Beneath the Surface #12 - Panorama of American Piano Music – From Antheil to Zappa: 1911 to 1991

Composer: Various, all American

Works: Many! For a full tracklisting click here

Performers: Yvar Mikhashoff (piano)

Label: Mode

Background and Critical Reception

On Saturday May 19th, 1984, Yvar Mikhashoff (seen in the picture with John Cage) gave an extraordinary concert on Broadway.

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

It would of course be foolish to try and experience all this music in one sitting, but dipping in and out of Mode's compendium is a fascinating experience, providing a wholly alternative history of the piano and its development in America.

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

Sending classical music into Orbit

Almost imperceptibly, Decca have sneaked out a second volume of William Orbit's 'Pieces In A Modern Style'.

This may not seem like a massive event, but I remember the furore over the first album when Orbit was on Warners. Copyright issues prevented its release for a long time, and when it did finally come out in 2000 the reaction amongst many of the classical press was one of horror. It sold well, though, and introduced a lot of people to new music in the process.

Especially successful was his arrangement of Barber's 'Adagio for Strings' was hugely successful, a sort of cloudy synthesized registration that stayed faithful to the original, like a mottled Wendy Carlos. Orbit maintains this second volume is more to do with his love of the music rather than a desire to turn more people to classical music, which I firmly believe having interviewed him twice in recent years, but it may have the same effect once again.

It's fair to assume the classical press will continue in their indifference, especially when there are arrangements such as Elgar's 'Nimrod' to be heard. It seems here that Orbit has drawn from the success not just of Barber's 'Adagio' but also its remix by Ferry Corsten, who turned it into a floor filling trance music monster.

'Nimrod' ends up pitched some way in between, with some odd sounding bleeps and atmospherics that break down to a slightly psychedelic bit in the middle. Unfortunately the impact is harmed somewhat by the piece ending that bit too fast. Listening to it I was reminded of the time I tried to write a piece of trance music lifting the chords from Elgar's Cello Concerto, which was certainly unusual but petered out all too quickly once it had run its course.

Some of Orbit's arrangements stand the music on its head. 'Morning' from Grieg's 'Peer Gynt' has a very strange emphasis rhythmically, and while it loses a lot of its charm it benefits from an interesting choice of instrumentation. Likewise 'In Paradisum', which leans on Fauré's beautiful harmonic sleights in the last movement of his Requiem, while Bach's 'Arioso' tries some neat spatial tricks. Unfortunately Saint-Saëns' 'Aquarium', from 'Carnival of the Animals', is not so successful, laced liberally with cheese.

While the above proves is that these arrangements won't please everybody familiar with the originals, and might even annoy, but at no time is Orbit trying to preach from a soapbox. He simply loves the music, and wants to use his abilities in the studio to present it in a different light.

Even if the only thing to come out of the listening experience is a greater respect for the original, that surely has to be a good thing too.

The sea is calm tonight

What do William Orbit, Ferry Corsten, Escala, Leonard Bernstein and the Emerson String Quartet have in common?

This isn't about a bizarrely conceived talent show or a fantasy musical program. No - all have recorded Samuel Barber's 'Adagio For Strings', in one way or another. Orbit made an especially effective arrangement for synthesizers as part of his 'Pieces In A Modern Style' album in 2000, while Ferry Corsten took the baton and ran with it to create a trance monster, pulverising dancefloors later that same year. Escala - well, the less said about their post 'Britain’s Got Talent' mutilation the better. Bernstein, of course, wrought maximum feeling from the piece in its beefed-up, emotionally wrenching arrangement for full string orchestra. That's the arrangement that appears in the film 'Platoon', where it was really made famous, unfolding in a seemingly endless phrase as the soldiers lost their lives.

Of these performers, only the Emersons have played the piece in its totally original form, as the second movement of the composer's String Quartet. I got to see the whole piece as part of a Barber centenary concert at the Wigmore Hall on Monday, and it reminded me that Barber should be much more than a one hit wonder.

For me, his overall style is different to that of the 'Adagio'. Exploring beyond that brings you naturally to the Violin Concerto, a highly attractive, Spring-like piece with a warm heart. For a more steely edge, one of the composer's 'Essays' for orchestra - preferably the second - works extremely well.

The Wigmore concert revealed several aspects to the Barber's writing. His 'European' side is more serious, with longer structures that can be fiercely expressive, romantic even. The Cello Sonata and Piano Sonata fell into these categories, the latter exploring jazz syncopations. For a more carefree, American approach, the piano duet 'Souvenirs' did the job perfectly, telling a tale of time spent in a New York hotel listening to the house band. All sorts of dance forms played off each other, wrapped up in spicy harmonies and catchy melodies.

The hidden treasures in Barber's output are the songs. The title of this post is actually the first line from 'Dover Beach', a tragic but romantic setting of Matthew Arnold for baritone and string quartet. Early Barber songs charm with their simplicity, while the later works are sometimes elusive but ultimately more rewarding. Into this category fall the 'Hermit Songs', recorded by the soprano Barbara Bonney and pianist André Previn just over ten years back.

So while Messrs Orbit and Corsten might not find any more source material for further ambience or trance, the curious will have plenty to reward their endeavours.