|
Music Review by Lou Wigdor Angelic Voices in Good
Company |
 At long last, Anonymous 4 has worthy company in
its paradisaical circle of women’s a cappella Early Music. The new
sopranos on the block are three Norwegians who call themselves Trio
Mediaeval. Their first album, Words of the Angel (ECM), has
been out for several months in Europe and was just released here in
February. Critical responses to the cd and to the trio’s
concerts have been wildly enthusiastic. Gramophone named it
among its top ten choices in January, musing that it just might be a
cult disc in the making. If so, it will follow in the sonorous
footsteps of Anonymous 4’s own recording debut, An English
Ladymass, which has sold over 221,000 copies since its release in
1992.
So what do Anonymous 4 and Trio Mediaeval have in common? Both sing with extraordinary beauty, balance, delicacy of inflection, and an uncanny feel for internal rhythms. Both focus primarily on sacred repertoire from the late medieval/early renaissance world (usually the 13th and 14th centuries). And both bestow a women’s gloss on material that with few exceptions (e.g., A4’s involvement with Hildegard) was written by men for male voices. With Valentine’s Day a convenient eleven months away, it is perhaps safe to recommend The Second Circle as a low-risk gift alternative to flowers and chocolate. The disc offers seventeen jewel-like ballata, composed by Landini for two and three voices. Anonymous 4 adds a fourth voice to eight of the songs. The economy of the ballata and their stanza form-A-b-b-a-A-is the soul of Early Renaissance conciseness. The tracks on the disc range from 1:16 to 5:43 minutes, all but six clocking in at under four minutes. Landini’s love songs convey a daunting emotional range: on the sunny side, they contemplate love’s joy, love’s angelic beauty, love’s perfection. But be forewarned--darkness was also Landini’s delight. For Anonymous 4, that means conveying beautiful, at times, burnished harmonies about love unattainable, love unrequited, love unconsummated, and love lost. So who said eros, courtly love, and their variations were any more a cake walk in 13th century Florence? That leads to a concern about Anonymous 4’s take on Landini. The group’s performances of sacred music radiate a contemplative--at times, oracular-- beauty. Anonymous 4’s Landini exudes the secular analog--the restraint and formality, musically speaking, of courtly love. How does that square with Landini’s own multi-faceted emotionality? In my view, this doesn’t need to be an issue. With prismatic richness, Anonymous 4 refracts Landini’s variegated emotionality on the group’s own lapidary terms. These are performances of ravishing beauty and coloristic and rhythmic subtlety. All the same, there is certainly room for interpretations by others who bring an earthier emotional resonance to the songs.
Words of the Angel, like Anonymous 4’s An English Ladymass, features a 13th -14th century mass interspersed with Marist motets, sequences, and chants from the same period. Surviving in a cathedral manuscript from the once powerful mediaeval city of Tournai (just northeast of Lille, France, over the Belgian border), the Tournai Mass appears to be a compilation. The Kyrie, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei employ a conventional 13th century modal rhythm; the Gloria, Credo, and Ita Missa Est display 14th century Ars Nova innovations, including freer rhythms and triadic harmonies. Interspersed with the mass are nine vividly polyphonic motets and sequences from 14th century England, and four monophonic (chants) laude from a thirteenth century manuscript from Cortona, in central Tuscany. Three of the English pieces survived only by accident. In the medieval world--especially in England-musical manuscripts often got recycled (sometimes in bookbinding) after falling prey to wars, secular and church politics, and shifting musical fashions. The three survivors here somehow got copied onto the back of a financial record, which accountants thought warranted eternal salvation (Today, the so-called Berkeley Castle Select Roll 55 might have gone the way of the Enron Financial Codex-straight into the shredder.) Through 14th century eyes, the one time-warper in the program is the cd’s title track, Words of the Angel, written by the present-day London-born composer, Ivan Moody. Like his former teacher, John Tavener, Moody has found religious affiliation and musical inspiration in the Greek Orthodox church. Taken from the Orthodox Easter day liturgy, Words is a tour de force of sinuous chant and unadorned contrapuntal statements, alternating with a broad and occasionally dissonant brush of soaring and cascading polyphonies. After that stunning 5:27-minute performance, there is nothing to do but adjourn the disc with the Tournai’s Ita Missa Est (i.e., Go, it is dismissed.) During my conversation with Susan Hellauer, I asked her if she knew of any other Early Music women’s groups doing similar repertoire to Anonymous 4’s. Together, we came up with only one, Tapestry, an American quartet that records for Telarc. I told her that I admired its ambitious repertoire but felt that its balance and tonal purity were not in Anonymous 4’s league. At long last, Ms. Hellauer and Anonymous 4, with the emergence of Trio Mediaeval, are in good company. With this troika, three is anything but a crowd. Also Recommended
|
Ladymass,
Anonymous 4’s Susan Hellauer told me 2 ½ years ago after a
performance at the Sterling Clark Institute in Williamstown, was a
spin on the wheel of fortune that rocketed the group almost overnight to Early Music stardom. (Since then, Hellauer &
Co. have sold over a million cds and played more churches worldwide
than probably anyone save the pope.) The performance that I heard that
day in Williamstown was one of the group’s minority forays into
secular music--a collection of love songs by the great 14th century
blind Florentine composer, Francesco Landini. Anonymous 4 calls the
collection, The Second Circle, in honor of that passionate
region of the Inferno inhabited by Paolo, Francesca, and a cast
of thousands (and then some). Last fall, Harmonia Mundi finally
released the cd version of The Second Circle, which became an
immediate commercial success.
