Search - Margaret Mills, Feigin, Schonthal :: Meditations & Overtones

Unnecessary Music in Stolid Performances

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 08/09/2010

(1 out of 5 stars)

"Like the previous reviewer I was curious to hear the contents of this disc which I ordered before one was provided with the clips accompanying this Amazon listing. I'd never heard of Margaret Mills, but I'd heard of most of the composers and quite like some of the music written by Amy Beach. I knew I didn't much like the music of Gloria Coates but was willing to take a chance. Well, I shouldn't have. The performances, first off, are stolid, competent but not particularly scintillating. Add to that the rather clangy recorded piano sound and on that score alone this CD was teetering on the edge of unacceptability.



The music of Joel Feigin is, I suppose, competently crafted, but it also strikes me a completely unnecessary. He has little to say and says it in, to me, pointless fashion. The same goes for the music of Ruth Schonthal included here. Fortunately her Sonata Breve only lasts six minutes. The Five Improvisations for Piano by Amy Beach (who was referred to in my student days as Mrs. H.H.A. Beach -- or Mrs. Haha Beach to the class clowns) are interesting in that they were composed very late in her life in 1938. I had not realized she lived that long, considering her really to be a 19th-century composer. They are surprisingly modern sounding. They use tone clusters, tinkly meanderings and really do sound like not very admirable improvisations.



But the worst offender here is the music of Gloria Coates. I had known that I probably wouldn't like it because I've heard enough of her orchestral and chamber music to know that she writes avant garde music that tends towards microtonal caterwauling. One can't do microtones on the piano without special tuning and that isn't done in these pieces. But how about the first movement of her Sonata No. 1: Tones in Overtones? It consists of nothing but C's played up and down the keyboard in many combinations which, however crafty, do not erase the notion that the procedure is idiotic first and last. Little more positive can be said for the succeeding movements -- II. Triads and Clusters; III Scales open and closed; IV Tetrachord -- which seem more like gimmicks than music. One notes that III is played with white gloves because it consists primarily of glissandos with the pedal held down.



Recognizing that I am sounding like a troglodyte, I nonetheless cannot do anything but give this whole mess the worst possible rating here at Amazon. Be warned!



Scott Morrison"

A somewhat pointless collection of pieces good and bad

Leonard Bogat | Philadelphia, PA USA | 06/26/2010

(3 out of 5 stars)

"My first reaction to this disc was, why this group of composers? Then I saw that three of them were women composers. Amy Beach was represented on the CD and I want to hear anything of hers. She is an excellent composer whose name, had she been a man, would be a household word. I started with her Five Improvisations (yes, Op 148!). These pieces are not up there with her great works, but they are well composed and charming. OK.



Next, the Sonata No. 1 by Gloria Coates. A good and interesting piece, satisfyingly pianistic, from another prolific woman composer (15 symphonies, 8 string quartets) who has doubtless written some big, dramatic, and important music. Ingeniously composed and more than charming. Getting better.



Then, from Ruth Schonthal, the one movement Sonata Brevis, essentially a formula piece without thrust or content, an inoffensive paint-by-numbers piece that substitutes different styles for colors. Well constructed, and pointless.



The lone male composer on the album is Joel Feigin who is represented here by two compositions, his 1994 "Four Meditations from Dogen" and his 2008 "Variations on empty space" (aptly named). These works did nothing for me and struck me as devoid of even a touch of genuine, well, anything. And I found myself wondering again, why this group of composers?



I have great enthusiasm for the performance of the music of women composers. They have gotten the short end of the stick, no doubt. But for that very reason, the works should be their best. The Coates work is the one really winning piece of the lot. In it she posed interesting challenges to herself and acquitted herself admirably.



I also believe that the music of our time must be played and recorded. The good stuff is as good as that from any of the last 10 centuries, and it has been pitifully ignored in favor of the 43rd recording of - name a work from column A and an 18th or 19th century composer from column B. But again, because of that the really good new music must receive the attention.



I have not mentioned the playing of Ms. Mills because I don't really have much to say about it. She is a capable pianist. Would a pianist of genius have been able to make more of this music than she. I don't know. I hope so.



So I would say, save the Beach for a collection of her work in which these pieces are the weakest of the bunch, put the Coates on a CD of some really great works by Louise Talma and a few other women whose genius should shame us all, send the other two home."