BEST CONTEMPORARY MUSIC RECORDING OF 2018: Harold Meltzer — SONGS AND STRUCTURES (P. Appleby, M. Cuckson, N. Katyukova, B. McMillen, Avalon String Quartet; Bridge Records BCD 9513)

HAROLD MELTZER (born 1966): Songs and Structures — Paul Appleby, tenor; Miranda Cuckson, violin; Natalia Katyukova and Blair McMillen, piano; Avalon String Quartet [Recording venue(s) and date(s) not specified; Bridge Records BCD 9513; 1 CD, 60:51; Available from Bridge Records, Naxos Direct, Presto Classical (UK), and major music retailers]

When hearing new music, it is imperative to remember that at some time all music was contemporary. Bach, Brahms, Beatles, or Beyoncé, the evolution of the music of any artist or age can be traced to a finite beginning before which its influences and inspirations were only disparate noises and notions. Physiologically, artistic creation is owed to fortuitous ignitions of synapses within complex cognitive processes, but there is something unknowable and unnameable in the mind that sees a raindrop, a star, or a skyscraper and perceives within and beyond its shape, past the limits of sight, the song that it sings into the void. The ability to hear these songs and to recreate them in sounds that other ears can perceive is eternally new. The sounds become familiar, but it is too often the familiarity of words repeated but not comprehended. In the most basic sense, contemporary music is nearer in temporal proximity to the listener than the music of past masters, but the dissolution of time is one of music’s most potent powers. The music by American composer Harold Meltzer on this Bridge Records release, Songs and Structures, is new not solely owing to its recency but, more significantly, because it makes audible the songs of iconic structures of modern life, physical and psychological. Just as Bach’s Passions are forever contemporary, the works on Songs and Structures are newly ageless.

A quartet of settings of verses by British poet Ted Hughes, Meltzer’s song cycle Bride of the Island was premièred by tenor Paul Appleby and pianist Natalia Katyukova in 2016. Composer and tenor have fostered a professional relationship not unlike the one between Franz Schubert and Johann Michael Vogl, the baritone whose performances of Schubert’s Lieder motivated the composition of some of the finest songs in the canon. In his performances on Songs and Structures, Appleby sings Meltzer’s songs as though both music and words are his own, instinctively fusing his vocalism with Katyukova’s versatile pianism. From the first bar of ‘Reveille,’ tenor and pianist entwine their instruments with shared awareness of aural textures.

Meltzer traced the narrative trajectory of ‘Reveille’ in music of absorbing simplicity, and Appleby deftly manages the ascents to Gs and A♭s above the stave. Katyukova articulates the swirling aquatic figurations that cascade through ‘Sugar Loaf’ with rhythmic exactness that propels but never hurries the performance. ‘The water is wild as alcohol’ is among Hughes’s most evocative lines, and Meltzer seized the opportunity of its musical potential by crafting a vocal line that enhances the words’ histrionic strength. It is the tenor’s lyricism that illuminates the paradoxes of ‘Thistles.’ His direct enunciation of ‘Every one a revengeful burst of resurrection’ reveals the poetic erudition of Meltzer’s treatment of the text. Appleby and Katyukova perform ‘Hay’ with a suggestion of cynicism that reaches its—and the cycle’s—climax in the line ‘Her heart is the weather.’ The disquieting honesty of Appleby’s delivery of the words ‘She loves nobody’ infuses Meltzer’s subtle musical prosody with startling immediacy. The contrast of the passage taking the tenor to top A, sung triumphantly as stipulated by the composer’s instructions, with the song’s ‘ghostly’ resolution ends Bride of the Island with a glimmer of deceptive serenity.

It is not difficult to conclude from a superficial survey of the history of Art Song that American music lacks a complementary literary tradition liked that of German Lieder, shaped by poets of the order of Goethe, Heine, and Schiller. Such a conclusion, however misguided, cannot be wholly rejected, but its validity is substantially reduced by works such as Meltzer’s Beautiful Ohio. The composer found in the poems by James Wright from which Beautiful Ohio’s texts are drawn an economy of words with layers of meaning that, like Shakespeare’s sonnets and the works of William Blake, reveal different truths to each observer. Beautiful Ohio shares with Schubert’s Winterreise an ambivalence about coping with loss, but it is Brahms’s adaptations of biblical texts in his Vier ernste Gesänge that Meltzer’s emotionally-charged treatments of Wright’s words most closely parallels.

