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SOLITUDES

BALTIC REFLECTIONS

1 Olli Mustonen (b. 1967) Toccata

2 Zita Bružaitė (b. 1966) Bangos

Su-a Lee cello, Maria Martinova piano

5 Kalevi Aho (b. 1949) Lamento

Robert McFall viola 1, Brian Schiele viola 2 Pēteris Vasks (b. 1946)

MR McFALL’S CHAMBER

Cyril Garac violin 1

Robert McFall violin 2 (track 5 – viola)

Recorded on 8-9 December 2014

at St Mary’s Parish Church, Whitekirk

Producer/Engineer: Paul Baxter

24-bit digital editing: Adam Binks

24-bit digital mastering: Paul Baxter

Cover image © Mikko Lagerstedt www.mikkolagerstedt.com

Design: Drew Padrutt

Booklet photography © Delphian Records

Booklet editor: John Fallas

Delphian Records Ltd–Edinburgh–UK www.delphianrecords.co.uk Join the Delphian mailing list: www.delphianrecords.co.uk/join

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Brian Schiele viola Su-a Lee cello (track 14 – musical saw)

Arvo Pärt (b. 1935) Für Alina

Martinova piano

Toivo Kärki (1915–1992) Täysikuu

Robert McFall

Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) Einsames Lied (Solitude)

Robert McFall from Belshazzar’s Feast

Unto Mononen (1930–1968) Satumaa

Robert McFall

Sibelius Finlandia Hymn

Robert McFall

group except where individual players named)

Standley double bass

Martinova piano

Rick

Maria

The Eastern Baltic seaboard is an extraordinarily rich and diverse area in cultural terms, including as it does the countries of Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. These countries, while possessed of their own distinct languages, histories and cultures, also have a great deal in common, not least in their shared but diverse histories as nations oppressed and occupied by foreign powers. Whilst it is not straightforward to identify common cultural themes, it is easy to feel that, as part of that spirit of resistance, these countries perhaps share a strength related to their suppressed freedom and an attendant sense of isolation, a yearning for the return of liberty, and a genuine relationship to nature. Certainly these elements are characteristic of much of the music included on this recording.

If we begin with Finland, we must also begin with Sibelius, the archetypal Finnish composer, who forged a musical language that reflected his country, occupied at different times by Sweden and Russia. Nothing is more symbolic of this than the majestic Finlandia Hymn, which is often considered to be Finland’s second national anthem (the actual national anthem is Maamme, to music by the Germanborn Fredrik Pacius). It was originally part of the tone-poem Finlandia (1899/1900), which specifically portrays the Finnish national struggle, and was given words in 1941 by the poet Veikko Antero Koskenniemi. The ‘Hymn’ has been arranged for many different

ensembles, including twice by the composer himself, but this is probably the first time that piano quintet and musical saw have been used in its performance.

Einsames Lied (known in English as ‘Solitude’) is a short piece originally entitled ‘The Jewish Girl’s Song’ and included in the incidental music for the play Belsazars gästabud (‘Belshazzar’s Feast’) by Hjalmar Frederik Eugén Procopé, written in 1906. Its constant rocking accompaniment is, perhaps, a distant ancestor of the Baltic minimalism of composers such as Sumera, as is the tone-poem Luonnotar (1913). And, as with the later work, though the accompaniment is static, the melodic writing is ethereal and haunting: the music is anything but earthbound.

‘Ethereal and haunting’ are words that could also be used to describe Lamento for two violas, written in memory of the violinist Sakari Laukola by Kalevi Aho, one of Finland’s most prominent living composers. Aho’s music is characterised by an extremely delicate sense of instrumental colour, and Lamento is no exception. The two violas’ sometimes surprisingly romantic lines intertwine constantly, as though one were a different aspect of the other, until they reach a moment of exquisitely poised sadness, and the lamentation is done.

case of Olli Mustonen’s piece, the title is only half the story. Certainly there is a toccata within the piece, or even several toccatas, suggesting (as does much of Mustonen’s music) Bach and Stravinsky, but the work changes gear frequently, and there are also quiet, richly reflective sections that are more than reminiscent of Sibelius. Nevertheless, it is virtuosity and rhythmic verve that lead the work to its abrupt conclusion, as though the machine can simply go on no longer.

