WOW - this is possibly the greatest work of the contemporary period in my opinion... well at least it felt that way at first listen. I was flabbergasted at how every note and emotion here felt just as masterful as some of my most favorite works. No wandering experimentation - just powerful music. I don't really know what else to say other than check it if you haven't. Sometimes innovation is overrated, and I think this work -while still modern and contemporary sounding, is a key example of that. Sure there's some borrowed orchestrations from Wagner (horns) or Beethoven (percussion) that I'm a sucker for, but it's incredibly powerful in it's own orchestrations.
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Symphony No. 7 ("Seven Gates of Jerusalem"), for 5 soloists, speaker, 3 choruses & orchestra
Description by "Blue" Gene Tyranny
Penderecki's "Seven Gates of Jerusalem (Symphony No. 7)" scored for five soloists, speaker, three mixed choirs and orchestra was composed in 1996. There are seven parts, all, except for one, sung in Latin. Part I - The choir enters with Psalm 48 in a simple Gregorian chant style. The primary building block - chromatic lines moving against tonal drones - is introduced in the "Magnus Dominus ... (Great is the Lord ... in the city of our God, his holy mountain). This is followed by Psalm 96 ("Sing to the Lord a new song"). Instead of a joyous Handel-like major, this music broods in chromatic counterpoint that looks for deep spiritual places evoked by the five soloists, as the music climbs in small steps toward the bright reiteration of the opening. A gong is swept with brushes in Part II as low instruments punctuate with mysterious chromatics and violin harmonics fly to the sky. A soprano introduces the solemn pledge of Psalm 137, "If I forget you O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill". Part III for choir a capella alternates chromatic lines with chanted passages in full harmony. The text is the famous Psalm 130 "Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord." (Incidentally, in some translations, rather than the supplicant speaking from the "depths", God is in the "depths", waiting). Part IV opens with ominous pulsing bass strings underlying wind and brass melodies. A woman's voice repeats the previously heard pledge of Psalm 137. The choirs then join in one note unison, "Aperite portas ... ("Open the gates that the righteous nation may enter ...) as the orchestra climbs in chromatic lines. In an atonal-like solo, the call is made to "Awake, awake, O Zion, clothe yourself with strength ...". Part V - Masses of drums (including the pitched tubophones) and cymbals gradually build until the choir punctuates the air with "Lauda, Ierusalem, Dominum ... " ("Extol the Lord, O Jerusalem ... "). Playful figures represent joy but in a determined rather than light-hearted manner, the expectant peace of a weary people. A strange instrumental section follows with piccolo solo and string sustains, followed by a Hovhaness-like horn solo, seems to depict a distant mirage. The choir enters gently with "Benedixit filiis tuis in te ..." ("and blesses your people within you [the gates of Zion] ..."). Again the drums begin to build and are now joined by winds with dissonant trumpet-like announcements. The choir repeats "Lauda ..." with renewed energy.
Part VI- A Hebrew speaker relates the famous story from Ezekiel (37:1 - 10), one of his fantastic vision journeys, this one in the valley covered with dry bones. The Lord tells him to address the bones, "Hear the word of the Lord!". We hear orchestral sounds of tone clusters, and dry gourds suggesting the bones and the desert valley - sounds reminescent of Penderecki's groundbreaking early orchestral soundscapes from the 1960's. The bones join, gain flesh, and the four winds enter them giving them breath, and they rise up "a vast army". Part VII begins without pause. The choir quotes the powerful line of Jeremiah (21: " ... the Lord says: See, I am setting before you the way of life and the way of death". The rest of the text quotes, Daniel, Isaiah,and the Psalms, concerning God's strength and glory, recapitulates the music of Part I, and declares that "Your [Jerusalem's] gates will always stand open, they will never be shut, day or night ...".
Hmm - this is a tough one - it's right on the cusp of me really liking, but was a little too much of a journey for me - which is a nice way of saying wow, that's going somewhere, and then just kept on morphing and morphing until I didn't even know what I was listening to anymore. I mean that's over exaggerated, I just felt a bit too all over the place with it. Otherwise I thought it pretty good for the first listen.
What I will say for the symphony though was wow to those dynamics - the quietest I have ever heard an orchestra play/ending and beginning especially.
