Chicago Classical Music

I hope you enjoyed last week’s introduction to Cedille Records. Feedback in the comments is always welcome. I know what subjects interest me. I’d like to write about what interests you, so please let me know if there’s anything record companies (and Cedille Records in particular, of course) do that you would like to know more about.

In last week’s post, I mentioned the twin missions of Cedille Records: 1. recording the work of the finest musicians and composers in and from Chicago, and 2. making recordings that add something of value to the record catalog. How we do the former is, I suppose, obvious: every recording we produce must have a strong Chicago basis. I thought I would devote today’s post to how we try to achieve the latter goal.

First of all, what we DON’T do is dictate repertory. You can’t add value to the catalog unless the musicians you’re recording care about and have something distinctive to say about the music they’re recording. This isn’t likely to happen unless the repertory chosen emanates from their own aesthetic interests. The lion’s share of the music we record at Cedille Records comes directly from the recording artists’ own proposals. What we CAN do, however, is choose from among artists’ ideas and/or refine their initial concepts to create projects that stand out from what’s already in today’s crowded record catalog.

To offer a recent example, pianist Jorge Federico Osorio told me that for his third project on Cedille Records, he would like to record the complete Debussy Preludes. I had no doubt that his interpretations would stand among the best recorded. However, there are dozens of recordings of these popular Debussy pieces by revered pianists such as Walter Gieseking and Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, and many, many contemporary performers. I felt our recording would need to offer a new wrinkle on this repertory in order for consumers and critics to take notice. So I asked Mr. Osorio if he could find other piano music that might shed a different light on the Preludes: perhaps something by a composer who influenced Debussy or one who was influenced by the great French impressionist.

Some time later, Mr. Osorio informed me that he had been looking at music by the early 20th century American impressionist Charles Tomlinson Griffes, whose piano writing clearly built on the style exhibited by earlier works such as Debussy’s Preludes. Osorio chose two Griffes works he thought would make particularly interesting companions for Debussy: Griffes’s Four Roman Sketches, Op. 7 and Three Tone Pictures, Op. 5. I thought these were excellent choices and added one request of my own: the Pleasure-Dome of Kubla Kahn, Op. 8, to which Osorio readily agreed after studying the score.

So we are now in the midst of recording this project: We recorded the Debussy at the end of August and will record the Griffes at the beginning of December, for Spring 2007 release. Even though the “extra” repertory will push this on to two CDs (the Debussy Preludes usually fit on one), we will charge a single-disc price for this recording to keep it competitive with recordings of the Preludes alone. (Curious coincidence: as I was driving to WFMT for one of the Debussy sessions, the station was broadcasting the orchestral version of Griffes’s Three Tone Pictures.)

Some artists come to me with project ideas fully-formed that are designed to add something really new to the record bins. One such is violinist Rachel Barton Pine. To use her most recent recording as an example, she didn’t just come to me with the idea of recording Scottish-inspired works for violin and orchestra: she knew exactly which pieces she wanted to play, with what orchestra, and which Scottish scholars and players she would consult to help make her performances as “authentic” as possible. Her idea wasn’t just to record pieces based on Scottish melodies; it was to return those themes as much as possible to their Scottish roots. So in addition to recording Max Bruch’s famous Scottish Fantasy as never heard before — with Scottish ornaments and inflections added wherever appropriate — she recorded Pablo de Sarasate’s Airs ecossais, pieces by two Scottish composers, and her own Medley of Scots Tunes co-authored and performed with the extraordinary Scottish fiddler Alasdair Fraser. I cannot resist quoting ClassicsToday.com, which called the disc, titled Scottish Fantasies, “a model of what a themed release ought to be.”

The projects I’ve mentioned so far are examples of how we try to combine familiar with less familiar repertory that fit a consistent theme to create something new and unusual. Many of our recordings add something to the catalog by offering music that is not available anywhere else, recorded premieres in most cases. These generally fall into three categories: music by 1. unjustly neglected composers of the distant past, 2. relatively overlooked composers of the recent past, and 3. contemporary composers of all stripes (in our case, often Chicago based composers). Our most recent examples fitting these categories would be, respectively, our disc of forgotten chamber music gems by Josef Labor (1842-1924) and Walter Rabl (1873-1940) with the Orion Ensemble; our CD spanning 50 years of music by the late Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson (1932-2004), who was based at Columbia College’s Center for Black Music Research during his last decade; and our new disc of contemporary American Orchestral Works with the Grant Park Orchestra conducted by Carlos Kalmar. (All of these discs are, of course, available at our web site: www.cedillerecords.org.) We also love to bring out less well known works by “major” composers such as our upcoming release of the Violin Sonatas by Robert Schumann (the third and last sonata is particularly rarely heard) with violinist Jennifer Koh and pianist Reiko Uchida.

Again, we record all these works not because I find them and “shop them around,” but because the Chicago musicians to whom Cedille is devoted come to us with these ideas (or in the case of Chicago composers because I become impressed with their music by hearing it performed — usually by local musicians).

I should offer a reminder that the special 15% OFF sale to Chicago Classical Music readers, advertised near the top of this site’s home page, will cease at the end of the week. Next week, I’ll write about our latest release, with the Pacifica Quartet, which offers its own fascinating combination of pieces.

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