Brian Ferneyhough - The Arditti Quartet Edition
CD released in 1989
Arditti Quartet:
Irvine Arditti - violin
David Alberman - violin
Levine Andrade - viola
Rohan de Saram - cello
One of the most important and fascinating personalities of today's music, Brian Ferneyhough is also one of the most difficult to define. His earliest compositions go back to 1968. In 1974 he suddenly came into full view at the Royan Festival, then directed by Harry Halbreich. Prior to that time the complexity of his thought and the extreme difficulty of his works seemed to prevent their wider circulation. From 1974 onwards, this situation was completely reversed and, owing to a greater number of performances, not least by the Arditti String Quartet, who enjoy a close relationship with the composer, Brian Ferneyhough's stature now places him among the most recognized and influential composers of his time.
Brian Ferneyhough defines himself as a "sceptical mystic" in search of "the positive nature of doubt". He creates a fundamentally original music, replete with polyphonic potentials and rich harmonic textures. It often demonstrates a powerful architectonic concern and an acute sense of the large form. His strictly organised writing confronts the material's specific and pragmatic interconnections with the performer's "creative neurosis". This is a music of discontinuous sound and discourse, with complex combinations and hierarchies. As the information content is so extraordinarily dense it can at times be very demanding for the listener, but the aesthetics and dialectics reflect an art of extreme rigour and genuine grandeur.
...
The Arditti Quartet was formed in 1974, when its original players Irvine Arditti and Levine Andrade were studying at the Royal Academy of Music, London. They were joined in 1977 by Rohan de Saran and in 1986 by David Alberman.
They specialise in the performance of contemporary music and music of this century comprising a vast and varied selection of works in all styles, and consider it important to work with the composers whose music they play. Part of their objective is to encourage young composers to write for their medium. In the course of one season they have performed as many as 50 new pieces. The 1988/1989 season included new works from Georges Aperghis, Philippe Boesmans, Sylvano Bussotti, John Cage, Elliott Carter, Pascal Dusapin, Brian Ferneyhough, Sofia Gubadulina, Maurizio Kagel, Helmut Lachenmann, Conlon Nancarrow, Luigi Nono, Krysztof Penderecki, Henri Pousseur, Wolfgang Rihm and Hans-Jurgen von Bose.
Since 1982 they have been resident string tutors in the Darmstadt Summer Academy for New Music, as well as having given master classes worldwide.
This record is part of a series played by the Arditti Quartet for Disques Montaigne. This series consists of the classics of the XXth century to include music of the 2nd Viennese School and Bartok as well as a selection of recent repertoire. (Patrick Szersnovicz; translated by A. A. Hebbachi)
Tracklisting:
1. Deuxieme Quatuor a cordes {9:57}
2. Adagissimo pour quatuor a cordes {1:54}
3. Troisieme Quatuor a cordes: 1er mvt {9:51}
4. Troiseme Quatuor a cordes: 2e mvt {7:00}
5. Sonates pour quatuor a cordes {41:03}
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Paul Hindemith and Bernhard Heiden - Sonatas for Horn & Piano
LP released in 1981
Performers:
Caswell Neal - horn
Zita Carno - piano
The two Sonatas by Paul Hindemith represented on this album represent in full flower the consolidation of his musical language achieved in his celebrated opera, Mathis der Maler, but in the context of the duo sonata for wind instruments. The 1939 Horn Sonata is contemporaneous with the powerful Violin Concerto, while the 1943 piece, composed after he had settled down to a professorship at Yale, having emigrated from a Nazi-dominated Middle-Europe, has as its major companionpiece the brilliant and popular Symphonic Metamorphoses on Themes of Carl Maria von Weber.
