Deer, Police, Niccolò

I love a good anthology, and in 1988 the great Italian publisher Ricordi released the Antologia di Autori Contemporanei, a who's-who of contemporary Italian composers who submitted short piano works, many of them written for the collection.  I'll get back to this collection with a few more leaves but today's is by Niccolò Castiglioni (1932-1996), a serialist who had a fascination with the upper frequencies of human hearing.  Near the end of his career he loosened up a bit on the serialism thing, and that happened to coincide with this collection, producing Das Reh im Wald.

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Das Reh im Wald (The Deer in the Woods) is simply a series of chords, none more than four notes, played very slowly.  Despite its simplicity the chords are tightly organized, and probably contradicts my previous statement about loosening up on serialism (though serial analysis without knowing the row beforehand is frighteningly difficult and largely pointless).  The cyclical nature of composing with rows is met by a set of four meters, endlessness seeing endlessness eye to eye.  It's very fitting for the subject matter, a calm being wandering through deep, chartless foliage.  The piece has no conventional arc, but despite its atonality there are moments of tension and climax, such as when two perfect fifths are offset by a ninth in bar 9 (Numerology?  Who cares?).  A glance may indicate this piece is easy to play, but it is surprisingly tricky, revealing not only inconsistencies in your touch but also in your piano.  Before I found a professional recording I made a YouTube performance, and my final cut took about 20 takes (and still isn't perfect).  So here's a pro doing the hard work for me:

This piece isn't Niccolò's first attempt, however.  I got a bout of déjà vu when I found Reh as I was already a fan of his infinitely charming piano travelogue Come io passo l'estate (How I Spent the Summer), detailing his vacation in the Italian Alps with his family.  The suite was written for young pianists, and is the first piece of his I know of that breaks from serialism.  Movement 8, Antonio Ballista Asleep in the Police Station, uses slow quiet chords, but the sonorities are denser and are very reminiscent of jazz.  Notice how the last measure is two major thirds offset by a whole step, and the first measure is three major thirds offset by whole steps (with one note overlapping).  As with the open fifths of Reh, Antonio has a peak in measure 12 with an eight-note split-5th/split-7th stack.  No YouTube performance for this one, but the recording I would recommend is by the British composer Thomas Adès on his album Thomas Adès - Piano.  His is the only recording that drops the Avant-Garde pretense and enjoys the piece as good ol' childhood wonder.

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~PNK