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Volume 28 Issue 3 | December 2022 - January 2023

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  • Thewholenotecom
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Creative Collisions offer land-use hope for community and arts space; "Take Dec 10 for Example" -- Orchestral Explosion; Landmark novel finds music theatre form; Behind the scenes at Salute to Vienna; Collaborative serendipity on the joint-concert front; Amnesia and the alternative: QSYO's take on "Comfort and Joy". A bumber crop of record reviews (and not a Holiday compilation among them)! All this and more...

No Choice but Love –

No Choice but Love – Songs of the LGBTQ+ Community Eric Ferring; Madeline Slettedahl Lexicon Classics LC2206 (lexiconclassics. com/catalogue) ! In this rather breathtaking, twodisc recording, noted American tenor Eric Ferring – in a made-inthe-stars collaboration with pianist Madeline Slettedahl – has created a significant piece of work that highlights many diverse LGBTQIA voices and perspectives. Included in the project is the world premiere of composer Ben Moore’s Love Remained (in a new arrangement for tenor voice) and his commissioned title work, No Choice But Love. Ferring has expressed “As members of this community, Madeline and I wanted to pay homage to the beautiful, difficult history of the LGBT+ community within the classical world… we, as artists must use our gifts to be catalysts for change…” The talented producers of this artful collection are Gillian Riesen and Rebecca Folsom. Also included in the recording are illuminating and eclectic works by Manuel de Falla, Jake Heggie, Francis Poulenc, Ethel Smyth, Jennifer Higdon, Willie Alexander III, Mari Esabel Valverde, Benjamin Britten and Ricky Ian Gordon. First up is Moore’s four-movement work, Love Remained. Ferring and Slettedahl shine here, expressing Moore’s message of hope and eventual acceptance throughout. On Hold On, Ferring sings with such emotion, imbuing each word with meaning and hope. Valverde’s two-piece song cycle, To Digte af Tove Ditlevsen is a work of shimmering beauty, rendered with sumptuous dynamics, pianistic skill and Ferring’s magical voice; and de Falla’s Oración de las madres que tienen a sus hijos en brazos is moving beyond measure. A true standout is Gordon’s Prayer. Ferring and Slettedahl move as one being through this luminous, deeply spiritual composition and Britten’s Canticle I is an inspired inclusion. The magnificently rendered title track was debuted on this year’s National Coming Out Day and nothing could be more appropriate. This performance and the entire recording is a clear hope for understanding, love and acceptance. Bravo! Lesley Mitchell-Clarke Ode Odeya Nini populist records (odeyanini.com) ! LA-based interdisciplinary vocalist and composer Odeya Nini has created an album displaying the limitless bounds of her voice in a solo vocal chamber work. Holding both a BFA from the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music and an MFA in composition from California Institute of the Arts, Nini is known for her vocal sound baths, workshops and retreats, where she explores the transformative and healing qualities of the body through voice. With Ode, Nini explores a wide collection of style, harmonic range and influences. Creating a work of almost entirely multi-tracked acoustic voice, Nini’s sound poems imagine landscapes of tonal and textural shifts that develop and melt beneath your feet, creating experiences with resonances and vibrations of both the body and the surrounding landscape, extending her voice to