Appleby premièred Beautiful Ohio in 2010, and he and Katyukova prove in the performance on Songs and Structures to be as musically and dramatically well-matched in this music as in Bride of the Island. The vivid imagery of the opening song, ‘Small Frogs Killed on the Highway,’ as bizarrely poignant as its title intimates, is communicated assertively but without exaggerated pathos. Appleby and Katyukova approach ‘Little Marble Boy’ reverently, as though performing the song in the hollow, hallowed space conjured in Wright’s poem, their sounds demonstrating the skill with which Meltzer instilled the mood of the text in his music. In ‘Beautiful Ohio,’ the tenor voices ‘I know what we call it / Most of the time’ with particular eloquence, echoing the wariness that haunts the music.

In all of these songs, Katyukova’s playing provides a second voice, not disinterested accompaniment, and her technical mastery of Meltzer’s writing for the piano allows her to focus on nuances of phrasing that reinforce details of her colleague’s interpretation, not least in ‘Caprice.’ Untroubled by the tricky chromatic writing centered in the passaggio, Appleby voices ‘The trouble is / They keep turning faces toward me / That I recognize’ confidently. He and Katyukova boldly stride through the demands of ‘Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio,’ unflinchingly confronting the ambiguities of both music and text. Though there is no real stylistic kinship between the works, the emotional currents by which the narrator’s journey in Beautiful Ohio is transported recall the bittersweet integration of thankfulness and sorrow at the core of the music composed by Henry Purcell for the funeral of Queen Mary II in 1695. The philosophical threads that bind words to music in Beautiful Ohio are more tangled than those woven into Purcell’s music, but Meltzer’s songs are no less reliant than any others upon performers’ prowess. Beautiful Ohio and Bride of the Island could be performed differently but surely no better than by Appleby and Katyukova on this disc.

Aqua for string quartet is a musical response to the visual and spatial impact of Aqua Tower, a residential building at 225 N. Columbus Drive in Chicago’s Lakeshore East development that was designed and built under the supervision of a team headed by noted architect Jeanne Gang. Meltzer’s writing in Aqua is as intrinsically ‘vocal’ as in his song cycles, the interactions among instruments here probing the metaphysical implications of an edifice’s marriages of earth and sky, steel and glass, public and private. One of the most intriguing aspects of Meltzer’s artistry is his gift for fabricating gossamer strands of sound that metamorphose into vast vistas. The performance of Aqua by Avalon String Quartet on this disc is a celebration of musical camaraderie, the instruments’ timbres combining to produce an engrossing sonic silhouette of Aqua Tower. The ways in which Meltzer’s part writing exploits traditional tonal relationships are reminiscent of Arvo Pärt’s syntheses of plainsong. The Avalon musicians are clearly as aware of their colleagues’ playing as of their own. They are also unmistakably aware of how Aqua dissolves the boundaries between visible monuments to man’s ambitions and the intangible pursuit of community.

Composed in fulfillment of a commission by the Library of Congress for a work to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the death of celebrated Austrian violinist Fritz Kreisler (1875 – 1962), Meltzer’s Kreisleriana pays homage both to Kreisler and to the music that he espoused. Organized in six movements, the piece might be described as a series of variations on a theme of virtuosity. Kreisler studied with Bruckner, Delibes, and Massenet in the course of an education that exposed him to virtually every trend in composing for the violin and gave him technical assurance sufficient to write his own pieces and successfully masquerade them as works by renowned composers.

Meltzer’s music traverses a broad spectrum of musical influences, but his own voice remains audible, especially in the inimitably innovative development of thematic material. The performance of Kreisleriana by violinist Miranda Cuckson and pianist Blain McMillen is a whirlwind of technical wizardry of which Kreisler would be proud, but there is depth in this music greater than virtuosity alone can infiltrate. Cuckson never attempts to mimic Kreisler’s singular style of playing: rather, she plays Meltzer’s music with her own impassioned phrasing, which McMillen supports with pianism of sensitivity and suavity. Kreisleriana does not attempt to be an Enigma-esque musical portrait of its subject. If Meltzer tasked himself with composing music that reimagines Kreisler’s artistry from a Twenty-First-Century perspective, he succeeded. In this performance, Cuckson and McMillen succeed in playing Meltzer’s music as Kreisler played Beethoven’s.

All music is a tribute to something—a person, a place, an event, an idea. The composer’s imagination is besieged by a realization or a recollection, and music seeps or surges from the creative deluge that results. It is not necessary for the listener to know the circumstances of a piece’s genesis in order to feel the pull of the music’s sentimental gravity. The connections between listener and composer, not esoteric bonds, determine the relevance of music. In order to enjoy the music on Songs and Structures, the listener needs no acquaintance with the literary world of Ted Hughes, the sights of Ohio and Chicago, or the career of Fritz Kreisler. Harold Meltzer’s musical tributes come with no prerequisites: the performances on Songs and Structures need only to be heard to be understood.

