Spectrum - Contemporary Works for Piano

Customer Review: marvelous bagatelle-like piano album
This is a wonderful collection of piano bagatelle like durational envois, shibboleths,effacacious timbral meanderings,visionary,some ephemera, egregious. Yet all ponder an obsessive elan for the pure rarefied luv of piano timbre.And since modernity has passed out of itself,there is a freedom simply to create unencumbered,eremitical with pure devotion to piano timbre. Some works actually betray their asopted,intended/distended frames. That perhaps is a more interesting feature of postmodernity. Here as in Bedford's 'Toccata', scouring post-electronic tonality. It is a wonderful work diapasonal,diaphanous,orgasmic at times,yet direct and to the point. Also a prolific great piano practicioner-monger is Michael Finnissy with an excerpt from his 'Yvaropera 5', there are more,these are dedication to the marvelous new music pianist Yvar Mikashoff. Finnissy has finely woven threadbare lines. These works engage the challenge of the miniature, and the lyricism present here is like walking in a gallery with a predominance of no one particular musical language. There are also some leftovers from the Tango Projekt.Perhaps the precursor of this Spectrum. Howard Skempton the pre=eminent British miniaturist 'Cantilena' is here,hovering with an air of eridite presence,his voice is rather taciturn like,yet talismanic with a few purely wrought tones. Andrew Toovey's 'Still'I found is not as remarkable as his brilliant chamber works,of dense complexity. Here the upper register clusters seemed overly labored,and unintentional within the context. Jonathan Harvey's 'haiku' is the ultimate effrontery for this miniscule musical parade, a mere single arpeggiated gesture, one press-down of the sustaining pedal, a mere 20 seconds, or as long as the envelope decay dies. I found overall that it is the structural context that harbors the conceptual complexity,even the more pronounced examples as Roger Redgate's 'trace' is not as rhythmically forbidding as a measured particle exhumed from Ferneyhough,who is mirabile dictu absent from the proceedings here. Also the epigones of complexity, as Barrett, Dench,Fox are out of the picture.Why?.If you smite their faces do they not shed a tear,if you cut them, do they not bleed. Neglected imaginative piano creator Dave Smith however is included. Smith has written,contributed greatly to solo literature, and his "tuesday" is included, a wonderfully crafted work with equisite voicings,ephemera.Additional I enjoyed Edward McGuire's "Foglie d'Autunno" a work satisfying the more song/canto,piano album dimensions of its generic frame. There are as well extroverted-like tone poem/paintings, as Edwin Roxburgh "Moonscape", Montague's "Mira",Hoddinott's "Dark March". All these excursions into the finer particles of piano timbre leaves one empty, I found, not in an inferior way, but as Cornelius Cardew once quipped an eudaemonia,a felt perception,of something else,an emotive entity,a creative pathway missed, a wrong turn,a bad egg of structure,or concept,and that some unknowable espousal,some imaginative envoi should have been at the center of the music.
Customer Review: Modern music made easy
This double CD is a recording of "Spectrum" - two volumes of piano music by late twentieth century composers. The works were commissioned by Thalia Myers and the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music from a wide range of figures, well-known and otherwise, with a simple brief: to create short pieces in a contemporary style that could be accessed by pianists of any standard. As a composer myself, I can safely say that such a brief is not as easy to follow as it may seem. Whilst it is true that short works are easier to write than long ones, it is never always easy to think of beginners or amateurs at primary school level when you're used to working with professionals and semi-professionals of more or less the same standard as yourself. In "Spectrum," the various composers have met the challenge impeccably, and the books are now proving to be a useful teaching tool with which to introduce young performers to contemporary music. With this recording, the same material can be made accessible to first-time listeners as well as performers. The first volume is perhaps the harder of the two in terms of both listening and playing the music. Most of the composers featured in it returned to contribute to the second volume and it is clear (from listening) that some lessons were learned: you may find it more pleasant to put Disc Two on first when trying it out. To summarise all the pieces, short though they are, is beyond the scope of this review but among the names appearing are Jonathan Harvey, Diana Burrell, Michael Finnisey, Graham Fitkin, Philip Cashian, John Tavener, Howard Skempton and Stephen Montague. In the books, most of the pieces occupy single or double page spreads only; on disc, this makes each track less than two minutes long. (For the record, the absolute shortest work is Jonathan Harvey's "Haiku" from the second volume, which is two lines long on paper and takes just 30 seconds to play!) Take the music as you will, but in all cases it is well-played: Thalia Myers commands a wonderful expressive range and captures the extreme subtlety of each and every piece. This really is the finest introduction to modern music around!


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