expressions of breath, growls and stratospheric lyricism. At times modal and melodic and at other times mining the depths of microsounds, each of the six tracks is constructed of compositional and improvised collages. An album well suited to those who are interested in listening experiences over melodic content, Ode is a work of vocal prowess from this sonic artist. Cheryl Ockrant Immensity Of Departure Duo New Focus Recordings FCR329 (newfocusrecordings.com) ! Cheekily tagging itself “a high-low duo” the virtuoso Departure Duo is an unlikely combo. Boston-based soprano Nina Guo and double bassist Edward Kass are committed to commissioning, performing and touring repertoire composed for their unusual combination, music that explores the full range of styles and sounds they can produce. They frequently collaborate with sonic artists to create new music, including three of the works on Immensity Of by younger generation American composers Katherine Balch, John Aylward and Emily Praetorius. Balch’s Phrases dramatically grapples with meaning, gesture and sound, while Aylward mines the poetry of Rilke for inspiration in Tiergarten (Zoo). The time-stretching Immensity Of by Praetorius is quite different from anything else here, featuring delicate, long glissandi for both voice and bass. Its beautiful lonely spaciousness is relieved only by soft whistling, birdsong, mouth clucks and knocking bass pizzicati. Kurtág’s Einige Sätze aus den Sudelbüchern Georg Christoph Lichtenbergs forms the album’s centerpiece. Drawing from 18th-century German polymath Lichtenberg’s collection of often humorous aphorisms, the composer selected texts to form the lyrical and aesthetic backbone of his collection of 18 succinct individual sections, a veritable song cycle. Kurtág’s pleasure in the texts’ wry humour is evident in Die Kuh (The Cow) and in several other places. In Die Kartoffeln (The Potatoes) for example, he appears to depict root vegetables in storage in atonal first-species counterpoint. Surely that’s a first! Departure Duo’s masterful performance makes a strong case for this 21-minute work, as well as for their high-low partnership. Andrew Timar CLASSICAL AND BEYOND Bach – Violin & Harpsichord Sonatas Andoni Mercero; Alfonso Sebastian Eudora Records EUD-SACD-2025 (eudorarecords.com) ! Recorded in the later part of 2020 at St. Miguel Church in Zaragoza, Spain, this splendid and affecting recording captures the remarkable variety, innovation and intimacy of these great sonatas. Written in the early 1720s, they feature both instruments as equals and, as with many of Bach’s “sets of six” (Brandenburg concerti, cello suites, English and French suites for keyboard, violin sonatas and partitas), each stands alone in mood, spirit and thematic development. From the wistful and distant B Minor, the tragic C Minor (with its echoes of Erbarme dich in its first movement), the nostalgic and poignant F Minor to the majestic A Major, the towering E Major and the final exuberant G Major, this recording offers generous and beautiful performances, full of intelligence and heart. Both players are leading performers and educators in Spain, with Mercero equally at home as a soloist, leading orchestras from the violin (both Baroque and modern) and playing more intimate chamber music (he coaches string quartets at Musikene in San Sebastián in Spain) and Sebastián collaborating with many Spanish early music ensembles, as well as teaching harpsichord at the Salamanca Conservatory. The handsome 2CD set is accompanied by an informative booklet, featuring a lengthy and 54 | December 2022 - January 2023 thewholenote.com

