New Classical Tracks with Julie Amacher - Minnesota Public Radio

New Classical Tracks - Awadagin Pratt

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Awadagin Pratt/A Far Cry/Roomful of Teeth – Stillpoint (Art of the Piano)

“When I'm talking to a non-musician, they often say, ‘Oh, you’ve played in Carnegie Hall, sure, that’s great.’ But the only time they say, ‘Oh, well, you must be something!’ is when they find out I’ve been on Sesame Street,” says pianist Awadagin Pratt. “It was fun. I did a skit with Big Bird about sharing the piano. He was pecking away at the instrument, and then I entered the room and he said, ‘Do you play the piano?’ And I said, ‘Sure, I do.’ And he said, ‘Well, why don't you play a little something?’ The lesson was about sharing and turn-giving, so we took turns playing.”

In the world of classical music, Awadagin Pratt has shared the stage as a pianist, a conductor and, on occasion, as a violinist. He grew up in Pittsburgh, lives in Cincinnati, and now commutes to San Francisco in his new role as a professor at the San Francisco Conservatory.

Recently, he also shared the studio with two incredible ensembles, including the string orchestra A Far Cry and the vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth. Together, they bring to life six newly commissioned works which appear on his latest release, Stillpoint.

“ I was thinking two things. One, we have to have African-American composers. The second thing, in terms of the unifying element was the poem The Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot, which I love. So I decided to fight. I decided we would look at The Four Quartets and see if the composers could take inspiration from some of the lines as a unifying element.

“The five lines that I chose are the lines that I love, and they seem to be the right ones:

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;

Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,

But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,

Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,

Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,

There would be no dance, and there is only the dance. ”

— T.S. Eliot

Time Past Time Future is the piece that Alvin Singleton wrote for you. He's an American composer who always hoped that one day he would hear you play his music. What was that experience like for both of you when you were playing his music?

“It was great. I had met Alvin decades before and he has such a lovely personality, but he was also so generous. He liked what we were doing. The sound, it was demanding because of the dynamic range of four or five keys to the extreme of four or five fortes . It's challenging because of the stillness, but he loved it, which was really nice. It's always great when a composer is smiling when you finish playing, like, okay, that's pretty good!”

The piece that Pēteris Vasks wrote for you is a solo piano work titled Castillo Interior , and it focuses on the past and future gathered. Can you explain what that means and how we hear that in the music?

He wrote a piece for violin and cello called Castillo Interior, as well. And that's the piece that he transcribed for me with changes, and the title of the piece references Saint Teresa of Avila who has these seven castles built on the pathway to understanding God.

You have, within religion, those opposites of ascetic and ecstatic, and maybe they're not exactly opposites, but there's sort of two opposing energies kind of working together as one. And so the piece is really compelling, people absolutely love it.”

Listen on YouTube

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Resources

Awadagin Pratt/A Far Cry/Roomful of Teeth – Stillpoint (Amazon)

Awadagin Pratt/A Far Cry/Roomful of Teeth – Stillpoint (Art of the Piano)

Awadagin Pratt (official site)

A Far Cry (official site)

Roomful of Teeth (official site)

New Classical Tracks - Plinio Fernandes (radio edit)

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Plinio Fernandes - Bacheando (Decca)

“For me, playing the guitar gives me a sense of identity, because it's something that I have been doing since I was very, very young,” guitarist Plinio Fernandes says. “I don't really remember my life that well before I was 6 or 7, which is when I started to play. Like brushing my teeth, drinking water, showering and breathing, I just have to play a couple of notes and feel like that grounds me.”

Fernandes is a Brazilian guitarist who grew up surrounded by music. As his father’s guitar rested on the sofa, Fernandes would pluck a few strings. Before he knew it, he was headed to London to study at the Royal Academy of Music. That’s where he met his roommate, friend and musical colleague, cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason. Fernandes and Kanneh-Mason recently completed a tour in support of Fernandes’ second recording, Bacheando .

Fernandes says the album’s name is just a made-up word inspired by the title of Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras and as an homage to the great German master Johannes Sebastian Bach.

How does the music of Bach and the rich culture of Brazil come together on this recording?

“Villa-Lobos, our greatest composer of all time, who really reshaped Brazilian culture, was massively influenced by Bach. His contemporaries were massively influenced by that connection between Villa-Lobos and Baroque music. In addition to taking the pieces that already existed, Sergio Assad was one of the arrangers and composer on the album. He wrote a piece inspired by that concept to pair with the Prelude, Fugue and Vivace.”

One of your favorite pieces by Bach, the Prelude, Fugue and Allegro, is at the heart of this recording. Why is this one of your favorite pieces?

“Very simply, it’s one of the most beautiful pieces of music I’ve ever heard. And I grew up listening to it. The three movements represent to me what perfection is.”

How did the piece that Assad created for you come about?

“I came to him and we were discussing the repertoire for the album and said, ‘Sergio, I would love to have you writing something specifically for that.’ And then he was very keen on doing something that he first wrote, the Prelude and Fugues. It's the first fugue that he has ever written, which is quite something and a privilege to have that. And then it just kept on growing until it became this little suite of three movements.”

Can you talk about what it means when you're describing colors in playing the guitar?

“I was basically trying to use everything that the instrument has to offer. I think it is a very specific thing to the guitar. One can talk about the colors that you create with the piano, but with the guitar … you use both of your fingertips to produce the sound, so it's a very personal thing. Depending on the size of your fingers or the length of the nails, each person will have a very particular and unique sound.”

Listen on YouTube

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Resources

Plinio Fernandes - Bacheando (Amazon)

Plinio Fernandes - Bacheando (Decca)

Plinio Fernandes (official site)

Simone Menezes, Camila Provenzale and Philharmonic Zurich – Amazônia: Villa-Lobos - Glass (Alpha Classics)

New Classical Tracks - Simone Menezes (radio edit)

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“I think it's very funny that people think I am creative,” conductor Simone Menezes says. “I just I feel like the ideas are in the air and I just take them.”

Menezes is a Brazilian conductor who is known for her creative approach. With her new recording, Amazônia , she says it was just “so obvious” that this project should focus on the Amazonian rainforest. Her goal was to make an important point with no speech, just music. In other words, it’s art that goes straight to the heart.

The centerpiece of the recording is a suite by Heitor Villa-Lobos, Floresta do Amazonas . It’s a work that Menezes believes should be part of the standard repertoire.

“My opinion is that this music has some very strong points,” she says. “The first one: It's an epic. It sounds somehow like Carmina Burana . It has this large aspect and sounds like monumental music. The second, because of Villa-Lobos’ lyricism, is very touching. Sometimes we think about Latin American music as happy music. But in this case, it's deep music and the melodies come from the influence of fado, which is a deep Portuguese song.”

Why did you want to bring the rainforest to the forefront through this music?

“ For me, the Amazonia is one of the biggest treasures of humanity. We should consider that we are in a beautiful garden that is this Earth, and we have our job as guardians of this garden. This project aims to make people see how touching and beautiful this place is.

“And it's very funny that Villa-Lobos, when he wrote many pieces at the end of his life, he wrote, ‘Maybe my music is our letters from the posterity.’ And I think this is the case with this piece now.”

As you are leading this piece of music with the orchestra, is there a part of it that you really enjoy?

“The most touching is the ending of the speech. It's called the ‘Epilogue,’ or the very last movement, because it sums up everything. And the melody is sung by soprano Camila Provenzale, but she did not sing with lyrics. It's just a kind of vocalese with the orchestra. I have conducted this piece maybe 11 or 12 times recently, and this was the first time that I saw musicians crying during the concert.”

Listen on YouTube

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Resources

Simone Menezes, Camila Provenzale and Philharmonic Zurich – Amazônia: Villa-Lobos - Glass (Amazon)

Simone Menezes, Camila Provenzale and Philharmonic Zurich – Amazônia: Villa-Lobos - Glass (Alpha Classics)

Simone Menezes (official site)

Camila Provenzale (official site)

Philharmonic Zurich (official site)

Ronn McFarlane and Carolyn Surrick: And So Flows the River (Flowerpot Productions)

New Classical Tracks - Carolyn Surrick & Ronn McFarlane

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“The music that we're doing is music that's really a part of us,” viola da gamba player Carolyn Surrick says. “It's like music inside of us, the way that the deciduous forest is inside of us, because this is where we're from.”

Surrick and Ronn McFarlane have both lived in Maryland for most of their lives. Their careers have run somewhat parallel, with Surrick playing viola da gamba in the Ensemble Galilei, which she founded in 1990, and McFarlane playing lute with the Baltimore Consort and the folk trio Ayreheart, the ensemble he founded. Three years ago, when touring came to a halt during the global pandemic, they finally had the time to make music together, and they’ve been doing so ever since. They’ve just released their third recording, And So Flows the River.

Surrick: “This is the music of our lives. We're both over 60, and we’ve had a lot of time to incorporate music into our lives, to have music become central to our being. And so I wanted to bring the idea that as our lives are flowing along, we're accumulating music, we're accumulating things that we love along the way and bringing them to this project.”

How did you decide on the title And So Flows the River ? How does it reflect what we're hearing on the recording?

McFarlane: “In terms of flowing, the repertory itself was a real flow state for each of us. It brought music that each of us loved, regardless of the genre that it came from. So I think we kind of get into a flow state when we're deciding what to play, bringing up pieces from any memory, any part of our lives, anything we might have heard of, or maybe we're just discovering something for the first time.”

The album features Erik Satie’s Gymnopedies . What is your relationship to the pieces?

Surrick: “I think we both remember hearing them for the first time in the 1970s and thinking this music is so special. I mean, so simple and so beautiful. It has so much in it. So when we were casting about for what to put on this new recording, I said, ‘what about the Gymnopedies ?’ And it was kind of like, ‘Well, why not?’”

McFarlane: “My first experience of them was in the 1970s, but I didn't hear it on the piano at first. I heard it live in a guitar recital played by Christopher Parkening, who made some excellent arrangements of them. But I was so captivated hearing the first Gymnopedie for the first time that I really fell in love with it.”

You both also heard about Bach’s Sinfonia in the 1970s. What is your relationship with that piece?

McFarlane: “Yes, I first heard it when I went to a record store. That was back when they had records around 1968 or ‘69. I got the first Led Zeppelin album and the Walter Carlos, now Wendy Carlos, album Switched-On Bach . So I first heard this on a synthesizer with all its boops and beeps and whistles. So I think my idea of how it ought to sound was permanently skewed by hearing it that way. And it just sounded so fresh and great.”

And now you have added your own arrangement of the piece, which you described as a revelation. Why did you describe it that way?

Surrick: “We sat down to play it, and there was so much happening. You almost can't imagine that these two instruments could be doing all of this at the same time.”

And you have a percussionist on the recording?

Surrick: “Yes. Yousif Sheronick. He's fabulous. And so I call him up out of the blue, and he's like, ‘Yeah, cool. I'm free.’”

Give me an example of his playing in this recording that you want to make sure we don't miss.

McFarlane: “Well, I think the very first piece, W. Lee’s Reel , where Yusif is playing an ocean drum, is a great one.

“This piece has kind of a Scotch-Irish flavor to it, which reflects my dad's background. It's a sort of adventurous piece because it has something in the flute part that sounds like a propulsive fiddle tune in the Scotch-Irish tradition. And yet that's not the lead voice. You would think so because of the beginning. But as it goes along, the gamba comes in and actually has the melody as the slower moving part. Somehow, it seemed to fit the personality of my dad.”

W. Lee's Reel

Resources

Ronn McFarlane and Carolyn Surrick - And So Flows the River (Amazon)

Carolyn Surrick - official website

Ronn McFarlane - official website

Conspirare – Miró Quartet/Craig Hella Johnson – House of Belonging (Delos)

New Classical Tracks - Craig Hella Johnson

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“It's exciting, isn't it? It's hard to believe,” says Craig Hella Johnson, the artistic director of Conspirare. “I don't know how to understand the passage of time like this because it feels like we just got started.”

The vocal ensemble Conspirare was started 30 years ago in Austin, Texas, by Johnson, who was inspired by the power of music to change lives. Their anniversary celebration is underway with the release of their latest recording, House of Belonging , which features a long-awaited collaboration with the Miró Quartet.

“I spoke about collaborations early on and how we can partner with musical friends, both just for the sheer joy of it and also to really learn. It's how we keep a knife-sharp edge in terms of our own creativity.

“The Miró Quartet, they're just stupendous players themselves, and they come together and create this astounding magic.”

Can you explain the title, House of Belonging , and the music that lives within it?

“I thought, ‘What music do we need to hear at this time? What am I sensing in our audiences, the people? What are they going through in their lives? What's meant to be expressed from Conspirare at this time?’ So, I chose these pieces, and it was quite an eclectic bunch initially. And I thought, ‘Oh, well, I don't see the thread yet.’ And then suddenly it just appeared to me. It felt like what I observe culturally, just so many elements that aren't feeling a deep sense of belonging.

“David White has a wonderful poem called The House of Belonging . I decided to borrow that as a working title. And then in the process, which was kind of quick, I got in touch with Alex Berko and asked if he would consider creating an anchor piece, a multimovement work.

“He created a beautiful work called Sacred Place , and that's at the heart of this CD. He used a Jewish service as a model for the piece, as well as texts from a lot of different places. Wendell Berry is in the first movement. Then there’s John Muir in a letter that he wrote to Teddy Roosevelt about preserving Yosemite.”

You've said commissioning new works is important as part of the mission of Conspirare, and the recording opens with one of your pieces, Reaching .

“ For our Christmas concerts, we always sing in Austin and often in Houston. But in December 2022, we made a decision to reach out to the people in Uvalde, Texas, where that horrible school shooting took place in May 2022, to ask if they thought it would be helpful if we brought the concert on the road to Uvalde.

“The whole team wanted to do this so deeply. The piece you're referencing is called Reaching , and it is the first track on this CD, just because it speaks to the yearning, the first lines of, ‘We are far away from home. We were turning away, oh, my unknown home. I love you. I'll never return.’ It just spoke to that sense of separation in a simple way.“

Listen on YouTube

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Resources

Conspirare – Miró Quartet/Craig Hella Johnson – House of Belonging (Amazon)

Conspirare – Miró Quartet/Craig Hella Johnson – House of Belonging (Delos)

Conspirare (official site)

Miró Quartet (official site)

Craig Hella Johnson (official site)

Rachel Barton Pine/Royal Scottish National Orchestra/Tito Muñoz – Dependent Arising (Cedille Records)

New Classical Tracks - Rachel Barton Pine

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“From age 10, when Santa Claus brought me my first transistor radio and I discovered all the other kinds of music out there on the airwaves, I was particularly drawn to metal,” violinist Rachel Barton Pine says. “It never occurred to me to play anything but classical on my own instrument. Actually, what changed it all was when I played the National Anthem for a Chicago Bulls playoff game.”

