Ten years ago, CBC radio broad­cast Robert Volkmann’s Sym­phony #1 in D. I was charmed by it. The announc­er said that it sound­ed like “a for­got­ten work by Brahms”. True enough, and Volkmann’s obscu­rity could eas­ily be explained by say­ing he was one of Brahms’ many imi­ta­tors. But that sym­phony was com­posed in 1862, and Brahms’ first sym­phony didn’t appear until four­teen years lat­er. I’ve nev­er been able to find a copy of that sym­phony, and didn’t hear the whole thing on the CBC broad­cast, so it isn’t list­ed in my lis­ten­ing files. But I have obtained two works by him, the Konz­ert­stück for Piano & Orches­tra, and the Cel­lo Con­certo. Both are enter­tain­ing and well-craft­ed, but not over­whelm­ing. The cel­lo con­certo is worth sev­eral lis­tens. Both works reveal his real influ­ence: Schu­mann. Volk­mann lived from 1815 to 1883. He was born in Sax­ony, spent a short stint in Prague, then the rest of his life in Budapest. He was respect­ed and often played in his life­time, but fell out of the reper­tory after his death. It’s more fair to say that he was a seri­ous com­poser whose work fol­lowed on Schu­mann and antic­i­pated Brahms, whom he influ­enced sig­nif­i­cantly. This is not dis­mis­sible as mere imi­ta­tion. But time has a way of cast­ing off such in-betweens.

17498. (Gus­tav Mahler) Das Kla­gende Lied [s. Shaguch, DeY­oung, Moser, Leiferkus] 
17499. (Illu­mi­nati) The Illu­mi­nati [with bonus bootlegs]
17500. (Alan Hov­haness) Sym­pho­ny #24, Op.273 “Maj­nun”
17501. (Oscar Peter­son) Oscar Peter­son Plays Duke Ellington
17502. Otan­tic Azer­bay­can Rek­sleri 2: Music of Azerbaijan
17503. (Fred­er­ick Delius) A Walk to the Par­adise Garden
17504. On Mar­co Polo’s Road: The Musi­cians of Kun­duz and Faizabad
17505. (Robert Volk­mann) Konz­ert­stück for Piano and Orches­tra, Op.42
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Har­ry Somers (1925–1999) was prob­a­bly the most respect­ed com­poser in Toron­to dur­ing his gen­er­a­tion. The seri­al­ist John Weinzweig found him com­pos­ing, self-taught, as a teenag­er, and encour­aged him to train vig­or­ously in both tra­di­tional har­mony and in avant-garde twelve-tone tech­niques. He end­ed up train­ing under the fair­ly con­ser­v­a­tive French com­poser, Dar­ius Mil­haud. In the end, he set­tled on an eclec­tic style. Up until now, all I’ve lis­tened to close­ly was his just­ly pop­u­lar Five Songs from New­found­land Out­ports. But today, I lis­tened to a col­lec­tion of his songs, both sec­u­lar and sacred, by the Elmer Isler Singers. I was sur­prised at their com­bi­na­tion of sassy humour — “Spot­ted Snakes” is the best exam­ple of that — and lyri­cal beau­ty. The “Three Songs of New France” are real­ly fine, quite as good as the famed New­found­land set. The sacred pieces com­bine con­ven­tional rev­er­ence with some uncon­ven­tional twists. I par­tic­u­larly like “God The Mas­ter of This Scene” and “Bless’d Is the Gar­den of the Lord”. There’s a touch of Mes­si­aen in these, but in a clean-cut, whole­some Toron­to boy way. Cana­dian com­posers, even when they see them­selves as bad boys, tend to be polite and well-scrubbed behind the ears. It’s our kismet.

The Huel­gas Ensem­ble, under the direc­tion of Paul Van Nev­el, put togeth­er a col­lec­tion of Renais­sance poly­phonic works for large choirs, which they called “Utopia Tri­umphans”. In fact, these works are for huge choirs. It starts with Thomas Tallis’ aston­ish­ing 40-part motet Spem in ali­um, and ends with Alessan­dro Striggio’s 40-part Ecce beat­am lucem. Striggio’s piece was per­formed in Eng­land in 1567, and caused such a stir that it was tak­en as a chal­lenge. It is said that Tallis was com­mis­sioned to com­pose an “answer”, and Spem in ali­um was the result (how­ever some author­i­ties doubt this story).

