I finally had time tonight to catch up with Ben Ratliff’s excellent profile of trumpeter John McNeil, which ran in The New York Times on Thursday (Feb. 15). I’d long been aware of the buzz building around McNeil — my Time Out New York comrade K. Leander Williams is another enthusiast — but hadn’t really found the time to check into his work. (I knew that I should; how many trumpeters out there are devoting their attention to both Gerry Mulligan and the Shaggs?) Now, it’s become imperative: Ben’s thoughtful, detailed piece offers more than enough inspiration to get down to business. Even if you don’t consider yourself a jazzbo, do have a look at this cool (in every applicable sense) piece of writing. Well done, Ben.

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In unrelated news, tonight’s playlist includes a recording with which I’ve been spending a lot of time lately — but apparently only on days when I haven’t posted, which is why you haven’t seen it before.

The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center is the latest participant in Universal Classics’s series of live downloads available via iTunes, a program that was rolled out with much fanfare last year. The New York Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Philharmonic were the charter members of DG Concerts (the "DG" for Deutsche Grammophon); since then, a recording of Pierre-Laurent Aimard with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe has followed. More recently, Riccardo Chailly and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra marked the debut of Decca Concerts, which has continued with a London Philharmonic Symphonie fantastique led by Charles Dutoit, as yet unavailable in the U.S. — wait, wasn’t iTunes supposed to get us past this kind of territorial nonsense?

Anyway, I’ve duly downloaded and spent time with each release. The New York Philharmonic has been content to offer the mainstream repertoire it favors in concert; its bestselling Mozart recording is overstuffed and indulgent, but the Richard Strauss program (also on CD), the Shostakovich and the Colin Davis-conducted Berlioz (with Ian Bostridge) are high points. The Aimard recording is a solid but unsensational all-Mozart affair. The Leipzig offering is a hearty all-Schumann bill, with an electrifying Martha Argerich account of the Piano Concerto and a Mahler-upholstered version of the Symphony No. 4.

Unsurprisingly, the Los Angeles Philharmonic set the early mark for what’s possible in this new format, with timely installments from its still-fresh "Minimalist Jukebox" series making available performances of works by Steve Reich, Arvo Pärt and Louis Andriessen. As far as I’m concerned, this is exactly what the new download platform is ideally situated to do. Further illuminating releases provided samples of an Esa-Pekka Salonen Beethoven cycle punctuated with modern works by Witold Lutoslawski and Anders Hillborg. (More, please.)

Happily, the Chamber Music Society has followed this left-hand path. Its inaugural offering is a recent "Debussy and Modernism" program, in which a six-part cycle of sonatas proposed but only half-finished by Debussy was completed with new works by Steven Stucky, Kaija Saariaho and Marc-André Dalbavie. The latter three pieces were commissioned by Carnegie Hall for the "Perspectives" series curated by Emanuel Ax; the Chamber Music Society was the first to intersperse all six on a single program, presented last November.

Tony Tommasini’s New York Times review of the premiere deemed this an "ideal context" for the new works, and what he claimed is true: Debussy’s music sounds appropriately visionary, while all three new works, however disparate, sound rooted in a living tradition. The performances are uniformly excellent. All told, it’s enough to make me declare that this is the most vital of Universal’s iTunes offerings to date.

Playlist:

David Toub – Objects – Hugh Sung, Daniel Beliavsky and Bill Solomon (MP3 stream)

Claude Debussy – Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp; Sonata for Cello and Piano; Sonata for Violin and Piano; Steven Stucky – Sonate en Forme de Preludes; Kaija Saariaho – Je sens un deuxième Coeur; Marc-André Dalbavie – Axiom – Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (DG Concerts download)

Philip Glass – Music with Changing Parts – Icebreaker (Orange Mountain Music)

Metallica – Orlando, FL 07/13/03 (LiveMetallica.com download)

John Zorn, Bill Laswell and Tatsuya Nakamura – Buck Jam Tonic (Tokyo Mix) (Wilddisk)

Derek Bailey, Peter Brötzmann and Sabu Toyozumi – Live in Okayama 1987 (Improvised Company)