CD Reviews

Ralph Shapey: Radical Traditionalism

Wanda Maximilien, piano; The Lexington Quartet of the Contemporary Chamber Players of the University of Chicago; Quartet of the Contemporary Chamber Players of the University of Chicago; Robert Black, piano; New York New Music Ensemble: Jayn Rosenfeld, flute; Laura Flax, clarinet; Daniel Druckman, percussion; Alan Feinberg, piano; Cyrus Stevens, violin; Eric Bartlett, cello; Robert Black, conductor New World Records

Ralph Shapey died a few years ago in 2002, and very little of his music gets heard anymore. There was a time, back when he was very active in Chicago, when I heard a lot of his music, such as his choral/orchestral works Praise and The Covenant. However, I suspect some of this had to do with my being a student at the U of Chicago during a period when Shapey was one of the more significant presences in the local music scene; outside the Hyde Park academic enclave, Shapey’s name just didn’t come up very often. These albums, particularly the New World Records release last month, start to re-present Shapey’s output in an important context, even if everything on the New World discs has been previously released.

As a student at Chicago from 1979-1987, I knew Ralph Shapey, mostly from chance meetings at receptions or concerts since I didn’t take any music courses at the University. He didn’t come off as a nice person. If that seems harsh, I should say that it was well known that Shapey was difficult, and as a gnarly, self-absorbed professor, he fit in very well at the University and was therefore hardly unusual. When we spoke, it was clear that we had little to agree upon; he was dismissive of the minimalist music that I advocated, and seemed to prefer the seclusion of the academic music world that was the U of Chicago, one better known for musicology than for composition. Even though I might not have liked him personally (and to be fair, I suspect I didn’t exactly make his day, either), I held a lot of respect for him, and much of his music I found captivating: the early work Evocations for violin and piano, the Fromm Variations for piano, and a few others. I confess I found some of his music too self-absorbed, too angry, and often just went on too long. His scores, most of which were easy to find in the Regenstein Library, were largely messy handwritten reproductions, and his nested tuplets (a staple of his later music) were so complex I couldn’t understand how anyone could accurately perform them.

Shapey was someone I felt was a nonacademic trying to be an academic. I agree with Robert Carl’s detailed liner notes, however, that Shapey wasn’t truly an academic. Indeed, Shapey was hardly accepted by the “uptown” establishment and was something of an exile from the NYC scene. Unlike Feldman, who also had very little formal education (indeed, Shapey had but a high school diploma), there is nothing avant-garde or groundbreaking/innovative in Shapey’s music. True, he was never serial, and like Feldman, studied with Wolpe and was a fellow traveller in terms of some of the abstract expressionist painters of that time in NYC. But unlike Feldman, Shapey’s music often sounds no different to my ears than a lot of the music I used to force myself to listen to as a kid at the usual ISCM or New York New Music Ensemble concerts at the old Carnegie Recital Hall. Yet even with its harshness, a lot of Shapey’s music is compelling.

Shapey considered himself a “radical traditionalist.” The “tradition” is what often reminds me of uptown music. Shapey was rooted in traditional forms and wrote for musicians who were in the mainstream of contemporary music. Yet Shapey’s music is much more impassioned and unique than, say, that of Arthur Berger’s, even if the latter’s String Quartet at times inhabits a sound world that is not that different from that of Shapey’s. Shapey is known for having withdrawn his music from performance and publication for several years (in an old NYT interview, he stated, perhaps with a combination of malaise and self-aggrandizement, ”I was disgusted with the depth of degradation the world had sunk to in Korea and Vietnam and withdrew my music because I didn’t want to give it to humanity.” He had devoted friends and devoted enemies, and I wonder how much his personality had to do both with his being dissed by the Pulitzer Committee and the general neglect of his music since his death.