Motets on this scale are very dif­fi­cult to mount. The man­u­script kicked around for cen­turies, but no doubt those who looked at it shrugged their shoul­ders. Inter­est­ing, but too much work to put on, and Tallis had lit­tle sell­ing pow­er. His rep­u­ta­tion was eclipsed by his pupil William Byrd, and if Ralph Vaugh­an Williams had not com­posed his Fan­ta­sia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, few would have heard his name. But in 1965, the choir of King’s Col­lege Cam­bridge took a chance, and record­ed it. Sub­se­quently, there was a revival of inter­est in Tallis, and today I noticed a site list­ing it among the “top 10 essen­tial choral pieces”. There have been many record­ings of it, the most well known being that of the Tallis Schol­ars. Per­haps the most amaz­ing trib­ute to the work is in the Nation­al Gallery of Cana­da, in Ottawa. Here, Maya 3D mod­el­ing soft­ware, laser scan­ning and pho­togram­me­try were used to accu­rately recre­ate the inte­rior of a beau­ti­ful con­vent chapel which, unfor­tu­nately, had to be demol­ished. With­in this mod­el (where even the “sun­light” in the stained glass is arti­fi­cial), forty speak­ers set around the chapel each play the sound of a sin­gle voice of the forty-part choir, allow­ing for an espe­cially intense, and vari­able expe­ri­ence of the piece. Read more »

17395. (Aztec Cam­era) Stray
17396. (Johannes Brahms) Piano Trio #1 in B, Op.8
17397. (Johannes Brahms) Piano Trio #2 in C, Op.87
17398. (Johannes Brahms) Piano Trio #3 in C Minor, Op.101
17399. (Johannes Brahms) Piano Trio #4 in A, Op. Posth.
(Homayun Sakhi) The Art of the Afghan Rubâb:
. . . . 17400. (Homayun Sakhi) Raga Madhuvanti
. . . . 17401. (Homayun Sakhi) Raga Yaman
. . . . 17402. (Homayun Sakhi) Kataghani
17403. (Karol Szy­manows­ki) Vio­lin Con­cer­to #1, Op.35
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One of the finest singers in West­ern Cana­da, Sandy Scofield glides effort­lessly from her Métis and Cree musi­cal roots into a high-lev­el syn­the­sis of jazz, blues, rock and pop. Long known in abo­rig­i­nal music cir­cles, she deserves to break out into the glob­al music scene. Her music is orig­i­nal, refined, and intel­li­gent. I pos­sess three of her four albums, Dirty Riv­er (1994), Riel’s Road (2000), and Ket­wam (2002). I have yet to hear all of this year’s release, Nikawiy Askiy, but I’ve heard three songs from it, and they clear­ly indi­cate that her musi­cal evo­lu­tion is con­tin­u­ing with­out hin­drance. Riel’s Road is prob­a­bly the best intro­duc­tion to her work, open­ing with the stun­ning “Beat the Drum (Gath­er­ing Song)”, and going on to explore emo­tion­ally the after­math and con­se­quences of the most dra­matic events in post-Con­fed­er­a­tion Canada’s his­tory, the Métis upris­ing and death of Louis Riel. How­ever, most of the songs on this album have a folk-jazz feel­ing. On Ket­wam, which focus­es on much more tra­di­tional abo­rig­i­nal-métis mate­r­ial, she col­lab­o­rates with the vocal trio Nit­si­wakun, of which she is one mem­ber (the oth­er two are Lisa Saza­ma and Shak­ti Hayes), with fid­dle Daniel Lapp, and with vocal­ist Win­ston Wut­tunee. The Cree-lan­guage songs are the most pow­er­ful. The album is tru­ly col­lab­o­ra­tive. Some are the finest moments belong to Hayes on “Nit­si­mos” and to “Wut­tunee” on “Tap­weh” (a tra­di­tional round dance that would fit in at any west­ern powow).

