BALEY Uniforms of Snow¹. 10 Songs without Words² — ¹Lucy Shelton (sop); ¹Virko Baley, cond; ²Karen Bentley Pollick (vn); ²Timothy Hoft (pn); ¹Cleveland CO — TOCCATA CLASSICS 0681 (74:55)

            It’s a little unusual for Toccata Classics to mix genres as distinct as voice & orchestra and violin & piano, but the company’s interest in devoting discs (with few exceptions) to a single composer (a most laudable trait, I hasten to add) supersedes considerations of instrumentation. Virko Baley (b. 1938 in Ukraine) emigrated to the US in 1949, so his mature compositions were all written here. He was featured in 33:6 in an interview with Robert Schulslaper where further biographical details may be found. Apart from Schulslaper’s favorable review there, I found little enthusiasm for his music in the reviews of the other dozen or so considerations of it by our mutual colleagues. Given that the same music will strike even knowledgeable listeners quite differently, I determined to come to these works with unbiased ears, and lest I keep the reader in suspense, I’ll state up front that I like his music very much indeed. 

            The disc contains but two works, each of which lasts for well over a half hour. The first, Uniforms of Snow sets eight poems of Emily Dickinson for soprano and chamber orchestra, and includes two instrumental interludes and a prelude. The first movement is actually labeled as “Intrada and Song Without Words,” the latter involving a simple tune played on the harp that is bookended with a violent orchestral outburst that would seem to have little or nothing to do with the tune, but is certainly dramatic and exciting. The approach rather strikes me akin to a painting in pastels placed in a fire-engine red frame. Once the songs themselves commence, the listener is presented with a wide variety of styles. The serene and staid setting of the opening “Love can do all but raise the Dead,” vividly contrasts with the highly rhythmic and pointillistic second song, “Oh, honey of an hour,” which impresses me as though it could be a depiction of Paul Klee’s famous painting, The Twittering Machine, which has indeed been set in similar fashion by several composers. One of the most dramatic portions of the work comes in the first interlude, a dynamic and bold outburst of instrumental color, and an equally striking song is heard in “There is a pain – so utter.” In the latter, pain is portrayed through dissonant clusters of instruments in their higher register. These occasionally punctuate the lovely lyrical line of the soloist, and the outbursts are jarring, but very distinctive and effective. The cycle as a whole strikes me as some of the most effective settings of Dickinson’s poetry I’ve heard—and I’ve heard many. 

            Renowned soprano Lucy Shelton hardly needs my praise, but gets it anyway for her beautiful and sensitive singing. Especially pleasing is the way she floats her high notes so effortlessly. In the dramatic songs, of which there are several, she brings considerable excitement and energy to her presentation. Although I could not understand her words, I ascribe this not to any defect in her enunciation but to the fact of my attenuated hearing and my dislike of listening to music with my hearing aids in. In any case, texts are provided. Baley, as conductor, knows exactly what he wants in his music and how to get the fine musicians in the Cleveland Chamber Orchestra to fulfill his intentions. 

            Despite what I said in the opening paragraph, the work for violin and piano that wraps up the recital fits in well with the opening song cycle. Ten Songs without Words may not have any verbal expression, but these pieces are nevertheless songs; the violin, after all, is as “singing” an instrument as any other, and more so than most. The present work had an unusually long gestation, having been composed between 2003 and 2019, but this is explained in part by the fact that the composer has gone through some of his early songs and transcribed them for the forces employed here. Given that Baley is himself a fine pianist, he has taken care to give equal weight to both instruments. Once again, there is great contrast between the moods of these songs, the lullaby-like “There is a solitude of space,” for instance, being a foil for the lively note-filled “Oh honey of an hour.” In all 10 of these pieces, some of which are rather extended, the composer proves himself to be a master of mood and color, enhanced in part by his incorporation of some sul ponticello and senza vibrato writing in the violin part. One movement in particular that caught my eye (and ear) was  “Der Abschied,” fully half the length of Mahler’s eponymous portion of Das Lied von der Erde, and comparably evocative. 

Violinist Karen Bentley Pollick and pianist Timothy Hoft are clearly both masters of their respective instruments. The composer praises their playing in his notes, and I do the same here. They both strengthen my conviction that Virko Baley is an important and distinctive composer, one whom I’d welcome hearing in other works as I might have opportunity. Highly recommended on all fronts. 

David DeBoor Canfield Fanfare Magazine Issue 47:4 (March/April 2024)

Four stars: Highly evocative settings of Emily Dickinson’s poetry and violin song arrangements. 

David DeBoor Canfield Fanfare Magazine Issue 44:4 (March/April 2021)

IVAN SOKOLOV Violin Sonata No. 2.1 Reminiscence.2 13 Postludes.3 Elegie3 • Karen Bentley Pollick (1vn, 2va, 3pn); Ivan Sokolov (pn) • TOCCATA 0560 (68:54)

The Fanfare Archive lists 13 works by composer(s) named “Sokolov,” but none seems to be Ivan Sokolov, a Russian composer born in Moscow in 1960. So, yet again, Martin Anderson has apparently introduced a previously unrecorded composer’s music to the CD-buying public (diminishing in numbers though it may be). In Toccata’s usual thorough program notes we learn that the composer commenced musical studies in piano at the age of eight and four years later was accepted into the class of none less than Heinrich (Genrikh, as transliterated from Cyrillic) Neuhaus (Neigauz). In the 1970s, Sokolov attended the Gnesin Music College, continuing his piano studies with Irina Naumova and thereafter entered the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatoire, undertaking composition lessons with Nikolai Sidelnikov, well known to diehard collectors of Melodiya LPs (such as myself), whose works, including his delightful Russian Tales, showed up on a handful of discs. After completing his postgraduate studies, Sokolov taught composition at the Academic College associated with the Conservatory, and in recent years has divided his time between posts in Germany and Moscow.

He also continues to give piano recitals, and was endeared to me when I read in the notes that during performances of Pictures at an Exhibition has crowed several times during the “Ballet of Unhatched Chicks” movement, and, without missing a beat, moved the piano and bench forward during “Bydło.” Talk about a pictorial approach to playing the piece! But—what does his music sound like? I confess I was not expecting what I heard come out of my speakers in the opening Violin Sonata No. 2, namely unalloyed Romanticism, more or less in the tradition of César Franck in his own Violin Sonata, to which there is more than a passing similarity (even in their shared key of A Major). Perhaps even more surprising is the fact that Sokolov utterly rejected the avant-garde idiom of his early works in favor of this overt Romanticism. Once the initial shock wore off (quickly), I settled into a thorough enjoyment of this beautiful work with its long flowing violin lines and rich harmonic tapestry that supported them in the piano part. In trying to come up with a Russian composer from the Romantic era to which I could compare this music, the best I could do was Nikolai Medtner, whose own violin sonatas are evoked in my memory by listening to this work (and it has been years since I heard any of them). Georgy Catoire could also be considered a forebear.

The second movement of the sonata is much darker than the first, even to the point of sounding ominous, and it builds up to a tremendous climax at around the four-minute mark. Throughout the sonata, one hears evidence of the prowess of both the composer-as-pianist, and the pianist-as-composer, given the extremely idiomatic piano writing. What may be less expected is the equally idiomatic violin writing, which is nothing less than stunning, showing off its singing tone, and the instrument’s capability to produce brilliance and power. Karen Bentley, a triple threat on violin, viola, and piano(!), is a superb player on all three instruments, and this sonata could not be in better hands from either performer. Her passion in the very dramatic final movement simply could not be bettered. When I heard her playing, I wondered if she might have studied with Josef Gingold (she demonstrates a certain je ne sais quoi quality) and in reading the notes, discovered that she had, as well as with Camilla Wicks.

She joins Sokolov in the six-minute Reminiscence for piano four-hands. This work—more than the sonata, I think—suggests the ghost of Rachmaninoff hovering over the music. Sokolov, in his recent writing, has been suggested as the successor of the great Russian composer-pianist, and I can hear that here. Parts of it even remind me of Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances or of his Suites for Two Pianos.

Only in the 13 Postludes for viola and piano does a bit of contemporary sound come into these works. The second of them, a prestissimo movement, employs sul ponticello writing and astringent (albeit not atonal) harmonies to good effect. Despite this, Romanticism (or at least Neo-Romanticism) pervades the work. The tonal centers traverse the first half of the circle of fifths (C Major/A Minor through F♯ Major). Since Sokolov is blessed (as I suppose he would consider it) with synesthesia, an association of musical key with specific colors, he has assigned colors to each of the 13 pieces. Rimsky-Korsakov and Scriabin (and yours truly) all share(d) this phenomenon, although, for instance, Sokolov associates A Major with green, and for me it is a brilliant golden yellow. Despite the generally slow tempos of these pieces, the listener’s interest is sustained through the skill and shift of mood that Sokolov brings to them.

While Pollick produces a luxuriant and warm tone on her viola, I suspect that violin is her primary string instrument, as there are a few spots where she is not perfectly in tune on the larger instrument, while her violin playing is impeccable in that respect. I do not mean at all to imply that her viola playing is anything less than enjoyable, and what bothers me here and there might not be picked up by many other listeners.

The program closes with the earliest-composed (by more than a decade) work, the Elegie for solo viola from 2001. The piece is meant to portray the end of the life of a hero, the soul of whom upon death is carried away by a guardian angel. This brief and effective work ends with an unusual effect involving the dampening of the strings with the left hand while the bow (with its wooden side against the string) traverses the fingerboard all the way up the string across the bridge to the tailpiece of the instrument to which the strings are connected. I never would have guessed how this sound was created without the information given by the notes, but it is quite striking.

Toccata Classics has scored another coup in unearthing music by a composer who should be widely known. Any violinist or violist hearing these works will almost certainly immediately desire to perform them as well, and I suppose that is part of the reason Martin Anderson does what he does in bringing such music to the attention of the music world. I do hope he’ll eventually issue some of Sokolov’s avant-garde works, as I have no doubt they’re also very much worth hearing. Kudos all around from David DeBoor Canfield.

This article originally appeared in Issue 44:4 (Mar/Apr 2021) of Fanfare Magazine.