That's violinist Rachel Barton Pine, who's been living at the intersection of metal and classical music most of her life. On her new recording, Dependent Arising , these two worlds collide in the best possible way. Pairing the Shostakovich Violin Concerto No. 1 with a new concerto written for her by a fellow metalhead, Earl Maneein.

“I used to listen to metal to relax when I was a teenager, which sounds counterintuitive. And I thought that I was drawn to metal because it was so different from classical. But it turns out that I must have been drawn to it because it's so close to classical, which I literally didn't realize until I started playing some of it in my early 20s. And I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, here's a Vivaldi passage,’ or, ‘Here's this Brahms lick.’ So I thought, ‘How can I introduce people to this side of classical, to the more intense stuff?’

“That's when I started going on the rock radio stations. I would use a cover song kind of as a bridge, like, here's a tune you already know, but here's how it sounds played on the violin. Trying to really rock out. I was really inventing how to make some of these sound effects, which was really breaking new ground. Turns out that Earl Maneein, my friend who wrote this concerto, was literally doing the same thing in New York at the same time, but we didn't yet know about each other.”

You paired this new concerto with Shostakovich's Violin Concerto. You've said that this concerto by Shostakovich holds a special place among metal enthusiasts. Why is that?

“I think the reason that it connects so much is that it's full of some of the same emotions. We all know that Shostakovich was living under this repressive Soviet regime where he was afraid for his life, literally.”

What about Shostakovich's Violin Concerto moves you when you're playing it?

“The older I've gotten and the more aware of history I am and everything else, what moves me so deeply is particularly the first movement. It's the fear and the hiding and all of that that’s just so raw. There's something just so incredible about it going on and on and on until you almost can't take it.”

The new concerto on your recording is called Dependent Arising . What is the emotional journey that the listener experiences?

“Earl is a practicing Buddhist, hence the title of the entire piece, which is Dependent Arising , meaning that everything in life is connected to everything else, that nothing is independent of everything else. Something called the “Heart Sutra” is the last movement, where it's embodying wrath. It's like going and going until you achieve some kind of catharsis, and you definitely hear that in the music. It's relentless and feels very empowering by the end.”

Listen on YouTube

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Resources

Rachel Barton Pine/Royal Scottish National Orchestra/Tito Muñoz – Dependent Arising (Amazon)

Rachel Barton Pine/Royal Scottish National Orchestra/Tito Muñoz – Dependent Arising (Cedille Records)

Rachel Barton Pine (official site)

Royal Scottish National Orchestra (official site)

Tito Muñoz (official site)

Clancy Newman and Natalie Zhu – From Method to Madness: The American Sound (Albany)

New Classical Tracks - Clancy Newman and Natalie Zhu

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“I just love to play with Clancy because he challenges my mind,” pianist Natalie Zhu says. “This program was Clancy's idea. When I tried to plan for my festival, I asked Clancy if we should play a cello recital together. I asked him, ‘What do you want to play?’ And he came up with this program. I said, ‘Oh, my goodness, I don't know any of the pieces on the program.’ I had to learn every piece.”

Zhu and cellist Clancy Newman have been performing together for over 20 years. During the pandemic lockdown, they created a virtual recital that evolved into their debut recording, From Method to Madness: The American Sound .

Newman: “Natalie has always been very kind to go along with whatever I'm doing. She's so open-minded and willing to try whatever I might suggest. Playing with Natalie, I feel like I can do anything, and I have the freedom to be myself."

This recording relates and showcases the element of friendship and/or collaboration between composers, performers and friends. And this was a time when you had to really be creative about how you were having those collaborations. How did this come together during the global pandemic?

Newman: “ The From Method to Madness part is the title of my composition that's on the album. And I thought, there's something about the idea of From Method to Madness that encapsulates both art in general and music. I think it reflects the idea that you need to have both the passion, which you could say is the madness, the irrational element and the emotion, but also the discipline, using some sort of method and structure.

“You can see the madness in America certainly now. There's also these sweeping melodies that I think of as part of what America has — not to be cliché, but with the mountains and the valleys and just the beauty of America.”

You wrote the title track in 2008, yet this is the first time you've recorded it. Why was it the last piece on the recording rather than maybe the opening piece?

Newman: “The piece is 5 minutes long, and it's basically just one huge crescendo all the way to the end. It's a little bit like a cup of water boiling. And then gradually it starts to bubble until finally it's just boiling and boiling over onto the stove. And I think that this piece has that excitement to it. And I guess I thought it would be a good way to end the album after beginning it with the Barber sonata that starts in a more conventional and romantic manner.”

Clancy, you gave the premiere performance of composer Kenji Bunch’s Broken Music in 2003 at Lincoln Center. It is a piece that was written for you, and again, this is the first time you've recorded it.

Newman: “In 2001, I won the Naumberg Competition. Part of winning that was that I would get to premiere a piece that Naumberg would commission. By sheer luck, Naumberg chose Kenji to write the piece, and I knew Kenji because we were at Juilliard together. Every time I've ever performed it, it's always the audience’s favorite thing on the program.”

Natalie, what strikes you about the piece Broken Music ? Is there a section that is especially powerful to you?

Zhu: “ My favorite movement would be the “Broken Verse,” which is the slow third movement of the piece. It just touches your heart. It’s sad and it's lonely, but at the same time, at the very end I am still hopeful. The first moment I heard the piece, it took me somewhere else. Even though it is sad, it comforts me in some way.

“Actually, it made me think about my childhood. I immigrated to America from China. I came to America when I was, I think, 10. America is a completely different place, and I feel like this piece really brings back those great memories in my life.”

Listen on YouTube

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Resources

Clancy Newman and Natalie Zhu – From Method to Madness: The American Sound (Amazon)

Clancy Newman and Natalie Zhu – From Method to Madness: The American Sound (Albany)

Clancy Newman (official site)

Marc-André Hamelin – Fauré : Nocturnes and Barcarolles (Hyperion)

New Classical Tracks - Mark-Andre Hamelin and Cathy Fuller

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“The thing about him is that he's so honest and real and natural,” pianist and radio host Cathy Fuller says. “He never thinks about how he comes across so much as how the music gets to the other person, and you can even sense that in the way he converses. And that's one of the things that really struck me about him.”

That’s what impressed Fuller when she first encountered pianist Marc-André Hamelin . He was on the other side of the microphone as she interviewed him for her classical radio program in Boston. That interview led to lunch, then long-distance phone calls and eventually marriage. And now, for the first time, Fuller , who is also an accomplished pianist, performs with Hamelin on his new recording. It features the complete nocturnes and barcarolles by Gabriel Fauré, as well as the piece they perform together, the delightful Dolly Suite , for piano four-hands.

Fuller: “I thought, ‘Playing with Marc-André Hamelin — oh, my God! I have to do scales with Marc. Forget it!’ But I remember, when I was studying the music, how much I loved being next to somebody. I think he made me better just by being next to him. But I really had to work at this. And it was he who asked me. I would never have asked to do this. And I was so touched that he had the faith and confidence in me to do this. And I really tried to rise to the occasion, but it was a ton of fun.

“This was the first time we really played together. And I have a really hard time with the idea of giving up the pedal. That was difficult. And so does he — don't you, Marc?”

Hamelin: “Oh, yes, absolutely. I was taking the bottom part in the duet that we were playing, and it's more logical for the bottom player to take the pedal. So, it takes two players who are really in sympathy with each other, you know? And we really worked at it. And the result really speaks for itself.”

Why did you want to record the barcarolles and nocturnes of Gabriel Fauré?

Hamelin: “To have all the nocturnes and barcarolles in one place was an especially attractive idea, I thought. And the more I delved into it, the more wonderful I thought it was. And you just go from one wonder to the next.”

Nocturnes are often a night piece and therefore something that's more subtle or subdued. However, these nocturnes by Fauré are not like that. Can you talk about the sense of drama that he creates in some of these pieces?

Hamelin: “Fauré’s publisher was mainly responsible for the titles given to his works upon publication, because he really didn't care much about what to call them. It's really what was expressed that was of prime importance to him.

“So a nocturne is not necessarily nocturnal in his outlook, because some of them get quite dramatic. I'm thinking of the last nocturne, No. 13, which has a very stormy and anguished middle section that really rises to a big fever pitch.”

If you were going to sit down and play one of those nocturnes right now, which one would you choose and why?

Hamelin: “One of them, to my mind, stands out above almost all the others. And that's No. 6. The special atmosphere that he creates has always been very, very special to me, perhaps more than any other of his piano works.

“Although if you put it on the CD with the nocturnes, the very beginning of the first nocturne is magical.”

Do you feel that way about the barcarolles as well? Is there one that stands out to you?

Hamelin: “The Third Barcarolle, which I learned when I was a teenager. I think I was maybe 16 or something like that, and I've always had a soft spot for it. And on a personal note, whenever I visited my mother, she asked me to play it because she just adored it.”

Listen on YouTube

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Resources

Marc-André Hamelin – Faure: Nocturnes and Barcarolles (Amazon)

Marc-André Hamelin – Faure: Nocturnes and Barcarolles (Hyperion)

Marc-André Hamelin (official site)

Sphinx Virtuosi – Songs for Our Times (Deutsche Grammophon)

New Classical Tracks - Andre Dowell, Sphinx Virtuosi

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“My role with the organization as the chief of artist engagement is to really understand the talent that is out there and to be able to recruit the musicians who perform with the Sphinx Virtuosi,” Andre Dowell says. “Community engagement, in terms of how they are engaging their community, not just the youth, but also their audiences and educating them about our mission, which is transforming life through the power of diversity in the arts.”

For the past 15 years, Dowell has watched the Sphinx Organization evolve as it strives for and achieves that mission. One way in which it’s doing that is with a professional, self-conducted touring ensemble of 18 members made up of freelance musicians and professors at universities. That ensemble is Sphinx Virtuosi, which has just released its debut recording, Songs for Our Times .

“Over the past couple of years, we've had the great opportunity to have our programs be comprised solely of musicians who are Black or Latino. Because of that, we really wanted to have an album out that represented not only the Sphinx Organization, but the Sphinx Virtuosi. One thing that you'll find with our debut album is that every composer is a composer of color.”

Why is this title, Songs for Our Times , so significant?

“ Songs for Our Times really digs into composers that we've worked with in the past, celebrating artists and composers who have paved the way. We talk about Florence Price, for example. We talk about Jessie Montgomery, Valerie Coleman, Carlos Simon, and we have a great arrangement of Beethoven's Bridgetower by Rubén Rengel . Songs for Our Times goes into the past, the rich history of the Sphinx organization, and explores how that intertwines with the composers of today.

The album opens with Global Warming , by Michael Abels, who won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Music. Can you talk about the history of this piece and why it fits in so well with this debut recording?

“ This piece really inspired us to feature Michael Abels as a composer. This piece just captures so perfectly what it means to be in this world today and going through COVID-19 and the pandemic. And what you'll find on the CD is George Floyd in the aftermath of that, in terms of what it means to reflect in this world today.”

Watch on YouTube

There's an unusual time signature in the piece by Ricardo Hertz. It's called Sisyphus in the Big City . Why do we have this 25/16 time signature?

“ It is great. And if you listen to the music enough, you'll be able to understand and feel the rhythmic structure of it. We have the great opportunity to play this piece in Brazil with Ricardo himself. It’s something that requires a lot of communication in terms of being able to play that type of time signatures while also keeping the groove.”

Valerie Coleman's two-movement piece, Tracing Visions , is on this recording, and each of the movements is so powerful. Would you share the story behind them?

“ The first movement we talk about Emmett Till and other victims of domestic violence or terrorism, if you will. It's a remembrance of those times. And it ends with the second movement, which means power and is a celebration of where we have come in our society. And she takes this motif and really expands it to uplift the work that has been done, and that we continue to do, and the fight that we continue to have in our society.”

Listen on YouTube

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Resources

Sphinx Virtuosi – Songs for Our Times (Amazon)

Sphinx Virtuosi – Songs for Our Times (Deutsche Grammophon)

Sphinx Virtuosi (official site)

Ashley Jackson and the Harlem Chamber Players – Ennanga (Bright Shiny Things)

New Classical Tracks - Ashley Jackson

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“I started thinking about this album in the summer of 2020. We were still living in Harlem, and the protests were happening just outside of our street,” harpist Ashley Jackson says, “And I really remember sitting and practicing and thinking, ‘What can I put on my music stand that's going to be able to speak to what's happening right now?’”

Jackson is an assistant professor of music at Hunter College. She commutes to New York City once a week from her home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. That gives her time to hang out with the Harlem Chamber Players, who join her on her debut recording, Ennanga .

“I started [playing] African American spirituals. For me, they're America’s first performing art form. We have so many different genres of music that stem from them.” Jackson says, “I started with two spiritual arrangements by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, and then I wanted to branch out to other genres. And so that's why I have a mixture. I have a piece by Alice Coltrane called Prima , and, of course, Ennanga , by William Grant Still.

“Ennanga as a piece that takes us on a journey through different American musical styles. And that's really what I was trying to go for in this debut album. Ennanga itself is a type of Ugandan harp, and I really wanted to focus and have listeners think about not only the African American roots of American music, but the West African roots of American music.”

The album opens with a recording of a piece by Alice Coltrane. What inspired you to include it?

“ In the fall of 2018, I had the opportunity to perform an arrangement of Prima with the Urban Playground Orchestra, and it was one of those pieces where I thought, ‘I'm not finished with it, I still have more learning to do.’ So fast forward to now and I'm planning the concept of the album. I take out Prima and I'm thinking about the summer of 2020 and moments of healing and justice, and prima means love, pure love for the divine, which completely melts the heart. So, I said, this piece has to be on here.”

There is a piece by composer and harpist Brandy Younger called Essence of Ruby in this album. Could you tell more about her and this piece?

