Nan Schwartz: Aspirations; Perspectives; Romanza;
Angels Among Us; Brenton Broadstock: Made in Heaven—Concerto for Orchestra. Synchron Stage Orchestra
(Vienna) and Bratislava Studio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kevin Purcell.
Divine Art. $17.
20th Century Masterpieces for Two Pianos
and Orchestra, Volume 1—Lopatnikoff, Tansman, Malipiero, Berezovsky, Poulenc,
Starer, and Creston. Joshua Pierce and Dorothy Jonas, pianos; Slovak State Philharmonic
Orchestra and National Symphony Orchestra of Polish Radio & Television
conducted by David Amos; Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Carlos
Piantini. MSR Classics. $19.95 (2 CDs).
Scriabin: Piano Sonatas Nos. 3 and 4; Preludes and
other short piano pieces. Jeremy Thompson, piano. MSR Classics. $12.95.
Scriabin: Piano Sonata No. 9; Granados: Goyescas;
Janáček: In the Mists. Orion Weiss, piano. Orion Weiss. $13.99.
Composers in the 20th and 21st
centuries have increasingly come to see the piano as a member of the orchestra,
frequently using it as more of an obbligato
instrument than one leading and even competing with the ensemble as in familiar
concertos. This sort of keyboard use is actually a throwback to Baroque and
early Classical times, when the harpsichord was part of the ripieno, but of course modern composers
handle matters quite differently. Thus, two of the four works by Nan Schwartz
(born 1959) on a new Divine Art CD employ piano in a significant way, but no
more so than other individual instruments highlighted in the pieces heard here.
Aspirations includes piano (Lee
Musiker) and tenor saxophone (Harry Allen); Perspectives
uses piano (Musiker again) and guitar (Jon Delaney); and Romanza features violin (Dimitrie Leivici), while Angels Among Us includes trumpet (Mat
Jodrell). In every case, Schwartz uses these instruments to color the overall
orchestral sound, but never makes them the front-and-center, extended focus of
these pieces. She is, indeed, a good orchestral colorist, a fact that helps
rescue her music from its tendency to meander and to try too hard to be
emotional and lyrical – a lot of what she writes sounds like movie music, which
is not surprising in light of the fact that film music is what Schwartz primarily
creates. Certainly she knows how to produce rather superficial emotional
connections through orchestral sound, through the sorts of swells and dynamic
passages that inevitably accompany, underline and enhance movie scenes. It just
happens that the four works heard here sound as if they come from films even though
they do not: it is easy to feel them moving along in four different dramatic
arcs, even if they do not precisely correspond to any particular story line.
Film music is generally designed to supplement visuals and dialogue, not take
their place, but in this case the music is all there is – and while it
certainly invites emotional experience and possesses a kind of narrative
cohesion, it does not do so with any particular depth or profundity. It is
music that is pleasant to hear once but will not likely bear repeated listening
very well. The CD also includes the world première recording of Made in Heaven by Australian composer
Brenton Broadstock (born 1952), and this too is a well-made work with many of
the same roots in jazz that the pieces by Schwartz possess. Indeed,
Broadstock’s piece has an overt jazz connection, being intended as a tribute to
the 1959 Miles Davis album “Kind of Blue.” Hence the movement titles: “So
What,” “Flamenco Sketches,” “Blue in Green,” and “All Blues.” Broadstock can
scarcely expect audiences to be familiar with this specific album from nearly
60 years ago, but his music stands on its own in its jazz gestures, both
expansive and pointed. It is not quite the “Concerto for Orchestra” that its
subtitle indicates – the virtuosity required of the players is not really at
the level demanded by Bartók and Kodály in their works with that title – but
certainly the musicians have to pass themes and phrases back and forth with
aplomb, as if in a jazz ensemble. Conductor Kevin Purcell handles both the
Schwartz and Broadstock pieces with considerable élan, and if the music is a
bit outside the comfort zone of the orchestras he leads, they certainly manage
the material with professional skill – if perhaps less idiomatically than more
jazz-focused groups might.