Steve Arloff MusicWeb International 

December 2020

Ivan SOKOLOV (b. 1960)
Chamber and Instrumental Music
Violin Sonata No.2 (2018) [24:12]
Reminiscence for Piano, four hands (2013) [6:31]
Thirteen Postludes for viola and piano (2018) [31:50]
Elegie for solo viola [6:20]
Karen Bentley Pollick (violin, piano, viola)
Ivan Sokolov (piano)
Rec. 24-27 September, 2019 Immanuelskirche, Wuppertal, Germany
TOCCATA CLASSICS TOCC0560 [68:54]

Three things struck me immediately on hearing this disc, firstly that I knew the opening of the violin sonata (I didn’t), secondly that it is SO refreshing to hear music which once might have been considered ‘old hat’ by misguided members of the ‘musical establishment back in the 1950s-60s and lastly what a prodigious talent Karen Bentley Pollick is to be proficient enough to record playing violin, viola and piano! The music has a late 19^th century ring to it which, as I said I, find musically reassuring, for surely in music it is a true as in any other area of life that “if it ain’t broke why fix it?” Don’t get me wrong I do not mean that composers shouldn’t seek to push the boundaries but that doing so for no better reason than because it is thought that if they didn’t, they’d be written off is not a good enough one. This happened, regrettably, in the 1950s and many really good composers and music was lost to listeners at that time. This is the sort of music I would like to write if only I could compose; beautifully melodic, richly tuneful, restful in the extreme; just the sort of music to help you unwind which we need more than ever during these most testing of times. It was therefore, interesting to read that his music was initially “avant-garde (and) conceptual” and “A postmodern approach he termed ‘natural’, ‘simple’ or ‘pure’ appeared in the early 2000s…” after he had got tired of his early style.

Sokolov’s Violin Sonata No.2 tugs at the heartstrings in a way that all lovers of Rachmaninov will immediately recognise with an achingly beautiful melody at the core of the first movement that has a fragile edge to it. The second acts as a kind of bridge and the third sees a replay of that core theme that is developed in an equally delightful way. The final movement brings about a complete change of tone with an agitated introduction which continues throughout with echoes of the core theme hovering in the background though disturbed by this anxious mood while the soaring violin takes us up to a fortissimo closing.

Karen Bentley Pollick swaps violin for piano to join the composer in his Reminiscence for Piano, four hands. It is another piece in the Russian romantic tradition that seems to embody within it a palpable nostalgia for Sokolov’s mother country; Russians are renowned for missing the country of their birth more than many other races, when away from it. Such inspiration, however, makes for a superbly evocative work.

To explain the background to Thirteen Postludes for viola and piano would require copying verbatim from the accompanying insert for it is technically complex. Suffice it to say that Sokolov is “a synaesthete who hears keys as colours” and the description gives the colours attached to each one along with the mood he sought to evoke e.g. ‘angelic, red’, ‘Mahlerian, yellow’, ‘transcendental, medium blue’. These are the kind of pieces that make the music lover so grateful they enjoy this art form and for the wide-ranging inspiration that composers draw upon to power their writing. Mere words cannot hope to convey the depths that the composer can plumb and these short pieces are exemplars par excellence that music really can ‘reach parts that other’ art forms ‘cannot reach’.

The final work on this intriguing disc sees Karen Bentley Pollick stay with the viola for Sokolov’s
Elegie for solo viola. Once again it is more than a collection of notes but a profoundly felt work which depicts “‘the completion of a large and eventful life’” and at the end of the piece we ‘“hear the soul exiting the body, meeting its guardian angel’” and Sokolov enables the soloist to represent clods of earth being dropped onto the coffin lid; a truly extraordinary experience.

Ivan Sokolov is clearly a composer of astonishing talent whose emotions are displayed in the most powerful and deeply felt ways and I am so glad to have been able to make his musical acquaintance through this marvellous disc. I can only imagine what he can produce in orchestral terms which I am eager to discover. Add to his compositional talents a rich an expressive pianism which this record show in spades. It was a lucky thing for both him and Karen Bentley Pollick to have found each other back in 2004 since when they have developed a close understanding of each other’s musical abilities which further enriches Sokolov’s writing and their playing. As I wrote in the introduction it is unusual on a single disc for a musician to be recorded playing three different instruments as Pollick does and the biographical details in the notes takes over two pages to list all her awards and performance history; she is extraordinarily talented. The sound is exemplary as is to be expected from Toccata Classics and it is to their credit that these works are their first recordings. Thank goodness there are recording companies like them that are not solely motivated by profit for music and composers like Sokolov would certainly be the losers.

Steve Arloff

EXPLORING SOKOLOV’S CHAMBER MUSIC

SOKOLOV: Violin Sonata No. 2.^1,4 Reminiscence for Piano 4 Hands.^2,4 13 Postludes for Viola & Piano.^3,4 Élegie for Solo Viola ³ / Karen Bentley Pollick, ¹vln/²pno/³vla; ⁴Ivan Sokolov, pno / Toccata TOCC 0560

Composer-pianist Ivan Sokolov was born in 1960 to a cultural family; his father was an ancient art historian. Yet, in one sense, this release is as much a showcase for American musician Karen Bentley Pollick, who plays the violin, viola, piano and (not represented on this CD) the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle.

Sokolov’s music is by no means avant-garde. It has a strong tonal bias but also a good sense of structure and an interesting use of harmony related to, but not as widely varied as, the music of Nikolai Medtner. At about the 3:40 mark in the first movement of the Violin Sonata No. 2, for instance, Sokolov goes through a fairly lengthy sequence of linked harmonic changes, shifting voices within the chords to make these changes. One thing I found interesting in Pollick’s violin playing is that she sounds as if she is playing the viola: it has a full, rich tone, almost in the German tradition rather than the Russian, Italian or French schools. The second movement of this sonata has a desolate, melancholy quality built around minor keys, again with several key shifts within the movement, particularly at the climax (approx. four minutes in) where things become less opaque and more overt in feeling. Interestingly, the third movement is a relatively relaxed “Moderato” rather than a scherzo, but the last movement is a fairly frenetic “Allegro molto” with plenty of spiky harmonies. The composer accompanies her in most of the music on this disc.

Reminiscence for Piano 4 Hands features both Pollick and Sokolov at the same piano. It, too, is in the same mold as the Violin Sonata, romantic but with many fascinating harmonic shifts and a few dramatic outbursts. The Postludes for viola and piano follow much the same pattern as the Violin Sonata but on a smaller scale. This, I found, was Sokolov’s one real weakness, the tendency to write music that sounds too much alike. The second postlude, in 3/4 time, features spiky harmonies like the last movement of the sonata. Apparently, Sokolov is also a synethesiac who “sees” music in terms of colors. The various postludes are ascribed such colors as red (No. 1), green (No. 2), orange (No. 3), light blue (No. 4), yellow (No. 5) etc. Postludes Nos. 4, 8 & 9 were the most musically interesting to me.

A nice album, then, with some very interesting moments among some fairly mundane ones.

—© 2020 Lynn René Bayley

July 23, 2020

GRÄDENER Violin Concertos: No. 1 in D, op. 22; No. 2 in d, op. 41 • Karen Bentley Pollick (vn); Gottfried Rabl, cond; Natl SO of Ukraine • TOCCATA 0528 (74:32)

We may not yet have sorted out the classical music canon of the last 75 years, but surely the period before the Second World War is fairly stable by now, isn’t it? What are the odds that we’ll find some forgotten composer whose music is as good as Mozart’s or Mahler’s? Pretty slim, I’d say—but the situation gets murkier when we move beyond the top ranks. It turns out that the odds that we’ll discover some forgotten composer whose music is as good as Goldmark’s or even Bruch’s is moderately high—and a handful of adventurous record companies (including, of course, Toccata Classics) are intent on playing those odds. So the appearance of what’s advertised as the first volume in a series devoted to the orchestral music of Hermann Grädener (1844–1929) deserves at least the benefit of the doubt.

Granted, there’s reason to be wary. For at least the last 40 years, Grove has dismissed Grädener with a 175-word notice from Gaynor G. Jones, which devotes a single sentence—a damnation with faint praise—to discussion of his actual music: “His Violin Sonata shows the influence of Brahms; this work and the String Octet op.12 show more rhythmic, harmonic and contrapuntal interest than most of his other chamber works.” And even G. H. Wilson’s notes for the Boston Symphony, when the orchestra programmed his Capriccio in 1889, had little to say about him other than to suggest his output was small and that he was an “earnest … professor” whose work was “by no means lacking in warmth.” With friends like that….

Still, he was born into a distinguished musical family (his father, Carl, was a composer, conductor, cellist, and teacher, and for a while a good friend of Brahms), and he himself was a teacher whose long list of students, as William Melton’s thorough notes remind us, included Rott, Webern, Schreker, and Korngold (who studied choral writing with him privately). He was an important violinist and conductor as well; and jibes aside, he had a reputation in his lifetime as a solid if generally conservative composer, one who, Zelig-like, certainly showed up in distinguished company. His Comedy Overture was first performed on the concert that introduced the Brahms Fourth; his D-Minor Quartet headed the program that saw the premiere of Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht; his Cello Concerto showed up on the concert that also saw the first American performance of the Bruckner Eighth (which, oddly, came first); and the Second Concerto, included here, was premiered at the same concert that introduced the 1890 version of the Bruckner/Schalk Third. Then, too, the endorsement of Toccata is always a good sign.

In any case, violinist Karen Bentley (as she was then known) and pianist-conductor Gottfried Rabl, chamber music associates and inveterate searchers through the dustier shelves of music shops and libraries, were smitten with the Violin Sonata 30 years ago, and they turned to the two violin concertos later on. This disc—which uses Rabl’s edition of the orchestral score of the First—gives us a chance to share those latter discoveries.

So what does the music sound like? The First is, to my ears, the more striking of the two. It’s a hefty work that surges through what can be a quickly shifting landscape, notable for its sweeping arcs of sound, its bursts of storminess, and a questing and challenging solo part that—while far from acrobatic in a post-Paganini way—keeps the violinist’s fingers moving, even in the more poignant middle movement. While the melodies are not quite memorable, they are unfailingly attractive; while the orchestration is a trifle gray on the whole, it’s solid, and in spots imaginative (the opening, which plays the solo horn off against the violinist, is especially deft). Although the influence of Brahms is evident, it’s not stifling (indeed, there are moments in the first movement that seem to look toward Richard Strauss). It’s not a short work, running over 36 minutes, but it doesn’t outstay its welcome; and while, as you listen, you won’t be surprised that it has dropped from the repertoire, you’ll surely be glad that it’s been resurrected.

The Second starts out with an impressively turbulent opening, the violinist taking control immediately. But you soon sense a certain predictability in its back-and-forth between soloist and orchestra; and although the first movement is dotted with bits of aching sweetness, the melodies consistently fall just short of distinction. On the whole, it seems a slightly busier work than the First, especially in the three-and-a-half minute first-movement cadenza (actually composed by dedicatee František Ondříček) and the virtuosic finale—and that activity sometimes turns hectic. It’s a bit longer than the First, too. Still, there are many less pleasant ways to spend 38 minutes.