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AllMusic Review by Blair Sanderson
Among his contemporaries, Kalevi Aho stands as one of the most exciting composers, and foremost among his peers in revitalizing the Finnish symphonic tradition for the postmodern period. A student of Einojuhani Rautavaara, Aho has surpassed his teacher in orchestrational skill and daring. He has amply demonstrated that the symphony should not be treated as an academic exercise in imitation of past masters, and that it deserves the full resources of today's virtuoso orchestra and all the freedoms of the avant-garde's explorations. The Symphony No. 11 for six percussionists and orchestra consolidates the gains of modernism and spans innovations from Varèse to Xenakis. Yet Aho's music never sounds derivative, for he has internalized his influences and made his work sound fresh and spontaneous without obvious references or mannerisms. Aho's Symphonic Dances feature astonishing orchestral effects and powerful collisions of sound, superimposed on driving rhythms and cycling motives with abundant invention. The Kroumata Percussion Ensemble and the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, led by Osmo Vänskä, are particularly adept at playing Aho's impressive music, and have the benefit of the composer's advice for these performances. The recorded sound is excellent through most of the disc, though the closing Tranquillo movement of the symphony is extremely soft and best heard on headphones.
(couldn't find a recording for symphony no. 11, sorry, above spotify link will have to do)
What I did love about this is it felt like there were two distinct voices the whole time... one that was what I'll call "happy" and one that was "sad" fighting and sometimes playing with each other. Overall I didn't like it, but the concept jammed.
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Etudes (17) for piano, Books 1-3
Description by Chris Morrison
In his series of etudes for solo piano (Book I, 1985; Book II, 1988-1993; Book III, 1995-present; with a possible Book IV), Ligeti has drawn upon a host of styles and influences that have contributed to his own unique sound world. In these etudes one can hear elements of the 1950s and 1960s avant-garde of which Ligeti was so prominent a part, along with the complex polyrhythms of African music, the Indonesian gamelan, jazz, and the composers of the past and present who have explored the limits of piano technique -- Scarlatti, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Nancarrow, and many others. The great pianist Alfred Brendel has gone so far as to say, "You need three or five hands to play Ligeti."
The jagged, aggressive Disorder leads off Book I. It is followed by Open Strings, a study based on the interval of the fifth, which is very lyrical at first, but becomes faster and more dissonant as it goes. Blocked Keys skitters nervously about the keyboard, and Fanfares develops out of a repeating ostinato figure. The fifth piece, Rainbow, is a mellow nocturne not far from the world of jazz pianist Bill Evans; the piece is even marked "con eleganza, with swing." Book I concludes with Autumn in Warsaw, a tribute to a city and country that had long supported Ligeti's music. The delicate passagework, made up of several different lines traveling at different speeds, was inspired by his interest in how polyrhythms are deployed in various forms of African music.
After a break of several years during, which he composed his Piano Concerto, Ligeti returned to the etude cycle with Book II, which features works of even greater complexity than Book I. The title of the opener, Galamb borong, is ersatz Indonesian; the complex rhythms of the gamelan are mapped onto the whole-tone scales of Claude Debussy, who was himself fascinated by the Indonesian gamelan. Metal is playful and jazzy, with an almost barrelhouse quality to the rhythm. Vertigo is a very challenging piece, with its constant swirl of scales up and down the keyboard. The Sorcerer's Apprentice bears no relationship to the Paul Dukas piece of the same name; its rapid repeating notes are a contrast to the elegant, spacious In Suspense that follows it. Interlacings is another rhythmically complex piece. A series of unpleasant experiences in the Santa Monica area in 1993 led to The Devil's Staircase, a jagged and unrelenting piece that ends with a thundering chord. Book II ends with Infinite Column, inspired by the Brancusi sculpture of the same name. Its series of loud, upward-striving scales is a great challenge to the pianist; Ligeti in fact originally conceived this piece, as the score states, "for player piano (ad lib. living pianist)." Inspired by the Studies for Player Piano by Conlon Nancarrow, Ligeti has authorized arrangements of many of the etudes, including all of Book II, for that instrument. Those arrangements are quite effective in their own right, especially in the ferocious torrent of notes found in Infinite Column or Vertigo.
Ligeti sees the etudes as an ongoing series. He has already completed several pieces for Book III, including the very peaceful White on White (1995), which never quite settles on one tonality, but is nonetheless quite diatonic and, despite the restless ending, quite lovely. "For Irina" and Etude No. 17 were also composed in 1995.
