Thoughts on the Death of Rodion Shchedrin

Rodion Shchedrin (right) with his wife, prima ballerina assoluta Maya Plisetskaya (photograph provided by Si-Ziga, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, from Wikimedia Commons)

I just finished reading the obituary for composer Rodion Shchedrin, written by Johnathan Kandell for The New York Times. I know Shchedrin’s music best for his score for Alberto Alonso’s one-act ballet “Carmen Suite,” created for Maya Plisetskaya, prima ballerina assoluta of the Bolshoi Ballet. According to my archives, the New Century Chamber Orchestra performed this suite twice, the most recent having taken place in the Concert Hall of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in September of 2014. Unless I am mistaken, I was able to see this ballet performed by American Ballet Theatre back when I was working on the East Coast a few decades ago.

It would be fair to say that what I remember most about this score is the abundance of Shchedrin’s gestures that poke fun at the music for Georges Bizet’s Carmen. The first example that comes to mind is how he rearranged the entrance of the toreadors for a xylophone solo. (Any time I played my recording for friends, that episode evoked the most raucous response!)

I subsequently had a second encounter with that sense of humor, this time a bit more explicitly. This was back in 2019, when I wrote about the Profil release of thirteen CDs entitled Kyrill Kondrashin Edition: 1937–1963. This included Shchedrin’s first concerto for orchestra, given the title “Naughty Limericks.” Mind you, the music did not do a particularly good job of reflecting the “scan” of a limerick; but the overall rhetoric was unabashedly naughty. This was composed in 1963, a decidedly “safe distance” from any risk of provoking the legacy of Joseph Stalin!

Shchedrin’s sense of humor would surface about three decades later with the publication of “3 Merry Pieces” for piano trio. I first encountered this music on the debut album by the AdAstra Piano Trio, released through the Polish label CD ACCORD. I had little to say about this music at that time, but it was in good company rubbing shoulders with another raucous composition, the three-movement “Café Music” by Paul Schoenfield, which I have previously associated with performance by a band of Muppets!

With all that context, it would be fair to say that Shchedrin never seemed to be shy about exercising his sense of humor, no matter who happened to be calling the shots from the Kremlin!

Catone’s “Complete” Shostakovich: Volume 2

courtesy of Naxos of America

At the beginning of this year, I wrote about the launch of a project to record a more thorough account of Dmitri Shostakovich’s compositions for solo piano. The recordings are being made by Italian pianist Eugenio Catone and released by Stradivarius. When I learn about a project like this, I tend to assume that the individual albums will be released at a snail’s pace. Therefore, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the second volume will be released this coming Friday and that, as expected, Amazon.com has created a Web page for processing pre-orders. The not-so-good news is that, as of this writing, the album will distributed only for digital download; and I have yet to encounter any specific information about a “physical” release.

Readers may recall that there were only two instances of content not previously recorded in the first volume. The more significant of these is the addition of three preludes to the Opus 2 collection. The other consisted of nine tracks of juvenilia composed between 1918 and 1920.

Where the second volume is concerned, it turns out that the “new content” has nothing to do with Shostakovich. The two piano sonatas, Opus 12 and Opus 61, remain as they have always been. The same can be said of the seven pieces in the Opus 69 Children’s Notebook. The only difference is that the new release accounts for all eleven of the “Variations on a Theme by Glinka,” composed in 1957. This was a “collective” project for which Shostakovich provided only three variations, the eighth, the ninth, and the eleventh. The remaining variations were composed by Eugen Kapp, Vissarion Shebalin, Andrei Eshpai, Rodion Shchedrin, Gregory Sviridov, and Dmitri Kabalevsky; and they have all been recorded by Catone.

I am not sure how advantageous it was to include this in a complete-works project for Shostakovich. On the other hand, after having poked around both Amazon and Google, I found myself wondering if the complete set had ever been previously recorded (particularly since this music has nothing to do with the Glinka variations composed by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov). The project took place in 1957, which was a relatively good time for artistic innovation as the innovators became less fearful of Joseph Stalin’s ghost. The fact is that all the contributors seemed to have had fun with this project at a time when “fun” was only gradually returning to their working vocabulary. At the very least, this “complete” set of variations provides the attentive listener with some sense of the company that Shostakovich was keeping at that time.

