Piano Potpourri No. 9 (CD Mini-reviews)

by Karl Nehring

The Future Is Female: Vol. 2, The Dance. Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre (1665-1729): Suite No. 1 in D minor: 1, IV, V, VIII, VI (from Les Pièces de Clavecin) [1687]; Clara Schumann (1819-1896): Variations, Op. 20 [1853]; Germaine Tailleferre (1892-1983): Partita [1957]; Zenobia Powell Perry (1908-2004): Rhapsody [1960]; Madeleine Dring (1923-1977): Colour Suite [1963]; Betsy Jolas (b. 1926): Tango Si [1984]; Elena Kats-Chernin (b. 1957): Peggy’s Rag [1996]; Meredith Monk (b. 1942): St. Petersburg Waltz [1997]; Gabriela Ortiz (b. 1964) Preludio y Estudio 3 [2011]; Theresa Wong (b. 1976): She Dances Naked Under Palm Trees [2019]. Sarah Cahill, piano. First Hand Records FHR 132

This is not just another piano recital recording, for Sarah Cahill is not just another pianist. Among other things, she is also a musical explorer, communicator, and advocate. Her radio show, Revolutions Per Minute, can be heard every Sunday evening from 6 to 8 pm in San Francisco. The program focuses on the relationships between classical music and new music, encompassing interviews with musicians and composers, historical performances, and recordings outside the mainstream. She is on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory and is a regular pre-concert speaker with the San Francisco Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In 2018, she started working on her project, The Future is Female, which now encompasses more than 70 compositions. 

 “For decades I had been working with many living American composers,” Cahill explains, “including Pauline Oliveros, Tania León, Eve Beglarian, Mary D. Watkins, Julia Wolfe, Ursula Mamlok, Meredith Monk, Annea Lockwood, and many more, but felt an urgent need to explore neglected composers from the past, and from around the globe. Like most pianists, I grew up with the classical canon, which has always excluded women composers as well as composers of color. It is still standard practice to perform recitals consisting entirely of music written by men. The Future is Female, then, aims to be a corrective towards rebalancing the repertoire. It does not attempt to be exhaustive, in any way, and the three albums in this series represent only a small fraction of the music by women which is waiting to be performed and heard. At some point I would love to record Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre’s complete Suite in D minor and Madeleine Dring’s complete Colour Suite, but my main objective in this project is to be inclusive rather than exhaustive.”

 

What we have here is the second volume in the series (Vol. 1: In Nature was released in March, 2022), and as you can see from the track listing above, Cahill presents the works of 10 composers in chronological order of their composition, spanning the years from 1687 all the way up to 2019. Somehow it seems that you can sense that the earliest selections, five movements from Jacquet de la Guerre’s Suite No. 1 in D from her Les Pièces de Clavecin was indeed written for an instrument different from our modern piano; it just has that feeling of music meant to be played on the clavichord or harpsichord – not that it sounds wrong on the piano, just that the style of the music gives away that it was written for such an instrument – which of course it originally was. In any event, it’s a danceable delight. As we come next upon the music of Clara Schumann, the more stately, formal style of dance is served well by the full, rich sound of the modern piano (Steinway Model D) captured so well by engineer Matt Carr. 

 

And so the program continues with diverse forms of dance such as the “deconstructed” tango of Tango Si by Betsy Jolas or the gently swinging Peggy’s Rag by Elena Kats-Chernin. The stylistic range of the program that Cahill has assembled makes for an interesting program, and the dance theme, even though not all of the pieces sound like the kind of music that is going to make you just want to just get right up and dance, is enough to keep things lively and interesting. The most recent compositions, those by Gabriela Ortiz (Preludio y Estudio) and Theresa Wong (She Dances Naked Under Palm Trees) give Cahill particular opportunity to fly her fingers nimbly over the keyboard and emphasize some expressive dynamic contrasts. In addition to her playing, Cahill also supplies the liner notes, which give biographical information about all of the composers. The Future is Female, Vol. 3 is scheduled for release later in 2023. 

 

Federico Mompou: Música callada (“Silent Music”): Book One [1959]; Book Two [1962]; Book Three [1962]; Book Four [1967]. Stephen Hough, piano. Hyperion CDA68362

 

In his fascinating collection of essays titled Rough Ideas (reviewed here), the British pianist Sir Stephen Hough wrote of the Spanish composer Federico Mompou (1893-1967): “The music of Federico Mompou is the music of evaporation. The printed page seems to have faded, as if the bar lines, time signatures, key signatures, and even the notes themselves have disappeared over a timeless number of years. There is no development of material, little counterpoint, no drama nor climaxes to speak of; and this simplicity of expression – elusive, evasive and shy – is strangely disarming. There is nowhere for the sophisticate to hide with Mompou. We are in a glasshouse, and the resulting transparency is unnerving, for it creates a reflection in which our face and soul can be seen.” Hough also observed that of his musical education, “I knew Mompou before I knew Mozart,” which perhaps give him something of a different perspective on the composer’s output.

