Search - Christopher [Composer] Berg, Chester Biscardi, Aaron Copland :: Music By My Friends

A Garden of Delights

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 11/08/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Bennett Lerner is an American pianist known primarily for his performances of contemporary American music. He has made at least two previous recordings of it on the Etcetera label as well as a recording of 'Exposition - Paris 1937,' a delicious collection of pieces written to celebrate that event by French composers like Auric, Ibert, Milhaud, Poulenc, Honegger, Schmitt, Sauguet and others (including Martinu, A. Tcherepnin, Mompou, E. Halffter and Tansman). Here we have performances of 'Music By My Friends,' as the 2CD set is titled. And it contains some wonderful stuff. The composers represented -- in a total of 24 pieces -- are Aaron Copland, Christopher Berg, Chester Biscardi, Robert Helps, Donald Ritchie, Tison Street and Roger Zahab. It's hard for me to pick out favorites; I keep changing my mind (but I finally picked one -- read on!). With the exception of Chester Biscardi's 'Mestiere' and 'Incitation to Desire,' all of this music is new to me, even the Copland pieces (one of them, 'Midday Thoughts,' transcribed by Lerner from an unfinished concerted work from 1944 and another, 'Jazzy,' from a piece of Copland juvenilia). These Copland pieces are unmistakably in his voice and frankly I think they represent a very nice addition to the not-too-large total of his solo piano works. I could easily see either of them becoming encore pieces.



Pianist-composer Robert Helps is the elder statesmen among these composers (with the exception, of course, of Copland) and he was, like his pupil Lerner, an indefatigable proponent of newly written American piano music. His 'Hommage à Fauré,' one of three homages he wrote to composers he adored (Fauré, Ravel, Rachmaninoff), is a set of variations on a lovely original melody with a more than passing resemblance to one of Fauré's nocturnes. Simply gorgeous, this piece, played with a singing legato by Lerner. Helps's three piece suite, 'Recollections,' one of the longest works here at 13 minutes, is in a slightly more astringent style but also has singing melodies, spare harmonies, a kind of gentle ebullience.



Christopher Berg (b. 1949), whose tonal style is neoromantic, polytonal, classically lucid, is represented by five pieces, the longest of which, 'Ossessione,' does, at the same time the material does not reappear along the way, have obsessive ruminations, for a time, with each of the bits and pieces of musical material that pop up, some of them in wildly varying styles (one hears ragtime, Satiesque reticence, triadic exuberance, even Muzak). Berg describes it as being like walking down a long hall and overhearing, for a moment, snatches of conversations from open doorways; its original title was 'Many Rooms.' I love 'Manic Episode,' a funny and evocative piece that seems to recall all those études pianists work on -- Chopin, Liszt, Czerny, Debussy. And also 'Tango Meditation,' a slow, obsessive rumination on the tango rhythm. And I mustn't forget 'Montparnasse! Bienvenue!,' that out-Milhauds Milhaud in its cheekiness. It's a piano duet and the composer plays the secondo part.



Chester Biscardi (b. 1948) is represented by two of his better-known pieces, 'Incitation to Desire,' (another tango whose title is taken from the old Grove's definition of the tango as music which is 'an incitation to desire') and 'Mestiere,' a piece that is in a brittle language that still somehow evokes melancholy and desire. I do prefer its performance on CRI by Robert Weirich, its dedicatee, for its greater incisiveness although its recorded sound is less immediate than Lerner's. The other Biscardi piece is another piano duet, the eight-movement, nine-minute suite, 'Nel giardinetto della villa,' in which Biscardi takes the primo part. It did not, I must admit, leave much of an impression on me for some reason.



Rober Zahab (b. 1957) is represented by 'The Earth's Jig,' which is indeed in jig-time and at one point has three different jig rhythms going at once. One keeps expecting Bachian quotations but as far as I can tell there are none. But one does hear, strangely, a little Machaut (who always wrote in triple time, but never, of course, a jig!). And by the two-section 'Silence Orchids,' whose craft I can admire but whose complexity has somehow not made much sense for me (yet?).



Donald Ritchie's 'The Room,' is an eight-movement, ten-minute suite of character pieces with titles like 'The Bed,' 'The Water Basin,' 'The Ceiling,' and so on. The style is extremely simple, perhaps like Satie or Mompou, or better, like that of Virgil Thomson. I was both charmed and occasionally irritated by it (as I often am by Thomson's music). There is a kind of sophisticated foolery involved which I can sometimes respond to, but often am simply put off by. This time I was mostly attracted to it; still it's not a work I'm likely to want to memorize. You'll probably know from my description (and your knowledge of the composers mentioned) how you might react to it.



Finally, we have 'Poem (If by Chance),' a 10-minute piece that is my favorite here. It came about in an unusual way. The first four notes of the piece were chosen by chance: twelve little bits of paper, each with a musical note written on it, were tossed in the air and the four that came closest to a chair leg were chosen. They are C A C# F#. Sounds unpromising, no? Well, amazingly and wonderfully, Tison has fashioned a Mahleresque work of late-Romantic sensibility that has wormed its way into my mind's ear and won't let go. I find myself humming bits of it at the oddest times. I've liked some of Street's other works (e.g., Adagio for Oboe and Strings) but this one really got through to me.



The bottom line: This is a valuable collection of modern American piano music played very nicely by one of its most prominent proponents, Bennett Lerner.



TT= CD 1: 47:39, CD 2: 52:18



Scott Morrison"