Both Rabl and Pollick are best known for their work in more modern repertoire—Rabl, in particular, for his cycle of the Wellesz symphonies, Pollick for her support for what she calls “cutting edge” music. But they are certainly attuned to the late Romantic ethos here, and they get solid support from the orchestra. Good sound and, as I’ve suggested, exceptional notes. Recommended for the adventurous.

Peter J. Rabinowitz

This article originally appeared in Issue 43:5 (May/June 2020) of Fanfare Magazine.

Download Review by Jerry Dubins

GRÄDENER Violin Concertos: No. 1 in D, op. 22; No. 2 in d, op. 41 • Karen Bentley Pollick (vn); Gottfried Rabl, cond; Ukraine Natl SO • TOCCATA 0528 (Download: 74:32) Reviewed from a WAV download: 44.1 kHz/16-bit

At first glance, I thought I’d happened upon a recording of violin concertos by German composer Paul Graener (1872–1948), of whose music CPO has already released three volumes of orchestral works, including concertos for violin, cello, and piano, all reviewed in prior issues. But no, this is German-born, Vienna-based composer Hermann Grädener (1844–1929), “whose music, esteemed in its own time, has since slipped between the floorboards of history. Yet this first recording of his two violin concertos—substantial works both, downstream from Brahms, and with a hint of Sibelius—prove him to have been one of the more important Romantics, with a strong sense of drama, a sure hand for musical architecture, and a natural flair for extended melody.” So says the album’s promo blurb. By the end of this review, I should be able to tell you whether I agree with that assessment or not.

Meanwhile, this Toccata release documents not only first recordings of Grädener’s violin concertos, but his first appearance in the pages of Fanfare as well. Also making her Fanfare debut is violinist Karen Bentley Pollick. Her career résumé is long, impressive, and star-studded, but here’s the abbreviated version. A native of Palo Alto, California, she began piano lessons at age five with Armenian pianist Rusana Sysoyev, studied with Camilla Wicks in San Francisco, and with Yuval Yaron, Josef Gingold, and Rostislav Dubinsky at Indiana University, where she received both Bachelor’s and Master’s of Music Degrees in Violin Performance with a cognate in Choral Conducting. She performed in masterclasses of Nathan Milstein in Zurich, Jean-Jacques Kantorow in Victoria, B.C., and Glenn Dicterow in Carmel, CA. Most of Pollick’s performing and recording efforts have focused on contemporary music genres, such as electro-acoustic, hardanger fiddle, and various crossover fields that are not exactly in the domain of this magazine. That probably accounts for why we’re hearing from her here for the first time in mainstream Romantic repertoire, albeit in works—Grädener’s violin concertos—that have been keeping company with the dust bunnies under the floorboards for over 100 years.

Grädener was born in Kiel, Germany. He was educated by his father, Karl, also a composer. Son Hermann then studied at the Vienna Conservatory. From 1862, he was organist at the Lutheran City Church in Vienna, and from 1864, violinist in the court’s orchestra. He taught at the Vienna Conservatory from 1877 to 1913. Between 1892 and 1896, he was director of the Wiener Singakademie.

Grädener’s compositions, which are said to be heavily influenced by Brahms, number approximately 50 with opus numbers and another 10 or so without in his work catalog. Among them are two symphonies, two each of concertos for piano, for cello, and for violin, two each of string quartets, piano trios, and piano quintets, plus a string quintet with two cellos, a violin sonata, and a sonata for two pianos. Much of the rest of his catalog is made up of sets of Lieder, though one entry in the no-opus appendix lists an opera, Richter von Zalamea. Obviously, there is no shortage of material here for Toccata and/or other enterprising record labels to explore.

Now to the music. The Violin Concerto No. 1 dates from 1905, coincidentally the same year as Sibelius’s Violin Concerto, which the album note suggests there is a hint of in Grädener’s concerto. Sorry, but I just don’t hear it, and with over 50 recordings of the Sibelius (my favorite violin concerto) in my collection, I don’t know anyone more familiar with the work than I am.

One of the main reasons I find no hint of Sibelius in Grädener’s concerto is that its temperature and tone are warmer, more amiable, and more hospitable than the great Finnish composer’s. There’s none of the austere, icy exterior sitting atop a volcanic chamber of molten lava below that characterizes much of Sibelius’s music. Make no mistake though, Grädener’s concerto beguiles the listener with a spellbinding beauty all its own; and yet, it’s easy to understand why it never achieved a place as a repertoire staple. If anything, it’s too congenial, projecting a rather modest profile and eschewing much of the virtuosic razzle-dazzle of other violin concertos composed around the turn of the century, a poster child for which is the death-defying, 1898 Concerto in E Minor by Julius Conus.

Grädener’s First Concerto begins at a fairly moderate tempo, with intoning of the brass choir that has an almost Wagnerian feel to it. As the tempo picks up, the lengthy first movement (almost 20 minutes in duration) unfolds at a fairly leisurely pace, the score’s content a long, lyrical outpouring of continuous melodic material, though absent the preparation for a self-contained, clear-cut theme with a distinct start and cadential conclusion. It’s more like an entwining of two lovers, solo violin and orchestra, in a rhapsody of song and rapturous embrace. Along the way, there are a few passages calling for double-stopping and more vigorous passagework, but they’re not of a flashy, “see-what-I-can-do” nature. Only at movement’s end does Grädener give the soloist an extended and—from the sound of it—technically taxing cadenza. The style and vocabulary of the music speak with an unmistakably Austro-German accent, but the effect and affect—the spell that Grädener spins—remind me a bit of Chausson’s Poème for violin and orchestra, composed in 1896.

We now come to the second movement, which in both mood and method strike me as rather similar to the first movement, just at a slower tempo. I want to emphasize that this is music of real beauty, once again rhapsodic and rapturous. So far, however, I haven’t heard anything that resembles or even suggests Brahms, the composer who is supposed to have been such a strong influence on Grädener. The music is more free-flowing and fluid than Brahms’s more structured musical sentences and paragraphs, and the emotional/expressive makeup of Grädener’s music is different too. It’s also nowhere near as rhythmically complex. This second movement sounds closer to Bruch’s manner of writing for violin and orchestra.

After two movements that could just as easily have been titled “Serenade” or “Romance,” the third movement takes off lickety-split, with the solo violin launching into a rapid moto perpetuo passage. That peters out, to be overtaken by a virtual parade of violin acrobatics—double-stopping, rocking-across-the-strings arpeggios (like in the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto cadenza), flighty, flute-y trills, veering chromatic runs resembling a Paganini caprice, and a host of other technical tricks of the trade. It’s as if Grädener decided to make up for the shortage of virtuosic exhibitionism in the first two movements, and now does so by parodying every stunt in the book, from Paganini to Ernst, Lipiński, Wieniawski, Sarasate, and Saint-Saëns. It’s hard to believe that after such two gloriously beautiful movements Grädener didn’t intend this finale to be both a musical joke and perhaps even a cynical sendup, as if to say to the audience, “Here’s what you musical Neanderthals want and what you think makes for a great concerto.”

Personally, I find this finale a piece of rubbish. It’s a jumble of jigsaw puzzle pieces, none of which fits together, bringing into question the promo blurb about Grädener’s “sure hand for musical architecture.” The movement leaps wildly from one act of sleight of hand to another, as disjointed, spasmodic, and discontinuous in its progress as the first two movements were the opposite. For the finale of this concerto to have any redeeming value, one would have to consider it a burlesque.

Grädener’s Violin Concerto No. 2 in D Minor, composed in 1914, is cut from an entirely different cloth. First, it’s more like what we’ve come to expect of a late Romantic concerto dating from the first decade or so of the 20th century. It’s highly virtuosic—practically the entire first movement is written in unrelenting double-stops, as if Grädener wanted to make the solo part as brilliant and as difficult to play as he possibly could. Second, the Brahms influence now makes itself felt in the harmony and, in a generalized sort of way, in the shape of the melodies as well. But there also seems to be a touch of Dvořák (which could also be a Brahms trait) in a bit of a Gypsy and/or Slavic tinge to both melody and harmony. And third, there is now the preparation we expect for a self-contained, clear-cut theme—the big tune, if you will—with a distinct start and cadential conclusion. The setup or lead-in begins at the three-minute mark, ushering in the Romantic melody we’ve been waiting for in the hope of it making us shed a tear. It finally steals in at 3:22, and in its Bruch-like way, it’s pretty darn good, but to get the tears flowing you may need to rely on eyedrops.

With all of the heavy-duty double-stopping throughout the first movement, a cadenza seems superfluous, but Grädener doesn’t see it that way. To the contrary, he now composes a cadenza of a viciousness and vengeance the likes of which I don’t think I’ve ever heard in any other concerto. As if to make child’s play of all the foregoing technical difficulties, Grädener raids the gift shop of the grotesque for every gargoyle he can find with which to ornament his cadenza. And it goes on for over three and a half minutes. Not even Karen Bentley Pollick’s formidable technique is an entirely effective weapon against this assault, but though she struggles, I doubt there’s anyone else who could do any better.

The second movement is a return, and a grateful one, to the Grädener we encountered in the slow movement of his First Violin Concerto. The opening and closing sections are of a sweetness and tenderness that are quite touching, while the contrasting middle section conjures the atmosphere of a Gypsy camp. Upon hearing the finale to Grädener’s Second Concerto, I think I understand the reference the album note makes to Sibelius. The movement is a driving, sometimes stomping, rhythmically charged dance with a feeling of the ritualistic or primitive about it. But Grädener’s dance finale is the music of happy Hungarian peasants inviting the listener to join in the celebration. In contrast, the finale to Sibelius’s Violin Concerto is of a dark and brooding mien, barely veiling an aura of menace or threat—a pre-Stravinskian Rite of Spring. If you will.

In Grädener’s music of Romantic rhapsodizing, violinist Pollick plays with rare purity and radiance of tone, and with deep concentration of emotional expression. Now that she has made her Fanfare debut here with these two concertos, I hope she can be persuaded to record some of the more mainstream repertoire for violin and orchestra. She has both the technique and the temperament for it; there’s no doubt of that. It would be unfair and ungracious of me to observe that in Grädener’s fevered cadenzas and beyond demandingly difficult passagework, Pollick’s tone is not as refined as I might like, but that may be asking for the impossible. In the end, I think it has to be said that Pollick acquits herself magnificently.

Grädener gives the orchestra much to do as well. His writing is not mere accompaniment; it has real symphonic weight and substance, which makes me curious to hear his symphonies. Gottfried Rabl and the Ukraine National Symphony Orchestra are a significant presence throughout these two scores.

