Evgeny Sorkin & Gerard Willems: Beethoven Sonatas for Piano & Violin (& Cocktails)

A   re we as performers always bound to execute Beethoven’s ornamentation as he consciously intended when we believe that there is a more convincing possibility? This is a subject to which a whole conference could be devoted, as it involves aesthetic, philosophical and even moral dilemmas. My own short answer is ‘Yes!’ There are certain works where it is obvious that a convincing manner of execution took decades to discover. It is reasonable to think that we are still today discovering it.”
  — Daniel Herscovitch, Professor of Piano, Univ Sydney Conservatorium of Music.

T he faculty recital given last night by Sydney Conservatorium faculty members Evgeny Sorkin and Gerard Willems was exciting. The program featured the ‘Spring’ Sonata (Op. 24) and the ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata (Op. 47). The conservatory’s ‘Cocktail’ programs—starting at 19:30, with 65- to 80-min of performance and a snap 5-min intermission—are very popular. It is clearly a very effective marketing/programming concept… the recital hall was nearly completely filled up on this cool Fall Monday evening. Attendees seemed mainly to be 30s to 60s business people who work in Sydney’s central business district, who attend these concerts before taking the train home to the suburbs.

Abundant sturm und drang… lots of passion and gravity-defying force… yet tremendous intimacy, with both performers probing emotionally far beyond the notes. Such joy in this ‘Spring’! Really beautiful to see two artists enjoy performing together this much. Thrilling performance, plus 60 seconds of amusing historical/explanatory remarks from Gerard and Evgeny prior to beginning each piece. No ‘museum’, this!

• Gerard Willems website
• Evgeny Sorkin website
• Sydney Conservatorium of Music (Univ Sydney)
• Lockwood L, Kroll M, eds. The Beethoven Violin Sonatas: History, Criticism, Performance. Univ Illinois, 2004.
• Stowell R, ed. Performing Beethoven. Cambridge Univ, 2005
• Rostal M. Beethoven: The Sonatas for Piano and Violin, Thoughts on their Interpretation. Amadeus, 1985.
• Kolodin I. The Interior Beethoven. Knopf, 1975.
• Newman W. The Sonata in the Classic Era. Norton, 1983.
• Katz M. The Complete Collaborator: The Pianist as Partner. Oxford Univ, 2009.
• Accompanists' Guild of NSW
• CollaborativePiano blog (Chris Foley)

Konstantin Lifschitz: Collaborative Poesy of the Goldberg Variations

A  passage of music could have a ‘semantic range’ that is essentially the same as that of any word in a language, only much broader in scope—sharing the same kind of elasticity but of a much greater degree than is typical in language... Choosing whether the French overture [Var. XVI] in Bach’s Goldberg Variations connotes ‘sublime confidence’ or ‘deep despair’ is easy because the semantic fields of those expressions are so completely separate. One seems coincident with the music—and the other, far from it!”
  —  Joseph Swain, p. 55.

T  he hypothesis that syntax mediates tension—and its corollary, that if there is no sense of tension and resolution then there is no sense of syntax—do not entail that all tension is ‘syntactic’ in origin... The tension and resolution of this passage depend more on harmonic progression and meter than on the variety of rhythmic durations and texture.”
  —  Joseph Swain, p. 32.

K onstantin Lifschitz’s performance of Bach’s Goldberg Variations BWV 988 last night was staggeringly beautiful, unified in conception and spiritually cohesive all the way through the Variations to the reprise of the Aria at the end.

T he left-hand/right-hand equality of voices that Lifschitz maintains is astounding—that it is biomechanically/anatomically very difficult goes without saying, but it is conceptually/expressively exceedingly difficult as well. (The intentions of the composer—and of the performer, and, now, of ourselves—are complex and tremendously varied through the course of this work. And they must emerge in the performance as fresh and totally genuine—a factor that learning and technically mastering and memorizing the musical text threaten to a degree, as anyone who has ever memorized and performed music in recital knows well...)