In commentary supplied for this recording, horn soloist, Caswell Neal, after noting the love that Hindemith shared for the horn in common with his great Austro-German predecessors, Mozart, Weber, Schumann, Brahms, and Bruckner, gives the following description of the music:
"The first movement leads off with a bold statement for horn, tempered subsequently by more tender and reflective material. A sudden return to the bravura manner ensues with repeated horn calls. A second assertive theme is introduced, this time with interchange between horn and piano. All this occurs within the first page of the horn part. The movement as a whole continues in this vein of contrast between the brisk and heroic, the tender and reflective. A lively coda recalls the opening and leads to the final bars on a note of high resolution. The slow movement opens with a broad, peaceful statement for piano, then taken up by the horn, which then turns the tables with a bolder version; but calm returns quickly and we soon hear thematic elements in inverted form. The music then works toward a brassy climax, then returns to its tranquil opening theme, this time inverted. Abrupt interjections by horn and piano serve as introduction to the spirited finale, with the opening theme proper following in quick succession. A slow section, introduced via a variant of the slow movement main theme, leads to the most haunting and memorable part of the music. The piano brings us back to the fast music, and after dialogue development, the slow episode is recalled, this time leading to a climactic statement for horn. The main elements of the exposition are recalled, then the second movement main theme variant dovetailed with the third movement opening theme, which then becomes inverted to provide a broad and virile ending to the whole Sonata."
While the 1939 Sonata is scored for horn in F, the 1943 work was written originally for the alto horn in E-flat, more commonly associated with the marching band. However, the composer indicated the French horn and/or saxophone as perfectly acceptable alternates, and Mr. Neal in his notes emphasizes his own preference for the more agile and expressive French horn, and accordingly has used it on this album. Herewith his comments on the music:
"The opening is a quiet and noble statement for horn with piano accompaniment - short and full of feeling. The brief movement as a whole constitutes a kind of prelude - a Hindemithian glimpse of ethereal music. Brisk and busy interplay between horn and piano in varying meters characterizes the second movement. The dynamic range of the horn is fully exploited, but the end is quiet.
Following the slow-fast-slow-fast sequence of the baroque sonata da chiesa, Hindemith gives us here another brief slow movement, this time in dialogue format between piano and horn.
Finally, before the last movement proper, Hindemith requests a reading of a spoken dialogue of his own composition, which states in quietly eloquent fashion something of the composer's own perspective on music past, present, and future:
THE POSTHORN (DIALOGUE)
Horn Player:
'Is not the sounding of a horn to our busy souls (even as the scent of blossoms wilted long ago, or the discolored folds of musty tapestry, or crumbling leaves of ancient yellowed tomes) like a sonorous visit from those ages which counted speed by straining horses' gallop, and not by lightning prisoned up in cables; and when to live and learn they ranged the countryside, not just the closely printed pages? The cornucopia's gift calls forth in us a pallid yearning, melancholy longing.'
Pianist:
'The old is good not just because it's past, nor is the new supreme because we live with it, and never yet a man felt greater joy than he could bear or truly comprehend. Your task it is, amid confusion, rush, and noise to grasp the lasting, calm, and meaningful, and finding it anew, to hold and treasure it.'
The piano leads off the last movement with a virtuoso evocation of the modern hustle-bustle. Then the horn makes its quiet statement with a song in slow tempo. They build together, but the horn insists on the stately and the ordered, holding out against the onslaughts of piano to the very end."
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Bernhard Heiden, born in Frankfurt, Germany, was a pupil of Hindemith who finished his studies in the U.S. He has been teaching composition at Indiana University since 1946 and has composed prolifically for all manner of instruments. His 1939 Horn Sonata is of distinctly lighter character as compared to the ordered and thoughtful complexities of his mentor.
Caswell Neal describes the music as follows:
"The 2/2 Moderato opening movement has the horn leading off with a quiet statement, with subordinate themes following over a moody piano accompaniment. The piano is indeed most skillfully used to announce changes in direction throughout the entire movement. When the original theme is heard again, it is at half the original tempo; but the tempo primo resumes speedily. Contrasting episodes of calm and energy carry the movement to another half-tempo statement of the main theme, which serves via crescendo to end it. The second movement contrasts a quiet minuetto section with a vivace pitting horn against piano. The minuetto section returns in intensified vein. A highly effective obbligato episode for horn leads to a brief and tranquil coda. The finale is a lively 2/2 rondo of almost quickstep character with horn and piano vying vigorously, one against the other. The concluding pages of the movement are marked by the expected return of the main theme, but this time in triplets."
In recent correspondence to Caswell Neal, the composer, Heiden, had some interesting comments on the SONATA:
"The Horn Sonata was written for Theodore Seder who was the first horn player with the Detroit Symphony in 1939. He later became the Librarian of the Fleisher Collection of the Public Library in Philadelphia.
