(++++) SOLO ENDEAVORS

Franz Xaver Mozart: Piano Sonata in G; Fantasy on the Russian Song “Tchem Tebya Ya Ogortshila” and a Krakowiak; Variations on a Minuet from the First Finale of W.A. Mozart’s “Don Giovanni”; Variations on a Russian Theme. Robert Markham, piano. Grand Piano. $19.99.

Nils Vigeland: Piano Sonata; 9 Waltzes and an Ecossaise; Mnemosyne; Perfect Happiness. Jing Yang, piano. New Focus Recordings. $18.99.

     The extent of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s uniqueness in musical history is highlighted, among many other ways, in the lives of his only two children who survived to adulthood (four others died in infancy). Karl Thomas Mozart (1784-1858), born second, tried to make a career in music, but gave up when in his mid-20s and became an accountant and Italian translator. He did, however, earn enough royalties from his father’s music so that he was able to buy a country estate near Lake Como. Franz Xaver Mozart (1791-1844), the last-born of the children, was only four months old when his father died, so any paternal musical influence would have had to be inherited – which it was not. F.X. Mozart did become a pianist of some note and a moderately successful composer with the misfortune to be a transitional figure between the Classical and Romantic eras – much like Hummel, with whom F.X. Mozart studied. The main way F.X. Mozart found his own compositional voice was through what was essentially salon music, especially the sets of Polonaises Mélancoliques for which he became modestly well-known. But as a new Grand Piano CD featuring Robert Markham shows, F.X. Mozart did have grander ambitions, at least early in his life: the four works on this disc were all created by the time the composer turned 24. The earliest of them – published when F.X. Mozart was all of 14 – draws directly on his father’s music, and is a well-wrought set of variations on the famous Don Giovanni minuet from the opera’s first finale. The seven variations make no pretense to profundity – even the F minor sixth is at most wistful or thoughtful – but all lie well on the keyboard and provide for an effective recital piece. Markham does a fine job with them and, indeed, with all the works here, including another set of variations (published when the composer was 18). These Variations on a Russian Theme wander further from their basis (an unidentified song) than do those based on Don Giovanni, and feature a variety of pleasant pianistic ornamentation that Markham handles with aplomb. A more-substantial work and the latest-composed on the disc is the elaborately titled Fantasy on the Russian Song “Tchem Tebya Ya Ogortshila” and a Krakowiak, which dates to 1815. This is considered F.X. Mozart’s most-virtuosic piano piece and is an interesting amalgam of Russian- and Polish-derived thematic material that becomes increasingly demanding of the performer as the variations progress – after which the attractive Krakowiak lightens matters for listeners although still making significant demands on the pianist. The longest work on this CD is the largest that F.X. Mozart ever composed: his Piano Sonata in G, which he completed at the age of 16. This is a well-made four-movement work that is somewhat oddly proportioned: its emotional center, a solemn Largo, is the shortest movement, lasting only three minutes in a work that spans nearly half an hour. There are plenty of interesting elements in the sonata, including the substantial first-movement development section and the increasingly elaborate technical display in the finale. But compared with the piano sonatas of W.A. Mozart or the early ones of Beethoven that were in vogue at the time, F.X. Mozart’s 1807 sonata is comparatively unconvincing, showing a good grasp of the formalities of the form but no significant interest in exploring new areas of either technique or emotion. It is a fine piece that might be more impressive had it not been created by someone named Mozart – and certainly Markham does his best to present it as convincingly as possible.