“ She's one of my harp sisters. Starting in 2020, she started to release solo harp arrangements of her compositions and I was really excited. I thought, yes, finally, something she’s composed that I can play, and Essence of Ruby was one of them. And I love the piece. I loved the groove-based rhythm that it has and I love how it draws from not only jazz but R&B, and that's my musical DNA, that's the music I grew up listening to.”

There are two African American spirituals on this recording by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. One is called I'm Troubled in Mind , and it is the last track of the album. Why did you decide to close the recording with this piece?

“ It’s one of those rare spirituals that uses the first person. ‘I'm troubled in mind’ speaks so clearly and plainly to how the enslaved channeled grief and pain on a daily basis. ‘ The angels changed my name. I looked at my hands and my hands were new. I looked at my feet and my feet were new,’ so I wanted to close the album by asking us to consider how we can move forward towards the future in a way in which we are changed for the better, that we're looking ahead towards a brighter day, a moment of freedom for all of us.”

Ennanga: I

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Resources

Ashley Jackson and the Harlem Chamber Players – Ennanga (Amazon)

Ashley Jackson and the Harlem Chamber Players – Ennanga (Bright Shiny Things)

Ashley Jackson (official site)

Harlem Chamber Players (official site)

Michelle Cann – Revival: Music of Price and Bonds (Curtis Studio)

New Classical Tracks - Michelle Cann

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Pianist Michelle Cann has had a pretty incredible journey. Her path into the world of piano led her to the Cleveland Institute and the Curtis Institute of Music, which is where she teaches. In 2022, she was the recipient of the Sphinx Medal of Excellence. Now, her journey goes down another life-changing path with the release of her debut recording, Revival: Music of Price and Bonds .

“Growing up, I didn't play any music by any Black composers other than church music. Nothing in the classical field was really ever assigned to me. I wasn't really aware of anyone except for Scott Joplin,” Cann says. “And it wasn't until 2016 that I was introduced to the Florence Price Piano Concerto and I was asked to play it. I'd never heard of her, never heard of the piece, and I read through it. You can only imagine that moment and put yourself in my shoes. I've never been aware of somebody like her in this field.

“And I remember, at that point, I was reading her story. I was looking for anything I could find about her. I was looking to see, ‘What else did she write?’ And then one of the things that was out there at that time was her piano sonata. How have I never heard of this piano sonata? I’m a pianist!

“I remember exactly where I was, sitting at the piano in my apartment at the time, and I was reading through it and there were tears going down my eyes. One of the most beautiful things ever written for piano is the second movement of that piano sonata. And I called my mother and I was emotional and my mom was getting emotional because I asked myself, ‘How could they deny this woman her place in history? Why did no one know to share this with me?’

“It was from there that I came across Margaret Bonds. I read that Margaret Bonds was actually one of Florence Price's most successful students. They met because Price moved to Chicago alone. She moved from Little Rock, Arkansas. She had kids, was divorced and had no connections. She was just starting to make them. And one of them was with the Bonds family. They actually took her in.

“And Margaret Bond, of course, had her own story. She went on to become a great composer and pianist, and she premiered many of Florence Price's works as a performer. She didn't write as much for solo piano, not like Price. One of her most influential and important works is the Spiritual Suite , which is on this album. I had to include the suite because it is just so great what she does with these spirituals.”

What do you feel like you personally bring to their music as a pianist?

“I feel that I am on this journey with these composers, and the final thing I feel is a huge sense of pride. I feel so honored to be one of the conduits of their story.

“So being part of this rediscovery and excitement about their story and their music and their voice in America that is everything to me. And when I perform their music, I perform it with that knowledge and that pride.

“Because if I can do anything with this album, it’s to share this music with the world. These women deserve a place in the canon of great American classical music.”

Spiritual Suite: I. Valley of the Bones

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Resources

Michelle Cann – Revival: Music of Price and Bonds (Curtis Studio)

Michelle Cann (official site)

Gabriel Olafs and Steiney Sigurðardóttir: Lullabies for Piano and Cello (Decca)

New Classical Tracks - Gabriel Olafs

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“When you write a pop song today, you want it to be catchy. But with folk music, you want it to be catchy for hundreds of years. You need it to survive. I really like that,” pianist Gabríel Ólafs says. “I thought that was intriguing. And I thought of this idea of challenging myself to write new ‘folk melodies’ or new lullabies.”

That’s the idea behind the third recording from the 24-year-old Icelandic pianist, featuring cellist Steiney Sigurðardóttir. It’s a collection of lullabies for cello and piano based on Icelandic folk songs. The pieces were inspired by a collection of melodies he discovered in an antique book shop in Reykjavik, Iceland.

“I'm on a list at this old bookstore, and they often call me for stuff that comes in. And when they called about this one, I recognized it as something that I learned about in school studying music in Iceland. I had totally forgotten about it, and I had never seen the book. It’s quite rare, this book itself.

“It contains our most important piece of musical history in Iceland. Basically, it was a priest that toured the country and collected them from families and churches, and he went to every part of Iceland around the island, and he collected these melodies. And I think what captured me was that many of these melodies, as I was just reading them and playing them on the piano, I thought they were surprisingly catchy.”

How did you decide which ones you were going record?

“ I noticed very early on that most of the melodies that I really liked, my immediate favorites, were lullabies. I picked a combination of some lesser-known ones that I found for the first time in the music score, but then I also picked some that I recognized and were personally my favorites.

“For example, Mama , which means mother or mom in Icelandic, is probably our most celebrated and common lullaby here in Iceland. And it's one that my mom, or rather my parents, would sing to me.

“The opening track is called Fantasia , which is an original melody. It is sort of inspired by the Celtic side of Icelandic musical heritage. We have a sort of Irish Celtic population that arrived early on and very much influenced the musical sound of the Vikings, and it also celebrates my love of fantasy. I'm a huge nerd, and I've recently been able to admit this publicly. I'm really into The Lord of the Rings books.”

Why is nostalgia important to you as you create your music?

“ Because of the nuance in this feeling of nostalgia. If you try to express nostalgia or create a nostalgic feeling in a piece of music, I feel like it translates well because of this nuance, because it's not too on the nose of a feeling. Ever since I started writing, I do very much chase a feeling of nostalgia in many of my pieces.

“I would describe this record as maybe an a la carte menu. You know, in cooking, you can make a really complicated big dish, and it's amazing, but you can also make a really complicated big dish that doesn't taste very good. What I discovered about myself is me wanting to create a musical a la carte menu, where every small little dish does satisfy you.”

Gabríel Ólafs - Lullabies for Piano and Cello ft. Steiney Sigurðardóttir

Resources

Gabríel Ólafs and Steiney Sigurðardóttir: Lullabies for Piano and Cello - (Amazon)

Gabríel Ólafs - official website

Joshua Bell, the Singapore Chinese Orchestra and Tsung Yeh: Butterfly Lovers (Sony Classical)

New Classical Tracks - Joshua Bell

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Joshua Bell is a world-class violinist who has also been music director of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields since 2011. With all his years of experience, it might be difficult to imagine insecurities creeping in on occasion.

But that’s precisely what happened during the making of his latest recording, Butterfly Lovers , with the Singapore Chinese Orchestra.

“To tell you the truth, I was a bit scared to walk out on stage at the first rehearsal,” Bell says. “[But] it was just very heartwarming, the reception I got from the orchestra and that sense of acceptance from a different culture.”

In 2018, you said, “My new favorite orchestra besides the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields in London is the Singapore Chinese Orchestra.” What do you love about this orchestra?

“I first went to them about seven years ago. At the time, they said, ‘We have these arrangements for Chinese orchestra, using Chinese instruments, of some classic violin pieces, like Introduction et Rondo Capriccioso , by Saint-Saens, and Zigeunerweisen , by Sarasate.’ I fell in love with the unique sound of a Chinese orchestra, with instruments like the pipa and the erhu. It was thrilling.”

When did you decide you wanted to play Butterfly Lovers with the orchestra?

“For years, I didn't take the time to really get to know the piece. I just kept hearing about it and then finally sat down and listened to it with the music. It is a gorgeous piece of music. And I had this new relationship with the Chinese orchestra in Singapore, and I thought the stars were aligned for me to learn this piece and to play with my new friends in Singapore. And that's what happened.”

I know that you also have a special relationship with the conductor with whom you're working on this project and that you met him early in your career. How did you develop that relationship along the way?

“Maestro Tsung Yeh and I actually met a few decades ago. He was the one who brought me to Singapore. The musical language of the Butterfly Lovers is rooted in the Chinese sound of Chinese instruments, although it's a weird hybrid of a piece in that it was ironically written for Western instruments in Western orchestra about 50 years ago. In our case, we've actually reverse engineered it back to Chinese instruments and Chinese orchestra.”

What is the history of this piece, and why is it so popular and beloved?

“The easiest way to describe the Butterfly Lovers is sort of like the Chinese Romeo and Juliet . It’s about a young Chinese woman who wants to study during a time where girls were not encouraged to study. So she dresses up as a boy to go study at the school, and she meets a boy who becomes her best friend. But she's secretly falling in love with him and he doesn't know that she's a girl.

“The truth eventually comes out and they fall in love, but she's been betrothed to someone else. And because of this he becomes heartbroken, falls ill and dies. So on her wedding day, heartbroken that she's not with the man she loves, she decides to dig into his grave and out of the grave emerge two butterflies.

“When I first heard it, I got goosebumps because the melody is so beautiful and it's very descriptive music. You can hear the strife between the families and all the longing. In the end, it's the two butterflies going away together, and you can feel all those things in the music.”

Is there a moment in this work that really gets you every time you play it?

“At the very end, the culmination of the piece features the opening melody, originally played by the violin solo, now with the whole orchestra, so 30 players playing in unison. It's quite dramatic, and it's one of the moments that first gave me goose bumps.”

Joshua Bell - Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto: Allegro (Official Video)

Resources

Joshua Bell, the Singapore Chinese Orchestra and Tsung Yeh: Butterfly Lovers - (Amazon)

Joshua Bell - official website

Singapore Chinese Orchestra - official website

William Kanengiser and the Alexander String Quartet — British Invasion (Foghorn Classics)

New Classical Tracks - William Kanengiser and Ian Krouse

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“When I was in high school, I was in a rock band called Euphoria. We did all these covers. I had massive hair,” guitarist William Kanengiser says. “Even though I'm a classical guitarist, I have a background in rock, jazz, flamenco and world music. The whole vibe of this recording is something that comes naturally.”

That vibe is the British Invasion of the ‘60s and ‘70s in guitar quintet form, featuring Kanengiser, best known as a founding member of the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, and the Alexander String Quartet.

Kanengiser joins the Alexander String in their first album, British Invasion . It features incredible pieces inspired by Led Zeppelin, Sting and the Beatles. Kanengiser and composer Ian Krouse talk about how this project came together.

How did the Led Zeppelin-inspired piece “Labyrinth” come about?

Krouse: “I am also a guitarist, although I stopped playing many years ago. Growing up, I was interested in rock music and the Beatles, the Stones and Jimi Hendrix. I played in bands and learned how to do folk fingerpicking, which was my gateway to classical music.

“I don't even remember how it started, but Bill and I were talking, and the idea of me writing a piece for the LAGQ based on a Led Zeppelin song came into view. We both thought, ‘Yeah, let's do this.’ I jumped right on it and wrote ‘Labyrinth.’ The original version was for four guitars.

“A few years ago, Bill called me and asked if I would consider making a new version of ‘Labyrinth’ for guitar and string quartet. The words were hardly out of your mouth when I said, ‘Absolutely.’”

Kanengiser: “Although it's a classical guitar, I strung a second guitar with specialized steel strings. I have steel strings on the trebles and play with a pick. I get to do a bottleneck slide solo in this open rock tuning.

“He writes a passacaglia in a baroque form. There's a 12-tone fugue on the subject. It's an intense piece. That's the highest level of composition. This is a crossover pop tune and a serious, amazing contemporary composition.”

Tell me about “Prims: Six Songs,” by Sting, and the composer who made it.

Kanengiser: “Dušan Bogdanović has been my dear friend for decades. Sting did a project quite a few years ago where he approached the music of John Dowland. He worked with lutist Edin Karamazov, who is good friends with Dušan. Edin commissioned Dušan to write these arrangements.

“There's this beautiful letter that Sting wrote to Dušan saying, ‘You took the broken fragments of my songs and turned them into a flight of nightingales.’”

How did the work of John Dowland end up on this recording?

Kanengiser: “He was like a rock star, the Jimmy Page of the Elizabethan age. I knew Ian had written this spectacular piece called ‘Music and Four Sharps,’ based on ‘Frog Galliard,’ by Dowland.

Krouse: “I've always enjoyed the thrill of music that picks you up and takes you somewhere else over many minutes. In both pieces, the goal was to unleash energy and passion. “

British Invasion Official Trailer (William Kanengiser & The Alexander String Quartet)

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Resources

William Kanengiser and the Alexander String Quartet — British Invasion (Amazon)

William Kanengiser and the Alexander String Quartet — British Invasion (Arkiv music)

William Kanengiser (official site)

Alexander String Quartet (official site)

Hilary Hahn - Eugène Ysaÿe: Six Sonatas for Violin (Deutsche Grammophon)

New Classical Tracks - Hilary Hahn

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“This was my grand homage. And I really put so much love and time and energy and respect into the recording,” violinist Hilary Hahn says. “I really wanted to focus on that aspect, almost like giving a gift to a relative on their birthday. This is my gift to my musical grandfather on his hundredth birthday.”

Hahn is talking about her new recording featuring the violin sonatas of Belgian violinist and composer Eugène Ysaÿe. He composed these masterpieces 100 years ago this month. Each one was dedicated to a top violinist of the day.

“I am one generation removed from him musically. He was born in the 1850s. I was born in 1979, but my teacher was born in 1907 and studied with him. So there was something about listening to him, listening to the early recordings of his I when I hadn't heard them for a while, that was very surprising for me.

“I have spent most of my career trying to get closer to my own way of playing, my own sense of expression and my own sense of freedom within the instrument. And I realized that instead of getting closer to myself as an individual, I've gotten closer to myself as part of a long history. Because when I heard Ysaÿe, it was like opening a box in your grandparents attic and looking at a photo of an ancestor. But it is also like looking in the mirror, because they might be wearing different clothing but there's something about them that's just like you.

