- Original Release Date: October 4, 2011
- Label: Cantaloupe Music
- Copyright: (C) 2011 Cantaloupe Music
- Total Length: 31:24
- Genres:
- ASIN: B005R9690O
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #195,393 Paid in MP3 Albums (See Top 100 Paid in MP3 Albums)
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Lisa Moore & Sō Percussion: Martin Bresnick's "Caprichos Enfáticos" on Cantaloupe
October 7, 2012
Format:Audio CD
Francisco Goya's famous series of prints Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War) were created between 1810 and 1820, though not actually published until 35 years after Goya's death, in 1863. There are 82 prints in all, each highly critical of both Spanish and French rulers during the conflicts between the two countries in the early 19th century, and they are shockingly graphic: realistic depictions of mutilated corpses in the aftermath of battle and the effects of famine, and gross mockeries of the ruling classes and the clergy. They are less high art and more a sort of proto-photojournalism.
Martin Bresnick's Caprichos Enfáticos: Los Desastres de la Guerra, an 8-movement concerto for pianist Lisa Moore and Sō Percussion, begins with, of all things, a farandole/farándula--a popular, jaunty 6/8 chain dance. In live performance, Lisa Moore plays the opening line of the farandúla on xylophone, alone on stage. A percussionist enters behind her and seamlessly takes over the line, and Moore continues to the second line. A second percussionist enters, taking over the first line, and the first percussionist moves to the second line, and Moore moves to the next layer, etc. It's torturous to try and describe the effect in words, especially since it's been three years since I saw it live at the 2008 Canberra International Music Festival in Australia, but it really does look and feel like a musical chain dance. It's also just really cool to watch Lisa Moore play toms.
Eventually, of course, she does end up at the piano. Farándula De Charlatanes, No Saben El Camino (Farandole Of Charlatans - They Don't Know The Way) alternates between harsh dissonance and strange timbres (flexatone!) and a kind of offbeat march. Estragos de la Guerra (Ravages of War) makes an overt reference to Mars, from Holst's Planets suite, with all four percussionists playing in unison on large drums. As that famous rhythm grows and morphs into a torrent of martial outbursts and machine-gun barrages, the piano embeds a simple tune, starting on an open fifth and growing along with the drum-rhythm to a virtuosic and wild peak. Farándula De Políticos, Contra El Bien General (Farandole Of Politicians, Against The Common Good) is all gallows humor: long silences, a dog barking (actually a cuíca), huge shifts in register and tone, musical sarcasm. Farándula De Populacho (Farandole Of The Rabble) contrasts a low-rumbling, dissonant piano with tick-tick-boom percussion blasts (on various high unpitched pieces of wood and a large bass drum) in multiple tempos, and ends with a burst of, yes, applause: this is bread and circuses, reality TV, a monster truck rally. Church bells and whispered prayers begin ¡Extraña Devoción! (Strange Devotion!); a simple, descending scalar melody in the piano gives way to something almost hymnal, but distorted, haunted.
Farándula De Creyentes, Nada. Ello Lo Dice (Farandole Of Believers, Nothing. That Is What It Says) is the dark heart of Caprichos Enfáticos, a sparse, ambient soundscape built from non-pitched percussion and lots of silence. A hymn appears briefly (that's Lisa Moore again, this time on melodica) before being cut off by the loud, obnoxious ring of an old telephone, which itself ends abruptly, returning us to the soundscape. The hymn appears again, is cut off again by the telephone. It appears a third time, playing through and under the ringing telephone, swelling into the final movement, Farándula Doble (Farandole Double), in which the first movement's dance music reappears on piano with the Mars-esque brutal drums and ever-increasing chaos: police whistles! cowbells! The cuíca, of course, gets the last, groaning word.
If that description sounds kitchen-sink maximalist, I promise you it's not. Bresnick's music always has a thrilling economy of means--not minimalist, but concise, efficient--and he is a true master of guiding a listener's attention through long spans of time (this work is around a half-hour, but feels shorter). He does manage to cram a whole ton of instruments onto that stage, but each one has such a clear role (yes, even the cuíca) that it never becomes cluttered or overwhelming. Caprichos Enfáticos works slightly less well on CD than it does live, but only because you lose Johanna Bresnick's video projections (based on the Goya prints) and the theatrical element of the performance. That said, couldn't the DVD projections have been included on the CD as bonus material? The CD itself is pretty bare-bones, and doesn't include the Goya prints the movements are based on, either. They're readily available on Google Images, but it would have been nice to have them on the disc itself.