     A sonata is also the longest work on a New Focus Recordings CD of the solo-piano music of Nils Vigeland (born 1950). This sonata, begun in 1979 but not put into final form until 2008, retains roots and some structural elements from the past while using harmonic language and pianistic approaches that mark it clearly as a contemporary work. The first movement, which really is in sonata form, emphasizes the piano as a percussion instrument, as so many modern compositions do; the second offers elements of lyricism within a largely dissonant soundscape; and the third and last is notable for its extensive use of trills – not as ornaments, the way F.X. Mozart and many others use them, but as an integral part of the movement’s rhythmic structure. The sonata, which Jing Yang plays with fervor and commitment, takes up nearly half the length of this short (49-minute) CD, but is less engaging than the shorter works on the disc. The single-movement Mnemosyne (1987) offers an effective contrast between quieter inward-looking material and exuberant outward-focused music that is made with a strongly percussive orientation. The four short movements of Perfect Happiness (2000) do a surprisingly good job of expressing forms of joy: ebullience in the first movement, quiet peacefulness in the second, and a mixture of outward and inward feelings in the third and fourth (which Yang performs as a single track). The most-interesting work on the CD, though, is 9 Waltzes and an Ecossaise (1987), whose combinatorial title is reminiscent of F.X. Mozart’s for his fantasy/krakowiak. Interestingly, Vigeland’s piece harks back to F.X. Mozart’s time, although its specific compositional referent is Schubert. Yang does an especially good job of drawing attention to the underlying dance rhythms of the movements, which are often almost athematic but which require (and, here, receive) careful attention to the complementary material for the two hands. Three of the movements last less than a minute, and only one reaches minute-and-a-half length, but there is an impressive wealth of feeling communicated in the aptly named Appassionata and its immediate successor, Sardonico, while other movements clearly reflect such titles as Ostinato and Mesto – this last being the final one before the Ecossaise, which brightens matters considerably and retains a pleasantly dancelike feeling with some elfin touches in the keyboard’s higher reaches. Like Markham’s disc, Yang’s is at its best in the less-portentous pieces that, in the case of Vigeland’s music, showcase clear familiarity with the exigencies of piano performance (Vigeland is, like F.X. Mozart, a pianist/composer) while drawing on forms and approaches of the past and casting them in a more-modern aural idiom.

(++++) FOR ALL SEASONS

Bach: Easter Oratorio; Magnificat. Nola Richardson, soprano; Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, countertenor; Thomas Cooley, tenor; Harrison Hintzsche, baritone; Cantata Collective conducted by Nicholas McGegan. AVIE. $19.99.

     It is a tribute to Bach’s extraordinary creativity that his intensely religious Lutheran compositions, written within the conventions of the 18^th century (although sometimes stretching them), continue to have both musical and liturgical appeal 300 years after their creation. Even in contemporary times that are so much more secular than Bach’s, the emotional intensity of these works is uplifting – even to audiences that do not share Bach’s beliefs and may not even know or understand the words he set, much less their purpose within the ecclesiastical year. No small part of the never-ending appeal of this music are the advocacy and excellence of historically informed performances by ensembles such as Cantata Collective under Nicholas McGegan – interpretations that resolutely refuse to regard Bach and his music as fusty museum pieces and that breathe new (or, rather, continuing) life into Bach’s works by recognizing them as deeply felt expressions of faith that can and do reach out far beyond their original audiences and intentions.

     McGegan and Cantata Collective have already produced exemplary recordings for AVIE of two of Bach’s largest religious works, the St. John Passion and Mass in B Minor. Their new release includes two somewhat less-expansive pieces that nevertheless have grandeur of their own. Both the Easter Oratorio (1725) and the Magnificat (1723/1733) are festive works that call for large orchestras including trumpets, timpani, flutes, recorders, oboes and bassoon as well as strings and continuo. And both have specific seasonal purposes: the Easter Oratorio, obviously, for the celebration of the central mystery of Christianity, the resurrection of Jesus; and the Magnificat for the Feast of the Visitation (July 2) and also for Advent and/or Christmas. The works differ in significant ways: the Easter Oratorio largely rearranges music Bach had written earlier, and the text is in German, while the Magnificat is filled with new music and is in Latin (a less-common language in the Lutheran faith). But these historical matters are of no significant consequence for modern performers and listeners – which is exactly the point for interpretations like McGegan’s, which are historically aware without being historically insistent in a way that would make them time-bound.

