Mixing it

Mixing it is the way forward- Pierre Boulez did it in his Domaine Musical concerts in Paris in the 1950s when he played Bach, Machaut and Dufay alongside Stockhausen, Maderna and Cage, Stravinsky did it in 1960 when he recomposed three of Gesualdo's madrigals for instruments, David Munrow did it in 1975 with The Art of the Recorder which put music from the Middle Ages alongside Britten and Hindemith, the Hilliard Ensemble did it in 1993 when they added jazz saxophone to Morales' Officium defuntorum, while in 2000 Kent Nagano did it in Berlin by programming Mahler with Ockeghem, and confirmed that mixing it really is the way forward by selling the Philharmonie Hall out.

Now The Orlando Consort, Paul Hillier and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir are doing it with a new release that mixes choral music by Guillaume Dufay and Guillaume de Machaut with twenty-first century works by Tarik O'Regan and Gavin Bryars. The main juxtaposition is Tarik O'Regan's 2006 Scattered Rhymes which is followed by the fourteenth century masterpiece that inspired it, Machaut's Messe de Nostre Dame. And in the brave new world of the download even the performers mix it. Paul Hillier and his Estonian choir only perform for 16 minutes on a 61 minute CD. If you want Paul Hillier just pay to download the first track.

The marketing of this new Harmonia Mundi release also indulges in some gentle mixing, with the sleeve proudly proclaiming Production USA. Now I know my friends in Sequenza21 land are territorial but is Greyfriars Kirk, Edinburgh, Scotland really in the U.S.A? Well I suppose the team of producer Robina G. Young and Soundmirror Inc engineer Brad Michel are from the States, and, as expected, they do a great job of delivering a credible soundstage enhanced by the church acoustics. When all is said and done Scattered Rhymes is an important new work (it reminded me of Joby Talbot's superb 2006 Path of Miracles, which cannot be bad) and 30 year old Tarik O'Regan is mixing it in all the right places with posts at Cambridge (England), Columbia (New York) and Harvard. And most importantly mixing it is a great way to reach new audiences.

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The Rite of Spring

Photo taken at the Lost Garden of Heligan, Cornwall. Now playing - Fazil Say's recording of the four-hand piano transcription of the Rite Of Spring. The starting point of this CD is Stravinsky's own four-hand score for the Rite, but the finishing point is some way away from the composer's original. Not only does Say use multi-tracking to play both piano parts, but he builds up further layers with his own additions to the score mimicking percussion and cymbals, with the different layers using different microphone perspectives.

As if this is not enough Say does a Glenn Gould and offers an interview with himself in the sleeve notes justifying his approach and also justifying releasing a full price CD containing just 31 minutes and 12 seconds of music. (He does threaten a coupling of his take on Verklärte Nacht, but thankfully refrains). Not so much Stravinsky as a technical tour de force, and, surprisingly, it is still in the catalogue at full price eight years after release. Certainly not a first choice or even tenth choice Rite but a fascinating musical and technical curiosity if you don't mind few bangs for your bucks.

More interesting orchestration in my Future Radio programme this Sunday (March 9 - check sidebar for details) in Lou Harrison's Concerto for Violin with Percussion Orchestra with a score that includes 12 brakedrums, 6 flowerpots, dustbins, a double bass laid on its back and tin cans. The recording is a new one by Madeleine Mitchell and Ensemble Bash.

No short change with this excellent Signum release (sleeve below) which offers 66 minutes of music from Anne Dudley, Tarik O'Regan, Stuart Jones, and Simon Limbrick and a traditional Sengalese drumming piece which I will finish the programme with. An excellent release, but the Fiddlesticks title, with no mention of Lou Harison on the cover, doesn't do it justice. Retailers are saying it would sell far more copies if it had been marketed as a Lou Harrison recording and filed in the browser under 'H'. Signum are best known for their choral recordings, but are doing some interesting things in contemporary music including a new recording of the complete Philip Glass String Quartets.


More Lou Harrison here.
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