“While listening to his recordings, I realized there is musical DNA. Somehow, deep in my soul, I have internalized a set of values in my playing that I must have inherited.

“Ysaÿe also wanted to lift up some incredible violinists of his day, and he dedicated these sonatas to several of those. I don't know if it's obvious to the listener or the performer, but the deeper you get into the pieces, the more you realize it's customized for different players. The feeling of playing the instrument is different in each piece, and it's a bit of an insight into what it must have felt like to be that person. Also, there are lots of hidden messages in these pieces that were never written down in the music. So it's kind of a little game of Clue.

“A very good example of that is the beginning of the Sonata No. 2, Obsession , which was dedicated to a violinist who played fast but also practiced in a very fragmented way. So he would kind of start with one thing and quickly work on a phrase of something else and go back to the other thing. A sort of free-flowing mentality is in practice that Ysaÿe brings that into his writing for that particular violinist.”

You said listening back to yourself playing these pieces gave you goose bumps. What were you hearing that caused that?

“ I think the most goose bumpy thing for me was just listening to Ysaÿe’s own playing and then getting as close as I wanted to these pieces in a total immersion studio situation. Listening to the playback and drawing these connections back to the past, but also knowing that what I do now is very much geared toward the future. And so that feeling of inheriting this sense of mission, of passing things on from the past to the future generations.”

Ysaÿe: 6 Sonatas for Violin Solo, Op. 27 - Sonata No. 6 in E Major

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Resources

Hilary Hahn - Eugène Ysaÿe: Six Sonatas for Violin (Deutsche Grammophon)

Hilary Hahn - Eugène Ysaÿe: Six Sonatas for Violin (Amazon)

Maya Beiser – InfInIte Bach: J.S. Bach’s Six Cello Suites (Islandia Music Records)

New Classical Tracks - Maya Beiser

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“I'll never forget. I think I was 10. My father said, ‘Maya, you have to decide: It's Carnegie Hall or Wimbledon,’” cellist Maya Beiser says, “And I remember telling him, ‘I don't think it's going to be Wimbledon, so why don't we do Carnegie Hall?’”

Beiser did not disappoint her father. She has performed at Carnegie Hall many times over the years. She admits her father wasn’t all that keen on the crazy contemporary music for which she’s best known. However, he would have loved her latest recording, which is why she dedicated it to him. It’s called Infinite Bach ,’ and it features the composer’s famous cello suites.

“ The earliest musical memory that I have is of Bach, specifically the Bach cello suites,” she says. “I grew up in the northern part of Israel, in the Galilee, at a time where there was constant threat of war. And we spent actually a lot of time in shelters during my early childhood. I grew up in a commune. It was called a kibbutz.

“And my father would always just listen to music. He bought this old recording of Pablo Casals performing the cello suites, and that is the earliest memory of my childhood, is the pleasure of just listening to that music in my parents’ little house. It was the sense of safety and the connection that music always had for love.

“I never thought I was going to record the Bach suites, because I always felt that there were enough recordings out there. There were wonderful cellists who have already done that, and I felt that I had a different mission. I'm 60 now. So it was kind of a big, momentous moment. For years, I had to juggle being a mother and a partner and all these things, and then the pandemic. During that time, my partner and I found this house in the Berkshires. We just fell in love with that place because it was inspiring. It had this separate converted barn; it just had the most incredible acoustics.

“The first day I was there, I just took my cello and I sat in the middle of this empty space and just started to play the Bach suites. I all of a sudden realized that this is what I want to do for the next year. I imagined the cello as this sort of giant organ that takes over, and I wanted to create all these different reverbs and delays, but without any artificial electronics. I wanted everything to be acoustic.”

You say in your liner notes that some believe the suites bear a whisper of Bach’s wife. Why did you include this?

“ All my teachers were men; all my mentors were men. And they always told me, you need to listen to Pablo Casals and Rostropovich and Pierre Fournier. I can give you the list. They were all older men. There was no model of how a woman would think of this music.

“There are people who claim that Anna Magdalena, Bach’s wife, was actually the one who wrote the suites. And whether it’s true or not, the idea intrigued me. So I just liked to think about it as if I'm presenting a feminine Bach.”

Maya Beiser: InfInIte Bach (Official Music Video) Water, The Prelude in D minor

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Resources

Maya Beiser – Infinite Bach: J.S. Bach’s Six Cello Suites (Islandia Music Records)

Maya Beiser – Infinite Bach: J.S. Bach’s Six Cello Suites (Amazon)

Maya Beiser (official site)

Randall Goosby with the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin — Max Bruch & Florence Price Violin Concertos (Decca)

New Classical Tracks - Randall Goosby

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“This whole season, since January, I've been performing the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto,” violinist Randall Goosby says. “I actually hadn't performed it with an orchestra prior to that. It's been a fun exploration of the piece from the stage.”

He recently had a week off from touring and was out running errands in New York City. That’s what he was up to when he pulled over to the side of the road to talk about his new recording with Yannick Nezet-Seguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra, featuring violin concertos by Florence Price and Max Bruch.

More From Randall Goosby

2021 PT Young Artist in Residence: Randall Goosby

2021 Violinist Randall Goosby finds inspiration in his heritage

2022 Listen to 2021 PT Young Artist Randall Goosby's Tiny Desk Concert

How did this collaboration with Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra evolve?

“It was one of those things where I just couldn't say no to it. I had been wanting to continue my exploration of Price's music after my first album, Roots, came out, so I was thrilled at the invitation. I then spent all of last summer really diving into both the Price concerti.

“To make this recording with a conductor and an orchestra that have been dedicated and passionate champions of Price's story, not just her music, was really special. It was a privilege that I'll always look back upon with great gratitude.”

What about Price’s Violin Concerto No. 1 resonates with you?

“One of the things that I think is very special about the Violin Concerto No. 1 is that it's modeled after the warhorse that is Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto. It quickly becomes an example of what makes American music what it is, and that is the combining of influences from all over the place.

“The piece presented her with an opportunity to shed a new light on some of the themes that Tchaikovsky laid out. I mean, Tchaikovsky had to go through some great challenges of his own at the time. But there were challenges that he had to go through that Price probably couldn't relate to. And there were certainly challenges that Price experienced and had to overcome that Tchaikovsky could never have conveyed in his music. And so I think it presents a unique opportunity to look at these two very different artists under the same spotlight.”

Price’s Violin Concerto No. 2 is made up of a single movement. What are we learning about her in this piece?

“ There's a lot of athletics; there's a lot of very quick moving notes and very fleeting harmonies that keep you on the edge of your seat — until suddenly it gives way to the richest, chocolatiest and soulful singing quality found in some of those andante sections that are laced in between the athleticism. In terms of the structure of the piece, she just changed things up and went against the grain.”

Why did you decide to pair these two works with Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1?

“ I fell in love with the violin because of music like the violin concerti by Bruch, Mendelssohn and Brahms, not because of the Price concerti. But the Price concerti have injected new life to me in terms of having some sort of a guiding purpose behind a lot of my programing.”

Price: Violin Concerto No. 1 in D Major - I. Tempo moderato

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Resources

Randall Goosby — Max Bruch & Florence Price Violin Concertos (Amazon)

Randall Goosby — Max Bruch & Florence Price Violin Concertos (Decca)

Randall Goosby (official site)

Lara Downes – Love at Last (PENTATONE)

New Classical Tracks - Lara Downes

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Love at Last is a new recording by pianist Lara Downes featuring music of healing and hope. The album contains music that came out of the darkest period of the global pandemic. Downes recalls hearing those years referred to as unprecedented times, but that’s not entirely accurate, she says.

“When we are immersed as classical musicians in a tradition that goes back so many centuries, and we know the stories behind the music, then we're very familiar with the cycles of war and plague, and all of the tragedies that humans endure. So I started thinking about the ways that music could support a feeling of connection across time and place and understanding of history. This continuum, this past, present and future continuum. And then I started amassing music, and it was a really beautiful process.”

More From Lara Downes

2023 Lara Downes performs a spring-themed Tiny Desk Concert full of renewal

2022 Classical Woman of the Year: Lara Downes

2022 Lara Downes reflects on the music of Scott Joplin

2021 Pianist Lara Downes re-centers the music of the Great Migration

2019 Pianist Lara Downes celebrates the power and artistic legacy of women in new album

What made you decide on the title of Love at Last for this collection of music?

“ It comes from a poem by 19th-century writer Shaul Tchernichovsky. He was a Ukrainian poet who later emigrated to Jerusalem. The poem had been set by a singer songwriter named Debbie Friedman in the ‘70s, and it was a song that we used to sing in temple when I was a kid.

“He wrote the poem when he was a young man at the very turn of the century in Odessa. But he was about to witness so many terrible things, the antisemitism that was going to ravage his community in Ukraine, two World Wars. And this poem of his begins with, ‘Laugh at all my dreams, my dearest laugh. And I repeat anew that I still believe in man as I still believe in you. Let the times be dark with hatred. I believe in years beyond, love at last shall bind all people in an everlasting bond.’”

The piece that opens this recording is Dawn , by Czech composer Jaroslav Ježek. It's a work that you performed at the Czech Embassy in Washington, D.C., a few years ago, and most of your audience was in tears. Can you talk about this song and why it has such an impact on those who hear it?

“ This song was played on the radio in Prague every day during the Nazi occupation, and it was kind of a secret message of resistance — a reminder to the Czech people that there would be another dawn, a brighter day. And I didn't know that history when I played it in this room full of people who had this visceral connection with that music that was handed down from their parents and grandparents. And the emotion around it just was staggering.”

You created an arrangement of a piece by Margaret Bonds. It's the Credo No. 2, and it's from a larger work. Can you talk a little bit about this piece and how it is still relevant today?

“She wrote her credo inspired by the text from W.E.B. Dubois, a prose poem that he wrote in 1904. In the 1960s, Bonds took that text and wrote a large piece for baritone soloist, chorus and orchestra, also called The Credo , bringing his words to life in the middle of the civil rights movement.

And just thinking about all of the generations who have fought for this American promise and how we continue to do that. We're certainly living in times that are complicated and challenging when it comes to race

All of the pieces on this record. They're all reminding us that tomorrow is a new day, and that means a new chance.”

Tree of Life

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Resources

Lara Downes — Love at Last (Amazon)

Lara Downes — Love at Last (Pentatone)

Lara Downes (Official site)

Tessa Lark — The Stradgrass Sessions (First Hand Records)

New Classical Tracks - Tessa Lark

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“Smell is supposedly one of the strongest sensory responses to bring memories back. But for me, the sound of bluegrass may as well be the smell of bluegrass because it launches me back to a pure time and place every time I listen to it,” violinist Tessa Lark said about recording her latest album, The Stradgrass Sessions .

In this recording, she blends the sounds of bluegrass with classical music elements. She does that with the help of some of her idols, Michael Cleveland and Edgar Meyer.

What the heck is stradgrass?

“I was using the old Stradivari violin for four years, which is the violin that Joseph Gingold owned and used until the end of his life. Now the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis owns it. It lets one of the prizewinners use it in the four years between competitions. That was me from 2014 through 2018.

“My fiancee, Michael Thurber, when we first met and played together, played bass and accompanied me on a bluegrass number with my father, who plays banjo. In the middle of rehearsal, he said, ‘bluegrass on a Stradivarius is stradgrass.’”

What did Michael Cleveland think when he played on the Stradivarius?

“ I just ran into him at a conference in New York, and he was there doing a showcase. I told him I was his biggest fan and had a Stradivarius with me. I asked, ‘Would you like to try it out?’ He said, ‘Of course.’ He said it growled. He got into the tone, playing many double stops and long notes. It sounded excellent in his hands.

“The tune we played together is ‘Lazy Katie,’ and I was in nearby Louisville after we met at that convention in New York City. He lives just outside that in Indiana, and he invited me over to his place. We just jammed for a few hours at his house.”

What was it like to make music with Edgar Meyer?

“Talk about a dream come true. He has influenced the way I live in music in every way. It is a little bit of a shock when I step back for a second and think that this lifetime hero of mine is a colleague.”

Watch now

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Resources

Tessa Lark — The Stradgrass Sessions (FHR Store)

Tessa Lark (official site)

Osmo Vänskä/Minnesota Orchestra – Mahler: Symphony No. 9 (BIS)

New Classical Tracks - Osmo Vanska

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In the past few months, Osmo Vänskä has conducted from a wheelchair, a stool and now, finally, standing up after suffering a bad fall and shattering his pelvis. There’s a lot of metal keeping him going, he says, and that’s another reason he’s decided his motorcycling days are over.

“I have decided to sell it, because I’m now 70, and I’ve had enough miles with the motorcycle,” he says. “… It will go to the Symphony Ball auction this June. I don't want to have anymore stupid risks in my life.”

Vänskä has been a music director for almost 40 years. Nineteen of those years were with the Minnesota Orchestra. Recordings he made with the orchestra are still being released, and the latest features Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 9.

More From New Classical Tracks

2017 Minnesota masters Mahler's Symphony No. 5

2019 Vanska shares insights into Mahler's 'Resurrection Symphony'

2020 Keeping the beat on Minnesota's recording of Mahler's Symphony No. 7

2021 Minnesota violist enjoys being an inner voice on Mahler's Symphony No. 10

What makes Mahler's Symphony No. 9 so powerful?

“[The piece was composed] at the time when his daughter had died, and Mahler knew in his heart that there was something wrong. He thought he was coming to the end of his life. And even though he wrote about the world and about life when he was younger, those pictures were different than when he was an older composer. Death is much closer to this music. It’s a question about the whole life, the whole world, whatever those thing include.”

Mahler was a conductor as well as a composer. Are you seeing something in the score that makes his intentions clearer because he’s so well versed in both of those roles?

“It means for me that I have to take what he wrote very seriously. He's giving a lot of instructions in this score. Technically speaking, I don’t need to add anything to the score. I just try to do what he wrote there, and in my experience, that is how it works. But then it comes to the point where technical things are not the final say in the music. The final say is what my heart and the hearts of the players are telling them when they are playing this.”

Can you give me an example? Is there a spot in this performance with the Minnesota Orchestra, with you conducting, where you followed your heart?

“From the first bar until the last bar. There is not one bar that is done without emotional feeling, not one bar that is done without the heartbeat and the understanding that comes from the music about life, about the world.”