The recording itself sounds great, though the piano can sometimes sound a little distant when up against a battery of drums. There is a beautiful acoustic bloom on those drums, so it might just be one of the inevitable trade-offs of the recording style. I'm also not entirely convinced that that recording style (the recording as document of a live performance) was right for this piece, and wondering what a different recording style would have produced. Certain musical elements--that ringing telephone in Nada. Ello Lo Dice, the jangling metal and whispering in ¡Extraña Devoción!, and a few other small things might have actually benefited from being recorded separately and multi-tracked into the mix. It would be less "accurate," but paradoxically more true to how those things actually worked in live performance.
I do have one other gripe. In the program note, on the inside of the CD jacket, there are two big-ol' typos: a misspelling ("Destastres" [sic] for "Desastres") and a grammatical error (amazingly, "it's" for "its"). Does nobody hire proofreaders* anymore? Those are pretty easy typos to spot--I caught them at first glance--and there's really no reason why they shouldn't have been caught, especially given how little text there is in the packaging.
Despite all that, the performances are as amazing as you'd expect from these players, and the piece is fun, darkly funny, witty, and unexpectedly moving (as you'd expect from this composer).
*Shameless self-promotion: I'm a proofreader. I'll do it.
-
Jeremy Howard Beck is a New York-based composer, as well as an active trombonist. Follow him on Twitter: @jeremyhowardboo
Originally published on ICareIfYouListen.com
Martin Bresnick's Caprichos Enfáticos: Los Desastres de la Guerra, an 8-movement concerto for pianist Lisa Moore and Sō Percussion, begins with, of all things, a farandole/farándula--a popular, jaunty 6/8 chain dance. In live performance, Lisa Moore plays the opening line of the farandúla on xylophone, alone on stage. A percussionist enters behind her and seamlessly takes over the line, and Moore continues to the second line. A second percussionist enters, taking over the first line, and the first percussionist moves to the second line, and Moore moves to the next layer, etc. It's torturous to try and describe the effect in words, especially since it's been three years since I saw it live at the 2008 Canberra International Music Festival in Australia, but it really does look and feel like a musical chain dance. It's also just really cool to watch Lisa Moore play toms.
Eventually, of course, she does end up at the piano. Farándula De Charlatanes, No Saben El Camino (Farandole Of Charlatans - They Don't Know The Way) alternates between harsh dissonance and strange timbres (flexatone!) and a kind of offbeat march. Estragos de la Guerra (Ravages of War) makes an overt reference to Mars, from Holst's Planets suite, with all four percussionists playing in unison on large drums. As that famous rhythm grows and morphs into a torrent of martial outbursts and machine-gun barrages, the piano embeds a simple tune, starting on an open fifth and growing along with the drum-rhythm to a virtuosic and wild peak. Farándula De Políticos, Contra El Bien General (Farandole Of Politicians, Against The Common Good) is all gallows humor: long silences, a dog barking (actually a cuíca), huge shifts in register and tone, musical sarcasm. Farándula De Populacho (Farandole Of The Rabble) contrasts a low-rumbling, dissonant piano with tick-tick-boom percussion blasts (on various high unpitched pieces of wood and a large bass drum) in multiple tempos, and ends with a burst of, yes, applause: this is bread and circuses, reality TV, a monster truck rally. Church bells and whispered prayers begin ¡Extraña Devoción! (Strange Devotion!); a simple, descending scalar melody in the piano gives way to something almost hymnal, but distorted, haunted.
Farándula De Creyentes, Nada. Ello Lo Dice (Farandole Of Believers, Nothing. That Is What It Says) is the dark heart of Caprichos Enfáticos, a sparse, ambient soundscape built from non-pitched percussion and lots of silence. A hymn appears briefly (that's Lisa Moore again, this time on melodica) before being cut off by the loud, obnoxious ring of an old telephone, which itself ends abruptly, returning us to the soundscape. The hymn appears again, is cut off again by the telephone. It appears a third time, playing through and under the ringing telephone, swelling into the final movement, Farándula Doble (Farandole Double), in which the first movement's dance music reappears on piano with the Mars-esque brutal drums and ever-increasing chaos: police whistles! cowbells! The cuíca, of course, gets the last, groaning word.