If this sounds like a negative review, it isn’t, nor is it meant to be. Having heard the premiere of the Fromm Variations sometime in the early 80′s, I have for a long time regretted never having purchased the LP on CRI records, and was even starting to barter for Kyle Gann’s copy when fortunately, this New World release came out re-releasing the 51-minute piano work and several other neglected masterpieces. It is a great overview of much of Shapey’s music, authentically performed by several of the people who championed his difficult, thorny music over the years, such as Robert Black and members of the Contemporary Chamber Players of the University of Chicago.

Let’s start with the 31 Variations for Piano (Fromm Variations). This is a long work, with a recurring motif of two pedal points each followed by a dissonant chord. It blew me away when I first heard it, and still does. Like many works by Shapey, there is repetition, but not in the minimalist way. Nor is the repetition akin to what Feldman did in his later works with providing slightly varied “memories.’ Selected motifs come back, sometimes varied just a bit but often not, and these provide landmarks along the way. But there is much variation and new material along the way that doesn’t get repeated, so I never find myself engaged in a timeless new universe the way I do with Feldman’s long works. The Fromm Variations is a masterpiece, and an unfairly neglected one. It’s perhaps not as innovative or cutting edge as Triadic Memories, and certainly whole galaxies removed from The Well-Tuned Piano. I think of the work as an extension of some of Wolpe’s piano music, albeit more dense and lengthy. And that’s no surprise, given that like Feldman, Shapey studied with Wolpe. Parts of the Fromm Variations remind me of Form or Form IV: Broken Sequences, but make no mistake, Shapey had his own unique voice and avoided the serialism of his teacher.

The other works on this 2-CD set are also noteworthy. The String Quartet #6 is an earlier work in one movement that is striking in its counterpoint. The later String Quartet #7 is even more complex, and pairs the instruments much as Carter did with his String Quartet #3, yet both works are very different in their approaches to counterpoint and rhythm. There are moments in SQ7 that are very quiet and ineffable, and the composer’s shared heritage with Feldman are hinted at. The 21 Variations for Piano I’m still working through. I like it, but I’m trying to get the Fromm Variations out of my head and appraise the 21 Variations on its own merits. In other words, I don’t want to subconsciously compare one work with the other. Finally, Three for Six is a piece for chamber ensemble that was written in 1979, coincidentally when I started my freshman year at the University of Chicago. It’s a piece in three movements (for six players, natch) that at times reminds me of the humor that I detected in Shapey’s Evocations and also has a more introspective, quiet second movement that is a contrast to the outer movements.

Overall, this is an outstanding album, and hopefully will inspire other performances and recordings of Shapey’s neglected music. Robert Carl’s liner notes are thorough and provide important perspective, even with the disclaimer that he was one of Shapey’s students at Chicago.

Music of Ralph Shapey

Centaur Records

Unlike the New World 2-CD set, this album provides unrecorded music for violin and violin+piano by Ralph Shapey. Shapey was a violinist, and his knowledge of the instrument comes through in this recording. Interestingly, the CD contains an early work from 1945, the Etchings for violin, which remind me in some ways of Feldman’s 1945 Sonata for Violin and Piano, in that both works presage the later, more mature music by their respective composers. Three of the five works on this album are for solo violin, and while these don’t strike me as being as distinctive as some of Shapey’s works for chamber groups or orchestra, they are good listening just the same. The two works for violin and piano, however, are much more “typical” Shapey, and the late Millennium Designs is particularly engaging. The disc is noteworthy as well for including music that ranges from the early Etchings to Millennium Designs that was composed two years before the composer’s death.

The performers are clearly dedicated to Shapey’s music and share a genuine affection for it. This is often not easy music to perform, and Miranda Cuckson and Blair McMillen pull out all the stops in making it seem a lot easier than it really is. This is a first-rate performance of music for solo violin and violin and piano.

