Erkki-Sven Tuur: String Quartet

I had been tossing and turning thinking about what piece to show this week, and I came to the decision that actually its about time I discuss this figure. Erkki-Sven Tuur (1959*) is quite the Estonian giant and is important to Estonia for two major reasons; his musical eclecticism and sheer vibrancy. He first started his musical career in the progressive rock band Spe heavily influenced by Frank Zappa, and Emerson Lake and Palmer. Shortly after this period he dove into 'classical' composition. He studied with Jaan Raats and Lepo Sumera and studied electronics in Karlruhe, Germany.

His music has a great vibrancy and energy and is never afraid to include various musical devices or strategies into pieces like bringing serialist language in combination with minimalistic repetitions and cycles. Even though the string quartet (1985) is not the strongest piece by Erkki-Sven Tuur, I felt compelled to talk about this one first, as it was the first piece of his I found. The colour and clarity of the two movement work really struck me.

The two movements are very direct episodic movements, with the first being about half the length of the second movement. The first movement closely resembles a rondo or ritornello form loosely following this shape:

A - B - C - B1 - C1 - A

A - is a monophonic texture with the quartet musically playing in unison, the harmony is vaguely tonal, but contradicts itself as it is never clearly Bb major or Eb major for example.

B - is a more animated episode with driving arpeggios in the violins while the viola and cello wait before interacting with it.

C - is a still moment, with the cello playing a harmonic glissando to colour the circling notes in the other three instruments.

The directness is treated remarkably as  it never feels predictable.

The second movement is far more extensive in its evolution, but follows a similar basic shape to the first movement. It vaguely references the same kind of shape, but feels more elegant in its construction. The second movement is as follows:

A - B - A1 - B1 - C - B2 - A2 - Reiteration of opening material of 1st movement.

A - is growing tremolandi 

B - is a burst of circling notes, combined with an arpeggiated gesture

C - is a sustained chord of Db, F,G,Ab.

It is a wonderful and approachable work, which made me fall in love with the composer's work. In larger scale works like the symphonies or concerti, the pieces are far more profound and elegant; this is by no means a condescending message for his chamber works like this quartet. It is hard not to love his work. You can hear the string quartet here  and you can find out more about Erkki-Sven Tuur here; alternatively you can find him on twitter.

See you next time, when I am likely to come back to wittering about lovely Lithuanians. 

Raimo Kangro: Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra No. 2

Firstly, and rather belatedly, Happy New Year. As the blog is still very young, it would have seemed pretentious to do a rounding off 2015 blog post; especially when I hadn't even been writing this blog for the whole year. This past week has been rather nonstop with my involvement in the BFE/RMA Student Conference 2016, in Bangor north Wales. It was fun to be involved for two reasons, firstly it was great to introduce everyone present to works by Kutavicius, Juzeliunas, and Montvila. Secondly, it was particularly fun to be extra sci-fi by being sat in my comfy flat in Vilnius, talking 1000 miles away in Bangor through the magical power of Skype.

Anyways, it is back into the Baltic and into the gems. As it is wonderfully chilling and snowy here in Vilnius, we need something upbeat and positive. I could think of no better person than the wonderfully witty and charming Raimo Kangro (1949-2001). Raimo is a figure I have had a wonderful soft spot for, ever since I heard the first note of his music. Raimo has a wonderful charm and wit that can only be equaled by composers like Haydn or Vivaldi. A student of Jaan Raats and Eino Tamberg, Raimo Kangro became closely linked to the 'neo-classical' scene in Estonia. The 'neo-classical' label does Raimo Kangro a disservice, mostly giving the impression that he was a conservative composer. His music is wonderfully energetic, bouncy, and just a joy to listen to.

What really makes Raimo Kangro stand out is his connection to sonatas, symphonies, and concerti. Works like his Clicking Symphony or Sonata for Two Pianos are times when he is at his strongest. So this brings me to his Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra. This wonderful four movement work. The first movement Declamazione starts with a rich piano chord, resonating freely as strings slowly enter; then a burst of life comes into the orchestra. After a brief interlude by the pianos, the orchestra enter again, circling on their motifs, the atmosphere is calm, rich, and resonant. The colour and power in the orchestra builds into really beautiful passages.

The second movement Variazione starts a fantastical musical interaction between the two pianos, focused on the more percussive effects like harmonics and plucking strings. As can be guessed from the title, the movement is a theme and variations of sorts, with opening gestures returning to the for. A highly rhythmic movement and is just a pure delight to listen to.

The third movement Impressione is a more austere movement, with crystal clear piano chorale. The entry of the cellos brings in a rich melody, and the circling harmonic material adds real beauty, but also a really mournful tone to the movement. The entry of the pedal adds so much angst to the piece that you are just gripped for the entirety of the movement. 

