MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2023
Approaching 60,000 reviews
and more.. and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


 REVIEW

Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

alternatively
CD: Crotchet AmazonUK AmazonUS


Paul CHIHARA (b. 1938)
Ain't No Sunshine for piano, violin and cello (2006) [14:43]
Piano Quintet La Foce (2007) [20:56]
Minidoka for clarinet, viola, harp, percussion (1996) [11:23]
An Afternoon on the Perfume River (2002) [12:00]
Yael Weiss (piano); Mark Kaplan (violin); Clancy Newman (cello) (Sunshine); Pascal Rogé (piano); Ysaye String Quartet (Quintet); Alan R Kay (clarinet); Richard O'Nell (viola); Barbara Allen (harp); Daniel Druckman (percussion) (Minidoka); Odense SO/Paul Mann (Afternoon)
rec. Recital Hall, Purchase College, NY, 18-19 May 2007, 21 September 2007, 9 April 2007; Carl Nielsen Hall, Odense Konserthus, Denmark, 20 June 2007. DDD
BRIDGE 9267 [59:26]
Experience Classicsonline

I first heard something by Chihara when I was sent a private tape of his Saxophone Concerto. It was a good experience and led on - sparsely - to other discoveries including the Reference Recordings CD of his full length ballet The Tempest.

Chihara was born in Seattle and holds a doctorate from Cornell having studied there with Robert Palmer. His other teachers have included Boulanger (Paris), Ernst Pepping (Berlin) and Gunther Schuller (Tanglewood).

This selection of three of his chamber works and one orchestral work is the first of his music I have heard in quite some time. I hope to hear more but opportunities are regrettably scarce.

Ain't No Sunshine is the outcome of a commission for a short yet brilliant piece for a Far East tour by Joel Sachs and his Continuum Ensemble - much of whose studio work has been reissued on Naxos. It is based on but never states directly the blues ballad of that name by Bill Withers. Its full title is Ain't No Sunshine when she is gone. The work heard here is an extended three movement version of the original written specially for Mark Kaplan's Trio. Its intensely coloured fantasy is slightly dissonant yet in substance stays in touch with tonality. Its dreaminess reminded me of the desolate witchery of the instrumental part in Warlock's The Curlew. It is not specially bluesy but is more dreamy-yearning-haunting in the manner of say Lambert and Ravel. 

The Piano Quintet La Foce benefited from the advice of Pascal Rogé during the writing stage. It contains the DNA of Fauré's singing lines and Ravel's impressionism alongside the eerieness and fragmentation of more modern styles. The two elements are nicely resolved and rude gear-changes avoided. The central movement is the vehicle for a blast of sanguine writing. The final pages glow with the memory of the composer's idyllic recollected Parisian years.

Minidoka reflects the composer's childhood experience of forced relocation from Seattle to camps (including Minidoka) in the USA where those of Japanese origin were effectively incarcerated in the wake of Pearl Harbour. It is another atmospheric score with many impressionistic touches including something that sounds like a kazoo playing a siren noise and the sound of shinto monks. The second movement includes the singing of fragments of a song remembered from those years Away Beyond the Hills of Idaho. The effect is of a warm collage in which memory focuses and slips into haze and back.

The single orchestral work is An Afternoon on the Perfume River which was premiered at Carnegie Hall, by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra on 7 February 2003. As we have come to expect by now the style is impressionistic and bejewelled with notes slewing off-centre. The title is from a poem by Nguyen Khoa Diem who fought for the communist side in the Vietnam war. The Perfume River flows past the country's capital Hanoi.

The recording is uniformly powerful - strikingly so in the chamber works - in fact almost intimidating in the last movement of Ain't No Sunshine.

These are all compactly expressed short pieces which show a creditable intensity of concentration by this composer. Rewarding music and no mistake. Will appeal to those able to accommodate a insurgency of dissonance and modern discontinuity. The pulsing core is melodic, impressionistic, atmospheric - even nostalgic.

Rob Barnett


 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools




Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.