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Thursday 16 July 2020

Benjamin Britten - A Midsummer Night's Dream



"Benjamin Britten's own recordings of his operas must be considered authoritative, but any great art can yield insights from a variety of interpretations, and an objective performer may find felicities in a score of which the composer was hardly aware. Additionally, new recording technology can create a truer realization of the sound, and in vocal music, the quality of voices in subsequent productions can surpass the originals, so new recordings are always welcome.

"Virgin's reissue of its 1990 recording of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', conducted by Richard Hickox is notable for how closely it resembles Britten's 1966 version in many aspects. The sound quality is somewhat fuller than Britten's, and orchestral details emerge with more clarity, but the engineers have gone overboard in duplicating the spatial relationships of a stage performance, so there is a distracting variability in the soloists' miking; some are very close and some are so distant as to be nearly inaudible. It may be an accurate replication of the theater experience, but more sonic consistency would have been less annoying. (Some decisions seem random; Lysander almost always sounds distant, and Demetrius, close. The miking is, however, very effective in capturing Puck's fleet leaps from near to far.) The soloists in the two versions are similar in quality, which is very high, as well as in interpretation. Britten's conducting of the diaphanous opening and the fairies' sound world has a magic that Hickox's does not, but Hickox's handling of the comic elements is generally more deft and funnier, except for the play of Pyramus and Thisbe, which Britten handles incomparably. Britten's reading of the score unfolds more organically, while Hickox is less successful in making the sound worlds of the fairies, the mortals, and the mechanicals flow together as an integrated whole. If a choice must be made, Britten's original remains the preferred version, but not by so large a margin as to disqualify Hickox's very reputable effort, which has much to recommend it." (Review by Stephen Eddins. From AllMusic. See here.)

Performers: City of London Sinfonia, Richard Hickox, James Bowman, Della Jones, Lillian Watson, Henry Herford, John Graham-Hall, Jill Gomez, Donald Maxwell, Dexter Fletcher

1.1. Act I: Introduction. The Wood, Deepening Twilight/'Over Hill, Over Dale'
1.2. Act I: 'Oberon Is Passing Fell And Wrath'
1.3. Act I: 'Well, Go Thy Way'
1.4. Act I: 'How Now My Love?'
1.5. Act I: 'Be It On Lion, Bear, Or Wolf, Or Bull'
1.6. Act I: 'Welcome Wanderer... I Know A Bank'
1.7. Act I: 'Is All Our Company Here?'
1.8. Act I: 'Fair Love, You Faint With Wand'ring In The Wood'
1.9. Act I: 'Through The Forest Have I Gone'
1.10. Act I: 'Stay, Though Thou Kill Me, Sweet Demetrius'
1.11. Act I: 'Come, Now A Roundel And A Fairy Song'
1.12. Act I: 'You Spotted Snakes With Double Tongue'
1.13. Act I: 'What Thou Seest When Thou Dost Wake'
1.14. Act II: Introduction. The Wood
1.15. Act II: 'Are We All Met?'
1.16. Act II: 'I See Their Knavery'
1.17. Act II: 'Be Kind And Courteous To This Gentleman'
1.18. Act II: 'Hail, Mortal, Hail!'
1.19. Act II: 'I Have A Reas'nable Good Ear In Music'
1.20. Act II: 'How Now, Mad Spirit?'

