Shank-Hagedorn Duo: At Home and Abroad
Innova

Operating under the Shank-Hagedorn Duo name, Leslie Shank and Joseph Hagedorn make beautiful music together on this seventy-six-minute release, which attests to the richness of their sound and the breadth of their interests. On six pieces, five of them premiere recordings, the sweetly singing tone of her violin and viola are complemented wonderfully by the classical guitar of her husband. The Minnesota-based partners are hardly upstarts: Shank was a member of The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra for thirty years, twenty-four of them as assistant concertmaster, and she's also a founding member of the Isles Ensemble, which includes many of the Twin Cities' chamber musicians; Hagedorn is a founding member of the Minneapolis Guitar Quartet, with whom he's performed and recorded since 1986, and has served on the music faculty of the University of Wisconsin-River Falls since 1988.

At Home and Abroad presents some of the duo's favourite works from the past fifteen years of performances. An eclectic programme, the recording includes a serenade written for the two by Alf Houkom, a short piece by David Lang, and respective works by Ian Krouse and David Hahn that have ties to John Dowland and “Pop Goes the Weasel.” Regardless of the piece involved, the level of musicianship is high and the joy the two share in performing together communicates vividly. That feeling is also resoundingly conveyed in the Chagall-styled painting on the release's cover.

On only one piece, Ian Krouse's Music in Four Sharps (2004), are the two joined by others, with cellist Laura Sewell, violist Tom Turner, and violinist Stephanie Arado expanding the arrangement to string quartet and guitar. This single-movement performance is arguably the recording's peak moment, though the others following it are also strong. A reworking of the composer's Portrait of a Young Woman, written in the ‘90s for two guitars, Music in Four Sharps uses the John Dowland song “Now oh now I needs must part” (also known as the Frog Galliard) as a deconstructed springboard of sorts. Said detail quickly retreats into the background when the players' rapturous string sonorities fill the air, the graceful lilt of their expressive outpourings wonderfully complemented by Hagedorn's elegant picking. At almost sixteen minutes, the adventurous setting naturally progresses through many stages, from delicate and restful to stately and authoritative, yet retains throughout an elegance of the kind one associates with Renaissance music as well as an understated melancholy like that heard in Dowland's songs.

The gracefulness of Krouse's piece carries over to Houkom's Serenade for Two (2010), a two-movement work that sees Shank's virtuosity put to full effect, in the second part, “Fancy,” in particular. Being the consummate musicians they are, however, Shank and Hagedorn never grandstand gratuitously, their displays instead deployed in service to the composition at hand. Lang, who met Shank in the late ‘70s when both were students at the Aspen Music Festival, wrote the four-minute gift (2018) as a belated wedding present for the two; interestingly, he less emphasizes joy in the material's tone and more rumination as the instruments engage in an intricate dance, the composer perhaps alluding to the patterns of interactions married partners engage in as their lives unfold together.

Hagedorn was so struck by the experience of seeing Finnish musician Maria Kalaniemi perform “Slingerdansin,” “Tähdet Taivahalla,” and “Sofias Flykt” with her band in Minnesota, he transcribed and arranged them for violin and guitar. Presented under the title Three Pieces, the movements present powerful contrasts, the first a spirited, waltz-styled dance, the second a timeless folk lament, and the third an emphatic number whose spirited swing gives the work a pleasing formal design.

At Home and Abroad ends with two lengthy works structured using multiple movements. David Hahn's four-part W is for Weasel (2003) follows the brisk scene-setter “Insistence” with “Estampie,” which involves staccato alternations between 7/8 and 5/8 measures, and “W is for Weasel,” which disarms the ear with humorous riffs on the familiar “Pop! Goes the Weasel!” nursery rhyme. Suite for Violin and Guitar (2016) by Chile-born composer Javier Contreras enlivens the recording with six movements animated by traditional Latin American dance rhythms. Shank's singing tone is perfectly matched to the radiance of “Tonada,” after which she flutters, struts, and gambols her way through “Chacarera Doble.” As perfect a fit as she is for such material, Hagedorn impresses also when his picking so effectively captures the essence of the music's style.

July 2019