Mahler's protégé, Bruno Walter, conducted the premiere of this symphony over a year after Mahler died. Walter said that as he studied the score, he recognized the way that Mahler walked, his gait, in some of the limping rhythms of the first movement. And then, later, Leonard Bernstein said that it could have been Mahler's irregular heartbeat. What do you hear in that first movement?

“I think both are right. And I believe that the reason why we like that music is because those details could be about our lives, too. I can easily say right now, after my accident, that I have much more understanding about people who cannot move, especially when I was in my wheelchair on the streets. It's difficult to go because the streets are not made for people who are using wheelchairs, those kind of things. And I also understand that I was very close to dying.

“We all have our dark moments, and we all have our hope, and then we are thankful and think, ‘Wow, this is a new chance.’ That is all coming from Mahler’s music. He sent a message about his life.”

Symphony No. 9: I. Andante comodo

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Resources

Osmo Vänskä and Minnesota Orchestra — Mahler: Symphony No. 9 (Amazon)

Osmo Vänskä (Minnesota Orchestra official site)

Minnesota Orchestra (official site)

Mehmet Ali Sanlikol and A Far Cry — A Gentleman of Istanbul (Crier)

New Classical Tracks - Mehmet Ali Sanlikol

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Mehmet Ali Sanlikol is a Turkish American composer and multi-instrumentalist who grew up surrounded by Western classical piano music. Then, he discovered jazz. He moved to Boston to study at the Berklee College of Music. And today, he’s a professor at the New England Conservatory. His life-changing journey comes to light in his new recording with the chamber orchestra A Far Cry, A Gentleman of Istanbul .

“I came back to my roots seven years after moving to Boston,” he says. “When I reconnected with my culture. I realized that I was self-alienated, self orientalism. It was a very important moment. It took about 10 years for me to come out of it.

“What I mean by that is I started picking up several traditional musical instruments, studying them in addition to piano and singing professionally in traditional classical Turkish style. It was around 2011 when I relaunched my career as a composer and jazz musician. I had developed a more confident and unique voice as a composer.”

How did you come up with A Gentleman of Istanbul ?

“It wasn't that difficult for me to think about a theme because right then, Donald Trump had come forward with his Muslim ban. It wasn't in response because almost everyone I knew was arguing. What surprised me was how many people out there looking to defend Muslims happened to be putting out images that were also stereotypes.

“This just kept hitting me one after the other. They once said, ‘Come on, this is not right. This is reductionism.’ Islamic geography is huge, from Morocco to Indonesia. It's a huge religion, and you're reducing that culture to just the mosque and the headscarf?

“I said, ‘Let me show you cosmopolitanism within Islam.’ I went to this fantastic Ottoman intellectual Muslim traveler from mid-17th-century Istanbul. His name is Evliya Çelebi. I thought if I picked several excerpts from his traveling, I might be able to show the kind of cosmopolitanism I rarely see.

Would his ideas of Islam be accepted now?

“I think those kinds of attitudes still exist. However, he was devout, but at the same time, he had a lot of room for all kinds of Sufi dervishes, too. That's the cosmopolitanism that I'm talking about. It's striking, especially considering this is a 17th-century travelogue.”

How have you created music that blends traditional Turkish Western classical jazz?

“First, I selected four different sections out of the travelogue. The first one was the clocks and bell towers of Vienna. That first movement is a little bit more classical, if you will. I am playing the oud as the featured soloist — the middle of the first movement follows the sonata form. In the middle of that, there is a fugue. There is a sense of Vienna that I found different ways to express.

“In the second movement, where he talks about the death of an Ottoman sultana, he becomes melancholic, dramatic and Homeric. I thought about Istanbul and the kind of violet or purplish tones you see that get reflected on the Bosporus Strait right around sunset. I imagine crossing the Bosporus with a ferry at that hour and seeing the seagulls fly before the Hagia Sophia or Blue Mosque. I had these images, and then I thought, ‘That's jazz.’ I said, ‘I'm going to score a jazz ballad.’

“The third movement is the funniest passage, because he says he sees two Bektashi Sufi dervishes, an order from central Turkey. One is riding a rhinoceros, and the other is on an animal with horns by the ears. I was like, ‘What's going on?’ It was so entertaining. When I go back to that, it puts a smile on my face, and it's fantastic. It's like a passage out of Star Wars , right?”

Watch now

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Resources

Mehmet Ali Sanlikol and A Far Cry — A Gentleman of Istanbul (Amazon)

Mehmet Ali Sanlikol (official site)

A Far Cry (official site)

Brooklyn Rider — The Wanderer (Icy Cold Records)

New Classical Tracks - Nicholas Cords

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“We think of the string quartet as a laboratory and learning experience of which there is no end,” says Nicholas Cords the violist for Brooklyn Rider. “We've done so much over our nearly 20-year history, and I think it would be as interesting to us if we only stayed in the world of what we knew.”

Cords says Brooklyn Rider is a string quartet that always has irons in the fire. The ensemble’s latest album, The Wanderer , is its first digital-only release and live album.

“These things often come about through happenstance and opportunity. One of those opportunities was that we knew we would be on tour in Europe last spring,” Cords says. “We would be in Lithuania. We had heard through a friend that there's this amazing place to record there called police. It's about ten kilometers from the Russian border.

“This was a very interesting time to be there as the conflict in Ukraine was not so old at that point. Everybody was on edge,” he says. “But here we were in this amazing retreat that used to be a horse stable. It was enclosed in glass. It turns out this was an amazing place to record.“

Can you talk about the themes in the recording?

“The album is called The Wanderer . We chose this title because it's a famous song by Franz Schubert. Also on this recording is his Death in the Maiden for string quartet. We've all experienced that life has changed over the last few years. This album combines certain dualities in life, such as memory, remembrance, melancholy and bliss, old and new, and life and death, as represented by Schubert's work. It's an album about life's journey.”

Can you talk about Gonzalo Grau’s Aroma a Distancia ?

“Gonzalo is a Venezuelan composer but has called many places home. You can hear those influences, from Venezuelan music to Afro-Cuban music to the flamenco.

“The more you dig into any work, you discover it's a web of influences that created that music. All these traditions we have musically are living traditions that continue to change and morph because of other outside influences. That is on display in Aroma a Distancia .”

Can you talk about Osvaldo Golijov’s work he commissioned for Brooklyn Rider?

“This five-movement work depicts a life story from morning to midnight and beyond. It's sort of a metaphor told in the day. A metaphor for life's journey that also ties to the theme of this album.”

Is this the first time Brooklyn Rider has recorded Death and the Maiden ?

“Absolutely. It is our first time. This felt like a natural connection, especially with Osvaldo Golijov's music. We were workshopping both quartets at the same time. Osvaldo's favorite thing to do was sit in the room and be a fly on the wall as we rehearsed this Schubert quartet. Schubert is one of his favorite composers.”

Watch now

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Resources

Brooklyn Rider — The Wanderer (Amazon Music)

Brooklyn Rider — The Wanderer (Bandcamp)

Brooklyn Rider (official site)

JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra — Danny Elfman: Violin Concerto 'Eleven Eleven' & Adolphus Hailstork: Piano Concerto No. 1 (Naxos)

New Classical Tracks - JoAnn Falletta

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“I've been doing a lot of American concertos and commissioning them for our players. I'd love to start a concert series of American concertos,” conductor JoAnn Falletta says. “What better way to start than with these two unbelievable pieces?”

As the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra music director and music director laureate of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, Falletta has built a reputation as a champion of American composers. Her latest recording features Danny Elfman’s first violin concerto, Eleven Eleven , with violinist Sandy Cameron, and the Piano Concerto No. 1, by Adolphus Hailstork, with pianist Stewart Goodyear.

“I chose these works because they were from a different world than we normally associate with concertos. Adolphus Hailstork is African American and has intense training in classical Western music,” Falletta says. “Violinist Sandy Cameron comes from Danny Elfman, who had never written a classical piece until he wrote this amazing violin concerto. They are two very out-there concertos. I love them. They're destined to be classics of the 21st century.”

The Virginia Symphony commissioned Adolphus Hailstork’s Piano Concerto No. 1.

“ That's right. It was commissioned right after I became music director. Part of the reason for the commission was that Hailstork lived in my apartment building. We both came to Virginia at the same time. I came to work with the orchestra, and he came to teach at Old Dominion University and Norfolk State University.

“He wrote so many pieces and was very active as a composer. We played them all. He was also our composer in residence, and we got to do premieres of his pieces all the time. But we asked him to write a piano concerto, and he wrote this amazing piece. We took it with us when we made our debut performance at Carnegie Hall.

“I thought it was time to record it with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. We have to record it because no one knows about this piece. It’s one of the greatest piano concertos ever written, after Gershwin.”

Tell me about Eleven Eleven , by Danny Elfman.

“He was working with Sandy on some of the Tim Burton films, and he had written some parts for solo violin. Sandy lived in Los Angeles and was playing them. Her virtuosity struck him. He said, ‘I want to write a violin concerto, and I want to write it for you.’ He had never written a classical piece. At 60, he said, ‘It's about time. If I'm going to do this, I must do it now.’

“They came up with this incredible idea of slightly amplifying the violin. Doing that allowed Danny to use the tremendous forces he wanted because the violin would be heard. People listening to the recording won't even be aware of that.

“Danny told me about putting in a Latin tango in the second movement and then wanted to take it out because he said, ‘Oh, no. That's too pop.’ Sandy talked him out of it, saying, ‘No, it's great. Our orchestra agreed it was one of their favorite spots.’

“It's similar to a film noir concerto if that makes sense. Danny's well known for his Batman music with a city noir soundscape where it's dark and a little threatening. It’s just so enticing this dark journey that he takes us on. I teased him when he was there by saying this is what Batman would sound like if you played the violin.”

Watch now

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Resources

JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra — Danny Elfman: Violin Concerto 'Eleven Eleven' & Adolphus Hailstork: Piano Concerto No. 1 (Amazon Music)

JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra — Danny Elfman: Violin Concerto 'Eleven Eleven' & Adolphus Hailstork: Piano Concerto No. 1 (Presto music)

JoAnn Falletta (official site)

Deborah Moriarty and Zhihua Tang — Connecting Cultures (BGR)

New Classical Tracks - Deborah Moriarty and Zhihua Tang

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“When you're playing two pianos or when you're playing piano for four hands, you do not only have to listen, but you have an attack that happens,” pianist Deborah Moriarty says about herself and colleague Zhihua Tang’s recently released first album, Connecting Cultures . “You have to anticipate what the other person will do. You have to be in their head, heart and soul and know where they will go. That allowed me to work with Zhihua and get to know her.”

The album presents four-hand piano music from around the world.

What is it like to work with a former student who is now a colleague?

Moriarty: “ There's nothing more exciting than having a student become a colleague. I can't even describe it. To go from being the mentor and being the person who is giving them ideas to having an exchange of ideas. The roles shift. One of the great things about working with Zhihua is that we work as equals. We have fun. We have a good time.”

How did you decide which cultures you would represent on this recording?

Tang: “We included music from all corners of the world. We try to pick pieces that are diverse in style but at the same time, they do share some commonalities. All the composers draw from their roots and express simple beauty in life.”

Moriarty: “If you want to connect cultures, you have to do it in a way that will cause people to listen. When we chose the repertoire, we wanted works we thought people would listen to. Then they could move further into appreciating that particular culture.”

Why did you choose Antonín Dvořák’s Slavonic Dances ?

Moriarty: “Those are dances we've played quite a lot and enjoy. We wanted to choose two contrasting dances. The first one is the triumphant opening of the album, and the second one is one that we love to play.”

Can you talk about the two Chinese composers on the recording?

Tang: “Those two pieces are by two wonderful Chinese composers from two different generations, Wang Jianzhong and Gong Huahua. Jianzhong’s piece, Colorful Clouds Chasing the Moon , is more of a traditional folk song from the Guangdong province in Southern China, and it's joyful, peaceful and relaxed.”

Moriarty: “Let me say also, as somebody who is not Chinese, I think that one of the great things about going to China and having a lot of students from there has been my exposure to this incredible music. Colorful Clouds Chasing the Moon is like colorful tripods chasing the moon. Every time we play, I think people are just amazed at the beauty of it.”

Watch now

Resources

Deborah Moriarty and Zhihua Tang — Connecting Cultures (BGR Store)

Deborah Moriarty and Zhihua Tang — Connecting Cultures (Presto music)

Eric Whitacre and Voces8 — Home (Decca)

New Classical Tracks - Eric Whitacre

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“If I could travel back in time and tell my 20-year-old self, this will be your life; you'll be a classical choral composer. I just never could have imagined it,” Eric Whitacre says.

“‘Go Lovely Rose’ is the first piece I wrote. I remember hearing it being sung live in the room. That's the day I knew I would be a composer,” he says, still realizing his dreams 30 years later.

That first composition is featured on his new recording, Home , in collaboration with the British vocal ensemble Voces8.

Why did you call the album Home ?

“ On one level, it is referenced in a couple of the pieces on the album, specifically in Sacred Veil . It's the major theme and the final words of the entire piece. ‘Welcome home, my child. Welcome home.’”

What do you admire most about Voces8?

“It's their technical acumen. They're spectacular musicians. They sing with such purity and clarity. They sing so selflessly as a group. But there's this deeper thing going on, this kind of emotional intelligence that they have. I knew that from the albums, but I didn't really know until I was in the room with them.”

Can you talk about the liner note, ‘This is how I always dreamed it would sound’?

“ About 32 years ago, I wrote something close to it, and a version in my head is always playing. It is ‘I always imagined it would be like this.’ I remember the first time we sang through the album, and I thought, ‘Oh, my God, that's it.’ It replaced the version in my head. So now I think about how it should sound. It's just that recording.

“There's something about the transparency of just eight voices. It’s the strength of their purity. It causes these clouds of overtones that, while making the album, send chills down your spine that are just endless.”

Watch now

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Resources

Eric Whitacre and VOCES8 — Home (Decca store)

Eric Whitacre and VOCES8 — Home (Amazon)

Eric Whitacre (Official Site)

VOCES8 (Official Site)

Catalyst Quartet — Uncovered, Vol. 3: Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, William Grant Still & George Walker (Azica Records)

New Classical Tracks - Karlos Rodriguez

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“At the end of the day, the Catalyst Quartet is important because we’re trying to do something that matters to people.”

