The first thing that struck me about this release is its intrinsic anachronism; Despite the fact that Bach might have enjoyed the sound of a viol, the instrument was well on its way out the door by the time this piece was written, so hearing these particular sonorities from these six instruments is a little strange, like playing the Brandenburg’s on sackbuts and cornets. Okay, maybe that is a bit of an exaggeration, but the sentiment remains. Mr. Boothby’s attitude is simply that for those who don’t like this arrangement the others are still out there in spades, and that is true. But I would argue that any new recording of the Goldberg’s should bring something new to the table, and the booklet notes erudite author, John Butt, really stretches the argument when he says that “the notion of transcribing the variations for other types of instruments is of a piece with Bach’s own attitude towards his music, since different combinations and timbres bring out different aspects of the music, arrangement actually continuing the process of ‘variation’.”

Really? If that is the case, then no sets of variations ever written will ever be complete!

I am also not buying the rather astounding comment at the beginning of the notes, this time by arranger Boothby, that Glenn Gould’s iconic recordings are in fact an arrangement of the Goldberg Variations due to the fact that they were written for a two-manual harpsichord, and the varying colors available on both keyboards would be different on the piano. But who is to say that any two harpsichordists would play them the same way? Now we move not into arranging as such but to interpretation, the color of any keyboard performance being as aspect of this, and not the craft of arranging. In fact, out of all Bach’s works, this is one where we really don’t have to worry about scoring and instrumentation or rewrites—it is what it is.

So does this mean that this piece should be left alone? Only if you believe Beethoven’s string quartets should have been left alone by Mahler for example. Anything can be arranged for any reason, and I am sure Bach will remain a particularly enticing target. Does Fretwork bring anything new? Aside from the pre-Bach timbre that comes across so strongly, I can’t say that the performance in general does this, certainly not “clarifying the contrapuntal nature of all the canons”—how often have we read this sort of thing about Bach arrangements?—or adds anything new to what generations of keyboards players have already found in this music. But as pure playing, performance standards are very high, as they always are with Fretwork, and because it is the Goldberg Variations the music itself remains the thing, and the thing is not easily upset by adventures into speculative rescoring. There really is no need to come up with lengthy justifications of why this arrangement needed to be done; if I had simply heard “Fretwork is a great ensemble and we are just dying to have a crack at the Goldberg Variations” it would have been enough. As is, great playing in wonderfully comfortable sound, not a first choice by any means, but superbly professional for anyone wanting to hear the music in a different guise. There you have it.

– Steven Ritter

Composer, pianist, teacher Eric Moe is a busy man. Not only does he compose, quite often on commission; teach composition and theory at the University of Pittsburgh; and occasionally lend his keyboard talent to the cause of other composers, he is also codirector of the Music on the Edge, a new-music series that brings many of the leading lights of contemporary music to the city. His music has been widely recorded, and while his name is familiar to me, probably through his Philadelphia connections (he once taught at the University of Pennsylvania and his Eight-Point Turn was commissioned by the Philadelphia new-music ensemble Relâche), this is the first time I’ve caught up with his music. “Caught up” is probably an apt phrase since his work is often jet propelled—a manic series of stuttering ostinato figures that go flashing by in constantly changing instrumental garb. As note-writer Andrew Druckenbrod observes, Moe’s “musical language is informed by major compositional trends, but he’s in no camp, not even the big ones such as post-minimalism, neo-tonal, indie-classical, or eclectic.”