     What listeners hear in McGegan’s Easter Oratorio and Magnificat is celebratory music delivered with understanding, suitable intensity and an unerring sense of style. In the Easter Oratorio, the four soloists – representing Mary Magdalene, “the other Mary,” Simon Peter and John the Apostle – carry forward the story after the chorus initially urges everyone to “hurry and run” to the now-empty tomb of Jesus (the chorus does not reappear until the very end of the work). The emotional underpinnings of the story are well communicated by the sensitivity of the singers, from Mary Magdalene (here sung, interestingly, by a countertenor rather than the more-usual alto) exclaiming about the “cold hearts of men” to John the Apostle being “delighted that our Jesus lives again” and the chorus, at the work’s end, rejoicing that “Hell and the devil are conquered.” And in the Magnificat, the back-and-forth between chorus and various solo and duet parts enlivens the recitation of the formulaic words of praise and helps give them depth of feeling and conviction. The simplicity and purity underlying Quia respexit humilitatem, and the unusual use of three accompanied high voices in Suscepit Israel, are among the elegantly realized touches in this performance. But such details are always subsumed within the work’s overall structure, which is as it should be. Like the prior Bach recordings by Cantata Collective, this one combines a well-sized chamber choir with a well-balanced instrumental ensemble, with all performers collaborating with great sensitivity to the music as music – and to the messages Bach intended to convey. Those messages are scarcely irrelevant to believers in modern times – but even for those who are not believers, or whose beliefs are not in line with those expressed by Bach through these works, the music, as performed here with expressiveness and sensitivity, conveys heartfelt joy and emotional engagement in ways that reach out across the centuries and well beyond the context in which these works were originally created.

(++++) POETRY IN (UNCEASING) MOTION

Poems of Parenting. By Loryn Brantz. William Morrow. $19.99.

     All children are different, all parents are different, but somehow, some of the time, in some ways, all parenting is the same. Loryn Brantz not only figures this out but also has the talent, both verbal and representational, to bring the insights of commonality to the world at large. Hence we have Poems of Parenting, a charming little written-and-drawn journey through some not-always-charming elements of parenthood. And many that are charming. And some that are definitely worth thinking about but are not thought about very often, such as the realization, while breastfeeding, that “this will be a fully grown adult someday” and that fact is “REALLY REALLY REALLY WEIRD,” illustrated with a full-grown adult curled happily on the lap of a suitably bemused-looking woman.

     Brantz is particularly good at bemusement, a kind of second cousin of amusement (she is particularly good at that, too). For example, the exuberance of the illustration for “Mom Joy” (a state of affairs including “Solve big problems” and “Do nothing”) is neatly complemented by the picture for “Splash,” which shows the all-too-common everyday event occasioned by the words “Like a moth/ to a flame/ Baby hand/ to my cup” (actually a glass, whose ice-cube-cooled drink is about to be everywhere except in the glass). Most words of most poems drift around the page, although some longer ones are laid out more traditionally, line by line – while some entries are barely poems at all, containing as few as three words: “Fat. Baby. Hands.” (The half-dozen chubby little human paws spread across two pages are the point here.)

     Parenting does not, by any means, stop when children are babies, so neither, of course, does Brantz’s book. As squishy little infants grow into mobility, Brantz provides guides to such episodes of everyday life as “Warm Jammies” and how it feels to experience the insertion of a little one into them (“If a rabid raccoon/ was dipped in oil/ And I had to dress it/ in a three-piece suit”). Again and again, Brantz juxtaposes the internal joys of being a parent with the external, mundane, often maddening quotidian duties of parenthood involving matters both big and small (mostly small). Thus, her poem about trimming baby’s “sweet tiny nails” concludes, “Damn/ this is/ A lot of work.” Indeed, she notes elsewhere that babies are in effect in charge of things, parents do all the work, and the result is “the cutest tyranny,” in which an adult who must gather all the detritus of babyhood becomes in essence a “Beautiful/ Walking human/ trash bin.”

     By the time Brantz gets to kids’ toddler stage, she is referring to them as “tiny bestie” and “spicy little nugget,” and the reality is that they are both, all the time. And as amusing as many of her observations are, this is the place in the book where Brantz pauses for some sincere First World thoughtfulness: “How lucky am I/ That we have so much” and “How lucky am I/ That we have a place to sleep” and “How lucky am I/ I can’t believe what good fortune we have.” The overt sentimentality does not last long – Brantz quickly reverts to amusingly-juxtaposed-opposites mode – but it is worth bearing in mind for every reader’s individual-yet-common parental journey. Indeed, “You’re living/ The poetry/ Of/ Parenting,” Brantz reminds readers directly. That poetry sometimes encapsulates reality in just a few words, sometimes sprawls across two pages, sometimes curses, sometimes indulges in bathroom breaks and doomscrolling, and sometimes invents entirely new concepts that seem to have age-old resonance – such as the discovery that something even worse than the Terrible Twos is possible when a child becomes a “threenager.” Throughout all this amazing everyday life, Brantz celebrates traditional man-woman-children families in a 21^st-century urban environment, even as she offers thoughts to which parents in many other times and places can relate – such as the journey from staying up all night “buzzed on new love” to staying up all night “Because our children/ Are trying to kill us/ By sleep deprivation.”

