This collaboration between ICP Orchestra and Nieuw Amsterdams Peil – another pool, oriented towards composed works – is about as close to an Amacord Misha Mengelberg as is likely to be heard. The album is a full body of work scan of a composer who irascibly resisted definition. de hondemepper traces Mengelberg’s roots (Karel, his composer father, and the jazz trinity of Ellington, Monk, and Nichols), retrieves seldom-heard pieces from the Orchestra’s book, and recasts pieces he penned in the 1970s and ‘80s for, respectively, Okest de Volharding and Hoketus, both led by Louis Andriessen. Although the album vaults from one aspect of Mengelberg’s sensibility to another track by track, it is a remarkably cohesive program, one of the more persuasive cases for Mengelberg as a composer on disc.
NAP comes to this recording with relevant history – co-leader Gerard Bouwhuis was Hoketus’ pianist when they premiered “Een Hutje van Gras” in 1985. They also bring other assets to the table: NAP co-leader and violinist Heleen Hulst and cellist Mick Stirling buttress ICP’s strings section, bassoonist Dorian Cooke and Patricio Wang, who plays mandolin and chromatic panflute, expand the color palette, and Bart de Vrees thickens the percussion textures. Most importantly, they contribute to the cracking, close-order ensembles that permeate the program, essential to multi-sectioned works like “Dressoir,” in which quirky, vernacular-driven punchlines require straight-faced delivery.
The polishing of Mengelberg’s compositions by no means diminishes their subversions. Instead of blossoming into a full-bodied exposition, the lovely triple canon that opens “Een Hutje van Gras” peters out, leaving only a Minimalist pulse flecked with exotic accents that lingers almost too long before the closing reiteration of the canon. The reading of “A La Russe” by Cooke, Stirling, and Mary Oliver (heard on viola) plays upon classical conventions with the sardonic piquancy often associated with Prokofiev. The title piece vaults over follies-worthy romps, dour melodies, and texture-driven intrusions, the ensemble’s every landing nailed.
The NAPsters are also impactful on the repertory pieces. Cooke and the strings add to the frenzied energy of Guus Janssen’s clarinet-rich arrangement of Nichols’ “Cro-Magnon Nights,” which is very much in line with the deceptive looseness ICP has honed over decades, where swerves, jolts, and lurches are smartly placed. The same holds true in the passages of Ab Baars episodic “Pools and Pals” that draw on the hard-swinging “Depk” from Ellington’s Far East Suite. While Wang’s pan flute effectively punctuates the improvised sections of Baars’ piece, and adds jaunty color elsewhere, it is not well suited as a lead voice in Michael Moore’s otherwise sumptuous expansion of Mengelberg’s chart for Monk’s “Reflections.”
Ultimately, despite its many pleasures, de hondemepper begs an important question: Having made this impressive homage, can ICP now foreground the works of its deep bench of composers? Making such a transition is complicated by the one-two punch of the pandemic (Tristan Honsinger and Thomas Heberer are currently on the wrong side of the Atlantic) and the loss of long-term support from the Fonds Podiumkunsten (the Dutch Foundation for the Performing Arts). How the next chapter unfolds in a new normal will be keenly watched. –Bill Shoemaker