Like many contemporary American composers, he incorporates pop elements in his music “without having to turn in his academic badge.” The pop references are clearest in Superhero and Kick & Ride, the former a tone poem in five movements that portrays the exploits of a comic book superhero, the latter a sort of concerto for drum set and small orchestra that starts with a tribute to Ron Wilson’s wild drumming in the Surfari’s surfer-rock classic “Wipeout.” However, whereas in the work of, say, Michael Daugherty the pop elements too often seem to commandeer the music, in Moe’s work the popular elements are subsumed by and woven into the fabric of the composer’s unique musical language. As in the music of John Adams, you occasionally catch whiffs of the work of other classical composers—I hear definite echoes of Stravinsky, including Stravinsky’s use of instrumental color, in Eight-Point Turn—yet just as with Adams, Moe ultimately sounds like—himself. Whether his music is unique in a good way or a bad way, you’ll have to decide for yourself. I can imagine some listeners being turned off by the frenetic pace and the fragmentary nature of the music, thanks to the brief ostinato cells that drive each work. I find the high energy exciting, and the subtle changes of instrumental color that Moe weaves throughout a piece manage to engage the intellect as well as the ear.

Driving rhythms aren’t the whole story of Moe’s work, either. As he says of Superhero, “My evocation of the genre [comic books] is affectionate and serious, not ironic. The two slower reflective sections are the saddest music on the CD. . . .” Sad and beautifully written: the first section, “early loss,” features a contrapuntal dialog for clarinet and flute that unfolds over a strangely droning, thumping bass that sounds like a funeral march heard from far off, heard in shreds of sound. The second, “existential crisis (what’s it all for?)” finds the superhero questioning his own world-saving mission in life; again, it’s a lovely duet, this time for violin and cello over a nervous backdrop of repeated piano notes. Still, maybe the most arresting movement is the first, “learning to fly,” in which the chugging stop-start rhythms cleverly describe the action of the title.

The Boston Modern Orchestra Project once again proves its skillful commitment to the music of twentieth- and twenty-first-century American music. Is this the same orchestra that captured the various neo-Romantic impulses of Virgil Thomson, Lukas Foss, and Alan Hovhaness in earlier recordings? Eric Moe is quite a change of pace for the orchestra, which here appears in a greatly pared-down version of itself: in Superhero, we have the often-encountered ensemble of violin, cello, flute, clarinet, piano, and percussion that Schoenberg used in Pierrot Lunaire. I don’t know if this is a one-off departure for the Project or if we’ll be hearing more music for smaller ensembles from the group. Whatever the case, I hope they keep exploring composers with a unique voice and something new to say, which sums up my reaction to the music of Eric Moe.

—Lee Passarella

There is a lot of very evocative music on this disc, thanks in no small part to the good taste of the composers represented here. Now, a really good composer can turn even crummy poetry into something better than the original; Schubert did it for the work of his writer friends, most of whom are now footnotes only because Schubert set their poetry in the first place. Then again, with truly fine poetry Schubert created wonders that led such an eminent poet as Goethe to worry that the composer’s uncanny settings would steal thunder from the poetry.

Well, there is some pretty fine poetry and commensurately fine musical treatments on the disc under review. The most famous name, of course, is that of George Crumb. It’s not a coincidence that his work is the best of all. Like his earlier Ancient Voices of Children, also drawing on the poetry of Federico García Lorca, Ghosts of the Alhambra of 2009 is an instant classic. The wide range of coloristic effects that Crumb draws from the three performers—including the singer, who’s called on to whisper, hiss, and shout the text—matches just about note for note the magic of Lorca’s beautiful, and sometimes beautifully frightening, poetry in which death and destruction often haunt the seeming joys of life.

I was surprised to learn that Crazy Jane is not named for the well-known poem of Yeats but for a crazy little poem by Dale Driscoll, hardly a household name even in poetry circles. It’s given a suitably crazy musical treatment by Ronald Roxbury, a composer known for his off-the-wall theater pieces such as Le Werewolf s’amuse, “for stand-up cabaret-type performer with wolf mask and tuxedo, and three percussionists.” I’m not sure if said percussionists play the assortment of kitchen gadgets featured inn Roxbury’s Crazy Jane, but the effect herein is pretty wacky: we have, it seems, pots and pans as well as wine glasses filled with water and played like a glass harmonica. (I assume the kitchen sink isn’t included in the instrumentation, but you never know.) The piece is endearingly nutty but also something more than that as Roxbury gives his performers a series of interesting things to do.