     “The days are long/ But the weeks are also long,” writes Brantz in one of her small, semi-precious poetic gems, concluding this particular bit of blank verse by saying, “It’s not always easy/ But it’s always hard.” And there you have the central message of Poems of Parenting, provided you do your best to add, in your own mind, the words “And it’s always worthwhile.”

(+++) THE BROAD SCALE AND THE INTIMATE

Wynton Marsalis: Blues Symphony. Detroit Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jader Bignamini. Pentatone. $17.99.

Music for Unaccompanied Violin by Melia Watras, John Corigliano, Ástor Piazzolla, Paola Prestini, and Leilehua Lanzilotti. Michael Jinsoo Lim, violin. Planet M Records. $15.

     Today’s composers, like those of earlier eras, have many reasons for choosing to write music for large ensembles or small ones – or even for solo performance. The type of material they are working with, the sensibilities they wish to explore and present, and the availability of appropriate-size and appropriately skilled performers all figure into compositional planning. So it certainly makes sense that Wynton Marsalis (born 1961) wanted to create something on a very large scale, for full orchestra, in his Blues Symphony, because Marsalis’ ambition was a grand one: to explore not only the sound of the blues but also the history, background, emotional underpinnings and sociopolitical context of this musical form. That is a lot of text and subtext to pack into a symphony, even a seven-movement one that runs more than an hour. A new Pentatone recording of this 2009 work, featuring the Detroit Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jader Bignamini, provides an opportunity to find out whether Marsalis’ accomplishment matches his ambition. A fair answer would be: not quite, although the composer tries mighty hard to encompass everything about the blues – and the conductor and orchestra do their best to put the composer’s auditory vision across. The symphony is in seven movements, whose titles are integral to Marsalis’ thinking and planning and are therefore crucial for the audience to know and consider while listening to the music: Born in Hope; Swimming in Sorrow; Reconstruction Rag; Southwestern Shakedown; Big City Breaks; Danzon y Mambo, Choro y Samba; and Dialogue in Democracy. As those titles make clear, Marsalis focuses throughout on the society (really, societies) in which the blues were born and developed; a kind of societal gloss is intended to permeate the work. How well it does so, and to what end, is a matter of opinion. The first movement, for example, communicates an upbeat sense of “hope” clearly enough, but it communicates it again and again and yet again – there is clangor in the music whose effectiveness diminishes the longer it goes on. The second and longest movement is dour enough, expressing itself in a rather cinematic (that is to say, surface-level) fashion, with plenty of swells and exclamations contrasted with unhappy string sighs. The third opens with a continuation of the same mood before working itself into something bouncy and upbeat but, at least by implication, with sorrow suppressed rather than eliminated. The fourth features some genuinely bluesy-sounding material, with brass chorale elements mingled with the sound effects of a TV commercial featuring the imagined ruggedness of the Old West – an amusing potpourri that is not, however, intended to amuse; this is a disparity, and not the only one, between the work’s intentions and its execution. The fifth and shortest movement is back in “bounce” mode, now with irregular rhythms and prominent drum set. The sixth movement sighs and laments in a solo violin before lapsing into a vaguely Latin dance beat, then becomes increasingly insistent (and loud) before dipping again into quieter material; the feelings alternate, on and off, until a rather silly police-whistle-dominated section leads to an eventual cartoonish fadeout. The finale immediately brings speediness to the orchestra’s sections, individually and together, with a cartoonish sound of a different sort – a kind of chase scene in which no one ever catches anyone. After going on this way for a while, Marsalis opts for a full-throated climax (with more police whistle) and then a gallop toward a hectic conclusion that, inevitably, comes to an abrupt stop. A lot of this is great fun, and the enthusiasm that conductor and orchestra bring to this performance is enough to gloss over some of the structural and communicative inelegances of this sprawling work – whose sprawl is itself an issue, making the piece sound more like a series of individual tone poems than a tightly knit symphony. Marsalis really wants the symphony to be profound and meaningful, but it does not sound that way, coming across more as a once-over-lightly (but not too lightly) romp through and with a musical form that is scarcely undiscovered and that has already been used by a great many composers in a great many ways for a great many years. Bignamini and the Detroit Symphony have given this work as fine a recorded performance as it is likely to receive. But the piece, despite its many pockets of enjoyment, ultimately tries too hard to assert its importance, and as a result comes across as unconvincing – it just plain takes itself too seriously, or, rather, more seriously than Marsalis is able to communicate convincingly.

