Search - Stefan Wolpe, Geoffrey Douglas Madge :: Stefan Wolpe: Piano Music - Geoffrey Douglas Madge

Inconsistent,and works more as masterfull stepping stones

04/06/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"For my money the only good pieces here are the "Passacaglia" and "Battle Piece". In the "Passacgalia" Wolpe's aesthetic strategy was to merely create an incessant unfolding of various intervals collected in each self-contain section or for each comment on the main passacgalia idea. The overwhelming power comes through slowly in an accumulative like argument. As a performer you really need to have a global vision of this unfolding otherwise you will dilute the on-going forward moving momentum. You need to set yourself almost like a slow lugubrious locomotive pulling and puffing itself out of the station. Madge doesn't quite get it, and I found some expressive holes here where the momentum became dissapated. The work has a gruff, unrelenting roaring power, and if you loose this gestural quality you never get it back. I am prejudiced in hearing the early David Tudor recording from the late Fifties. Tudor created a seamless one-dimensional gesture without ever allowing the piece to slow or dilute its impassioned momentum. The "Battle Piece" as well is a work that should literally make you shake. John Cage said this at an early performance of it in New York. Here Madge gets the idea more comprehensively. Wolpe's creativity was inconsistent. He began profoundly,but then saw his work as an odyssey creating sketch-like works."