I was not aware at the time that I composed the work that Hindemith was also writing a Sonata for Horn that same year. Nor, I am sure, was he aware of my piece. I do remember showing it to him 1 or 2 years later. The last movement contains some Greek dance rhythms which I heard while dining in a Detroit Greek restaurant! This was long before we ever came to Greece where we now have spent many summers and 2 sabbaticals." (from the liner notes)
Tracklisting:
Side 1
1. Paul Hindemith - Sonata for Horn & Piano: Massig bewegt {5:22}
Hindemith's Sonata for Horn & Piano composed in 1939
2. Paul Hindemith - Sonata for Horn & Piano: Ruhig bewegt {3:56}
3. Paul Hindemith - Sonata for Horn & Piano: Lebhaft {6:45}
Side 2
1. Bernhard Heiden - Sonata for Horn & Piano: Moderato {4:35}
Heiden's Sonata for Horn & Piano composed in 1939
2. Bernhard Heiden - Sonata for Horn & Piano: Tempo di minuetto {4:14}
3. Bernhard Heiden - Sonata for Horn & Piano: Rondo: Allegretto {3:02}
4. Paul Hindemith - Sonata for Alto Horn in E-Flat (or Horn) & Piano: Ruhig bewegt {1:49}
Hindemith's Sonata for Alto Horn in E-Flat (or Horn) & Piano composed in 1943
5. Paul Hindemith - Sonata for Alto Horn in E-Flat (or Horn) & Piano: Lebhaft {3:25}
6. Paul Hindemith - Sonata for Alto Horn in E-Flat (or Horn) & Piano: Sehr langsam {1:46}
7. Paul Hindemith - Sonata for Alto Horn in E-Flat (or Horn) & Piano: The Posthorn (Dialogue); Lebhaft {3:38}
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I'm going to be visiting some people on Xmas day. I'll probably be back in a couple of days.I would like to wish everyone out there best wishes for the holidays and seasons greetings.
Del Roper - Chimes from the Church Tower
released on LP
The delicate electronic balance demanded by today's precise recording techniques requires special studios, sensitive sound systems, and acoustical perfection - all to provide the listener with all the purity and realism of the original performance.
How to duplicate this technical flawlessness - and record the actual playing of a massive carillon - was the problem faced by Del Roper in his creation of this collection of favorites.
Obviously, the instrument could not be housed in a recording studio. Rather, the studio had to be "transplanted" to the location of the carillon in the sanctuary and bell tower of the beautiful Polytechnic Methodist Church.
Here, after endless experimentation with technique and positioning of recording equipment, an engineering triumph was accomplished that is matched only by the excellence of Del Roper's virtuosity on the carillon.
After almost 100 hours of recording, the unique presence of the carillon was vividly caught at last. Now it was possible to reproduce the noble sound of chiming chorales in a home stereo or hi-fi system.
The sound that reaches your ears is the same sound that graces the evening air in the quiet neighborhood of Fort Worth's Polytechnic section. Not just a recording where a microphone overheard the instrument, but the actual, faithfully reproduced sound of the carillon as if your living room were just a short stroll from Del Roper and his Chimes from the Church Tower. (from the liner notes)
Tracklisting:
Side 1
1. And Can It Be {2:29}
2. Onward Christian Soldiers {2:44}
3. Faith of Our Fathers {2:18}
4. Come Thou Almighty King {1:42}
5. When I Survey the Wondrous Cross {3:28}
6. Blest Be the Tie That Binds {2:04}
7. My Faith Looks Up to Thee {2:03}
8. How Beauteous Were the Marks {2:53}
Side 2
1. Deeper and Deeper {1:57}
2. I Need Thee Every Hour {2:28}
3. Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee {2:29}
4. I Love to Tell the Story {3:00}
5. All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name {2:34}
6. I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord {2:06}
7. Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken {2:23}
8. The Church's One Foundation {1:48}
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Rita Ford's Music Boxes - A Christmas Tree
LP released in 1985
I'm not sure if I really wanted to post Christmas music. I really don't care for it even at this time of year. Then I dug this LP out and since there's only music boxes on it, I might as well put this up. Some of the only Xmas music I would not mind listening to (even enjoy it) is played by these beautiful-sounding antique devices. Teo Macero is listed as executive producer on this LP, so that might count for something I suppose.
