Alexei Lubimov - Der Bote: Elegies For Piano (2002)

A sublime programme, and one spanning the centuries from baroque to modern, performed by Alexei Lubimov (b. 1944, Moscow).  This recording was made by DRS Radio in Zurich at the end of 2000, and released as an ECM New Series album a year and a half later.

 

Kicking off with a 20-minute stretch that pairs CPE Bach and John Cage, it's clear that this is no ordinary classical solo piano recital.  But you know what, the Fantasie Für Klavier and a nice pacey In A Landscape complement each other just fine, and things just get more interesting from there.  With an overall theme of 'elegies', and an album title of 'the messenger' (taken from the haunting final piece), as a concept piece it plays out well, and just sounds heavenly.  Balancing stock repertoire choices like Liszt, Chopin and Debussy with the kind of more recent composers that have long been Lubimov's interest (Tigran Mansurian, Valentin Silvestrov), he turns in a great set that feels satisfying from beginning to end on every listen.

link

pw: sgtg

Momo Kodama - La Vallée Des Cloches (Ravel, Takemitsu & Messiaen) (2013)

Sticking with ECM and classical today for some incredible 20th century piano music, played by Osaka-born pianist Momo Kodama.  Maurice Ravel's Miroirs suite is rendered in all its tricksy, impressionistic wonder with crystal clarity, with Kodama's rendering of Une barque sur l'ocean (one of my favourite piano pieces of all time, which made me buy this album) capturing the delicacy of every lapping wave.  The other substanital work on the album is Olivier Messiaen's birdsong catalogue La Fauvette Des Jardins, evoking a garden-warbler and several other birds on a midsummer's night, and as a bridge between the two French masters Kodoma plays Rain Tree Sketch by Toru Takemitsu, chosen for its interesting similarities to the other composers.

link

pw: sgtg

Ravel at SGTG:

Alborada Del Gracioso arranged for marimba duo

Takemitsu at SGTG:

Asterism, Requiem, Green, The Dorian Horizon

November Steps

Messiaen at SGTG:

Quatre Études De Rythme
Des Canyons Aux Étoiles
Turangalîla Symphony / Quatour Pour La Fin Du Temps (EMI recordings cond. by Rattle)
Turangalîla Symphony / L'ascension (Naxos recording cond. by Wit)
Et Exspecto Ressurrectionem (Philips recording cond. by Haitink)
Et Exspecto Resurrectionem (Erato recording cond. by Boulez), etc

Éclairs Sur L’Au-Delà...

Bill Evans - Alone (1968)

Entirely solo date from late 1968, most likely released in early 1970, with Bill Evans' piano genius laid bare on a set of five standards.  After a solo track here and there on previous albums, and a pair of records featuring overdubbed pianos, this was his first full-length with no backing at all.  Alone works well in Evans letting himself stretch out, not least on the fourteen-minute Never Let Me Go that took up all of the original second side.  This expanded reissue includes 40 minutes of additional music: two unreleased numbers and alternate takes of the full album, for maximum immersion in Evans Alone.

link

pw: sgtg

Bill Evans at SGTG:

East Coasting
Everybody Digs Bill Evans
The Blues And The Abstract Truth

Sunday At The Village Vanguard
Waltz For Debby
Undercurrent
I Will Say Goodbye

Vassilis Tsabropoulos - Akroasis (2003)

Very lovely solo piano suite from Athens native Vassilis Tsabropoulos, previously featured here in trio format - see link below.  Akroasis is based on five traditional Byzantine hymns, which together with three of Tsabropoulos' own compostions "became a poem of eight pictures".  Enjoy just under 45 minutes of blissful piano poetry.

link

pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG: Achirana

Dustin O'Halloran - Piano Solos (2004)

First solo album by Phoenix-born musician Dustin O'Halloran, who'd go on to form A Winged Victory For The Sullen a few years later with Adam Wiltzie from Stars Of The Lid.  Twelve beautifully composed and rendered solo piano miniatures make for a meditative 40 minutes of music, with perhaps some similarities to Nils Frahm's work in the same field, or even those from the prior generation like George Winston.  That's all there really is to say about this lovely record - just relax and enjoy.

link

pw: sgtg

AWVFTS at SGTG:

s/t debut

Atomos

Live At BBC Proms 2015

That's all, folks! (for now)

Time for a break.  Many, many thanks for all your comments over the past five years!

