Here are some favorite new releases from 2019, presented with the understanding that it is not a complete list. It was a great year for new classical records, so much so that I will be uploading a Part 2 in a few days. For Part 1, I chose to compile tracks by living women composers, and even with that demographic limitation this playlist was difficult to make. There is no ranking involved, just the order of the playlist. Discs whose jackets are pictured below are recommended without qualification, assuming you like the excerpt below. Other tracks come from ones I haven’t listened to enough to recommend or are perhaps a bit uneven.
0:00:00
Caroline Shaw: “Valencia”
from Caroline Shaw: Orange [New Amsterdam/Nonesuch]
Attaca Quartet
I do believe Caroline Shaw (along w/ Missy Mazzoli) represents the future for art music – in the United States, at least. Which is to say, she writes music that can reach new listeners. Fresh-faced and upbeat, Shaw makes music catchy enough to be likeable on first listen and complex enough to be likeable after twenty listens. As I once read, in a piece about Aaron Copland, that is far harder to do than it would seem.She is from North Carolina, which I do not hold against her. This is the first album of exclusively her work. I chose “Valencia” despite having chosen the JACK Quartet’s version on my list for 2017, because it is tight, and a good intro for a mixtape of music by contemporary women.
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0:05:41
Anna Thorvaldsdottir: “Metacosmos”
from Concurrence; ISO Project v. 2 [Sono Luminus]
Daniel Bjarnason: Iceland Symphony Orchestra
The Sono Luminus-Iceland connection is yielding a steady stream of brilliant releases, between Nordic Affect and the Iceland Symphony. I like this as much or more than the last Iceland SO disc, which was also great. This one has “Metacosmos,” which I think is my favorite Anna Thorvaldsdottir piece to date, with a clear 3-part structure and thunderdrums evoking Jon Leifs, Iceland’s greatest composer. So far. This album also contains an excellent piece, “Oceans”, by the ever-cool and decasyllabic Maria Huld Markan Sigfusdottir. The two pieces by gentlemen on this one are super-solid as well.
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0:19:00
Teresa Proccacini: Quintetto
from The Other Half of Music [Dynamic]
Ensemble Chaminade
This is a record that is trying to be accessible and good at the same time. And doing it, though some might balk at borderline easy listening passages, however short. It’s a wind and piano quintet, with all women composers who hail from all over the world, including Jordan and Nigeria. Proccacini, like the label, is Italian, born in 1934.
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0:22:46
Pauline Kim Harris & Spencer Topel: Deo
A reimagining of Deo Gratias (ca. 1497) by Johannes Ockeghe
from Heroine [Sono Luminus]
Pauline Kim & Spencer Topel
In one of the review journals I subscribe to, the editors have declared war on “sound art”, a term they employ as a term of derision. Well, I am one old fogey for whom it is possible to enjoy “music” and “sound art” both. Ambient is what this is, really, but in reworking two early music pieces – J.S. Bach’s Chaconne and Johannes Ockeghem’s 1497 Deo Gratias – Kim has created substantive ambience that I suspect Bach and Ockeghem would appreciate. Kim, a student of Heifitz who has premiered works by Glass and Reich, worked with “sound artist” Spencer Topel for her Sono Luminus debut.
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0:25:06
Kaija Saariaho: “Ciel d’hiver”
from Saariaho: True Fire/Ciel d’hiver/Trans [Ondine]
Hannu Lintu: Finnish Radio SO
Saariaho is the Godmother of contemporary art music, her stature cemented by being the first woman composer to have a full-length opera at the Met. Of late, Scandinavian labels like Ondine in Finland are honoring her long career music with a steady stream of brilliantly-recorded albums while she is still alive, perhaps the first women composer of orchestral works (among other categories) to be granted such treatment.
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0:31:48
Missy Mazzoli: “A Thousand Tongues” (version for violin, piano and electronics)
from Jennifer Koh – Limitless [Cedille]
Jennifer Koh (violin) and Missy Mazzoli (piano, electronics)
Missy Mazzoli, I’d be willing to bet, is a fan of Kate Bush and Joanna Newsome. (Maybe she has said as much – I wouldn’t know…) She writes art songs that have that vibe. She will have an opera performed at the Metropolitan in the next season, which constitutes a milestone for a living American composer of female persuasion. This piece is voice-free and is from an 2-disc set in which Jennifer Koh duets with a host of contemporary composers, including Nina C. Young.
