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Jean-Guihen Queyras and Ensemble Resonanz lit up the Ij Haven last night in Amsterdam’s Muzikgebouw aan’t Ij. There was a twinkling view of the harbor through this great glass house, and the Ensemble matched this crystalline vision with a lush dynamic ebb and flow in the treatment of the four pieces programmed. With floors of naked cedarwood, red plush seats, blue light glowing through the latticed walls, and lighting and tech equipment exposed at the ceiling, the concert hall has the feel of Zankel (at Carnegie Hall, Ed.), but more spacious. Throughout the evening, the respect of the audience was astonishing; not a cough was to be heard until the general applause, so that diminuendos in the music and the space between movements enjoyed a profound and utter silence.
Jean-Guihen Queyras - Photo by Marco Borggreve
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Three composers – each aiming to create modern music in which form has been replaced by “structures” – are featured on this Aurora CD of piano music performed by Håkon Austbø. When does one listen to atonal music? In the morning while sipping coffee over a NY Times detailing the latest fabricated Iranian “threat”? Perhaps while running on the treadmill at the gym and looking up at Anderson Cooper reporting on the latest school shooting? Maybe at the checkout line at Wholefoods with a basket full of organic beet juice? The answer to all of these is yes: as we are continuously mesmerized by the last gasps of an unraveling empire, these various incarnations of serial piano music are the medicines to free us, and deliver us back to a spiritual tabula rasa, an unpolluted universe of pure sensory potential.
Håkon Austbø - Photo Edwin Roelofs
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Pärt Piano Music by Naxos features pianist Ralph van Raat interpreting the Estonian composer’s music spanning over four decades. This retrospective takes us on a stylistic journey that is truly millennial in scope, while remaining reverent in spirit.
The first of the Zwei Sonatinen, Op. 1 (1958), shares much of the language of Pärt’s elder contemporary, Shostakovich, with acrobatic melodies supported by harmonies that become only occasionally dissonant, and then only through linear voice-leading. Ralph van Raat plays the allegro passages with a digital precision characteristic of post-war piano music. He imbues the largo passages, though, with a touching impressionistic quality. The second sonatina (1959) is quite another animal, with a jazzy improvisatory feel, recalling the dizzying flights of Oscar Peterson.
Arvo Pärt - Photograph by K. Kikkas
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On his new album from Cantaloupe Music, this was written by hand, David Lang treats the piano alternately as a eulogizer and as a medium to commune with the departed. Pianist Andrew Zolinsky’s technique is well suited to tastefully render these finely wrought improvisatory pieces, to sound out the meditative character of Lang’s postminimalism. The range of piano articulation presented here stretches from use of the instrument as pitched percussion all the way to liquid, dulcet burbles. Piano music in the contemporary classical world often embraces jazz tropes, or world music idioms, or past stylistic genres. Lang’s piano voice sometimes recalls the phase music of Reich but is for the most part quite original in its complete metrical flexibility (or complete lack of meter in some cases, it seems), and in the way it exhaustively explores all the possibilities of a spare musical form. The tracks here are all character pieces in my opinion. There are no grand statements; on the contrary, the prevailing voice is one of personal introspection, without a hint of sentimentality.
David Lang
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4 Comments »Like many readers of this blog, I am on the mailing list for Bang on a Can. A recent email described an interesting piano competition hosted by composer David Lang. Pianists were invited to download a score of a new composition, ‘wed’, practice it, and post a youTube video of their performance; the winner would receive an honorarium and a chance to perform the piece at Le Poisson Rouge. When I checked out the guidelines, though, something stuck out like a sore thumb – the exclusion of residents of countries sanctioned by the US government (Cuba, Iran, etc).
Like many artists, I not only take an interest in politics, but am vociferous in defense of my liberal views and humanistic values. I immediately posted a comment under the youTube video explaining the competition, inviting musicians of conscience to boycott the competition in solidarity with those fellow artists who suffer under a geographic accident of birth. I have always held the ideals of John Lennon close to my heart – “Imagine there’s no countries – it isn’t hard to do.” Those who buy into our political establishment’s fear-mongering campaign against countries like Iran would do well to read the Martin Luther King Jr. speech of April 4, 1967, in which he refers to the US government as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” – a description unfortunately as apt today as ever.