Back in a few months.  I'll leave you for now with some of the most perfect, timeless piano music ever written, in my favourite rendering by French pianist Pascal Roge, recorded 1983 and released the following year.

 

Happy new year to everyone, and here's hoping your 2021 is better than 2020 (not a high bar to clear, I guess).

Cheers,

AB

link

pw: sgtg

Michael Jones / David Lanz - Solstice (1985)

Merry Christmas, everyone!  Hope you're having a good one, and getting some time to relax and reflect.

Here's a nice mellow half-hour in the company of two pianists associated with the Narada new age label, in a side-each split LP from 1985.  First up is Michael Jones, turning in a lengthy improvisation around Good King Wenceslas, then turning Carol Of The Bells into an extended snowfall of gentle arpeggios.  David Lanz's side takes in the Greensleeves-variant What Child Is This, then closes the record with his Improvisation On A Theme of Pachelbel's Canon.

link

pw: sgtg

Previously posted featuring Michael Jones: Amber

Aaron Parks - Arborescence (2013)

Mentioned this album when recounting the chance meeting of Aaron Parks and Yeahwon Shin that led to Lua Ya, so about time I posted it.  Arborescence was the second appearance on ECM (Lua Ya came out a few months before it) for Parks, born 1983 in Seattle, and his first album of solo piano.  It's an impressionistic, highly evocative set of improvisation-composition pianism, that almost seems to unfold like a forest-reverie concept album.  The album title feeds down into the track titles that start with Asleep In The Forest, Towards Awakening and so on, with later tracks named Squirrels, Branches and River Ways.

Parks' style occasionally bringing Keith Jarrett to mind in the way that some of the initially hesitant sounding tracks unfold, and spin off from jazz, blues and Satie-era classical music.  Arborescence is a gorgeous collection of pieces that are endlessly enjoyable, and mostly mellow and reflective.  The most the temperature gets raised is in the rolling arpeggios of In Pursuit, and in the brief, jittery movements of Squirrels.  Beautiful stuff.

link

pw: sgtg

Roedelius - Piano Piano (1991)

Whether you read that album title as an indication of musical dynamics ('soft, soft'), or just that Hans-Joachim Roedelius' touch on the titular instrument was so good he named it twice, this is a sublime album.  Released in 1991 on the Italian label Materiali Sonori, these nine tracks of solo piano bear all the hallmarks of the master of melancholy melody.  A couple of the longer ones meander a bit, but always in the nicest way possible, along the paths and across the fields of rural Europe that Roedelius' more reflective music conjure up.

On the CD version, Materiali Sonori added three bonus tracks: one of them 15 minutes long, and the other two back down to a compact three minutes.  In contrast to the album proper, there are subtle synth shadings added to these extra pieces.  In the lengthy In der Dämmerung, actually, they're not all that subtle at all to begin with, sounding like a particularly odd counterpoint or out-of-sync overdub at first, but it all starts to make sense after a few minutes.

link

pw: sgtg

Roedelius at SGTG:
Kluster 1970-1971
Cluster & Eno
Jardin Au Fou
Live In Vienna
Curiosum
Lustwandel
Wenn Der Südwind Weht
Offene Türen
Apropos Cluster
Inlandish
Qua
Rufen
Fragen
Tasten

Imagori

Kate Moore - Dances And Canons, performed by Saskia Lankhoorn (2014)

Piano music by British-Australian composer Kate Moore (b. 1979), who studied under Louis Andriessen and now lives in the Netherlands, performed by her friend and collaborator Saskia Lankhoorn (same age, Dutch born & bred).  There's lots to love here for fans of the piano music of Philip Glass, John Adams (especially the second track Stories For Ocean Shells) et al, but Moore's stamp on her work is definitely an individual one.  For these pieces, she variously took inspriation from woven patterns, nature and tectonic movement, and the writings of Sufi philosopher Hazrat Inayat Khan.

