Friday, November 29, 2013

A Gracious Nod to Chopin (with some ungraciousness later)


There.

In 16 measly bars, Chopin whipped out his shallowest overplayed work.  In a set of 24 inventive, exquisitely crafted preludes this is the most played (after the "Raindrop", of course), and that kind of stinks.  All those harmonic subtleties and explorations of piano textures can't fight for air next to Ol' Catchy Tune, and countless kiddie piano recitals have helped it dig its claws further into the rep.  One of the fine bunch of Italian composers to revitalize Italian instrumental music at the beginning of the 20th century, Alfredo Casella (1883-1947) saw the ditty and inspiration struck.  He'd been writing quirky atonal music at the time, and his Two Contrasts, op. 31 starts with a fine homage to the A-Major Menace:


With a few extra bars and a bunch of extra subtleties, Casella turns the prelude on a wry ear.  You could make a point that all of 19th century salon music owes its livelihood to Chopin, as he infused a lot of creativity and emotional depth to a previously shallow genre of music - Casella infuses that with anise and absinthe.  All the original architecture is there in spirit; he just enriches it with extended tertian fuzziness.  You may notice at the top that this is called Grazioso, or "gracious" for the Anglo-inclined.  I'll let you guess what the other movement is called - it should be apparent when it starts.


~PNK

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

A Perfect Half-Page by Zhelobinsky


My Stanchinsky article got me thinking about untimely deaths in composition, and a name from the far side of the Iron Curtain came to mind - Valery Zhelobinsky (1913-1946), who was quite prolific in his short career.  Stalin aside, the big reason most music from Stalin's oppressive policy haven't gained traction after the fact is primarily for being shallow, irritating populist pap.  I can't say that Zhelobinsky's music totally escape the Stalinist tractor beam, as the music of his I've seen sits squarely under Shostakovich's wing, but some gemlets rise to the surface.  His Six Short Etudes, op. 19 were performed by Vladimir Horowitz, and are among the only works of his to be recorded (at least the first one, here performed by Raymond Lewenthal on a pretty interesting album).


His 24 Preludes, op. 20 show the full scope of his skill for piano writing, and find their place comfortably among the long line of 24-strong Russian prelude sets alongside Cui, Shostakovich, Scriabin and many others.  The problems arise with the overabundance of moto perpetuo pieces, with constant 16th notes in the right hand and boom-chik left-hand stride figures, like this:



In reality there should be more like this:


(Click for larger view)

And there are some, but this one is far too gorgeous to ignore.  It perfectly captures that turn-of-the-century Russian blend of expansiveness and melancholy, and seeing that this year is the centenary of Zhelobinsky's birth it's an all-too-convenient elegy to boot.  It's almost enough to make one forget the political circumstances in which it was conceived, and Zhelobinsky was often able to use restrictions to his advantage.  There's a subpar recording on YouTube that popped up for the centenary, but I made my own version, and with November almost gone it wasn't a moment too soon.

https://soundcloud.com/peter-nelson-king/valery-zhelobinsky-24-preludes

~PNK

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Milhaud Mazurks his Way into a November Thursday


One of the most prolific composers of the 20th century, Darius Milhaud (1892-1974) first gained prominence as a member of Les Six and made a career far outshining that paltry moniker.  With an opus list ending at 443, Milhaud managed to keep a smile affixed on nearly everything he wrote, and you can imagine his work went through many phases of smile.  His time with Les Six was pretty dang early in his career, just beginning to pry himself off of Debussy's language and get his own grooves into motion - and for the Album des six, he offered one of his most enchanting works from this transitional period.


The mazurka is a Polish dance that was popularized by Chopin's many entries in the genre, and Milhaud's Mazurka brings a lot of whole tones to the table.  The melody is doused in sultry swinging chromaticism, a much more languorous take on the usually stiffer mazurka rhythm.  The bass line swoops freely, creating surprising shifts in character and tonality.  Deep, yet deft, pedaling is required to make the piece really shine, and thankfully the different modes shift on a bar-by-bar basis.  Small touches keep things lively after multiple plays, such as the right hand chord in bar 34 (six from the end), and I've always loved "super-resonance" lines, ones that indicate notes should be held across the barline, only to reveal that there's nothing there.  I feel like this piece should be played all the time, but perhaps its leafiness accounts for its lost-in-the-shuffle status.  Or maybe people just don't want to be upstaged by this performance, which just about nails it (and what more needs to be said?):


~PNK

Sunday, November 3, 2013

A Spectrum of the Coming Snows


Sometimes a piece jumps right the Sam Hill out of nowhere and snaps at your heels, unrelenting until the second you write an article about it.  Such is the case with a piece uploaded just an hour ago on Inciptisify, arguably the premiere channel for disseminating pieces by young contemporary composers (I've featured it before).  It's composer, Sehyung Kim, is only a year older than me and has so far slipped past my radar, but his Korean-Kazakh heritage is enough for at least a peek.  That peek takes the form of six bars of varying length for piano.

(Click for larger view)

Sijo is an ancient Korean poetic form that explores deep metaphysical and natural questions with a strict syllabic form.  The Wikipedia article goes over it much better than I can, but sijo already appeals to me for its haunting brevity and heightened evocation.  Kim has composed a bunch of them, as evidenced by worklists and his Soundcloud, which is where Inciptisify got the recording for Sijo_280412, "der Schnee kommt".  The numbers refer to the date when the piece was composed, and with this kind of micro-piece titling becomes a non-issue - John Cage eventually abandoned titles, as well as the I-swear-to-God-his-time-on-this-blog-is-coming Gardner Jencks.  In case you're wondering, "Der Schnee kommt" means "the snow comes", which is exactly what I'm taking bets on now considering I live near Seattle and snow is about as consistent as lightning strikes.

Sijo_280412 is an egg of resonant simplicity.  It's a philosophical puzzle: while different keys of the piano are struck, the placement of a finger on different parts of the strings results in the same pitch (sort of) sounding for all of them.  Are there eight different pitches or only various shades of one?  His organization is also elegant.  The small numbers above each harmonic refer to their order in the overtone series - 7 was skipped presumably to keep the tight 4-to-4 ratio between the first and second staves intact (and it might have sounded gross).  The pauses reveal an interesting architecture: decreasing in length in one way, increasing the next, and circling the drain in the third.  The final line also circles the harmonics before bringing the piece back to the natural E.  The wide spaces between the thunking, gong-like E's perfectly evoke the muted, desolate beauty of a snowy landscape, the more disparate harmonics even reminding the listener of the crunch of a boot penetrating the surface.  You can look in all directions and infer the changing landscape, but it's all enveloped by the E - static, immense but ultimately fragile, as one slip of the finger on the string brings it all down.  Daylight Savings Time is finally over, and the cold months are done lying in wait, so Kim's Sijo couldn't be more timely.  Well, maybe if there was actual snow.  I live in Seattle, so that day seems unlikely to come.

Crap.


~PNK