I'm not too sure if this is the perfection of the first 2 or a mindless copy. Given the subtle play on orchestration or subtle perfection of certain sounds, etc., it feels like the equation is perfected and the inclusion of Ma is for me explosive, but I also kinda got the same feeling. I mean I also get the point of cohesion between projects that are decades apart... Anyway, of course I liked it because I liked the first 3, but I was near expecting something completely different for some reason. Also a Jew's harp was a little surprising, yet fitting... reminded me of some Eno stuff that was surprising but fitting.
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AllMusic Review by Patsy Morita
It is always impressive to hear an ensemble that plays well together, not only in terms of tonality, but also in tempo, and with sensitivity to other aspects of performance. While that is expected of professional musicians, it's surprising how often this is not the case on CDs. Members of the Philip Glass Ensemble had been working with each other and with the composer for a while and, therefore, perform Glass' music quite competently. The pick-up orchestra members employed on the Naqoyqatsi soundtrack should also get excellent marks. For that matter, so should conductor Michael Riesman, who has worked on all three Qatsi films. Even listeners who do not like Glass' music will admire the skill it takes to clearly execute keep those repetive rhythms and tones. The soloists, too, deserve praise. Ma plays in his usual musically sensitive way: on one track, it is interesting to hear the vocal soloist match timbre with the cello, sparking brief flashes where the two sound like one. Although recording the parts separately and then tweaking and mixing them back together could have "artificially" produced some of the cohesion (in which case credit should go to the engineers and editors), the musicians still deserve a lot of credit.
Glad you listened to the Schnittke, I was thinking about the context of you having started out with some ancient music in the beginning. It's interesting to see that's what Schnittke was wanting to compose in his waning years, because that music is pretty intensely spiritual. Same with that Penderecki, which is one that I had only first listened to in the last 6 months or so, but it's definitely as good as you say it is.
Glad you listened to the Schnittke, I was thinking about the context of you having started out with some ancient music in the beginning. It's interesting to see that's what Schnittke was wanting to compose in his waning years, because that music is pretty intensely spiritual. Same with that Penderecki, which is one that I had only first listened to in the last 6 months or so, but it's definitely as good as you say it is.
Agreed! Thanks again/nice touch on my way to "close" out this journey.
Sometimes it seems like Ma can just take his bow and poke straight into your soft spots.
Right you are - his tone is incredibly warm and intonation always firm. Easily up there with Rostropovich and Casals in my book as far as powerful too.
Oh also I've updated my first post with my favorite works from this amalgamation of a period. Basically probably could be surmised with first part of the period is dominated by Mahler as my favorite (post-romantic), Shostakovitch for the Modern period, and Adams as the Contemporary leader. But that's not final or anything either.
I have mixed feelings about Max Richter. In some ways I find it cool he's probably the next in line from a Glass to combine "classical tradition" with "modern" music. I'm somewhere between really liking this and feeling like it's a cheap knock off of something... not really sure which is true. It's not bad though. Interesting mixture of sounds and feelings. Somewhere between cool minimalism and easy listening...
