Review

Author(s): Caroline Rae

Review by: Caroline Rae
Source: Tempo, New Series, No. 216 (Apr., 2001), pp. 55-58
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/946740
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CDs is that they feature nothing from the Milan
Electronic Studio. Neither is there anything from
Utrecht or Warsaw and only one piece from
Tokyo (Yuasa's Projection Ensemplastic). The
Cologne studio is represented only by an edit
from Stockhausen's Kontakte and a briefEimert/
Beyer collaboration which actually predates the
former's most important work; there is nothing
by Ligeti, Boucourechliev, Kagel, Evangelisti,
Hambraeus or Gottfried Michael Koenig.
INA/GRM of Paris is represented only by an
early Schaeffer Etude and edits from Bayle,
Risset, Ferrari and Parmegiani (the latter a mere
2-minute segment); and nothing by Lejeune,
Riebel, Mache, Malec or - most amazingly -
Pierre Henry.
Yet even if one is prepared to accept the
inherent bias towards American music the
anthology still makes little sense due to its exclu-
sion of Gordon Mumma, Bulent Arel, Earle
Brown, Alice Shields, Ilhan Mimaroglu and
the prototype of live electronic music, the
Cage/Tudor collaboration Cartridge Music. Part
of the problem, I suspect, revolves around the
rather equivocal term 'gurus' (of electronic
music). Had the anthology been titled 'pioneers'
or 'innovators' the exclusion of so many major
figures would have been difficult to justify.
However, the term 'guru' is so open to differing
interpretations that one can readily include such
historically inconsequential figures as Raymond
Scott, Paul Lansky, Holger Czukay and Laurie
Spiegel without having to justify their relevance;
and present Jon Hassell and Brian Eno alongside
Eimert and Xenakis as if their achievements
were in any sense artistically equivalent.
For me this anthology represents a tragically
wasted opportunity. It would surely have been
possible to reissue some of the pioneering creations
of electronic music which originally appeared
on the Philips anthologies 'Panorama des Musiques
Experimentales' and 'Electronic Panorama', and
the Disques Bam classics 'Musiques Experi-
mentales' 1 & 2 - four anthologies which
between them offered a balanced selection of
major works from the studios of Paris, Cologne,
Utrecht, Warsaw, Milan and Tokyo. I have in
mind such masterpieces as Mache's Terre de Feu,
Carson's Turmac, Kagel's Transicion I,
Boucourechliev's Texte I, Parmegiani's
Ponamatopees II, Kotonski's Microstructures,
Dobrowolski's Music for Magnetic Tape No. 1,
Kayn's Cybernetics III ... the list could continue
(check the relevant discography in New
Perspectives). The challenge now is to compile a
genuinely international survey which rescues such
unjustly forgotten works from obscurity. And
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Record Reviews 55
which sets the historical record straight. For
electronic music was not primarily an American
achievement at all. This was for the simple
practical reason that the commercially owned
radio stations of the US were unwilling to loan
studio facilities to experimental composers;
whereas their state owned counterparts in
Europe - even Eastern Europe - were more than
willing to do so. Leaving aside Louis and Bebe
Barron (who had their own private facilities)
electronic music was not a triumph of American
entrepeneurship but of bureaucratic, if benevo-
lent, state ownership in postwar Europe.
Finally, it should be possible to compile a defin-
itive anthology comprising whole pieces, especial-
ly since most of the pioneering works were rarely
more than a few minutes in length - as an
example Xenakis' Concrete P.H., his first tape
composition, is just two and a half minutes long.
(The very reason why Stockhausen's Kontakte
provoked such a storm at Darmstadt was because,
at 35 minutes long, it challenged the prevailing
orthodoxy in favour of extreme concision). The
fact that this compilation comprises edits from
large-scale pieces available elsewhere give it the
rather episodic flavour of one of those advertising
samplers issued by the major CD catalogues (and
suggests that there was never any serious attempt
to obtain full copyright for the works in question).
