A special eight-page section focusing on recent recordings from the US and Canada Bates . Bresnick ‘Ways You Went’ Bates Mass Transmissiona Bresnick Self-Portraits 1964, Un inishedb The Crossing / Donald Nally with a Scott Dettra org bPRISM Quartet Navona (NV6648 D • 61’) a Recorded live at the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, December 18, 2022 D The two affecting works on The Crossing’s new album find the composers making observations from different perspectives. Self-Portraits 1964, Unfinished provides glimpses into Martin Bresnick’s thoughts as a teenager ruminating on life. Mason Bates’s Mass Transmission evokes long-distance communications between a Dutch mother and her daughter, who is working in the East Indies in the 1920s. As stylistically varied as the pieces may be, they share expressive terrain of immediate allure. Bresnick teams a chamber choir with a saxophone quartet, which contributes subtle and haunting atmospheric details to six highly personal narratives. The saxophones set scenes with lonely chords, soar as birds and add yearning to verses by Herman Melville, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Thomas Hardy and James Joyce. Among the sentiments in Hopkins’s ‘I Wake’ is the disc’s title, ‘Ways You Went’, a fervent depiction of dreams and nightmares. The choral lines throughout the cycle overlap and echo, sometimes through the supple intermingling of solo voices with instruments. It is a compelling and touching journey the penetrating choristers of The Crossing and lustrous saxophonists of the PRISM Quartet perform with meticulous polish and urgency. Bates weaves poignant tales in Mass Transmission, whose three movements combine choral utterances with electronic sounds (radio, gramophone, gamelan sonorities) and organ lines. The outer movements are set to texts from official government documents that include mother-daughter conversations; the second movement, describing the beauty of Java, is an excerpt from a diary written by a Dutch woman. The contrasts between tender and mechanical auras are striking as cast by Bates in a spectrum of colours, ranging from hushed vocal statements to declamatory, non-vocal gestures. The composer applies his characteristic use of electronics to refined effect, always guided by dramatic context. Organist Scott Dettra anchors Bates’s textures as The Crossing’s singers shape phrases with their extraordinary amalgam of focus and eloquence. As led by Donald Nally, the ensemble is virtually unrivalled in adding new works to the choral repertoire and performing them to the artistic hilt. Donald Rosenberg Cameron-Wolfe ‘Passionate Geometries’ Heretica. Kyrie(Mantra)IVb. Lonesome Dove: A True Storyc. Mirage d’espritd. O minstrele. Passionate Geometriesf. Telesthesia: 13 Episodes/Deliberations on Multi-Planar Syzygyg. Time Refractedh e Nina Berman, eStephanie Lamprea sops bfRoberta Michel l cGeoff Landman ten sax hCaleb van der Swaagh vc hGayle Blankenburg pf dOren Fader, bdef Daniel Lippel, dJay Sorce, aMarc Wolf, dMatthew Slotkin gtrs gAntwerp Cello Quartet New Focus (FCR406 • 71’) Richard CameronWolfe is probably best known for his micro-operas – powerful pocket-size, single-movement pieces for solo, duet or small ensemble combinations that explore musical, cognitive and dramatic dissonances through the lens of the composer’s hardhitting atonal and microtonal style. ‘Passionate Geometries’ is bookended by two of these micro-operas. The first, Heretic, revolves around a dysfunctional dialogue between solo guitar and the performer’s own voice (both elements impressively coordinated on this recording by Marc Wolf), where vocal and instrumental fragments combine to generate wildly contrasting moods and gestures – from relaxed and friendly to fractious, frenzied and chaotic. Think Elliott Carter on Quaaludes to get a general sense of the music’s impact. The title-track, for soprano, flute, guitar and cello, offers a more muted and withdrawn take on Cameron-Wolfe’s micro-operatic aesthetic. Even when writing for ensemble, however, CameronWolfe builds his material around solo statements and duet combinations. The music is often at its most effective when the soloist becomes entangled in a kind of schizophrenic soliloquy with itself (as happens in Heretic) or where subject and object are pitted against one another. A sinister and uneasy undertow lurks beneath the surface of Time Refracted for cello and piano – its title reflected in ticking clock-like oscillations and uneasy, shifting patterns – while echoes of Wagner’s Tristan chord hover stubbornly, like a dark cloud, over the musical landscape of O minstrel for soprano and guitar. Cameron-Wolfe’s music is perhaps less effective when the focus is on group dynamics rather than dramatic conflict. Such moments are encountered in the microtonal Mirage d’esprit and fragmentary Telesthesia, for guitar and cello quartets respectively, where sonic weirdness takes precedence over substance and content. Nevertheless, with eye-catching contributions from soprano Stephanie Lamprea in O minstrel, flautist Roberta Michel in Kyrie(Mantra) IV, saxophonist Geoff Landman in Lonesome Dove: A True Story (another Cameron-Wolfe micro-opera) and the ever-present Dan Lippel on guitar, ‘Passionate Geometries’ provides a timely overview of the chamber output of this under-the-radar composer, forming an excellent companion album to ‘An Inventory of Damaged Goods’, issued on the Furious Artisans label in 2018. Pwyll ap Siôn gramophone.co.uk GRAMOPHONE NOVEMBER 2024 I