I am not going to pass judgment on Grädener based on my hearing of his two violin concertos. For all we know of his music, they may be typical and characteristic of his output as a whole, or they may not be. I don’t know. But I will say this: Many composers—perhaps more than not—have “slipped between the floorboards of history,” as the album note puts it. It’s always interesting, and sometimes revelatory, to hear what they had to say, and we should definitely make the time and effort to listen to them. But it’s the rare exception rather than the rule that a composer who’s dug up from under those floorboards turns out to have been interred there unjustly. That doesn’t mean we can’t take pleasure in their music and find it rewarding; it just means that the odds of a Grädener turning out to be a long-lost Brahms are very slim. 

Jerry Dubins

This article originally appeared in Issue 43:5 (May/June 2020) of Fanfare Magazine.

New CDs from local performers offer rare pleasures

Hermann Grädener: Orchestral Music, Vol. One. Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major, op. 22; Violin Concerto No. 2 in D minor, op. 41. National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, Gottfried Rabl, conductor, with Karen Bentley Pollick, violin. Toccata Classics TOCC 0528.

The German/Austrian composer Hermann Grädener taught at the Vienna Conservatory for 35 years (1877-1913). His works were often found on concert programs in Vienna and elsewhere, if not warmly embraced by the stern critics of the time. After his death, however, he disappeared, and in recent years his music has gone unrecorded and is nearly impossible to find.

Or it was until Viennese conductor Gottfried Rabl and his Indiana University grad-schoolmate violinist Karen Bentley Pollick began investigating his music. (Pollick is a Colorado Mahlerfest festival artist who has performed in Boulder and served as principal second violinist in last year’s Mahlerfest orchestra. Disclosure: I also knew her when we were both students at Indiana University, and we have stayed in touch over the years.)

Pollick and Rabl have teamed up for the first volume of a planned series of recordings of Grädener’s orchestral works, a CD of his two violin concertos with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine. This is a well played and well engineered recording of music that is available nowhere else. As such it is a worthy addition to any collection.

Grädener was born before Dohnányi, and is consequently more in the Romantic mainstream than post-Romantic—or as the liner notes laconically state, he was firmly “downstream from Brahms.” His music is lush, sometimes overripe, always attractive to the ear. It is filled with striking Romantic moments, from the very first opening solo by the horn in the First Concerto.

The first movements of both concertos are on the longwinded side, with discursive passages that tend to wander. It’s all pleasant music, if occasionally overripe, that sometimes gives the impression of having lost the plot. The shorter movements are more successful, particularly the second movement of the second concerto, where a lyrical opening section with long, flowing melodic lines is followed by a more energetic middle section and a return of the opening mood.

Both finales are buoyant rondos. That of the First Concerto has plenty of fireworks which Pollick handles gracefully. The finale of the Second Concerto opens dramatically, but soon turns to a more cheerful character, again played with assurance.

Pollick plays with an alluring sound and great confidence. Rabl and the Ukrainian orchestra provide a solid background. They never threaten to overwhelm the soloist; indeed, either the performance or the engineering so favor the soloist that the orchestra seems understated.

These is no question that this is attractive music, skillfully woven together. The recording helps fill in a blank spot in the history of 19^th-century music and is certainly worth enjoying, but whether either concerto adds up to more than a lovely 35–40 minutes in the concert hall—or sitting in front of your speakers—is something each listener will have to decide. Available here and here.

Opus Klassiek

© Kees de Leeuw, februari 2020

Hermann Otto Theodor Grädener (1844-1929) behoort tot de grote groep componisten die praktisch vergeten is. Mogelijk zijn er lezers die de naam wel kennen omdat zoon Hermann (1878-1956) enige bekendheid genoot als auteur. Wellicht wordt de musicus ook weer wat bekender dankzij het cd-label Toccata Classics.

Hermann werd in Kiel geboren en werd aanvankelijk opgeleid door zijn vader Carl Georg Peter die onder andere twee symfonieën schreef en Universitätsmusikdirektor in Kiel was, waarvan er één enkele jaren geleden opnieuw werd uitgevoerd.

Hermann bracht het grootste deel van zijn leven in Wenen door. Hij begon in 1862 als organist in Gumpendorf, een voorstad van Wenen. Enkele jaren later werd hij violist in het Hoforkest. Grädener behoorde tot de vriendenkring van Brahms. Hij werkte ruim dertig jaar aan het conservatorium, vooral als docent muziektheorie. Hij volgde Anton Bruckner op als docent harmonie, vormleer en contrapunt. Erich Korngold, Clemens Kraus, Hans Rott, Franz Schrecker en Anton Webern behoorden (tijdelijk) tot zijn studenten. In 1912, enkele jaren voor zijn zeventigste verjaardag, werd Grädener ontheven van zijn functie door directeur Wilhelm Bopp, die graag modernere docenten zoals Franz Schrecker en Arnold Schönberg zag. Zemlinsky die de nog zeer jonge Korngold les gaf vroeg deze ironisch of zijn nieuwe docent Hermann Grädener nog wel vooruitgang boekte. Grädener was immers feitelijk in het Brahms tijdperk blijven stilstaan en het is dus logisch dat Bopp en Zemlinsky niet erg over hem te spreken waren.

Grädener componeerde onder meer twee celloconcerten, een pianoconcert, twee symfonieën en verschillende werken voor koor en orkest. Daarnaast schreef hij twee vioolconcerten, die beide ongeveer even lang zijn, zelfs de delen ervan ontlopen elkaar qua tijdsduur nauwelijks. Het karakter van beide concerten verschilt echter flink. De partituur van het eerste concert uit 1890 is niet volledig bewaard gebleven. Dirigent Gottfried Rabl die de muziek in een Weens antiquariaat ontdekte heeft echter met behulp van het klavieruittreksel en zijn eigen ervaringen als musicus het concert zo goed en verantwoord mogelijk gereconstrueerd. Het werd opgedragen aan de violist Adolph Brodsky, een vriend van de componist, die tevens tekende voor de première, samen met de Wiener Philharmoniker. In de kritieken van onder meer de beruchte criticus Eduard Hanslick komen onder meer de woorden ‘lang’ en ‘saai’ voor. Wat het eerste deel betreft ben ik het daar wel mee eens. Het kent weinig ontwikkeling en de ideeën worden soms niet verder uitgewerkt. Het lyrische tweede deel en het meer virtuoze derde deel maken echter veel goed. In zijn totaliteit is het een lyrisch en soms zelfs wat sentimenteel concert. Er wordt de violiste weinig rust gegund want het orkest is vooral ondersteunend; van een dialoog tussen solist en orkest is nauwelijks sprake.

In 1905 volgde het tweede vioolconcert, dat bij de eerste uitvoering met Frantisek Ondrícek als solist op meer bijval kon rekenen dan het eerste concert. Geen wonder, want het tweede is dynamischer en virtuozer, waardoor de solist meer van zijn technische vaardigheden kan tonen. Er is bovendien meer wisselwerking met het orkest wat het discours boeiender maakt, ook al heeft het orkest hierin slechts een bescheiden rol. Van saaiheid is echter geen sprake. Het geheel getuigt van vakmanschap en inspiratie, hoewel niet van veel originaliteit. De invloed van vooral Brahms, maar ook van Mendelssohn is in beide concerten goed hoorbaar.

Het grote enthousiasme waarmee Gottfried Rabl over de beide concerten schrijft kan ik niet helemaal delen. Evenwel, het is muziek die zich kan meten met de meeste vioolconcerten die verschijnen in de cd-serie The Romantic Violin Concerto van het Britse label Hyperion. Violiste Karen Bentley Pollick speelt heel goed en zet zich in alsof het om ware meesterwerken gaat. Het orkest en de dirigent halen dit niveau echter niet helemaal. Terugdenkend aan een concert dat ik hoorde in de tijd dat er hoogstwaarschijnlijk nog zeer veel musici met een gedegen sovjet-opleiding in het orkest zaten, kan ik slechts constateren dat de kwaliteit sindsdien nogal verslechterd is. De politieke en economische situatie in de Oekraïne zal hier mogelijk debet aan zijn.

De opname bevredigt mij ook niet helemaal omdat het soms weinig gedetailleerd en wat diffuus klinkt. Tegelijkertijd moeten we ons realiseren dat echte toporkesten zich praktisch nooit aan dit repertoire wagen en dat we blij moeten zijn dat er musici en labels zijn die zich wel sterk willen maken voor componisten van het kaliber Hermann Grädener.

San Francisco Chronicle Datebook

February 26, 2020

Joshua Kosman

Hermann Grädener, Orchestral Music, Vol. 1 (Toccata Classics)

Music doesn’t necessarily have to have been written recently to be new — there’s also a wealth of music from long ago that has been sitting in libraries for centuries, unperformed and unappreciated. I love it when a performer decides to go to bat for a forgotten composer and makes you hear the reason why.

Hermann Grädener was a German composer, violinist and conductor, a decade younger than Brahms (who evidently groused about the younger composer’s lack of productivity). And if you’re as ignorant of his work as I was, conductor Gottfried Rabl and violinist Karen Bentley Pollick are here to enlighten us.

This release — the initial installment of a promised survey of Grädener’s orchestral music — includes his two violin concertos, written in 1890 and 1905, and they’re fine, even irresistible scores. Yes, the influence of Brahms is everywhere, but listen past it to the sense of spaciousness in the opening movement of the First Concerto, or the still-voiced eloquence of the slow movement of the Second. The performers’ advocacy seems entirely well-merited, and the playing backs it up.

“Die Presse”, Print-Ausgabe, 04.12.2019:
“Ein milder Zeitgenosse von Richard Strauss”
von Wilhelm Sinkovicz

Das Label Toccata arbeitet – unter anderem – die wienerische Musikgeschichte der Ära um 1900 auf. Nach der verdienstvollen Erstaufnahme von Julius Bittners Erster Symphonie kam nun eine CD mit den beiden Violinkonzerten von Hermann Grädener in den Handel. Wer war Hermann Grädener? Alle Musikfreunde, die an einer Erweiterung des Repertoires interessiert sind und Musik der Brahms- und Richard-Strauss-Generation mögen, werden hier fündig.

Jahrgang 1844, in Deutschland geboren, gehörte Grädener zum Wiener Musikleben um Johannes Brahms. Seine Musik, harmonisch reizvoll differenziert, aber nie über die romantischen Klangwelten hinaus forschend, kommt in der Einspielung durch die Geigerin Karen Bentley Pollick und das ukrainische Nationalorchester unter Gottfried Rabl wunderbar zur Geltung: melodisch, schwärmerisch, hie und da – etwa am dramatischen Beginn des Zweiten Konzerts – mit pathetischer Geste.

