RECORDINGS IN REVIEW: NEW MUSIC
2015; Wiley; Volume: 103; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/tyr.2015.0121
ISSN1467-9736
Autores Tópico(s)Music Technology and Sound Studies
Resumo1 7 9 R R E C O R D I N G S I N R E V I E W J A Y N O R D L I N G E R Almost every day, new recordings bring new music. I propose to look at five such recordings, and five composers – beginning with Philip Lasser, an American who teaches at Juilliard. In 2002, he wrote Twelve Variations on a Chorale by J. S. Bach. This is a piano work, and it was championed by Simone Dinnerstein. She is Bachbesotted , and so is Lasser. Any musician – I’m tempted to say any person – ought to be Bach-besotted. Lasser has now written a piano concerto for Dinnerstein. The concerto incorporates a Bach chorale. It also has a name, a title: The Circle and the Child. What does that mean? I’ll let the composer explain: ‘‘The idea of the circle was inspired by Bach, who understood better than anyone that if abstract music is to have a meaningful structure it can only do this by traveling away from a beginning back to the beginning, through memory. The child represents the repeating cycle of life, the travel from the end of life back to the beginning of life.’’ Dinnerstein includes Lasser’s concerto on an album called Broadway-Lafayette (Sony Classical 88875032452). The idea, as the album title implies, is that this disc brings together American and French music. Or rather, the disc honors the connection between France and America, musically. In addition to The Circle 1 8 0 N O R D L I N G E R Y and the Child, Dinnerstein plays Ravel’s Concerto in G and Gershwin ’s Rhapsody in Blue. She does so in the company of a German orchestra with a mouthful of a name: the MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra. The orchestra is conducted by its chief, Kristjan Järvi, who comes from a conducting family: Neeme Järvi is his father and Paavo Järvi is his older brother. And the Lasser concerto? It begins in a tuneful, simple C major. The opening measures sound rather like pop music. Then there is a Romantic flourish, Schumannesque. Along the way, I heard a number of influences and resemblances: American folk music, Gershwin, the Ravel G-major concerto (yes), Prokofiev. I also thought of Roy Harris, the midcentury American composer. Lasser’s first movement is basically warm and pleasant. I admire Lasser for his willingness to be simple (or outwardly simple). ‘‘’Tis the gift to be simple.’’ The second of his three movements is much like the first, at a slower tempo. It is su√used with Bach. And it is open, or ‘‘white,’’ in tone and feeling. The last movement begins just like the first, only in D major, not C. Before long, there are vague dissonances in the orchestra, but the piano continues in its simple, tuneful way. Eventually, the music tinkles out pleasantly. The circle is complete, I suppose. My language has been sni√y – but a simple, tuneful concerto can be a gift indeed. The prime example of the species, I think, is Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto no. 2: childlike, endearing, and masterly. Lasser’s music did not hold my interest, in my first hearing. I found the music pleasant – unobjectionable – but unnourishing . I liked it much better in subsequent hearings. It has a lot to o√er, and the phrase ‘‘deceptively simple’’ came to mind. In any case, I applaud a composer for going his own way, and I applaud him for recognizing that ugly and aggressive does not necessarily equal good. Jacob Cooper is another American composer, the holder of a Ph.D. from Yale. His music is presented on a disc called Silver Threads (Nonesuch 540989-2). That is also the title of a song cycle, the sole work on this disc. The cycle began life as one song, the opening, ‘‘Silver Threads,’’ which sets a seventeenth-century haiku. Cooper wrote the song for a soprano friend of his, Mellissa Hughes (whose first name is spelled interestingly – I wonder whether she pronounces the first syllable like ‘‘tell’’). He then R E C O...
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