As baritone Patrick Mason says in his notes to the recording, it took some guts for Tokyo-born Akemi Naito to set one of the greatest poems by one of the greatest twentieth-century American poets, Wallace Stevens. Of course, Naito doesn’t even attempt to hint at the central aesthetic conceit of the poem, that art has a way of informing and even shaping the hostile and indifferent natural order of things. Naito’s setting is still quite evocative of Stevens’ mise-en-scène, effectively conjuring the play of water and light at Key West.

I’m least impressed with the folksong settings of Paul Lansky. Surprisingly, Lansky’s most known for his electronic music, yet lately he’s turned to a more approachable idiom. These folksongs, taken from a collection by Cecile Sharp entitled English Folk Songs of the Southern Appalachian, are given a pop-based treatment by Lansky, “with a portable or easily obtainable percussion setup” that includes vibraphone and small bells, among a few other instruments. The result is a kind of James Taylorish approach to folksong, though even here the last piece, “When I’m Gone,” appeals in its strange mix of tempi— now slow, now fast, and not always matching the sentiments expressed by the poem, with the result that the text often becomes pure music rather than words, forcing you to listen to the words even more closely.

With settings of poems by James Tate and James Laughlin, we’re in the realm of Important Poetry again, the realm of beauty and of fear. Both David Leisner and John Musto do well by their sources. The first song in the Tate collection, “I Can’t Speak for the Wind,” “has a cowboy feel in the guitar writing and in the yodelly vocal jumps.” But it’s followed immediately by two poems that hint at the fearsome aspect of nature, or rather the fearsome perception of it that only humankind, with its various psychological trepidations, can supply. Love and death in equal measures pervade the impressive poetry of James Laughlin, founder of New Directions, a firm that bravely published the work of now-famous twentieth-century writers while they were still virtual unknowns. Musto’s music does a Spanish dance in “When You Danced,” weaves a dirge in the sad “The Summons,” a powerful poem in which the speaker imagines he is visited by his wife’s dead first husband:

Wanderer come
Return to this bed & embody the
Love that was yours and is hers
And is mine
And endures.

The performances are as compelling as much of the poetry and music are, because this is Crazy Jane’s poetry and music, crafted in most cases with the group in mind. The recording, from New York’s Academy of Arts and Letters, is nigh on to ideal as well: intimate yet open and airy, the sense of depth created by the front-to-back arrangement of the percussion palpable. If you enjoy good poetry and expert settings of the same, this disc is for you.

—Lee Passarella

One thing you can say about Florilegium—they know how to make programs that blend and entice. This is a nice Vivaldian mix that contains only one work that you are likely to recognize, the Double Concerto for Violin and Cello in B-flat. After the concerto genre Vivaldi wrote more double concertos than anything else, and they are very impressive indeed. The Concerto Madrigalesco has nothing to do with madrigals, but is instead a parody concerto for strings constructed from various sacred works of the composer, its tight construction and stately manner most likely designated it for a church setting. Il Gran Mogul, a national flute concerto about India, was one of three other “national” concertos written in the 1720s, though the others are unfortunately now lost. Ashley Solomon is her usual sterling self in this work.

The two vocal pieces here do much to show off the impressive artistry of soprano Elin Manahan Thomas, whose pyrotechnics are studded and blazing in the fast moments of both pieces. Though most of the works on this disc were written for Vivaldi’s exceptionally talented female orphans at the Ospedale della Pieta, a charitable orphanage where he spent many years, Laudate Pueri was written for the Saxon court at Dresden around 1730. It is a highly virtuosic work, the high “D” evidence of the need for an accomplished soprano. Nulla in mundo is a small scale, chamber type motet for two violins, viola, basso continuo, and soprano used in services even though basically a religious non-liturgical work substituted as “filler” in many places. Vivaldi wrote a slew of them, but only twelve survive today. Manahan Thomas is on top of her game here, and the singing is quite thrilling.