Trio Mediaeval would no doubt fit that bill.
Like Anonymous 4, The new group’s harmonies can soar and swoop with
ethereal luminosity and grace. But in their flights of entwinement,
uncoupling, and untripling, the Norwegians reveal more of their
individual vocal personalities than their mentors--the Hilliard
Ensemble--or Anonymous 4. That includes some less than perfectly
tempered polyphonic edges (no doubt anathema to the Hilliard and A4)
as well as a predilection for camping on tones via rubato and other
vocal devices. But it’s all calculated for aesthetic and emotional
effect and for this reviewer, it’s risk taking that yields repeated
satisfaction. Trio Mediaeval astonishes both with its
extraordinary emotional range and its deft navigation of that range:
the threesome can
transition on a dime from emotional street level right up to the
celestial sky roof.
For over a decade, Munich-based Lebanese
oudist Rabih Abou-Khalil has been the driving force behind the world’s
most successful hybrid of Arabic music and modern jazz. Charlie
Mariano, Glen Velez, Howard Levy, Sonny Fortune, Ellery Eskelin,
Antonio Hart, and Steve Swallow have been among the Americans over the
years who have joined forces with Abou-Khalil and a cast of
outstanding musicians from Europe and the Middle East. With an
ensemble of twelve, Abou-Khalil’s latest album, The Cactus of
Knowledge, features the largest instrumental forces by far
of any of his previous outings for the Munich based label, Enja. In
the up-tempo tracks like Got to Go Home, Maltese Chicken
Farm, and Ma Muse M’Amuse, the added brass pushes the
intensity level almost through the roof. The cd also offers its share
of contemplative, sometimes smoldering moments, featuring inventive
solos from the cello, French horn, and Abou-Khalil’s masterful oud
playing. Particularly notable is the recording balance and clear
definition of each instrument in ensemble. Considering the ascendancy
these days of the military march, one can almost wax nostalgic for the
cd’s inspired opening track title, The Lewinsky March.
Last year, with lavish American roots boxed
sets all the rage, there was no better deal on the market than
Cambridge-based Rounder Records’ Roots Music: An American Journey.
For under thirty dollars, you get four discs with sixty-eight tracks
that cover bluegrass to zydeco; acoustic blues to Tex-Mex conjunto;
and everything in between. All of it is from the Rounder vaults: the
Smithsonian and Library of Congress aside-Rounder is America’s
premier living folk archive. The set features higher-profile artists
like Buckwheat Zydeco, Tish Hinajosa, Natalie MacMaster, Sweet Honey
in the Rock, and, of course, Alison Krauss. And how about dozens of
less familiar artists like Preacher Jack, Tuts Washington, the Tarbox
Ramblers? There’s room for everyone with musical integrity and
talent under the Rounder umbrella. To date, Rounder has sold 3,000,000
copies of Alison Krauss’ Now That I’ve Found You. Had she
thrown in her lot with corporate labeldom, she could have sold many
more, but she’s chosen to stay with the genuine article. Roots
Music: An American Journey is perhaps the best one-stop reflection
of that article within our reach.