An immense disappointment, then: this anthol-
ogy opens up a chasm which, we may hope, will
be filled by more definitive compilations. In the
meantime those who wish to delve into the real
history of electronic music are advised to check
out the Acousmatrix series on BVHAAST -
especially WDR Cologne (CD 9106), G.M.
Koenig (CD 9001/2), Berio/Maderna (CD 9109)
and Pousseur (CD 9101); and for a more useful
insight into the American side of electronics
Gordon Mumma's 'Studio Retrospect' on
Lovely Music LDC 1093 is highly recommended,
as is the regrettably short but nevertheless
valuable 'Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music
Centre' on New World 80521-2. Finally, all the
electronic works of Bruno Maderna can be heard
on 'Musica Elettronica' on Stradivarius STR 33349.
Roger Sutherland
OHANA: Livre des prodiges; Anneau du Tamarit;
Synaxis. Anssi Karttunen, Pascal Devoyon,
Christian Ivaldi, Orchestre Philharmonique du
Luxembourg c. Arturo Tamayo. Timpani 1c1056.
The latest CD of music by Maurice Ohana
includes three large orchestral works of the 1960s
and 1970s - Livre des prodiges, the First Cello
56 Record Reviews
Concerto Anneau du Tamarit and the Concerto
for two pianos, percussion and orchestra,
Synaxis - and forms part of an on-going Ohana
series by the Orchestre Philharmonique du
Luxembourg under Arturo Tamayo.1
Tamayo is well established as a conductor not
only of contemporary repertoire but also of opera,
from Mozart and Bellini to Berg and Nono. He
first became associated with Ohana's music
when he conducted the opera La Celestine at the
Opera de Paris in June 1988. (Ohana's opera
was the last new work to be premiered at the
old Palais Garnier.) The pianist Christian Ivaldi,
one of the soloists in the present recording of
Synaxis, is also an experienced performer of
Ohana's music. He was one of the soloists in the
first performance of Tombeau de Claude Debussy
in 1962 and is among the dedicatees of Signes
(1965) for flute, piano, zithers and percussion
which he premiered and subsequently recorded
with the Ensemble Ars Nova under Marius
Constant (Erato MF2292-45503-2). Together
with Genevieve Joy (who recorded some of
Ohana's piano music in the 1950s) and Les
Percussions de Strasbourg, he premiered Synaxis
in 1966 and made the first recording with the
same soloists and the Orchestra Philharmonique
de 1'ORTF under Charles Bruck (Erato
STU70431).
Completed in 1979 as a result of a commission
from the French Ministry of Culture, Livre des
prodiges (Book of Prodigies) is one of Ohana's
most orchestrally brilliant, rhythmically dynamic
and ritualistic works. Scored for quadruple
wind, six horns, four trumpets, trombones, tuba,
piano, two harps, timpani, four percussionists
and a correspondingly large string section, this
concerto for orchestra not only explores the
complex colours of the full body of players but
reveals the powers and virtues of each instru-
mental group in what the composer described as
'succession of antiphonal, sequenced dialogues'.
Their first Ohana recording for Timpani, made in 1997
(CD-1c1039), includes T'Haran-Ngo (1973-74) for orchestra,
the Second Cello Concerto In Dark and Blue (1988-90) with
Sonia Wieder-Atherton as soloist, and the Concerto for
Piano and Orchestra (1980-81) with Jean-Claude Pennetier,
who is also the dedicatee. They have also released Tombeau de
Claude Debussy (1961-62) for soprano, piano, concert zither
and orchestra with soloists Sylvie Sulle, Christian Ivaldi and
Laure Morabito, the Concerto for Percussion and Strings
Silenciaire (1969), and the Concerto for Harpsichord and
Orchestra Chiffres de clavecin (1967-68) with the Polish harp-
sichordist and dedicatee Elisabeth Chojnacka (Timpani
lc1044). Chojnacka's recording of Ohana's complete music
for harpsichord is available on Erato MF2292-45699-2 and
also includes her earlier recording of the concerto with the
Nouvel Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France under
Stanislaw Skrowaczewski.
