O'Connell the Music

IN FLIGHT

Harold Gretton

Move Records MCD 627

This musician is a new name to me but not to guitar aficionados in Canberra or the Riverina Conservatorium in Wagga Wagga. This CD, recorded in early 2019 at the Holy Trinity Anglican Church in Weston, UK, has been delayed by the universal plague that reduced serious music-making to a dribble for at least two years. Its content is, to put it mildly, eclectic with some classics like Sor’s Introduction, Theme and Variations on ‘O cara armonia‘ (that distracting little number from Mozart’s The Magic Flute), and a quartet of Latin-inflected favourites in Morel’s Danza Brasilera, Lauro’s La Negra, Estrellita by Ponce, and – just to show the performer’s 1990 credentials – Piazzolla’s La Muerte del Angel.

Adding to the regular repertoire security blanket, Gretton performs Mertz’s Fantaisie Hongroise and tucks in three pieces by Weiss. For a bit of contemporary relief, he outlines The Prince’s Toys suite by Moscow-born Nikita Koshkin. Just as interesting is his own five-part collection from 2013, Flock, which gives us Gretton’s musings on Australian birds. And he concludes the CD with another of his compositions: Inarticulate Music, composed after Gretton’s move to Wagga as Deputy Director and Head of Guitar.

Earliest in time is the Weiss trilogy: a Fuga, Passacaille, and the well-thumbed Capriccio. Gretton gives excellent interpretations of them, certainly superior to anything I heard from other guitarists when scrabbling around for comparisons on the internet. The D/B minor fugue version allows for plenty of liberties in placing the bass line in the instrument’s lowest octave or using an upward transposition, e.g. in the middle of bar 10, or across bars 32 and 33. Also, the ornamentation is very discreet, like the small semiquaver run interpolated in bar 40.

He sets up the passacaglia by playing the initial seven bars twice before launching into the 11 variations, which are accounted for with touching sensibility, nowhere better than in the 8th variant in 3rds and 6ths, and the following two semiquaver-rich strophes before a moving reversion to the original: a Goldberg in miniature. What strikes you particularly about the Capriccio is its rapidity, yet all lines remain clear and unfudged, with some finely resonant bass work (viz. bars 4 to 6) and a restrained outline of when the fugato stops from bars 50 to 53 and the splayed chords emerge as an unexpected, final jeu d’esprit.

Sor’s variations on Papageno’s Das klinget so herrlich features among the composer’s most popular works. The portentous preliminary bars, all 24 of them, serve as a kind of tongue-in-cheek prelude to the infectious, superbly balanced melody that Sor elaborates. Gretton observes all the repeats in this, the CD’s longest track, with an expert eye for second-time-around changes and an effective use of vibrato and that muted effect achieved by plucking above the fingerboard rather than directly above the sound hole. Of course, the player uses that time-honoured trope of setting loud against soft in identical repeated passages but it isn’t over-worked. Still, this is a reputable sequence, coming fairly close to the opera’s premiere and before the advent of the thunder-and-lightning virtuoso.

Speaking of which, Mertz’s fantaisie, the first of 3 Morceaux from an 1857 posthumous publication, is a splendid display piece with as many separate sections as a Liszt rhapsody, like a 15-bar lassan marked Lugubre, followed by an Allegro vivace that stands in for a friska. As with the Sor, Gretton includes or ignores bass notes as he pleases, omitting several low fundamentals for reasons (I assume) of articulation clarity. But he follows the wilful Romantic attitude to metre – taking his time over the Adagio maestoso con entusiasmo, and the two volante brief cadenzas.

Then, when he comes to the final 1 and a 1/2 pages, he is an exhibitionist’s delight, playing nearly all the notes I find in an old Haslinger edition and elevating the tension in a dazzling series of semiquaver patterns for the jubilant A Major of the maestoso. No, it’s not profound, but it’s not trying to be anything but exuberant and nationalistically coloured in the Liszt vein; the first 15 of the Hungarian Rhapsodies were available for general consumption by 1853.

Ponce’s Estrellita of 1912 remains the Mexican composer’s most well-known melody, having been subjected to many transformations, but it’s rarely heard in its original form – as a song, a cancion mexicana . But then, how many contemporary vocalists have the required range of a 13th? The arrangement used by Gretton, attributed to Scots guitar master David Russell, underlines the lyric’s plaintive quality with plenty of space allowed for the vocal line to breathe. A pity that the song’s second half was not repeated.

La Muerte del Angel was written as incidental music for a play in 1962 and, in its original shape, is a typical Piazzolla affirmation, packing an impressive punch in its outer sections which cradle a quite substantial central lyric. Gretton plays Leo Brouwer’s arrangement which expands the Argentinean composer’s horizon with an introduction that goes into improvisation-suggestive territory before settling into the biting, catchy main topic. To be honest, I think Gretton plays this piece better than its arranger, with a deft whimsicality colouring the introduction’s more fragmentary elements and a powerful rasgueado attack at the work’s dynamic highpoints. As well, unlike several other interpreters, he doesn’t underplay the final chord’s inbuilt ambivalence.