CD REVIEW: Harold Meltzer — VARIATIONS ON A SUMMER DAY and PIANO QUARTET (A. Fischer, Boston Chamber Music Society; Open G Records 888295672382)

HAROLD MELTZER (born 1966): Variations on a Summer Day and Piano Quartet—Abigail Fischer, soprano; Tara Helen O’Connor and Barry Crawford, flute; Alan Kay and Vicente Alexim, clarinet; Margaret Kampmeier, piano; Cyrus Beroukhim, Miranda Cuckson, and Andrea Schultz, violin; Daniel Panner, viola; Greg Hesselink, cello; Jayce Ogren, conductor; Boston Chamber Music Society [Recorded at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York City, USA, on 25 March 2017 (Piano Quartet) and 28 – 30 March 2017 (Variations on a Summer Day); Open G Records 888295672382; 1 CD, 40:51; Available from Bandcamp.com]

Originality for its own sake is scarcely better than unimaginative adherence to traditions. Popularity is not universally indicative of quality, but traditions are rarely devoid of some degree of celebration of the exceptional. Newly-minted words with nothing to say merely clutter languages that are already ludicrously verbose, widening the chasm between thought and expression in ways that further complicate the critical act of communication. As a physical manifestation of the most honest aspects of humanity, Art must communicate necessary truths too uncomfortable for everyday discourse and must do so in ways that demand attention and action. For music, it is not enough to spin a beguiling melody or beat out a distracting rhythm. Whether old or new, the sounds must forge connections among people—connections that engender harmonious resolutions for life’s chaotic cacophonies.

There are no formulæ that reliably concoct success for a composer of what is now identified as ‘serious’ music. Few composers in the recent history of Classical Music are likely to have been spared enduring the well-meaning dictate that artistic fulfillment depends upon originality, but originality in music is a misleading notion. All that has been achieved by musicians since the inception of composing in written form notwithstanding, the available tonal spectra are finite. Whether music makes use of quarter tones, tone rows, counterpoint, scordatura, or any of the thousands of effects that fill musicological glossaries, the basic structural tenets are unchanging. Success as a composer begins with recognizing that originality does not demand abandonment of the time-tested fundaments of music.

That Johannes Brahms was one of the most powerful instigators of musical evolution is indisputable, but which bold innovation in music does one attribute solely to Brahms’s invention? Brahms’s genius was not in discarding established methods and fabricating new ones: he altered the course of music’s cyclical metamorphoses by perfecting the forms he inherited from past masters and reshaping them to realize his own designs. As a reformer looking to both the past and the future, Brooklyn-born composer Harold Meltzer is among Brahms’s most gifted Twenty-First-Century heirs. The pieces on this expertly-produced Open G Records disc ask the listener not only to absorb the complexities of the sonic layers but also to consider their meaning. Why did Meltzer choose these forms, these instruments, these words? This is not arbitrarily-conceived music. Like Brahms, Meltzer has crafted an individual style not by rejecting the work of his artistic ancestors but by respecting, learning from, and continuing it. His is originality with purpose.

Written in 2016 in memory of composer Steven Stucky (1949 – 2016), Meltzer’s Piano Quartet is a thought-provoking but never coldly academic piece in which novelty and nostalgia interact in a mesmerizingly intricate ballet. The spirit of Meltzer’s memorial to a fellow artist is anything but funereal: this music is a paean to living, remembering, carrying on, and moving forward. The adjectives combined by the composer with metronome markers in lieu of conventional verbal instructions of tempo and temperament—effervescent, ardent, ecstatic, eager, poignant, ebullient, contented, sparkling—are observed so meticulously by the Boston Chamber Music Society musicians—violinist Harumi Rhodes, violist Dimitri Murrath, cellist Raman Ramakrishnan, and pianist Max Levinson—that an attentive listener might use precisely these words to describe the impact of this performance of the piece. The through-composed structure of his quartet differs from the architecture of these earlier works, but Meltzer’s part writing fleetingly recalls both Brahms’s three piano quartets and Antonín Dvořák’s superb Opus 87 Piano Quartet. Notable for inspired use of pizzicato, the emotional epicenter of the American composer’s quartet is the ‘Dreamwaltz for Steve,’ an episode further distinguished by kaleidoscopic intermingling of instrumental textures and timbres that amplify a faint echo of Beethoven. The instrumentalists are alert to the music’s subtleties, navigating the work’s expressive transformations with playing of unwavering technical mastery. This is a sophisticated performance of significant, splendidly-scored music.