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Intended as a commentary on Stravinsky's Rite of
Spring, from which the work's bipartite structure
is borrowed, Livre des prodiges alludes to the
Stravinskian model in its use of the orchestra,
the paraphrasing of certain thematic fragments
and the evocation of an imagined, primeval
world in which ritualistic ceremonial reaches an
apogee of frenzied excitement. The allusions to
Stravinsky and exploration of mythological
themes continue the compositional preoccupa-
tions of Ohana's other work for large orchestra
of the 1970s, T'Haran-Ngo, completed five years
before. While T'Haran-Ngo alludes to cosmogonic
symbolism in its celebration of the primary
forces of nature, Livre des prodiges evokes a series
of images inspired by ancient myth and legend.
According to the composer's original programme-
note for Livre, the prodigies of the title are
'monsters and marvels which, since the beginning
of time, have inspired the religious beliefs of
ancient civilisations and still haunt the contem-
porary mind.' His world of dreams and magic
spells is not only inhabited by winged bulls,
many-headed monsters and the Fates and Furies
of Greek mythology, but is one of impossibilities
and paradox where the moon is the earth and an
inverted sun suggests impending apocalypse.
With the exception of the short, measured
silence which articulates the bipartite structure, the
13 episodes of Livre des prodiges proceed without
a break. (There are seven episodes in Part One and
six in Part Two.) The contemplative tranquilli-
ty of the opening episode 'Claire de terre' belies
the extrovert dynamism of the episodes which
follow. Meaning 'earth-light' (as opposed to the
more familiar, even Debussian 'moon-light')
this episode reappears in both Parts One and
Two, serving as interlude and quasi-refrain. The
energetic, repetitive rhythmic material of
'Cortege des taureaux ailes' generates much of
the work as a whole. Exploring sound-mass as
texture, 'Immemorial' begins with juxtaposing
wind and strings, while the more overtly rhyth-
mical 'Hydre' is dominated by percussion but
concludes with wind and horns superimposed in
layers of aleatory counterpoint. Murmuring,
divisi strings (pizzicato and col legno) provide a
background to the syncopated woodwind in
'Cle des songes'.
After another appearance of 'Claire de terre',
Part One concludes with the explosive 'Soleil
renverse', characterized by strident tritones in
the low orchestra and horns playing screeching
glissandi, 'pavillons en l'air'. The more brooding
'Conjuration des sorts' (conjuration of the Fates)
opens Part Two, its dark, mysterious harmonies
alternating with incantatory, Stravinskian melodies

on woodwind. 'Alecto' further develops the
obsessive, incantatory melodies and paves the
way for the more extended 'Son noir'. Here the
tribal incantations and Afro-Cuban rhythms
suggest some imagined, pagan dance, while the
title alludes to the 'black sounds' of the
Andalusian Cante Jondo. Preserving continuity
in the evocation of a ritualistic ceremonial dance,
the motoric 5/8 rhythms and raucous homo-
phony of 'Jeu des masques' (masked dancers,
perhaps) becomes a fevered whirlwind of melodic
incantation. The slower concluding section
introduces a variant of 'Claire de terre' which,
this time, paraphrases Stravinsky's 'Cercles mys-
terieux des adolescents'. Opening deceptively
with a clarinet solo, the final episode 'Koro-
Ngo' is a climactic tutti of violent orchestral
colours. Its title is an invented Afro-Spanish
word of the composer which, like all his titles
incorporating the suffix 'ngo', suggests a frenzied
tribal dance of African or Afro-Cuban origin.
Ohana's First Cello Concerto, Anneau du
Tamarit (Ring of the Tamarit) illustrates a more
lyrical, if nevertheless sombre, side of his musical
persona. Completed in 1976, the concerto com-
memorates the 40th anniversary of the death of
the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca, shot by
the Nationalists in Viznar near Granada at the
outset of the Spanish Civil War. Ohana com-
posed this work at Viznar; the title alludes to
Lorca's last collection of poems Divan del
Tamarit (Tamarit being the name of a garden
near Grenada) in which the poet appears to have
foreseen his own death. Images of hopeless
despair are contrasted with the peace and beauty
of the garden; children have veiled faces, fruit-
trees bear apples of sobs and water becomes a
fountain of tears. Ohana imagined these images
to have encircled the imprisoned poet at the
time of his death, hence the 'ring' of his title.