I was surprised to receive an email from Red Poppy Music, explaining that while I was right, their lawyers had advised them to comply with Homeland Security guidelines (I pine for the day when such Orwellian names are no longer part of our discourse). My original post was deleted because of its provocative tone (guilty as charged!) but Mike McCurdy invited me to re-post in more diplomatic fashion, which I did, pointing out that the U.S. government was hardly in a position to issue moral judgments of other countries. I added that musicians and artists have a noble tradition of bucking rules that run against the grain of our collective conscience, and that it was unfortunate that David Lang’s competition, though generous in spirit, was marred by this bureaucratic instance of cruelty.
I learned today that I wasn’t the only one to protest the David Lang competition guidelines. An Iranian musician had also contacted him to voice his disappointment. I also learned, to my amazement, that Red Poppy Music had altered the guidelines so that “If work papers, or any other entrance papers cannot be obtained by the Winner by 12PM (noon) EST April 1, 2012, Winner shall forfeit the travel component of the prize, but Winner may perform Winner’s performance of wed by a live internet stream on the day and time of the Competition Concert. If live internet streaming is not available for Winner, Winner’s original Entry video will be projected live during Competition Concert.”
We in the “West” sometimes forget how lucky we are to benefit from our own geographic accident of birth. Our rich musical heritage is now eagerly embraced by other cultures such as those in East Asia, whose conservatories now turn out astounding numbers of brilliant classical musicians. Moreover, artists in the West have, in recent decades, embraced folk music traditions from the farthest corners of the globe. This is the type of globalization that I’m interested in. I learned recently that legendary guitarist Ry Cooder was prosecuted and fined $25,000 for his invaluable work in Cuba on the Buena Vista Social Club. Imagine how much poorer we would be if Cooder had observed State Department rules. Because of his work, record retailers a decade ago began devoting entire sections of their stores to Cuban music and other types of newly-discovered world music.
I am humbled that my criticism was not only respected by David Lang and Red Poppy Music, but that it was an agent for reflection, however small, that we must, as individual artists and as a creative collective, do what we can to break down the walls erected by our insane national leaders. I encourage all of you to listen to David Lang’s ‘wed’, the poetic, contemplative tone of which encouraged this listener to think of the possibilities of a well-examined life.
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Rob Wendt is a pianist / composer / music educator living in Astoria, NY. You can follow him on twitter: @RobWendt
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I finally made it to Le Poisson Rouge, which I have heard so much about, to hear this tribute concert on the first anniversary of the composer’s passing. As I walked down the stairs, it all came back to me – this used to be a nightclub called “Life”! I remembered dancing here to disco music in the late ‘90s, and wondered how such a space could be converted to a curated classical music space. I was pleasantly surprised – LPR’s business model seems to have succeeded in making classical music sexy. Tables are laid out, cabaret-style, in a dark, low-ceilinged room, and one hears the languorous murmur of a mixed bohemian / bourgeois crowd sipping their drinks.
The evening began with a brief interview of Bob Hurwitz (Nonesuch records) by Ronen of LPR. Asked how Nonesuch came to work with Górecki, Hurwitz related that there had already been a recording of the composer’s 3rdsymphony, but he’d never heard it live until March ’89, by the London Sinfonietta, during a festival of Górecki and Schnittke. “I was there to hear lyrical music, and they were using extra players (70-80), in a room for only 500 people, and just the live experience was overwhelming. Dawn Upshaw had a beautiful, clear, bell-like sound, and I decided to record this.” At CTS Studios, London, with David Zinman conducting, the composer was present during the recording “and so there was this reverence for him; I didn’t know if Dawn would be able to sing, but the recording took only four hours. It sold itself through word of mouth, and even Górecki was shocked. There were no royalty participants, so when the record started selling, we decided to give Dawn, Dave and Górecki royalties.” The latter carried the check around for two years. “He was stunned that people were affected by the piece.”
JACK Quartet. Photo credit: Stephen Poff.
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