Both rhythmic interest and yearning melodic writing are also at the heart of the Finnish tango. Many people are surprised at the very existence of this music. In fact, it is enormously popular, but it has taken on its own characteristics that differentiate it quite clearly from the Argentinian original. No one is quite certain exactly when it became established in Finland, though presumably it spread from Paris after the arrival of Argentinian tango musicians there in the first decade of the twentieth century, but by the 1930s, Finnish composers had begun to write their own tangos, with a distinctively Nordic melancholic colour, recalling the elegance of earlier Finnish and Russian waltzes, and replacing the Argentinian bandoneón with the European accordion.

shooting himself in 1968 at the age of only 37. Satumaa was made famous by Reijo Taipale’s 1962 recording, and has since become a staple of the Finnish tango repertoire. Its yearning, upward-sweeping phrases, punctuated by sudden rhythmic figures, are characteristic of the style.

Toivo Kärki was one of the biggest names in Finnish tango, but was also active in many other genres of popular music, working in revue and writing for theatre and radio as well as being a prolific arranger. Täysikuu (‘Full Moon’) is a more straightforward piece than Mononen’s, and demonstrates well Kärki’s melodic gifts – the title and style here lead one to imagine a romantic tryst under the moonlit night sky.

One might have thought that a work entitled Toccata would be quite different, but in the

Satumaa (‘The Fairy-Tale Land’), telling of a longing for an unreachable land over the sea, is one of the classic Finnish tangos, written by the prolific tango composer Unto Mononen and published in 1955. Mononen met a tragic end,

The result of the creation of this remarkable repertory is that Finnish tango has become, as it were, a quotable style, and this is what lies behind Aulis Sallinen’s Introduction and Tango Overture, scored for piano quintet or small string orchestra. The Introduction takes us to a slithering, melancholy world, the composer making much use of sideways chromatic slips so that any underlying tonal security is effectively undermined. This uncertainty seems about to be resolved when the Overture begins, as it ‘warms up’ with typical tango rhythms and extrovert gestures, but the ambiguity of the Introduction remains, the chromatic slips making out of the vocabulary of the tango

something disturbing and uncertain. Indeed, Sallinen achieves a sense of alienation quite as subtle and powerful as Alfred Schnittke ever did in his ‘polystylistic’ music. The final chord, with its unresolved seventh, is a monument to this alienation: one can go neither forward nor back.

Arvo Pärt also went through a period that one might describe as polystylistic, as his collage works such as Symphony No. 2 show: the result of his own sense of alienation, as the composer who had written the first Estonian dodecaphonic work (Nekrolog, in 1960) and then discovered that this route was, for him, a cul-de-sac. Near-total silence was the answer, and an extreme concentration on mediaeval and renaissance techniques: he would go to libraries and copy out by hand music by such composers as Machaut and Palestrina. What emerged was his now famous tintinnabuli style, based on the resonance of arpeggiated major triads in one voice and a second, melodic voice that moves by step. This style, which would give rise to the whole of the composer’s subsequent output, is initiated and symbolised in the tiny Für Alina for piano, written in 1976 for an Estonian girl living on her own in London.

Like Aho’s Lamento, Dedication, by Pärt’s fellow Estonian Erkki-Sven Tüür, is a memorial, in this case to the highly original composer Kuldar Sink (1942–1995). It is a

mercurial piece, its lyrical outbursts of melody and rich harmonies punctuated by mysterious gestures that suggest lamentation, making use of the strings of the piano played from inside the instrument, and of harmonics on the cello. From the resonant silence following these gestures arise the melodic sections; it is music that suggests absence and the recollection of that absence, and even, at times, anger or frustration.

The apparent simplicity of Little Summer Music (1985) by Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks is, as so often, deceptive. Like so much else in his output, it suggests a landscape, but this is the landscape of Latvia while still a part of the Soviet Union, so while its folklike transparency evokes summer, there is also a sense of nostalgia for a truly Latvian summer. Indeed, the composer’s ‘symphony for strings’, Voices (1990–91), was a direct reflection of his country’s final transition from occupation to freedom.