 

Khan's words were the direct inspiration for The Body Is An Ear, from an ancient legend about human ensoulment by angel song, and the two pianos are overlaid exquisitely.  Moore also writes for four pianos, in the longest track Canon, where the gentle reverberations of the piano parts made me think of Jordan De La Sierra.  Sensitive Spot calls for the same piano part to be played in multiple layers, creating gorgeous ripples of sound.  Highly recommended, beautifully evocative music.

link

pw: sgtg

Charles Ives - The "Concord" Sonata, performed by John Kirkpatrick (1968)

A sometimes tricksy but exhilarating 40 minutes of early 20th century pianism, courtesy of Charles Ives (1874-1954) and his early champion pianist John Kirkpatrick (1905-1991).  This 1968 LP was Kirkpatrick's second recording of the sonata, having played the premiere recording in 1948 and also the concert premieres in 1938/39.

Ives began work on what would become "Concord" around 1905, and it was eventually self-published in 1920.  The four movements are named for literary figures of the mid-19th century transcendentalist movement based in Concord, Massachusetts: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Bronson and Louisa May Alcott, and Henry David Thoreau.  Ives pushes forward early 20th century American music in bold, impressionistic strides, sneaks in little quotes of Beethoven, and at one point in 'Hawthorne' calls for a plank of wood to be used on the piano for a cluster chord.

Kirkpatrick's recording still sounds rich and powerful, and this CD release adds the bonus of six tracks played by Ives himself.  Three of these recordings of parts of Concord date from 1943 (plus a tiny fragment from 1938), and two are "Emerson transcriptions with interpolated improvisations" that Ives recorded in London as far back as 1933.  These six tracks originally appeared on a 100th Anniversary box set in 1974.  The recording quality is as raw as you'd expect for the era, but it's nonetheless fascinating to hear the composer's touch on his music.

link
pw: sgtg

Michael Harrison - In Flight (1987)

Ignore the slightly corny album cover - this album is sublime.  From the mid 80s, American pianist Michael Harrison pioneered the "harmonic piano", using just intonation.  The second and third tracks here are played in this arrangement, adding a whole new angle on the solo piano genre that had become seriously overcrowded by 1987.  The Swan Has Flown To The Mountain Lake in particular is a gorgeous piece, and the longest on the album.

Reverting to standard intonation elsewhere, Harrison proves himself a great melodic and harmonic player with a nimble, meditative touch.  The opening title track had appeared on a Windham Hill piano sampler in 1985 (which I'm sure I have on cassette somewhere), but rather than commit to the label Harrison stepped sideways to another New Age powerhouse, Fortuna, for this album.  It's well produced, with just enough reverb to work in favour of this beautiful, sometimes trancelike music.

link
pw: sgtg

Philip Glass - Solo Piano (1989)

Been getting majorly reacquainted with this album of sublime, beautifully relaxing piano over the last few weeks, so it's well due a posting.  Just composer and instrument, nothing else.  Half an hour of gradually evolving meditations on Kafka, with some themes from his Thin Blue Line soundtrack.  Thirteen minutes of achingly gorgeous flowing waves originally written as an organ piece for the Dalai Lama's visit to New York City in 1981.  Then seven minutes of gospel-inflected loveliness written in collaboration with Allen Ginsberg (the version with his voice would appear the following year, on Hydrogen Jukebox).  I could listen to this album forever.

link
pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:
Music With Changing Parts
Two Pages, Contrary Motion etc
Music In Twelve Parts
Einstein On The Beach
Dance Nos. 1-5
Dance No. 4 (Christopher Bowers-Broadbent)
How Now, etc (Steffen Schleiermacher)
Glassworks (live 2017)
Symphony No. 3 (live 2020)

George Winston - Piano Solos (1973) (reissued as Ballads And Blues 1972 - The Early Recordings)

Seven years before George Winston became Windham Hill's breakout star, he released his debut album 'Piano Solos' on John Fahey's Takoma label.  Windham Hill reissues, titled 'Ballads And Blues 1972', started from 1981, to make these formative recordings available to the new audiences brought in by Winston's success.