Another Argentinian, Jorge Morel, produced a samba in his Danza Brasilera of 1968, and Gretton plays it straight, without any irregularities of rhythm; it’s as though he’s accompanying dancers who don’t look for any idiosyncrasies. You can hear a nice sense of urgency throughout this as the main theme’s recurrences lead to a kind of return to a turbulent base after some more texturally transparent excursions, like the central 14-bar repeated bracket leading into a chain or two of quick single quavers before the catchy principal melody returns: excellent articulation throughout, especially the no-fuss negotiation of the harmonics patches.

Last in this Latin bracket, Antonio Lauro’s 1976 La Negra (third in his Triptico suite for Segovia, after Armida and Madrugada) is approached with a more supple rhythmic outline, including some fetching pauses as at the end of bar 16 each time it comes around, later in the work’s central section at the end of bar 32, and – most lingeringly – at the return to bar 2 for the second-last time. This interpretation is a fine example of controlled sentiment with a graceful lilt illustrated by several carefully positioned portamenti.

Russian guitarist Nikita Koshkin achieved initial prominence with his suite The Prince’s Toys of 1980, a variant on Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortileges plot where the abused turn on the abuser; in this case, the toys take the prince to another world/dimension. Gretton plays five of the six elements in this collection, omitting the final Grand Toys’ Parade. His opening, The mischievous prince, is a gratifying setting-up of the central character’s psychopathology in which portamenti play a large part as well as some fiercely (potentially sadistic) hard-hitting single-notes and chords; the whole ending either in melancholy or menace, according to your taste.

Some of the effects achieved during The mechanical monkey are remarkable. A side-drum imitation is highly persuasive but no more so than the cymbal clashes that the toy produces with extraordinary fidelity. Added to which, the central pages in 6/8 (or a variant) pass along with sterling fluency and irreproachable security of left-hand work. Next, The doll with the blinking eyes becomes more intriguing the longer it lasts with Koshkin including in his piece two articulation problems that afflict all guitarists: the audible swipe when rapidly changing fingering positions, and the buzz that comes about when a string vibrates against frets. Both make for fine image suggestiveness, probably bettered by the final music-box harmonics that come in the piece’s final pages.

The soldiers opens bravely enough with tuckets and trumpet imitations, the former achieved by a unique series of intervals rather like an organ’s mixture stop. The movement sticks to a quick march tempo for about half its length when material starts disintegrating until, by the end, the martial sounds have been mutated, the toy soldiers shadows of their former glory, the prince’s miniature army falling on hard times. Here again, Koshkin’s technical skills are outlined with considerable craft by Gretton. As for The prince’s coach, this begins bravely enough with plenty of assurance and forward progression that eventually accelerates until the inevitable crash when the unleashed horses gallop off into the distance.

The whole suite is written for a virtuoso performer with the ability to take on novel sound-production demands and remain unafraid to indulge in sound imitations with panache. Gretton fits the bill with a mastery of Koshkin’s technical panoply and the composer’s blend of vocabularies, mainly coming down on the side of neo-classicism best exemplified by the leading 20th century Russian composers, both resident and expatriate.

So we come to the guitarist’s own compositions. Gretton’s Flock includes the currawong, magpie, blue wren, galah and rainbow lorikeet. and his CD’s booklet is illustrated with five water colours by Penny Deacon from which this ornithologically-challenged observer can identify three birds with some certainty. We are not in Messiaenland where the bird calls are notated and indicated, as in Oiseaux exotiques, Catalogue d’oiseaux, or even Le Merle noir. Gretton is more concerned with each bird’s character – or, better, its characteristics. So his Currawong presents as jaunty, almost cakewalking: the C. J. Dennis of birds, staying firmly on the ground before a transfiguring ending rich in harmonics. Unlike a Collingwood supporter, the Magpie is a conversationalist – or he could be involved in a fluent soliloquy; this personality is amiable enough, apart from the occasional abrupt outburst.

With the Blue Wren, we come across a questing, inquisitive busybody who suddenly bursts into a flurry of activity; the following Galah is similar if more consistent in his activity before normal behaviour gives way to near-aggressively restive, then off-the-wall temperamental flights (the CD’s shortest track). Finally, Gretton’s Rainbow Lorikeet begins with a motif/melody like its predecessors but accretes more lines as it progresses. At its opening, this seems the most harmonically conservative member of the set but, as with some of the others, it moves out of an avian comfort zone into a dissonant and unpredictable landscape with powerful, confrontational chords. Finally, the piece returns to its opening melody, immediately more rich in its setting before a conclusion of heightened power.

Yes, the bird titles aren’t necessarily attached to the music itself and one man’s lorikeet is another woman’s buzzard. Yet each of these five vignettes has a distinct flavour which might as well represent the animal of its title. Gretton writes that, when overseas, he missed Australia’s bird sounds and so we have to approach his suite as a kind of memento sequence, even an exercise in patriotic nostalgia. It’s not on the same intellectual level as the French master’s imagery but it’s certainly easier on the ear.