2.1. Act II: 'Flower Of This Purple Dye'
2.2. Act II: 'Puppet? Why, So?'
2.3. Act II: 'This Is Thy Negligence'
2.4. Act II: 'Up And Down, Up And Down'
2.5. Act II: 'On The Ground, Sleep Sound'
2.6. Act III: Introduction. The Wood, Early Next Morning/'My Gentle Robin, Seest Thou This Sweet Sight?'
2.7. Act III: 'Helena! Hermia! Demetrius! Lysander!'
2.8. Act III: 'When My Cue Comes, Call Me'
2.9. Act III: 'Have You Sent To Bottom's House?'
2.10. Act III: 'Now, Fair Hippolyta'
2.11. Act III: 'If We Offend, It Is With Our Good Will'
2.12. Act III: 'Gentles, Perchance You Wonder At This Show'
2.13. Act III: 'In This Same Interlude It Doth Befall'
2.14. Act III: 'O Grim-look'd Night, O Night With Hue So Black'
2.15. Act III: 'O Wall, Full Often Hast Thou Heard My Moans'
2.16. Act III: 'You Ladies, You Whose Gentle Hearts Do Fear'
2.17. Act III: 'This Lanthorn Doth The Hornèd Moon Present'
2.18. Act III: 'Sweet Moon, I Thank Thee For Thy Sunny Beams'
2.19. Act III: 'Asleep, My Love?'
2.20. Act III: 'Come, Your Bergomask'
2.21. Act III: 'Now The Hungry Lion Roars'

Harry Partch - Enclosure Five


"[Revelation in the Courthouse Park] is one of the major music dramas by Harry Partch, the American pioneer of just intonation music. It is a powerful piece dramatically and musically, using the resources of Partch's collection of self-made microtonal instruments, including the bass instrument, the marimba eroica.

"In 1955, Partch, intrigued by the hero-worship of the stars of the new rock & roll music (especially Elvis Presley), mentioned a plan for transplanting Euripides' 'The Bacchae' into a contemporary American setting. Eventually, Partch alternated 'The Bacchae', set in ancient Thebes, with scenes in an American courthouse park, where Dion, the new popular music star, makes an appearance surrounded by his rapturous (mostly female) fans. The frenzied, half-nonsensical American segments provide a kind of relief from the searing tragedy of the King of Thebes, who, due to his lack of reverence for the newly-proclaimed god, Dionysus (or Bacchus), is mauled by the spellbound Theban women. The powerful stage spectacle is a telling of the classic tragedy, with running commentary on how the same phenomena noted by Euripides exist today. Partch's main target was the destructive nature of cultural conformism.

"Partch, then associated with the University of Illinois, proposed his idea, called 'Revel and Revelation', to the University for the 1961 Festival of Contemporary Arts. He began seriously writing the text in June 1959 and the music in February 1960. Staging Revelation was an unusually smooth process. For the first time, Partch worked with a producer (Barnard Hewitt) and choreographer (Jean Cutler) who understood, and were in accord with, his ideas. The two sides to the drama were set on opposite sides of the stage, where Partch's often massively beautiful instruments and their players were on full display and gave the whole production a ritualistic quality. Partch, as always, had to teach the players how to play his instruments and how to read their parts, assisted by Danlee Mitchell and Jack McKenzie. The production was a success and largely well received.

"While rehearsals were in progress, gymnastic coach Charles Pond saw a sequence from Chorus III of 'Revelation' called 'Tumble On', using tumblers and a trampoline. He asked Partch to prepare the scene, 'with added music,' to be used in the upcoming NCAA Gymnastics Championship. This music was named 'Rotate the Body in All Its Planes' and was premiered three days before the performance of the major work, on April 11, 1961." (Description of 'Revelation in the Courthouse Park' by Joseph Stevenson. From AllMusic. See here.)

"In 1933, [Harry Partch] had read William Butler Yeats' English translation of Sophocles' 'Oedipus Rex' and wrote the poet asking for a meeting after Partch came to Europe. Partch built a new instrument, the adapted guitar, with frets allowing him to play in his new scale system. Partch played and sang his setting of 'By the Waters of Babylon' for the aging poet. Partch was thrilled when the performance excited Yeats and his comments showed 'total comprehension' of Partch's musical ideas. Yeats said that ' ...a play done entirely in this way, with this wonderful instrument, and with this type of music, might really be sensational.'

"Partch then went through his proposed outline for 'Oedipus'. Yeats approved the plan, and brought in an Abbey Theater actor. Yeats and the actor read through parts of 'King Oedipus' and Partch made a rough graph of their speech inflection.

