Which is a more important consideration: musical style or musical substance? Can you stand the relentlessly eclectic, if all of its disparate elements are treated with equal care? Listening to composer/pianist Andrew Violette's gargantuan Seventh Piano Sonata raises these issues.
A sprawling work, nearly three hours long, it recalls (in scope if not in formal design) such mammoth pieces as Beethoven's Diabelli variations, Messiaen's Vingt Regards, and, most especially, Jean Barraque's imposing piano sonata.
The liner notes, by Violette and some of his musicologist colleagues, claim that this work "is minimalist in terms of structure but lives in a sound world that can be characterized as neo-romantic." However, the stylistic touchstones are far more varied than that; there are snatches of everything from Rachmaninov to Scriabin to Glass to Berlioz to Cowell to Stravinsky to ... well, you get the general idea. Violette is versatile and omnivorous, and like all good poly-stylistic composers (Schnittke, Berio, John Wolf Brennan), he is never overwhelmed by the materials that he appropriates. As Stravinsky was known to say, "A good composer never borrows —- he steals," meaning that the composer must make other music his own through the force of his compositional personality and aesthetic.
Witness the work's second movement -- a sprightly, pandiatonic, neoclassical dance worthy of old Igor himself. This contrasts nicely with the first and third movements, glacially paced Adagios that wring all of the juice out of deliciously dissonant, but quasi-tonal, chorales.
My favorite piece is the twenty-minute Chaconne, a substantial work in its own right, which finds Violette at his most fleet-fingered and technically impressive. Portions of it are quite in league with the minimal and post-minimal music of such composers as Glass and Adams; you may even detect a dash of Michael Torke.
After such an impressive and exhausting tour de force as the Seventh Sonata, disc three's First Sonata might seem like an afterthought. However, this is an attractive piece as well, and it's a nice bonus to hear a more concise and edited Violette work.
Make sure to take a powder room break and pour yourself a beverage before you load the changer and dim the lights; you are in for a long, but exciting and rewarding, musical adventure.
Sunday, August 5, 2007
Piano Sonatas 1 and 7-Review
-- Christian Carey
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After many years' hiatus, I received a phone call from Andrew. He said he would send me some of his CD's. So it was, that upon returning home from a week out of town, I found that his CD's had arrived. I felt a surge of anticipation akin to how I would feel on contemplating the sampling of a box of the finest French chocolates or perhaps an order of several select and distinctive Estate teas, in their air-tight pouches; both familiar territories for me, each requiring a level of personal engagement involving the senses to the edge of the ineffable. Vividly recalling my reactions to Andrew's piano recital in Carnegie Recital Hall, so many years ago that it seems almost like another lifetime away, I knew that with these CD's, I was going to be embarking on a musical journey that would acquaint my senses with vast and exotic regions that, to be fully appreciated, would require considerable deliberate attention.
My plan was simple; there were SEVEN piano sonatas, the last being among the longest I know of (and to date I have only managed THREE of my own and by comparison, their musical landscape is about as commonplace as a walk through suburbia, and compared with Andrew's, none of them lasts more than twenty minutes); in order to fully appreciate them, I would have to experience them one at a time; I would begin with Sonata 1.
The acquaintance process would involve listening to this piece many many times. Each time I was going to determine how long it would take for me to recognize a phrase, a passage, anticipate the music as well as register my particular reactions to it.
The immediate impression was not unfamiliar; Andrew was serious, not just about composition, but about pianism; he was playing his own music as if it were by someone else, with a combination of precision and passion in every phrase, practically every note. I had no doubt that this "playing with authority" whether one plays soft or loud, sharp or smooth, or on any number of pianistic continuums, was surely going to be a hallmark of everything I would be hearing from Andrew.
After listening to this piece many times, I read the liner notes by Bruce Posner. The usual information one gets was there; how the piece was constructed, etc. But what was this music about, what was it saying, and what was it saying to me as I was listening to it?