A setting of verses by American poet Wallace Stevens (1879 – 1955), Meltzer’s Variations on a Summer Day discloses a rare affinity for perceiving the inherent song in words and fashioning music that manifests that song for performers and listeners. Stevens’s text is a stream-of-conscious meditation that is not unlike the mature work of writers as seemingly dissimilar as T. S. Eliot and Allen Ginsberg, the thoughts within his lines seeming to exist externally, free-standing concepts that are not reasoned but encountered like landmarks along a path. The poet blurred the distinctions between physical and metaphysical, and Meltzer embraces this ambiguity in writing that is at once earthly and ephemeral. Though their musical idioms are very different, there is a familial relationship between the narrator of Variations on a Summer Day and the nameless protagonist of Francis Poulenc’s La voix humaine. Like Poulenc’s incarnation of Jean Cocteau’s surrealistic drama, Variations on a Summer Day is an engrossing exchange with an unheard conversant. Mimicking nature’s cycles, the music imparts a sense of inevitability: rather than beginning and ending with contrived formality, the music rises to the surface for the duration of Variations on a Summer Day and then retreats into silence, waiting to be heard again.

Under the direction of conductor Jayce Ogren, the musicians to whom performing Variations on a Summer Day for this recording was entrusted play Meltzer’s music with an abiding interpretive spontaneity, vividly limning the score’s tonal unpredictability. Flautists Tara O’Connor and Barry Crawford, clarinetists Alan Kay and Vicente Alexim, violinists Miranda Cuckson and Andrea Schultz, violist Daniel Panner, cellist Greg Hesselink, and pianist Margaret Kampmeier approach this music with obvious preparation, but their playing is appealingly free from artifice. [In the passages beginning with ‘Round and round goes the bell of the water’ and ‘Low tide, flat water, sultry sun,’ violinist Cyrus Beroukhim deputizes for Cuckson. That the substitution is indiscernible is a testament to both musicians’ artistic integrity.] Cleanness of execution of the music’s rhythmic transitions is critical to the effectiveness of Variations on a Summer Day, but clinical exactitude would deprive the piece of its improvisational fervor. Guided by the apparent thoroughness of Ogren’s acquaintance with the score’s challenges, this performance is precise without ever being perfunctory.

It is often as an implicit euphemism for a less-flattering characterization that a singer is said to possess an unique voice, but soprano Abigail Fischer proves to be a peer of Bethany Beardslee, Cathy Berberian, and Jan DeGaetani as a singer with a wholly unique voice in the very best sense. A bright, forward placement of vowels and a flickering vibrato contribute to the fluidity of the soprano’s singing of both Meltzer’s music and Stevens’s words. Moreover, Fischer’s diction is little affected by notorious ‘opera singer English,’ her enunciation refreshingly natural. The exhilaration generated by her voicing of ‘Say of the gulls’ is tempered by the uneasy serenity of her declamation of ‘A music more than a breath.’ Fischer commands the irregular emotional tides of the sequence encompassing ‘The rocks of the cliffs,’ ‘Star over Monhegan,’ and ‘The leaves of the sea’ like a sorceress, wielding the magic of Meltzer’s music with able, assured vocalism.

A restless energy reminiscent of that found in Dylan Thomas’s poetry courses through ‘It is cold to be forever young,’ its sparks igniting Meltzer’s ingenuity. The music here grows more intense, and Fischer and Ogren sharpen their focus on the composer’s aural imagery. Singer and musicians lend ‘One sparrow is worth a thousand gulls’ a measure of lightness, and the accents of ‘An exercise in viewing the world’ and ‘This cloudy world’ are judiciously matched with the cadences of the words. Meltzer provides music of uncompromising directness for both ‘To change nature’ and ‘Now, the timothy at Pemaquid,’ and these performers give his lines readings of equal earnestness. Fischer sings ‘Everywhere the spruce trees bury soldiers’ with particular eloquence, joining Meltzer in evincing the ambivalence of the text with touching simplicity. Emotional honesty is also the heart of Fischer’s account of ‘Cover the sea with the sand rose,’ the vocal lines of which she sculpts with perfectly-balanced tenderness and toughness.

‘Words add to the senses’ is an apposite artistic credo for both Meltzer and Wallace Stevens—and for this performance of Variations on a Summer Day. Too often, words seem to stand in the way of today’s composers’ efforts at creating memorable music, but Meltzer seizes the opportunities for sketching familiar but previously unseen vistas offered by Stevens’s words. A near-Baroque sensibility permeates ‘The last island’ and ‘Round and round goes the bell of the water,’ the composer identifying distant vestiges of John Donne in the text, and Fischer sings the music with appropriately ringing tone that would serve her as stylishly in music by Bach or Telemann. Meltzer’s final variations emphasize the parallels between Stevens’s words and the poetry of Emily Dickinson. Afforded a chance to demonstrate her dramatic instincts, Fischer sings ‘Pass through the door’ with unaffected sincerity. Her vocalism is impressive throughout the performance, but she saves her best singing for the final three segments, launching the work’s quest for renewal with a searching traversal of ‘Low tide, flat water, sultry sun.’ The strangely disquieting ‘One boy swims under a tub’ and ‘You could almost see the brass on her gleaming’ highlight the perpetuality of Variations on a Summer Day. Instead of proposing a resolution, they suggest an inexorable continuation of the voyage. Fischer, Ogren, and their colleagues eschew ostentatious gestures in Variations’ final pages: their sounds cease, but the music does not end.