John Cage: Music for Keyboard 1935-1948
Jeanne Kirstein, prepared piano, piano, and toy piano

Morton Feldman: The Early Years
David Tudor, Morton Feldman, Edwin Hymovitz, Russell Sherman, pianos; Matthew Raimondi, Joseph Rabushka, violins; Walter Trampler, viola; Seymour Barab, cello

New World Records
This is a 2-CD release of a historic recording of early music by Cage and Feldman. Even though I already own a lot of this music (this is something the fourth version of Cage’s Bacchanale that I have on my iPod), these represent important early performances from Columbia Record’s “Music of Our Time” series that was overseen by David Behrman. The Feldman CD represents a 1959 LP that served as the first major recording of his music. The Cage CD is from another LP that contains classic performances by Jeanne Kirstein.

The Cage CD contains the following:

Two Pieces, Metamorphosis, Bacchanale, The Perilous Night, Tossed As It Is Untroubled, A Valentine Out of Season, Root of an Unfocus, Two Pieces for Piano, Prelude for Meditation, Music for Marcel Duchamp, Suite for Toy Piano, Dream

The Feldman CD consists of:

Piece for Four Pianos, Intersection 3 for Piano, Extensions 4 for Three Pianos, Two Pieces for Two Pianos, Projection 4 for Violin and Piano, Structures for String Quartet, Extensions 1 for Violin and Piano, Three Pieces for String Quartet

A few comments about selected tracks—all of the performances of Cage’s piano and prepared piano works are outstanding. While there’s a lot to be said for Markus Hinterhauser’s performances of many of these works on his CD set of Cage’s works for prepared piano, Kirstein’s performances are similarly inspired, and are said to have been highly regarded by Cage himself.

I was particularly interested in hearing the recording of Feldman’s Piece for Four Pianos. This is one of Feldman’s most noteworthy works, in which the four pianos paly the same notes but on their own time frames, and this means that each performance is particularly unique. I own a recording by Le Bureau des Pianistes that is amazingly beautiful, and clocks in at just over 16 minutes. This recording by David Tudor, Russell Sherman, Edwin Hymovitz and Morton Feldman is less than half the length of my other recording, and is very different in other ways as well. Yet it is just as valid and captivating. Similarly, I have recordings of Structures and Three Pieces for String Quartet by the Concord and Rangzen Quartets respectively, and these are captivating performances. The recordings on the New World CD by a string quartet consisting of Matthew Raimondi, Joseph Rabushka, Walter Trampler and Seymour Barab are different in some ways but offer an engaging sonic experience. The repetitive section with mostly string harmonics in Structures is perhaps better accentuated in the New World CD performance. The included performance of Projection 4 by Matthew Raimondi and David Tudor is as definitive as that of the recent recording by Christina Fong and Paul Hersey on OgreOgress.

So even if you might have some or all of these works on other recordings, this is a very special 2-CD set, both from historic and listening perspectives.

Leo Ornstein, Complete Works for Cello and Piano Joshua Gordon (cello) & Randall Hodgkinson (piano) New World Records 80655-2

Six Preludes for cello and piano (1929-30)
Composition 1 for cello and piano* (date unknown)
Sonata No. 1 for cello and piano, Op. 52 (1915)
Two Pieces for cello and piano, Op. 33 nos. 1 and 2* (date unknown)
Sonata No. 2 for cello and piano* (ca. 1920)

* World Premiere Recording

Well, not quite. Ornstein was part of that multitude of heralded geniuses at the onset of modernism (back when it was called Futurism). He made quite a splash, prompting one critic to deem him the sum of Schoenberg and Scriabin squared, but posterity has endowed only a fraction of their fame on poor Leo, who disappeared into academia after his initial notoriety.

The new recording by Joshua Gordon and Randall Hodgkinson of Ornstien’s Complete Works for Cello and Piano seems to confirm posterity’s judgment. The compositions on this CD are all very lovely to encounter, but aside from a few haunting moments, they don’t particularly linger in the mind. Back when it was easy to become famous for breaking all the rules, enfants terribles were a dime a dozen, but Ornstein is no charlatan. His musical vocabulary is expansive, and he has a gift for creating a wide variety of textures that, left by themselves, would make fine post-modernist pieces.

