Robert Schumann: Piano Concerto in A-Minor and Symphonies 1, 3 and 4

This 1990 double CD release from the German budget label Pilz provides some of the best music from Robert Schumann (1810-1856), whose life and career were cut short from mental illness, but whose massive catalog of piano works and four symphonies are among the finest music from the so-called Romantic period.

Schumann was influenced by such major figures as Franz Schubert and Felix Mendelssohn, but his performing career on piano was ended by an injury to his right hand, forcing him to focus exclusively on composition.  He came into prominence with his piano works during the 1830s and, the next decade, branched out into symphonic work.

His muse was Clara Wieck, a virtuoso pianist and daughter of Schumann's teacher, who resisted their romance even as they married in 1840 when Schumann went to court to overcome a legal objection.  Clara was ambitious, controlling, and constantly championed her husband even as she chafed at the restraints of raising a large family (there were eight children), managing the household, and continuing her performance career.

Schumann's mental illness worsened by the early 1850s and he attempted suicide before being placed into an asylum where he remained until his death.  One of his few visitors (Clara was not allowed because of concerns of his mental state) was a young Johannes Brahms, who was a friend and who the Schumanns championed, though it was years before Brahms made his mark.

The piano concerto on this set was recorded by The Radio Symphonic Orchestra at Ljubljana in Slovenia, conducted by Marko Munih and Dubravka Tomsic as soloist, while the three symphonies were conducted by Henry Adolph and performed by the Philharmonica Slavonica.  To these untutored ears, the playing is fine, especially the concerto, and Schumann's expressive, dynamic and emotional compositions seem to come out well.  The pieces abound with beautiful melodies and pleasing harmony.

Schumann's works may be very familiar, but they are always welcome to hear again and again, because of their complexity, richness and expressiveness.

Soul of Angola: Anthologie de la Musique Angolaise, 1965-1975

Angola is a country the history of which is filled with strife, from the colonial domination of the Portuguese for some 500 years to the 27-year civil war which followed independence in 1975 and which ravaged the southwestern African nation of about 28 million (with many killed and displaced in the last forty years).

So, it was with great curiosity that this stellar two-disc recording, released in 2001 by the Lusafrica label, based in Paris, was acquired, because the time period covered was the last decade before independence when political agitation grew among Angolans.  The album's liner notes by Leonard Silva, refer to the idea "the urban Angolan musics of the 1967/70 period were born from a strong desire to oppose a cultural resistance to the colonial Portuguese power."  It was also asserted that it was impossible to separate the independence movement from the "new musical creativity rebirth," which was a form of "soft protest."

What emerges on this impressive anthology are pieces centered on treble-heavy guitar, with often infectious and driving rhythms and nods to British and French pop-rock infleuences and a variety of African and Afro-American percussion styles from the adjacent Congo (a book just finished two days ago detailed to horror of the Belgian dominance of that part of Africa), Brazil (another Portuguese colony) and the Caribbean.  This reflects another fascinating combination of musical sources in a place that stamped these with its own identity.

It was stated in the liners that, when Portuguese authorities took a new tack in 1968 in dealing with Angola, one of these was the creation of a national radio station that gave voice to the new wave of young musicians featured on this recording.  Silva observed that listeners "will be able somehow to recount one of the most important stages in the historic march of the Angolan artists, for the recognition of their musical art and culture."  While some of the musicians featured on this remarkable album died during the civil war years, Soul of Angola is a document of remarkable artistic endeavor in an era of struggle for a country still seeking stability.

Masters of Old-Time Country Autoharp

Somtimes a recording is (or a group of them are) acquired out of sheer curiosity and this great Smithsonian Folkways release is one of those.  An expanded version of a 1962 Folkways album, this disc features nearly forty short pieces played on the autoharp, an instruments invented in the 1870s as a variation of a zither. 

Several posts on this blog, mainly of music from other countries, have highlighted instruments that are related to the zither and dulcimer, most recently the post on Lily Yuan, a Chinese master of her instrument.  Here is an album focusing on performers in the Appalachian region of the southern U.S. performing on the autoharp, which reached this area as the 19th century yielded to the 20th.

The players are Ernest "Pop" Stoneman, the first person to record on the instrument back in 1924; Kilby Snow, who held the instrument upright and played what he called "drag notes," or slurs or hammering on the strings across frets; and the father-and-son duo of Neriah and Kenneth Benfield, who played duets and solo pieces on the recording.  All four men are masters, though Snow is particularly impressive for his innovative technique.  There is accompaniment on harmonica (Stoneman), guitar, and banjo, as well.

