Search - James Dillon, Noriko Kawai :: James Dillon: The Book of Elements, Vols. 1-5

Earthy primoridal mixtures of miniature forms

scarecrow | Chicago, Illinois United States | 10/18/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"James Dillon has a wonderful earthy sense of timbre, you would think that would be the norm with serious composition, but no!, there are entire continents of composers hung-up on styles, and accessible musical languages, popularity, tribal politics, minimalisms or worse music attached dependent on the visual image for its existence.



The fact remains however that all this plurality of expression, Do we still refer to it as post-modernity or not!, has render an incredible wealth of repertoire. And the piano solo genre, of large scale works has been far from neglected. You need search no further than the piano oeuvre of Michael Finnissy, or John Cage, Morton Feldman, Clarence Barlow, or George Flynn for seminal piano works.



Here Dillon seeks to arrange grouping of smaller durational frames situated into "Books", and with this import of creative agenda the results can never be fascinating from piece to piece. I actually found those works, the shortest ones, of a mere 56 seconds to be the most compelling as the "Book 1" here attests to. Dillon has a marvelous sense of timbre, rather earthy, treating the piano as a new unadulterated found source, like discovering the mysteries of nature for the first time, some taxonomic strain or phyla that the fossil records neglected to represent.

He also utilizes "dronish" like timbres,in a number of the works within the "Books" (for want of a better description), that to my ears suggested the folkish, the Folk has been a frequent icon in his music,his native Scotland. But there is nothing obvious about it, there are no known folk tunes emerging from the texture of the music in obvious setting of them.I think Dillon believes these primordial experiences remain with us regardless of what obvious forms it may take. Dillon, a post-modernist keeps a distance to his materials. And all the better for the listener. The piano timbre is treated as one un-unified timbre at times. He frequently stops in some of the registers with obvious inclusions here to summon a rhythm for example that forever reveals its sides to us, single tones become the focus here.

He also visits the 20th century piano vocabulary as the extremes of pointillistic virtuosic display, the fast quicksilver visitation to all registers seemingly simultaneously. This is always exciting to ponder regardless if one has experienced this countless times before in other pieces, from Cage, to Finnissy,Ferneyhough to Xenakis.



The various "Books " are not intended to be played in entirety so there is no pretension here of a long large scale agenda, of a durational frame that accretes or embellishes the content at work. Within that perspective these various "Books" work quite well. So we listen to one at a time, erasing our memory for the next. The pianist here Ms. Kawai is a wonderful committed player to these modernist expressions. I tended to think however that she restrained herself at times, scaling back the gesture.The music never reached a point of loss of control, which can create another dimension within the music, regardless of the composer's intentions. This restrained-ness works quite well then in the more reflective,un-ponderous,un-arrogant moments, where traditional beauty is summoned to represent the discourse."