The final movement Allegro is a real tour de force, a speedy that just keeps flying. The pianists are let off the reins and are both able to really show off their own prowess. The circling harmonic configuration, gives the movement real stability allowing the soloists and orchestra the space to bring out the energy; not that it is much of a challenge, with the irregular time signatures and moto perpetuo-feel of the whole movement.

The work is wonderfully direct, so I do not want to take up more of your time, by giving strong rhetoric to prove you should enjoy this. Just listen to the piece here on spotify. The two other works: Concerto for Two and Gaudeo are both wonderful gems I aim to touch on in the future. Until next week.

Justina Repeckaite: Toro

My choice of composer is built on two reasons, firstly it is always a novelty for me to see contemporary composers writing for my first musical instrument, the euphonium; secondly she is a composer I have admired her work for as long as I have known about her.

Justina Repeckaite (1989*) is a Paris based composer, who initially studied in under the guidance of Osvaldas Balakauskas and Ricardas Kabelis while she was studying in Lithuania. While in Paris she has studied with Jean-luc Herve and worked with many leading ensembles like Ensemble 2e2m and Ensemble Cours-Circuit. A meticulous composer, every single one of Justina's pieces is carefully considered and expertly crafted. In the profile I wrote about her for the Lithuanian music information centre, I made the comparison between her and a diamond which annoyingly now writing this blog post, I cannot find a way to top it. There is not much point in trying to compete with myself or rewrite myself.

The piece in question I wanted to show this week is Justina's work Toro (2015) for euphonium and electronics. the work was written for and dedicated to Vianney Desplantes a wonderful French euphonium player, who really brings so much out of such a beautiful instrument. Toro almost quite simply gets the most animalistic sounds out of the instrument, through percussive colours, multiphonics, and other extended techniques; and then further warps them with the electronics. The result is an extremely primal ritual. 

Despite the raw sounds and disjunctive shifts from gesture to gesture, the result is oddly hypnotic. The gradual build of energy in the centre of the piece is just fantastic; its almost like a whole new creature has been born out of this piece. Hopefully other euphonium players will see this piece and just realise how much more there is to their instrument, so they can finally put things like the Carnival of Venice to sleep. Anyway back to my point, the structure of the piece is handled so beautifully and the energy and musicality always well restrained; its almost like Justina knows the story of the ten bulls, this bull despite still being a wild animal, is well controlled and brings a new musicality to an instrument that has needed this input for a severely long time.

The recording of the piece can be heard here and people who want to discover more about Justina Repeckaite really should check out her website here. I am intrigued where she could take this instrument, and as always very intrigued to see where her music takes her next.

Bronius Kutavicius: String Quartet No. 1

As mentioned in my last post, I had gone on a bit of a bender in a local music shop where I had managed to buy four scores by Lithuanian composers for around 10 euros. I had discussed Stasys Vainiunas's second piano concerto. This week I am returning to the Lithuanian giant Bronius Kutavicius. In this previous article I discuss Kutavicius's background as well as the phenomenal Gates of Jerusalem. In the aforementioned music shop, I had managed to grab myself a copy of Kutavicius's first string quartet.

The work is an intriguing curiosity for many reasons, firstly it was written in 1971 and it is an intriguing period of Kutavicius's music, as it is still searching for 'identity'. The piece is in three movements simply called: Con Sordino, Pizzicato, and Arco. The three movements in their Feldman-like no-nonsense naming do exactly what the titles say. This mentality would have been a welcome relief for many composers of this time, as it opened the door to more extreme forms of experimentalism, detaching themselves from the romantically obsessed older generations; as well as being able to not go out of the confines of Soviet decreed social realism.

Musically the piece is more akin to early Gorecki or Penderecki, which is of no real surprise due to how important the Warsaw festival was to composers in the iron curtain. The chaotic flourishes, combined with aleatoric devices make the piece truly wild, a far distance from the hypnotic repetitions often associated with the giant.

The first movement, Con Sordino, is almost in a free sonata form, with the two main contrasting materials: the extremely quiet running lines, and the chorale-like texture. The harmonic emphasis of the work is on a tetrachord of A, Bb, B, and C, four tones each a semitone apart. This symmetrical harmony is a definitive sign Kutavicius was incorporating serialism, a form of music that is often seen as a dirty word even now. 

