"One work that you'd like fellow GMG members to discover."
Jean-Michel Damase is a French composer born in the 1920s and still around. He was pointed out to me by GMG's own vandermolen. The '50s Piano Sonata is objectively weird: a blend of Bartók, jazz, and (at the ends of the last two movements) a little bit of easy-listening nicety. I kinda liked it, most of the time, while recognizing that it's kind of a bizarre piece. The 1977 Eight Etudes are overtly jazzy, but not as aggressively fake-jazz as Kapustin's stuff. There's a light touch, and they're just plain fun. I'd love to have them in my repertoire if I was playing piano on Saturday nights at a wine bar. The 1991 Sonatine ain't Ravel, and it could have been written in 1921, but it's okay.
Damase's Concertino for Harp and Strings, on the other hand...yikes. Simplistic, amateurish orchestration; basically only one melody repeated ad infinitum over 13 minutes. Bad, bad, bad. Sylvia Kowalczuk is a good performer, though, and the conductor's name is fun.
Next up: recommended by EigenUser, "Ars Moriendi":
Starts out with the same chord repeated over and over, very slowly. At 2:05, I was reaching to turn the piece off in frustration when the cello finally entered doing something else, which caused a rush of happiness just because finally, something happened! Over the rest of the 25 minutes, things do happen with regularity, and some of them are things/harmonies that I like a lot, but not enough to listen twice. The ending came as a relief, honestly. I wish I could pluck out a few excerpts to form a mini-string quartet.
Next up: recommended by Bruce. Surely I've heard this piece before, right? I must have listened in college a couple times?! If so, it's disqualified from this thread. Tsk tsk.
Left: Bang on a Can (45:30); right: Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble (20:43)...slightly different track timings.
Groovy
As many GMGers know, the performers can move from one phrase to the next, or repeat, at their will, and the result is a huge allowance for spontaneity and repetition. Bang on a Can takes 45 minutes and GVSU takes 21, but that doesn't mean Bang on a Can is playing more
slowly - this is a pretty fast, upbeat, high energy piece, and in some places you really appreciate it when the intensity dials back just a little bit. I will say that, by the end, I was ready for the experience to be over.
Putting the GVSU recording on immediately afterwards - 70 minutes of Riley! - was risky, but in different performances this essentially becomes a different piece, and the GVSU scoring is more percussive, more immediate. This is in-your-face, but, like, a nice person getting in your face, not a mean person. Patterns emerge and fade much more quickly, and all in all there's an electrical energy that only seems to intensify. If you only have 20 minutes to spend with a minimalist masterpiece, you sure ain't missing out. In fact I think I prefer it this way... (GVSU's Music for 18 Musicians is terrific too.)
Nominated by North Star:
Abel Decaux's
Clairs de lune. After the frantic hyperactive energy of In C, the slow, soft, impressionistic Decaux is as opposite as you can get. It's also stunningly modern for four miniatures that were done by 1907. They remind me of Schoenberg's little piano pieces, or very late Scriabin, or maybe some of the Debussy etudes.
Speaking of giant contrasts, here comes Rinaldo's pick:
Never heard of Albicastro before at all. But this is sheer baroque bliss. Ahhhh
Tomorrow!
- Britten's cello sonata
- Arnold's Ninth Symphony (going out of order here; I recently first-listened to 1-4)
- Marenzio's "Solo e pensoso"
- Schoeck's "Elegie" (this might be disqualified from the thread too; I may have heard it before)
- Schmitt's Symphonie concertante
- Hovhaness's Symphony No. 50 "Mount St. Helens"
- Machaut's Nostre Dame Mass