In the CD’s last track, Gretton is responding to a conversation with a painter who decried the verbiage surrounding art, wondering why art cannot be allowed to speak for itself. Inarticulate Music attempts to create a music that requires no explanation, no exegesis, no apologia. It consists of an alternation between repeated common chords (Major mainly, with one minor excursion) and single notes and, in that, it resembles a simple man’s The Unanswered Question. It’s probably the most conservative piece on the CD in terms of form, vocabulary, melodic content and metrical variety. But it makes for a placid conclusion to Gretton’s considerable efforts, a simple Amen to a string of finely-executed works from across a wide time-frame.

LATIN AMERICAN PIANO MUSIC

Alejandro Alberto Tellez Vargas

Move Records MCD 639

You’d have to assume that this pianist is Mexican-born, if only because the few life details you can glean point to his bachelor’s degree coming from the Escuela Superior de Music, even if his Ph. D. was earned at the University of Melbourne and – as far as I can find – he resides in that city. On this CD, he performs works by seven composers: Cuban writer Ernesto Lecuona enjoys four exposures; Ricardo Castro from Mexico is heard in three tracks; the voice of another Mexican, Manuel Ponce, is heard twice; and three of the remaining four writers, all of whom are heard in one manifestation, are also Mexican – Alfredo Carrasco, Ernesto Elorduy, and Mario Ruiz Armengol. The odd man out is Luis G. Jorda who was born (and died) in Catalonia.

As a preface in the CD’s booklet, Vargas writes a few words in Spanish. As far as I can make out, he says the following: ‘I dedicate this recording to my beloved fathers [artistic?], many thanks for my piano lessons and for all the support during my studies and concerts. Also, I want to thank my dear siblings for all your patience during those long afternoons when I sat practising in the living room.’ Pleasing and charmingly domestic, as is most of the music that the pianist presents which is either of the salon or a small bijou serving well as an encore. I didn’t anticipate that this courtly, colonial music would have much overtly striking about its character and that prediction was largely fulfilled; it’s hard to avoid the impression that this perspective into Latin American art has an all-too-comfortable European veneer – the landscape of the 19th century virtuoso pianist.

So none of the great names of the Romatic-to-Modern Mexican school appear: no Chavez, no Revueltas. Vargas has concentrated on the small-scale compositions of – in the main – a minor rank of writers whose vocabulary is slightly infused with national colour but is chiefly the product of the drawing-room. Fortunately or unfortunately, this ambience lacks any Chopinesque chromatic intrigue or superbly arched melodic contour; in many instances, composition is presented as a pastel-shaded art.

The works representing Lecuona are A la Antigua in D flat Major, Ante el Escorial in E flat minor, La Comparsa in F sharp Major, and Gitanerias in D minor. Well, the first has the key signature for C sharp minor for its first part before changing to D flat Major for the happier, scherzando second section; its main interest lies on the second beat syncopations and also in leaving you with the question: what is so old-fashioned about this? Standing in front of the monastery/palace, Lecuona begins with full slow chords in both hands in a melodic minor shape, a kind of chorale with which he also ends his meditation after a virtuosic flourish and a central passage in G flat Major. In fact, the piece consists of an arch form with the first melody, after those initial chords, being treated later to a left-hand enunciation before the aspirational chords return.

The composer’s vision of a Cuban carnival procession opens softly with a bass figure that persists across the piece’s brief duration as the parade arrives and passes, off into the distance following a resonant climax. The gypsy business comes from the composer’s six-part Suite Andalucia and falls into a predictable ternary shape with a semi-D Major relief in the middle; sprightly and attractive in Vargas’ treatment which disappoints only in a blurring across the crescendo four-bar link before the return of the initial material 54 bars from the end.

Castro presents as less folkloric than Lecuona. His three samples are an A minor Prelude (Barcarola), Polonaise in G sharp minor, and Caprice-Valse in E Major – the composer’s Opus 1. The Venetian-indebted piece is, as far as I can tell, in 9/8 – which might present some challenges for rhythmically illiterate gondoliers. This is eminently acceptable salon music, showing a mastery of orthodox Romantic writing for the piano, the piece notable mainly for its left-hand semiquaver motif. A lot of Chopin is present in the polonaise, including an aggressively strident introduction with plenty of bravely martial repeated chords, although the main theme and its consequents don’t strike me as really assertive. Also, a note at the top of the instrument is sounding out of tune, but I can’t isolate it (maybe the instrument’s top G sharp?); and Vargas inserts quite a few delays while he readies himself for some awkward arpeggiations. This is the second-longest piece on the CD (coming in a few seconds behind Castro’s Opus 1) and its repetitious material tends to fray.

In fact, the Caprice-Valse concludes the CD and is one of the more intriguing tracks of the 15. Your attention is taken up from the beginning by the waltz’s bantering between 3/4 and 6/8 which Castro plays very cleanly so that you don’t lose connection with the basic pulse. The piece begins with a bit of bravura and stops every so often for some interpolated fireworks, handled by Vargas with infectious brio. It isn’t demanding on a Lisztian scale but it does test the executant’s fluency. Castro also spices up this piece de concert with some rhythmic irregularities and a flashy vivo and grandioso that bring us home to general satisfaction.