Beide langsamen Sätze (vor allem jener des d-Moll-Konzerts) erinnern in ihrer Schlichtheit sogar an die Frühromantik eines Mendelssohn. Wer also nicht immer das Brahms- oder Tschaikowsky-Konzert hören möchte, aber auf die Klangschwelgerei jener Ära nicht verzichten möchte, wird hier gut bedient. Und bekommt ein Beiheft mitgeliefert, das die Entstehung dieser Erstaufnahme in munterem Erzählton dokumentiert.

Wiener Musikfreunde fühlen sich in vergangene Tage versetzt, wenn Dirigent Gottfried Rabl, der ein notorischer Raritätenjäger ist und (für CPO) mit dem RSO Wien unter anderem sämtliche Symphonien von Egon Wellesz aufgenommen hat, seine stundenlangen Aufenthalte auf der Holzgalerie des längst aufgelassenen Antiquariats Doblinger beschreibt. Grädeners Partituren waren ihm dort bereits aufgefallen.

In der amerikanischen Geigerin Karen Bentley Pollick fand er eine engagierte Mitstreiterin, die beide Grädener-Konzerte für Privataufführungen mit Klavierbegleitung einstudierte und so begeistert von der Musik war, dass sie bald keine Noten mehr brauchte, sondern die Stücke auswendig beherrschte. Nach Herstellung eines spielbaren Orchestermaterials – keine kleine Herausforderung nach vielen Jahren der völligen Ignoranz – ging man in Kiew ins Studio und nahm die beiden jeweils knapp unter 40-minütigen Stücke auf.

Für neugierige Musikfreunde eine willkommene Gelegenheit, Musik jenes Mannes zu entdecken, zu dessen Schülern etwa Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Franz Schreker, Oscar Straus, Anton von Webern oder auch der spätere „Presse“-Kritiker Heinrich Kralik zählten. Bis in die Dreißigerjahre war Grädeners Œuvre in den Wiener Konzertsälen präsent – jetzt gibt es immerhin eine CD…

Music Web International

November 2019

Hermann GRÄDENER (1844-1929)
Violin Concerto No.1 in D major, Op.22 (1890) [36:24]
Violin Concerto No.2 in D minor, Op.41 (1905) [38:06]
Karen Bentley Pollick (violin)
National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine/Gottfried Rabl

recorded in June 2018 at House of Records, Kiev, Ukraine
TOCCATA CLASSICS TOCC0528 [74:32]

Toccata seldom does things by halves. This is the inaugural volume in yet another exploratory series devoted to another composer that Time has forgotten. In the case of Hermann Grädener, a student of his composer father Karl, and later of the esteemed Josef Hellmesberger Sr and Felix Otto Dessoff at the Vienna Conservatoire, this release represents his first appearance on disc. Though he composed extensively he was best known as a teacher, alongside another figure who has undergone re-evaluation on disc of late, Robert Fuchs. Grädener’s student list is heroically long over the decades he taught and includes names better remembered as conductors and executants – Clemens Kraus and Rudolf Kolisch among them – as well as Korngold, Schreker, Webern and Weigl.

The first volume in his orchestral music series disinters his two violin concertos. Some considerable editorial work has been necessary in the case of the earlier concerto. The score and parts were lost but a copyist’s manuscript score was traced to the Library of Congress in Washington. Given the defective nature of elements of this, conductor Gottfried Rabl, who has been interested in the composer for many years, revised this copy incorporating details from the piano reduction and using his own experience. The D major concerto dates from 1890 and was dedicated to Adolf Brodsky who premiered it in December that year, in a programme that also included the premiere of Bruckner’s Third Symphony. In a similar kind of way Grädener’s String Quartet in D appeared at a Rosé Quartet evening in 1902 alongside the premiere of Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht sextet (a certain Franz Schmidt playing second cello).

The Concerto is conventionally, romantically structured and is flecked with Brahmsian elements, not least the opening rather rustic horn motif. Grädener doesn’t hang around with a grandiose orchestral introduction but pitches the soloist into the melee to glide, embellish and gracefully draw the ear. The orchestral material is sweeping and finely orchestrated, its counter-themes strong. The cadenza is convoluted but affords numerous opportunities for barnstorming.  Contemporary critics made complaints about the work’s sense of form, but the slow movement is lyric and effective, with a gentle solemnity, albeit perhaps lacking true memorability and there’s plenty of declamatory writing in the finale where the soloist begins a recitative and skirls away in fine style. Karen Bentley Pollick is at her very best here, driving eagerly, warmly supported by Rabl and his forces.  There’s even a hint of the toreador about this movement, Grädener’s attempt at a Brahms-like Hungarian finale perhaps, though I suspect Mendelssohn’s shade, too, in the violin’s passagework.

Grädener could clearly call on the cream of the violinistic firmament for his premieres. After Brodsky in the First, Czech virtuoso František Ondříček premiered the Concerto in D minor in 1905. Ondříček had previously premiered the Dvořák Concerto. This is another large-scale, conventionally structured work and once again the composer has no interest in an orchestral introduction. Once more this is a strongly late-Romantic work with lyric finesse for the soloist. Toward the end of the first movement there are some chugging figures that sound a touch Sibelian though whether he knew the Finn’s Concerto, which had been premiered in 1904 I don’t know. It seems unlikely as the first version wasn’t published.  Ondříček’s cadenza has its complement of fireworks, including pizzicati and harmonics. With a nicely varied slow movement, songfulness and refinement predominant, and a heroic finale this was generally preferred critically speaking to the earlier concerto. I have a soft spot however for the 1890 concerto.

With booklet notes and production standards flying high, you can judge for yourself which concerto you prefer in performances that are focused and communicative.

Jonathan Woolf  

Hermann Graedener Violin Concertos make the grade

The Unmutual Blogspot: Finding Beauty in Ephemera

November 7, 2019

This is what I like about Toccata Classics. They don’t just do a single release of a composer I’ve never heard of — they do a whole series. And their instincts are usually spot on.

In this case, the composer is Hermann Graedener (1844-1929). In his early years, he was a colleague and friend of Johannes Brahms. After both men moved to Vienna, they drifted apart. But Graedener continued to admire Brahms’s music.

Austrian music theorist Heinrich Schenker characterized one of Graedener’s works as “wholesale, huge richness.” That’s a fair assessment of these works, too.

The Violin Concerto No. 1 is full of rich harmonies. The melodies given the solo violin struck me as somewhat sweet as well. Not overly sentimental, though. My impression was that this concerto was emotionally reserved (compared to other late-Romantic concertos). The breezy finale was charming, though, as it zipped along to the closing cadence.

Graedener’s 1914 Violin Concerto No. 2 had a much different character. It wasn’t just that it was in a minor key, either. The work seemed bigger, especially the heroic-sounding first movement. The concerto also had an urgency to it that the first concerto lacked.

The ‘transitional’ music of Ivan Sokolov

KAREN BENTLEY POLLICK:
ALTERNATING CURRENTS

Karen Bentley Pollick: Virtuosity of the avant garde

Published: Thursday, March 11, 2010, 9:40 PM

By Michael Huebner — The Birmingham News 

Thursday, Birmingham Museum of Art

Five stars out of five

Invariably, a program of modern music will contain one or two works that won’t stand the test of time — they will be performed once or twice and never again. For the eight pieces on “Alternating Currents,” violinist Karen Bentley Pollick assured that wouldn’t happen.

Rarely will a recital such as this engage the ear from beginning to end, yet each piece at Birmingham Museum of Art event had a unique style and temperament, reflecting Pollick’s keen sense for gleaning quality in experimental music and giving these scores their rightful due.

A common denominator in all but one piece was electronics, hence the program’s title. Two speakers belted out sounds ranging from vaguely recognizable to incomprehensible, flighty to otherworldly. Pollick’s role was to complement, contrast and expound on them.

Michael Angell’s “Capital Spheres” created a menagerie of repetitive bleeps and ethereal sounds, extending the sonic range of a piano while Pollick accompanied on amplified violin. David Jaffe’s half-human, half-machine evocations in “Impossible Animals” could be mournful, frightful or funny. Based on synthesized voices and a recorded winter wren, it tweeted, warbled and created new creatures in the imagination, the scales and arcing vocal glissandos sometimes resembling Chinese opera.

Brian Moon continued the animal theme by electronically manipulating the howls and growls of a stray dog who has taken up residence at Pollick’s home. Charles Norman Mason’s intricate sonic weavings in “Metaman” brought a grainy video by Sheri Wills into focus. Dorothy Hindman introduced her “Fantasia for Karen Alone,” a slowly unfolding dialogue with a recorded violin in pointillistic plucks and snaps and high-pitched harmonics. Zack Browning used highly-charged sound masses in broad swashes to bring “Sole Injection” to an intense conclusion.

The only acoustic piece on the program, Dan Tepfer’s sultry “Solo Blues” is a duo for a single performer. A remarkable feat for both composer and performer, it showcased Pollick’s unique ability to play the violin with one hand and the piano with the other.

To some, the works on “Alternating Currents” might not be music at all. To those following the thread of the avant garde through the tame apologies of post-modernism, there was no denying these composers’ skill and vision. Pollick not only extended that thread, she vitalized and emboldened it. An audience in Seattle will have a say in the matter when she repeats the program there on March 19.

Violinist Karen Bentley Pollick and pianist Lisa Moore.THIS celebration of American music was one of the most challenging programs of the Canberra International Music Festival.Synergy percussion ensemble kicked things off with a new arrangement of  “China Gates” by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Adams. This ornate work creates a music box effect, and Synergy performed it with precision and sensitivity.A second work by Adams, “Road Movies” for electric violin and piano, was brought to audience acclaim by renowned pianist Lisa Moore and violinist Karen Bentley Pollick. This three-movement minimalistic work, based on the manipulation of short cells, recalls the all-American sounds of George Antheil and Steve Reich.Bentley Pollick’s violin playing was nothing short of astonishing, delivering absolute precision with double and triple stops, as well as accented bowed staccati. In the scordatura second movement, she produced low tones of a truly extraordinary timbre. Lisa Moore demonstrated incredible stamina with her effortless presentation of the relentless piano part, particularly in the vigorous final movement.Martin Bresnick charmed the audience with his “Ishi’s Song”, based on a recording of the last Yahi Indian. The work began sweetly, with pianist Lisa Moore singing the little song upon which this work is based, the piano then picking up the tune for the first few bars. Bresnick achieves a wind chime effect with his clever use of sostenuto pedal, building up layers of harmonic colour beneath delicate rhythmic patterns. Moore brought out lovely bell-tones from the Steinway and maintained a chant-like character throughout the work. Intricate passages become gradually sparser, until “Ishi’s Song” was reduced finally to a single repeated note – a poignant metaphor for the last Yahi singer.The final work of the evening was an unexpected pleasure for me – Paul Dresher’s semi-improvised “Glimpsed from Afar” for his invented instrument the “Quadrachord”, (a giant construction with long amplified strings) and a MIDI controller, the Marimba Lumina, played by Joel Davel. The musicians used laptops to generate loops and define synthesis parameters, creating a shifting palate of musical colour. “Glimpsed from Afar” revealed the influence of Indian Carnatic music – its extended melodies produced with bowed Quadrachord, in a singing style not dissimilar to the musical saw.The poetic quality of the music soon expanded into thunderous percussive sonorities produced by mallets on Quadrachord strings. A noise like huge helicopters was generated by pummelling the Quadrachord with fists and palms, building to cacophony, layer by layer. The audience threw concert tradition to the wind and showed their appreciation with cheers, whistles and stamping.Judith Crispin is a composer, writer, photographer and director of  Manning Clark House .  