If that description sounds kitchen-sink maximalist, I promise you it's not. Bresnick's music always has a thrilling economy of means--not minimalist, but concise, efficient--and he is a true master of guiding a listener's attention through long spans of time (this work is around a half-hour, but feels shorter). He does manage to cram a whole ton of instruments onto that stage, but each one has such a clear role (yes, even the cuíca) that it never becomes cluttered or overwhelming. Caprichos Enfáticos works slightly less well on CD than it does live, but only because you lose Johanna Bresnick's video projections (based on the Goya prints) and the theatrical element of the performance. That said, couldn't the DVD projections have been included on the CD as bonus material? The CD itself is pretty bare-bones, and doesn't include the Goya prints the movements are based on, either. They're readily available on Google Images, but it would have been nice to have them on the disc itself.
The recording itself sounds great, though the piano can sometimes sound a little distant when up against a battery of drums. There is a beautiful acoustic bloom on those drums, so it might just be one of the inevitable trade-offs of the recording style. I'm also not entirely convinced that that recording style (the recording as document of a live performance) was right for this piece, and wondering what a different recording style would have produced. Certain musical elements--that ringing telephone in Nada. Ello Lo Dice, the jangling metal and whispering in ¡Extraña Devoción!, and a few other small things might have actually benefited from being recorded separately and multi-tracked into the mix. It would be less "accurate," but paradoxically more true to how those things actually worked in live performance.
I do have one other gripe. In the program note, on the inside of the CD jacket, there are two big-ol' typos: a misspelling ("Destastres" [sic] for "Desastres") and a grammatical error (amazingly, "it's" for "its"). Does nobody hire proofreaders* anymore? Those are pretty easy typos to spot--I caught them at first glance--and there's really no reason why they shouldn't have been caught, especially given how little text there is in the packaging.
Despite all that, the performances are as amazing as you'd expect from these players, and the piece is fun, darkly funny, witty, and unexpectedly moving (as you'd expect from this composer).
*Shameless self-promotion: I'm a proofreader. I'll do it.
-
Jeremy Howard Beck is a New York-based composer, as well as an active trombonist. Follow him on Twitter: @jeremyhowardboo
Originally published on ICareIfYouListen.com
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
The artwork of Francisco Goya is bold, stark and frequently very sombre. The artist had to live through the atrocities of the nineteenth century and Napoleonic conquest and, like Picasso's "Guernica". his art is often a reflection of the brutality of wartimes. Goya's sketchbook, "Los Desastres de la Guerra" (the Disasters of War)" provides the imagery that composer Martin Bresnick used for this new work for piano and percussion and the resulting music is dramatic, bold and a bit disturbing, as is the source material. Each of the movements to this eight movement concerto, Caprichos Enfaticos (Emphatic Capriccios)" is titled after one of the sketches in the Goya collection. Bresnick uses the provincial Spanish dance, the farandole, as the form for six of the movements. The farandole is typically in 6/8 meter and ranges in tempo from an accented moderato to a highly propulsive allegro. As conceived by Bresnick, this work is intended to be performed in a mutli-media way, with projections of sketches by Johanna Bresnick, the composer's wife, inspired by the Goya originals. I imagine that seeing the visuals projected during performance helps the symbolism and imagery intended by the music, however, Bresnick's score stands very well on its own as a very powerful listening experience. The music is wonderfully written to run a range of emotion from the darkly mysterious (as in mvt. 7 "Strange Devotion") to the violent and chaotic (as in mvt. 2 "Farandole of the charlatans - they don't know the way"). The combination of piano and percussion is not a new form but is a very appealing and inherently dramatic one (the Bartok "Concerto for Two Pianos and Percussion" being what for most people is the best known example Caprichos Enfaticos makes a very solid addition to this genre and credit the performers here for helping to give this piece a very weighty, attention getting interpretation. Pianist Lisa Moore performs with great technique and a moody sensitivity when called for and the percussion ensemble is the renowned new music ensemble, So Percussion; whose work I enjoy every time I hear it. Martin Bresnick is a name you should know. The multiple award winning New Yorker has been composer in residence at an impressive array of colleges, universities and foreign arts festivals and is presently serving as such at Mannes College of Music. He has worked with Cantaloupe Records and the Band on a Can group before. I admit that my exposure to his music is limited, being familiar with his saxophone quartet work Everything Must Go, but this piece absolutely makes me want to go explore more. Caprichos Enfaticos is picturesque and compelling. The music succeeds in peaking one's interest for Goya as well. I recommend this disc highly for anyone fan of So Percussion, anyone who likes piano and percussion and anyone who wants to hear an excellent example of visual art interpreted in sound.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Goya, Bresnick, Moore and So Percussion....So much more than good!