I suspect that the only name familiar to many of us will be that of Ponce; in my case, almost totally for his association with, and compositions for, Segovia. Here, the first of his works is a Scherzino Mexicano in D Major, the shortest on the CD as Vargas doesn’t play the first part’s repeat of 16 bars’ worth. It’s a generally quiet bagatelle with an adventurous chromatic sequence in its central section, and the main melody is certainly catchy. Its complement is the Intermezzo in E minor, the first of three. This is another ternary construct with a slightly fierce central highpoint, but the main concept of repeated thirds travels just about as far as this work’s length will carry it. The executant allows the final quaver chord to linger for a long time; he probably didn’t agree with the composer’s curt conclusion to this melancholy miniature.

Carrasco’s Adios in A Major is a dance (a habanera, I think) as well as a song, because my copy has words inserted. This is another A-B-A format where the centre is stormy and ardent and the framing passages suggest languor in a set of two-bar phrases in balance with each other. The three danzas called Tropicales by Elorduy are one-page trifles that Vargas extends by playing everything at least twice. Perhaps the most successful is the third which is of a piece, without a fast introduction, and its language shows more sophistication than its companions; being kind, you call them ‘lightly atmospheric’ and the performer adds more of the same while employing an attractive rubato in the slower reaches of all three.

Armengol, last of the Mexican writers celebrated here, contributes a Prelude in E Major for piano or harp which deals with two key elements: a rapidly rising arpeggio-type figure, and a sequence of block chords – grist to the mill of any harpist, of course. What dominates everything is the spirit of Debussy: the Arabesque No. 1 and the Reverie come to mind straight away, followed by La fille aux cheveux de lin, Claire de lune, probably Danseuses de Delphes. For all that, the composer follows a fairly unsurprising harmonic plan and the piece’s elements circle each other with the inevitability of a rondo. Vargas treats these pages with considerable care and sympathy.

And so we arrive at the Spaniard in the works. Jorda’s Danzas Nocturnas is a series of three vignettes: Moderato, Con tristezza, and Mesto; 54, 16 and 48 bars long and in F minor/Major, D minor and A minor/Major respectively. All partake in the habanera rhythmic underpinning, although it’s not a strict observation with a plethora of languid triplets brought into play. Vargas handles these short dances with elegance and fine responsiveness, extending their substance by playing all the repeats and then some, my only quibble coming with his interpretation of mesto which here has little of that depression I usually associate with the term, having first encountered it in Beethoven’s Piano Sonata Op.10 No. 3.

It rounds out a CD of considerable charm, expertly carried off by Vargas who is at some pains to demonstrate the restraint and fresh-eyed inspiration of these writers. Owning a considerable technique, the interpreter offers fluent versions of pieces that have been passed over in favour of more flamboyant Latin productions by famous names, significant composers with advanced skills and insights. Much of the music recorded here can be found on the internet, scores and performances; still, as far as the latter are concerned, few match Vargas in ease of production and sympathy with his small-frame material.

ECLIPSE

Concordia Mandolin & Guitar Ensemble

Move Records MCD 612

The latest product by this well-known Melbourne group comprises works by well-known guitar/plucked instrument expert Michelle Nelson who was first guitar with the Melbourne Mandolin Orchestra across this century’s first decade, taking up the same position with Concordia in 2013. In fact, Nelson has been conducting a healthy professional life for 40 years now and has produced several additions to the Concordia repertoire – all of them, as far as one can judge from this CD, traditional in language and instrumental use.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. This composer is given to wondering how modern music composition (20th century) strayed so far from popular taste of the time. Yeah: it’s the same sort of thing I self-divert with when listening to the Gabrielis and Bach, Gesualdo and Chopin. Funnily enough, I tend to come down on the side of the benighted composer who finds little stimulating in the simple-minded. But, if you want to continue finding your inspiration in the folksy and the English bucolic, be my guest; just don’t wait around for praise on your originality.

This small CD (40′ 45″ long) contains four compositions: Bishops Spell, which is a musical portrait of musicians Ida (recorder) and Frank (mandola) Bishop; the title work Eclipse: Concerto for Mandola and Plucked Strings with soloist Darryl Barron; After the Fire, a rearrangement of an earlier construct expanded into two movements; and Jim Greer’s Jig. This recording was due for release in 2020 but universal infections got in the way; hence, its arrival now. So the family portrait was recorded at Move Studios in 2019, the concerto at the same venue in 2018, the two-movement new construct probably put down in 2022, and the jig recorded live during Concordia’s first post-lockdown concert at Christmas, 2021.

The Bishops’ family portrait begins with a jovial, folk-like tune (British Isles). Will Hardy‘s recorder answering the orchestra’s statements with variations, the whole featuring some extensions that seem to work against the four-bar phrase pattern that matters start off with. Still, the trend is to the non-adventurous, although the atmosphere is jaunty. That’s Ida dispatched. Frank begins more soberly – a slow 3/4 rather than Ida’s brisk 6/8, and the more meditative male enjoys a calm depiction from Darryl Barron’s mandola, even though it has to be observed that Ida is well-represented in this movement, having a definite melodic and descant function in turns. Furthermore, Ida has the last word.