The sound is nothing to sneeze at either, as we expect from Channel Classics, now expert at capturing all sizes of Baroque ensembles. If you haven’t heard Florilegium this is as good a place to start as any—but you do need to hear them.

—Steven Ritter

Whenever the subject of Tchaikovsky’s chamber music arises, we feel a kind of condescension set in, warranted or not, that Tchaikovsky felt uncomfortable with the medium, excepting his one acknowledged masterpiece, his 1871 String Quartet No. 1 in D Major. Too often, Tchaikovsky concedes his naturally passionate and effusive nature to the “German” sense of formal structure and polyphonic procedures, a means of “legitimizing” his otherwise grand, even symphonic urgency of expression. The musicians who form the Israel Philharmonic Richter Quartet (founded 2006) obviously do not share the obverse his criticisms of Tchaikovsky that lament his lack of discipline, his lack of restraint, weaknesses of form, and awkward textures and part writing. In fact, they deliver an integral set of quartets that stands to establish a high bar for execution and sensitive interpretation of this composer’s oeuvre.

The D Major Quartet, subtitled “The Accordion” due to its opening sonorities in an unusual 9/8, proceeds according to the rules of sonata-form, subdividing the main theme into luxuriant kernels that often explode contrapuntally. The densely syncopated mix moves to a brilliant coda in rapid D Major chords that contains a scale that Berlioz used in Un Bal. Legend has it that Tchaikovsky utilized a Ukrainian folk tune for his famous Andante cantabile movement, a dumka moment that moved epic writer Leo Tolstoy to tears. Viola Dmitry Ratush makes his own points with the gentle song, soon played in muted fashion by the ensemble. The Scherzo: Allegro non tanto e con fuoco treats us to a heavily accented peasant dance that the IPO relish with vivacious and sharp-edged gestures, often unisono and rhythmically askew. Cellist Felix Nemirovsky can indulge his broad tone with unbuttoned fire. The Finale: Allegro gusto reveals a certain dignity and poise in the course of its nationalistic rondo-sonata form that takes a page from Haydn.

For more fervently blatant emotionalism in Tchaikovsky, we need only audition his 1874 String Quartet in F Major, Op. 22. Tchaikovsky himself felt that the music “flowed out of me. . . easily and simply. I wrote it almost in one sitting.” The scale of the first movement Adagio; Moderato assai proves quite expansive, again moving to some potent chords unisono or with concertante violin that might well have accommodated the full orchestra. The Adagio opening of the quartet reminds many of the chromatic opening of Mozart’s “Dissonant” Quartet, K. 465. Ilya Konovalov’s violin and Dmitry Ratush’s viola diverge early, and the ensuing development only increases the contrary motion. Despite the quicker pace of the Moderato assai portion of the first movement, the often contrapuntal mood remains relatively dark. The Scherzo features shifting rhythms and a trio section with an asymmetrical, offbeat waltz of considerable intensity from the IPO ensemble. An emotionally weighty, even psychologically naked, movement of sometimes symphonic proportions, the Andante ma non tanto finds unity in its recurring lament. The fugal finale has a rondo-like theme that grows more lively with each repeat and also provides the material for the exultant coda to conclude a movement of essentially classical means.

The premature death of violinist Ferdinand Laub in 1875 inspired Tchaikovsky’s Quartet No. 3 in E-flat Minor, begun in Paris and completed in Moscow, early 1876. The quality of the broad, histrionic writing proves both symphonic and operatic in character. The solo violin appropriately leads the Andante sostenuto, a funeral march and momento mori for Laub. The Allegro moderato section becomes a valse triste that includes a triplet figure handled like a Chopin mazurka, deviously suggesting 2/4. The Konovalov-Nemirovsky combination dominates the valedictory affect, itself broken and wispy, fragments and shards of poignant emotion that often recall late Beethoven. With the reprise of the funeral march, Ratush’s viola and Nemirovsky’s cello have inscribed the lament on our souls.

