Ravel: The Complete Solo Piano Works
Seong-Jin Cho, piano (Deutsche Grammophon)
Seong-Jin Cho’s 2017 Debussy recording was full of bold colors and sharply delineated textures, which suited that composer perfectly. So I had high hopes for this set of Ravel’s complete solo piano works. Surprisingly, it leaves a more mixed impression. As elsewhere, Cho plays with remarkable sensitivity and easily meets the music’s technical demands. Yet the high refinement of his pianism sometimes drains these works of their intensity and expressive focus.
“Jeux d’Eau,” for example, is beautifully articulated but muted in its sonority, missing the atmosphere other pianists have elicited. I loved Cho’s dignified, unsentimental approach to “Pavane pour une Infante Défante,” but that works less well in “Valses Nobles et Sentimentales.” The nightmarish atmosphere of “Gaspard de la Nuit” emerges only fitfully, though the control and dexterity are wondrous.
The five-movement “Miroirs” is a microcosm of this album’s strengths and weaknesses. The birdsong of “Oiseaux Tristes” has rarely sounded so desolate, and, with carefully layered dynamics, the bells of “La Vallée des Cloches” seem to drift in from another world. The more extroverted pieces leave less of an impression, as Cho seems determined to rein in “Une Barque sur l’Océan” and “Alborada del Gracioso.” There is so much to admire here, but I just wish Cho had found a bit more in music he plays so well. DAVID WEININGER
David Lang: ‘poor hymnal’
The Crossing; Donald Nally, conductor (Cantaloupe)
With “poor hymnal,” David Lang has written hymns for a religion that doesn’t exist. There’s no book of worship or complicated dogma. Its only document is this hymnal, which, over and over again, proclaims the virtues of charity and compassion for those less fortunate.
Lang fashions lyrics from Bible verse, the Haggadah, Tolstoy and Barack Obama for a collection of sorrowful, monastic a cappella pieces in four-part harmony. The vocal lines move in straightforward, rise-and-fall patterns, and solos have an intimate candor. Church altos will recognize Lang’s loving re-creation of their boring harmonizations of the soprano part.
In the score, Lang writes that his imaginary congregation wants to “make our responsibilities to each other the central tenet of our coming together.” The worshipers only ever encounter godhead when providing service to the outcast.
The piece doesn’t escape the temptations of self-flagellation and guilt wracking. With a somber, tear-stained tone, Lang mourns his project’s impossibility. Perhaps as countermand, he instructs the singers to be “direct,” “plain-spoken” and “not overly sentimental.” The canny chamber musicians of the Crossing, conducted by Donald Nally, oblige with smooth, dry-eyed luminosity that sustains a gently haunted air.
And so the work’s title has at least two meanings: This hymnal contains songs for the poor, but it has also fallen into neglect and disuse, its lessons as simple to understand as they are difficult to practice. OUSSAMA ZAHR
‘Inheritances’
Adam Tendler, piano (New Amsterdam)
The origins of “Inheritances,” a collection of miniatures written for the pianist Adam Tendler, are as universal as they are unusual. We all experience loss, as Tendler did when his father died several years ago; few of us, though, receive the inheritance of a cash-filled envelope. He used the money to commission these pieces from some of his closest friends. After presenting them in concert, he has recorded them on an album with a prevailingly contemplative mood, but also a variety of perspectives and approaches that accumulate into a sculptural view of grief and remembrance.
Many works here take advantage of Tendler’s adventurousness and muscular skill. Missy Mazzoli’s “Forgiveness Machine” has the unrelenting force of heartbroken rage, and Inti Figgis-Vizueta’s “hushing” conjures similar might. But there is also the aching suspension of John Glover’s “In the City of Shy Hunters,” the bright wonder of Angélica Negrón’s “You Were My Age” and the uncanny comfort of Marcos Balter’s “False Memories.”
Laurie Anderson’s wistful “Remember, I Created You” incorporates spoken word and artificial intelligence; Tendler’s own voice is sampled in Pamela Z’s “Thank You So Much,” which, in its extended technique, also nods to John Cage, a specialty of Tendler’s. He is most exposed in Darian Donovan Thomas’s “We don’t need to tend this garden. They’re wildflowers,” a musicalized therapy session in which Tendler reminisces, comes to realizations and slides into self-accompanied singing. You will be moved, profoundly and intensely. JOSHUA BARONE
Donnacha Dennehy: ‘Land of Winter’
Alarm Will Sound; Alan Pierson, conductor (Nonesuch)
Many of the best works of the Irish composer Donnacha Dennehy have a tangible link to the history or geography of his homeland. Think of the use of traditional sean-nós singing in the song cycle “Grá agus Bás,” or the Great Famine’s presence in “The Hunger.” In this new, mesmerizing work — named for Hibernia, the classical Latin name for Ireland — he tries to capture one of the country’s distinctive but elusive features: the quality of light particular to each of its seasons. Divided into a dozen movements (one for each month), “Land of Winter” begins in December, where shivering harmonics and rumbling bass tones conjure a piercing sunlight that slices through the cold, darkness never far away. Rhythmic energy takes over as the piece moves toward spring, with playful dances in April, scat-singing in May and languorous swells in June.
Dennehy’s shrewd, sensitive ear for timbre is a large part of what makes “Land of Winter” such enveloping listening. Just as important, though, is the ingenious way that his overtone-rich harmony and use of refrains conveys both cyclicality and change. The way the light swirls through the Irish air, the composer seems to say, is a phenomenon both familiar and mutable over time, so that by the time we arrive at November — granitic and slow, and with allusions to a Bach chorale — we are back where we began the winter’s journey, and yet time also seems to have moved ineluctably, even a bit sadly, forward. DAVID WEININGER
‘The Golden Renaissance: Palestrina’
Stile Antico (Decca)
The superb vocal ensemble Stile Antico concludes its anniversary-themed “Golden Renaissance” triptych with Palestrina, who was born 500 years ago this December. Following albums devoted to Josquin des Prez (died in 1521) and William Byrd (died in 1623), this final installment is a concise introduction to an Italian master whose flawlessly smooth, celestially shining sacred polyphony loomed over the second half of the 16th century.
Stile Antico’s central offering is Palestrina’s great “Missa Papae Marcelli,” but the ensemble cleverly alternates its sections with six shorter works: “Exultate Deo,” gently surging; a pure “Tu es Petrus”; the stunningly serene, deeply felt “Sicut cervus”; a 12-voice “Laudate Dominum in tympanis”; a “Salve Regina” that, in this company, is strikingly austere; and “Assumpta est Maria,” which draws the program to a joyous conclusion.
But the “Missa Papae Marcelli” is in every way at the core of the album: Listen to the longing of the “Kyrie eleison” and, in the “Gloria,” the quiet build to rapture of “Qui tollis peccata mundi.” Stile Antico sings this complex yet elegantly polished music with the group’s usual combination of lushness and focus, stillness and energy, bringing expression and nuance to what can sometimes slip into coolly uniform gorgeousness. ZACHARY WOOLFE