The Family Life third movement has a percussive element as underpinning – just your normal hand-beaten drums (bongos?) supporting the two soloists as they work together through a four-square melody and its small-scale elaborations, It all sounds slightly medieval/Renaissance in character, as though the Bishops were early music enthusiasts; and, as I know from bitter experience, the interest in such complexes generally falls to the solitary woodwind line. Things move from the four-square 4/4 a little after the half-way point to a more meditative triple-beat interlude, before the drums return and we come together for a rousing estampie conclusion. As you’d assume Nelson’s language is eminently assimilable with nothing much to astonish anyone born before 1700.

The composer’s Eclipse concerto has three movements: Eclipse: Approach, Eclipse, and Eclipse: Release. I can’t argue for the shape of the first of these. It takes a firm stand at the start with some block chords, a strong melody based on an upward-rising arpeggio; the composer allows both soloist and orchestra to deal with both elements, then stops before moving into more lyrical territory. Nelson has an occasional habit of curtailing or extending her regular phrases but the working out of material is orthodox with a lot of pattern-work where the development section would be. A return to the opening second-inversion chord/arpeggio melody and we’re not long before the home stretch is in sight.

[As a completely oblique observation, I have to report that the strongest impression I have from what I’ve heard so far on this disc recalls nothing so much as Debbie Wiseman’s theme music to the BBC One production Shakespeare & Hathaway. It might be the suggestion of massed lutes that is produced by the Concordias, or the definite if unadventurous bass line, or the optimistic bent of both Wiseman and Nelson. But the aura is reminiscent of Stratford at its cleanest, as we see it in the series, despite the mandolin’s necessity to play tremolando much of the time.]

The middle slow movement starts out in the same key as its predecessor, the threnody melody articulated over a fixed bass note for the opening strophes. The soloist occupies a semi-prominent role before everything halts for a cadenza where the harmony stays pretty constant, apart from a chromatic frisson about the four-minute mark. The slow march recommences, working on three layers (eventually four when a sustained bass note is added) as the rhythmic level sees people playing with Beethoven’s ‘Fate’ motive. This leads to a climactic point, from which apogee the music dies out to an ambiguous conclusion – which is actually an imaginative depiction of the state in which an eclipse’s maturation leaves us.

The Release is very abrupt: we’re immediately back in clear skies with a slightly threatening march that, for much of its initial statement, follows an iambic metrical pattern. The first antistrophe appears to recapitulate a memory from the first movement, before we slow down for a more melancholy stretch that ends interrogatively before we revert to the march/strut. Another cadenza appears which owes something to Rodrigo although lacking that master’s quirkiness and timbral curiosity. Back to the iambic rhythm and a final reference to the first movement’s chord inversion, and this mainly-minor mode concerto ends with a unison/octave emphasis.

A minor quibble: Nelson entitles her first movement to After the Fire – Incinerat – as ‘burnt to ashes’. It’s a bit more specific than that as it means ‘he/she/it had burnt it (to ashes)’, the pluperfect of incinero. Not that it means anything to most people except those of us who sweated through six years of the language in secondary school, back in the days when they taught it. In fact, the afore-mentioned tremolando effect is atmospherically suggestive here, especially at the start where a free-standing flickering comes across very well. I’m not as enamoured of the guitar and bass solos that follow because they bring a touch of interruption, of unexpected voices in a bleak aural landscape.

Harmony Returns, the second movement, begins with a reversion to the expected. The ambience is TV soap comfort with a series of rising adjacent chords spreading the benignity until a tune arrives after a minute of preparation: an amiably swinging 6/8 melody which is well-established before a subsidiary figure enters for some more mercilessly predictable repetitions. Then it’s heigh-ho for the original lightly syncopated melody that has suggestions of something that could have been produced by/for Captain Corelli – a nostalgic Mediterranean travelogue, perhaps. As with much of Nelson’s output, it’s not so much a question of harmony returning but more an iteration of the fact that harmony never left.

It’s probable that the composer’s fire is one of the bush infernos that have swept across the country, but the post-crisis ambience that she has constructed is free from any signs of PTSD or shivers of reminiscence – at least, as far as I can tell. As for the CD’s finale, the jig in memory of Concordia member Jim Greer, it’s a pretty rough affair, compared to the preceding tracks. Attack is not as split-second as the group is capable of and the rhythm is heavy-handed; everyone sounds as though they’re not at ease with the work which, for some reason, ends on a chord inversion. Yes, it’s a live performance after a long epidemic-controlled cessation of activities, but the players’ assurance of address does not satisfy as much as in the three preceding scores.

