Tsontakis: Ghost Variations - Weber: Fantasia - Copland: Piano Variations - Corigliano: Etude Fantasy

This CD I picked up from the constantly updated 'Please, someone, buy me' batch that Hyperion Records offers at deep discounts (at this very moment it is still available but it won't be for long). It's the kind of piano recital that inevitably tickles my curiosity: not so well known American 21st century works intelligently curated under a banner that promises urbaneness and metropolitan sophistication. Yesterday I played it through for the first time and I was not displeased with what I heard: a rather accessible (but not trivial) Etude Fantasy by Corigliano, Copland's famous and rather stern Piano Variations, a short Fantasia (Variations) (1946) by Ben Weber and, as pièce de résistance, a big and wayward work - Ghost Variations - by George Tsontakis (b1951). It was this last piece that intrigued me most, so I listened to it a couple of more times. It's a very substantial work, stretching over 30 minutes, that falls into 3 parts: a fantasia-like head movement culminating in a madcap set of Mozart Variations, followed by two scherzi. I don't think I have seen a piece in this kind of idiosyncratic layout before. From Tsontakis' wikipedia page I learned that Stephen Hough's premiere performance on this CD was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition and that it was the only classical recording among Time magazine's 1998 Top Ten Recordings. I'd need to spend a bit more time with this piece to get a better grip on it. For now I'd say that this reminds me of late Beethoven with a postmodernist twist. The writing is really resourceful and exhibits formidable drive. It's basically tonal so that's not where the difficulty is. It's the overall shape of the piece that eludes easy comprehension. Hough writes in the booklet notes that "there are two overriding, opposing psychological elements at work in the piece that could be described as obsessiveness versus dissipation, clear-sightedness versus hallucination, firm purpose versus aimlessness: a contrast between moments when everything matters, and moments when nothing matters (...). The search for enlightenment happens here either by obsessive repetition - as if trying to solve a problem by going over it again and again; or by an unravelling process, 'becoming muddled' or 'doodling' as the composer writes in the score." The first movement sounds like a tormented, disjointed fantasia in which a dark, chorale-like theme (reminding me of Liszt) plays a prominent role. But there are also many twists I would associate with ageing Beethoven. This leads up unexpectedly to a set of tongue-in-cheeck variations on a theme from Mozart's E flat major piano concerto, KV482. Astonishingly, the whole thing seems to work. The two scherzi - each around 9 minutes long - are complex compositions in their own right which fully demand the listener's attention. The piece ends in a wonderfully atmospheric way with a final variation on the Mozart theme played on the wood of the piano frame. I'm certainly going to spend more time with this work in the next couple of weeks. Kudos to Hyperion and Hough for the imaginative programming, the persuasive performances, the excellent recorded sound, beautiful packaging (with a suggestive painting by Ben Moore gracing the cover) and very informative notes by the performer himself. A great find!

Copland: Symphony for Organ, Rodeo, Billy The Kid, Appalachian Spring, Music for the Theatre, Symphony nr. 3, Quiet City

I'm going to close this very eclectic listening month with a report on the music of Aaron Copland that I've been surveying the last two, three weeks. How did I get to Copland? After having encountered the Jongen Symphonie Concertante I looked up some other orchestra and organ works and came across Copland's which was not in my collection but which came in soon enough via the Bernstein Sony box. So I listened to that, and I added Billy The Kid (which was also unfamiliar to me) in the Mata/Dallas SO recording. Went on to Rodeo and Appalachian Spring, both from a Telarc CD with Louis Lane conducting the Atlanta SO. I compared Lane's Spring with Bernstein's on a digital DGG recording with the Los Angeles SO. Another Telarc disc (Levi, also with the Atlanta SO) includes Copland's Music for the Theatre. More recently I reacquainted myself with his Third Symphony in the much lauded Bernstein 1986 recording with Quiet City as a filler.

I learned from all this that Copland is not my favourite composer. The only recording I really appreciated was Louis Lane's rendering of the Fanfare, Rodeo and Appalachian Spring. That is a truly memorable disc as Lane (for many years Szell's assistant at the Cleveland) captures the spirit of these works so admirably well. He plays them with the right mixture of grandeur and unfussyness, avoiding Bernstein's larmoyant take on this composer. In the latter's case, the Americana tilt into the sentimental and become really unpalatable. Lane's Fanfare for the Common Man is the only one I have heard that makes sense as a piece of jubilation. His Rodeo has a quietly granitic quality that really speaks to me. His Appalachian Spring, without any doubt Copland's greatest score, exhibits the clarity of line and purpose we find in Shaker furniture and utensils.

I was much less impressed by the other things I heard. Billy The Kid struck me as episodic and not as inspired as Rodeo. Music for the Theatre is a genuinely fun piece, mixing jazzy locutions with the composer's trademark idyllic rusticity. The Symphony for Organ, Copland's first substantial piece composed for his teacher Nadia Boulanger, is a very odd and strained affair with a sullen first movement and an incongruent scherzo that already looks ahead at the Wild West ballets. The Symphony nr. 3 finally, allegedly the composer's magnum opus, lacks a convincing symphonic superstructure. All the individual movements are nice enough to listen to but the whole doesn't gel. Bernstein, in his late recording, tries maybe to spin a little too much yarn from Copland's wool. Some say Antal Dorati's reading with the Minneapolis SO is the one to have, but it has sadly never appeared on CD.

Maybe I'm giving Copland short shrift here and do I need to have more patience. Or perhaps I just haven't been in the mood, immersed as I've been in French repertoire. I'm set to revisit this composer sooner or later.