Music Festival: Musical shine to the Dome

Canberra International Music Festival
“Amazing Space 4: sounding the Shine Dome”
At the Australian Academy of Science, May 16.
Reviewed by Helen Musa

Audience members look on behind ensemble“WE needed a very special iconic building for this concert,” architect and  UC lecturer, Ann Cleary, told the crowd at the Shine Dome today, before the Australian premiere of Paul Dresher’s work “In the Name(less),” and the seminal Terry Riley composition “In C”.To be sure, festival director Christopher Latham had warned her that the Academy of Science building was designed for voice not music so it was all a bit of a risk, but it proved a risk that paid off.First, in freezing conditions, the audience had to form a sort of conga line to circumnavigate the building before entering the two concert spaces.As with previous “Amazing Space” concerts held in the Arboretum, in two J S Murdoch buildings and in the High Court, the concert was preceded by words – many of them.Cleary explained how architect Roy Grounds had won the contract to design the Academy of Science building because of the way he related it to Canberra, with its  “blindingly brilliant natural light” and the hills around which partly inspired the dome shape. Cleary waxed musical in her metaphors, suggesting that Grounds had designed a building full of “intervals, rhythms and cadences”.There followed a rare reminiscence by Victoria Grounds, the daughter of the architect, who told those assembled of the conservative time at the height of the Menzies era when the presence of brilliant scientists necessitated such a building. Although, in her childhood, when the building was being constructed, Canberra was tagged “six suburbs in search of a city,” it was distinguished by a general optimism, a sense of future.Seemingly matching the adventurous architecture was the inventiveness of the San Francisco-based performance duo, Paul Dresher and Joel Davel, both playing electronically supported instruments.Dresher’s was the elongated Quadrachord,  a largely aluminium instrument that breaks down for touring. The west coast of the US, he told us, still had a “do-it-yourself tradition” that came from being so far from the centres of cultural authority, and in his view, when playing on such a large-scale  instrument, “you move towards architecture”.“In the Name(less)” proved  to be a structured improvisation without notation, in which the Quadrachord was bowed, plucked and sometimes beaten, to gentle  percussive effects from Davel that, like the building, evolved into a more fully enveloping experience.It was time for the audience to move into the centre of the Dome, where ceiling discs floated above us “like a Martian embassy”, as Cleary suggested. The “conga” lineLatham put  in a word or three, describing the powerful ideas in the San Francisco Bay area that had inspired him as a young music student, and explaining the Indian musical influeces on Dresher and Terry Riley, whose influential work “In C” was possibly “the most performed piece of the last century”. His music was not feudal,” Latham told us, it had no conductor, and unlike most western music that Latham thought was ultimately “neurotic”, Riley’s was perhaps the happiest music ever written.He was right. It was time for sheer enjoyment, as Dresher and Davel were joined by other colleagues including Lisa Moore on piano and Karen Bentley Pollick on violin. Then, emerging from the shadows above us on the rear balcony were ANU School of Music students with  faculty members, sax player John Mackey and percussionist Gary France.Astonishingly, the audience accepted Latham’s invitation to walk around, sometimes beating out the rhythm, during the performance, which began with trancelike delicacy and then, augmented by brass from above, ended up as a triumphant assertion of joie de vivre.  

Canberra Jazz blog

 

22 May 2013

Channeling Joni and ‘Runner
“Make me feel good, rock and roll band / I’m you’re biggest fan / California coming home”. So sang Joni Mitchell. Paul Dresher performed at the Albert Hall and he did some things differently. They say they do things differently in California, the home of hippies and Hollywood and Silicon Valley. It also gave us Ronald Reagan and it’s also broke. Jazz looks to civilisation and lives in its undercurrents, in NYC and Berlin. California channels the fresh and new, at least to our generation. So Paul Dresher presented his Double Duo in concert with compositions relating to our sense of the passage of time and to fuel drag racing. Paul himself performed on electric guitar (Strat) so the R’n’R reference has some validity. He also performed on Quadrachord, a five-stringed instrument of 160-inch scale which he bowed. So here’s the new and the quirky together. I didn’t particularly warm to the use of either instrument. Paul doesn’t attempt Steve Vai although he does solo, but the distorted tones were lacking in overtones and seemed to just fatten the mix and get lost in it. It might work better with studio processing. Similarly, the Quadrachord didn’t seem to provide a whole lot more than repeating sequenced arpeggio-like harmonics, although there was an intervening sound each cycle that was maybe a double stop. I was thinking it must have cost a bomb to transport. So much for the R’n’R and the quirky Californian aspec

But did I like the music? Immensely. This was minimalism, repeated arpeggios and sequences that mutate over time, square structures of four with melody over, brilliant dissonance and consonance switching back and forth, stubborn contradictory polyrhythms, dense clouds of percussion that regularly float over, dull repetition and deep groove with obtuse melody and clashing harmony and splashes of colour from bell-like percussion. It’s a world of dull repetition and enlivening contrast. I frequently remember a murder and chase street scene from Bladerunner as a picture of a possible future: huge diversity of people and clothes and cultures under constant rain and huge neon signs and police in flying cars descending next to Asian street hawker kiosks. To some degree dystopian; to some degree diverse and exciting. I picture both California and minimalism as somewhat like this. I can doubt the mind-numbing repetition of the fours and triplets and two chords and the rest, but I tap my feet with this music and thrill with the incongruity of it all, the unexpectedness of melody and harmony, and especially the rhythms that clash and contradict but are sustained, wondering all along that it holds together and speaks to me. There’s even a sense of soloing here, from distorted guitar or clarinet or especially from the violins, but it’s written, not improvised.
It’s not surprising that this was one of the smaller audiences at a CIMF concert. It’s new music, although minimalism is not too new now. I’d picked it. Megan’s normally a listener to Bach and Beethoven but she liked it too, suggesting it’s better live. Maybe. It grows and mutates like a living thing and that probably works better live. This was another concert with a Quiros St connection. Our no.2 billet is Graeme Jennings. He knew these players in SF but had never played with them until he played a solo part in Cage Machine on this date. This was a great gig. I felt satisfied and excited and intellectually requited. There’s great tradition in “fine” music and I love it, but this is music for our time and I’m pleased to see it’s so well grounded. Great gig.

The Double Duo is led by Paul Dresher (electric guitar, quadrachord, composer) with Karen Bentley Pollick (violin), Lisa Moore (keyboard) and Joel Davel (percussion) with guests Graeme Jennings (violin) and Robert Spring (clarinet, bass clarinet).

 

Posted by Eric Pozza at 9:32 pm

 

 

The Paul Dresher Ensemble Double Duo returns to Old First Church

April 13, 2013

By Stephen Smoliar – San Francisco Examiner

Last night in Old First Church, the Paul Dresher Ensemble Double Duo returned to the Old First Concerts series, under whose auspices they had last performed in June of 2010. The two duos of the group’s name reflect both the traditional and the modern. The traditional one pairs violinist Karen Bentley Pollick with pianist Lisa Moore. The other pairs Dresher himself, performing on electric guitar and invented instruments, with percussionist Joel Davel. Nevertheless, the group has prepared a repertoire allowing them to perform in different combinations. Last night each duo performed only once; but there were also two solos, one trio, and one quartet.

Dresher is also a composer. In that capacity his two contributions to the program revisited works that were performed in 2010. One of these, “Glimpsed From Afar” was his one duo performance with Davel. For those who enjoyed Dresher’s “Chromatic Quadrachord,” when he performed with the San Francisco Contemporary Players at the end of last month, “Glimpsed From Afar” provided an exhilaratingly different perspective on his invented instrument. The quadrachord has a 160-inch frame supporting four strings and considerable pickup and synthesis technology. While Dresher used it as a drone behind an instrumental quartet of piano, marimba, clarinet, and violin in “Chromatic Quadrachord,” in “Glimpsed From Afar” it was the primary instrument.

Davel divided his time between sharing the ample space of the quadrachord with Dresher and performing on a marimba lumina, basically an electronic control device played with marimba mallets invented by Don Buchla (whose first modular synthesizer, the Buchla Series 100, was built almost exactly 50 years ago). Davel used this to provide the sonorities required by a percussion section, but he also brought his percussionist’s skills to the quadrachord, including inserting metallic plates below the strings to create some ecstatically exciting bursts of fortissimo rhythms. “Glimpsed From Afar” was composed for “A Slipping Glimpse,” a dance work performed by the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company; but a generous amount of choreographic thinking also went in to how Dresher and Davel worked together when both were performing on the quadrachord. This “return performance” was a high point of the evening and remains a first-rate example of the synthesis of music and technology at its best.

The other Dresher composition on the program was a repeat performance of the second movement of “Double Ikat,” composed for the trio of violinist David Abel, pianist Julie Steinberg, and percussionist William Winant. This was again composed for a dance piece, “Loose the Thread” by Brenda Way. The title of the music refers to a style of weaving in Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia, but the second movement is an homage to the North Indian sitarist Nikhil Banerjee. Where the focus of “Glimpsed From Afar” is rhythm expressed through diverse sonorities, “Double Ikat” is highly melodic, with themes that spin out in the manner of the unfolding of a raga on the sitar, while the piano arpeggios reflect plucking across the sitar strings when a raga is introduced. Dresher calls this “my most blatantly lyrical work to date;” but his lyricism remains decidedly contemporary, as well as invitingly engaging.