Cellist Karlos Rodriguez is a founding member of the Catalyst Quartet , whose goal is to reimagine and redefine the classical music experience and the string quartet. One way its members do that is through their multivolume series of recordings called Uncovered .

“We thought the series' inception, which started in 2018, would be one album,” he says. “Then, luckily, we called the thing Uncovered , because more and more music started to be uncovered, and it turned into this multivolume recording project. And in the end, I think it will probably be four volumes.”

The third volume of Uncovered features works by George Walker, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson and William Grant still. Why feature these three composers on the same recording?

“Their music is related wonderfully. One of the pieces is called the Lyric Quartet , which is by William Grant still. George Walker's quartet is referred to as the Lyric Quartet. … The middle movement has been published as the Lyric for Strings . [Another example is] William Grant, the dean of all great American music. There is a Jazz Age reference in that. [And] when you say American music, Perkinson has been inspired [and also] crossed the line into jazz-age harmony.

Walker’s Lyric Quartet was his first major composition. He finished it while he was still a student studying in France. What is it about this work that makes it so significant?

“As I spoke of earlier, the middle movement has been published as a standalone work called Lyric for Strings . It's beautiful. And so, many people play it that way, not even knowing that it's a whole string quartet, much like Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings .

“We were in California playing a series of concerts. The Barber Quartet was on the program, and so was George Walker's Lyric for Strings . Now, we knew it was a whole string quartet. It's not that we didn't know that, but programmatically it was a good fit. So, we're driving from concert to concert on tour, and we get alerted to a tweet from George Walker, and he must have been well into his 80s at that point.

“And he said, ‘Why does nobody play my whole quartet? Everyone only plays this Lyric for Strings , the slow movement. Are they not up to the challenge of the outer two movements of my string quartet? It's a shame…’ — or something like that. And so, we thought, ‘Oh, wow, good for him for getting on Twitter at his age,’ but also that he knew that people weren't playing this entire work. And so, I wish that he were still with us. But, finally, this album comes out of us playing his entire string quartet.”

When Perkinson finished his String Quartet No. 2 ( Calvary ) in 1956, he was about the same age that Walker was when he finished his Lyric Quartet . Why is this work important to the ensemble?

“For us, the work is important because of our connection to Perkinson himself through one of our early mentors, Sanford Allen. Sanford Allen is the first African American member of the New York Philharmonic. He's a violinist, and Leonard Bernstein hired him. Sanford is directly responsible for commissioning most of the smaller chamber works and solo works for violin, which often came from Perkinson. He used to call him Perky.”

Watch now

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Resources

Catalyst Quartet — Uncovered, Vol. 3: Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, William Grant Still & George Walker (Amazon Music)

Catalyst Quartet — Uncovered, Vol. 3: Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, William Grant Still & George Walker (Presto music)

Catalyst Quartet (Official Site)

Hélène Grimaud and Konstantin Krimmel — Silvestrov: Silent Songs (DG)

New Classical Tracks - Hélène Grimaud

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“His music is his poetry. It has exceptional transparency. It's simple in the language yet so expressive. Do you know what they say in French? This expression, à fleur de peau — ‘means I want to pull something on the skin's surface that reaches deep,’” says French pianist Hélène Grimaud about the music of one of Ukraine’s greatest living composers, Valentin Silvestrov. “It is pervasive and something that grabs you by the heart and hand and takes you quite far. It's a beautiful journey.”

Her most recent recording, Silvestrov: Silent Songs , also features German/Romanian baritone Konstantin Krimmel as they pay homage to Silvestrov and perform 12 of his 24 ‘Silent Songs.’

What was it like performing these works in front of the composer?

“We met just before the performance, which was the one to be recorded. To meet him afterward and get into his head was a gift. It is a privilege to ask a creator because we always hoped we would have the chance to do it. It's both intimidating and wonderful to have that possibility.

“One thing that fascinated me was that he confirmed my suspicions. Part of the artistic process in the composition is about catching the music. It comes to him as something preexisting. I think there's something extraordinary about it.”

Can you talk about some of the poets that are represented on the album?

“There is a poem by John Keat. It has to do with the melody. The melody is equivalent to a smile, and it is what enables connection. He says you can connect through that smile when you meet another being.

“Because of the hypnotic melody, every time it comes back, it has a different connotation. What better theme is there than love in all its déclinaisons?”

What is the role of the piano in these songs?

“I feel that the role of the piano in this cycle is that of confidence. How would one say that in English? It’s the person you confide in and comes with a higher responsibility because you must take in those secrets and nurture them. There's a beautiful give and take and the music has this ebb and flow, which becomes an integral part of the expression.”

Watch now

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Resources

Hélène Grimaud and Konstantin Krimmel — Silvestrov: Silent Songs (DG Store)

Hélène Grimaud and Konstantin Krimmel — Silvestrov: Silent Songs (Amazon)

Hélène Grimaud (official site)

Benjamin Grosvenor — Schumann & Brahms (Decca)

New Classical Tracks - Benjamin Grosvenor

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“They're so interconnected as figures and personalities. There are so many ways you can bring them together, because their whole lives are just interconnected in this wonderful way,” British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor says about his latest recording, Schumann & Brahms, which explores the fascinating relationship among Robert Schumann, Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms.

Can you tell us about the fictional character by E.T.A. Hoffmann that is the inspiration for the first track, Kreisleriana ?

“Johannes Kreisler was a romanticized idea of a tortured artist, a musician with really high ideals and obsessed with the music of Bach. A temperamental musician prone to mood swings and fits of inspiration and then depression. Robert Schumann identified with him as a figure. I mean, there were many similarities between them. The most substantial movement of the set is the second. He told Clara that this piece was about their lives together. This movement is intimacy, longing and love.

“Clara only performed certain movements of it, and Franz Liszt did, as well. Although they admired the piece, they thought it was too much for the audience. I believe that Robert even suggested to Clara that when she plays the last movement, perhaps she should do a crescendo at the end so that the audience would applaud. The idea of a piece disappearing to pianissimo as it does was unusual for the time.”

When you perform the work, do you do the pianissimo?

“ Yes. It's a magical effect. Everything dissolves, like in a puff of smoke.”

Why did you choose Robert Schumann’s Romance No. 2 for this album?

“ When they were married, he wrote these romances. Clara requested that he dedicate them to her, and she greatly admired this second piece. She said she knew of nothing more tender than this love duet. It remained a special piece for her throughout her life. It was the last piece she requested on her deathbed. A grandson played it for her.”

Watch now

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Resources

Benjamin Grosvenor — Schumann & Brahms (Presto music)

Benjamin Grosvenor — Schumann & Brahms (Amazon)

Benjamin Grosvenor (official site)

Lara St. John — ♀she/her/hers (Ancalagon Records)

New Classical Tracks - Lara St. John

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When Lara St. John was 14 and studying at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, she was abused by her violin teacher. When she reported it, nothing happened. That’s why she decided to reveal her story to the public.

“Finally, I decided the only way to do it right was to scream from the rooftops,” St. John said. “I've been doing that since the 5,000-word article came out in July 2019 in the Philadelphia Inquirer.”

Her fight for women in the world of classical music continues with a new recording that lifts the voices of a dozen women composers called ♀she/her/hers.

“For years I've been trying to include music by women in programs. There's so much great stuff out there for solo violin I decided to make a recording of it,” she said. “For example, Sophie-Carmen Eckhardt-Gramatté , was a violinist, pianist and terrific composer. Nobody outside of Manitoba has ever heard of her. So I wanted to change that.”

Can you talk about some of the extended techniques used on the album?

“Milica Paranosic’s Bubamara is the first track. She and I have been friends for years and originally bonded over our love of Serbian Roma music. So she wrote this one for me and used traditional Macedonia rhythms. At one point, she said, ‘I want this effect here. How can you do this and can you do it? Can you do it with foot bells? Can you do it with this?’ I just figured out different ways of being able to play a theme. It's doing pizzicato with the left hand, which is kind of like accompanying oneself.

“Laurie Anderson gave me carte blanche, basically. I set her Statue of Liberty for solo violin and Tibetan bells. The bowls make those beautiful sounds that go right into your solar plexus. I don't know how Tibetans do that, but it's an incredible sound.

“I've been a big fan of Valerie Coleman for 20 years, and she wrote a gorgeous flute piece, which I figured out how to perform on violin. I can even do flutter tongue. I have the sound that I want to achieve in my head, and then I figure out how to do it.”

Tell me about Ada Caplan's Whitewashed .

“ She was 14 when she wrote to me and said, ‘Hi, I don't know you, but I'm a composer and a violinist. I wrote a piece I want to present to a competition at my school. I wrote it a little bit too hard, and I don't sound good. Can you record it for me?’

“She's from Philadelphia. Of course, a 14-year-old from Philadelphia was a little more fateful than a coincidence. One of her composition teachers is Melissa Dunphy, who also wrote a great piece for solo violin called Kommós , which is also on the album. The whole thing just came together.”

Watch now

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Resources

Lara St. John — ♀she/her/hers (Lara St. John Store)

Lara St. John — ♀she/her/hers (Amazon)

Lara St. John (official site)

Christopher Mallett — Justin Holland: Guitar Works and Arrangements (Naxos)

New Classical Tracks - Christopher Mallet

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“For me, it's not just American music. It's music that a Black American arranged,” classical guitarist Christopher Mallett said. “That's the most significant part of why I want to help spread this music and why I need to play it.”

Mallett honors and celebrates the Black pioneer of American classical guitar music in his latest solo recording, Justin Holland: Guitar Works and Arrangements.

He initially discovered Justin Holland's music while studying classical guitar at his local community college. He went on to study at Holland’s alma mater, Oberlin College, and discovered more of Holland’s music as a student at Yale. For several years, Mallett has been carrying around a stack of Holland’s music playing it occasionally.

“It wasn't until 2020 that people started to take notice of Holland's music. It was around the time of George Floyd,” he says. “People started looking up Black composers and classical guitarists. Suddenly, people are writing articles about Holland and reaching out to me and saying, ‘Can you record Justin Holland?’”

“I sat down and read through every single piece,” he says about creating the album. “I spent days and days putting my wife through the torture of just sitting there and saying, ‘What do you think of this one?’ I was whittling it down from 50 to 60 pieces down to 14 of what I thought would be something that would catch the attention of listeners.”

What piece did your wife enjoy the most?

“ The two that she said should be on the recording were ‘The Maiden’s Prayer’ and ‘Carnival of Venice.’ My wife is from Indonesia, and ‘The Maiden’s Prayer’ is prevalent throughout Asia and Southeast Asia. When I played it, she said, ‘Oh my gosh, I used to listen to that all the time when I was a little kid. You have to record it.’

“It's an amazing arrangement. I've seen other guitarists play other arrangements online that I feel aren't even half as good as Holland's. Hopefully, this innovation will get out more because it is a trendy tune.”

What sets the “Carnival of Venice” apart from other arrangments?

“ There are variations with intricate and quick pull-offs reminiscent of metal music. He has variations with these quick, rapid arpeggios that fly up and down the neck. It's a culmination of all his method books into one piece. Everything he talks about scales, arpeggios, harmonics, pull-offs, slurs, it’s all within that one piece.”

Why was Justin Holland so influential as a guitarist in 19th-century America?

“It was his arrangements. He started making them for his students. They passed them around and they started becoming popular. It caught the attention of a viral publisher back then, S. Brainard & Sons. Any new popular tunes that would come out, Holland would be the person to arrange them.

“What made him a household name to guitarists in America were his two method books. There's this famous method book now called Pumping Nylon by Scott Tennant. As I look through Holland’s method, I almost consider it the Pumping Nylon of the 19th century.”

Watch now

Resources

Christopher Mallett — Justin Holland: Guitar Works and Arrangements (Presto music)

Christopher Mallett — Justin Holland: Guitar Works and Arrangements (Amazon)

Christopher Mallett (official site)

Calidore String Quartet — Beethoven: The Late Quartets (Signum Classics)

New Classical Tracks - Calidore Quartet

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Sometimes the best way to tell a story is to start at the end. That way your destination is clear. That’s what the Calidore String Quartet decided to do when recording all of Beethoven’s String Quartets during the pandemic and recently releasing their first 3-CD set, Beethoven: The Late Quartets.

Cellist Estelle Choi said about the creation of the project, “It will be an interesting journey to go back and realize how much uniqueness and creativity was involved in every single one of his quartets. Each one is completely different from the other.”

Why are these string quartets significant to you?

“The Beethoven String Quartets span his entire career. You get work from every single period of his life. The importance of these works is immeasurable. It ushered in a completely new era and cemented the roots of the string quartet as a vehicle, not just for looking into the past but also looking far into the future.

“Suppose you're coming into this not knowing anything about the string quartets. In that case, it represents an incredible body of work from somebody who pushed his creativity and did not feel constrained to fit the status quo. You can explore his compositional eras and find something that speaks to you because his music expresses the human condition.”

How do these late quartets unite us as people?

“ In his struggles, you see how he made himself heard within the music. One particular piece which hits me personally is Opus. 132, Heiliger Dankgesang . This is Beethoven struggling to come to terms with knowing that he's towards the end of his life. But in the slow movement, he takes a moment to give thanks.

“A visceral moment in learning this piece that stays with me forever is when we worked with the first violinist from the Alben Berg Quartet, Günter Pichler. He was describing this movement as going from this gorgeous chorale-like opening into the next section which is renewed force.

“He described it as imagining somebody who had been belabored with sickness, suddenly being able to stand up and walk as a healthy individual. That has always stayed with me in imagining Beethoven feeling the burden of this illness and yet being able to stand up and say, ‘No, there is something to live for.’”

Watch now

Resources

Calidore String Quartet — Beethoven: The Late Quartets (Signum Classics)

Calidore String Quartet (official site)

Eldbjørg Hemsing — Arctic (Sony Classical)

New Classical Tracks - Eldbjørg Hemsing

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“It's hard to describe with words what the Arctic is like, and that's one of the reasons I wanted to create this musical journey through the region,” Norwegian violinist Eldbjørg Hemsing said. “I try to give an audio/visual experience with images when people listen to it.”

Hemsing grew up about 60 miles from the Arctic Circle. In her new recording, Arctic , she offers a glimpse of its fragile beauty through the music of contemporary and traditional composers.