well-written essay on the provenance of these fascinating pieces and personal reflections on the 30-year musical partnership of these two brilliant musicians. Larry Beckwith Beethoven – The Five Piano Concertos Haochen Zhang; Philadelphia Orchestra; Nathalie Stutzmann BIS BIS-2581 SACD (bis.se/performers/ zhang-haochen) ! Having taken the classical piano world by storm when he first burst upon the scene in 2009 as the youngest pianist to ever receive a gold medal at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, Haochen Zhang, now 32 with three releases under his belt, offers a fine follow-up recording here to his earlier Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev piano concertos. Once again recording for Naxos, Zhang performs Beethoven alongside the well-regarded Philadelphia Orchestra, the city in which the Chinese-born Zhang is currently based, under the direction of guest conductor Nathalie Stutzmann. For any pianist, even one as accomplished as Zhang, to take on a complete program (spanning three discs) of Beethoven’s five piano concertos is yeoman’s work indeed. First there is the work of performing the pieces themselves (the study, nuance, technical challenge, among literally thousands of additional artistic decisions), plus the “work” of situating oneself into the canon of Beethoven interpreters (of which there are many and they are great), adding one’s name and vision onto the ever-growing corpus of versions and canonic contributions. Nicholas Cook, writing in Music: A Very Short Introduction coins the phrase: “The Beethoven Effect” referring principally to the fact that Beethoven, freed from the obligation of compositional servitude to a church, a noble patron, or a feudal landlord was perhaps the first true musical “artist,” (differing here from trades or crafts person) who enjoyed a kind of self-awareness of his own greatness that not only traversed geography but the “boundaries of time and space.” Beethoven’s music was, as Cook suggests, “for the ages,” and, although difficult to know for certain, Beethoven knew it. Unlike Bach, who would use his own handwritten etudes as parchment paper to wrap lunches while taking a break from his teaching obligations at St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, Beethoven did not view his music so ephemerally. As a result, offers Cook, composing after Beethoven was an exercise in hearing his historical and giant footsteps from behind. With such grandiosity of intent and purpose came the grand compositional gestures that we now associate as hallmarks of Beethoven specifically, and the Romantic era more generally. And it is in these expansive signifiers, hugely encompassing of human emotion and offering a kind of bordered frame that tests the limits of any performer brave enough to tackle his repertoire, that Zhang excels. Where, for example, a less competent interpreter would use virtuosity as a proxy for expressiveness, Zhang’s performance here sounds as if there is another dimension in play where we do not just hear, as Hans Von Bulow established, the pianist abdicating one’s agency so audiences hear only the composer and not the performer, but rather a satisfying fusion that is equal parts Beethoven and Zhang. Lastly, when we look at classical music history through the eyes of today, we often see an artificial bifurcation between composers and performers/improvisers. But Beethoven, in addition to being a composer, was apparently an extremely fine pianist, and, like the aforementioned Bach, improviser. And it is here as well where we hear Zhang contributing to the continuum of the pianist Beethoven, wrestling with, accepting and ultimately transcending this music with this fine recording that is sure to add much lustre to his impressive but still developing legacy. Andrew Scott Schubert – Vol.7 The Wanderer Mathieu Gaudet Analekta AN28929 (analekta.com/en) ! Has it really been more than three years since Quebecborn pianist and emergency room physician Mathieu Gaudet completed his ambitious series of 12 recitals presenting the complete piano sonatas of Franz Schubert which launched the equally ambitious project by Analekta to tailor them into a 12CD collection? Since then, Gaudet has proven without a doubt that he is among the foremost interpreters of Schubert’s piano repertoire, and this seventh addition to the collection is indeed further evidence. Titled The Wanderer, it features the sonatas D157 and D784, and, appropriately, the renowned Wanderer Fantasy D760. Dating from 1815, the Sonata in E Major D157 was Schubert’s first essay in the form, while the Sonata D784 was completed five years later. As expected, Gaudet’s performance in both is a delight, demonstrating a particularly beautiful tone combined with an impeccable technique. The famed Wanderer Fantasy from 1823 is reputed to be one of Schubert’s most difficult compositions, not only technically but also in nuance. While it comprises four movements, each one transitions into the next instead of ending with a definitive cadence, and each starts with a variation of the opening phrase of his lied Der Wanderer D489. The piece conveys a vast array of moods, but Gaudet draws them all together into a cohesive whole and the piece – like the disc itself – flows with What we're listening to this month: thewholenote.com/listening Sonatas and Chamber Music for Oboe and Oboe d'amore Mary Lynch Vanderkolk The soulful sounds of Seattle Symphony principal oboe infuse this expressive and lyrical new album from Canadian composer Christopher Tyler Nickel The Way It Is...Is the Way It Was Barry Romberg's Random Access ROMHOG RECORDS latest installment in the Random Access series featuring Sam Dickinson on Guitar and Ewen Farncombe on Keyboards blue Diana Panton “Easily in the top echelon of jazz vocalists anywhere in the world today.” David Braid, JUNO/Gemini Award Winner Paradise Blue Bill King "This is absolutely a beautiful piece of musical art" WHFC 91.1 Maryland USA - "Amazing instrumentalist" Copenhagen Blues Festival thewholenote.com December 2022 - January 2023 | 55

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