinister, eerie Ninth Sonata (of Satanist origin or intent or not), the two Études (op.8, no.12 and op.2, no.1) sound like Chopin. But with the care with which Sudbin tends precisely to these smaller pieces (as the four of the ten op.3 Mazurkas and Poème from Two Pieces, op.56), they become revelatory in offering depth beneath whimsy, a foreboding of things to come beneath their rather unassuming exterior. And yet, what a delightful change it is to plunge from the mazurkas directly into the perverse Fifth Sonata that Sudbin plays with charged and carnal, prurient vigor. Or listen to the organic pantonalism of the op.59 Poème. If ever you were looking for the missing link between Debussy’s Préludes and Schoenberg’s op.11 Klavierstücke, here it is, courtesy of 91 wonderful seconds with Yevgeny Sudbin.

Fans of Scriabin will find this voluminous and rich sounding disc an essential addition to their collection already containing Horowitz, Pogorelich, Austbö, Pletnev, et al. Newcomers to Scriabin are encouraged too, to sample. It will be mind-alteringly sublime at best – and at worst it could not be more ill than hell. (Not much at any rate.)