One review­er describes Holy Fuck as “strange­ly melod­ic and pulse pound­ing free-form fusion of the heavy chug and groove rock of Trans Am and the quirk­i­ness of Beck rolled into one mes­mer­iz­ing view­ing and lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence.” Well, I don’t know if you can form any plau­si­ble impres­sion from that descrip­tion, but it’s fair­ly accu­rate. A more com­pre­hen­si­ble way of describ­ing this Toron­to band is to say that they try to dupli­cate, live, using phys­i­cal instru­men­ta­tion, with­out pre-tap­ing or splic­ing, the sounds that you would think could only be done by com­puter. I think they achieve this admirably, judg­ing from the record­ing I have of their epony­mous debut all­bum. Here, band mem­bers Bri­an Borcherdt, Gra­ham Walsh, Mike Bigelow, Loel Camp­bell, Kevin Lynn, Glenn Milchem, Rob­bie Kuster, Matt Schulz are joined by Lau­rence Cur­rie and Dave Newfeld (of Bro­ken Social Scene). Some­thing like this should be seen live. I haven’t had the chance to, yet, but a hint of it can be seen in the videos avail­able on their Myspace site.

17311. (Elvis Costel­lo) The Very Best of Elvis Costel­lo and The Attractions
17312. (Nico­lae Guţǎ) Select­ed Roman­ian Manele Songs
17313. (Bohuslave Mar­t­inů) Sym­pho­ny #1
17314. (Bohuslave Mar­t­inů) Inven­tions for Large Orches­tra [Invence Sym­fon­ická sklad­ba o 
. . . . . třech vĕtách]
17315. (Ján Šim­bracký) Con­grati sunt inimi­ci nostri
17316. (Ján Šim­bracký) Ange­lis suis man­davit dete
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Li Xiang-Lan

Between the two World Wars, Shang­hai was one of the most cos­mopoli­tan and sophis­ti­cated cities in the world. It was also one of the world’s hotspots for Jazz. The great jazz bands toured there, and there was a con­sid­er­able pool of local tal­ent. Pre-emi­nent among the local artists were the “Lounge Divas”, female singers who owed their orig­i­nal inspi­ra­tion to Amer­i­can stars like Bil­lie Hol­i­day and Bessie Smith, and to Euro­pean cabaret singers like Edith Piaf, but who qui­ckly devel­oped their own, indi­vid­ual styles. Among the great­est of these divas were Li Xiang-Lan, Bai Kwong, Chang Loo, and Chow Hsuan. All had glo­ri­ous voic­es. I recent­ly acquired a fas­ci­nat­ing 2‑cd set. The first cd has the orig­i­nal record­ings from the 1930’s. The sec­ond has mod­ern remix­es of the same songs, done up to suit the cur­rent taste for dance music in Asia. I have no objec­tion to these. The dance remix­es are per­fectly legit­i­mate, and rea­son­ably well done. But the orig­i­nals are far more inter­est­ing. They take you on an amaz­ing jour­ney to a place and era lost in dim light and a haze of cig­a­rette smoke.

A num­ber of years ago, I was walk­ing across the plaza of Toronto’s City Hall. Designed in the 1960’s by Finnish archi­tect Viljo Rev­ell, it’s a pleas­ant place, filled with skaters in the win­ter (when the orna­men­tal pond is frozen), and music con­certs in the sum­mer. On this par­tic­u­lar occ­ca­sion, a Big Band was play­ing music from the 1930’s and 1940’s. Fold­ing chairs had been set up in the plaza, and there was a rea­son­ably large crowd enjoy­ing the music. When I sat down among them, I noticed that almost every­one there was a) very old, and b) Chi­nese-Cana­di­an. I turned to a dig­ni­fied-look­ing elder­ly cou­ple, and asked them why so many Chi­nese had come to this con­cert. With a twin­kle in his eye, the man said: “This is the music of our youth. We lis­tened to this in Shang­hai, when we were just mar­ried.” Lis­ten­ing, now, to Chang Loo singing “All the Stars in the Sky”, I think I can under­stand what that twin­kle in his eye was all about.

17251. (Carl Maria von Weber) Sym­pho­ny #1 in C, J.50
17252. (Carl Maria von Weber) Sym­pho­ny #2 in C, J.51
17253. (Carl Maria von Weber) Music for Schiller’s Turan­dot, J.75: Overture
17254. (Carl Maria von Weber) Music for Schiller’s Turan­dot, J.75: March
17255. (Sandy Scofield) Dirty River
17256. (Sán­dor Kalla und seine Zige­uner Kapelle) Kulacs Restau­rant: Berühunte Umgarische
. . . . . Zige­uner­Lieder und Immer­grüne Melodien
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