Search - Nicolas Flagello, Paul Creston, Tatjana Rankovich :: Creston: Piano Sonata; Six Preludes; Giannini: Piano Sonata; Flagello: Piano Sonata; Two Waltzes / Rankovich

Terrific piano music

10/14/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"These mid-20th Century composers created some melodic, beautiful works, as evidenced here. Tatjana Rankovich interprets with style and passion."

Conservative but highly elaborate, not major works but enjoy

Discophage | France | 08/05/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"The three American composers featured on this disc share a common Italian ancestry - Paul Creston was born Giuseppe Guttoveggio in 1906 -, a traditionalist compositional bent, and even personal ties, as Flagello was a pupil of Giannini.



In view of the fact that he left school at 15 in order to earn a living and was largely self-taught in music and composition, Creston's Sonata from 1936 is an early work. It starts muscularly and busily as a Prokofiev Sonata, but soon settles into a neo-classical (even neo-baroque) and very French elegance. It could have been written by Poulenc, Auric or Sauguet. Debussy (Suite Bergamasque) and Ravel (Sonatine, Valses nobles et sentimentales) also comes to mind. As the notes aptly put it, the music is "a combination of Baroque patterns and textures and Impressionist harmony, suffused with a romantic temperament and organized around the elaborate development of a few basic motifs".



The six preludes from 1945 are meant to exemplify the theory of rhythm that Creston had developed in those years, but despite its theoretical purpose it doesn't sound at all cerebral. Ravel and post-Debussy impressionism again come to mind in the nostalgic and dreamy preludes # 2 (which also evokes Copland's "prairie" style) and 5 (the latter's Romanticism also recalls some Rachmaninoff salon piece), as well as in the rippling arpeggios of # 3. It is Gershwin and ragtime that come to mind in the jagged boogie-woogie syncopations of # 4, and even the first movement of Dutilleux's Sonata in the busy activity and sometimes anger of Prelude 1 & 6.



I hear similarities again with Dutilleux's Sonata in the agitated but dreamy harmonies of the First movement of Giannini's Sonata - a late work (1963), composed three years before the composer's death. Vittorio Giannini, born in Philadelphia in 1903 to a musical family, had received his formal training at an early age in Milan, Italy then at Juilliard. His music is said to show the influence of Italian late-romanticism, but his piano compositions display a German-minded seriousness and care for contrapuntal elaboration. Another link to Creston then is his complex elaboration of characteristic basic motifs, an angry three note call in the first and last movements, a Beethovenian fate theme in the second, a funeral march. I first encountered the music (and name) of Giannini through his relatively early (1947) Variations on a Cantus Firmus and his Prelude and Fughetta from the late 1950s, disc mates to the best interpretation available of Ernest Bloch's magnificent 1935 Piano Sonata by Myron Silberstein (Silberstein plays Franck, Bloch and Giannini). But the two Giannini compositions failed to impress me, although I already noted the Dutilleux similitude in the flurry of notes that launches the Prelude. Despite a long career and a large output, Giannini didn't leave a big mark on the history of music, and his Sonata, although I find it more convincing than the two above-mentioned works, gives a clue as to why. It is superbly crafted and displays a commendable attention at carefully elaborated formal processes, it is enjoyable and even exciting in the motorism of its finale, but it hardly breaks any new ground, technically or musically. There is nothing in it that Prokofiev or the German expressionists (Krenek and the likes) and many since hadn't said years before - though maybe not always as elaborately.



Like Creston, Nicolas Flagello was born in New York City (in 1928) and like Giannini, in a musical family. From early on he became a pupil of Giannini, with whom he studied until the older composer's death. The two waltzes from 1953 are trifles, but his Piano Sonata is heavy, serious stuff. It dates from 1962, one year before Giannini's, and the spiritual and stylistic kinship with the latter's piece is striking. As Giannini's, it is highly elaborate and cogently wrought in its formal procedures (the 1st movement is a complex elaboration in sonata-form over a four-note motif), busy and highly virtuosic in its keyboard activity, grim and turbulent in mood, with two kinetic and toccata-like movements framing a slower one, alternating between a meditative and dreamy atmosphere and a powerful and tormented climax.



These compositions break no new grounds then and are not fundamental additions to the literature, but they are very enjoyable in their own right and style, and at times even impressive. Tatjana Rankovich, born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia and Juilliard-trained, seems entirely up to the works awesome technical demands, with a playing that his both muscular and full of feeling. Truly excellent notes by Walter Simmons, one of the most esteemed authorities on the American 20th century traditionalists, and also producer of the recording. The Creston and Giannini items are world-premiere recordings, by the way.



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