Contemporary Classical for Christmas

Peter-Anthony Togni: Lamentatio Jeremiae Prophetae (ECM New Series)

Whitacre and others are changing new music.

"A bum rap is a hard thing to beat. That's the problem "contemporary classical" music faces today, thanks to the audience-unfriendly composers of the post-World War II decades.

But those composers - Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, Milton Babbitt and many others - who did such a fine job of alienating audiences half a century ago, have pretty much faded from the scene. More and more, composers today are writing with a sympathetic understanding of what people really want to hear.

In recognition of this happy trend, here are five recent CDs by North American composers. They'd all make fine Christmas gifts for the classical-music lover on your list who already owns everything that Bach, Beethoven and Brahms wrote.

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Choir and bass-clarinet sounds like an unlikely combination of musical forces. But Togni, (a Canadian composer) has teamed up with Toronto's Elmer Iseler Singers and bass clarinetist Jeff Reilly to create a powerful and expansive work that he calls "a concerto on texts from the Book of Lamentations."

The choir, under Lydia Adams, sounds great. But what makes this work so unique and fascinating is Reilly's performance: He's a virtuoso of contemporary techniques, and Togni has given him plenty of room to show off what he can do. As well, it's to the composer's credit that he has managed to successfully marry tonal harmonies to some very "outside" improvisations in the bass clarinet.

As the texts Togni has chosen would suggest, this is mournful, sometimes angry, music. But it's also hauntingly beautiful and deeply expressive.."
Colin Eatock; Sunday, 4 December 2011 12:44

Retrieved from: http://www.colineatock.com/1/post/2011/12/contemporary-classical-for-christmas.html (© Colin Eatock 2011) on January 3, 2011