Scored for an orchestra of more classical propor-
tions than Livre de prodiges (but nevertheless still
requiring a piano), Ohana's concerto echoes the
tragic tone of Lorca's poems. In keeping with
the Spanish character of the work's inception,
Ohana alludes to the vocal forms of the Andalusian
CanteJondo, many of which are associated with
the outpouring of intense, personal grief. Ohana
also paid homage to Lorca in his much earlier
setting of the Llanto por Ignacio Sanchez Mejias
(available on Caliope CAL9877 and soon to be
re-issued by Opus 111). As significant a contri-
bution to the cello repertoire as the concertos by
Dutilleux and Lutoslawski (completed only a
2 Livre des prodiges has also been recorded by the Orchestre
National de France under Stanislaw Skrowaczewski (Erato
STU2292-45503-2).
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Record Reviews 57
few years earlier), Ohana's First Cello Concerto is
a single-movement form which makes powerful
technical and expressive demands on the soloist.3
Synaxis, the other concerto on the present
recording, resulted from a commission by Les
Percussions de Strasbourg to whom the work is
dedicated. Completed in 1966, the Concerto for
Two Pianos and Percussion is scored for an
orchestra requiring triple woodwind, four horns,
four trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani,
four percussionists (additional to the four per-
cussion soloists), two harps and a correspondingly
large string section. To this is added a zither tuned
in third tones -an instrument which, since Tombeau
de Claude Debussy, has been conspicuous in many
of Ohana's ensembles as a means of providing
an aural orientation-point for his use of these
distinctive microintervals. As African rhythms
and drumming techniques provided an important
compositional source for his developing language
in the 1950s, it is not surprising that Ohana was
drawn to writing for percussion as a solo group.
His first exploration with solo percussion dates
from his 1955 ballet Etudes choregraphiques. Apart
from including large percussion sections in most of
his orchestral and other ensembles he completed
two percussion concertos, Synaxis and Silenciaire,
and explored the relationships between percussion
and other instruments or voice, most notably in
Signes (1965), in the chamber opera Syllabaire
pour Phedre (1966-67) and in Sibylle (1968) for
soprano, percussion and tape. He revisited the
very Bartokian combination of percussion and
piano in the second book of Etudes d'interpretation
(1983-5) and explored the relationship between
harpsichord and percussion in Miroir de Celestine
(1989-90).
Like Livre de prodiges, Synaxis is extrovert,
violent and ritualistic. According to the composer's
preface to the score, the title refers to the name
given to second century liturgy. Rather than
suggesting any specific ceremonial the word is
used in a more abstract sense to describe the
ritualistic exploration of essential sound-matter;
the eight movements are concerned with tessitura,
timbre, rhythm, duration, density and harmonic
synthesis. A range of material is used to create
sound-masses and webs of aleatory counter-
point, these processes being central to the work's
technical vocabulary. Another layer of musical
allusion is added by the movement-titles, several
of which refer to medieval vocal repertory and
techniques of early polyphony: 'Diaphonie'
'Tropes', Organum' and 'Antiphonie'.
3Anneau du Tamarit has also been recorded by Alain Meunier
with the Orchestre National de France under Marius
Constant (Erato MF2292-45503-2).
58 Record Reviews
The second movement, 'Tympanum', is - like
the movement of the same title in Ohana's First
String Quartet (1963) - an essay in rhythm and
percussive texture. The third movement 'Sibile'
is a portrait of the tragic Greek prophetess who
was given the gift of eternal life, but not eternal
youth. The final movement is a hymn to 'Maya'
and alludes both to Central American mythology
and the worship of the Virgin Mary often asso-
ciated with renewal of nature in spring.
Caroline Rae
GINASTERA: Danzas argentinas, op.2; Tres Piezas,
op.6; Piezas Infantiles; 12 Preludios Americanos,
op.12; Suite de Danzas Criollas, op.15; Rond6 sobre
temas infantiles argentinos, op.19; Piano Sonatas-
No.1, op.22; No2, op.53; No.3, op.55. Michiko
Tsuda (pno). Cypres cYP1625.