The outer sections of the duple meter Scherzo: Allegretto vivo e scherzando exemplify the composer’s love for Russian dances, while the middle section exploit’s the IPO capacity for Tchaikovsky’s melancholia. The heart of the quartet, Andante funebre e doloroso, ma con moto,  opening with dissonances and then expanding to a mighty psalmody taken from the Russian liturgy, likely inspired by Tchaikovsky’s work on his Chrysostom study contemporaneously. The IPO players accomplish no mean feat of symphonic sonority in this movement. The last movement worried Tchaikovsky, its Allegro non troppo e risoluto too lightweight to counter the gravity of the slower movements. The Andante returns prior to the energized coda, in the course of which Tchaikovsky, a la Schumann or Beethoven, has inscribed the F-E-D-A to immortalize his late friend’s anagram into this imposing score.

For the marvelous string sextet Souvenir de Florence (1890; rev. 1892), Vladislav Krasnov and Kirill Mihanovsky join the IPO Richter ensemble, and their energy proves immediately radiant. Florence had been Tchaikovsky’s preferred vacation spot, and he had taken time there for his opera The Queen of Spades while placing the sextet on hold. The IPO confirm that Russian more than Italy dominates the creative ethos throughout, though a sharp ear might pick a reference to Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet in the guitar-evocation of the Adagio cantabile. The third movement has the ensemble actively sporting a Russian folk song once more. The first movement, however, virtually explodes with innate gusty lyricism, a fund of counterpoint almost a rival to Brahms in its symphonic character. A charming spirit of national celebration suffuses the finale, and we have come to know second violin Shmuel Glaser for his own merits. Recorded 12-15 September 2010 in the Frederic Mann Auditorium, Tel-Aviv, this entire set has restored these Tchaikovsky chamber works to their celebrity status.

—Gary Lemco

The Quartetto Italiano (1945-1980) still basks in an immaculate reputation for their stringent discipline cross-fertilized by a freedom of expression rare among chamber music ensembles. Critic and composer Virgil Thomson pronounced them “the finest string quartet, unquestionably, that our century has known.” On this happy disc, they appear at the Royal Festival Hall, London (22 February 1965) in total command of their powers and of the music at hand, which includes a late Beethoven string quartet, their perennial trump card.

The program opens with Boccherini’s two-movement work intended to celebrate both Seville and Madrid with a gregarious Presto and inventive Tempo di minuetto. The first movement, originally requiring a tambourine as a Tirana, moves in cantering pulsations that display the unanimity of tone of the Quartetto Italiano, while the variations allow first violin Paolo Borciani his moments of concertante splendor. The dancing figures in the course of the variants will likely recall Boccherini’s eternal fandango quintet to connoisseurs.

Mozart’s B-flat Major Quartet, one of six dedicated to Haydn, has less to do with “hunting” per se than with the rising and falling degree of the sixth that infiltrates its first movement. Mozart claimed that he had well learned the lesson writing string quartets from Haydn’s Op. 33 “Russian” Quartets. The clean articulate liens of the Allegro vivace assai allow Borciani and violist Piero Farulli to converse elastically and with nuanced expression. The happy scamper of the movement proceeds with warm exaltation, especially fertile in harmony with Borciani’s extended trills or running passages. Even the traditional coda becomes enriched and develops along lines Brahms would find to his creative taste.

A dignified Menuetto and Trio ensues, a loftily expressive conception rife with courtly grace. The Trio dances on tiptoes, Borciani a step away from a miniature concerto or concertino. Borciani’s first violin dominates the long, melancholy line of the Adagio, the other voices shading its grief with hints from Gluck’s Orfeo. Franco Rossi’s deep-chested cello adds to the emotional alchemy an aura of primal loss mollified by spiritual serenity. The finale, Allegro assai, combines three themes in bravura fashion, the interweaving voices passing through each other in unbroken, supple counterpoints. The seamless ensemble moves so effortlessly, we quite jump in surprise as the London audience erupts in delight.