I  ntentionalism [in music]... not so much a coherent philosophical position but rather a kind of ‘antidote’ to hermeneutic analytic approaches that treat musical works as ‘organic matter’—in short, like vegetables—rather than as products of thinking [,feeling] people. Ideally, this means encouraging analytic results that might please composers if they were told about them... Intentionalism is meant as a heuristic device that asks that we pose the question: What might the composer have thought about this composition and its sense? It has become common practice for musicologists to invoke the warning of the Intentional Fallacy as if it were law accepted by everyone. In fact, the entire hermeneutic tradition stands opposed to this doctrinaire apologia for New Criticism, so that merely calling the quest for intentions structuring a work of art a ‘victim’ to a fallacy does not make it so.”
  — Laurence Dreyfus, p. 171.

T he interplay between the rhythmic, metric, melodic, harmonic, and textural tensions in Goldberg variation—notably in the French overture (Var. XVI)—was fascinating. When harmonic tension predominates, it “frees-up” the melodic syntax and vice versa. The realism of the multi-line, multi-voice dialogue or story-telling is enabled and augmented by the parity/equality of the hands, each tension-generating modality taking its “turn” and providing scope and opportunity for other modalities to express things freely.

L ast night our imaginations were permitted to run, taking all the “rope” they could, until close to the end near the 70-minute mark, when we realized in retrospect that the “story” explored by Bach (and Lifschitz) through all of these Variations is our very own. We had not only understood the story; we had in a palpable, true sense ‘said’ [to ourselves] the things that Bach—and Lifschitz—had just said. The story and these thoughts had come a huge distance to find us, as if meant (intended) to be found by us.

W e were inscribed by them, but we found that we, too, were, in a real sense, inscribing/authoring the thoughts. The attentiveness, the transcendent wide-awakeness that Bach has impelled us to with these Variations: like a newly-discovered, implausibly effective form of prayer. An unforgettable performance and a really wonderful evening.

A  poem as a persisting manifestation of language—and, therefore, essentially ‘dialogue’ [that can be indefinitely-extended, with unnamed or yet-to-be-named respondents]—can be a message in a ‘bottle’: sent out in the not-always-greatly-hopeful belief that somewhere and sometime it might wash up on land—on some heartland. Poems [and music] in this sense, too are ‘under way’: they are making toward something... Wirklichkeit ist nicht! Wirklichkeit will gesucht und gewonnen sein! [Reality is nothing apart from our individual construction of it. It must be sought and won!]”
  — Paul Celan.

• Konstantin Lifschitz website
  
• Goldberg Variations BWV 988 score at IMSLP
  
• Ciardi J, Williams M. How Does a Poem Mean? 2e. Houghton-Mifflin, 1975.
  
• Dreyfus L. Bach and the Patterns of Invention. Harvard Univ, 1997.
  
• Levin B. A performer's survey of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, Part 1. La Folia, JAN-2007.
  
• Levin B. A performer's survey of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, Part 2. La Folia, FEB-2007.
  
• Levin B. A performer's survey of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, Part 3. La Folia, MAY-2007.
  
• Rosen C. ‘Bach and Handel’, in Keyboard Music, D. Matthews, ed. Parkwest, 1972, pp. 95-120.
  
• Swain J. Musical Languages. Norton, 1997.
  
• Williams P. Bach: The Goldberg Variations. Cambridge Univ, 2001.
  
• Wimsatt W, Beardsley M. ‘The Intentional Fallacy’, in The Verbal Icon, W. Wimsatt. Univ Kentucky, 1954, pp. 3-20.

I ’ve come to feel over the years that a musical work, however long it may be, ought to have basically—I was going to say ‘one tempo’ but that’s the wrong word—one ‘pulse rate’; one constant 'rhythmic reference point'. Now, obviously, there couldn’t be anything more deadly dull than to exploit one beat that goes on and on and on indefinitely. That’s what drives me up the wall about rock and about minimalism. Anyway, I would never argue in favor of an inflexible pulse. That just destroys any music. But you can take a basic pulse and divide or multiply it—not necessarily on a scale of two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, but often with far-less-obvious divisions—and make the result of those divisions or multiplications act as a subsidiary pulse for a particular movement or section of a movement... So in the case of the Goldbergs, there is in fact one pulse, which, with a few very minor modifications—mostly modifications that I think take their cue from ritards at the end of the preceding variation, something like that—one pulse that runs all the way throughout.”   — Glenn Gould, 1982 radio interview with Tim Page.