However, what emerges as Ornstein’s greatest talent in this collection of five pieces is not any groundbreaking modernity, but rather, a passionate, Russian-Jewish lyricism. (Ornstein rejected Judaism as an adult, but his cultural heritage is never far afield in these pieces. In the fifth of his Six Preludes for cello and piano, he even quotes the triplet piano motif of Mussorgsky’s “Samuel Goldenberg und Schmuí¿le”.) Composition 1 for cello and piano is simply one long lament for the cello, much like the first part of Sonata No. 2. On this disc, these languorous melodies abound.

Joshua Gordon sings each melody with a gorgeous, dark tone that is utterly captivating at times. Ornstein was a crack pianist, and like most composers with prodigious piano chops, he writes some miserably complex accompaniments, all of which Randall Hodgkinson plays effortlessly. If these two are coming to your town any time soon, don’t miss them. The only flaw in this recording is the mix, which often lets one instrument overbalance the other.

Philip Corner: Extreme Positions

The Barton Workshop

New World Records

Disc: 1
1. For 2 Trombones No. 2 13:26
2. Calling! OM 8:54
3. attempting whiteness 10:07
4. Round Sound 5:14
5. One Note More Than Once (A) 7:41
6. An Earth Bereath Trilogy: I 3:28
7. An Earth Bereath Trilogy: II 4:54
8. An Earth Bereath Trilogy: III 5:36
9. Big Trombone 9:27
10. One Note More Than Once (B) 8:44
Disc: 2
1. Zen Om 7:07
2. Just Another 12-Tone Piece 4:06
3. Sang-Teh, movement III 13:21
4. Passionate Expanse of the Law 11:30
5. Lovely Music 13:53
6. When They Pull the Plug: Part I 3:41
7. When They Pull the Plug: Part II 4:41
8. When They Pull the Plug: Part III 4:33
9. Chopin Prelude I: The V9 Chord Which Begins The Chopin D Major Prelude…as a revelation

I’ve known Philip Corner’s music for many years, but only the stuff he’s written for gamelan, of which I’m a big fan. This 2-disc set is a very nice overview of his work, spanning several decades, as performed by James Fulkerson and his colleagues with the Barton Workshop. The first disc contains works for brass with/without tape and/or piano, while the second disc has music for ensemble and also Corner’s 2002 piece When They Pull the Plug for percussion.

Corner has been active on many fronts over the years, including the Fluxus movement, Gamelan Son of Lion, and even the Judson Dance Theatre. His music comes out of a deep understanding of Eastern music, and while some works are notated “conventionally,” graphic notation and written instruction are used for many compositions. Thus, the music is largely indeterminate and improvised, based on the composer’s instructions.

Most of the music on this set is interesting for the various sounds elicited by the (mainly brass) instruments, and the use of tape collages, while characteristic of the early 60′s when such music was written, is intriguing. But I have to confess that it doesn’t work for me in the same way that, say, many of the works by Christian Wolff do. In other words, I found the music of interest, but not something that blew me away.

With one exception, however—Chopin Prelude I: The V9 Chord Which Begins The Chopin D Major Prelude… as a relevation. Conceived as a series of “revelation” pieces based on older works, this piece struck me as a very nice example of 60′s minimalism. Given that that’s my taste, it wasn’t surprising that this compositions stood out in my mind when I listened to this album over several days.

The performance is undoubtedly first rate and the musicians are incredibly dedicated. If you’re a fan of Corner’s music, this is an essential, must-have album.

George Antheil: Piano Concerto No. 2, Serenade No. 2, Dreams

Philadelphia Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra;

Daniel Spalding, conductor
Guy Livingston, Piano

New World Records 80647-2

George Antheil is probably best known for his 1924 work, “Ballet Mecanique“. Featuring 16 player pianos, electric bells, three airplane propellers, a siren, and several percussionists, this piece sounds like it could have been written today.