DAVID JOSEPH: WORKS FOR STRING ORCHESTRA

Melbourne Chamber Orchestra, Zagreb Soloists, Ripieno Kammerorchester

Move Records MD 3460

This CD is a blast from the past; three blasts, in fact. Australian composer Joseph wrote two of the three works offered here in 1992, the other in 1999. Honourably aged, you may think, if not exactly ancien regime. But the recordings have not been available since their premieres, as I understand it. For instance, tracks 1 and 2 comprise the Chamber Concerto for Piano and Strings, , commissioned by the then-director (1992) of the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra, violinist Spiros Rantos. Originally conceived for Rantos’ wife, Brachi Tilles, the first soloist was Michael Kieran Harvey. So far, fine. The score was premiered at Melba Hall in Melbourne University’s Faculty of Music. What we hear on this CD is a performance recorded in the former ABC studios at Waverley, Harvey as soloist with Rantos conducting his MCO. This must have taken place between 1992 and 1995, after which the ABC moved to Southbank.

As for the second work, Scheherezade was written for the Zagreb Soloists, one of Europe’s premier chamber orchestras. I’m assuming that the composition date of 1999 was also the year of the work’s first performance (which is heard on this CD), but it’s hard to be sure. In Joseph’s catalogue, the work appears as Study for strings, ‘Also known as : Scheherezade’, and an undated presentation of this work by the late lamented Academy of Melbourne under Brett Kelly is also documented, as well as appearing on a previous Move Records collection of Joseph’s music which was released in 2006. The remaining composition, Dialogues of 1992, was written for violinist Urs Walker and the Ripieno Kammerorchester of Winterthur. Its first performance under conductor Howard Griffiths took place on September 5, 1993 and what we have here is a recording of that occasion.

Now, the Chamber Concerto is written in three movements, according to the disc booklet: Toccata, followed by Poem of Love/Meditation. In the original, there were no musing moments but you take what you’re given. In the Australian Music Centre documentation, this work was actually written for the Rantos Collegium, which disbanded in 1996 or thereabouts. Somehow, the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra was spun out of the Collegium – or did it really emerge from the dying throes of the Pro Arte group? Well, the orchestral group is strings, which could be sourced from any one of the three ensembles.

The Toccata is a hard piece to pin down. It follows an almost moto perpetuo chugging rhythmic pattern which is relieved for only a few seconds at two places. The harmonic language is dissonant, suggesting Bartok and Prokofiev, although the overall texture is reminiscent of Mosolov’s short-lived brutalism, or even the less sloppy moments of Messiaen’s Turangalila. For all that, the movement radiates energy, Harvey’s realization of the solo part both hard-edged and scintillating, the pianist addressing his work with unflappable authority and a determination of output that every so often leaves the strings in his wake.

I think I’ve found the separation between the second part’s two sections. For the Poem, we’re apparently in Messiaen-Land where the strings settle into an ascending or descending motif of two chords, Harvey’s keyboard offering a rhapsodic commentary. The impression is less firm in contour than the French master’s Chant d’amour excursions but much less populist, even if Harvey’s contributions suggest several of those Messiaenic modes of disposable musical income. And these pages are definitely proposing an emotionally benign state; if not the Turangalila garden of Sanskrit delights; rather, a calm and welcoming landscape in which the dissonances mutate with remarkable smoothness, a cleverly achieved absence of surface friction no matter what progressions are quietly taking place.

The Meditation, I suspect, begins when the piano sets off on a sequence of stately chords that pass up and down the keyboard from top to bottom against a shimmer of strings from which a solo violin emerges with a soothing if angular melodic line. The musing is carried out with something of a forced-march mentality behind it, as though the action itself rendered the mind active rather than flooding it with random impressions or metaphysical ephemera. You couldn’t call this section of the work vehement or threatening but the consciousness being exercised has a clear, if repetitive, path to follow. Yet again, the spectre of Messiaen rises up, mainly in the shape of the chord processional, but the uses that Joseph puts this sequence to is less aspirational, less grasping for the ideal.

Joseph’s Scheherezade is not the gorgeous panoply of Rimsky-Korsakov but seems more empathetically related to Ravel’s Asie, even if the colour is monochromatic. The work starts with a unison/octave melody that eventually takes on a mildly astringent harmonic coating, Joseph taking his theme (such as it is) from the slow movement (presumably the first Moderato of the two in the score) to Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No. 6 in E minor. The atmosphere remains fairly taut and menacing throughout with what seems like closely argued harmonic structures kept well-leashed; Joseph stays well away from sentiment and colour for its own sake.

You can find some Oriental flourishes, but they are pretty rare in a dour landscape. The composer insists on a hefty attack style (or perhaps that’s just the Croatian players’ reading) and the work’s progress enjoys a heavy-handed treatment with semi-tragic undertones; perhaps Joseph is less concerned with the narrator’s flights of fancy and more with the sad, if not downright tragic, extracts from the 1001 Nights. Just on a technical point, the writing is monolithic as far as string technique is concerned: the only pizzicati I heard came in the last minute; maybe there is a slight use of harmonics, although to me it simply sounded like high violin work; you won’t come across any behind-the-bridge or on-the-fingerboard work; the work’s progress is too slow to admit of anything as frivolous as saltando or staccato. In sum, this is a rather grim Oriental fantasy, more illustrative to me of the current situation in Syria, Gaza or Lebanon than in the head-in-the-sand images we have of life in Jordan or the smothering of gross cruelty in Saudi Arabia or the Emirates.