Dazzling Percussion Featured at Davies

Last night in Davies Symphony Hall, guest conductor Joseph Young led the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) in the program that was devoted almost entirely to a performance of Rodion Shchedrin’s “Carmen Ballet.” Shchedrin composed this music for his wife, prima ballerina assoluta Maya Plisetskaya, who premiered the title role at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow on April 20, 1967. As I observed this past Wednesday, Shchedrin called his score “a creative meeting of the minds,” the minds being his own and that of Georges Bizet, composer of the Carmen opera.

I should therefore begin by taking issue with the SFS program sheet, which identified the music as having been composed by “GEORGES BIZET (arr. Rodion Shchedrin).” This is a gross misconception. Shchedrin deserves the same “top billing” that Franz Liszt claimed for any of his many solo piano paraphrases of opera music. As is the case with those paraphrases, the real creativity behind the score can be found in the arrangement, rather than the source content, whose primary asset was being a source of themes familiar to just about everyone in the audience.

As the audience assembled in Davies, they were quickly aware that, while the tunes would be familiar, the treatment would definitely be “something completely different.” The rear of the stage was filled with a cornucopia of percussion instruments, both pitched and unpitched. There were four percussionists led by Principal Jacob Nissly; and all of them should have had their names listed on the program sheet, just as is the case for any concerto soloists. In the center of all this, Edward Stephan presided over a set of four timpani.

These was not the only shortcomings on that program sheet. The ballet score is in thirteen sections, but anyone encountering this music for the first time would not know this from the program. All thirteen of the sections were listed on five lines, and no one took the trouble to separate them with punctuation marks! Those planning to attend tonight’s performance would benefit from having a copy of the Wikipedia page for this music, which provides not only a clearer enumeration of the sections but also gives a through account of all the percussion instruments and how they are distributed among the four players.

The good news is that the performance itself could not have been more delightful. Shchedrin’s treatment of Bizet covers the full gamut from the ridiculous to the sublime, and Young clearly knew how to give each of those dispositions its proper treatment. He somewhat spoiled the fun by letting the audience know in advance about one of Shchedrin’s most prankish gestures; but it was soon followed by another one, which registered the expected shock value for just about everyone in the audience.

Having seen the ballet for this music, I should also note how satisfying the concert experience was. The fact is that trying to cram all of that percussion into an orchestra pit is more than a little unfair to both the performers and the listeners. Watching the SFS percussionists was as absorbing as watching the ballet being performed; and, with all of those instruments on the stage, one had a far better sense of how Shchedrin had conceived the interplay between the percussion and the string section (the only other instruments on the stage).

“Carmen Suite” was preceded by two relatively short compositions. Carlos Simon’s “An Elegy: A Cry from the Grave” was only about five minutes in duration. It was conceived as a memorial piece for Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, and Michael Brown; and it served as a compelling example of intense emotion expressed through quietude. It was preceded by Jessie Montgomery’s “Banner,” composed in 2014 as a bicentennial “response” to “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

We have come a long way in our attitude towards our National Anthem. Igor Stravinsky composed an orchestration that was banned by an Act of Congress! Montgomery’s reflection on the Anthem was imaginative and featured compelling solo string performances by violinists Alexander Barantschik and Helen Kim, violist Yun Jie Liu, cellist Peter Wyrick, and Charles Chandler on bass. Nevertheless, there was a sense that Montgomery said all that she had to say before her composition covered its duration of less than ten minutes.

Revisiting the “Carmen Suite” Ballet

This is the week when the San Francisco Symphony, led by guest conductor Joseph Young, will perform the music for the “Carmen Suite” ballet, first performed on April 20, 1967 at the Bolshoi Theatre with prima ballerina assoluta Maya Plisetskaya in the title role. The choreography was created by Alberto Alonso, who was, at the time, the choreographer for the Ballet Nacional de Cuba. Plisetskaya’s husband, Rodion Shchedrin provided a score, which he called “a creative meeting of the minds,” the minds being his own and that of Georges Bizet, composer of the Carmen opera.