“ I come from a small village in the middle of nowhere. Six hundred people live in that area of wilderness, which is just beneath a big mountain chain. I grew up with my mom playing the violin,” she says. “My father was working in nature. So my upbringing was very much music and nature. That's the main inspiration for this album.”

Many of the pieces on this album are trying to capture the beauty of the Arctic.

“There are difficulties in the North regarding ice melting. The environment is changing. It's easy to lose hope and feel depressed. I wanted to try with this project to come from another angle and show the life and beauty that we need to preserve.”

Could you walk us through Jacob Shea’s Arctic Suite ?

“In the Arctic, it's important to try to show all the different sides. That's the musical journey in the piece. It starts with a frozen world. Everything's very quiet, harsh and frozen. But then as the sun returns, which happens around January, you can see life return to this region.

“Slowly but surely, it happens. There's inspiration from the aurora borealis, giving a musical expression to the polar regions. With this piece, you can get a sense of a whole year in the Arctic Circle.”

Does he also sing on that piece?

“ Yes. He wasn't supposed to. But when we were preparing the piece, he had so much power while singing. I felt strongly we needed this in the recording because it's raw and real.”

Why did you include Einojuhani Rautavaara’s Whispering ?

“ I was thinking about the sound you get when you hear the winds howling up in the mountains. It carries so much meaning and expression, but it's quiet and round when it moves. It's almost like water in that sense.”

Could you tell us about Henning Sommerro’s Vårsøg ?

“This is a piece I grew up with. It's well known in Norway. The piece was made over a poem written in 1945, just as the world was starting to become normal again after the Second World War. The poem talks about hope for peace and a new start.”

Watch now

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Resources

Eldbjørg Hemsing — Arctic (Sony Store)

Eldbjørg Hemsing — Arctic (Amazon)

Eldbjørg Hemsing (official site)

David Starobin — Giulio Regondi: A 200th Birthday Bouquet (Bridge)

“I retired from playing four years ago,” guitarist David Starobin says. I didn't have all that much time to deal with my playing until I stopped playing.

Despite retiring from performing, he still teaches at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia and the Manhattan School of Music. He also runs an art gallery and produces records for his label, Bridge Records. One of those releases, Giulio Regondi: A 200th Birthday Bouquet , celebrates one of Starobin‘s musical idols, the Swiss-born composer, guitarist and concertinist Giulio Regondi.

“As a composer, he wrote the finest romantic guitar music from the mid-1800s. This was when you had Mendelssohn, Schumann and amazing composers writing romantic music that we consider great repertoire,” Starobin says.

“Everything about his music appealed to me,” he says. “His life story is unbelievable. He was a child prodigy who played before every European court by the time he was 9. He then emigrated with his stepfather to England and had a very successful career there, and then something strange happened.

“He encountered a scientist, Charles Wheatstone, who had invented the concertina. Regondi was the first person to try this instrument when he was just 12. For the rest of his life, he alternated concerts between the guitar and the concertina, but he wrote most of his music for concertina.”

Why did you transcribe his concertina etudes for guitar?

“There's a real lack of repertoire, especially for my students who could play intermediate Regondi. This fills a gap in the guitar repertoire regarding learning romantic style and the necessary contrapuntal voicing that his music requires.

“The best piece compositionally on the record is his second etude. It traverses all sorts of keys. It starts in a minor and works through a series of keys that ends in C-sharp major. That work, essentially a slow piece, offers the most opportunity to sing lyrically.

“When I was listening to Fete Villageoise , for example, there’s a beautiful melody, but the way it's played and presented has a lovely sense of delicacy. I don't know if that's the right way to describe it, but that's what I'm hearing.

“ One of the main reasons that I fell in love with this man's music was the certain intimacy that he achieves in expression. What Regondi does is give enough harmonic variety in the music so that it colors what he's writing in a very different way for the guitar than other composers of that period.”

Watch now

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Resources

David Starobin — Giulio Regondi: A 200th Birthday Bouquet (Bridge Store)

David Starobin — Giulio Regondi: A 200th Birthday Bouquet (Amazon)

Cleveland Orchestra — Walker: Antifonys, Lilacs, Sinfonias Nos. 4 & 5 (Cleveland Orchestra) Jump to giveaway form

New Classical Tracks - Eliesha Nelson - Walker

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“Of course, it was important and meaningful for me to play a Black American composer,” said Eliesha Nelson who has been a violist with the Cleveland Orchestra for more than 20 years.

She talked about the orchestra’s release, Walker: Antifonys, Lilacs, Sinfonias Nos. 4 & 5, which is also the first time they have recorded the music of George Walker.

“They're not that many Black violists in a major orchestra, and to have an African American tell their story through their words and pen is so meaningful to be a part of, “ she said. Nelson had the pleasure of meeting George Walker a few times after he asked her to play his viola sonata with him. That experience reinforced her enthusiasm for him and his music.

“He's one of my musical icons. I so respect him in so many ways. He's just brilliant. He started college when he was 14 — got into Curtis after he graduated from Oberlin. His music is thorny, but there's a lot of beauty in it as well,” Nelson said about Walker.

“He was very serious, and he wasn't one to joke around and try to make people feel good or pacify them. He just said things as he saw them and his music reflects that. He won a Pulitzer Prize for the piece Lilacs , which appears on this recording. That was in 1996. And even then, it was still difficult for him to get any traction with getting commissions or getting his music performed. That seems so heartbreaking to me,” she said about his career after winning the Pulitzer Prize. “ He wrote about how winning that prize didn't do anything for him. No major orchestra in this country offered to play that piece or any piece he wrote. Basically, it was youth orchestras and smaller community orchestras that played his music.”

Nelson said she hopes the Cleveland Orchestra’s album brings to light how wonderful a composer Walker is.

“And hopefully, more people will start playing his music so it will become part of the canon.”

Watch now

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Giveaway

Time For Three New Classical Tracks Giveaway

You must be 13 or older to submit any information to American Public Media/Minnesota Public Radio. The personally identifying information you provide will not be sold, shared, or used for purposes other than to communicate with you about things like our programs, products and services. See Terms of Use and Privacy . This giveaway is subject to the Official Giveaway Rules .

Resources

The Cleveland Orchestra — Walker: Antifonys, Lilacs, Sinfonias Nos. 4 & 5 (The Cleveland Orchestra store)

The Cleveland Orchestra — Walker: Antifonys, Lilacs, Sinfonias Nos. 4 & 5 (Amazon)

The Cleveland Orchestra (official site)

Anthony McGill/Pacifica Quartet — American Stories (Cedille) Jump to giveaway form

New Classical Tracks - Pacifica Quartet with Anthony McGill

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“I don't remember the first time I played or performed the Mozart Clarinet Quintet. There's something about the first journeys into works that are especially memorable for me,” said clarinetist Anthony McGill when talking about how he and the Pacifica Quartet formed powerful memories as they learned and grew into the music featured on their new release, American Stories .

Can you talk about what we hear in James Lee III’s Quintet?

“I've been thinking a lot about this because of my entire life as a Black musician. Lee’s piece interests me, particularly with his discussion about his inspiration from pictures of Native Americans or indigenous peoples, but also a blending of Black Americans who can trace their roots to indigenous populations in America.”

Can you talk about the story behind Richard Danielpour’s Four Angels ?

“The thematic material is based on the Black American struggle and civil rights movement, which he has been a champion of through his musical voice for many years. This particular piece, which was dedicated to the four girls who were killed in the Birmingham bombing in 1963, is a dedication to the lives that have been lost for freedom in this country.

“Recording it with the Pacifica Quartet worked perfectly. This concept of identity represents Danielpour. He always tells his story. We have individual stories of growing up. He grew up in Florida as a Persian American, but it always started in the civil rights movement. It’s about how you can feel the plight of other people and be a part of a movement in that way and then use your voice as a composer or creator to share the voices and the stories of others.”

How about Ben Shirley’s High Sierra Sonata ?

Pacifica Quartet violist Mark Holloway: “It starts with this external sound, which is our breathing, waking up and starting the day. To start the recording, we had to breathe. McGill put some air through his instrument, and we were stretching to have a human side to the way the music opens peacefully and calmly. You can imagine the High Sierras. It's evocative music that marches to the beat of its own drum. He doesn't write music the way everyone else does, which is the mark of a very good composer.”

McGill: “It's great to be on here with Halloway because we've never performed these pieces before, but we also haven't had long conversations. What Halloway says reminds me of my parents and family's visual art background. It reminds me of music that is similar to a collage. There are different pieces from different parts of one's artist's life within the work.”

Watch now

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Giveaway

Time For Three New Classical Tracks Giveaway

You must be 13 or older to submit any information to American Public Media/Minnesota Public Radio. The personally identifying information you provide will not be sold, shared, or used for purposes other than to communicate with you about things like our programs, products and services. See Terms of Use and Privacy . This giveaway is subject to the Official Giveaway Rules .

Resources

Anthony McGill/Pacifica Quartet — American Stories (Cedille store)

Anthony McGill/Pacifica Quartet — American Stories (Amazon)

Pacifica Quartet (official site)

Christopher Tin/Voces 8 — The Lost Birds (Decca)

New Classical Tracks - Christopher Tin

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Composer Christopher Tin and the British vocal ensemble Voces8 were introduced to one another by their recording engineer about a decade ago. Ever since that first meeting, Tin has been looking for an opportunity to collaborate with the singers. They were finally able to come together on a project called The Lost Birds .

“The main overture of The Lost Birds is actually a melody that I'd written years ago for a documentary about bird extinctions,” Tin said. “This subject has been on my mind for more than ten years. This one little tune that I wrote 11 years ago has stayed as something that I wanted to expand upon in a choral requiem format. I finally got the chance to do that with Voces8 during the pandemic.”

Why is the loss of birds important to you?

“ I've been very captivated by the metaphor of the canary in the coal mine, which you may know comes from the 19th century practice where miners used to bring a canary down to the coal mines with them. If the canary died it meant there was a buildup of poisonous gases in the coal mine and the miners would be next. I thought there was no better metaphor for the impending change in the climate and what it could mean for our own civilization. I took this metaphor and I essentially made an entire choral piece out of it.

“We talk about birds and celebrate their beauty in the first half. But over the course of the second half, the birds vanish and the texts become more suggestive of humans going extinct along with the birds. It’s a soft activist message about where these extinctions are leading us.”

Why did you decide to adopt a 19th-century musical vocabulary?

“ I immersed myself in the vernacular of the 19th century, both musically and poetically. The four poets that I chose to set to music are Emily Dickinson, Sara Teasdale, Edna St. Vincent Millay and Christina Rossetti. I really wanted to create a time capsule that was reflecting on where we are now.”

What were you going for with the piece “Thus in the Winter”?

“The way I think of writing choral parts is almost like the way that birds fly in a flock. The different voices are individual birds and they all have their own motion, but collectively they have a group motion to them. It's directional and it's made up of all these individual threads. A piece like ‘Thus in the Winter’ is a realization of that movement. It is a lot of individual lines weaving around, sometimes coming together with big cries, but often diverging and doing their own things.”

VOCES8 & Jack Liebeck: The Lark Ascending - Ralph Vaughan Williams (arr. Paul Drayton)

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

More on Christopher Tin

New Classical Tracks Christopher Tin's 'To Shiver the Sky' encourages listeners to take flight

Composer Christopher Tin has a funky message for APA Heritage Month

Resources

Christopher Tin/Voces8 — The Lost Birds (Christopher Tin official store)

Christopher Tin/Voces8 — The Lost Birds (Center Stage store)

Christopher Tin/Voces8 — The Lost Birds (Amazon)

Christopher Tin (official site)

Voces8 (official site)

Leif Ove Andsnes — Dvořák: Poetic Tone Pictures (Sony)

New Classical Tracks - Leif Ove Andsnes

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“It's similar to life with its highs and lows. That's what I love about this cycle. It's so contrasting and varied,” said Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, who recently fell in love with Antonín Dvořák's Poetic Tone Pictures . It’s an ambitious and unusual cycle of piano pieces by the Czech composer featured on Andsnes’ latest recording, Dvořák: Poetic Tone Pictures.

“He has this reputation for not writing very well for the piano because he was not a pianist. He was a violinist and didn't own a piano until he was about 40,” he said about Dvořák. “It's strange. I've known these pieces since childhood because my father came home from London once and brought a bunch of his pieces. One of them was the cycle played by the Czech pianist Radoslav Kvapil. So I listened to these pieces when I was little, and I especially liked some of the first ones. I played some of them in a youth competition when I was 12.

“I studied the whole cycle during the pandemic, and now I'll give the whole cycle a chance,” he said. “Let's see if Dvořák is right because he wrote in a letter to a friend that he thought one could only experience his real intentions about this music if one played the whole cycle, all the 13 pieces together. That's almost an hour of music. I do feel a difference. I feel it's a great journey when they are played together from beginning to end.”

What pieces did you play at that competition?

“I played the first piece, ‘The Night Journey,’ which is also one of the more ambitious pieces and one of the more difficult ones.”

What did you find challenging when revisiting the cycle?

“ It's a mixture of homecoming and challenging passages that exist. It's such a wonderful piece because it opens like a novel. It's saying, ‘I'm going to tell you a story.’ It just opens this personal world to enjoy.”

Can you give me an example of the range of unique colors in these pieces?

“ The second piece, ‘ Toying,’ is unassuming. It's full of surprisingly short staccato notes in the main section, with a conversation between the right and left hands. Then it has, in contrast, a very legato middle section. That means that the notes are bound together, and it's full of pedal. It feels like a brook or river you might find in Schubert's music. It’s fluid with wonderfully beautiful bell-like colors.”

Watch now

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Resources

Leif Ove Andsnes — Dvořák: Poetic Tone Pictures (Amazon)

Leif Ove Andsnes (official site)

John Metcalfe — Carols Without Words (Platoon)

New Classical Tracks - John Metcalfe

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“I’m similar to Jim Carrey in Yes Man , where saying yes to everything can lead you to extraordinary situations,” says New Zealander violist, composer and arranger John Metcalfe. “And of course, if you don't try it and don't say yes, you'll never know. I've rarely turned anything down at all, ever.”

That’s how Metcalfe landed gigs with rock artists like U2, Coldplay and Peter Gabriel. Now he lives in Oxford and says he’s as British as the next person. However, his spiritual home is still New Zealand, where he grew up surrounded by music. His father was an operatic tenor. However, Metcalfe’s new recording, Carols Without Words, is all instrumental.

