Recording Review #7: Sour Sailing

 

Jüri Reinvere: Ship of Fools (and other works). Paavo Jӓrvi, conductor; Estonian Festival Orchestra. Alpha Classics 1056. ISBN: 3701624510568. 

Occasionally I will listen to new(ish) works by living composers I don't know, just to see if I'm missing anything special in the world of contemporary classical music. Sadly, I'm usually not. As with past ages, really special talents tend to be few. Bachs, Beethovens, and Mozarts don't grow on trees. Okay, that's a ridiculously high bar. But have you ever asked yourself who the great composers of this age are? More pointedly, have you ever wondered who people in centuries hence will consider to be the great composers of our age? Are we accurately aware of such figures today, if they exist? I have my doubts. Part of me thinks we're in the long, comatose demise of our rich classical music tradition. (I have very strong opinions about how we found ourselves here, be it demise or temporary dip, but I'll save that post for another time.) Like Tony Soprano said, "Lately I'm getting the feeling I came in at the end. The best is over." I hope very much that this is wrong. 

But I'm comfortable saying that this recording contains merely garden-variety "contemporary" music. I put "contemporary" in scare quotes because so many composers have been at this same general schtick for a long while now: gaseous, dissonant, noisy, a-melodic fare, often decked out with pretentious titles. That's basically what we have with the three works offered here (or two out of three in the case of pretentious titles). It's music that strains to make a mark but instead adds a few drops to the sea of shrug-worthy background din dominating the current classical epoch. 

Having streamed this recording, I apparently cannot access the liner notes to interrogate the title of the first work we hear: And tired from happiness, they started to dance. This is already a long, awkward moniker, but each of three movements also has its own subtitle. First we get "Shadows in the Mirror," which opens with a temporarily recurring ascending motive in the strings (I seem to recall). But then we pretty much just have timbre-driven blocks of sound. This section is only 8 or so minutes long, but I was bored not long in. Then comes the second movement, called "Motion of Waiting." This is a shorter stretch kicked off by, among other things, some noodling on the solo violin. None of it is memorable, and we soon get more noisy material that sounds like a large ensemble warming up. Later something like a tune emerges in the strings only to quickly be subsumed in more clumps of dissonance. "Lack and Desire" closes things out. This at least had a nifty ostinato-like thing going for much of the first half. (I guess this is the "starting to dance" part?) But we return to unalloyed dreariness to close things out...save perhaps for another feeble attempt at melody in the conclusion. 

I could at length describe the Concerto for 2 Flutes, Strings, and Percussion, but what's the point? It's in two movements that are still too long for the paucity of events that transpire in them. Lots of ideas and sounds are explored. We even get something like a long melody in the second movement. But I was waiting for it to be done after only a few minutes. While I listened and took notes, my young children were briefly loud during their next-room play, and I had to rewind parts and listen again. But frankly, the interruption did not appreciably alter my experience of this music. Shouting kids could have been written into the score and made no difference there at all – just another timbral cluster of sound. 

I'd like to say that the best comes last, but it doesn't. Still, with On the Ship of Fools (a one-movement essay[?] for orchestra), we at least get an "Issues Piece." This is what I call a piece of music that is interesting substantially or entirely because of extra-musical issues, or at least treated that way by commentators etc. Per Presto Music's description: 

"On the Ship of Fools is inspired by the key phrase of a 16th-century novel: Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur (The world seeks to be deceived, therefore let it be deceived). 'People deceive each other on Facebook and Instagram', comments Reinvere, whose music is both heady and troubling."

It disappoints me to report that reading this description is easily more exciting than listening to the corresponding 20 minutes of music. While again I admit being unable to access the liner notes, I could not match anything in the music meaningfully with the above blurb. It basically takes the least engaging aspects of the first two pieces and prolongs them for over a quarter of an hour. I guess it's is a kind of feat, but not one that will make me revisit any of this soon. 

Finally, it does sadden me a little to pan new repertoire led by Paavo Järvi, who is one of my favorite living conductors. I can't blame him for promoting the music of his fellow Estonian. I'm sure he even believes in what he's doing here. But from my perspective, add another shipwreck to the watery graveyard of modernist conceits. Here's hoping that Mr. Reinvere does a Penderecki with the remainder of his career and embraces a more communicative sensibility. 

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