When
Rzewski Plays Rzewski first came out early this decade, I was interested in getting it, but for some reason I never quite got around to it until now. In some ways I can’t say that the wait was such a bad thing. Sure, Frederic Rzewski keeps alive the whole pianist-composer thing, but that really works only if the pianist’s compositions are really compelling. Other pianist-composers of the recorded age have apparently recorded relatively little of their own works. (Horowitz- and Volodos-like transcriptions not included.) Kempff, Casadesus, Schnabel – to name just three – all focused their recording efforts on more standard fare. Perhaps for good reason. (The little I’ve heard from the latter two hint strongly at them being better pianists than composers.) Rzewski, though, was afforded the luxury of recording seven discs worth of music by Nonesuch. Was such a luxury warranted?
The first disc seems to indicate it was. The disc is given over to music inspired by North American folk music, and here Rzewski’s obvious penchant for improvisation, or composition closely mimicking improvisation, really pays off. The
North American Ballads sound like folk-music that has gone through an intellectual’s mental meat grinder and come out quite well. Whether playing with heavy, droning ostinato, or dark, hardened boogie-woogie, or a throbbing, brittle rhythmic sense, the music jumps from the speakers.
The Housewife's Lament , the disc’s closing work, has moments of beauty, though it more or less carries on in the same style as before. The set starts off strongly.
The second disc is nearly as good. It opens with
Mayn Yingele, a set of variations that sounds rather like Beethoven-meets-Schoenberg. Gnarly and knotty much of the time, Rzewski still manages to leave room for some passages of outright beauty. The music also seems to wander almost aimlessly at times, and it certainly seems as though at least some of the music is truly improvised. Based on Rzewski’s own ideas, the long cadenza certainly seems made up on the spot. The work ends with an industrial strength trill variation. It’s good, and worth several listens. The next work,
A Life, is a work of around 4’33” that was written as a memorial to, not surprisingly, John Cage. Knotty, again, and chaotic, it is a fitting tribute. The disc ends with
Fouges, a collection of 25 Schoenbergian miniatures, with all that implies. Those wanting endless streams of lovely melody need not listen. More adventurous souls will find to more to enjoy. Alas, this is where something that pops up over and over through the rest of the set also appears: the use of non-musical means to convey ideas. Here that means Rzewski banging on something with something else. (Hitting the piano with a stick?) That doesn’t get me worked up.
The third disc is devoted to more traditional compositions: a Fantasia and a Sonata. The Fantasia is a modern day take on the old stand-by, and Rzewski’s is heavy and blocky and thick and spiky. Again, it sounds improvised at times, and it makes for a stimulating listen, if not a very relaxing listen. The Sonata is even harder going. Truth to tell, I find it too long. The opening movement is over 25’ in length, and while one can enjoy the alternating harsh, pounded out notes and the rounded chords and the slower music with snatches of fun and melody, it just doesn’t seem to end. The second and third movements are shorter, but are still long, and how much a variations on
Taps can one take? The concluding Agitato is yet another set of variations, here 27 of ‘em, and again, how much is enough?
The next two discs are taken up by the first parts of an on-going composition called
The Road. And here’s where my patience wore thin. The piece opens with the recorded sound of the pianist walking to the piano, and it concludes with him walking away. In between, one hears long stretches of hard, dissonant, clangorous music interspersed with somber, barren slower passages, as well as some more lovely passages, and everything in between. But one also has to sit through humming and banging and scraping and thumping and moaning and other non-musical, or rather, non-pianistic sounds. The recitation of the last part of Gogol’s
The Nose is an interesting conceit (I love that work), but in delivery it just doesn’t float my boat. I’m all for adventurous art, but there comes a point where it just ain’t working.
The Road has a lot of these points. Which is a pity, because some of the music is truly excellent and compelling.
The sixth disc contains Rzewski’s take on his
36 variations on “The People United Will Never Be Defeated!” , based on a song by Sergio Ortega. In some ways this is the modern equivalent of the great Diabelli Variations by LvB himself. The song, while nice, isn’t quite up to what follows, as Rzewski unleashes a torrent of emotions and pianistic techniques. The variations vary widely, from lyrical to introspective to depressed to fiercely defiant, with the most heated music delivered with a most robust cutting intensity. The two cadenzas do seem improvised on the spot and sound very much informed by his mood while playing. The final restatement of the theme has an intensity and vitality that one may not have expected upon first hearing it. Rzewski interjects some whistling here and there, and while I could have done without it, the work and the performance are still quite fine.
The set closes with the comparatively brief
De Profundis, which includes lengthy spoken parts, with the text provided by Oscar Wilde in the form of a long letter he composed while in prison. Again, random noises pop up all over, and again I just couldn’t derive much pleasure from them. But when only the piano or the piano and text are mixed together, there are some fine things. Wilde’s text, while a little incoherent at times as presented in the snippets here, have not a little power, and Rzewski’s music seems quite in tune with the spirit of the text. Alas, when a bicycle horn is added to the mix, the demented Marx Brothers effect ruins the music. Strip out the non-musical extras, and one would have a more compelling work.
What to make of this set? The purely musical aspects are often, though not always, quite compelling. Some works are too long, some too intense for extended listening sessions. (I don’t think I could ever finish this set in less than two-three weeks.) And Rzewski’s playing is quite good; he seems to have the inside scoop on the music, though he’d no doubt be the first to admit that there’s no “right” way to play his music. But the non-musical aspects of the set bother and annoy and detract from the overall achievement, at least for me. I simply don’t want to list to grunts and scraping sounds. This doesn’t get added to the frequently played list.
Sound is dry and close but excellent.