Quartetto Italiano added Beethoven’s 1825 Op. 132 to their repertory late in their career, c. 1962. Their 1966 inscription of the piece launched their Beethoven cycle for Philips records. Plastic and intensely molded, the lines of the opening Assai sostenuto capture the often groping melancholy and sudden rushes of improvised, exploratory lyricism that erupt from the composer’s pen, given that he treats the first four notes from the cello in a manner sympathetic to Bach’s The Art of Fugue. The abrupt moodiness of the piece, its fierce compression and harmonic audacities, obviously cast a compelling spell upon the imagination of Bela Bartok. Typically, the work moves from minor to major, dark to light, from strict determinism to a victory of the will. Later, Beethoven seems to relish a sense of antiquity, exploiting the Lydian mode for his Herculean Adagio movement, a rapt prayer of thanksgiving. Borciani’s little figure in the fifth measure of the Allegro ma non tanto second movement in A Major proves the kernel that occupies pride of place. The Trio sounds as if the quartet were tuning their instruments, a musical eddy that gives forth an ostinato reel of deceptive asymmetrical rhythmic power.

The “Holy Song of Thanks” receives a truly spacious, nervously taut reading, a clear precedent of anything like the yearning for spirituality in Mahler. The long-held notes ring brazen and clean, the resolutions out of the anguished harmonies hard-won, devastating. It seems as though the contrasting movements on either side of this awesome movement support its otherworldly nature, especially since the immediate successor, Alla marcia, assai vivace, exerts a four-square, banal, almost vulgar mediocrity upon the “sacred” ritual, much in the spirit of Bach’s quodlibet from the Goldberg Variations. But even the London audience feels the respite Beethoven grants profundity in this movement; and then, it segues via an instrumental recitative to the final Allegro appassionato, a procedure (and melody) directly indebted to and intended for the Ninth Symphony. Another massive sonata-rondo, the movement pays homage to master Haydn while vanquishing Beethoven’s personal demons in a flurry of luminous figures in A Major from the most peerless quartet ensemble of its era.

A Best of the Year candidate, certainly, as the British audience could perceive from the concert’s outset.

—Gary Lemco

(Mark Turner – tenor saxophone; Ethan Iverson – piano; Ben Street – double bass; Billy Hart – drums)

Billy Hart is an artistic drummer who is equally at home with straight forward time playing or embarking on an imaginative approach. It is this latter quality that comes to the forefront with his latest  ECM release All Our Reasons.

In this second album with the same musicians, the nine tracks are all original material from the band members and tend to run to a more open approach of interpretation by the group. The disc starts with Hart’s composition “Song For Balkis” which opens with a subtle mallet drum solo by Hart. At close to thirteen minutes long, it provides plenty of space for each member to travel their own road, although there is a strong rubato section by the ensemble. A rather unlikely sounding song, ”Ohnedaruth” by pianist Ethan Iverson, which is based on John Coltrane’s Giant Steps, demonstrates his technique which he delivers with perception and quality.

The integrative framework of each composition defines the boundaries that the musicians can explore. The bulk of the solo efforts are taken up by pianist Iverson and  the tenor sax of Mark Turner and each demonstrates that they are fully capable of shouldering the burden. Turner’s playing is harnessed, but he instinctively knows where he should be. He has some lovely moments on “Nigeria” and “Wasteland”. Iverson again covers some magical musical ground with his work on “Duchess” where he seems to have found some inner tranquillity. He also uses his solo on the brief “Old Wood” to segue into Hart’s composition “Imke March” where the song begins and ends with a whistling melody that Hart claims he used to call his daughter  back home from the playground.