Six different kinds of music boxes are used: the Regina, Symphonium, Stella, Regina with Bells, Polyphon, and the Mira. I hope that all of you are enjoying the holidays so far.
Tracklisting:
Side 1
1. Medley of: I Know My Redeemer Liveth/Silent Night, Holy Night/Ave Maria/Jingle Bells/O Tannenbaum/Good King Wenceslas/Adeste Fideles/Cloister Bells/On the Christmas Tree the Lights are Burning/Song of the Virgin Mary/Christians Awake {14:07}
2. Medley of: Auld Lang Syne/Monastery Bells/Nazareth, the First Noel/Consolation/O Holy Night/Chimes of Normandy/Star of the Sea/Sweet Spirit Hear My Prayer/See the Conquering Hero/Stabat Mater/Silent Night with Bells {15:10}
Side 2
1. Medley of: Moonlight Serenade with Bells/Angels Serenade with Bells/Parade of the Wooden Soldiers/Monastery Bells {13:09}
2. Medley of: Ave Maria/untitled European folk melody/Monastery Bells/Some Sweet Day/Coronation Hymn {13:56}
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Peter Maxwell Davies - Miss Donnithorne's Maggot/Eight Songs for a Mad King
CD released in 1987
Miss Donnithorne's Maggot (1974)
recorded at Henry Wood Hall on May 24, 1984
text by Randolph Stow
Performers:
Mary Thomas - mezzo-soprano
The Fires of London: Philippa Davies - flutes; David Campbell - clarinets; Rosemary Furniss - violin; Jonathan Williams - cello; Stephen Pruslin - piano; Gregory Knowles - percussion
The author has described his text as "a slur on the reputation of an unfortuante lady". Eliza Emily Donnithorne was a real-life model for Miss Havisham in Dickens' Great Expectations. An avid reader, she was probably well acquainted with her fictional counterpart. She was born in Bengal around 1827, and, upon her father's retirement, returned to live in New South Wales. In 1856 she became engaged to a naval officer, but was jilted en route to the altar. Miss Donnithorne coped with this traumatic event by "freezing" the moment of her impending wedding for the rest of her life. The wedding breakfast was left to moulder on the table, the bride continued to wear her wedding dress, and she became a virtual recluse, only indulging in minimal necessary conversations through a chink in her front door. In Maxwell Davies's outrageous but deeply compassionate portrait, we may well infer that Miss Donnithorne's re-living of her experience is a compulsively repeated ritual, one that may have taken place every night of her life. She died on May 20, 1886. Her funeral was her first outing for thirty years.
Although Miss Donnithorne certainly makes forays into the domain of the extended voice, the work fundamentally represents an extension of the ideals of bel canto into the music of our own time. And although there is a wealth of dramatic gesture, it is above all through pitch and harmony that Maxwell Davies informs the listener of his precise location on the axis between comedy and pain. (Stephen Pruslin)
Eight Songs for a Mad King (1969)
recorded at Decca Studios, London on October 1-2, 1970
text by Randolph Stow and George III
Performers:
Julius Eastman - baritone
The Fires of London: Judith Pearce - flutes; Alan Hacker - clarinets; Duncan Druce - violin; Jennifer Ward Clarke - cello; Stephen Pruslin - piano/harpsichord; Barry Quinn - percussion
Peter Maxwell Davies - conductor
The poems forming the text of this work were suggested by a miniature mechanical organ playing eight tunes, once the property of George III. A scrap of paper sold with it explains that "This Organ was George the third for Birds to sing". Another fragment identifies its second owner as "James Hughes who served his Majesty George 3 near 30 years penshen of in 1812 at 30 pouns year served HRH princes Augusta 8 years Half penshen of in 1820 at 30 year".
The organ remained in the family of Hughes until modern times, when it was acquired by the Hon. Sir Steven Runciman, who in 1966 demonstrated it to me. It left a peculiar and disturbing impression. One imagined the King, in his purple flannel dressing-gown and ermine night-cap, struggling to teach birds to make the music which he could so rarely torture out of his flute and harpsichord. Or trying to sing with them, in that ravaged voice, made almost inhuman by day-long soliloquies, which once murdered Handel for Fanny Burney's entertainment. There were echoes of the story of the Emperor's nightingale. But this Emperor was mad; and at times he knew it, and wept.