The second movement, Pizzicato, starts with a canonic material incorporating glissandi and many other variations of pizzicato. Then we hear a 8 voiced chorale which leads to an almost recitative like line from the first violin who is interjected by the rest of the ensemble. The centre of the movement is extremely dense, but oddly quiet, as the pluck single notes, but also continue tapping the string. This produces a very dense but quiet rustling from the ensemble. This suddenly breaks into a manic firework of fortissimo plucks which slowly die away into a final hearing of a melody being passed around the ensemble, before the final cadential chord.

The final movement is oddly more traditional, this maybe due to the fact, arco is the basic premise of the instruments. The opening pulses combined with later tremolandi and harmonics, make the movement the most energetic and colourful . The finale of the movement harks back to the dense circling melody we initially heard in the opening movement before coming to a final close on a B. 

Below is a wonderful recording of the work by the Vilnius String Quartet. The piece is an interesting work, but by no means one of Kutavicius's highlights. This is not to degrade the piece in anyway, but Bronius Kutavicius's greatest moments have been his oratorios. Works like Gates of Jerusalem or Last Pagan Rites, are truly astounding. This quartet is a very well crafted work, and a wonderful edition for the ensembles historical canon, but Kutavicius's greatest moments leave this in the dark. This being said, it has been wonderful to delve deeply into this score as it really shapes and give a lot of context to both the life and work of Kutavicius, but also opens up how composers attempted to deal with the situation they were put in during the Soviet Union. 

Until next time, I wonder what gem I'll discuss.

Stasys Vainiunas - Concerto No. 2 for Piano and Orchestra

Another installment arrives earlier this week, as I will be flitting off for a few days and didn't want to get lazy with this blog. It also ties in nicely with my little trip to the music book shop near the old town in Vilnius. I popped in, mostly to buy a friend a birthday present, but came across four scores of Lithuanian composers being sold at an extremely modest price, so I couldn't turn down the opportunity. One of those scores was Stasys Vainiunas's Concerto No. 2 for piano and orchestra.

Stasys Vainiunas (1909-82) is an intriguing composer, mostly from the sense of the fact he was in the first generation to be composing under Soviet occupation. What this ultimately meant was he and composers like Balsys Dvarionas and Antanas Raciunas had to write 'socialist realist' music. Despite the hindrances from external forces the music has some wonderful characteristics, which I think no regime could stamp out. Vainiunas himself was a composer and pianist, which like Chopin and Liszt before him, led him to write primarily for the instrument.

The concerto is a charming and modest three movement concerto. The modesty is probably what drew me to it. I am always put off by sickly sweet pieces which are too self indulgent, its my main complaint of a lot of composers between 1800-now. The form of the first movement is quite a curious little thing. The introduction of the movement is three major segments, with the opening material reappearing to round it off before the soloist gets going. What is interesting is how the introduction material gives away the entire shape of the movement. The rest of the movement plays around on the three areas really exploring their character and shape. The faster material is a modest nod to sutartines with its pulsing and irregular rhythms combined with intervals of a second.

The second movement is a rounded binary shape, with a beautiful harmonisation of the Lithuanian folk tune Beaustanti Ausrele, and the middle being a fast paced rhythmical material which also harks back to sutartines. The simplicity of the shape and open clarity of the harmonies makes the movement quite touching, and is oddly very similar to moment of Gustav Holst or Ralph Vaughan-Williams; especially in their slow melodic movements.

The Final movement is a pianistic tour de force, but is never to bombastic. Its sense of restraint and modesty makes the gestures more meaningful and feels like a necessary concerto and not another piece to bolster the ego of another diva.

Coming across this piece has been quite intriguing, mostly because I have had to do some serious digging to find out about him. The generation of composers in the Soviet era have ultimately been swept under the rug, as understandably, people don't want to reminisce about that period. What also strikes me is how knowing British audiences would adore this piece, mostly the Classic FM variety, but like many composers they become neglected because they are unfamiliar names. Which ultimately is sad, Classic FM listeners could have a wonderfully broad and international palette of music to listen to, but are constantly spoon fed a thousand renditions of Fur Elise or the New world symphony. 

But to come back to the point. Stasys Vainiunas, is a charming composer, who if under different circumstances could have produced something more 'modern'. But the sheer craftsmanship and elegance of the work goes beyond that.

So enjoy the recording below, sadly I could only find recordings online of the first two movements. Next time I will discuss another one of my findings. 

Rytis Mazulis - Canon Mensurabilis

Before I start my usual ramblings, my brief absence has been the combination of having my first visitor from the UK and being knee deep in other tasks. It has allowed me to spend some time thinking about who on earth do I discuss next. It then suddenly struck me, it has to be Rytis Mazulis next. Having been in Vilnius now for three months, I have been able to see the magnitude of Mazulis's cult status. A quiet man, who is regularly found walking up and down the corridors of the academy, from my own encounters coffee is one of the main motivations for Mazulis's wanderings up around the academy.