Finally, we come to the Dialogues, contemporary with the Chamber Concerto. This is the shortest work on the CD but not by much, coming in at 19′ 40″ minutes (not 9’04” as the CD booklet states), while Scheherazade stretches to 20′ 48″ and the concerto a few seconds less at 20′ 42″ in total. All one movement as a set of variations on ‘natural sounds – birds etc.’, this is an aggressively punchy work. driving and dramatic from the opening: its avian life is prehistoric, non-stop in its vehemence apart from a few short releases from about the 15 minute mark.

The performance is admirably committed, although you can hear a few discrepant moments that got away from conductor Howard Griffiths – the basses not quite in sync with an upper-string layer at a few dramatic passages. Further, the acoustic of the recording’s venue – St Peter Church, Zurich – is rich in resonance with a pronounced echo; this building’s high ceiling, tiled floor and richly wooded gallery contribute to a sound that can be overwhelmingly clear. Still, the memorable contribution in this reading comes from soloist Walker whose line is dazzling, vital, toweringly virtuosic. In all, Dialogues is the sort of score that should appeal to a body like the Australian Chamber Orchestra with its requirements for split-second discipline, an unyielding ferocity of attack, and a sustained convulsive power.

As matters present themselves on the web, Scheherezade is the most recent composition listed in Joseph’s output, if the Australian Music Centre information is any guide. This composer’s absence (of 24 years?!) from the lists is most regrettable, even if he has shifted his career path from music to law. These three works show a granite-hard assurance in their creative character, as well as a command of form and purpose that impresses mightily. Their re-discovery in the composer’s analogue recordings archives was a happy chance and we are the richer for their airing on this CD.

A BEETHOVEN ODYSSEY VOLUME 8

James Brawn

MSR Classics 1472

Here is the penultimate leg in this long voyage, Brawn has only two more works to release and the complete argosy comes home to Ithaca. For this CD, he has allocated four of the lesser-known elements in Beethoven’s output of 32 works, although each of them holds a world entire, even the F Major two-movement gem. It’s been a long time since I heard any of these in live performance; they’re usually the preserve of aspirants, as the big guns in the field go in search of more fleshy game. But each adds another facet or thirteen to this pianist’s insightful chain of interpretations.

None more so than the four-movement Sonata No. 13 in E flat Major, a quasi una fantasia companion to the more celebrated Moonlight Sonata No. 14. This particular work asks for an attaca between each segment, underlining the composer’s use of building-block inter-relationships, not to mention his looking backwards to the content of former pages, particularly obvious in the sonata rondo finale. Brawn opens his initial rondo with amiable expansiveness, giving full weight to those intrusive left-hand sforzandi at bars 6 and 7, then gently plucking out of the ether the C Major chords that surprise in the best Beethovenian style at bar 9, eventually attacking the central allegro with enthusiasm before taking us back to the four-square main theme and its gradual dissipation into three quiet bars of the home key.

It is hard to fault the following Allegro molto, either. This repeat-rich proto-scherzo enjoys an easy exposition, even when the arpeggios stop, and the syncopated version of the opening pages is persuasive if the whole passage is a tad blurred until the climax arrives at bar 132 where the off-the-beat right hand rings clear to the second-last bar. As in some previous sonatas, Brawn is free with his mini-pauses and phrase-pointing across the short Adagio, taking the rider con espressione with some interpretative amplitude, mainly in pausing before a bar’s first downbeat. Such an approach gives these 26 bars plenty of breathing space, if achieved at the expense of melodic fluency.

But the vivace finale runs past with an infectious head of steam; even the leaps at places like those between bars 31 to 35 are kept up to the mark and the handy treatment of this movement’s first (prime) subject are happily busy, rather than plodding as hefty semi-inventions. The performer maintains the light-footed humour and optimism by observing a style of attack that emphasizes Beethoven’s delight in movement, so that the episodes that touch on the minor (e.g. bars 131 to 138) come across with energy rather than weight. This is completely assured playing, a sunny conclusion to the sonata and in every way an atmospheric contrast with its opus number companion.

You might find the same in the following G Major Sonata No. 16 with its jaunty off-the-beat initial gambit that carries through the opening Allegro vivace‘s first subject. The exposition here is not all major-inflected, especially towards that section’s conclusion, but the development – as much of it as there is – definitely pursues a chain of minor modulations. Here you can enjoy Brawn’s unfaltering clarity, especially in those stages where the melodic operations transfer to the left hand, or those thinly textured but awkwardly placed pieces of mini-counterpoint (see bars 261-263). And this performer makes as much dynamic contrast as he can with the unexpectedly (or is it?) soft ending to the movement, as later he does in the sonata’s concluding rondo.

More of the contented Beethoven comes in the middle Adagio grazioso, Brawn following a fine vein of the adjective throughout with a clean observance of the left-hand’s initial arpeggio separated notes and allowing himself some metrical latitude at the end of elaborately decorated right-hand work (bars 10 and 12). He is not to be hurried in the two cadenza breaks, accounting for these brief rhythmic oases with quiet, measured placidity. Mind you, the composer is Romantically voluble throughout this Venetian arena, nowhere more so than in the plunging 6ths and 3rds of bar 107, but I admired the subtlety of Brawn’s restrained negotiation of some left-hand 7ths that are present but muffled, most obviously in bars 116 and 117. Small details like these send you back to pick up more occasions of delicate delivery.