“Much of the music I've written for my solo projects tend to be instrumental. I wonder if this might be pushing things a little bit too far, but I had wondered occasionally whether it was too painful to write for voice because it would have reminded me of my father, who passed when I was 11. Perhaps I was avoiding that when writing instrumental music. It allows you to wander, use your imagination and have your emotional response.”

Can you talk about how you re-created these carols to the point where they are almost unrecognizable?

“I composed from the inside out. I come to the melody last. When writing music, I often start writing from a perspective of sonics and texture. The point about the melody disappearing is quite deliberate because, particularly with some of the slower, more ambient reworkings, it was a deliberate attempt to make the melody disappear. I wanted to allow people to have their own memory. Perhaps they remember the melody of ‘Silent Night,’ but they're not engaged in listening to it.”

Is there a special memory in any of this music?

“If I were to push it, I would say it was the first Christmas after my father had died. That's the memory that springs to me when I've been listening to some gentler versions of these melodies.”

Can you talk about your arrangement of ‘O Come, O Come, Emmanuel’?

“It is a haunting melody, so I didn't want to do away with that completely. I performed that absolutely on its own at the start of the carol, to say, ‘Here is the material and now we're off to the races.’”

Which carol presented the biggest challenge for you?

“ It probably was ‘In the Bleak Midwinter.’ All of the others were very quick to do. They took care of themselves. ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ yielded its secrets much more slowly.”

Watch now

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Resources

John Metcalfe — Carols Without Words (Amazon digital)

John Metcalfe (official site)

Cantus — Into the Light (Signum)

New Classical Tracks - Paul Scholtz and Alex Nishibun from Cantus

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Each December, we find ourselves surrounded by the darkness of winter, as we prepare to say goodbye to the old year and welcome in the new. It can be a time of great promise. That’s Cantus’ idea behind their new holiday recording, Into the Light .

“We try not to take for granted that we were able to come together and sing, which is what so many folks based in singing community choirs couldn’t do,” says tenor Paul Scholtz. “But we had the privilege to do that because it is our full-time job. We wanted to bring that hopeful and celebratory energy to these performances.”

Tenor Alexander Nishibun joins Scholtz to talk about their new holiday release.

Tell me about Rosphanye Powell’s ‘Glory Hallelujah to the Newborn King.’

Alexander: “It has a killer opening solo by one of our great baritones, Rob Kelly Hines. One of the things we love about it is that Powell sets this beautiful poetry and creates this visceral excitement you feel in the music itself. It was also voiced for male voices by her husband, William C. Powell. So having that wonderful collaboration between these two artists and bringing it to Cantus was a real treat for all of us.”

Tell me about Bebe Boykin’s ‘O Magnum Mysterium.’

Alexander: “That's one of my favorite pieces in this album. ‘O Magnum Mysterium’ is this wonderful response to a text in Latin that I was introduced to us by a renaissance piece by Vitoria, which is about 500-something years old. Hearing it from this modern voice is astounding because it has this gravitas and weight. There's a huge respect for the language, which you can hear in how Boykin sets it. You hear the influence of the 21st-century ear and the 20th-century artists. You can get that sense because of how she treats the text. That informs us how we approach that particular song because of how she sets the lyrics.”

Do you have a favorite track on the album?

Paul: “The first one that comes to mind is Joni Mitchell's ‘River.’ She's talked about it being a song she wrote for folks who feel lonely during Christmas. I think the way that consciousness can capture essentially what is a transcribed piano part underneath some soloists is beautiful. There's motion, which brings up and highlights the text.”

Tell me about your reaction to premiering a new arrangement of ‘Silent Night.’

Paul: “Christopher H. Harris has been a friend of the ensemble for a few years. We've programmed some of his pieces. He's an emerging composer and getting a lot of attention now, which is well-deserved. He agreed to write this brand new arrangement of ‘Silent Night’ that allows us to explore some of the complex harmonies he put in here. It's one thing to see your line and to sing it, but then to have it come to life for the first time. This is a brand new arrangement, which means to have it come to life for you in that rehearsal room is an extraordinary moment.”

Watch now

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

More on Cantus

Christmas With Cantus

Cantus celebrates their 27th anniversary

Cantus and Chanticleer perform together in Minneapolis

Resources

Cantus — Into the Light (Signum Store)

Cantus — Into the Light (Amazon)

Cantus (official site)

Nadia Shpachenko — Invasion (Reference)

New Classical Tracks - Nadia Shpachenko

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“People are still trying hard to stay positive. People are powerful there and they believe in victory. They're just trying to continue living their lives but don't want to leave,” says Ukrainian pianist Nadia Shpachenko. “The people that I talk to want to stay. They feel like this is their country and want to help as much as possible.

Shpachenko wants to help, too. As a concert pianist from Ukraine, she became a hero to those in her homeland when she was the first and only Ukrainian to win a Grammy. She lives and teaches in California, but her heart is in Ukraine with her family and friends. That’s why her latest recording, Invasion , featuring compositions from Lewis Spratlan, is dedicated to the Ukrainian people and all proceeds support them. The music reflects the many moods the Ukrainian people experience daily.

“ I wanted to do something more,” she said. “Not a one-time thing, but a project that would be ongoing where I could raise money, and awareness and promote the work of Ukrainian artists. I was already planning to release a CD with Spratlan, who wrote many pieces for me during the pandemic. But on the first day of the war, we talked and decided that he would write a large piece about this war.”

Why did Spradlin choose a unique combination of instruments for the featured track?

“He chose the mandolin because he wanted to have a folk element. There is a Russian folk song feature at the beginning. It signifies the Russian forces arriving before they invade Ukraine. The saxophone has such a specific character. It often has melodies that are heart-wrenching but also passionate and kind. Each instrument has an exceptionally unique sound that fits the character assigned to that instrument. With the piano, I sometimes play with my fists. It has a huge sound at times.

“This piece is not what many people expect as a war piece. It is quite hopeful. It has many elements that describe Ukraine as a country or as it used to be. The middle section is very wistful, beautiful, and poetic, and it signifies nostalgia for what used to be. It is in remembrance of the beauty of Ukraine.

“This war and my experience also influence the other works. I had been learning and recording the pieces since the invasion started. Many pieces are directly connected to the war. For example, there was a video of high school seniors in Kharkiv dancing in dress clothes in front of the ruins of their high school. They were dancing the waltz. So there is one waltz-like piece on the album.”

Watch now

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

More on Nadia Shpachenko

2020 Grammy winners in classical and more

Resources

Nadia Shpachenko — Invasion (DG Store)

Nadia Shpachenko — Invasion (Amazon)

Nadia Shpachenko (official site)

Hilary Hahn — Eclipse (DG)

New Classical Tracks - Hilary Hahn

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Every 10 years or so, violinist Hilary Hahn takes a one-year sabbatical from performing. It’s a way for her to remove herself from the whirlwind of professional music-making, and re-evaluate what’s working, and what’s not. When she began her most recent sabbatical in September 2019, she had no idea what lay ahead. She’d always thought, as a creative person, she’d always find some creative outlet if she found herself unable to perform.

It turns out that playing onstage with an orchestra for an audience fills her tanks. The absence of that emotional outlet wasn’t the only loss. She said she’d also lost her connections with colleagues around the world, her sense of self as a musician and her confidence. Her latest album, Eclipse , is a testament to facing that challenge with vulnerability and the support of trusted colleagues.

The introduction you wrote for your new album revealed a vulnerability that artists haven’t always shared.

“I made a huge change in how I perceived the way we communicate as artists with our audiences and our fellow musicians with the project 100 Days of Practice. In this project, I shared my practice, read the comments, and realized that there was a certain relationship to practice that was very vulnerable. When people also saw that vulnerability as normal for a professional, they felt much more connected to their own practice. That's what cued me into the idea of finality presented in our field as we learn the way to do it. But music is an art form about emotions and people. When we don't tell our emotions, we don't tell stories about people.”

Why do you consider playing the Dvorak concerto as coming home?

“The joy of playing together again was similar to being away from your home country, and then you come back. It’s as if you have an extensive lively family you haven't seen for two years, and you're all in the room together. That was the homecoming aspect. That was something that I had missed that I hadn't been able to replicate, and suddenly we were all in it together. It was great. The room's energy was dimensional. They were also returning to a format they hadn't had for a while. They didn't have to sit apart from each other. The return to the big stage with the home audience was significant in ways I don't think we had challenged before, so it was nice to be part of that.”

Why do you describe Pablo de Sarasate’s Carmen Fantasy as finicky?

“You think you have the piece figured out and then practice it the next day. You're like, ‘Where did it go?’ In that sense, it is finicky. You have to play with a lot of accuracy, but also with a lot of spatial freedom around the instrument. That's a complicated combination. It's like walking on a balance beam that isn't just one balance beam. You're walking and then suddenly you're over in another area on another balance beam and then suddenly you're back. At the same time, the music is very free. You're trying to be a singer and virtuoso violinist at the same.”

Watch: Sarasate - Carmen Fantasy, Op. 25: I. Moderato

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

More on Hilary Hahn

New Classical Tracks Most coveted releases of 2021

New Classical Tracks Hilary Hahn memorializes her time in Paris

Resources

Hilary Hahn — Eclipse (DG Store)

Hilary Hahn — Eclipse (Amazon)

Johnny Gandelsman — This Is America – An Anthology 2020-2021 (In a Circle Records)

New Classical Tracks - Johnny Gandelsman

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“I was born in Russia into a family of musicians. Both of my parents are musicians. My only sibling, my older sister, is a violinist as well,” says violinist Johnny Gandelsman, who has been living in Brooklyn since 1999. “I've been playing since I was 5 years old, and my family moved to Israel when I was a kid. Then I came to the United States to go to school and have been living here ever since.”

You might recognize Gandelsman as one of the violinists with the ensemble Brooklyn Rider. He also has played in the world music collective Silk Road Ensemble. Most recently, he has been commissioning new works for his three-CD solo project, This Is America – An Anthology 2020-2021 .

“This is a project that was born a few months into the height of the pandemic. I was just trying to think if there was anything I can do about the situation in the world. One thing that occurred to me was to commission new works from American composers,” he said about his inspiration for the project. “I wanted composers who live here and to ask them to reflect on the times.”

Can you talk about the composers, pieces and themes we hear in the project?

“One piece that comes to my mind is a work by a composer from Tatarstan, Adeliia Faizullina . Her piece is Dew, Time, Linger . When the pandemic struck, she was a student in Los Angeles studying composition. Her piece captures this incredibly beautiful feeling of isolation. She finds really beautiful ways to depict silence, such as a drop of water in the sink or a gust of wind.

“I asked Rhiannon Giddens to write a piece. She created New to the Session . It was about her experience attending music sessions where people come together and play tunes. And her experience was that she was a beginner in that world. It's this succession of fiddle tunes, which are full of joy.

“The opening piece is by Clarice Assad . It's simply titled O , which represents oxygen. That seems to encompass so much of what we were experiencing, people struggling to breathe, just being able to breathe and maybe a sigh of relief if you did feel safe.”

Can you talk about O ?

“We were struggling to breathe. She also mentions the killing of George Floyd as forcibly denying his breath. It was not planned that way, but the piece that closes the album set is Breathe , by Kojiro Umezaki . His work also deals with the same themes but in a very different way of expressing them. It's a bookend for this almost four-hour release.”

Watch now

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

More on Johnny Gandelsman

New Classical Tracks: Yo-Yo Ma and Johnny Gandelsman

Johnny Gandelsman, 'O'

Resources

Johnny Gandelsman — This Is America – An Anthology 2020-2021 (Amazon)

Johnny Gandelsman — This Is America – An Anthology 2020-2021 (Bandcamp)

Amanda Lee Falkenberg with Marin Alsop/The London Symphony Orchestra & The London Voices — The Moons Symphony (Signum)

New Classical Tracks - Amanda Lee Falkenberg

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Amanda Lee Falkenberg is an Australian-born composer and pianist who lives in Dubai. Five years ago she took a leap of faith that led to the creation of a choral symphony that merges science and art. After a random email to a NASA scientist, which opened an entire universe of possibilities, she started work on her latest album, The Moon Symphony , featuring Marin Alsop conducting the London Symphony Orchestra, and the London Voices.

Can you talk about the article that started this project?

“I instantly went, ‘Oh my goodness! These moons are not weird. They're absolutely wonderful and I need to change their course.’ I felt like after reading the article I just wanted to break them free and give them a voice. Knowing the power of music and being a film composer let me understand the persuasive and powerful qualities that music has more than any other art form. It can really manipulate the emotional landscape. It was so clear to me that that's what I wanted to do with these moons.”

Why is it important for you to merge science and art?

“I just couldn't ignore it. I felt like science was tapping me on the shoulder saying, ‘Hey, can we be part of this moon adventure with you?’ At that point, I wasn't planning on having a choir, but I thought if I did get the choir involved it would give more relevance and outreach and could really house the science better.”

Which of these moons or movements presented the greatest challenge for you?

“Titan. I had a field day choosing the science of that moon because of all the recent discoveries, and because of the legendary Cassini–Huygens space-research mission by NASA . One of the challenging moments was when I had been composing nonstop for seven days, and I remember just listening back to what I had come up with. I don't like it at all. I scrapped everything. I just literally deleted it.

“The moon Miranda of Uranus was a challenge for different reasons. I felt the most emotionally affected by her meaning. I just got so involved in her world. I remember feeling like I was living in a nightmare. I just wanted to beam myself out of it because it just was so dark, scary and violent.

“That's when I found the story of the seventh moon. I thought, ‘Oh, my goodness! This is what's missing from my symphony. The seventh story. Why don't we position Earth's moon, our moon, in this storytelling?’ It’s something to remind us that we actually do have a home in the solar system and it was the moon Miranda's story that brought me to that inspiration.”

Watch now

To hear the rest of my conversation, click on the extended interview above, or download the extended podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

More on Amanda Lee Falkenberg

The Planetary Society Amanda Lee Falkenberg

Resources

Amanda Lee Falkenberg with Marin Alsop/The London Symphony Orchestra & The London Voices — The Moons Symphony (Presto music)

Amanda Lee Falkenberg with Marin Alsop/The London Symphony Orchestra & The London Voices — The Moons Symphony (Amazon)

Amanda Lee Falkenberg (official site)