Spearheading the recording was Mike Seeger, who came from a prominent musical family that included his half-brother Pete Seeger of the famed folk group The Weavers, and who was founder of the New Lost City Ramblers during the Folk Revival of the late 1950s.  Seeger's notes are very interesting and informative as he detailed the use of the autoharp and discussed the musicians, with whom he accompanied on several tracks.  Song notes of tunes that are both traditional pieces and originals by the musicians are also notable and are by Charles Wolfe.

The sounds generated by the autoharp are clear, ringing and, to this listeners, inherently uplifting.  The problem was that the instrument needed frequent tuning, which led people to abandon it when the fad wore off and it was easier to turn to other instruments, such as banjo or guitar.  More modern versions, from the 1960s onward, were improved to avoid the need for frequent retuning.  Masters of Old-Time Country Autoharp is an excellent introduction to the instrument and the Southern tradition of playing it, even for those who might not think country, folk or bluegrass is of interest.

Ornette Coleman Quartet: This Is Our Music

After the controversial splash (or tidal wave, maybe) that the Ornette Coleman Quartet made when it played its legendary run at the Five Spot in New York in 1959, the group was signed to a major label deal with Atlantic Records.

What resulted was an amazing run of phenomenal recordings that raised a ruckus among those who thought Coleman was a fraud, in his playing and compositional and conceptual methods, but also was inspiring to a new generation of creative artists and adventurous listeners drawn to his freer ideas of performance.

The third Atlantic release, and Coleman's fifth album overall, This Is Our Music, was recorded in summer 1960 and released early the following year.  It included pocket trumpeter Don Cherry and bassist Charlie Haden from his previous work, but also featured drummer Ed Blackwell, replacing Billy Higgins.  The latter was an important part of the success of The Shape of Jazz to Come and Change of the Century, but Blackwell proved to be more than a worthy successor, with his particular way of accompanying the soloists and, as Coleman wrote in the liners, his ability to "play rhythm so close to the tempered notes that one seems to hear them take each other's places."

This Is Our Music starts off with the hard-hitting and propulsive "Blues Connotation," which easily has one of the most memorable melodies in all of Coleman's work.  This high-energy masterpiece is followed by one of the most haunting and off-kilter ballads in the composer's palette, the stunning "Beauty is a Rare Thing" (which became the title of the 1990s box set of Coleman's complete recordings for Atlantic.)

All the tunes on this album are excellent and showcase not only the fine solo work, including some of the more interesting playing by the leader in his long career, but also the staggering interplay among the four musicians as an integrated ensemble--a core component of Coleman's hard-to-articulate concept of "harmolodics."  Notably, for a composer who almost never performed covers, there is a pretty straight-ahead version of the Gershwin brothers' chestnut "Embraceable You" that stands out amid the originals.  Part of the immense appeal (or the big turnoff) of Coleman's work in those early years was his unpredictability and willingness to explore wherever the music took the players and the listeners.

Earle Brown: Folio and Four Systems

Considered to be part of the New York School of modern composers, along with John Cage, Morton Feldman and Christian Wolff, Earle Brown developed an "open form" system of composition in the early 1950s that allowed for a measure of authorial intent and choice and improvisation by the performers.

While some early examples of the method were very abstract and left a great deal of room for musicians to interpret what Brown aimed for, later pieces had more concrete notational concepts in them.  In any case, the composer's ideas were a radical departure from conventional composition, even if Cage became even more open in his way of composing and Feldman retained more traditionnal forms of notation.

It's small wonder that John Zorn was greatly inspired by Brown's methods and that this recording is issued under his Tzadik label.  Zorn and the Earle Brown Foundation, celebrating what would have been the composer's 80th birthday in 2006 (he died four years prior), assembled a remarkable group of musicians for Folio and Four Systems.

The first piece, "Folio" was recorded by Brown as he performed trumpet (his main instrument) along with percussion and bass, and another work, "June 1953," was orchestrated by him withh Wolff playing piano as part of a quartet. Others on the album include the amazing vocalist Joan LaBarbara, the remarkable pianist Stephen Drury, noise musician Merzbow (Masami Akita), laptop electronic performer Ikue Mori, violinist Mark Feldman, composer and electronic musician Morton Subotnick (just highlighted on this blog), and the great trumpeter Leo Wadada Smith. 

There is a stunning variety of sounds, textures and colors on this recording that illustrate what Micah Silver, in his contribution to the informative liners, describes as "Brown's attempt to take his music to the brink.  Not to leave it there, but to visit the brink in order that he could explore his way home (wherever that would be) more freely." 

Brown is quoted writing "With FOLIO I intentionally extended the compositional aspect and the performance process as far out of normal realms as I could, just short of producing nothing at all."  The idea was to be produce work between "extremes of finite control" and "extremes of infinite ambiguity."  He also noted that truth is a mobile point on an arc between two ends of a paradox.  Translated into music, that can be very challenging for the listener, but a little patience and an open mind (for open form) can be very rewarding.