The piano is not a partial focus but the
primary one on a new two-CD MSR Classics release of recordings, originally
produced in the 1990s, featuring the piano duo of Joshua Pierce and Dorothy
Jonas. These are the world première recordings of some very-little-known music
that definitely deserves greater attention if it is possible to find more
pianists willing to share the spotlight instead of dominating it (Katia and Marielle Labèque would be natural
choices for this repertoire). In fact, Pierce and Jonas make an admirable team
in these seven pieces – four labeled “concerto” and three using the dual pianos
in somewhat different ways. The spirit if not the harmonies of the Baroque
hangs particularly strongly over three of these works: Suite for Two Pianos and
Orchestra (1928) by Alexandre Tansman (1897-1986), Concerto for Two Pianos and
Orchestra (1932) by Francis Poulenc (1899-1963), and Concerto for Two Pianos
and Orchestra (1949-1950) by Nikolai Lvovich Lopatnikoff (1903-1976). Overtly
in Tansman’s suite’s 10 movements and to some extent in the Poulenc and
Lopatnikoff concertos – both in three movements that contain multiple tempo and
mood changes, so they sound more like a series of shorter pieces strung
together – there is a sense of awareness of the role of keyboards in the
Baroque and a neoclassical interest in reviving some elements of Bach’s time in
the 20th century. Tansman’s piece, with its Perpetuum mobile,
Sarabande and concluding double fugue, makes the point particularly clearly. The
sensibilities of Poulenc and Lopatnikoff are quite different from each other,
and the composers’ handling of the pianos and the orchestra differs as well,
but both the works – which, interestingly, are very close to the same length –
offer the soloists multiple ways of blending with each other and with the
ensemble of which they are a part. The effects of the other works here with
“concerto” in their titles are somewhat different. The three-movement Concerto
for Two Pianos and Orchestra (1951) by Paul Creston (1906-1985) has a kind of
classical balance both in the movements and between the solo instruments, while
the four-movement Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra (1993) by Robert Starer
(1924-2001) has movements that are pithier, and its overall feeling is on the
jazzy and upbeat side. Also offered here are Dialoghi VII for Two Pianos and Orchestra
(1956) by Gian Francesco Malipiero (1882-1973), a largely athematic work of
meandering form, and Fantasie for Two Pianos and Orchestra (1931) by Nikolai
Tikhonovich Berezovsky (1900-1953), which unusually consists of two Allegro
movements that give the pianists ample chances to show their mettle. It would
be stretching things to suggest that any work here is a long-forgotten
masterpiece – there is little profundity in these pieces – but there is a great
deal of well-constructed and interestingly orchestrated music offered by Pierce
and Jonas, who are nicely if not especially forcefully backed up by conductors
David Amos (for most of the pieces) and Carlos Piantini (for the Starer
concerto). The most engaging aspect of this release is the way it brings to
light an entire subgenre of piano music with which even listeners well versed
in 20th-century neoclassicism are unlikely to be familiar. It will
be very intriguing to hear what Pierce and Jonas have unearthed for the planned
second volume of this series.
Of course, no matter how the piano’s role
changes in modern times and no matter how many ways composers find to use the keyboard,
there remains an important place for the piano as a quintessential solo-recital
instrument. And there are some exceptionally interesting ways to hear it in
that light. Jeremy Thompson has found one – on another new MSR Classics release
– by going back to the final recital given by Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915).