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0:38:59
Joanna Bailie: “Symphony-Street-Souvenir”
from Joanna Bailie: Artificial Environments [NMC]
Plus-Minus Ensemble
OK, more sound art… I’ll go to the mat for this one, though. Without reservation, this is my favorite contemporary disc of the year, for however little that’s worth. The London-born and Berlin-based Bailie weaves field recordings into her pieces to magical effect. “Symphony-Street-Souvenir”, a 3-part piece included here in its entirety, will be welcomed by anyone who’s fond of Gloria Coates (anyone who’s not should leave now…) The Artificial Environments pieces are the most fun-to-listen-to “music concrete”/tape jobs I’ve yet to meet. NMC, celebrating its 20th anniversary, had a really good year…
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0:53:19
from Heroine [Sono Luminus]
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0:55:27
Žibuoklė Martinaityte: Serenity Diptychs
from Martinaityte: In Search of Lost Beauty [Starkland]
FortVio Piano Trio
This is a handsome package, even in the download. The graphics are austere, the photography slick. They suggest the tone of the music, which is to say, indigo blue and glossily atmospheric. Martinaityte is a Lithuanian composer (the surname would seem to be somewhat common there…? How do you pronounce it?) who is based in NYC (where only rich people can live) and looks young enough to safely reproduce but may not be, if she was walking around Paris in ’79 as her notes report… Too involved to be called ambient, so I guess I’ll have to o with sound art. The booklet includes a quote from Agnes Martin, a name-drop of John Adams (a friend), and text by Ingram Marshall. This piece, originally a stand-alone, is part of the 10-movement title work.
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1:05:43
Stephanie Ann Boyd: “Lilacs”
from Jenny Lin: Etudes [Sono Luminus]
Jenny Lin, piano
This is a concept album that works. Jenny Lin asked a bunch of contemporary composers to write etudes (short solo pieces for practicing technique), and then she paired them with etudes by older composers (Messaien, Ligeti, Ruth Crawford, and Unsuk Chin, e.g.) based upon how the new pieces struck her. The composers, in other words, had not been asked to write in homage to anyone. Lin linked the young American Stephanie Ann Boyd’s “Lilac” to Debussy’s Etude No. 11.
So, basically The Etudes Project v. 1 is a collection of twenty 2:00-5:00 minute pieces. The idea that classical (or, art) music, in order to sell, should start adopting shorter timeframes – 5- to 12-minute pieces, say, as opposed to 40-minute symphonies – is a valid one. You can WISH people still had long attention spans like they did 50 years ago, but, by and large, they don’t. I admit to having a shattered attention span – it’s one of the main reasons I decided to listen to classical music.
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1:09:02
from Heroine [Sono Luminus]
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1:17:24
Chaya Czernowin: Ayre; Towed through plumes, thicket, asphalt…etc.
from Speak, Be Silent [Hudderfield Contemporary Records]
Riot Ensemble
2019 marked the centennial of women getting the right to vote in England and there were a number of comps featuring women composers from British labels as well as comps featuring British composers. This one, on the Huddersfield Contemporary offshoot of the British NMC Recordings label, was my favorite. HCR features non-U.K. composers in addition to British. Czernowin is an Israeli, about whom you should read Alex Ross’s New Yorker profile of not long ago. Perhaps Czernowin is sound art, as well. In which case, I double down: this is brilliant. I could listen to this kind of music for the rest of my life. Speak, Be Silent also has a great Rebecca Saunders piece (included on the NMC mixtape) and a Riot Ensemble’s version of Thorvaldsdottir’s “Ro”. As w/ Shaw’s “Valencia,” one of the steps in becoming a recognizable name is that multiple versions of compositions are in print, by top-notch ensembles.
1:32:40
Nina C. Young: “Kolokol”
from Poetry of Places [Reference]
Nadia Shpachenko
This is a solid comp of works for piano and sounds by younger contmporary composers. “Kolokol” is Young’s evocation of Russian Orthodox bells, for piano and electronics. I’m generally dreading 2020, although I am psyched that a full album of Young’s music will be released next year…
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1:43:46
Joanna Bailie: “Artificial Environments No. 3”
from Articial Environments [NMC]
Riot Ensemble
What I said.
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1:49:09
Olga Neuwirth: “Remnants of Songs – An Amphigory”; II. Sadko
from Neuwirth: Miramondo/Remnants of Song [Kairos]
Ingo Metzmacher: ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra Wien
This is definitely “sound art” – I know because the review of this record said so! Neuwirth composed the soundtrack to the solid Austrian psychological horror film Goodnight Mommy and an imaginary soundtrack to David Lynch’s Lost Highway (Lynch endorsed the effort), which like most of her music is on the Kairos label. The 7-part “Amphigory” (the word means a nonsensical statement following a promise of profundity) makes this disc worth seeking out, unless you like trumpet, in which case you might enjoy “Miramondo”, too. For whatever reason, I can not deal with trumpets.
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1:52:45
from Heroine [Sono Luminus]
Concentration Camp 