“Creative” is definitely the operative word in that phrase. To fit Alonso’s distillation of Bizet’s opera, Shchedrin cherry-picked his way through Bizet’s score, rearranging the music for a string orchestra augmented by one timpanist and four percussionists, each in charge of a generous battery of pitched and unpitched instruments. The choreography was similarly provocative, playing up the sexual interplay among the key characters in Bizet’s opera with a hyper-charged rhetoric that, even in the Sixties, was seldom encountered on an opera stage. As a result, between the bizarre sonorities coming out of the orchestra pit and the unabashed sexuality taking place on stage, Yekaterina Furtseva, Soviet Minister of Culture, banned the work immediately after its premiere performance.

Here in the United States awareness of this production was limited to an Angel album of Shchedrin’s score. It was one of those records that got played for friends with the preface, “You ain’t gonna believe this!” Shchedrin had a prankish sense of humor that amounted to never missing an opportunity to thumb his nose at authority. (The first of his five concertos for orchestra was given the title “Naughty Limericks.”) The prospect of seeing the choreography associated with his outlandish treatment of Bizet seemed out of the question on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Fortunately, time seems to heal wounds inflicted by Soviet authority. As early as 1974, Plisetskaya was allowed to arrange a world tour with selected “Stars of the Bolshoi Ballet” as the program notes put it; and, on September 17 of that year, they gave the United States its first exposure to Alonso’s “Carmen Suite” ballet. Almost two years later, on June 12, 1976, American Ballet Theatre (ABT) added the ballet to its repertoire. Both of those performances of the ballet were given at the Metropolitan Opera House in Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. I cannot, for the life of me, remember which of these I saw; but I am pretty sure it was the ABT performance.

These days “Carmen Suite” has a respectable presence on YouTube. There is a video of Alicia Alonso (Alberto’s sister-in-law) performing the leading role with the Cuban National Ballet at a performance on August 4, 1967 (back when the ballet was declared off-limits to the United States by the Soviet authorities). This is a black-and-white film, whose audio track is only marginally better than the video. More satisfying is the video of the Cuban performance on June 21, 2015, which actually documents two performances with different casts back-to-back. However, for my own money, the most satisfying video is a Bolshoi performance from 2019 (YouTube does not provide a more specific date) with Svetlana Zakharova in the title role.

Svetlana Zakharova doing what she does best (screen shot from the video being discussed)

Zakharova has extensions that are nothing short of jaw-dropping. At the risk of stepping on the wrong toes, I would suggest that her youth endows her with an agility that was simply beyond the scope of the much more mature Plisetskaya and Alonzo, who led the “original casts” in Russia and Cuba, respectively. Furthermore, there is a dramatic acuity in this staging that is more concerned with the personalities behind the choreography than with whether or not the dancers are doing justice to the music. Indeed, there are elements in this staging that, in my own humble opinion, do more justice to the characters than can be found in most stagings of Bizet’s opera.

That said, there are any number of passages in which Shchedrin’s music is as naughty as it was when he first composed his score. Whether the music is performed for a ballet program or a concert setting (as will be the case for the next two days), the attentive listener will probably encounter any number of devices through which Shchedrin tickles the funny bone. Is it permissible to giggle? In a concert setting Shchedrin’s wit is right up there with the pranks of Joseph Haydn. Indeed, I am sure that Shchedrin would be more than satisfied with anything letting loose an LOL reaction!

Decca Gold Releases Wei Luo’s Debut Album

Emerging young pianist Wei Luo (from the Amazon.com Web page for her debut album)

At the end of last month, Decca Gold released the debut album of the young Chinese pianist Wei Luo. Luo is currently studying with Gary Graffman at the Curtis Institute of Music, and last year she was granted the 2018 Gilmore Young Artist Award. Prior awards include first prizes in both the eleventh Chopin International Competition for Young Pianists and the second Rachmaninoff International Piano Competition for Young Pianists. Here in San Francisco she made her debut with San Francisco Performances (SFP) at the annual Gift Concert recital held on April 2, 2017.

As might be expected, her debut album showcases many facets of the diversity of her repertoire. She bursts out of the gate, so to speak, with Maurice Ravel’s solo piano transcription of his “choreographic poem” composed for full orchestra, “La Valse.” The Wikipedia page for this composition cites the transcription as “infrequently performed due to its difficulty;” but my own library includes a performance of that transcription played by HJ Lim.