     The foundational element is different on a new Planet M Records disc featuring Michael Jinsoo Lim and released under the title KINETIC: it is dance, with everything that Lim plays said to be dance-derived to a greater or lesser extent. The approach is different as well: these are works for a single instrument, the solo violin, rather than an ensemble. The CD presents material by five composers, arranged rather arbitrarily: for example, the two works by John Corigliano (born 1938) are separated by a Tango-Étude by Ástor Piazzolla (1921-1992), while works by Melia Watras (born 1969) appear first, fifth, and ninth among the 10 pieces on the disc. This peculiarity of arrangement also extends to Piazzolla’s music, which shows up third, sixth, and tenth. The rather forced sequencing does not, however, detract from the interesting elements of the program, from the effectiveness that can result in certain instances from using a single instrument rather than a group of them, or from the considerable verve with which Lim performs. Actually, Lim does bend the “solo instrument” approach a bit: Watras’ A dance of honey and inexorable delight includes a narrator (Herbert Woodward Martin), and A Jarful of Bees by Paola Prestini (born 1975) is for violin and electronics. Nevertheless, the overall impression here is of a solo recital, and a very nicely performed one at that. The three Piazzolla Tango-Études from 1987 (Nos. 1, 3 and 4, given in reverse order as well as being separated on the CD) are high points, by turns sultry and alluring, playful and (especially in the case of No. 1) quixotic. John Corigliano’s contributions are also noteworthy (so to speak). Stomp (2011) is somewhat overdone, over-insistent, and, well, over-produced, but it certainly puts Lim through his paces and has a somewhat endearing quality of trying a bit too hard. The Red Violin Caprices (1999), which predate Corigliano’s well-known Red Violin Concerto (2003) that is based on the 1997 film, consist of a theme and five variations in a compact 10-minute time frame, during which the violin needs to evoke extreme emotionality while displaying substantial technical prowess. The other major elements of this recording come from Watras. A dance of honey and inexorable delight (2022) is not especially evocative of either poetic emotion or apian matters, and Homage to Swan Lake (2018), thematic fragments aside, pays little attention to the unending melodiousness and dark beauty of Tchaikovsky. Watras’ Doppelgänger Dances (2017) are more intriguing. Although they are somewhat self-consciously modern in sound and technique, and frequently lose sight of the meaning of “dance” in favor of irregular rhythms and uncertain motion, they are often interesting to hear if they are not thought of too closely in a dance context: the movement called Fantasia and the fantasia-like concluding William are high points. The remaining two works on this very well-played but programmatically rather scattered CD are brief. Prestini’s A Jarful of Bees (2020) is the longest work on the disc, its 11-minute single movement more extended than the seven elements of Doppelgänger Dances or the six of The Red Violin Caprices. Even with the addition of electronics to expand its aural world, Prestini’s work goes on much too long: the repetitive electronic elements include the usual cloud-sounding background noises and snippets of mallet-percussion-like tones, all mostly at odds with the surprisingly rather tender (but scarcely dancelike) material given to the violin through most of the piece. And in where we used to be (a 2022 piece that bears one of those insistently non-capitalized titles), Leilehua Lanzilotti (born 1983) also presents a kind of soundcloud, here emanating from the violin itself – followed by some brighter material that then subsides into pizzicati and harmonics, the totality leaving the impression of a six-minute technical exploration far closer in spirit and approach to an instructional étude than to anything remotely dance-oriented. It is to Lim’s credit that he plays all these works with equal commitment and an equal determination to extract from them as much meaning and interest as they contain. That amount, though, varies so widely that the disc becomes one that will be found considerably more engaging by listeners interested in fine solo-violin performance for its own sake than by an audience that is genuinely attracted to dance in any of its multifaceted forms.