"The immediate result of the meeting was that Partch began to build more instruments. But several years intervened - some lost as Partch wandered, often as a hobo, without access to his instruments - before Partch found support for a production of his opera.

"Partch began actual composition in San Diego early in 1951, and completed it in Oakland, CA, on July 31 of that year. Four actors - portraying Oedipus, Jocasta, Tiresias, and the Spokesman of the Chorus - sing in intoning voice, while the other characters speak normally. The orchestra comprised clarinet, cello, and double bass, plus nine Partch-built instruments, including the contemporarily built marimba eroica, an enormous sub-bass percussion instrument. Partch cut Yeats' drama to its human core, and, true to his representations to Yeats, created intensified lines closely following speech. Allan Louw, as Oedipus, mastered Partch's style immediately, a comprehension shared by director Arch Lauterer.

"'King Oedipus' was premiered on March 14, 1952, at Mills College in Oakland and was given three times to sold-out houses. However, lack of funding stymied efforts to give the opera in New York, and Yeats' literary administrators elected not to honor Yeats' own letter to Partch granting permission for the setting. Partch, therefore, had to write a new text himself, for a 1954 staging (he called the new version, simply, 'Oedipus'). Release of the recording made of the Mills College production was prevented until decades later, when Yeats' text went into Public Domain.

"Although the music mostly underlines the drama until the catastrophe of the final section, Partch's Oedipus is a gripping, emotionally shattering setting, miles removed in impact from the brittle and artificial opera-oratorio form of the century's most famous musical setting, Stravinsky's 'Oedipus Rex'." (Description of 'King Oedipus' by Joseph Stevenson. From AllMusic. See here.)

"Harry Partch completed 'The Bewitched' in 1955. The composer referred to it as a satyr play, ritual theatre, and 'A Dance-Satire.' It is in ten scenes and about 75 minutes in duration. It is exotic and bizarre, not resembling Western art in any knowable sense. This work appeals to the imagination of the listener as a work from a fictional past. The stage is dominated by instruments at different locations on stage and on risers of different heights. Among the instruments are those of the composer's own invention, as well as Western and Asian instruments, the majority of them being winds and percussion. The central figure of the concert is The Witch, who for the most part sits on a throne at the front of the stage, robed, and exposed to changing lights that often render her to a silhouette and always a powerful presence. She also conducts a mixed chorus, and none of the vocal work includes actual text, though the work has an extensive plot synopsis. The work's argument, provided by the composer, maintains that humanity is divided into those who prefer good music and those who prefer less-good music, and that both sorts of people are frequently forced to contend with the other musical preference. In the piece's prologue, musicians are on stage as though they had always been there, like the Egyptian phoenix that was the first living creature in the universe. They are eternal spirits of music, and it is also to be understood that they are on a university campus. The witch appears and complains (in nonsensical speak) that the world prefers background music, to her displeasure. Following the prologue are ten different scenes of deep strangeness, mingling academic life with figures from mythologies representing different cultures and periods in history. The scenes have strange names such as 'A Lost Political Soul Finds Himself Among the Voteless Women of Paradise,' and 'A Court in its Own Contempt Rises to a Motherly Apotheosis.'

"None of the intensively detailed plots would be detectable in the score, making a recording of the music and a performance of the work different events entirely. As background to many different sorts of occasions, the soundtrack of 'The Bewitched' is a wonderful find, not to be underestimated. It is wild in its exoticism and beautiful. There is no greater dramatic curve to be followed, and the listener is not missing anything vital if paying attention only periodically while the recording plays itself out. For other listeners, 'The Bewitched' is a subtle set of variations of moods, featuring a unique nuance to each. It is a kind of religious music, unhappy with academia, sitting askew among the Western canon." (Description of 'The Bewitched' by John Keillor. From AllMusic. See here.)