CHAVEZ: Piano Sonata No.2; Piano Sonata No.6
in A flat; 10 Preludes; 7 Pieces; 5 Caprichos.
Hsuan-Ya Chen (pno). Elan CD 82406 (2-CD set).
There have been near-complete Ginastera piano
music CDs before, notably from Barbara
Nissmann on Globe and Alberto Portugheis on
ASV (their programmes differ slightly from one
another and neither is quite as full as here). But
now the exceptionally generously timed and
stunningly-played disc listed above is unques-
tionably the first choice. (In fact, no 'complete'
Ginastera piano music is possible on a single CD;
not only are his transcriptions omitted but so is
the Malambo - one of his more famous pieces -
and only three of the Piezas Infantiles are given.)
The bulk of Ginastera's keyboard output
relates to his early maturity, when the sophisti-
cated exploitation of Argentinian folklore was an
overriding concern. To hear this music in bulk
is to be reminded what a decisive influence the
music of Bart6k, especially the Allegro Barbaro, the
Hungarian Folksong Improvisation and the
Bulgarian Dances, must have been to the young
Ginastera. This is a piano style of visceral force,
pounding dionysiac rhythms, severe contrapuntal
adagios - and yet ever prone to unexpected
sensuousnesses of rhythm, nostalgic melodies,
sudden breaks of guitar-like rasgueado strumming
and humour both sardonic and grotesque. The
three Danzas argentinas he wrote at the age of 20,
the last a wildly extrovert effusion that would
bring the house down as anyone's recital encore,
show this clearly-defined musical personality
already in the making.
Michiko Tsuda's programme is arranged in
strict chronological order, allowing us to hear
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exactly how the composer developed. The
charming sets of pieces on Argentine children's
themes, and the Preludios Americanos - dedicated
to Copland and Villa-Lobos among other
friends, and laying out, as if in discrete mosaic
shards, the elements of Ginastera's highly-
coloured pianistic vocabulary - are balanced by
the larger Argentine and Creole suites; all of
these provide the necessary introduction to the
three Piano Sonatas. If the First (1952) capital-
izes on all the previous piano music to provide a
turning-point in Ginastera's career, perhaps the
finest essay in the genre by a South American
composer, the Second and the brief Third,
following after a gap of 30 years (in 1981 and
'82) show him still capable of the grand gesture,
the pulverising toccata, but in the much more
angular, abstract language of someone who
never ceased to move with the times.
Though often exhilarating, Ginastera's is
indubitably strenuous music: fascinating to hear
in sequence, it makes an exhausting disc to absorb
in at one sitting. But dip into it, and every time
one is mightily impressed by the skills and
empathy and sheer bravura of this most capable
Japanese pianist, in her splendid advocacy of
such taxing repertoire.
On the continuing theme of Oriental pianists
and Latin-American composers, Hsuan-Ya Chen's
anthology of works by the Mexican, Carlos
Chavez, is a timely reminder of a compositional
achievement that is too often represented to us
merely by the deliberate primitivisms of his
Sinf6nia India. The works on her double-CD set
span more than half a century's output of key-
board music, which eventually included six Piano
Sonatas. Chavez, perhaps more determinedly a
radical than Ginastera, was also stylistically much
more wide-ranging, and some of the pieces here
give the impression of an exploratory mind
travelling along many different paths simply to
see what he might see. The mingled late-
Romaticism and 'Spanish Nationalist' elements
of the early Second Sonata (1919-20) give way
swiftly in the 1920s to a much more consciously
modernist outlook - the Seven Pieces written at
various times between 1923 and 1930 include
spiky, dissonant inventions that take leave of
tonality, brutalist percussive numbers to be
expected in a friend and admirer of Varese, jazz-
style pieces and Diego Rivera-like populist
canvases. They are perhaps the most fascinating,
though also the most uneven, works in the col-
lection. The fine cycle of Preludes from 1937 is
much more unified in style; the pieces impress
by their expressive poise and fluid polyphonic
writing; they also admit a post-Debussian