Colorful, Relentlessly Entertaining, Linguistically-Inspired New Compositions by Eric Nathan

One of the most deviously entertaining recent projects in new classical music is Eric Nathan‘s epic double album Missing Words, streaming at New Focus Recordings. The composer takes inspiration for this colorful collection of vignettes and longer pieces from Ben Schott‘s Schottenfreude, a philosophical satire of the German propensity for interminable compound nouns. In turn, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, American Brass Quintet, cellist Parry Karp and pianist Christopher Karp, the International Contemporary Ensemble, the Neave Trio and finally, Hub New Music have as much fun playing this stuff as the composer obviously did writing it.

It’s a series of tableaux and character studies which range from the vividly cinematic to occasionally cartoonish. Sirens are a recurrent trope, as are pregnant pauses and trick endings. Some of the more otherworldly harmonies look back to Messiaen; the more circular passages echo Philip Glass. The series of miniatures at the end are more acerbic and somewhat less comedic – other than the obvious but irresistibly mangled Beethoven quotes.

The opening number, Eisenbahnscheinbewegung (Railway-Illusion-Motion) makes colorful use of dopplers and train-whistle sonics. Herbstlaubtrittvergnügen (Autumn-Foliage-Strike-Fun) has jaunty trombone flourishes echoed by violins. There’s balletesque bustle and a surprise ending in Fingerspitzentanz (Fingertips-Dance) and mini-fanfares grounded by diesel-engine low brass in Missing Words – what’s missing is the operative question.

Nathan spaciously and rather cautiously approaches the strangely intimate acrylic smell of a new car interior, i.e. Kraftfahrzeugsinnenausstattungsneugeruchsgenuss. Rollschleppe (Escalator-Schlep) is as persistently troubled as you would expect from a portrait of somebody who can’t take the stairs – and yet, the piece has a persistent determination. Life in the slow lane really is where all the action is!

Mundphantom (Mouth-Phantom) is a Scooby Doo conversation. Speaking of ghosts, the Straußmanöver (Ostrich-Maneuver) is performed by a seriously phantasmic bird. Schubladenbrief ((Desk-Drawer-Letter) seems to depict a letter stubbornly resisting an opener, but when the envelope finally get slit, its contents suggest its sender is recounting a wild ride.

Dreiecksumgleichung (Triangle-Reorganization) is built around a flashy violin solo and concludes with a lively flute-driven jig. By contrast, the wry, bracing dawn interlude Tageslichtspielschock (Daylight-Show-Shock) will resonate with any musician dreading a gig at an early hour.

Arguably the funniest piece here, Ludwigssyndrom (Ludwig’s-Syndrome) is a tongue-in-cheek, brief piano concerto with rapidfire, ostentatious cascades and a ridiculously good riff joke that’s too good to give away. The steady upward stride of the piano in Watzmannwahn (Watzmann-Delusion) is also pretty priceless.

The only one of the ensembles on the record who have a New York concert coming up are the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, who are Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall on April 15 at 8 PM, playing works by Andrew Norman, Lei Lang and Lisa Bielawa, the latter with the composer on vocals. The venue says you can get in for $21.

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A Bracing, Vividly Uneasy New Album of Eric Nathan Orchestral Works

“I compose for my music to be performed live and to be experienced from beginning to end,” Eric Nathan explains in the liner notes for the Boston Modern Orchestra Project’s new album of his compositions, The Space of a Door, streaming at Spotify. He’s hardly alone in that viewpoint – and these days, it’s against the law in New York to perform most of what’s on the record. If we want our culture to survive, we have to end the lockdown ourselves. Nobody’s going to do it for us.

Back to the music: the album is bookended by both a full symphonic arrangement and a chamber orchestra version of the bracing, persistently uneasy Paestum, inspired by the ruins of a Greco-Roman temple. The large-ensemble version begins with a bang – literally – which sets off an agitated, swirling flock of birds, or so it would seem. Conductor Gil Rose brings out a lustrous calm which is all the more suspenseful in contrast to the composer’s unwillingness to let it settle in: those ruins obviously left an impact. In both versions, the disquieting bustle returns with a fanfare and ends with unresolved Messiaenic clarinet.

With its lushly acidic close harmonies, slow doppler-like phrases, tense flutters and bubbles, Omaggio a Gesualdo has less in common with pre-Renaissance Italy than Henryk Gorecki (with some spiky Bartok thrown in for spice).

The album’s title track begins with a robust nod to Brahms but quickly shifts to an uneasy lustre and decays to a suspenseful stillness before Rose pulls one of many sudden upward spirals – a persistent trope here – out of the calm again. In many ways, the shifts between atmospherics and bordering-on-frantic activity mirror the album’s opening and closing segments.

Timbered Bells is a triumphantly brassy, regal shout-out to the distinctive echoes off the hills surrounding the Tanglewood complex, The triptych Missing Words has similarly playful origins, in this case the illusion of motion that passengers on a stopped train experience while watching one that’s actually moving – and also the joys of romping through piles of autumn leaves. Glissandos and razorwire microtones build vividly dissociative ambience. Big brass gestures answered by ghostly flickering strings pervade the middle miniature and the coyly furtive conclusion.

Flutter and bluster – Nathan really likes those clustering high winds and reeds – stand out in front of increasingly somber ambience and dramatic, windswept counterpoint in Icarus Dreamt, a Matisse reference  Nathan’s repertoire has been well represented by major new-music ensembles in concert here in his hometown in recent years; it’s good to have this record to spread the word about this distinctively compelling composer’s work