Heinz Holliger, James Avery, Peter Veale, SurPlus Ensemble - Music of Stefan Wolpe, Vol. 4 (2007)

The outpouring of Stefan Wolpe recordings fostered by the Stefan Wolpe Society continues apace with Bridge Records' Stefan Wolpe, Vol. 4. This disc is devoted to solo wind instrument works, with the oboe playing a very prominent role -- Wolpe's close friend and publisher was oboist Josef Marx, whose small, specialist publishing concern McGinnis and Marx was at one time both a boon to wind players the world around and part of the lifeblood of Wolpe's own support system. Four of the five works here were the direct result of Wolpe's long association with Marx (not to be confused with Swiss composer Joseph Marx), and the oboe pieces here are played by no less than the artist widely regarded as the greatest oboe player in the world, Heinz Holliger. These recordings are not old leftovers from the LP era, but most are brand new: Radio Bremen recorded the Oboe Sonata Fragment (1937) and the Piece for Oboe, Cello, Percussion and Piano (1955) in late 2005 and the Song, Speech, Hymn, Strophe…Tenderest Motion (1939) was recorded in early 2006. The Oboe Sonata (1937-1941) is the only older recording, made for the WDR in 1992; all of these tracks feature James Avery as pianist or conductor. Another long-established, top-tier concert artist, Canadian flutist Robert Aitken, performs the Piece in Two Parts for flute and piano (1959-1960) in a live CBC recording from 2001. One might wonder how a modest concern like Bridge Records could manage to obtain the services of such high-profile players. However, one of the unexpected benefits of the major-label classical recording departments' de-emphasis on long-term contracts is the increased availability of major concert artists to work on worthwhile projects such as this one, which no self-respecting major would have touched.
Heinz Holliger is dead right in wanting to participate, as Wolpe's oboe music is not "minor" for his instrument; his pieces of the 1930s for Marx were really the first forays of the oboe into contemporary composition. The Oboe Sonata Fragment is fascinating as it begins in a Straussian, post-romantic idiom but winds up, over the course of its four minutes, in a pseudo-Schoenbergian bag, wherefore Wolpe decides to hang it up. Fully fledged Wolpe works are not derivative and never show off their underpinnings. The Oboe Sonata is an excellent example of that; while essentially atonal, it is as invested in Palestinian folk forms in its opening as it is the jazzy atmosphere of New York City in the last section, representing Wolpe's own resettlement from a Palestinian kibbutz to a Manhattan apartment during its dates of composition. The Oboe Sonata's easy style and frequent references to the familiar did not keep New York mayor Fiorello LaGuardia from banning such music from his radio station WNYC when part of it was broadcast there in 1940.
The Piece for Oboe, Cello, Percussion and Piano is a fascinating work, as it constitutes Wolpe's response to his contact with John Cage at Black Mountain College in the early '50s. A Taoist in his youth, Wolpe took exception to indeterminacy as a technique, as he believed that it was the composer's responsibility to take charge for the content of a composition. In this rather laconic and wry "piece," fully notated, Wolpe achieves a texture rather similar to that of Cage's Music of Changes, heard at Black Mountain just a few years earlier -- the percussionist plays biscuit tins, a jar full of nails, Cage's least favorite instrument (the vibraphone), and a variety of other objects. What separates it from being a mere simulation of Cage's sound world is both Wolpe's satirical attitude and the linearity of the oboe solo part, which drives the scattered sound events around as much as it benefits from the backing provided by them.
The performances are all top notch, and the recordings are professional grade, though less so in the Aitken performance; we probably could have been spared the weak round of applause at the end of this piece, as well. Nevertheless, Bridge Records' Stefan Wolpe, Vol. 4, is easily recommendable to those following the Wolpe series and yet to others who take an interest in contemporary music for winds in a solo context.