The majority of the album, however, is devoted to Russian composers. In “order of appearance” they are Dmitri Shostakovich (two of the prelude-fugue couplings from his Opus 87 set of 24, those in D major and D minor), Sergei Prokofiev (his Opus 83 sonata in B-flat major, the second of his three “war” sonatas), and Rodion Shchedrin (the first two of the 25 preludes in his Polyphonic Notebook). However, Joseph Haydn “intervenes” between Shostakovich and Prokofiev with a performance of his Hoboken XVI/52 sonata in E-flat major.

Wei’s performance of “La valse” definitely grasps the attention of the serious listener. She clearly has the discipline to take on Ravel’s challenges and is not afraid to reveal the connotations of this music as the disquieting reflections of a mind seriously impacted by the horrors of World War I. In a similar vein, while Shostakovich composed his preludes and fugues in 1950 and 1951, the D minor fugue suggests that World War II continued to haunt him. This is the most monumental of the fugues in the overall collection; and Wei clearly appreciates that the rhetorical side of this music is as important as a command of the composer’s polyphony, if not more so.

On the other hand the weight of her intensity does not serve her particularly well in her approach to Haydn. It is not that she does not appreciate the need for a light touch when approaching Haydn. However, her pendulum swings between thematic material that clearly needs that touch to overdoing the sections that call for louder dynamics. Clearly, Haydn did not write this sonata for a modern grand piano; but there are any number of pianists who know how to keep from going overboard when Haydn calls for fortissimo. On this particular recording Wei has not yet established herself as one of them.

Ironically, that pendulum swings to the other extreme in her approach to Prokofiev. The tempo specification of the first movement may be Allegro inquieto, but Wei’s reading almost feels as if she wants it to be jolly. Similarly, the lifting of tensions in the second movement comes across as more syrupy than other Prokofiev pianists deliver. Only in the third movement does Wei arrive at a rhetorical stance consistent with the context of this “war” sonata; and it is a bit too late for most listeners by then. Still, her capacity for lighter spirits servers her well with the Shchedrin pieces that close out the album.

Sadly, I have not been able to find an account of Wei’s SFP recital. I know that her program included both the same two Shostakovich prelude-fugue couplings and the same Prokofiev sonata. Unfortunately, however, my schedule did not allow me to attend that particular event. The actual recording sessions for her debut album took place over a year after that recital, so I am not even sure that her frame of mind at that time would have been consistent with they way in which she approached those two composers when playing in Herbst Theatre. As a result, the best I can say about her debut album is that it has piqued my curiosity; but my curiosity about her second album may be more guarded.

Hakhnazaryan Makes an Impressive SF Debut

Last night in the Concert Hall of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, San Francisco Performances (SFP) presented the San Francisco debut of the young Armenian cellist Narek Hakhnazaryan. This was the second of the three concerts in the 2017–2018 Young Masters Series, the annual reminder that awareness of the coming generation is always just as important as the enjoyment of those who have firmly established their careers. Hakhnazaryan was accompanied by pianist Noreen Polera, returning to SFP for the third time.

The program was divided between large-scale compositions and a diversity of shorter works. The major work on the program was Johannes Brahms’ Opus 99 cello sonata in F major, the second of the two he composed. Brahms completed his first cello sonata, Opus 38 in E minor, in 1865, around the time he was beginning work on A German Requiem (Opus 45), which became his first major public success. Indeed, he had trouble getting Opus 38 published and even spoke dismissively about it.

Opus 99 was written about two decades later. It presents a composer with a far more positive attitude, confident to write a duo in which the partners are very much on equal terms. The result is a first-rate match of richly expressive phrases for the cello that resound through floods of pianistic gestures that never force the cello off the stage. Both Hakhnazaryan and Polera clearly understood this relationship, supremely confident that they were up to its high-wire challenges. The result could not have been more satisfying, making it clear that the judges for the fourteenth International Tchaikovsky competition knew what they were doing in awarding the Cello First Prize and Gold Medal to Hakhnazaryan in 2011.

The Brahms sonata was preceded by the work of one of Brahms’ strongest influences, Robert Schumann. His Opus 70 was a coupling of Adagio and Allegro movements originally written for horn and piano. Schumann subsequently specified that the solo part could be taken by cello or violin; but one can easily detect the “horn call” passages in the Allegro movement. Hakhnazaryan took the idioms that characterized both of the movements at face value, never trying to imitate a horn but reflecting that instrument’s capacity for not only vigorous energy but also extended lyrical passage by rethinking those qualities through his cello.