It's a short and sweet, fun little record that packs in all of Winston's early influences on his playing.  The impressionistic, 'New Age' pianism from Autumn onwards is only hinted at here, in a set of bluesy originals, covers (including Fahey's Brenda's Blues) and traditional melodies that cleave more closely to their roots.  Even so, Winston's talents on the piano are clearly fully-formed, and listeners who might not be as receptive to 'New Age' piano music will probably like this better than Winston's later recordings.

Original LP cover

link
pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG: Autumn | December

Liz Story - Unaccountable Effect (1985)

Liz Story's follow-up to her debut Solid Colors (see last week) offered another album's worth of superior Windham Hill solo piano, but with a couple of surprises bookending the album.  The most striking of these was the opening title track, in which Story collaborated with Mark Isham on synth to create a beautifully atmospheric piece.  On the album closer Deeper Reasons, Story collaborates with a percussionist (and also plays some herself) to eerie dramatic effect.

Everything in between these two new-sound tracks is performed by Story alone, but even here there's a definite progression from her debut.  The Bill Evans aficionado of Solid Colors has matured more into her own sound, and perhaps became more of what might be termed a New Age pianist, but still very much on her own terms.  There's no denying Story's considerable talent and lightness of touch on all of these tracks, and I think I'd go as far as saying that this is my favourite Windham Hill piano album that I've heard yet.  Definitely the most satisfying on repeat listens.

link
pw: sgtg

Liz Story - Solid Colors (1982)

Out of the seemingly endless stream of solo piano demo tapes that were being mailed to Windham Hill in the wake of George Winston's initial success, there was one pianist that Will Ackerman was convinced was the real deal.  Born in San Diego in 1956, Liz Story was classically trained and had become set on a career in music following a meeting with her idol Bill Evans after a concert of his.

Story's debut album Solid Colors certainly provided much of the impressionistic accessibility that the Windham Hill audience were looking for - it's been described in retrospect as "the intellectual sister of Winston's December" - but didn't always land with more traditional jazz audiences when "critics, expecting her to tackle Ellington and Monk, panned her performances."

Their loss, to be honest: from this distance, Solid Colors is a great solo piano record, rooted in jazz, that prioritises melody and economy but doesn't dumb down her nimble touch.  Story might not be Keith Jarrett, but she's certainly more versatile than Winston, and breezes through nine originals and a closing cover of Evans' Peace Piece in a great sounding production.  Next time: Story broadens her sound a little with the help of an ambient-jazz legend.

link
pw: sgtg

Daniel Lentz (performed by Arlene Dunlap) - Point Conception (1984)

An epic 36-minute work for nine piano parts played in octaves, overdubbed in a 'cascading echo system', Point Conception was written by Pennsylvania-born composer Daniel Lentz in 1979.  It was named for the headland on the California coast that separates Southern and Central CA, and the layers of piano performed by Lentz's longtime collaborator Arlene Dunlap ably evoke the ebb and flow of the great tides.  The seemingly endless waves of sound are often like a grander version of John Adams' early piano pieces, e.g. Phrygian Gates.  Stirring stuff.

link
pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG: Music For Three Pianos, with Harold Budd & Ruben Garcia

George Winston - December (1982)

Moving to something more appropriately festive for this post and the next couple, here's Montana-born pianist George Winston's third album, which was the followup to his breakthrough record Autumn.  The title of 'December' is a deft move that announces that this won't just be some schlocky record for the holiday season, with a dozen or so Christmas carols rendered on piano - Winston arranged a much more understated and satisfying suite of music than that.