In grasping at success that is increasingly difficult to define, today’s composers sometimes forget the ideal that should always be the objective of creativity. Scholars can debate whether originality is characterized by saying something entirely new or saying something that has been said before but differently, but the truest gauge of music’s success is its appeal to the listener. Sonic treatises on new ways of composing and performing music are valuable, but how often does one genuinely want to hear them? Harold Meltzer’s Piano Quartet and Variations on a Summer Day break new ground without subjecting the listener to gruesome noises of demolition. No idols of previous generations were smashed in the name of originality in the making of this music. Rather, this composer has molded contemporary music that is as pleasing as it is progressive. How original!

CD REVIEW: TOCCATAS – Modern American Music for Harpsichord (Jory Vinikour, harpsichord; Sono Luminus DSL-92174)

SAMUEL ADLER (b. 1928), THOMAS BENJAMIN (b. 1940), STEPHEN BLUMBERG (b. 1962), HENRY COWELL (1897 – 1965), HAROLD MELTZER (b. 1966), PATRICIA MOREHEAD (b. 1940), ROBERT MOEVS (1920 – 2007), ROBERT MUCZYNSKI (1929 – 2010), MEL POWELL (1923 – 1998), and NED ROREM (b. 1923): Toccatas – Modern American Music for Harpsichord—Jory Vinikour, harpsichord [Recorded at Sono Luminus, Boyce, Virginia, 11 – 14 February 2013; Sono Luminus DSL-92174; 1CD + Blu-ray, 61:41; Available from Amazon, directly from Sono Luminus, and from major music retailers]

The catalyst that spurs innovation in most contemporary business methodologies is the element of discovery, and the same quality proves to be the impetus for many of the most meaningful musical experiences.  A great artist can of course lend enchantment and novelty to even the most hackneyed music, but the most memorable experiences in a music lover’s life are those rare intersections of great artists with music that demands the full deployment of their talents.  Toccatas is just such an experience: a recording of 20th- and 21st-Century music for harpsichord by American composers, this disc—another triumph of recording technology from Sono Luminus—reveals every shimmering facet of harpsichordist Jory Vinikour’s formidable technique, which is already familiar to listeners who appreciate the more frequently-encountered Baroque repertory with which the harpsichord is associated.  That any release featuring Mr. Vinikour will preserve superb musicianship is a foregone conclusion, but playing of the quality heard on Toccatas is not to be taken for granted.  Likewise, it is no surprise that Mr. Vinikour transforms the harpsichord into an instrument capable of flights of rhapsodic expressivity as impressive as the daunting feats of virtuosity that are its more typical fare.  What may well surprise many listeners is that the harpsichord has retained, not least because of the advocacy of artists of the caliber of Mr. Vinikour, to whom three of the selections recorded here are dedicated, an important presence in contemporary composers’ work for the concert hall.  Spanning nearly six decades of contemporary American music for the harpsichord, Toccatas exemplifies the harpsichord’s status not as a relic of a distant past but as a fascinatingly vital instrument of endless—and timeless—possibilities.

Likely developed in Renaissance Italy, the toccata dwells most prominently in the minds of 21st-Century listeners via the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, by whose genius the Italian models were refined into the paragons of mathematical purity that define the form in modern minds.  Those who approach Toccatas under the assumption that the disc expands Mr. Vinikour’s discography of the Baroque music of which he is a consummate master will receive a cultural jolt upon clicking or pressing Play.  Opening with Mel Powell’s 1953 Recitative and Toccata percossa, Mr. Vinikour transports both the toccata and the harpsichord from 18th-Century Europe to the gritty environs of American Music in the 20th Century.  Resounding with the din of Tin Pan Alley rather than the elegant tones of the Champs-Élysées, Powell’s music nods to a Gershwinesque integration of Jazz with the musical traditions of the mid-20th Century and is played by Mr. Vinikour with fantastic verve and rhythmic crispness, the ease of his command of Jazz stylings worthy of Herbie Hancock.  The Five Toccatas of Harold Meltzer—composed in 2005, dedicated to Mr. Vinikour, and here recorded for the first time—also benefit from the confident but never confining rhythmic vitality of Mr. Vinikour’s playing.  Building upon Bach’s distillation of the toccata form that he inherited from his south-of-the-Alps ancestors, Meltzer constructed toccatas that melded the Baroque with the Contemporary.  Entrusting these pieces to a performer as knowledgeable of the whole history of writing for the harpsichord as Mr. Vinikour ensured that the Five Toccatas would receive insightful, energetic performances, and Mr. Vinikour’s playing on this recording gloriously fulfills the composer’s objectives.