Why, then, did Antheil leave this form of music, and spend much of the rest of his life writing music in classical forms for conventional instruments? His autobiography may give a clue. It’s title, “Bad Boy Made Good”, suggests that Antheil didn’t really think this wild music was that good. He wasn’t alone – the premiere of Ballet Mecanique at Carnegie Hall in 1927 was a dismal failure.

While Antheil was in New York for this performance, another premiere of his was occurring in Paris, where he lived at the time. “Piano Concerto No. 2″ was also a failure in Paris, probably because the European audience was expecting another “Ballet Mecanique”. Concerto No. 2 is anything but, a relatively conservative and traditional piano concerto. The piece contains a dissonant interval here and there, some rhythmic irregularities, and drastic changes of mood, but overall I find it hard to justify this piece as an “experiment in classical form” as described by the pianist on this CD, Guy Livingston. But those better trained than I in classical form may feel otherwise.

Antheil, originally from Trenton, NJ, moved back to the States in the early 1930s. He worked for a period of time for a movie studio in Queens, beginning a lifelong career in movie music that would eventually bring him to Hollywood. While in Queens, he wrote the music for George Balanchine’s ballet “Dreams”. The nine part music for “Dreams”, premiered in 1935, seems a little more relaxed and sure of itself than the earlier Concerto. There are still drastic changes in mood from piece to piece, but I think you can hear the influence of being back in America. Where the Concerto seemed to try to be something it was not, the nine miniatures in “Dreams” seem to be more of an artistic refection of the composer rather than a forced experiment with traditional forms. The nine short pieces each seem to contain their own sound world in a way that reminds me of Satie’s early piano works, influenced by American rather than French experience. “Acrobat” stands out as a bright point for me in this series.

“Serenade No.2″, written in 1948, is the most recent composition by Antheil on this CD. Written while Antheil was composing for film in Hollywood, this piece is certainly the most mature and polished work on the CD. Gone completely are the last vestiges of the experimental young composer who wrote “Ballet Mecanique”. Like many compositions of its day, to me it seems well constructed, but lacking in something – the piece does not stand out to me. It could easily sound old and fuddy-duddy compared to the new young upstarts of the time. Remember that in this is the same year that John Cage wrote “Sonatas and Interludes” for prepared piano and the “Suite for Toy Piano”.

The recording and performance on this CD are both excellent, and Guy Livingston deserves praise for championing the works of a composer who is being forgotten today. Two of the pieces on this CD have never been recorded before, and for this reason alone the CD would be valuable to a fan of Antheil’s music. For someone who only knows the “Ballet Mecanique”, it might be good to get to know the other side of George Antheil – less brash, perhaps, less iconoclastic, but more subtle and at times beautiful.

Earle Brown: Times Five; Octet I; December 1952; Novara; Music for Violin, Cello and Piano; Folio (November 1952, December 1952, Four Systems); Music for Cello and Piano; Nine Rare Bits

David Tudor, Michael Daugherty, Earle Brown, others

New World Records 80650-2

I fear for Earle Brown‘s historical legacy. He is no danger of falling out of the music history textbooks (a fate that might well befall his colleague Christian Wolff, most unfortunately), but he owes that staying power almost entirely to a single sheet of paper: the mysterious, widely spaced rectangles of December 1952. Quite aside from its musical merits, December 1952 has served as an iconic image of the Zeitgeist that gave rise to the New York School of composers. It is a stark, simple and shocking example of the opening of new possibilities, and even if Brown was neither the very first nor the most persistent explorer of these notational hinterlands his name will always be attached to them.

More thorough histories of American experimental music will note Brown’s innovations in proportional (“time-space”) notation, open form, and other sorts of structured notational ambiguities. But even if textbooks of the future devote a paragraph to Brown rather than merely the obligatory sentence and illustration of December 1952, they will neglect to evoke the wide-ranging aural imagination at work in the strikingly diverse group of works on this disc.