This is a highly intellectual program of music with Billy Hart’s dynamic ability used to define the outcome.

TrackList: Song for Balkis; Ohnedaruth; Tolli’s Dance; Nostalgia For The Impossible; Duchess; Nigeria; Wasteland; Old Wood; Imke’s March

—Pierre Giroux

Flutist Wissam Boustany is not only a wonderful performer but, clearly, a passionate promoter of composers from his homeland. His remarks in the booklet notes to this collection are passionate and speak of the beauty and “endless possibility” that musical expression offers, even emanating from cultures that have had a tough existence (such as those in the representative Armenia, Lebanon and Ukraine).

The selections are all very interesting and certainly pique the interest for more from these relatively obscure sources. Certainly, the “name” composer here is Khatchaturian, known chiefly for his ballet scores like Gayane or Spartacus and, somewhat, for his symphonies and concertos. I had not heard his Flute Concerto before but found it to be a real pleasure. Actually written first as a violin concerto for David Oistrakh; the great French flute virtuoso, Jean-Pierre Rampal asked Khatchaturian to write a flute transcription of the work. It is a standard three movement work chock full of some of the trademark spiky rhythms and percussion effects and plaintive melodies that permeate the composer’s other works. In certain moments, it resembles Khatchaturian’s Piano Concerto with a strange and very “Armenian” soulfulness, particularly the middle Andante sostenuto.  Boustany’s performance really is excellent and he has a marvelous tone and ample technique.

Hotaf Khoury is a Lebanese composer from Tripoli, but who has some ties to the Ukraine. He studied with Yury Ishenko at the National Academy of Music, Ukraine, and has subsequently taught as Ishenko’s assistant and, later, at the National Conservatory in Beirut. Khoury’s Mirror of Eternity is a concerto for flute and orchestra and makes a strong, atmospheric impression!  The opening Molto lento sounds mournful and plaintive. The flute line, throughout, is frequently doubled by other winds and is given melodies that have a melismatic quality that makes the flute resemble a mey or duduk in spots. The composer notes that the intensity of the opening movement is designed to represent a “desolate figure living in the middle of a society in denial.” The central movement conjures imagery of middle eastern cabarets and taverns while the closing Largo suggests the man (symbolized by the flutist) “retreating toward the depressed banality of his life.” Such depressing symbolism aside, this is a very interesting and compelling work, written for the present performer, Wissam Boustany.

This collection closes with the Chamber Symphony No. 3 by Yevhen Stankovych. Stankovych was born in Ukraine and studied composition with Adam Soltys at the L’viv Mykola Lysenko Conservatoire, later with Boris Lyatoshynsky and Myroslav Skoryk at the Kiev Conservatory. He has been working as a professor of composition in the National Music Academy of Ukraine, since 1998. The Chamber Symphony No. 3 is a relatively compact work in three movements that also serves as a flute concerto, of sorts. All of these works are written in a tonal but urgent style, including the Stankovych. There are certainly some wonderfully technical passages that showcase the flute throughout. This work, too, has a rather dark, emotional quality to it. As the composer’s own notes indicate there is a pervasive sense of “foreboding, darkness and despair interspersed by sudden moments of visionary peace.”  More importantly, this, too, is a very interesting work that has moments of great beauty (as the composer indicates.)

Boustany’s annotated remarks as well as the quotes from the composers involved may lead to the conclusion that this music is pretty grim and would make for depressing listening. Clearly, there is a strong emotional feel to all these works and which echoes Boustany’s own “Toward Humanity” project which uses music and musical performances to support humanitarian projects. However, even without knowing the mood or intent behind these compositions, this is extremely interesting and compelling music played beautifully.