The other duo performance of the evening was John Adams’ “Road Movies,” performed by Pollick and Moore to begin the program. This piece has become popular with many violinists, even some associated more with the traditional repertoire. (Midori performed it at her 2010 recital for San Francisco Performances.) It bops along at a pleasant pace, a bit like a Volkswagen Beetle from the Sixties puttering its way across New Mexico. Its affably loping quality disguises the technical demands placed on both performers, and last night’s execution concealed those demands well. This was music to smile at, even if a fair amount of sweat had to go into creating those smile-inducing conditions.

The two solo performances both involved electronic support. Moore performed “Piano Counterpoint,” an arrangement of Steve Reich’s 1973 “Six Pianos” for piano solo with prerecorded tracks prepared by Vincent Corver in 2011. Corver basically reworked Reich’s original conception into one of his later “Counterpoint” compositions, multi-line pieces for a single instrument (flute, clarinet, guitar) in which some of those lines may be taken up by a recording. In this particular case Moore actually performed two of the contrapuntal parts, leaving the rest to the backing recording. However, since this was based on relatively early Reich, the piece lacked some of the overall architectural conception found in pieces like “Electric Counterpoint” (another work performed by San Francisco Contemporary Music Players this season, at the beginning of the year, with none of the parts recorded). Nevertheless, Moore gave an impressive account of this arrangement, which was probably receiving its first performance in San Francisco.

Davel then took a drum solo in a performance of “Eight Oh Eight” by Ian Dicke. The title refers to the Roland TR-808 drum machine, one of the earliest instances of that particular technology. The piece is basically “about” creating and synchronizing with recorded loops, demanding much of the performer by way of listening in the course of execution. This was Davel’s one performance that did not use the marimba lumina; and his use of acoustic instruments clarified the interplay between the performed and the synthesized.

All performers united at the end of the evening for a finale that was truly grand. The piece was Martin Bresnick’s “Fantasia On A Theme by Willie Dixon,” whose tongue-in-cheek title evokes both Ralph Vaughan Williams’ fantasia based on a hymn by Thomas Tallis and Sixties Rock. Willie Dixon was a leading Chicago blues singer who influenced not only the origins of rock and roll but also the transformation of rock brought on by groups such as The Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead, and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. The “theme” for Bresnick’s fantasia is “Spoonful,” not so much in the way that Dixon sang it as in the way that Cream recorded it. The work was composed in 2001 as a piano concerto; and Bresnick created a revised “chamber version” in 2012. Like “Glimpsed From Afar,” this was music to get the blood flowing and the limbs pulsing in rhythm, the perfect way to send the audience home with a bounce in their steps.

Duo TwoSense Afloat Again

July 10, 2012

By Bruce Hodges

United States Janáček, Martin Bresnick, Samuel Carl Adams: TwoSense (Ashley Bathgate, cello and Lisa Moore, piano), Karen Bentley Pollick (violin), Courtney Orlando (violin), Bargemusic, New York City, 20.6.2012 (BH)

Janáček: Pohádka (Fairytale) (1923)
Martin Bresnick: Prayers Remain Forever (2011)
Samuel Carl Adams: Piano Trio (2011, world premiere)
Martin Bresnick: Trio for piano, violin and cello (1988)

In September 2011, the cello and piano duo TwoSense (Ashley Bathgate and Lisa Moore) had scheduled this concert at Bargemusic, the unique floating venue nestled in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge—that is, until the New York Fire Department closed down the barge unexpectedly, canceling the recital. Some ten months later, all parties were able to reconvene, and the reward for those who waited was a strong program featuring recent works by Martin Bresnick and Samuel Carl Adams.

Ms. Moore is well known for her expertise with Janáček, and the evening opened with his Pohádka(Fairytale), which scholars attribute to V.A. Zhukovsky’s The Tale of Tsar Berendyey, about the adventures of the Tsar, Princess Marya and her father, Kashchey. Packed with the composer’s typical folk-based rhythms, here it received—perhaps paradoxically—an urbane yet rustic performance. Moore’s light flicks on the keyboard were matched by equally deft pizzicato from Bathgate, and the concluding Allegro had plenty of garrulous energy. Some of that energy was held in check for Martin Bresnick’s Prayers Remain Forever, based on based on a poem by Yehuda Amichai. Bresnick writes of the poet’s intent to provide gentle consolation, but finding a “strain of existential reproach.” His musical response is an initial, solemn section, followed by one of great fervor. Moore and Bathgate gave the new piece an appropriately stirring reading, with both artists shaping Bresnick’s phrases with the intensity of passionate human speech.

In his comments, Samuel Carl Adams mentioned his Piano Trio as a kind of “tribute to 18th-century forms,” and for a young composer whose output regularly includes “noise, pulsating rhythms and slow harmonic movement” it is a departure, with a definite input from jazz. The coda was especially fun, and with Karen Bentley Pollick on violin, the trio enthusiastically captured Adams’s playfulness. Bresnick’s Trio (from 1988) is in four movements, starting with a spare, sustained opening (“simplice, inesorable”), which quickly becomes more ardent, fusing the three instruments in a rich choir. The contrapuntal, pizzicato-filled second movement arrives in vigorous contrast, followed by an airy, questioning love song. Near its end, a forceful piano cadenza leads straight into the final movement, which uses elements from the first three. After a ferocious mid-section—this time with Courtney Orlando adding her violin to the duo—the ending lands suddenly, mysteriously.

TwoSense ~ The Barge Rocked Further (A Review)

In Classical Music, Concert reviews, New Classical Music, Review on June 24, 2012 at 5:04 pm

By Chris McGovern

Duo unifies new music, minimal to modern

Published: Tuesday, March 10, 2009, 11:49 AM

By Michael Huebner — The Birmingham News 

4 stars out of 5

PROPHET BIRDS

Karen Bentley Pollick, violinist; Lisa Moore, pianist
Monday, Hill Recital Hall
Birmingham-Southern College

The stylistic cohesiveness in the “Prophet Birds” program Monday at Hill Recital Hall was made all the more convincing by Karen Bentley Pollick’s and Lisa Moore’s determination to make it lucid and palatable.

The violin and piano duo — both ardent protagonists for the new and the good in modern classical music — chose as its featured work a world premiere by Sam Adams. A 24-year-old Californian who happens to be the son of a more famous composer named John, Sam has written a work that bears a small resemblance to Dad’s post-minimal stylistic amalgamations, but is most concerned with sonic exploration. In “Aves Nostradamus,” the piano becomes a percussion instrument — pedals knocking on the floor, hands tapping on wood and rubbing under the keyboard. In the first movement, titled “Stutter,” its expressiveness comes from a winsome physicality inside a coherent rhythmic framework. “Prophecy” toys with silence, enhanced by violin ornaments.

Adams, who was on hand for the premiere, connected with Schumann’s song, “Prophet Bird,” as did Martin Bresnick in “Bird as Prophet,” performed immediately after Adams’ work. A tense, dizzying work, it moves from violin double-stop unisons going in and out of phase to a long chromatic expanse and sustained high violin note.

Anchoring the recital was John Adams’ “Road Movies,” a three-movement work bookended by the composer’s minimalism — repetitive patterns, off-kilter rhythms and caffeinated, adrenalin-rich ripples of sound — but offset by a languidly expressive middle movement. The duo played with inspiration and tenacity, mastering the work’s jazzy imprint on the finale, titled “40{32afa962bfebb357e7410b63e213524541d07bd24a9220e72b240f97100f6bf4} Swing.”

Also on the program was Paul Dresher’s “Elapsed Time,” a work that closes with Philip Glass-style minimalism, set in motion by Moore’s pianistic strength and focus.

Leos Janacek’s Sonata for Violin and Piano was the evening’s oddity. Its post-romantic angst played out with dry detachment, offset by lovely playing in the “Ballad” movement.

Violinist, pianist display wide range of inspiration

Published: Thursday, March 08, 2007, 10:18 AM

By Michael Huebner — The Birmingham News 

MUSIC AT A GLANCE

Who performed: Tuesday at Birmingham-Southern College, Karen Bentley Pollick, first lady of new music in Birmingham and wife of the BSC president, played an intriguing duo recital with Russian pianist and composer Ivan Sokolov.

Who composed: BSC composer Charles Norman Mason continues to accumulate miles from his year in Rome. So does his wife, Dorothy Hindman, who buttressed her playlist while there. Sokolov, Michael Angell, Robert Boury and Jan Vicar completed the assembly in this Birmingham Art Music Alliance event.

Modern musings: Birmingham composers headed the innovation department. Angell’s “Prig and the Pig” alternated clock-like staccato with an outpouring of brute force. Little could be perceived of Mason’s cryptic organization in “Incantesimi: Ommagio a Scelsi e a Berio,” yet he transcended the theoretical melee with drama and colorful sonorities. Hindman painted a multilayered cityscape of Rome in “centro.”

Easier listening: Sokolov’s “Solnechnaya” sonata lands somewhere between Shostakovich and Rachmaninoff, surprising for a work composed in 2005. Its passion and melodrama were mined well by the duo. Boury’s “Two Blues” owes much to ragtime, while Vicar’s “Uspavanky” served well as a meditative closer.

Karen Bentley Pollick, Grant Dalton put on exciting show in Birmingham

It’s rare to see the violin and piano played simultaneously – by one person. Karen Bentley Pollick, a violinist, pulled off that exciting feat when she played Dan Tepfer’s “Solo Blues for Violin and Piano” on Sunday at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Birmingham.

The piece, which ended the first part of an Artburst concert with Pollick and percussionist Grant Dalton, called for the violin and piano to alternate between melody and accompaniment. Pollick gallantly bowed away on her violin while her free hand bounced across the keyboard. Fortunately, Tepfer’s fine piece was worth the effort.

The concert also featured a number of exciting 20th century pieces, particularly two by Elliott Carter, who’s celebrating his 100th birthday this year. Pollick played “Riconoscenza per Goffredo Petrassi for Solo Violin,” a work that weaved many fits and starts into a smooth base. Dalton performed Carter’s undulating “March for Solo Timpani,” which featured several rousing, strong variations in beat.

Pollick and Dalton teamed for “Djembach: Suite for Violin and Percussion,” a series of movements by Christian Woehr that’s laid out as tributes to a variety of violists. Each movement was led off by a poem about the violist. The poems read more as inside jokes, but the movements themselves, with Pollick changing attitudes at will and Dalton playing the djembe (a kind of drum), made for some exciting music and painted portraits of the personalities of each subject.

Together, Pollick and Dalton also treated us to a piece called “Fanitullen,” for which she played her hardangerfele, a Scandinavian string instrument. Toward the end, she and Dalton were able to let loose on a piece called “Salsa for Karen for Violin and Percussion” by Ole Saxe. Pollick clearly has a personal connection with this piece, and she pretty much lit the house on fire with her movements as well as her playing as Dalton kept up the beat. But after having played the piano and violin simultaneously, she deserved to go wild….

