Modern and Contemporary

Songs of Insurrection by Frederic Rzewski
Thomas Kotcheff
Coviello Contemporary COV92021 (covielloclassics.de/en)

Veteran American composer and virtuoso pianist Frederic Rzewski (b. 1938)It’s still true that most Americans care more about the price of meat than they do about the exploitation of Bolivian miners.” 

Already 45 years ago Rzewski set the bar high in his 1975 The People United Will Never Be Defeated, an hour-long piano tour de force of 36 variations on a Chilean workers’ song. It has received over 15 commercial recordings to date, the first of which garnered a 1979 Grammy nomination. His even more epic Songs of Insurrection (2016) is Rzewski’s eloquent sequel to his 1975 masterwork. Presented here in its first recording by brilliant early-career American pianist Thomas Kotcheff, the composition reaches to the music of the world’s peoples for inspiration. Each of the seven movements is inspired by a song from a different country. 

For example Die Moorsoldaten (The Song of the Deported) was written by prisoners of the Börgermoor concentration camp, Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around is an American civil rights hymn and Oh Bird, Oh Bird, Oh Roller dates from the Korean Peasant Rebellion of Donghak. 

On one level Songs of Insurrection takes us on a global journey through social uprising. On a musical level the work is a sophisticated compendium of multiple piano idioms. They range from 19th-century romanticism, modalism, to pantonality, serialism and haunting experimental sounds coaxed from inside the piano.

Rzewski hailed this performance as “magnificent.” I too was swept away by the emotion in this work brought to life by Kotcheff’s passion and authoritative command of his instrument.

E Pluribus Unum
Liza Stepanova
Navona Records nv6300 (navonarecords.com/catalog/nv6300)

Although COVID is first and foremost a global health issue (and a crisis), it is also a political one. Without a doubt, there has been, and will continue to be, robust artistic responses to the virus, the mounting death toll and the ongoing lockdown. While the dissemination of artistic expressions are suffering at the moment – given furloughed touring and venue closure – the coalescing of political commentary and artistic expression has birthed a renaissance of music of all genres whose practitioners try and make sense of the current state of affairs in sound. 

While 2021 may go down in history as achieving a high-water mark of politically inspired music-making practices, pianist Liza Stepanova was ahead of the curve when she looked somewhat earlier to the turbulent American political landscape of 2017 when then-President Trump’s isolationist immigration policies were demonizing foreigners and breaking cross-border families apart. In response, Stepanova programmed a sprawling and challenging, but always musical, set of solo piano pieces composed by American composers of immigrant backgrounds. In part, her effort here was an attempt to shine a light on the contributions that immigrants make to the fabric of American musical life. But what is achieved is far greater than a political statement. As the album title (E Pluribus Unum – “Out of many, one”) suggests, Stepanova has taken a diverse range of composers with no other connection than a shared immigrant past and created a singularly unified, coherent and beautiful statement that stands up not just politically, but musically and artistically.

American Dream
Amstel (saxophone) Quartet
Amstel Quartet AR018 (amstelquartet.nl)

The Amstel Quartet is based in the Netherlands and describes itself as “the world’s most colourful saxophone quartet.” They have an active concert schedule (currently employing livestreaming) and have released over ten albums of music in many genres including classical, contemporary and popular music. American Dream is their survey of selected American composers who represent different aspects of musical culture which (the quartet writes) include the influence of jazz, working from modernism to post-modernism and employing unique rhythms. 

Paul Creston (1906-1985) is well known to saxophone players for his Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano which is a mainstay of the repertoire. His Suite for Saxophone Quartet, Op.111 was written towards the end of his career and illustrates his craftsmanship in the opening fugue, the rhythmic elements and the Pastorale written, strangely, in 15/12. Michael Torke’s May, June and July combine to demonstrate the “rhythmic dynamism” of his writing. May is sprightly and leaping with lush and melodic interplay; June is more sombre and July returns to a lighter form. John Cage’s Four5 is a series of instructions that can be played by almost any four instruments and includes percussive and tonal parts. The YouTube video the quartet produced playing this piece is well worth enjoying: it is the perfect COVID-era work combining Cage’s structure with the quartet’s own musical proficiency, isolated performances and sense of humour. American Dream is rounded out by Marc Mellits’ Tapas and Christian Lauba’s Mambo. 

The Amstel Quartet plays precisely and warmly and this collection of American saxophone quartet music is thoughtfully assembled.

Personal Demons
Lowell Liebermann
Steinway & Sons STNS 30172 (steinway.com/music-and-artists/label)

Composer-pianist Lowell Liebermann has just released a two-disc testament, expertly curated and impressively executed. It is a witness statement to five decades of life in music – a glimpse into an artistic practice that consistently hits its creative stride, fuelled by flames that still burn bright. The album has been adroitly produced, edited and mastered by Sergei Kvitko of Blue Griffin Recordings (featured in the November 2020 issue of The WholeNote.)  

Three of Liebermann’s own works are included in his debut solo recording as a complement to music by Liszt, Busoni, Schubert and little-known Czech composer, Miloslav Kabeláč. Each composer has galvanized – even haunted – Liebermann throughout his career. Such “demons” are presumably specters of the inspirational sort and Disc One opens with Liebermann’s most popular piano work, Gargoyles, Op.28. He swiftly introduces us to a forthright and individual brand of pianism, one with roughcast textures and crystal-clear melodic lines, obliging our ears toward resonant, robust and irresistible soundscapes. We perceive a virtuosic abandon, underpinned with an urgent, restless vitality. 

Such forthright modes of expression carry into the next tracks: the Eight Preludes, Op.30 by Kabeláč. These pieces are especially significant for Liebermann and he unveils them to us consummately. Finely etched, bearing echoes of Benjamin Britten, these evocative miniatures have absorbed Liebermann for decades and are here bestowed like building blocks: compositional models at which to marvel. The final work on Disc One is Liszt’s stalwart Totentanz, S525, a vivid, dazzling pianistic essay. The music’s economy of means – characteristic of Liszt’s best writing – remains of discernable influence for Liebermann hinting at the American composer-pianist’s own Lisztian lineage.

Disc Two’s Four Apparitions, Op.17 are followed by the extemporaneously tender Variations on a Theme of Hüttenbrenner, D576 by Franz Schubert. This unfamiliar set proves an ideal platform for Liebermann’s lyrical abilities at the keyboard. Next is Busoni’s Fantasia Contrappuntistica, BV256. Likening it to a “Mount Everest that he wanted to climb – a challenge in a way,” Liebermann’s affinity for Busoni is striking, with an audible reverence for the Italian master’s intellect and formalism on full display. 

Finally, the intimately benevolent Nocturne No.10, Op.99 ushers in a denouement. Highly personal for Liebermann, this music hums and swells, waxing poetic like a lucid conversation between lovers, revealing truths of a lifetime. Shades of Samuel Barber and Carl Vine drift in a dusky, sonic bloom as Liebermann’s piano now quietly sings this album to a whispered, nocturnal close. And so, what might the morrow bring, we wonder?