—Daniel Coombs

This is certainly an ambitious program, mostly very well played, and the only thing that keeps it from receiving a four-star recommendation is Young-Ah Tan’s Schumann. There’s so much competition in Carnaval that she would have to have something new to say in the work for her performance to register fully. As it is, this is a highly competent rendition, but it might have been more prudent to include a piece less central to the Schumann canon—maybe Davidsbündlertänze or Humoreske. Nonetheless, Tan is fleet-footed (or fingered) and ever-sensitive to Schumann’s poetry, but compared to, say, Eric le Sage’s mostly well-received version on Alpha, Tan’s version is somewhat missing in éclat especially in the brilliant final pages, and she has a tendency to over-pedal, a habit that puts a damper (no pun intended) on the Préambule.

But then there’s the fact that Tan boldly tackles the music of three centuries and shows equal affinity for all. She takes one of Haydn’s grandest, most taxing sonatas (along with Sonata No. 62), written for the German-born English virtuoso Therese Jansen, and turns in a performance that’s stylish, alive with nuance and flair. Her Allegro molto finale isn’t as molto as I’ve heard in other interpretations, but then again, the slower tempo doesn’t lessen the stature of the movement—indeed, it tends to make it seem less pert than Jenő Jandó does in his lightning-quick rendition on Naxos.

After this work that takes us to the heights of late–Classical era rigor, it’s good to observe that Tan is as comfortable with Liszt’s effusive, heart-on-sleeve brand of Romanticism. This music is thrice familiar and available in dozens of recorded renditions, but Tan is not outclassed here. She captures all the stagey swagger of Liszt’s Verdi tribute, the inwardness and longing of the Sonetto 104 del Petrarca. Here, she compares entirely favorably with my benchmark recording by Louis Lortie (on Chandos).

Perhaps the most useful inclusion is the bracingly acerbic Sonata by Tan’s teacher Leon Kirchner. This piece is certainly not new to recordings; there’s a classic version by Leon Fleisher (available from ArkivMusic) that’s undoubtedly a barn-burner. But then so, pretty much, is Tan’s version. She sets out on a mission wherein she’s resolved to take no prisoners, and her steely virtuosity stands her in good stead throughout the tough pages of Kirchner’s Sonata. The disc would be just about worth acquiring on the strength of this performance, but then the Liszt and Haydn interpretations help to make this an appealingly varied program to boot.

MSR’s sonics are bright and very immediate; this is mostly a very good piano recording, though there is just a hint of edginess or glare to the sound, which may tend to accentuate (to her detriment) the effects of Tan’s pedaling in the Schumann. Cutting back on the volume helps a good bit; a slight treble cut will help even more. A small matter, as far as I’m concerned. This is a fine showcase for Young-Ah Tan’s considerable talents, and I recommend it to one and all.

—Lee Passarella

Samsung & LG to Offer Dual View OLED TVs – Samsung & LG are battling over shutter vs. passive 3D, but at the same time both are planning to offer later this year TVs which allow two people to view two different programs simultaneously from different angles on the same screen. For example, one person can watch a drama while another enjoys a ball game, on one TV, simultaneously. The “smart dual view” OLED TVs use fast switching speeds to show the two channels simultaneously. The hope is that some consumers will be willing to pay the higher price (and smaller screen sizes) of OLED TVs in order to have the dual view technology.

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Donna Summers Die – Two widely varied vocalists passed away this week. German singer Fischer-Dieskau was perhaps the most-recorded classical baritone in history, with hundreds of recordings of art song, oratorio and opera in the catalog. He died in Bavaria just short of his 87th birthday. Donna Summer was a five-time Grammy winner who gained prominence during the 70s disco era. She eventually became fluent in German and moved to Vienna. She died at age 63.

Oregon Electronics Recycling – The Oregon E-Cycles program requires electronics manufacturers to provide free statewide recycling, and has increased the amount collected since it started in 2009. For 2011 it recycled nearly 26 million pounds of worn-out TVs, computers, monitors and other electronic devices. Manufacturers selling devices in Oregon must register their brands with the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), which reviews recycling reports and inspects collection sites.