Works: Many! For a full tracklisting click here
Performers: Yvar Mikhashoff (piano)
Label: Mode
Background and Critical Reception
Billed as The Great American Piano Marathon, it fulfilled a promise of Seventy Works in Seven Hours from Seventy Years, and made the most of the pianist’s friendship and contact with many of America's leading composers.
Mikhashoff, who died in 1993, began with an excerpt from Charles Ives' vast Concord Sonata, The Alcotts, while his finishing piece was the Tango by John Cage, one of four of the composer’s works to be included. He travelled by way of some of the great luminaries of American music – Copland, Gershwin, Bernstein, Nancarrow and many more. Yet he chose not to go with conventional or obvious pieces, which led to the inclusion of rarities such as the Copland Three Moods, and Gershwin's Impromptu In Two Keys.
For this album Mode revisit Mikhashoff's recordings, building a history of the century's piano music in America in his memory. What we get is therefore not so much the great works of twentieth century American piano music (some examples being Barber's Piano Sonata, Gershwin's Three Preludes or Steve Reich's Piano Phase) but more examples of compositional craft in the country, as well as intriguing morsels and rarities.
The Alcotts is once again the starting point, and the four discs unfold chronologically through works by Griffes (Three Preludes), Antheil (Sonata: Death of Machines), Morton Feldman (Vertical Thoughts 4) and John Cage (Landscape), arriving at the premiere of Nancarrow's Three Two-Part Studies, given by Mikhashoff in 1991.
Thoughts
Several different 'movements' present themselves – we have minimalism from Philip Glass and Lukas Foss, a work for piano and tape from Mario Davidovsky, four differing works from John Cage, or the more bluesy approach of
A wistful performance of The Alcotts, one of the cornerstones of the American piano repertoire, makes for a winning start, while the Griffes preludes are very enjoyable too, the third lost in its own thought.
There are also some unexpected additions from composers of abroad who spent time in America – Grainger (the expansive Pastorale from In A Nutshell), Stravinsky, Bloch and Krenek, all of whom were in a sense ‘honorary’ Americans.
The range and scope of the whole collection is too much to do justice to completely in the course of a shorter review, but memorable excerpts begin with Henry Cowell’s Amiable Conversation, which could easily have been written yesterday but which is actually from 1917. The very valuable rarities are well worth hearing too, especially the first recording of Copland's Three Sonnets.
The piano itself has quite a harsh sound at times, especially in the brief souvenir of Virgil Thomson, which sounds like an unpublished piece from a Bartók sketchbook, but the producer Brian Brandt has struggled manfully to make the sound as forgiving as possible. Brandt contributes an interesting booklet note as a suffix to an excellent mini-book that looks at Mikhashoff's friendship with American composers.
Back to the music – and the second disc feels more traditional, especially in items like Roy Harris' first American Ballad, which has an attractive language. Two of the Seven Anniversaries of Leonard Bernstein make brief and extravert appearances, while John Cage's seminal piece In A Landscape makes a timeless interlude, thoughtfully played.
The third disc begins in mysterious, murky waters with the stillness of Feldman's Vertical Thoughts 4, which leads to the touching simplicity of the Armenian-American composer Alan Hovhaness's Five Visionary Landscapes. The fourth, Evening Bell, bears the accent of both countries.
It is off hearing the other sounds of Davidovsky's piece for piano and tape, Synchronisms no.6, but they are strangely effective, like being in an old curiosity shop of noises. This cuts to the spectacular feats of virtuosity in the Crumb, the tumbling figures from an excerpt from Makrokosmos. Lou Harrison's A Waltz for Evelyn Hinrichsen is delightfully graceful, part of an imaginative and spontaneous sequence of waltzes on CD3 that leads to the bluesy waltz of Tom Constanten, a simple but effective winner. Glass, in his Modern Love Waltz, is quite romantic but inevitably repetitive.
It is ironically the minimalist 'area' where the coverage of this disc is not as effective, with no contributions from John Adams or Steve Reich, and a long piece, Solo, by Lukas Foss, that I found difficult to warm to with its relentless, caustic figurations.
Yet this is a small price to pay for such an imaginative and exhaustive survey. Small portraits of the American prairies or the cities can be found at every term, and are vignettes of emotion, starting points for listening elsewhere. I will definitely follow up on Hovhaness, for instance, but will also return to the Concord Sonata, the music of Antheil, and the massive output of John Cage.
And the Zappa? It's unusually reflective, an introduction to Little House I Used To Live In. But then that’s the charm of this set, always giving new and unexpected insights.
Verdict
If you don't mind quite a dry piano sound this is like leafing through an encyclopaedia of modern American classical music. Yvar Mikhashoff is an ever-engaging guide, playing with great character and affection, illuminating the corners of a repertoire that is far bigger than anyone could possibly imagine.
Further listening
The complete Panorama of American Piano Music can be heard on Spotify by clicking here
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