Two noteworthy recordings made in 2024 put a spotlight on the talented musicians of Portland.  During the summer violinist Tomás Cotik teamed up with the Martingale Ensemble to perform the music of Astor Piazzolla for his Buenos Aires album. In December, the Portland Youth Philharmonic released a digital recording of First Symphonies by two Russian-American female composers: Lera Auerbach and Polina Nazaykinskaya. Both recordings are excellent and underscore Portland’s strong musical culture.

Argentinian Tango Vibrations

Cotik, Associate Professor of Violin at Portland State University, grew up in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He studied violin at the University of Freiburg in Germany where he earned Bachelor and Master of Music degrees.  Afterwards he received an Artistic Diploma from the Glenn Gould School in Toronto and received a Government of Canada Award. After moving to Florida, he became a concertmaster for the New World Symphony, obtained his doctorate from the University of Miami, and taught at West Texas A&M University, Florida International University, and at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music before arriving at Portland State University in 2016. He has won numerous awards, including a Fulbright Scholar Award that allowed him to do projects in Spain.

Released in June at First Christian Church, the recording of Buenos Aires on the Naxos label features music by the great Argentinian composer Astor Piazzola. The takes, done during the summer of 2022, were led by Ken Selden, conductor and music director of the Symphony Orchestra and New Music Ensemble at Portland State University. Selden assembled 18 musicians – mostly from the Oregon Symphony – for the Martingale Ensemble, which accompanied Cotik through eight selections of Piazzollas’ music. Seven of the pieces were arranged by Selden, and all of them were given their world premieres in this CD. One selection was arranged by Ukrainian composer Leonid Desyatnikov.

“Although my core repertoire is from Bach to Schubert, when I was in Germany, music from my homeland became important to me, especially Piazzolla’s The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires,” said Cotik during a phone call. “Some of the music on my album reflects life on the streets. It could be gritty and raspy. The men had knife fights. There was music from the brothels. Overall, the recording went very well and was nominated to the International Classical Music Awards.”

Several pieces (for example, Chin Chin and Suite Troileana) exude an intoxicating mix of peppy and sultry passages. Now and then Cotik spices things up with a whistle-like glissando, and his artistry and immaculate technique is on display in each piece of the album. There are numbers (for example, Resurrección del Ángel) that dwell for quite a while in a languorous and mellow balm before breaking into a uptempo ending. Soledad stays in a wistful, melancholy mood throughout. Las cuatro estaciones porteñas delightfully weaves scratchy sounds with whistling glissandos, wiggling sonic cascades, playful melodies, and a propulsive rhythmic drive. It’s the kind of sonic journey that makes this listener want to catch the next flight to Buenos Aires. 

Russian-American Women Composers

In 2023, the Portland Youth Philharmonic, led by Musical Director David Hattner, got into the digital sphere with the release of Premiere Recordings (Navona Records), which featured works by Tomáš Svoboda. Now the PYP, again under Hattner, has released another digital album under the Navona label. Entitled First Symphonies, it features Chimera by Lera Auerbach and April Song by Polina Nazaykinskaya.

“Auerbach is a well-known pianist and composer who has had a lot of big commissions,” said Hattner in a phone call. “I was looking for newer works, and the last two movements of her First Symphony can be played separately as a symphonic piece – called Icarus – and the Oregon Symphony did that last year. I noticed that not many orchestras had done the full symphony. It suited the abilities of the PYP quite well. The symphony is well-unified thematically. It’s an impressive piece. The recording is an unedited live performance. Some coughs were removed, but there were not extra takes – no recording session. Performance was in May of 2019 at the Schnitz.”

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“We signed a contract with Navona Records during the pandemic,” added Hattner. “We had the Auerbach ready and needed to find another piece that would go with it. I knew about Polina Nazaykinskaya for quite a while. Her Winter Bells has been performed by many orchestras, and her First Symphony had been played in Belarus. So I contacted her and she was very excited. We were going to do her symphony in May of 2021, but the pandemic interfered. We did do her piece for ten violins – The Rising. It was a fantastic piece. It ended up being a ballet – San Francisco Ballet has choreographed it. So we finally did her April Song in May of 2022. That gave us two first symphonies by two Russian-American women composers for the recording.”

Although Chimera contains some themes from Auerbach’s ballet The Little Mermaid, it stands on its own as a symphonic work. Consisting of seven movements, Auerbach’s piece was inspired by Greek mythology and the changeability of legendary characters.  The first movement, “Aegri somnia (A Sick Man’s Dream),” begins with an insistent, ponderous motif that transitions to more isolated, searching statements before returning to heavy motif. The second movement, “Post tenebras lux (After Darkness Comes Light),” offers a slow tempo with rising passages, a melancholy trumpet, and a haunting ending with high, whistle-like sounds from the violins. The third movement, “Gargoyles,” switches between the rhythmic drive, sweetness, chaotic swirl, and eerie, otherworld sounds. The fourth, “Et in Arcadia Ego (I am also in Arcadia),” is highlighted by an ephemeral quality and a passage for oboe that evokes longing. The fifth, “Siste, viator (Wait, Traveler),” is filled with a sense of foreboding and heaviness. The sixth, “Humum mandere (To Bite the Dust),” is primarily loud, fast, and agitated. The seventh, “Requiem for Icarus,” begins angrily but mellows and then begins to climb higher and higher until all that is left is ethereal essence. 

Nazaykinskaya’s first symphony, April Song, opens with a busy, pulsating Presto that builds with rising tones and expansive phrases, suggesting a positive outlook. The second movement, Grave, has a brooding and elegiac quality.  The third, Moderato, brightens and lightens matters with faster tempo, and the fourth, Con Brio, picks up the pace even more and brings the symphony into a finale that gives a feeling of hopefulness.