The intermission was followed by a diverse assortment of music on a shorter durational scale. Hakhnazaryan began with a collection of five relatively brief pieces, each based on a folk theme, by the Georgian composer Sulkhan Tsintsadze. Hakhnazaryan observed that there were many parallels in the folk traditions of Georgia and Armenia. Indeed, listening to these engaging miniatures, one could easily hear echoes of Aram Khachaturian (along with a bit of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s take on an “Arab” dance, which he composed for the ballet The Nutcracker). There were even a few suggestions of klezmer, making me think that the ethnomusicological expertise of Veretski Pass might have been informative.

The geographical stance then migrated west to the Iberian peninsula. “Asturias,” which was originally published as the first movement of Isaac Albéniz’ Opus 232 suite Chants d’Espagne, is one of that composer’s best known pieces. It is also one of the most successful evocations of guitar technique to come from a piano keyboard, so it should be no surprise that the music is now played frequently by guitarists. So last night we had a cello and piano evoking the spirit of a piano evoking the spirit of a guitar, prepared by an arranger not credited in the program book. To his credit Hakhnazaryan seems to have a clear sense of when the music was conducive to the cello, and he played up those moments for all they were worth.

from IMSLP (public domain)

He then complemented this “chain of evocations” with an evocation of Albéniz himself by the Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin. Shchedrin was no stranger to Spanish rhetoric, having transmogrified Georges Bizet’s score for Carmen into a bizarre concoction for strings and percussion, which served as music for a ballet based on the opera choreographed by Alberto Alonzo for Shchedrin’s wife, prima ballerina assoluta Maya Plisetskaya. Shchedrin’s “Imitating Albeniz” was written for solo piano in 1959 and subsequently arranged for cello and piano by Walter Despalj. Hakhnazaryan and Polera presented this version with all of the wit it merited.

Hakhnazaryan then turned to the “violin encore” repertoire with his own arrangement of the “Meditation” interlude from Jules Massenet’s opera Thaïs. Listening to his performance, one could easily forget that Massenet had intended the music for a solo violin. Hakhnazaryan then returned to Iberia, concluding his program with “Requiebros” (compliments) by the Catalonian composer (and student of Pablo Casals) Gaspar Cassadó, a thoroughly engaging wrap-up of his survey of miniaturist techniques.

As might be expected, however, he and Polera returned with two encores. The first went back to appropriating virtuoso violin music. This time he turned to the violin virtuoso Niccolò Paganini playing his “a Preghiera” sonata, an introduction and variations on “Dal tuo stellato soglio” from Gioachino Rossini’s opera Mosè in Egitto. What made this a particularly virtuoso turn was that Paganini required the entire piece to be played on the highest string of the instrument (E on the violin but a fifth lower on the cello). He then concluded with the one selection by an Armenian composer, a nocturne by Edward Bagdasarian (not to be confused with Ross Bagdasarian or any of his chipmunks). Again this was music written for violin which translated over to cello with little difficulty.

Cellist Hakhnazaryan is Next SFP “Young Master”

Cellist Narek Hakhnazaryan (courtesy of San Francisco Performances)

Next month will see the second concert in the annual Young Masters Series organized by San Francisco Performances (SFP). The program will present the San Francisco debut of Armenian cellist Narek Hakhnazaryan. His accompanist will be pianist Noreen Polera, who will be appearing under SFP auspices for the third time. (At her first appearance she accompanied cellist Clancy Newman.)

Hakhnazaryan moved to the United States at the age of 22 to begin his studies at the New England Conservatory. This was in 2011, the year in which he won Cello First Prize and Gold Medal at the fourteenth International Tchaikovsky competition. Prior to making the move, he had been mentored by Mstislav Rostropovich. Since then he has accumulated an impressive track record of performances as a concerto soloist, a recitalist, and member of a chamber ensemble.