Also receiving world première recordings on Toccatas are Ned Rorem’s 1968 Spiders, Robert Muczynski’s 1982 Profiles, Robert Moevs’s 1986 Saraband, Thomas Benjamin’s 1988 Three Movements (‘Semi-Suite’), Stephen Blumberg’s 1991 Gyre (dedicated to Mr. Vinikour), and Patricia Morehead’s 2012 Tourbillon Galaxy (also dedicated to Mr. Vinikour).  Rorem, one of the great sages of contemporary American Classical Music, composed Spiders for Igor Kipnis, a pioneer of returning the harpsichord to prominence in the 20th Century.  A more worthy successor to Kipnis, in general and in the specific context of the tightly-wound music of Spiders, than Mr. Vinikour cannot be imagined.  Muczynski’s urbane musicality shines in his Profiles, and Mr. Vinikour plays the carefully-contrasted movements—Moderato and Allegro—with equal brilliance, drawing out the cleverness of the composer’s manipulations of both Jazz and Classical idioms.  Moevs’s Saraband utilizes another typical Baroque form, frequently employed by Händel in both instrumental and vocal works, but adapts it with thoroughly 20th-Century sensibilities.  Mr. Vinikour conjures a beautiful, ‘singing’ tone in the music’s lyrical passages and whirls through the formidable chromatic writing in a storm of unchallenged virtuosity.  Benjamin cites Bach, Händel, Hindemith, and Scott Joplin as the stylistic influences on his Semi-Suite—as unlikely a quartet as a composer might invoke.  In Mr. Vinikour’s performance, hints of the styles of Bach, Händel, Hindemith, and Joplin are evident, as is Benjamin’s unique voice.  Blumberg’s Gyre is, like many of Bach’s works for keyboard, an exercise in the mathematical workings of music, and Mr. Vinikour plays the piece with the glee of an expert mathematician sorting out a Fibonacci sequence.  The most recent piece featured on Toccatas, Morehead’s Tourbillon Galaxy is also one of the most technically daunting pieces that Mr. Vinikour plays in this recital, but his stylishness embraces both the underlying influence of the harpsichord music of Jean-Philippe Rameau and the starkly modern idiom of Morehead’s writing, the punishingly complex contrapuntal passages, their subjects contrasted at intervals of semiquavers, drawing from Mr. Vinikour wonderfully athletic playing.

The ‘Ostinato’ from Henry Cowell’s 1960 Set of Four receives a powerful performance from Mr. Vinikour, but it is Samuel Adler’s 1982 Sonata that is, in many ways, the most substantial piece on the disc.  Conceived as an homage to the keyboard masterworks of Bach and Domenico Scarlatti and a somewhat whimsical treatment of the sonorities of B♭and B♮, the German notations for which—B and H, respectively—form the initials of the musician for whom the Sonata was composed, the Sonata’s three movements (‘Fast, very rhythmic,’ ‘Slowly and expressively,’ and ‘Very fast’) engagingly fuse elements of Baroque music with discernibly 20th-Century tonalities.  The opening movement provides Mr. Vinikour with opportunities for the sort of barnstorming virtuosity at which he excels, and the energy of his playing compels surprisingly robust sounds from the harpsichord at his disposal, a superbly-crafted double-manual instrument in the French style by Thomas and Barbara Wolf.  The final movement is ‘very fast’ indeed, and Mr. Vinikour supplies a quicksilver performance.  ‘Expressively’ is an atypical description of music for the harpsichord but a very apt one for Mr. Vinikour’s playing.  18th-Century composers who preferred the greater expressive potential of the sustained tones of the piano never had the joy of hearing the songful expansiveness that Mr. Vinikour can coax from the harpsichord.  In the inner movement of Adler’s Sonata, the gorgeous, never exaggerated lyricism of which Mr. Vinikour is capable is displayed in its most eloquent incarnation, the subdued voices in the music revealed without any sacrifices of phrasing or rhythmic precision.