1.1. Ulysses Departs From The Edge Of The World (A Minor Adventure Of Rhythm)
1.2. Revelation In The Courthouse Park, Chorus One
1.3. Revelation In The Courthouse Park, Chorus Three, In Part
1.4. Revelation In The Courthouse Park, From Scene One: Hymn To Dionysus: Holy Joy And Get Religion
1.5. Revelation In The Courthouse Park, From Scene Two: Hymn To Dionysus: What The Majority Believes
1.6. Revelation In The Courthouse Park, From Scene Two: Hymn To Dionysus: Glory To The Male Womb
1.7. Revelation In The Courthouse Park, End Of Scene Three And All Of Chorus Four
1.8. Revelation In The Courthouse Park, End Of Scene Four And Coda
1.9. Introduction To King Oedipus
1.10. King Oedipus, Introduction
1.11. King Oedipus, Opening Scene
1.12. King Oedipus, First Chorus
1.13. King Oedipus, Tiresias Scene (Beginning)

2.1. King Oedipus, Tiresias Scene (Conclusion)
2.2. King Oedipus, Second Chorus
2.3. King Oedipus, Creon Scene
2.4. King Oedipus, Jocasta Scene
2.5. King Oedipus, Incidental Music
2.6. King Oedipus, Third Chorus
2.7. King Oedipus, Messenger Scene
2.8. King Oedipus, Fourth Chorus
2.9. King Oedipus, Herdsman Scene
2.10. King Oedipus, Oedipus Scene
2.11. King Oedipus, Fifth Chorus
2.12. King Oedipus, Instrumental Commentary
2.13. King Oedipus, Antiphony
2.14. King Oedipus, Exit Oedipus - Pantomime
2.15. King Oedipus, Final Chorus And Coda
2.16. Johann Krieger: Menuet (From Partita In G)
2.17. Douglas Moore: Come Away, Death
2.18. Come Away, Death
2.19. By The Rivers Of Babylon
2.20. Introduction To The Bewitched

3.1. The Bewitched, Prologue
3.2. The Bewitched, Scene 1: Background For The Transfiguration Of American Undergrads In A Hong Kong Music Hall
3.3. The Bewitched, Scene 2: Background For The Permutation Of Exercises In Harmony & Counterpoint
3.4. The Bewitched, Scene 3: Background For The Inspired Romancing Of A Pathological Liar
3.5. The Bewitched, Scene 4: Background For The Alchemy Of A Soul Tormented By Contemporary Music
3.6 The Bewitched, Scene 5: Background For The Visions Of A Defeated Basketball Team In The Shower Room
3.7. The Bewitched, Scene 6: Background For The Euphoria On A Sausalito Stairway
3.8. The Bewitched, Scene 7: Background For The Transmutation Of Detectives On The Trail Of Culprit
3.9. The Bewitched, Scene 8: Background For The Apothesis Of A Court In Its Own Contempt
3.10. The Bewitched, Scene 9: Background For A Political Soul Lost Among The Voteless Women Of Paradise
3.11. The Bewitched, Scene 10: Background For The Demonic Descent Of The Cognoscenti While Shouting Over Cocktails
3.12. The Bewitched, Epilogue

The Harry Partch Collection Volume 2


"In its final revised version (first performed in 1968), 'The Wayward' unfolds as a cross-country odyssey inspired by the nine years during the Great Depression that Partch spent as a 'broke-ass poor' hobo/composer. He rode the rails and thumbed rides across the country, often as not to get from one opportunity for musical employment to another, his self-created array of instruments packed up and shipped on ahead. They were hard times and it was a tough life. But despite that, it appealed to Partch for its camaraderie of the rails and the freedom of the open road.

"[...] As the scene evolves, the hobos' banter is accentuated by Partch's distinctive instruments: microtonal strums, plucks, and harmonic slurs from the surrogate kithara and large kithara II, bell-like tones from the cloud chamber with its chorale of suspended glass bowls, contrasting polyrhythms from diamond marimba and the enormous deep-voiced bass marimba, the clicky-clack of the multitubed bamboo boo II, and the melodious moans [...] of the modified organ Partch christened the chromelodeon.