When he does interpret carols, Winston goes for only two obvious ones - Carol Of The Bells, and The Holly And The Ivy.  Elsewhere his choices range from Jesus Rest Your Head, from 19th century Appalachia, to Alfred S. Burt's Some Children See Him, from 1951.  Winston's winterscape is then fleshed out by the rest of the programme, stretching from his own compositions Thanksgiving and Peace that bookend the album, to rearranged bits of classical music including Pachelbel's Canon.  Together it all works beautifully, adding up to the perfect 40-minute oasis of calm amongst the bustle of Christmas preparation.

link
pw: sgtg

Iannis Xenakis - Evryali/Herma & Olivier Messian - Quatre Études De Rythme (Yuji Takahashi, 1976)

Knotty but immensely satisfying piano acrobatics from Japanese musician, conductor and composer Yuji Takahashi (b. 1938).  He'd studied under Iannis Xenakis in the early 60s, so was well placed to tackle Xenakis' two foremost pieces for solo piano that kick off this album.

Evryali (1973) is apparently impossible to play in full, and each interpreter has to decide how much of the piece they are able to take on.  Packed with gamelan influences, "stochastic clouds" and "polyphonic arborescences", it probably takes a PhD to fully understand, but is a blast to just listen to in its typically Xenakian insanity.  This is complemented by Herma (1962), dating from Takahashi's time with Xenakis, who dedicated it to him, and is based on set operations from Boolean algebra... nope, me neither.  Still great.

Olivier Messiaen's Four Rhythmic Studies date from 1949-50, with the 'Island Of Fire' pieces at the bookends inspired by melodies from Papua New Guinea.  In between, Messiaen experiments with numerical organisations of pitch, duration & timbre, and with Gregorian neumes, in a fascinating break from his usual concerns of naturalistic and spiritual wonder.  Takahashi excels again at this beautifully odd music, and the whole album sounds as pristine as you'd expect from a digital recording from 1976.  Yep, Denon had been pioneering PCM recording onto videotape for a full five years at this point.

link
pw: sgtg

Iannis Xenakis at SGTG:
Phlegra, Jalons etc
Oresteïa
Synaphaï
Persephassa
Ata, Jonchaies etc
Pléiades/Psappha
Bohor etc
Kraanerg
Terretektorh/Nomos Gamma
La Légende D'Eer
Persepolis
Olivier Messiaen at SGTG:
Des Canyons Aux Étoiles
Turangalîla Symphony / L'ascension
Et Exspecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum, etc

Joshua Rifkin - Piano Rags By Scott Joplin (1987 compi, rec. 1970-74)

Just some great piano music from 110-120 years ago - let it never be said I don't keep up with the hip and happening trends in modern music.  These recordings were made in the 1970s by pianist & musicologist Joshua Rifkin, and released in three volumes; this CD reissue contains all of Vol. 1 from 1970 (Nonesuch's first million-seller), plus highlights from the others (original releases '72 and '74).  Around this time, The Sting hit cinemas, and that plus a handful of other key ragtime recordings all fed into a fresh revival of an often maligned and misconstrued musical form.

Rifkin's performances of the piano rags by Scott Joplin (1868-1917) were hugely important in their reverential, serious treatment, presenting ragtime as something of equal worth to classical music.  In Joplin's case, it's well deserved - he honed the emerging syncopated piano style of the late 19th century to a fine art, full of harmonic life and great subtleties.  To make sure this wasn't overlooked, Joplin noted on many of his original scores "Do not play fast - It is never right to play ragtime fast", and Rifkin keeps both tempi and dynamics in check (unless the piece genuinely demands otherwise) to let this gorgeous music speak for itself.  I chanced across this CD a few weeks back and it's been in heavy rotation ever since - I'd only heard the evergreen opening pair of tunes before, but there's so much more to Joplin than that, and new joys emerge with every listen.

link
pw: sgtg