The sonata’s conclusion is deceptive as it opens with a neatly balanced primary theme, then moves to play relentlessly with this tune’s opening mordent figure. Indeed, the composer occupies himself with subsidiary material, accompanying triplets and the like, before reviewing his amiable first idea, then moving into more hard three-part labour from bar 87 to bar 98: an instance of modulation working to little purpose. A lengthy period of footling leads to two brief adagio breaks before a presto coda that concerns itself almost exclusively with the afore-mentioned mordent shape. Compared to the preceding movements, this impresses as expanded beyond its dimensions, the working-out full of forward motion but lacking substance. Brawn treats it with an ease that recalls the first movement, following the triplet scale passages and left-hand melody announcements with a sympathetic response to each sequence-laced vagary.

Another four-movement sonata arrives with No. 18 in E flat Major, here distinguished by a musical sobriquet, ‘The Hunt’. This is an opus number companion of the preceding G Major work and shares its buoyancy of outlook, particularly in the even-numbered movements. You get the impression that its first movement is a stop-start operation, mainly because a ritardando is built into the opening gesture (see bars 3 to 6) and its reappearances. But these pages move forward with developmental purpose and the welcome presence – as in all the works on this CD – of whimsicality, here more contained than in its co-opus G Major’s opening allegro. Brawn keeps the pleasures coming smoothly, allowing only the smallest of independent gestures in the two irregular bars (54 and 177) and he negotiates his trills without cramming in extra oscillations (particularly the chain across bars 193 to 201), eventually opting for a piano final cadence.

He gives an individual transparence to the following 2/4 scherzo, one of the more infectiously pell-mell movements in Beethoven’s middle period sonatas. The initial theme and its restatements are not drowned in sustaining pedal melding but come across with excellent clarity. Some of the demi-semiquaver left-hand interjections from bar 42 to bar 49 are not as crisp as you’d like, although most of the later stretch (bars 147 to 154) are close to exemplary. Also, Brawn’s accounting for those abrupt fortissimo chords that punctuate passages of two-hand semiquaver work show a deft hand in supplying an apt dynamic level – just vehement enough not to drown out what follows.

Commentators speak of the Menuetto‘s standing as an unexpected throw-back to Mozart and Haydn – the sonata form’s courtly age. But this example seems integral to the work, standing as an easy break between two rapid-fire bursts of energy. The first third sets up a gentle, controlled environment through a simple series of splendidly interlocking four-bar phrases, before the gentle surprise of the Trio’s mildly vaulting chords, before the Menuetto‘s return and that touching calando conclusion. The whole is treated with clear sympathy and responsiveness: a model lesson in giving unassuming pages their proper respect.

As for the ‘hunt’ finale, Brawn maintains his presto pace convincingly, with just a hint of awkwardness in an odd spot like the left hand work in bars 135 to 138, and later, the preparatory pause before those 10-note chords at bars 307 and 317. But you find plenty of examples of exemplary skill, like the first over-the-hills-and-far-away burst from bar 64 to the end of the exposition, the relieving settle onto C Major at bar 120, and the ease of the crossed-hands single notes and main-motif statements between bars 280 and 299. This is a sustained example of rapid-fire playing but – as I’ve said before – articulated with admirable clarity and almost-unflagging impetus.

To end, Brawn gives us the shortest work on this CD in the F Major Sonata Op. 54. Compared to its predecessors on this CD, this score is decidedly odd. While the first movement opens easily enough, it soon (bar 24) takes a turn away from a slightly dour menuetto into aggressive contrary motion octaves in triplets for each hand; the two elements contrast and sort-of combine before the end. What presents as disparate in the first pages becomes more rational after the repetitions, yet the contrast is not really fused. I liked Brawn’s subtle force applied in the triplet-dominated pages, alongside a clipped approach to the opening material’s dotted-quaver-semiquaver repeated pattern. As across all four of these sonatas, you can rely on this pianist to give full measure to each note’s rhythmic value, even when the part-writing verges on the complex; everything is in its place and subsidiary elements are given as much care as dominant melodic lines.

Finishing this disc is a driving interpretation of the sonata’s Allegretto which many a pianist manages to turn into burbling. Not so here where the ceaseless semiquavers lead into a development of considerable tension across bars 23 to 99 – the movement’s core. Brawn keeps a cool head throughout the multiple modulations that Beethoven works on his one theme and carries us happily into a celebratory coda that keeps its head, despite a momentary indication of acceleration. An ending that borders on the over-wrought, if not as jubilant or as ferocious as the finales to its catalogue companions (the C Major Waldstein and the F minor Appassionata).

So what are we waiting for? Two late sonatas round out Brawn’s enterprise: the A Major Op. 101 and the B flat Major Hammerklavier Op. 106 – the first two in that late period sequence of five incomparable masterworks, setting the benchmark for Romantic (and beyond) pianism. It’s a consummation devoutly to be wished.