Each of the six brief movements nevertheless has a different character. The three most evocative of folk songs (or dances) are the second, third and fifth, which all nevertheless end ambiguously. The fourth movement opens with clangorous, bell-like chords in the piano, before the violin begins its meditative journey, again finishing on an unresolved dissonance. The sixth movement is a variant of the first, in which the instruments’ melodic lines do not

quite coincide: a quasi-heterophonic effect is produced by the interweaving of tiny decorated melodic cells; one might perhaps think of drowsy bees circling round each other, or moths circling a lantern as darkness overtakes the Latvian summer evening.

The Lithuanian composer Zita Bružaitė is noted for the enormous diversity of the styles in which she writes and of the techniques she uses. Attention is frequently drawn to her particular interest in folk and mediaeval music, and jazz. Repetition, and in particular the use of ritornello, have become especially characteristic. The flowing patterns of Bangos (‘Waves’), written in 2010, suggest on paper a kind of minimalist Bach prelude, though the harmonic journey might also at times bring

Chopin to mind. Its one-bar units all repeat twice, until the journey stops unexpectedly – there is no slowing-down of the music or anything to indicate that the end is approaching – with an accented chord which is then echoed one octave lower. A Baltic wave crashing against the sea wall, perhaps, leaving behind a brief resonance and a very long memory: an image that can stand in a sense for all the music on this recording.

Ivan Moody is a composer, musicologist, and Orthodox priest of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Portugal. Currently a researcher at the Universidade Nova in Lisbon, he was previously Professor of Church Music at the University of Eastern Finland.

Mr McFall’s Chamber

Known for its innovative approach to programming and stylistic plurality, Mr McFall’s Chamber was formed in 1996 as a response to the narrowing demographic for classical music in Scotland at that time. Initially an ad hoc string quartet, gradually adding a bass player and pianist as well as other, occasional members, the group played at first to nightclub audiences and offered a mixture of types of music, some popular, some way-out. Subsequently it took its bohemian approach and some, at least, of its bohemian audience back into the concert hall, creating music events which combined contemporary classical pieces with jazz, folk, progressive rock, cabaret and tango, all presented in a style which places the emphasis on informality and enjoyment.

Mr McFall’s Chamber has collaborated with a number of singer-songwriters, including Michael Marra and Valentina Montoya Martínez (both of whom have recorded CDs for Delphian with the group). It is also dedicated to commissioning new work from both well-known and unknown composers, and has premiered and toured pieces by James MacMillan, Gavin Bryars, Eddie McGuire, Kenneth Dempster, Cecilia McDowall, Chick Lyall, Phil Bancroft, Fraser

Fifield, Tim Garland and many more. Two McFall’s commissions, Martin Suckling’s What shall I give? and Martin Kershaw’s Closing In, were both shortlisted as finalists for the 2011 BASCA British Composer Awards.

The group has collaborated with artists and animators in multimedia projects, and has established many educational projects around Scotland, including North Ayrshire’s ‘Tango Fest’, launched in December 2012, in which more than three hundred young string pupils performed a programme of traditional tango numbers with the group. In 2014 Mr McFall’s Chamber toured and recorded five songs by classical singer-songwriter Errollyn Wallen, and a new set of songs by Errollyn has been commissioned for October 2015 as part of an ambitious curated programme of music from Scotland and the Caribbean, with support from a prestigious PRS for Music Foundation award.

In December 2014, Mr McFall’s Chamber was named in The List’s ‘Hot 100’ countdown of Scotland’s top hundred cultural icons.

Also available on Delphian

Gavin Bryars: The Church Closest to the Sea Susan Hamilton, Nicholas Mulroy, Mr McFall’s Chamber

DCD34058

The double bass has always been close to Gavin Bryars’ heart. His own instrument, it has also featured strongly in his music for other players –as in The Church Closest to the Sea, written for Mr McFall’s Chamber and their bassist Rick Standley. Voices, meanwhile, are a more recent concern, displayed here in typically understated settings of Petrarch translations by the Irish playwright J.M. Synge. Bryars’ music straddles worlds: classical and jazz, composition and improvisation, the works on this disc moving between the lushly sensuous and the coolly laid-back as they meditate on geographical and emotional borderlands.