Scriabin died of septicemia on April 14, 1915, and gave his last recital not
even two weeks earlier, on April 2. It was not his own pianism but that of
Rachmaninoff that brought Scriabin fame – posthumously. But certainly Scriabin
had a fine sense of the piano’s capabilities and a plentiful ability to delve
into and extract them. Scriabin’s final recital was built around his Piano
Sonata No. 3, the last in which he wrote in this form comparatively conventionally,
and Piano Sonata No. 4, the first in which he moved toward a new, complex and
highly personal compositional idiom. At his last performance, prior to Sonata
No. 3, Scriabin played 10 short pieces – seven Preludes plus a Mazurka, Etude
and Valse. Then, for the second half of the recital, he played eight additional
short items – Nuances, Danse languide, two more Preludes, Guirlandes, Flammes
sombres, another Prelude, and Etrangeté – before offering the very short
two-movement Sonata No. 4. Thompson has resurrected the entire recital, and he
handles it from start to finish with considerable understanding of Scriabin’s
style – although inevitably a modern pianist sees that style differently a
century after Scriabin’s death than the composer and his audience perceived it
in 1915. Thompson plays very well and with genuine sensitivity, but the CD is
more of a curiosity than a fully realized musical experience. The reason is
that the program of the recital, which undoubtedly made considerable sense to
Scriabin when he arranged it, now comes across as a kind of
multiple-reverse-encores grouping, with the substantial sonatas heard only
after a considerable number of lesser works whose relationship to the sonatas
is not especially evident. For a composer seeking to present a cross-section of
his music to a contemporary audience, and certainly not anticipating his
imminent demise, the recital is an interesting one, and surely the original
audience would have enjoyed seeing how Scriabin handled the various miniatures
that make up most of the material he played. But the reasons Scriabin selected
these specific pieces to play prior to the two sonatas are no longer clear and
not especially relevant. Now Scriabin is recognized – thanks largely to
Rachmaninoff’s advocacy – as a great Russian composer as well as a very unusual
one, and programs including his sonatas and shorter pieces can be put together
more meaningfully than this one is. This takes nothing from Thompson, whose
playing is first-rate and whose notion of reproducing this final Scriabin
recital is, in its own way, quite worthwhile. But the disc offers nothing
especially new in the understanding and interpretation of two of Scriabin’s
important works, and its presentation of 18 of his shorter ones, including
several that run less than one minute, gives the disc an overall choppy feeling
that renders the whole program intriguing but not especially significant.
Scriabin fares better in a
more-wide-ranging, thematic program self-released by pianist Orion Weiss. The
CD’s title is “Presentiment,” and the notion here is that there is an
underlying ominous quality to this music by Scriabin, Granados and Janáček. That is a bit of a
stretch, due largely to the hindsight associated with the fact that these
pieces were all created on the cusp of World War I: Scriabin’s in 1913,
Granados’ in 1911, and Janáček’s in 1912. The Scriabin is known as the
“Black Mass” sonata – a title of which the composer approved, although he did
not come up with it – and certainly its harmonic instability (because of its
strong reliance on the interval of a minor ninth) and its unsettling and
grotesque elements (notably the march into which the opening theme is
eventually transformed) produce feelings of disconnection, distress and
emotional dysfunction. Weiss highlights the anxiety inherent in the music,
turning it into an ominous portent of a war that was soon to come – and that
would claim the life of Granados, who was aboard a ferry that was torpedoed by
a German submarine in 1916. If the mood of Scriabin’s sonata seems to
anticipate the martial tremors soon to engulf the world, though, the multiple
moods of Goyecas do not. Weiss plays the work as a suite of six movements
(omitting El pelele, which is not officially
part of the suite but is usually played as its finale). He does an excellent
job of turning each movement into a miniature of storytelling, somewhat akin to
what Mussorgsky did in Pictures at an Exhibition even though there is no
known definitive correlation between Granados’ music and specific Goya
paintings. The beauty and immediacy of the music come through clearly in
Weiss’s performance, and the strong improvisational feeling he gives to the Balada
titled El amor y la muerte is especially apt and especially welcome. Goyescas
contains more of Impressionism than does Scriabin’s dense and difficult “Black
Mass” sonata, and the musical Impressionists, especially Debussy, also seem
prominent in Janáček’s In the Mists. The
five-or-six-flats keys and the complexity of the meters in this work create a
pervasive feeling of melancholy that never quite turns into despair. Weiss
emphasizes a certain sense of nostalgia, of longing for a past irretrievably
lost, in this music; the interpretation nicely fits the notion of this and the
other material on the CD as representing a kind of farewell to a world that is about
to be shattered forever. However, it would be a mistake to take the notion of
“Presentiment” in all these pieces too literally: only Scriabin’s sonata, the
most forward-looking of these works and the one written closest to the outbreak
of war, seems strongly to partake of a despairing prediction of imminent
catastrophe. Still, all the music, however carefully composed, has about it a
somewhat disjointed feeling, which could be heard as a sense of the old order
passing with no sure knowledge yet of the new. Weiss has here assembled a
program that is as well thought out as it is well played.
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