Modern classical

Louis Andriessen: The Only One

Los Angeles Philharmonic, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Nora Fischer

Some clarification: The “piece” for which this album has been nominated for the Best Contemporary Classical Composition Grammy is not the 2½-minute title track but the entire 21-minute suite, ­comprising an “Introduction,” two “Interludes,” and musical settings of five poems by the contemporary Flemish poet Delphine Lecompte (translated into English by Lecompte herself). It’s hard to say whether the shardlike verse suits Andriessen’s no-holds-barred compositional approach or vice versa, but they do suit each other. And the soprano Nora Fischer engages both with an unflinchingly steely verve.

Seven Pillars 

Sandbox Percussion & Andy Akiho

Seven Pillars—the work under consideration by the Recording Academy committee—consists not only of the seven movements on this album specifically titled “Pillar” but also of the four percussion solos interspersed throughout. And even if the voters choose something else (the competition is stiff this year), they will have had fun weighing this piece’s merits as well as the way that Sandbox Percussion (augmented by the composer Andy Akiho and the engineer Sean Dixon) bring it to life. Anchored by a bass drum that thumps in impressive three-dimensionality, the sounds accumulate, disperse, clatter, and shine as they span the nooks and crannies of the stereo spectrum.

Narrow Sea 

Sō Percussion, Dawn Upshaw, Gilbert Kalish

By bringing Dawn Upshaw’s art-song soprano, her accompanist Gilbert Kalish’s expressive pianism, and Sō Percussion’s eerie sound effects to bear on four selections from the 19th-century shape-note hymnal The Sacred Harp, Caroline Shaw has found a way to emphasize the universal, as opposed to the merely historical or sentimental, aspects of revival-era pietism. The reshaped melodies that she gives “Wayfaring Stranger,” “There Is a Land of Pure Delight,” “Had I the Pinions of a Dove,” and “On Jordan’s Stormy Banks I Stand” might seem disorienting, almost iconoclastic, at first. On repeated exposure, they seem anything but.

Archetypes 

Third Coast Percussion, Sérgio & Clarice Assad

If length enhances a piece’s chances of winning the Grammy in question, this 54-minute suite is a shoo-in. If, on the other hand, a piece’s chances are divided by the number of composers that it represents—six in this case—Archetypes is doomed. So ignore the odds and concentrate instead on the wit and sensitivity with which the sparkling mallet work and Sérgio Assad’s classical guitar vividly evoke a dozen prototypical figures. “Jester” frolics along to a twanging mouth harp and concludes with a honk. “Caregiver” incarnates pathos with appropriate TLC. “Sage” could inspire deep thoughts. And “Hero” could’ve heralded the Michael Jordan–era Bulls as they took to the court in Chicago.

Encore

The most interesting recording competing for the Best Contemporary Classical Composition Grammy is “Movement 11,” a two-minute selection from Jon Batiste’s latest album, We Are (Verve). It’s interesting because, as more than one Recording Academy voter has pointed out, there’s nothing particularly “classical” about it. So why not simply slot it into the Best Improvised Jazz Solo category, where it clearly belongs? Probably because—assuming that there’s a rule against this sort of thing—another Batiste recording (“Bigger Than Us” from the Soul soundtrack) got there first.

No controversy attends the other awards for which We Are (Album of the Year, Best R&B Album) or selections from it (Record of the Year, Best Traditional R&B Performance, Best American Roots Perfor­mance, Best American Roots Song) are contending. Nor should ­controversy ensue if Batiste wins each one—a likely enough result given that We Are is nothing less than a 21st-century Songs in the Key of Life. —A.O.