Hakhnazaryan’s program for SFP will consist of original compositions and arrangements. Nineteenth-century romanticism will be represented by both Robert Schumann’s Opus 70 coupling of Adagio and Allegro movements and Johannes Brahms’ Opus 99 (second) sonata in F major. He will play an arrangement (probably the one by Jules Delsart) of the “Meditation” music from the second act of Jules Massenet’s opera Thaïs. He will also play an arrangement of the opening prelude (also known as both “Asturias” and “Leyenda”) from Isaac Albéniz’ Opus 232 suite Cantos de España (songs of Spain). This will be coupled with Rodion Shchedrin’s “In the Style of Albeniz,” which he originally composed for violin and piano in 1973. Also from the twentieth century will be Gaspar Cassadó’s Requiebros” (complements), which was dedicated to Pablo Casals.

Those who have been following the Young Masters Series may recall that, when cellist David Requiro gave his performance in this series in March of 2014, he concluded with a fascinating encore selection. This was “Sachidao,” the third of the set Five Pieces on Folk Themes by the Georgian composer Sulkhan Tsintsadze. Hakhnazaryan’s recital will include all five pieces in this set as the most recent selection on his program.

This performance will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, February 16. The venue will be the Concert Hall of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, located at 50 Oak Street, between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin Street, a short walk from the Van Ness Muni station. All tickets are being sold for $40. Tickets may be purchased in advance online through a City Box Office event page.

AdAstra Piano Trio Makes a Nonstandard Recording Debut

A little over a week ago the Polish label CD ACCORD released the recording debut of the AdAstra Piano Trio. Also based in Poland, the group consists of violinist Anna Szabelka, cellist Łukasz Frant, and pianist Joanna Galon-Frant. The title of the album is Episodi, which is taken from the first selection, “Episodi e Canto perpetuo” (episodes and perpetual song) by the Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks. In fact the entire album is devoted to American and Eastern European compositions written during the last century.

At the very least this is a refreshing change from piano trios that feel determined to establish their chops through familiar nineteenth-century repertoire, daring to cross over into the next century only for the likes of Maurice Ravel or possibly Dmitri Shostakovich. The American composers on the album are Henry Cowell (his 1965 “Trio in Nine Short Movements”) and Paul Schoenfield (his 1985 thoroughly loopy three-movement “Café Music”). The other Eastern European is the Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin, represented by a 1997 piece that Grove Music Online translates from the Russian as “3 Merry Pieces,” which is apparently based on much earlier pieces composed for solo piano.

Curiously, this is not the first piano trio album to draw its title from Vasks. In 2012 the Boulanger Trio also used it as an opening album selection, following it with the two Shostakovich piano trios, providing a rare opportunity to listen to the seldom recorded Opus 8 trio in C minor. Similarly, AdAstra has prepared a program of rarely heard pieces. However, here in San Francisco there is one notable exception: “Café Music” has received a generous amount of exposure, particularly by the Aleron Trio before they disbanded. It was written on a commission by the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, supposedly inspired by Schoenfield’s days as a house pianist at Murphy’s steakhouse in Minneapolis. However, when I have written about this piece in the past, I have described it as “more suited to the Mos Eisley Cantina, possibly hosting a guest band of Muppets.”

Unfortunately, Schoenfield’s over-the-top sense of humor has not translated well to this recording. In fairness, however, it may be the case that it does not translate well to any recording. The very sight of three highly disciplined performers deftly jumping through all the hoops set up by Schoenfield’s score is as much a part of the fun as is the music itself. When it comes to comedy in music, the Shchedrin selection fares much better on recording, particularly the second of the three pieces, whose title in English translates into “Let’s Play and Opera by Rossini.” Structured as a coloratura aria with an introductory recitative, the piece indulges shamelessly in Rossini quotes and packs no end of low-comedy gags into a little more than two minutes. For this listener, at least, Shchedrin having fun with Rossini is a lot more satisfying than the fun he had with Georges Bizet when he prepared a score for a ballet about Carmen choreographed by his wife Maya Plisetskaya.

The more serious selections by Cowell and Vasks lead the listener into more exploratory domains. Both composers were interested in the technical potential of all three of the instruments in both solo and ensemble capacities. Furthermore, each of the two compositions amounts to a series of relatively brief studies. One might regard them both as sets of études; but these are “studies” directed at the ears of the attentive listener, as well as at the technical skills of the performers. From this point of view, the opportunity to revisit the Vasks composition turned out to be a very welcome one, while my reaction to the Cowell pieces simply involved wondering why I had to wait so long to listen to them for the first time.

How long will we have to wait before AdAstra makes their first tour of the United States?