The pieces recorded on Toccatas offer a comprehensive view of the important if largely unheralded place of the harpsichord in contemporary Classical Music.  None of the other emblematic instruments of the Baroque has retained a foothold beyond the Early Music revival.  There are many reasons for the continuing presence of the harpsichord, not least among which is its greater suitability for the acoustical atmospheres of modern concert halls than instruments like the theorbo or viola da gamba, but there is also the fact that none of the other instruments of the High Baroque enjoys the charismatic advocacy of Jory Vinikour.  Contemporary composers rarely benefit from the quality of playing that virtuosi lavish on the music of the past: in that regard, the keyboard music of the 20th and 21st Centuries is no less a ‘specialist’ repertory than that of the Baroque.  The harpsichord music of Bach, Couperin, Händel, and Rameau has received many wonderful recordings, including standard-setting performances by Mr. Vinikour.  The vigor with which he plays the pieces on Toccatas dispels the notion that a concert harpsichordist is as much an archivist and musical archeologist as a performer, however.  Toccatas is a voyage of discovery, one which introduces heartening vistas of tonal worlds so close and yet so unfamiliar to many 21st-Century listeners, and Jory Vinikour proves the ideal guide along these craggy, captivating musical paths.

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Harpsichord Recital by Jory Vinikour (College of Charleston, 7 April 2008)

The first thing that must be said about the recital given by eminent harpsichordist Jory Vinikour at the College of Charleston on 7 April 2008, is that this was the sort of performance that proved beyond contention that there are no archaic instruments, only performers who fail to comprehend that at their own fingertips is the critical ability to transcend eras and styles to shape performances that excite, entice, and enlighten.

Mr. Vinikour, an American-born Fulbright Scholar now resident in Paris, offered a performance that explored repertory ranging from music originally composed for the Elizabethan virginal (an instrument at which the unsullied Sovereign herself is reported to have been little short of a virtuoso) by Thomas Tomkins (1572-1656) to a new work from young French composer Régis Campo (born 1968), a piece on which the ink was practically still wet. That Mr. Vinikour pursued this tremendously varied repertory with such complete technical mastery is testament to his consummate virtuosity: that he also managed to present this program as a single arc, with no breaks in continuity or jarring disjoints in style, is evidence of considerable insight and artistry.

Virtuosity in any performance at the harpsichord is—or should be—a forgone conclusion as the music for the instrument, with its unique ‘plectrum’ response and limited capacity for sustained tones, is almost invariably of a certain difficulty. Even so, playing of the technical skill displayed by Mr. Vinikour is surely rare. With a prominent career as soloist, accompanist (to celebrated artists including countertenor David Daniels, soprano Annick Massis, mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená, and mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, with whom Mr. Vinikour collaborated on the acclaimed Archiv/Deutsche Grammophon disc Music for a While), répétiteur, and conductor, Mr. Vinikour has assimilated and mastered all the elements necessary to developing a musical talent of the first rate. Mr. Vinikour’s playing in Charleston was poised and unperturbed but also rewardingly passionate: rather than seeming a recital of centuries-old music from which our capable performer blew the dust just prior to taking his seat before the keyboard, the performance emerged as an invigorating showcase of an instrument, consigned in America largely—and sadly—to continuo for secco recitative, with limitless possibilities. This was a performance in which, the technique (as with Martha Argerich at her best) beyond reproach and the fingers unfailingly falling where they should, poetry could be created in sound.

Especially impressive, to both this writer and to the audience of attentive students and members of the musically-sophisticated Charleston community (home, after all, to the prestigious Spoleto Festival), were the contemporary compositions offered. Graham Lynch’s (born 1957) Admiring Yoro Waterfall was, despite its decidedly post-Stravinsky idiom, a piece of intense beauty, shimmering sounds cascading across the range of the instrument. Mr. Vinikour’s playing of this piece seemed to suspend time and also revealed that gorgeous lyricism need not compete unfavorably with rapid-fire bravura passages in music for the harpsichord. Perpetuum Mobile, composed by the aforementioned Mr. Campo, was a superb affair of contrasting intensity and sublimity, colors shining through Mr. Vinikour’s playing like light and shadow on a harsh but incredibly beautiful landscape. Similarly, Toccatas by Harold Meltzer (born 1966) pursued thematic ideas across a broad canvas, developing upon the models of Bach and Pachelbel. The two latter pieces were both dedicated by their composers to Mr. Vinikour, and it was easy to share what surely were delighted reactions by these composers at hearing their music played with such elegance, suavity, and aplomb.

In addition to the two pieces originally composed for the virginal by Thomas Tomkins, the balance of the recital consisted of suites by Baroque composers Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer (1656-1746) and Pancrace Royer (1705-1755), respectively, both of them containing music typical of the Baroque era that might best be described as barnstorming, music that highlights the virtuosity of the performer. Mr. Vinikour managed to convey much more than mere display, however.