‘deceptively simple sounds whose complexity is revealed in the aftertaste … Whenever I hear Bryars’ music, I want to hear more’ – Norman Lebrecht, www.scena.org, November 2009

Birds & Beasts: music by Martyn Bennett and Fraser Fifield

Mr McFall’s Chamber

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Martyn Bennett was one of Scotland’s most innovative musicians, combining the traditional and modern, the local and the international. A longplanned collaboration with Mr McFall’s Chamber was never realised during his tragically short lifetime. Robert McFall has put together a programme of his own sympathetic arrangements of Martyn’s music alongside original works by Fraser Fifield, another of Scotland’s virtuosic musical innovators.

The premiere recording of Bennett’s Piece for string quartet, percussion and Scottish smallpipes epitomises his sophisticated mastery of fusion.

‘a satisfying, serpentine dalliance of whistle, violin and percussion’ – The Independent, May 2010

Also available on Delphian

Michael Marra: live on tour 2010

Michael Marra, Mr McFall’s Chamber

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Robert McFall writes: When we toured with Michael in 2010 we had, of course, no idea that he would only be with us for a further two years. Looking back on it I’m hugely relieved that we made these recordings when we could, that we helped capture what a Michael Marra performance was like, down to his impeccably presented and hilarious introductions. For some time before the collaboration some of us had been faithful fans of his, and we feel blessed to have had the opportunity to be, for an all too brief few weeks, his backing band.

‘Aficionados will know Marra’s utterly idiosyncratic material … but the sympathetic McFall’s settings bring a new, almost cinematic element, managing to complement the frequent quirkiness of these songs while emphasising the compassion which glows amid the surrealism’

– The Scotsman, November 2010

La Pasionaria

Valentina Montoya Martínez vocals, Victor Villena bandoneon, Mr McFall’s Chamber

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Valentina Montoya Martínez’s songs of life as a Chilean exile are complemented by the music of the tango nuevo, including songs and instrumental interludes from Ástor Piazzolla’s ‘operita’ María de Buenos Aires, where the character of María represents the tango itself. ‘La Pasionaria’ was the nickname of Dolores Ibárruri, a Basque Communist leader during the Spanish Civil War. Likewise both engaged and passionate, the songs brought together here – including Valentina’s deeply personal odes to her late mother and to the political activist Sola Sierra – pay tribute to the private and public lives of women across Spain and Latin America.

‘hugely engaging … A glorious, loveable disc’

– The Arts Desk, August 2013

The Okavango Macbeth

Edinburgh Studio Opera & Mr McFall’s Chamber / Michael Bawtree

DCD34096 (2 discs)

The Macbeth story as played out in a troupe of baboons? This fanciful idea inspired writer Alexander McCall Smith and composer Tom Cunningham with the idea for this unique chamber opera, set in the Okavango Delta in northern Botswana. It centres on the efforts of an ambitious female baboon, Lady Macbeth, to encourage her husband to murder the dominant baboon, Duncan. The opera was premiered in Botswana, in The No 1 Ladies’ Opera House which McCall Smith helped found as a venue for the many talented local singers there, before transferring to this, the first of two Scottish productions to date.

‘Beth Mackay’s Lady Macbeth chills and charms, and we understand exactly why Rónan Busfield’s Macbeth is so besotted with her. The instrumental writing is pungent and lush by turns … Small-scale perfection’ – The Arts Desk, January 2012

Songs of the Baltic Sea

National Youth Choir of Great Britain / Mike Brewer

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Since the collapse of the Soviet Union the three Baltic states have emerged as powerhouses of choral innovation and imagination. The National Youth Choir of Great Britain brings all its customary fervour and virtuosity to bear on this programme of recent works from three of Europe’s smallest, yet musically richest, countries. East meets West as two great singing traditions are brought together to thrilling effect in Pēteris Plakidis’s ‘symphony for choir’ Nolemtība (Destiny), Galina Grigorjeva’s Russian-style choir concerto Svjatki (Holy Days), shorter pieces by Vaclovas Augustinas and Mindaugas Urbaitis, and a specially commissioned work by English choral composer and Baltic specialist Gabriel Jackson, who also contributes the informative booklet essay.

‘The intrepid young choristers are on glowingly excellent form throughout’ – Gramophone, February 2012