Rytis Mazulis (1961*) when he was a student studied with Bronius Kutavicius in the M.K. Ciurlionis School of Arts, then went on to study with Julius Juzeliunas in the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre. Mazulis is often described as a 'machinist' composer (not to be misread as 'masochist' composer), for those unfamiliar with the title; 'machinism' supposedly music which ultimately is very mechanic. Ultimately this is kind of true, but tells you nothing about what the music sounds like. I also dislike the title because of its use as an extension of minimalism. This is something that also misses the mark, a significant amount of Mazulis's music is canonic, ultimately a never ending canon, or a perpetually circling canon which is positively medieval, not minimalism.

Rytis Mazulis also often incorporates microintervallic gestures into his music, which is often used to blur the landscape or to simply distort the canon, but always producing hypnotic results. I remember just over a year ago Rytis told me about how when Horatiu Radulescu was in Vilnius, Radulescu kept telling Mazulis off for using microtones in the 'wrong' way.

 I digress, another element of Mazulis's music is the form. Ultimately in Mazulis's works, the form is in one direction, going from start to 'finish'. Inside the music, will be small evolutions and distortions, but never recapitulating in any sort of 'classical' sense. This combined with the hypnotic sounds is one of the many things that drew me to Mazulis's works, they hold you and simply are, there isn't any real extra nonsense on top of it. Any listener can hear the results.

The piece I wanted to show is 'Canon Mensurabilis' written in 2000 for the ensemble 'Ensemble Court-Circuit'. Like the medieval canon, the work is focused on a canon with different voices moving at different speeds. But on top of this Mazulis has some fun fluctuations and distortions running at the same time. Firstly the beat patterns change in patterns of:

(12-6) (10-5) (8-4) (6-3) (4-2) (3-6) (4-8) (5-10) (12-6) (10-5) (8-4) (6-3) (4-2)

This irregular pulsing ultimately distorts all sensation of rhythm as the predictability is constantly distorted. The semi-quaver pulse in the piano feels unrelenting and constant. On top of this the use of microintervals also distorts the soundscape. The piano from C3-B4 are tuned a quarter down. C4-C5 are unchanged, and C#5-C#6 are tuned a quarter up. On top of this the violin and flute (who are with C#5-C#6) play a quarter tone, the clarinet and viola do not play microintervals. The cello (who is within C3-B4) plays a quarter tone up. This combination of microintervals produces 'out of tune' semitonal clashes, which resolve. But always circling. The result is hypnotic and mind boggling, if 60s hippie bands had access to this instead of the sitar they would have had their brains fried.

But enough chit-chat here is the piece:

 Until next time. 

Anna Veismane: Wings

With the past few posts being consistently full of Lithuanian composers, you would be forgiven to think I am only going to discuss Lithuanians. Now GAIDA has finished, I thought this would be a great opportunity to discuss a recent Latvian gem I have uncovered.

The composer in question is Anna Veismane (1976*) a composer who I am surprised it took me so long to discover her. A pupil of Peteris Vasks and Romualds Kalsons, to name just two of her teachers. Her music and herself don't need too much of an introduction, due mostly to the wonderful clarity in her work. But to show her off a bit, she has worked with ensembles and musicians all over the world like the North/South Chamber Orchestra (USA), Latvian Radio Choir, William Schimmel, and The Concorde Contemporary Music Ensemble, to name but a few. I have never really been fond of just quoting someone's biography, but for me it simply highlights how many composers who are pretty busy writing for ensembles worldwide go under the radar, especially in the sheltered musical environment of Britain.

But I digress, today's post is merely an introduction to one piece for cello and accordion called Wings. The work was written and performed by TWOgether duo, at the Latvian Music Days 2014. The second work by Veismane with the title, the first being a piece for solo flute. The duo is pretty captivating, starting with timid flashes and flutters of sound. Hearing the gestures pass from cello to accordion and vice versa is always fascinating, due to the quite dynamic separating the two instruments becomes almost impossible. Then suddenly a strong gesture from the cello bursts from the music into a beautiful frenzy, with small circling motifs combined with clusters in the accordion. The energy is slowly released, and the duo shimmer and die away into nothing.

The work isn't overtly grand or revolutionary, but it is just a nice fresh piece of music. Every gesture and idea is refreshing to listen to and is something I have been listening to on loop for a fair while now. Its also always nice to just come across a gripping miniature. Sometimes the most gripping pieces of music are tiny, just look at Farben from Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra, or Webern's symphony. 

Enjoy the piece here, but I also recommend people check out her website here. Some recordings of her works are present and they are definitely pieces I will want to discuss in future posts. Until next time!