It is commonplace when describing music to say things such as that certain phrases remind one of someone else's style, and these sort of leapt out at me through the piece; Bussoni, Messiaen, Subotnick, any number of other composers that used Serialism. But I have come to believe that these are merely the inevitable result of there being "nothing new under the sun" and that unless my senses were growing tired, jaded, far too used to the dulling down process, which includes intellectualizing everything in life to the point that nothing ever becomes too emotionally disturbing, that I was going to need to reach farther, behind what seemed the merely obvious. For after all, for whatever it's worth, whether a composer chooses to use Serialism or something else, the choice has been made; "I have selected this and will write it down" and in the process create a sound painting that can be reproduced to project a select set of sounds over a projected interval of time. I would be trying out this sonata against my work, my daily routine, my idleness; my being at home and hearing it play as an accompaniment to my life.
It was not the case that this Sonata 1 sounded like everything else that fits a sort of jargonized, commonplace rejoinder to much serious 20th Century music; atonal, Serialist, etc. The piece was far too distinct in so many ways for that. It did not just sound like everything else.
"Andrew Violette, a composer and pianist, has assembled a large portfolio of works since the early 1970's, when he was a student of Elliott Carter and Roger Sessions at the Juilliard School," said the New York Times.
Elliott Carter: Another vivid recollection from the past was a concert at Merkin Hall of 20th Century music featuring some works of Elliott Carter. The musicians played the music with "authority"; they meant it, every note and moreover, every phrase could just as well have been by a "romantic" or "classical" composer; the intension was just as real, just as certain, which is what made the recital so astounding. The result was incredible profundity. One might attach whatever one liked of the modern experience in its many different textures involving our relationships with nature, the weather, various technologies, historical events, each other as people, ourselves with ourselves.
And yes, this Sonata 1 had similar associations for me, especially with weather. For instance, the opening theme could be likened to being out in a snowstorm, or is it out in a parade with confetti falling all around? No, for me it is wintry, but not in a negative sense, as some of us -me included- actually welcome the cold when it comes, as we find it invigorating on another level than sunshine and heat. There are all the flecks of snow, raindrops, rivulets of water and little eddies of wind scattering things about, stomping the snow off your boots, slipping, and then in the last movement something like the arrival of Spring, the appearance again of woodpeckers, then near the end, the little phrase that's sort of a flash of Scott Joplin, to me a summer composer, repeated twice, them the perfect ending on a complete tonal consonance.
Oh, come on. This is becoming as hackneyed as liner notes to a romantic composition! There are places in this sonata that could easily be said to convey emotions too, such as annoyance, pain (a phrase in the third movement), surprise, shock, stealth, deliberation, loneliness, morbidity (oh yes, especially the Bussoni-like passage in the second movement).
Or, one step beyond this would be to adopt Igor Stravinsky's view -which I believe he held insincerely- that "music can only express music," in which case Bruce Posner's liner notes seem the best conceivable way to describe the action in this piece. However, I am unwilling to go there completely as I cannot help but connect whatever music I hear to something else that I am inside; even those collections of experience that over time have developed the entity I call myself.
I shall shortly venture forth into Sonata 2, then Sonata 3 and so on. There will come a time when each will form its distinct impression on me, as indeed the various sonatas of Alexander Scriabin did several years back, and I will relegate each to a place where inevitably I shall have occasion to remark to myself or to my friends, "I must hear Violette's First piano sonata, nothing else will do," as the mood will simply stand for nothing else.
Incidentally, I am quite content to suggest that this first piano sonata of Andrew Violette's is in my experience about the most ambitiously intended first attempt of its kind. I thought of Beethoven's first, Chopin's first, Brahms' first, Scriabin's first, Ives' first, etc. I'd certainly put this one up there, for seriously accomplished pianists only, as it is obviously quite difficult and quite frankly there is almost nothing so unnerving or infuriating as hearing a piece played without proper attention or intention especially when the composition is not well known. Here, Andrew has demonstrated how this piece is to be played. I have absolutely no doubt that an aspiring pianist of accomplished technique might very well interpret this piece differently, but they most certainly must begin with the performance standard set here by the composer / pianist himself.
Can I say, Bravo?
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