Composer Martin Bresnick brings unique brand of spirituality to Birmingham-Southern College

Published: Saturday, February 16, 2008, 12:07 PM

By Michael Huebner — The Birmingham News

4 stars out of 5

The ever-scrappy and ambitious music department at Birmingham-Southern College has brought several iconic composers and their music to Birmingham in recent years. On Friday night, BSC presented Martin Bresnick, a profoundly spiritual composer from New Haven, Conn. He was in Birmingham to oversee rehearsals, lead a master class and explain his music to the small but tuned-in audience.

Bresnick’s particular brand of spirituality, with its emphasis on the beauty and connectedness of the natural world, recalls the transcendentalism of Emerson and Thoreau. The music of Charles Ives repeatedly came to mind throughout the nearly two-hour concert, although the surface of Bresnick’s music is very different. It integrated diverse elements, including birdsong, American vernacular music, video derived from William Blake’s eccentric poetry and engravings, and lots and lots of noise.

He complemented the regional underpinning with several references to southern creative traditions, including blues from the Mississippi Delta via the rock band, Cream, and texts by Georgia poets transformed into a mysterious song cycle for mezzo-soprano.

The vocal ensemble Sursum Corda sang two Sacred Harp-inspired Psalm settings. Despite the subtitles — New Haven and Woodstock — local audiences would surely place the craggy stylistic origins of the two choral works squarely in North Alabama.

Bresnick’s musical materials include nods to minimalism and, through the occasional musical quote, post-modernism. Bresnick is undaunted by major and minor triads, pounding rhythmic repetitions and extended stays in a limited tonal realm. While this description suggests minimalists such as Philip Glass and Steve Reich, Bresnick’s emphasis on transformation of material and, perhaps more significantly, of mood, distinguishes him from those composers. His repeated and varied musical aphorisms recall Beethoven and his descendants. Indeed, the manner in which Bresnick marries musical gesture with spiritual content often brought the music of Gustav Mahler to mind, especially during the song cycle.

The roster of excellent performers included violinist Karen Bentley Pollick, who navigated brilliantly between sumptuous melodies and timbral noodlings, and mezzo-soprano Nadine Whitney, for whom Bresnick composed the cycle. Most impressive was Australian pianist and would-be contortionist Lisa Moore, who, while engaged in traditional ivory tickling, also slapped, stomped, vocalized and narrated.

Duo Premieres Five Works

Karen Bentley Pollick, Violin & Craig Hultgren, Cello

By Michael Huebner — The Birmingham News

Sunday, March 05, 2006

Birmingham Art Music Alliance has proved time and again that the experimental and avant garde are still healthy and relevant.

These steadfast modernists are surviving the onslaught of what many classical music marketers perceive as audience-pleasing (therefore tonally conservative) new music. Instead, they stage a refreshing mix of world premieres, off-the-beaten-track oddities and multimedia works.

Monday’s concert at Birmingham-Southern College offered five premieres and two works with live computer processing. The performers were two of Birmingham’s most prominent new music devotees, one the violinist Karen Bentley Pollick.

BSC’s Dorothy Hindman contributed “Monumenti,” a duo inspired by Cindy Sheehan’s anti-war protests in which images of confrontations, arguments, periods of repose, humor and ridicule were easy to conjure from the two opposing instruments.

Charles Norman Mason, completed “Entanglements” in Rome recently, where he is fulfilling his Rome Prize obligations. An intricately scored duo, its acoustic string timbres are imitated and expanded by computer-generated sounds in snappy rhythms, balanced by eerie sustained tones.

Bentley Pollick commissioned Czech composer Jan Vicar to write “Homage to Fiddlers,” a bold, dramatic work with lively rhythms and a hint of Bartok. Tracy Mendel combines lyricism with tension-producing repetition in “Lines After Neruda and Gismonti,” but the work’s connection with its title is vague.

Projected images of melting timepieces, family photos and outer space propelled UAB composer Michael Angell’s Sonata for Cello and Tape, a work that oozes nostalgia and surrealism.

An amplified Bentley-Pollick accompanied herself in “Fiddle Faddle,” as Troy, N.Y., composer Neil Rolnick manipulated a feed of her live performance with a computer. Easily the most technologically advanced piece on the program, it was also the least adventurous, its Gershwin-esque language and suggestions of fiddle tunes softening the experimental bite.

Professors combine for engaging show

Published: Friday, October 12, 2007, 11:21 PM

By Michael Huebner — The Birmingham News

MASON/ROBERTSON RECOGNITION CONCERT

Performers: Karen Bentley Pollick, Craig Hultgren, Adam Bowles, Donald Ashworth, Alexander Volobuev, Lori Ardovino, Patricia Pilon, Laurie Middaugh, Jennifer Cowgill and Kathryn Fouse

Charles Norman Mason’s whimsical invention met Ed Robertson’s sophisti­cated craftsmanship Thursday night at Brock Recital Hall.

Mason, a Birmingham-Southern College professor and 2005 Rome Prize winner, tee­ters between the avant garde and post-modernism. His music is at once challenging and engaging and, judging from the consistently high performances by BAMA musicians, exciting to perform.

“Three Legged Race” served as a fanciful overture — a short but sweet trio with thorny rhythms that was handled deftly by violinist Karen Bentley Pollick, cellist Craig Hultgren and pianist Adam Bowles.

“Blazing Macaw” is also a trio, of sorts. A piano, played by Bowles, is accompanied by two speakers spewing out cascading electronic arpeggios and lyrical gestures that match and extend the piano’s express­ive range.

Perhaps most telling of Mason’s work is his string quartet, “Oh What a Beautiful City.” Premiered by the Miami String Quar­tet in front of the Birmingham City Council last February, the quartet, formerly titled “Prelude to Parlay: Mood Music for the City Council,” has a new name and was given a shot of adrenaline. Pollick, Alexan­der Volobuev, Michael Fernandez and Hultgren turned in a sparkling perform­ance, easily trumping the first reading. The work’s rhythmic intricacies, Appalachian-tinged folksiness and high energy were viv­idly realized.

Robertson, who retired from the Univer­sity of Montevallo faculty two years ago, was the 2004 Carnegie Foundation Ala­bama Professor of the Year. “Chronos,” for flute and piano, explores subtle hues through pitch bends and gently rocking rhythms. “Music for Cello and Piano” creates crafty dialogues in alternately medita­tive and dramatic movements.

The composer’s best work came in “Three Poems about War,” powerful set­tings of poems by A.E. Housman, Edith Sit­well and Siegfried Sassoon that weep and scream for an end to violence. Although soprano Jennifer Cowgill’s uneven reading didn’t do justice to the first two settings, the final poem, “Attack” was chillingly ren­dered in speech-song to shouts of “O Jesus, make it stop!”

Guitarist Bowman contributes versatility, talent at BAMA event

Published: Saturday, November 10, 2007, 11:04 PM

By Michael Huebner — The Birmingham News 

Few cities can boast new music forums as active as the Birmingham Art Music Alliance. Most of the works this tenacious organization presents will never achieve masterpiece status, and its concerts won’t set any attendance records. Yet they consistently turn up gems.

Saturday’s BAMA event at Hill Recital Hall featured guitarist Paul Bowman, whose passion for the moderns has landed him solo engagements at places like Carnegie Recital Hall and Alice Tully Hall.

The concert had Bowman busy on all six works, four of them premieres. An exceptionally versatile musician, he negotiated a pastiche of styles with ease.

Equally devoted to the cause, violinist Karen Bentley Pollick performed with enthusiasm and expertise in four of the pieces.

For his “Ten Strings,” a duo for guitar and violin, Monroe Golden made an about face from his unique brand of microtonal minimalism. The open strings of the violin and guitar were his palette, violin slides and glissandos his brush strokes. Suggestions of country fiddling and swing added to the color.

Dorothy Hindman reprised her “Needlepoint,” a poignant evocation for solo guitar that was inspired by her mother’s battle with cancer. Repetitive, relaxing arpeggios create the backdrop for dissonant outpourings that seemed to reflect pain and anger.

Joseph Landers’ gentle “Eclogue” used an alto recorder and cello, played by Lori Ardovino and Craig Hultgren, to create an effective pastorale. Matthew Scott Phillips’ “An Approach to Destiny” and Mary Elizabeth Neal’s “Duo for Violin and Guitar” were less engaging works that drew more on early 20th century styles.

Like much of Charles Norman Mason’s music, “Scrapings,” for violin and guitar, is a smile inducer. Blips of synthesized and pre-recorded sounds combined with jazzy violin riffs and steady guitar rhythms. Recorded voices, reciting poetry by Patrick Barron, seeped into the complex, but transparent fabric.

Opening Birmingham Art Music concert a multifaceted blend

Published: Friday, September 10, 2010, 1:30 PM

By Michael Huebner — The Birmingham News 

BIRMINGHAM ART MUSIC ALLIANCE

Music by Josh Crowe, Ed Robertson, Cooper Schrimsher, Dorothy Hindman, Monroe Golden and Jan Vicar

Thursday, Brock Recital Hall, Samford University

Four stars out of five

Instead of forming a unified front, the dedicated composers in the Birmingham Art Music Alliance express themselves freely, making each of their concerts a candy store of styles.

The standout came from Ed Robertson, whose music has taken on increased depth and profundity since he retired from the University of Montevallo in 2005. Composed in 2009 for soprano saxophone, “Inflections” takes a page from Messiaen’s clarinet solo, “Abyss of the Birds.” A somber five-note theme becomes a deeply moving solo voice that is at once engaging and conversational. Lori Ardovino performed with clarity and feeling.

Josh Crowe’s very accessible “Quirktet” for string quartet fits the mold of Mark O’Connor’s classical-bluegrass blend, moving from fiddle tunes to a slow waltz to a country jam. Cooper Schrimsher’s “Field of Dreams,” was a short and agreeable duo for violin and piano.

The final two pieces best revealed BAMA’s diversity. Birmingham composer Monroe Golden’s highly abstract piano solo, “81,” was followed by Czech composer Jan Vicar’s “Musica da Canzonetta,” a duo for viola and bass that produced smiles at every turn for its playful simplicity and clever turns of mood.

Karen Bentley Pollick, who played either violin or viola on four of the six pieces, played with unflagging skill, with strong support from violinist Julia Sakharova, cellist Craig Hultgren, Ardovino, pianists Adam Bowles and Kathryn Fouse and bassist Abraham Becker.