Search - Ian Pace, Michael Finnissy, . :: Michael Finnissy: Music for Piano (Verdi Transcriptions, Piano Concertos 4 + 6, Snowdrift, To & Fro) (2 CDs)

Richly diverse conceptual ways/piano resonance

scarecrow | Chicago, Illinois United States | 04/24/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"the 'Verdi Transcriptions' is a nice concept to explore simultaneously complexity, piano resonance and lyricism,philosophically Finnissy skates a thin line between what we know of modernity and the lyrical tune-monger penchant of creators on the Queen's Plot, those music creators sequestered there to cultivate melodic discourse,(as Skempton, White ) things only the voice can know. . . lines, arrays from social discourse, in fact those composers who refuse this philsophical aesthetic tend to hone their wares elsewhere for periods of times living in exile, as Benjamin and Ferneyhough. The aesthetic strategy herein is where the 'Verdi Trascriptions' take a fragment(incomplete) from a known or obscure aria and proceed simply amoeba-like building itself around the intervallic lines,gestures, opaque places,with wonderful threadbare counterpoint, and timbral colour,all deposits its results within the appraisal of the actual aria; its content-effect is somewhat arbitrary to the listener,for Verdi arias can be quite vacuous,functional, and provincial without mystery;which is why Finnissy I suspect chose this pathway;at other times the arias can be quite nostalgic for a time lost,Finnissy keeps this self-evident romanticism at a distance, wanting to explore its content and line while preserving his own pianistic repertoire . . . this process does guide the piano's discourse and other times, you barely can locate where it is,(the aria), the aria functions as a subdued, seduced icon, a foreign particle and can be like a post-modern fragment of content now lost, now simply floating in the water,(flotsam) from a disparaged sunken (HMS) vessel,like an Eco novel where it finds itself in culture of another time.

Similarly the concept of the "concerto" is here transmogrified into the constitution of the solo piano. Finnissy is always searching for different contexts to project his work, and the materials of his overly prolific lifeworlds; the virtuosity however boggles the human spirit, impacted,dense, and penumbral. . . redacted lines scouring the entire registral placements of the piano, the "white noise" effect/affect is portrayed at times with impenetrable passages, in moments. . . Finnissy remains a lyrical composer, (post-electronic tonality is a useful phrase), appreciating the complex resonance of the modern piano, yet searching for his own voice within that context.

"Snowdrift" is one of my favorite pieces, it recalls struggle; trudging through winter's solice-tices,but also nature's power of opaque painful abstract coldnesses, of ice breaking/kracking as when one steps in the snow and ice for the first time, the deep piano basso registers are explored to give it firm ground, to take flights where the wistful winds embark to develop the piece forever more, its nice compact shapes also attests to its beauty. Ian Pace here has been the closest to Finnissy's piano repertoire,and plays very well at times."