New World Records has, in either an act of great charity or an extremely optimistic business decision, taken upon itself the task of re-releasing and distributing the catalog of the defunct CRI label, home to a fair amount of historically vital material amid a larger number of forgettable recordings. This album, originally released as CRI CD 851 in 2000, is definitely in the first category. It brings together works from Brown’s early maturity, from 1952 to 1965, in performances either led by Brown himself or entrusted to stalwarts of the repertoire like David Tudor and harpsichordist Antoinette Vischer.

December 1952 is here, of course, in two different versions. The “classic” is David Tudor’s performance on prepared piano, which Brown declared the best of Tudor’s multiple realizations. The separated notes and small clusters are what we expect to hear, and the cloudily noisy timbres yielded by the preparations create an effective sense of three-dimensional sonic space. This is the version to play in the classroom””an expertly assembled and performed example of what we all know December 1952 is supposed to sound like.

Michael Daugherty’s realizations for piano and electronics of December 1952 and two of its companions in the collection entitled Folio (November 1952 and Four Systems) are quite different. Instead of Tudor’s points and noisy grumbles, they involve little linear melodic figures, literal repetitions (particularly in Four Systems), trills, and rhythmic motives, couched within a much wider sonic vocabulary than that deployed by Tudor. It’s a surprising interpretation. Although not obviously wrong, I certainly wonder how Daugherty justifies the sense of linear continuity that takes over at the end of his performance of December 1952, and what he intends with the surface motivic connections he creates with his melodic and rhythmic material. In any case, the results are certainly aurally compelling on their own terms, and the conceptual dissonance itself is a worthwhile experience.

The rest of this recording includes lesser-known pieces, most of which were unfamiliar to me, and some of which were revelations of a breadth and aural imagination of which I do not automatically associate with Brown. Music for Violin, Cello and Piano, written just before the Folio pieces, is utterly different””the apposite term is “Webernesque”, given not only he work’s concision in both overall length and motivic vocabulary and its continually wide registral span but the sense of horizontal line that manages to emerge nonetheless. Octet I, written while Brown was working with Cage on the tape-collage project that also yielded the latter’s Williams Mix, is as frenetic and unstoppable as its more famous cousin. Music for Cello and Piano, from 1954-55, is framed in the proportional notation that Brown developed, and the sensitivity of communal gesture and spontaneous sharing of resonance and energy is expertly captured in this performance by Dorothea von Albrecht and Christine Olbrich. Nine Rare Bits (1965) for one or two harpsichords, commissioned by Antoinette Vischer and performed by her and George Gruntz, is a riotous collection of modules put in order by the performers with a show of energy and force as uncharacteristic of the instrument’s traditional image as Xenakis’s later pieces would be.

The standout pieces here, the ones that show a side of Brown that is hidden from those who have lacked sufficient opportunity to explore much beyond the textbook characterization of his career and his strengths, are the longest: Times Five, from 1963, and Novara, from 1962. Both of these works for chamber ensemble (Times Five also involves four-channel tape) are shockingly limpid, calm, and utterly beautiful in these performances conducted by Brown; the unisons, held string chords and ear-capturing melodic figures outdo even those in the better-known Available Forms pieces. The sound is more Bruno Maderna than Webern or early Feldman, and these two pieces make this archival recording far more valuable than David Tudor’s historically important recording of December 1952, and also make it far more likely to get taken down again and again from the shelf.

Some of these recordings show their age in tape hiss and a mild loss of frequency response, and some have stray live-in-concert noises, but it doesn’t matter. Without Times Five and Novara, this would be a disc worth owning as a reference, a reminder of a participant in the joyous experimentation of 1950s New York often overshadowed by his more often performed colleagues. With these two gorgeous and obscure works, it becomes something to be listened to often, and savored. This record needs to be heard, and I hope that it will serve as a life preserver for Earle Brown’s posthumous reputation. It reminds us that Brown was, to reverse Arnold Schoenberg’s remark about his erstwhile student Cage, “not just an inventor of genius, but a composer.”