The songs are to be understood as the King's monologue while listening to his birds perform, and incorporate some sentences actually spoken by George III. The quotations, and a description of most of the incidents to which reference is made, can be found in the chapters on George III in The Court at Windsor by Christopher Hibbert (Longmans and Penguin Books). (Randolph Stow)
Tracklisting:
1. Miss Donnithorne's Maggot {36:40}
1. Prelude - Miss Donnithorne invites the listener to her imagined wedding.
2. Miss Donnithorne's Maggot - The first "song" suggests a parallel between Miss Donnithorne and the White Woman of Berners Street, a famous London apparition and another prototype for Miss Havisham. It also presents the image of the wedding cake as a tower, the first in a series of "Freudian" references invoked by Miss Donnithorne's fevered imagination.
3. Recitative - The well-read Miss Donnithorne here casts herself as Ophelia. Reference is also made to Bea Miles, the rich drop-out who slept rough and, until her death in Sydney in 1974, could recite all of Shakespeare by heart, and also to the "Eternity Man", who went round Sydney at night, chalking the word "Eternity" on the paving stones.
4. Her Dump - The phallic tower of wedding cake is here construed as a lighthouse, connecting it more specifically with Miss Donnithorne's naval officer fiance.
5. Nocturne, instruments alone
6. Her Rant - Miss Donnithorne now fantasises a rape, while further military and anatomical images proliferate from the cipher of the wedding cake.
7. Recitative - Miss Donnithorne rails against the local youths, while taking a more than ladylike interest in their conversations.
8. Her Reel - Miss Donnithorne anticipates the return of her bridegroom and finally pirouettes offstage in a shower of confetti to her imagined consummation.
2. Eight Songs for a Mad King {30:10}
1. The Sentry (Tune: King Prussia's Minuet) - The King imagines himself approaching the sentry before going for a walk in the country. He speaks paternally to the soldier, and promises him a present from his vegetable garden. Then suddenly, seeing himself as the prisoner of the sentry, he breaks down. (In this mood, he once burst into tears and cried: "I wish to God I may die, for I am going to be mad".)
2. The Country Walk (La Promenade) - The King imagines himself to be walking in the countryside, which he loves, but his failing sight distorts it into grotesque forms and his "nervousness" grows.
3. The Lady-in-Waiting (Miss Musgrave's Fancy) - The King imagines himself indulging in another of his chief pleasures, conversation with a wellbred young woman, but is reminded that wellbred young women are terrified of him.
4. To be sung on the water (The Waterman) - The King fancies himself in a boat on the Thames, and dreams of being relieved of his God-given burdens. (It was in such moods that he talked of retiring to Hanover, or even America.)
5. The Phantom Queen (He's ay a-kissing me) - The King yearns for his imaginary Queen. (Esther, Lady Pembroke, had been a famous beauty in his youth. During his first period of madness in 1788-9 he formed the delusion, which recurred later, that he had divorced Queen Charlotte and married Queen Esther, in the presence of his doctors.) Distrusting the doctors, whom he accuses of keeping Queen Esther from him, he remembers the brutal treatment to which he was subjected before the advent of the humane Doctor Willis.
6. The Counterfeit (Le Contrefaite) - The text is taken from one of the King's own monologues, recorded by Queen Charlotte's eavesdropper, Fanny Burney.
7. Country Dance (Scotch Bonnett) - The King imagines the people of Windsor (of whom he once said, weeping: "These good People are too fond of me") engaged in country merrymaking. He encourages them with one of the quotations from Handel which punctuated his conversation. He recalls a piece of local knowledge with which he once startled his grooms. Then (as in his famous interview with Fanny Burney at Kew) he becomes suddenly agitated about the evils of the age. (The Kew interview was terminated by the doctors after the King had cried: "When once I get away. I shall rule with a rod of iron!")
8. The Review (A Spanish March) - The King (who in this life occasionally wore mourning, "in memory of George III, for he was a good man") announces his death to the nation and reviews his career.
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