Midori: Close Readings of the Third Kind; ‘Deep Linking’ in Shostakovich’s Op. 134

Y   ou just have to ‘see’ more music in this music.”
  —  Valery Gergiev, regarding Shostakovich’s musical/spatial imagery, quoted by Fanning, p. 77.

T here is a sense of space and gravity... of invisible forces and large-scale coherence in the moves by Midori (五嶋 みどり, Gotō Midori), especially in her performance of the Shostakovich, Op. 134, with pianist Özgür Aydin. It is as though each phrase is a consequence of something more remote than what the immediately preceding bars contained. Her recital tonight was like an expedition...

• Mozart - Sonata in E-flat Major K.380
  
• Shostakovich - Sonata Op. 134
  
• Schumann - Sonata in A minor, Op. 105
  
• Schubert - Fantasy in C Major, D.934

T he Andante first movement of the Shostakovich with its twelve-tone parts embodies a kind of spacy ‘otherness’—an alien mysteriousness in this otherwise predominantly tonal movement. The violin’s expression of Shostakovich’s musical signature: D—eS—C—H (the music notes D—E-flat—C—B)... feels more like a “quotation” in this context—feels more like a citation of a statement made at another time by someone else, than a statement in its own right.

W hy does this sonata’s first movement evoke Bach for me? And what about the idiomatic ‘jazz’ figures in the piano part, about 2 minutes into the second movement (Allegretto) and about 8 minutes into the third movement (Largo)?

T he phrases are played as if they are in “double quotes”—reporting where they’ve been and what they’ve seen. They have an arresting effect. Are they accurate? Are they really meant by Shostakovich to reference artifacts of our own culture or are they instead a kind of caricature or impostor? Shrewdly constructed by an alien intelligence from outer space and sent to us for some alien purpose? Or is it devised by an empathetic terrestrial intelligence?

T he Allegretto scherzo in E-flat major is impulsive, vehement. The Largo is infused with drama, but it too is mysterious—ambiguous in its direction and tonality and genre... A Bach-like passacaglia that has now returned from outer space, changed by contact with unknown extraterrestrials? (Maybe I should not have had the absinthe before the concert...)

K ristian Hibberd’s 2005 dissertation was the first application of the ideas of philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin to understanding Shostakovich’s music—theories of ‘carnival’ and ‘registers,’ voiced in discourse. Since then, others have likewise found Bakhtin’s concepts helpful (see the Chapters in Part II of Pauline Fairclough’s multi-author edited volume, plus Chapter 6 and the Epilogue in Judith Kuhn’s book, links below). They examine Shostakovich’s musical language, exploring controversies pertaining to the composer’s labile and contradictory meanings.

T hese authors give an account of the diverse interpretations by partisans in the musicological “Shostakovich Wars,” reporting that the Wars have demolished the notion of one, fixed meaning in Shostakovich’s music. Political? Hard to tell for sure whether Shostakovich was a loyal communist or a dissident! Expressions of post-modern subjectivity, filled with various voices, inscribing each other, filled with uncertainty? Hard to tell whose narratives these are!

T o me, Shostakovich’s design in Op. 134 seems prophetic of our current hyperlinked, cross-referential age. In each movement I wonder: Is Shostakovich expounding, or quoting, or inline linking (referring to the expressions of others)? Did the Soviet authorities hold him liable for his musical deep linking? for carnivalizing or caricaturizing or referencing Soviet and Western culture? Do Midori and Aydin?

A nd, 40-plus years after it was composed, how should we feel about these deep-link references? Its gestures are “late-20th Century” through and through, and I wonder how it will be received in 50 years or 100. But I am after this performance impressed by it also as a composition about composing—a ‘meta’ commentary about reporting and referencing and linking. It is that aspect of this music that interests me most. And I wonder whether it is that aspect that will contribute most to this sonata’s continuing attractiveness and relevance in the distant future.

T    he ‘inner’ sounsdcapes of writing and reading bear resonance of [and refer to, or link to—] ‘outer’ soundscapes... the world is always full of sounds... they enter and depart in processions as events pass us or as we pass them. This is why the music of the streets has no beginning or end but is all middle.”
  —  Marianne Ping Huang, ‘Gestures of the Unheard,’ in The Novelness of Bakhtin, p.168.