The performance was brought to a close with an encore consisting of music by the French master of the keyboard François Couperin. To this Mr. Vinikour brought nothing short of complete authority, capping in an exuberant manner an evening that fully revealed the expressive possibilities of the harpsichord, not only in its ‘native’ Baroque repertory but also in music that challenges both player and audience with its modernity. Without having the luxury of considerable experience with solo harpsichord performances, I daresay nonetheless that this is a rare occurrence, and Charleston is to be praised for having hosted it and envied for having enjoyed it.

ARTS NEWS: Nominations for the 2015 GRAMMY® Awards include recordings featured on VOIX DES ARTS

The panels charged with nominating artistic endeavors for recognition by mainstream awards organizations often inspire confusion and consternation with their selections, but GRAMMY® voters distinguished themselves by choosing competitive, artistically significant candidates for the 2015 Classical GRAMMY® Awards, a number of which have been featured on Voix des Arts.

Among the recordings vying to be honored as Best Classical Instrumental Solo is Jory Vinikour’s superb disc of modern American music for the instrument of which he is the consummate master, the harpsichord. Featuring music by Samuel Adler, Thomas Benjamin, Stephen Blumberg, Henry Cowell, Harold Meltzer, Patricia Morehead, Robert Moevs, Robert Muczynski, Mel Powell, and Ned Rorem, all thrillingly performed by Mr. Vinikour, Toccatas is a compelling reminder that neither the composition of music for the harpsichord nor extraordinary virtuosity among the instrument’s practitioners became extinct when Baroque idioms fell from favor [Sono Luminus DSL-92174; reviewed here].

In an especially tight field, consideration for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album pits Argentine countertenor Franco Fagioli’s disc of arias by Nicola Porpora [Il maestro – Porpora Arias—Naïve V 5369; reviewed here] against mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato’s Stella di Napoli, a fiery recital of bel canto stunners by Bellini, Carafa, Donizetti, Mercadante, Pacini, Rossini, and Valentini [ERATO 08256 463656 2 3; reviewed here]. Mr. Fagioli brings to a fascinating array of music by one of the Eighteenth Century’s leading composers singing of histrionic flair and unstinting musicality. One of the handful of great bel canto singers of recent years, Ms. DiDonato exhibits her trademark vocal brilliance in her performances on Stella di Napoli. Both discs provide feasts of richly satisfying singing.

Best Choral Performance nominees include René Jacobs’s revelatory recording of Johann Sebastian Bach’s iconic Matthäus-Passion [harmonia mundi HMC 802156.58; reviewed here] and Dunedin Consort’s moving account of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem [Linn Records CKD 449; reviewed here]. Preserving unforgettable performances by Werner Güra as the Evangelist and Johannes Weiser as Christ, Maestro Jacobs’s Matthäus-Passion challenges traditions by looking deeply into the score for Bach’s true intentions. Dunedin Consort and Maestro John Butt do much the same with Mozart’s Requiem, taking as their inspiration the aim of reconstructing the work as it was first performed with the completion by Franz Xaver Süßmayr. Neither of these works is unfamiliar, but these performances reveal unseen facets of these cornerstones of the Western choral repertory.

Christian Thielemann’s recording of Richard Strauss’s Elektra, released in celebration of the 150^th anniversary of the composer’s birth, united a cast of acclaimed Strauss singers—Evelyn Herlitzius, Anne Schwanewilms, Waltraud Meier, and René Pape—in a performance of considerable dramatic power [Deutsche Grammophone 479 3387; reviewed here]. DGG’s forceful Elektra must contend in campaigning for the designation of Best Opera Recording with one of the most intriguing operatic releases of the Twenty-First Century, Darius Milhaud’s L’Orestie d’Eschyle [NAXOS 8.660349-51; reviewed here]. The virtues of DGG’s Elektra cast are complemented by those of NAXOS’s lineup for L’Orestie d’Eschyle: Lori Phillips, Dan Kempson, Brenda Rae, Sidney Outlaw, Tamara Mumford, Jennifer Lane, Julianna Di Giacomo, and Kristin Eder uphold the storied legacy of American singing established by artists such as Lawrence Tibbett, Leonard Warren, Richard Tucker, Lili Chookasian, Irene Dalis, Mignon Dunn, and Beverly Sills. Maestro Thielemann reminds listeners of why Strauss’s opera remains a stalwart in the international repertory almost a century after its première, and Maestro Kenneth Kiesler makes a strong argument on behalf of the merits of Milhaud’s elephantine homage to Aeschylus.

Congratulations to all of the nominees for the 2015 Classical GRAMMY® Awards!