VA: Beneath the Tide: A Collection of Concertos
Navona Records

One of the more satisfying aspects of this collection is its symmetrical design, with a guitar concerto framed by two violin-centered settings and the trio bookended by two three-movement works, one featuring clarinet and the other piano. On this fine addition to the Navona catalogue, the Croatian Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Miran Vaupotic, and five respective soloists bring to vivid life concertos by contemporary composers Michael G. Cunningham, Rain Worthington, Ssu-Yu Huang, Bruce Reiprich, and Beth Mehocic. In these emotionally encompassing pieces, turbulent passages regularly alternate with less unsettling episodes characterized by warmth and nostalgia.

Cunningham's Clarinet Concerto establishes a dramatic and somewhat dark tone for the recording, with clarinetist Bruno Philipp accompanied by the non-string sections of the orchestra. Opening urgently, “Dithyramb” inaugurates the work with aggressive horn statements that set the stage for Philipp's entrance. A rather Berg-like dissonance adds to the brooding character of the movement as the agile soloist darts amidst the equally fast-shifting backdrop; “Lithe” then brings the volume down without diminishing the work's acerbic tone, after which “Charivari” reinstates the faster pace of the opening with five minutes of churning rhythms and sombre clarinet expressions.

At the tail end, pianist Charlene Farrugia performs a concerto written in 1974 when Beth Mehocic was a twenty-one-year-old senior at Youngstown State University but which subsequently was set aside when her graduate school instructors deemed it “too conventional” (this occurred during a period when avant-garde experimentalism was at its height). Now dusted off and updated slightly by the composer, the eighteen-minute setting ends the release on a triumphant note. In an unabashedly tonal work that follows convention in framing aggressive movements with the restraint of a graceful “Lento,” Farrugia's grand gestures are matched in exuberance by robust percussion and the orchestra's strings, woodwinds, and brass.

As credible as the opening and closing works are, the three central ones leave a greater mark, attributable in part to the impact a single-movement work can exert when its power is concentrated into a single statement. Rain Worthington's In Passages is given a stunning reading by violinist Mojca Ramušcak and the Croatian Chamber Orchestra's strings. Effected as ongoing interplay between the soloist and string section, the material exudes tenderness as Ramušcak alternates between foreground and background, the standard approach of the soloist positioned at the forefront rejected in favour of something more daring. Paralleling the ebb and flow of emotional states, the two instrumental components move fluidly back and forth, the result a sonic organism as unpredictable in its unfolding as human experience.

Written after a move by the composer to a foreign country, Ssu-Yu Huang's Guitar Concerto No. 1 (Remembrance of Hometown) naturally exudes nostalgia, and, in fact, during the fifteen-minute work the guitar voices a motif from the Hengchun folksong “Nostalgia.” After a solo intro by Pedro Ribeiro Rodrigues, the orchestra emerges to complicate the classical guitarist's expression of homesickness with agitated passages that perhaps mirror the emotional turbulence wrought by relocation and the ambivalence a person experiences in reflecting on the decision to move. Rodrigues is a refined, expressive presence throughout, but the orchestral colour generated by many different instrument voices, oboe, flute, and trumpet among them, is just as pivotal to the work's effect.

March 2019