Like Villa-Lobos did for the Brazilian Choros only even more so, Argentinian Astor Piazzolla has taken the local Tango form and made from it his own kind of expression. That is all quite clear if you listen to Accordionist Bjarke Mogensen as he joins with the Danish Chamber Players and soloists Johan Bridger on vibraphone and Mathias Heise on harmonica for the freewheeling, well conceived and enthusiastic homage to the composer on the recent Album for Astor  (Our Recordings 8.226916). Select Piazzolla gems sparkle one after the other on this album. Solo accordion, accordion with ..read more

  Eastern Orthodox Chant and Liturgical Music is one of the sometimes neglected Wonders of the Musical World and a form that has seen important contributions to the repertoire in recent times. Cappella Roman gives us something worthy in that vein on their sonorous Heaven and Earth (Cappella Records CR424SACD 2CD). The first disk covers the John Tavener work Ikon of Light in its totality. It is cosmic and deeply meditative, like in some ways Arvo Part meets ancient Orthodox ambient spirituality. The second disk covers Heaven and Earth: A Song of Creation, nine short works covering a thema ..read more

  It can easily be argued that Thomas Ades is at the very top of the English crop of Modernist composers active today. The recent Marchentanze (Ondine ODE 1411-2), a set of four World Premiere recordings that have representative as well as abstract aspect that indicate how strong and central a voice Ades is in our time. The Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra under Nicholas Collon with soloists Pekka Kuusisto on violin and Tomas Nunez, cello, all give us the exciting readings these works deserve and as such constitute a must-hear and no doubt must-have offering. It touches upon four musical ..read more

  Composer Nicholas Chase gives to us a new EP of mesmerizing solo piano music entitled Tiny Thunder (Cold Blue CB 0064). Pianist Bryon Pezzone gives us carefully poetic performances of the two movements that exemplifies the Radical Tonality that the Cold Blue label so effectively and promisingly espouses. The emphasis throughout is on ultra slow, infinitely sustained piano explorations that take their time unfolding into a mysterious world we can sense and dwell in happily for the brief but event-filled vibrancy of the work. The second movement ups the pace yet maintains the hovering my ..read more

  I've appreciated Howard Hersch's compositions for quite a while now. Type his name in the search box above for previous reviews. Today there is a new one of solo instrumental works called A Crown of Feathers  (Self Published CD). It consists of some four well-considered works, for flute, for marimba, for multiple piccolos and for violin. The latter piece has a Jewish folk flavor, and a brief quotation from same. The marimba work has some Jazz underpinnings, and elsewise there are rewarding works that do a lot more than give a solist something to do. Each has a full bouquet of cont ..read more

  Michael Byron is a composer who innovates in the Neo-Minimal, Radical Tonality zone in ways that sometimes suggest, and nicely so, a cross affiliation with Avant Jazz in its spiritual aspects, such as we have heard from mature Cecil Taylor and later John Coltrane, and then from the Minimal school later Terry Riley also, in its hypnotic quality. In this manner the new album of some five lively chamber works steps forward boldly and appealingly. It is a new one on Cold Blue Records, named Halcyon Days, Music for Marimbas, Xylophones, Vibraphones, Glockenspiels, Maracas and Pianos (Cold B ..read more

  When you live through a period of music history, which of course we all do, it is not always clear how things will shake out when the years pass and it is the futurel. Like some fellow oldsters I bore witness as a listening self to some of the peaks of High Modernism and now get the chance to go back again to it in retrospect. For that I am happy to report in on an album that helps us further gauge and indeed affirm the stature of a leading light of US High Modern musical art. Milton Babbitt (1916-2011) when I was coming up was mostly known as a brilliant pioneer of Electronic and Comp ..read more

  If you know about chamber music in general you probably know that Beethoven's last String Quartets are considered among the most sublime and intensely personal chamber works of all time. There of course have been many recordings of them over the years. Here is a new version (Signum Classics SIGCD733 3CDs) by the  Calidore String Quartets and it has a freshness to it that helps it all rival the most acclaimed versions, to my mind. The music is astounding fare, strength-after strength from the 12th Quartet through the 16th and the grippingly profound Grosse Fugue. It is all here and ..read more

  As we travel through the seasonal cycle we experience the natural and cultural elements tied to each. It is a part of our birthright to recognize each element in conjunction with its multi-complemental whole. Major living Modernist composer Lei Liang gives us two major electroacoustic soundscapes that span seasonal and culturo-natural zones of timeliness conjoining multidisciplinary gestalts in two multipart works of importance, Hearing Landscapes, Hearing Icescapes (New Focus Recordings FCR 360).  The idea is that through a combining of musico-artistic and scientific knowledges ..read more

  Composer Scott L. Miller has in the past few years done some of the most interesting Modern music out there. It is not capitulating, nor is it a rehash of earlier ways so much as a new offering that sounds like the future again, promisingly. (Type his name in the search box for previous reviews.)  So today there is his latest, COINCIDENT (New Focus Recordings CD FCR 337). The objective on these eight movements for electronic synthesizer and chamber ensemble is to do something in furtherance of telematic music, or in other words in this case multipart music with live chamber ..read more