Mompou declared that Música callada was meant as a spiritual piece with an aim “to reach the profound depths of our soul and the hidden domains of the vital force of our spirits. This music is silent as if heard from within.” The music seems to exist somewhere behind the notes, drifting in and out of focus, or as Hough puts it, it “evaporates.” That does not mean that there are actual silences; no, it is not there are no notes, but rather there are times when the notes linger but the music seems to disappear. There are wisps of melody, but they seem to come and go as though they were scattered about hither and yon by the breeze. Hough has a tender touch at the keyboard, at times lingering, but then at other times snapping things back into focus with some sharply struck notes – those too, though, destined soon to evaporate.

Another way that I might try to explain this music would be to ask you to imagine keyboard music something like that of Debussy – dreamy, impressionistic, soft-edged; however, in this keyboard music by Mompou, there is much less of the lushness of Debussy’s music. Many of the notes have been subtracted, so that the music that remains is more subtle, more spiritual, more transparent. My guess is that some listeners will find the lack of hummable melodies a minus, while, others will find themselves entranced by the unique musical atmosphere evoked by Mompou’s writing and Hough’s performance, which has been captured in full, rich sound by the Hyperion engineering team. The customary top-quality liner notes and cover art that we have come to expect from Hyperion are the frosting on the cake.

 

Bordeaux Concert. Keith Jarrett, piano. ECM 2740 B0036120-02 

 

The American pianist Keith Jarrett (b. 1945) is most widely known as a jazz pianist, but that is not the extent of his recorded legacy. On the jazz side, some of his notable recordings include Forest Flower wlth Charles Lloyd; his American Quartet albums with Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden, and Paul Motian; his European Quartet albums with Jan Garbarek, Palle Danielsson, and Jon Christensen; his Standards Trio albums with Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette; and his numerous solo piano albums, including one of the most famous solo piano albums of all time, his Köln Concert. On the classical side, he has recorded music by Bach, Bartok, Mozart, Harrison, Hovhaness, Pärt, Shostakovich, and others. it is an incredible recorded legacy. Surprisingly enough, however, although he was nominated a dozen times, he has never received a Grammy (although Köln Concert was named a Grammy Hall of Fame recording in 2011). Tragically enough, in 2018 he suffered the first of several strokes that have left him unable to play the piano. As a longtime Keith Jarrett fan, that leaves me heartbroken. Thank goodness we have so many recordings to enjoy the beauty he has created throughout his remarkable career.

Bordeaux Concert documents a solo performance, the last that Keith Jarrett would give in France, at the Auditorium de l'Opéra National de Bordeaux on July 6, 2016. For this concert, the entire program was improvised – no segue into any familiar melodies, even at the end as an encore, as Jarrett would sometimes do at his concerts. Given the worldwide popularity of Köln Concert for well more than four decades, there may be readers whose familiarity with that recording might lead them to expect a similar style of music from Jarrett this time around. However, it would not take long for them to realize that this concert is not going to be the same gospel= and blues-tinged mix. From the almost random-sounding bunch of notes that opens his performance, Jarrett’s improvisatory inspirations in Bordeaux lead him down largely atonal paths. That is not to say that the resulting music is harshly dissonant or otherwise harshly voiced; there are, even within some of the more abstract sounding movements (the performance is divided into 13 Parts, of which Part I is the longest at 12:45, while Part X is the shortest at 2:54), there are often passages in which Jarrett’s lyrical impulses can be discerned. Part IV is simply tender and gorgeous throughout. Longtime Jarrett fans will know that he must have been particularly inspired during this part of the concert because of the groans picked up by the microphones – a Jarrett trademark. Some listeners hate it, some don’t mind, much as is the case with recordings by another keyboard legend, the late Glenn Gould.

 

The sound of Jarrett’s piano is captured quite closely by the microphones, so you hear plenty of detail, a few little warts and all (Jarrett’s occasional moans, some occasional creaks and bumps, some strings in the piano that occasionally just don’t sound quite right when struck hard). You can put recording on, close your eyes, and imagine you are hovering right above the keyboard as Keith Jarrett somehow manages to find all of these notes in his mind and fingers and use the piano to send wave after wave of energy into the auditorium on that night in France as once again you find yourself taking a moment to pause and reflect upon the miracle of high-fidelity sound reproduction and the magic of musical imagination.