Cool Tunes for the Big Bassoon
Jared Isaac ARAGÓN (b.1990)
Little Suite for Big Bassoon (2012) [10:28]
Jay VOSK (b. 1948)
The Giant Stirred (2015) [9:55]
Alan PALIDER (b. 1959)
L’Italiano molto breve (2011) [5:48]
Joel BJORLING (b. 1952)
Suite in A minor (2007) [7:50]
Jay VOSK
Contra Blue (2019) [8:32]
Jared Isaac ARAGÓN
Nebulae (Sonata for contrabassoon and piano, 2014) [13:58]
Ann Marie KURRASCH (b. 1947)
Chicago Cakewalk (2018) [2:24]
Susan Nigro (contrabassoon)
Mark Lindeblad (piano)
rec. 2021, Chicago
CRYSTAL RECORDS CD980 [59:32]
Here’s a CD that should interest anyone who has espied that strangely convoluted piece of plumbing lurking at the end of the bassoon section – i.e. the contrabassoon, or ‘double bassoon’ – and has wanted to hear what it sounds like up close and personal. There are precious few opportunities for the ‘contra’ to shine as a soloist in orchestral music - Ravel’s Left Hand Concerto and Beauty and the Beast, Mahler’s 9th Symphony…..and very few more. Its main function in classical music is to reinforce the double bass line, and occasionally to add organ-like depth to harmonies such as those in the finale of Brahms’s Symphony no. 1.
So there is no hyperbole involved when Susan Nigro is described as ‘one of the world’s very few contrabassoonists to have made a career of playing recitals, doing solo appearances and making recordings’. In fact, I don’t think I can name a single other one! But you have to admire Nigro’s dedication and hard work in the service of her instrument. All the music on this disc is by American composers, and every piece has been commissioned by her. All players of the instrument will want to hear this disc, the most recent of several she has made, because she is a fine musician, with an incredible technique on this large, unwieldy instrument.
Looking at a contra, you might be led to think of it as a loud, powerful instrument – a woodwind tuba, if you like. But that is far from the truth; in many ways, the contra is a strangely diffident creature, even a shrinking violet. The high register is disappointingly colourless, rather like a baritone with a bad chest cold. But it’s in the low notes that its glory lies; they are deeply visceral, deliciously, almost obscenely bovine.
So it is fascinating to observe how the different composers represented here cope with the contra’s characteristics. The opening track, Jared Aragón’s Scherzo from his ‘Little Suite for Big Bassoon’, makes an excellent introduction; Nigro’s incisive tonguing gives the piece great momentum, with the contra’s tone standing out well against the piano’s staccato figuration. A word about the accompanist, Mark Lindeblad, who is himself a bassoonist as well as a fine pianist. He copes impressively with the often very demanding piano parts, and manages to find an excellent balance with the soloist – though he is, to be fair, helped by a recording which has placed the contra well to the fore (a good decision in my view). Going back to Aragón’s Little Suite, this has been written with real understanding of the instrument’s potential, and the third movement, Folk Dance, is one of the most enjoyable tracks on the disc – bouncy, but with just a hint of bucolic menace!
Though many of the individual tracks are very short, Jay Vosk’s The Giant Stirred is quite an extended piece for unaccompanied contra. I felt it outstayed its welcome somewhat, despite Vosk’s resourceful use of the various registers. Alan Palider’s L’Italiano Molto Breve (‘The Very Short Italian’ – the title given because it was originally intended to be a two-movement work but never got there!) is a cheerful little trot for the two instruments, while Jay Vosk’s second piece, Contra Blue is more engaging than his previous one, even if his idea that the piece would be ‘..fitting for a jazz dance club’ does stretch the imagination somewhat. But it sustains the musical interest, and has a witty conclusion.
Jared Aragón appears again with his Nebulae, a three-movement sonata inspired by his new-found enthusiasm (in 2014) for astronomy and cosmology. Though not as obviously attractive as his Little Suite, the middle movement, a Chaconne entitled Red Square Nebula is an impressively concentrated piece.
Perhaps you need to be a little bit eccentric to write for the contrabassoon; Joel Bjorling apparently plays the bass guitar and the didgeridoo (amongst others), and has degrees in behavioural science and theology. He has written books on subjects such as Reincarnation and Consulting Spirits, and the first two movements of his Suite in A minor evoke personalities from Hydesville in 1848, a location and date important in the American Modern Spiritual Movement. Ann Marie Kurrasch’s ‘Chicago Cakewalk’ makes an amiable conclusion to the disc.
In sum, this is perhaps not the easiest of listens (a friend commented unkindly that listening to this CD is ‘a bit like going to a recital and sitting next to someone with terminal flatulence’), so definitely an experience to be spread out somewhat. But it would take a heart of stone not to be touched by Susan Nigro’s efforts and the excellence of her playing.
Gwyn Parry-Jones