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AllMusic Review by Heather Phares
Though his evocative debut album Memoryhouse introduced Max Richter's fusion of classical music, electronica and found-sounds (a style he calls "post-Classical"), it's his follow-up, The Blue Notebooks, that really showcases the style's -- and Richter's -- potential. The album's ten pieces were inspired by Kafka's Blue Octavo Notebooks, and quotes such as "Everyone carries a room about inside them. This fact can even be proved by means of the sense of hearing. If someone walks fast and one pricks up one's ears and listens, say at night, when everything round about is quiet, one hears, for instance, the rattling of a mirror not quite firmly fastened to the wall," which are read by actress Tilda Swinton, define the spare, reflective intimacy of The Blue Notebooks. The album is simpler than Memoryhouse, with a smaller ensemble of musicians playing on it and a shorter running time, but its restraint makes it a more powerful work -- it's so beautiful and fully realized that it doesn't need to be showy. As other reviews have mentioned, Richter tends to be a more traditional-minded composer than influences like Brian Eno, Philip Glass and Steve Reich. However, his sound works so well and seems so natural because he's not trying to be overtly experimental; the album ranges from pieces with little or no electronic elements, such as the piano-driven "Arboretum," to "Old Song," which is based on a busy, chilly beat that sounds like dripping water. Richter's music embraces all of the sounds that had an impact on him, but more important is the emotional impact that The Blue Notebooks has on its listeners; despite its high-concept origins, it's quite an affecting album. The warm-hearted piano melody on "Horizon Variations" and the delicate, somehow reassuring-sounding string piece "On the Nature of Daylight" both sound vaguely familiar, and are all the more haunting for it. Most striking of all is "Shadow Journal," which begins with hypnotic, bubbling electronics, Swinton's crisp voice and a piercingly lovely violin melody and then brings in harp and an electronic bassline so low that it's almost felt more than it is heard. The piece sounds so much like thinking, like turning inward, that the cawing birds at the end of the track bring a jarring end to its reverie. The field recordings that run through The Blue Notebooks heighten the sense of intimacy, and occasionally, eavesdropping. On "Organum," the distant piano and outdoor sounds feel like listening to somebody else listen to the music; meanwhile, the ticking clocks, clacking typewriter and street traffic on the title track help conjure up that room that everyone carries about inside them. The Blue Notebooks is a stunning album, and one that should be heard not just by classical and electronica fans, but anyone who values thoughtful, subtly expressive music.
Era: Contemporary
Year: 2004 (recording... performance as early as 1984)
Score: 90
Wow, this is another brilliant work by Penderecki. It's not quite as good as Symphony No. 7, but pretty close/of a similar caliber. I think I agree with the dude below that part of why I like these late Penderecki pieces so much is because they have a "post-romantic sensibility" about them. Good stuff. Probably my favorite though is the expansive percussion, but really the whole orchestration is solid.
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Polish Requiem, for SATB, chorus & orchestra
Description by Alexander Carpenter
As musicologists have noted, Penderecki is, above all else, these three things: a composer, a Polish patriot, and a Roman Catholic. In the Polish Requiem, these three aspects of Penderecki come together to produce a large-scale religious work for soloists, mixed choir, and orchestra. The work was composed over the course of nearly five years, and its many parts were composed in a number of different places in the world, as Penderecki undertook his conducting tours. The Requiem is certainly first and foremost a religious work, a mass for the dead in the Roman Catholic church service: the Agnus Dei was composed for the funeral of Penderecki's friend Cardinal Wyszynski, and the Recordare, Jesu pie was written for the beatification of Father Maximillian Kolbe. It should be noted, however, the Penderecki's Requiem also has a political side as well, revealing the composer as patriot: the Lacrimosa was written as a commission from Solidarity trade union leader Lech Walesa, and the Dies irae was composed to commemorate the Warsaw uprising against the Nazis in 1944.
Penderecki's Requiem omits several parts of the liturgical requiem, the Offertorium and Sanctus, replacing them with a Polish hymn and a finale taken from the psalms of David. In terms of its musical language, the Requiem represents Penderecki's mature style, a blending of modern sound and technique with a kind of post-Romantic sensibility. The work is pervasively polyphonic, the harmonic language chromatic. Moments of rich counterpoint are juxtaposed with noisy chord clusters and glissando effects. The Lacrimosa and Agnus Dei were originally composed as independent pieces, and were performed in the early 1980s before the entire Requiem was finished. These two sections of the Requiem are among its most profound, in particular the Lacrimosa, written in a decidedly tonal style and with a moving sorrowful character echoing the Requiems of Mozart and Verdi. The Requiem ends, like Verdi's, with a heartfelt Libera me, though Penderecki appends a finale which includes quotations from the sixth psalm of David and which brings back themes from earlier sections, including the Recordare and Lacrimosa.
The Requiem in its entirety was first performed in Stuttgart in September 1984. Guido Barth wrote, at the premiere, of the Requiem's profound Polish Catholicism, and felt in it "at once the confrontation of present times with the submission of its people to their history." The Polish Requiem thus stands as Penderecki's monument to the Polish people, a musical accounting of their past and future sufferings.
(didn't listen to any of this - hoping it's ok quality, but spotify link above was great)
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" ... the Lord says: See, I am setting before you the way of life and the way of death". The rest of the text quotes, Daniel, Isaiah,and the Psalms, concerning God's strength and glory, recapitulates the music of Part I, and declares that "Your [Jerusalem's] gates will always stand open, they will never be shut, day or night ...".