February 6, 2012
By Charlie Pitt
Format:MP3 Music
Cantaloupe Music has done it again. This CD label, created by the founders of the 'Bang on a Can' series that was such a presence and center of contemporary classical and experimental music in the 20th Century, doesn't disappoint. It challenges for sure, yet I think that our ears, much like that of our ancestors hearing Beethoven, Bach or Brahms for the first time, have evolved over time as well. Caprichos Enfaticos, composed by Martin Bresnick, and performed by pianist Lisa Moore and percussion quartet So Percussion, is a journey through the darkness of Goyas artwork - specifically his book of etchings that are Los Destastres de la Guerra, The Disasters of War. In more than 80 plates/etchings Goya captures the horror of war informed by Spain's War of Independence against Napoleon's forces.
According to art currator Peter Blum, "The original set of 85 etchings was most likely completed by Goya between 1810 and 1820, and entitled Fatales consequencias de la sangrienta guerra en España con Buonaparte. Y otros caprichos enfáticos. (Fatal consequences of Spain's bloody war with Buonaparte. And other emphatic caprices). The set of proofs was bound and given to his friend Juan Agustín Ceán Bermúdez to review, and is currently located in the British Museum. The prints were not published in Goya's lifetime. In 1863, the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando published the first edition of 80 etchings as Los Desastres de la Guerra, bound as a book."
Ironically, Goya was likely deaf by the time he completed these etchings, yet the testiment to his work is made in this powerfully dark, introspective musical work of Martin Bresnick. The piece stands on its own merit although it was originally performed in a multi-media setting with slides of the etchings projected from DVD. So Percussion have become one of my favorite percussion ensembles and they are a brilliant combination of skill and resonance. As a percussionist myself I can appreciate the choices they made in selecting one instrument over another, with a sincere attention to the qualit of the sound and how it was prduced in combination with the other instruments. And pianist Lisa Moore shines in this and her other Cantaloupe recordings...
Percussion and piano seems so stark and perhaps that is the point. The etchings are stark and graphic and the simplicity of a small ensemble allows the listener to be surrounded at once and yet be present in the midst of the performance / recording itself. I highly recommend this recording and any of the Cantaloupe Music CDs - great quality recordings and performances, and a reminder of the importance of the music that came out of Meet the Composer grants...
Charlie Pitt is the pen name of Mitch Gordon, percussionist, mediator, conductor and radio host - Mitch is a host for ClassiCollage, heard Monday nights 9pm-midnight at nonprofit, noncommercial, WCUW 91.3 FM in Worcester, MA and streaming live around the world at [...]wcuw.org
According to art currator Peter Blum, "The original set of 85 etchings was most likely completed by Goya between 1810 and 1820, and entitled Fatales consequencias de la sangrienta guerra en España con Buonaparte. Y otros caprichos enfáticos. (Fatal consequences of Spain's bloody war with Buonaparte. And other emphatic caprices). The set of proofs was bound and given to his friend Juan Agustín Ceán Bermúdez to review, and is currently located in the British Museum. The prints were not published in Goya's lifetime. In 1863, the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando published the first edition of 80 etchings as Los Desastres de la Guerra, bound as a book."
Ironically, Goya was likely deaf by the time he completed these etchings, yet the testiment to his work is made in this powerfully dark, introspective musical work of Martin Bresnick. The piece stands on its own merit although it was originally performed in a multi-media setting with slides of the etchings projected from DVD. So Percussion have become one of my favorite percussion ensembles and they are a brilliant combination of skill and resonance. As a percussionist myself I can appreciate the choices they made in selecting one instrument over another, with a sincere attention to the qualit of the sound and how it was prduced in combination with the other instruments. And pianist Lisa Moore shines in this and her other Cantaloupe recordings...
Percussion and piano seems so stark and perhaps that is the point. The etchings are stark and graphic and the simplicity of a small ensemble allows the listener to be surrounded at once and yet be present in the midst of the performance / recording itself. I highly recommend this recording and any of the Cantaloupe Music CDs - great quality recordings and performances, and a reminder of the importance of the music that came out of Meet the Composer grants...
Charlie Pitt is the pen name of Mitch Gordon, percussionist, mediator, conductor and radio host - Mitch is a host for ClassiCollage, heard Monday nights 9pm-midnight at nonprofit, noncommercial, WCUW 91.3 FM in Worcester, MA and streaming live around the world at [...]wcuw.org
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