"The huddle of the jungle camp gives way to the hawking of newsies: 'San Francisco – A Setting of Cries of Two Newsboys on a Foggy Night in the Twenties', with members of ensemble in the aisles brandishing the latest yellow journalism headlines of the Chronicle. Next came 'The Letter – A Depression Message From a Hobo Friend', with [...] the role of a slouchy, hatted narrator.

"It all builds toward what is by far the work’s most descriptive and lengthy movement — 'U.S. Highball – A Musical Account of a Transcontinental Trip, from San Francisco to Chicago'. It incorporates the entire array of instruments as well as narrative and song to form a truly great piece of American musical landscape painting.

"As the hero makes his way across the country, jolting along in an empty boxcar, puffing 'over the hump to Cheyenne,' his thumb out for anyone 'goin' east,' Partch layers tones atop tones and creates polyrhythms that clatter like the rails. There’s even a sarcastic 'praise the Lord' hymn offered up at a Salvation Army soup kitchen. [...]" (Jim Farber. From the San Francisco Classical Voice review of the Partch Ensemble premiere of The Wayward. See here.)

1. The Wayward: I. U.S. Highball - Musical Account Of A Transcontinental Hobo Trip
2. The Wayward: II. San Francisco - A Setting Of The Cries Of Two Newsboys On A Foggy Night In The Twenties
3. The Wayward: III. The Letter
4. The Wayward: IV. Eight Hitchhiker Inscriptions From A Highway Railing At Barstow, California
5. And On The Seventh Day Petals Fell In Petaluma

Åke Hodell - Spirit of Ecstasy; The Way to Nepal


"[...] Features two avant-garde masterworks from Swedish composer/artist, Åke Hodell. 'Spirit of Ecstasy (Racing Car Opera),' composed in 1977, is a bizarre experiment in 'non-music,' and an amazingly weird opera that tells the story of the first half of the 20th Century through that powerful symbol, the automobile. It features a compelling story despite consisting mostly of the repetitive chanting of car names, and it displays a witty sense of humor. 'The Way to Nepal (Landscape Music)' from 1971 is as unique and interesting, but more sombre, and noticeably darker in it's conception. It is as amazing as the first side, although probably the lesser known of the two. This package is beautiful and the reissue sounds crystal clear. A must-own album for avant-garde collectors, and a valuable work of experimental art." (From the Soundohm notes to the 2015 LP reissue. See here.)

A. Spirit Of Ecstasy (Racing Car Opera)
B. The Way To Nepal (Landscape Music)

Gene Ammons & Sonny Stitt - God Bless Jug and Sonny


Another early 70s date from Ammons and Stitt. This is a straight ahead date in contrast to contemporary soul jazz feel of "You Talk That Talk!" (see here), with a stellar lineup of Cedar Walton at the piano, Sam Jones on bass and Billy Higgins on drums. While the pedigree of the musicians here means the lineup might be unchanged were it recorded ten or fifteen years earlier, the live recording is of stellar quality and, in particular, the reverberating bass tone marks this out distinctly as a 1970s date. Jug and Sonny pair on tenor on "Blue 'n' Boogie", "Stringin' the Jug" and "Bye Bye Blackbird" (no electric tenor here!), with Ammons taking a tenor solo for an excellent "God Bless the Child", Stitt displaying his lightning chops and soulful playing in tandem on alto on "Autumn in New York", and the rhythm section taking the fore for "Ugetsu". The music here is, as might be expected, flawless and timeless in equal measure. It was issued, at long last, in 2001 as a CD on Prestige.

Performers: Gene Ammons (t-sx), Sonny Stitt (a/t-sx), Cedar Walton (pi), Sam Jones (bs), Billy Higgins (dr)

1. Blue 'N' Boogie
2. Stringin' The Jug
3. God Bless The Child
4. Autumn In New York
5. Ugetsu
6. Bye Bye Blackbird