Review of AFMM CDs

Hi Everybody!

I've written up a little review for the New Music Connoisseur
magazine concerning Johnny's new CD releases.

I've sent it to the mag so it could, technically, be considered under
the New Music Connoisseur copyright, so I would appreciate that it
not be copied or cited at this time. (At least until it gets out!)

The "fair use" on this list is simply for the "educational" component
of it, and the fact that the New Music Connoisseur will probably not
publish the review until several months from now.

Here it is:

Three CDs from Johnny Reinhard's American Festival of Microtonal
Music: "Chamber," "Odysseus" and "Early" on the "Pitch" (AFMM) label.

After almost 25 years of producing and recording concerts, Johnny
Reinhard, the intrepid impresario of the American Festival of
Microtonal Music is releasing CDs of highlights of these many years.
Projected is a series of 13 CDs, and this first release contains
three, "Chamber," "Odysseus" and "Early." All three CDs are
currently available on the internet at www.cdbaby.com.

"Odysseus" is an improvised composition, 45 minutes in length, by
Johnny Reinhard. He tells the classical myth of Odysseus by
assigning various instruments to the roles of animals and gods and
enacts parts of the classic story. He uses lots of microtonality in
this work, since he also assigns different tunings to the players. A
fun CD, I imagine the effect would be even greater by watching the
video, also available through the AFMM.

"Early" is a CD featuring primarily the music of J.S. Bach tuned in
the intonation prevalent at the time, Werckmeister III. It's an
ambitious project to render two complete Brandenburg concertos (#2
and #5) in an "alternate" tuning other than our "normal" 12-equal and
Reinhard should receive accolades for the splendid musicianship on
this disk. He has some of the best New York players around, and the
performing is very solid. Unfortunately, it was more difficult for
me to actually hear the difference between Werckmeister and our
standard 12-equal temperament. I could hear the unusual intonation
in the recorder part, played by Reinhard himself, but it was less
evidenced to my ear in the other instruments.

In any case, it is the "Chamber" CD on which I would like to focus,
since I feel this CD is one of the most interesting discs of
contemporary music around. It starts off with a bang, Preludio a
Colon by Julian Carillo, featuring soprano Meredith Borden. In this
piece, one of his most famous, he blends moods of mystery and
anticipation. I've always felt that Carillo really brings out the
microtonal aspects of his work. Some find his methods too obvious,
but I find them compelling. At least one can frequently hear the
scales with which he is working. There are "16th tones" and
quartertones in this piece. The violin parts, played by Dan Auerbach
and Tina Cho echo the sliding, microtonal singing by Meredith
Borden. Carillo creates a compelling, atmospheric world, and a hard
act to follow.

The CD continues bravely with Lou Harrison's, At the Tomb of Charles
Ives. This is a large, but short, chamber piece played in "just
intonation" or an intonation of only unbeating, pure, intervals. As
in several of the AFMM ensemble efforts, I find the just intonation
hard to hear, except in the expert playing of Chris Washburne on
trombone who is very obviously hitting the true, just intervals
against the accompaniment.

We have reached the midpoint of this AFMM "Chamber" CD. Reinhard
has, deliberately, placed some of the more conceptionally challenging
pieces here. Ko-Lho by Giacinto Scelsi, the reclusive Italian
nobleman, consists of long instrumental phrases that intertwine
between the flute, performed here by Andrew Bolotowsky and the
clarinet of Michiyo Suzuki. The microtonal playing with these
instrumentalists using quartertones, is very audible.

In another twist of expert programming, Reinhard then goes from the
very sparse meditative Scelsi to the high complexity of Iannis
Xenakis' Anaktoria, scored for eight instruments with Reinhard
conducting. I hear an unusual interpretation of Xenakis from
Reinhard. During solo passages, he makes the instruments come out
with animal-like sounds and personalities. This lends lots of
character and certainly a slightly different interpretation.

Next is a pretty "thorny" work, Charles Ives' String Quartet #2. Its
inclusion on the microtonal festival has to do with the particular
tuning coached for this piece: Pythagorean, or tuning evoking the
open, pure fifths on the string instruments as, supposedly, suggested
by Ives himself. I found the difference between this tuning and
the "conventional" renditions of this piece a little hard to hear.
On the other hand, there were some problematic aspects which were
very easy to hear, such as the playing of violin virtuoso Tom Chiu
not blending in with the other instruments of the "Flux" quartet.
Chiu is one of the most brilliant new music soloists of this day. Is
he, though, really an ensemble player? It sounded to me as more a
concerto for violin with three other accompanying strings who just
happened to be there. Hopefully, it was just the mic-ing. I was
also not fond of Chiu's interpretation of the final very high violin
section. He played it with a kind of screeching intensity and I have
heard it played more with an atmospheric transcendence which I
personally feel would be more to the Ives spirit.

The CD ends on a lighter note, as it should. Believe me, there is no
one, who can organize a concert or CD as well as Reinhard can. He's
had lots of practice. The final work 2 Settings from Joyce's
Finnegan's Wake by Harry Partch includes sung syllables by Meredith
Borden that sound a little like a cat meowing. For me, the lighter,
fun ending to this disk was just the "cat's meow."

Joseph Pehrson