• Midori website
  
• Özgür Aydin website
  
• Shostakovich Op. 134 page at Wikipedia.org
  
• Deep Linking page at BitLaw
  
• Supreme Court of Canada, Crookes et al. v. Newton, 2011 SCC 47, 19-OCT-2011. [linking of defamatory material is not defamatory]
  
• Panez O. Spanish court rules that linking to potential copyright infringing material is not copyright infringement. EFF, 05-AUG-2011.
  
• Bakhtin M. The Dialogic Imagination. Emerson C, Holquist M, trs. Univ Texas, 1998.
  
• Bakhtin M. Art & Answerability. Univ Texas, 1990.
  
• Bakhtin M. Toward a Philosophy of the Act. Univ Texas, 1992.
  
• Barta P, et al., eds. Carnivalizing Difference: Bakhtin and the Other. Routledge, 2001.
  
• Blevins J, ed. Dialogism and Lyric Self-Fashioning: Bakhtin and the Voices of a Genre. Susquehannah Univ, 2008.
  
• Bruhn J, Lundquist J, eds. The Novelness of Bakhtin: Perspectives and Possibilities. Tusculanum, 2001.
  
• Carpenter E. 'Russian theorists on modality in Shostakovich’s music,' in: Shostakovich Studies, Fanning D, ed. 2e. Cambridge Univ, 2006.
  
• Fairclough P, ed. Shostakovich Studies 2. Cambridge Univ, 2010.
  
• Fanning D. 'Shostakovich and structural hearing,' in Shostakovich Studies, Vol. 2, Fairclough P, ed. Cambridge Univ, 2010.
  
• Fay L, ed. Shostakovich and His World. Princeton Univ, 2004. (pp. 309-10, 344, 348)
  
• Haynes D. Bakhtin and the Visual Arts. Cambridge, 2008.
  
• Hibberd K. Shostakovich and Bakhtin: A Critical Investigation of the Late Works (1974-1975). PhD dissertation, Univ London, 2005.
  
• Holquist M. New Accents: Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World. 2e. Routledge, 2002.
  
• Jones M. Dostoyevsky after Bakhtin: Readings in Dostoyevsky's Fantastic Realism. Cambridge Univ, 2005.
  
• Kuhn J. Shostakovich in Dialogue. Ashgate, 2010.
  
• Midori G. Einfach Midori. Henschel, 2004.
  
• Morris P, ed. The Bakhtin Reader: Selected Writings of Bakhtin, Medvedev, Voloshinov. Hodder-Arnold, 2009.
  
• Rzhevsky N, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Modern Russian Culture. Cambridge Univ, 1998.
  
• Salzer F. Structural Hearing: Tonal Coherence in Music. Dover, 1962.

Art Song, Youth, and Omniscience: Stephen Costello, Tenor, & Danielle Orlando, Piano

W   hen I decided to go for vocal music in college, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was afraid of classical music. I didn’t understand it because of the languages. It seemed really long—like a lot of work, and everyone was singing all the time. Plus, how do you memorize all that music, right? [A chorus of nods around the table.]
I was into Broadway music for a while, but you know that whole ‘dancing’ thing didn’t work for me. [Laughter by other interviewees, at Costello’s dry delivery and self-effacing humor.] So I auditioned at AVA. There was something that the maestro saw that was very raw, which he really liked. Teachers can work with it and develop you, so I decided to go... It was kind of overwhelming at first. I think I was the only one at the school who had never sung a complete operatic role before. To be with these people who have sung two or three or more roles—it was intimidating! But, no matter: just dive into it and work your ass off. For me, if I hadn’t had music in my life during my public school system days, I don’t know what I’d be doing right now. I don’t know if I would have gone to college. No one in my family went to college. Through music, I made connections in school that helped me excel in places I wasn’t the most comfortable with.”
  — Stephen Costello, interview with Marilee Vergati, Dallas Examiner, 05-NOV-2010.

T he synergies between Stephen Costello’s tenor voice and Danielle Orlando’s piano last night were incredible.

• Verdi - Questa o quella (Rigoletto)
  
• Liszt - Tre sonetti di Petrarca, S. 270
  
• Rossini – La danza
  
• Lehár – Dein ist mein ganzes Herz
  
• Quilter – Drink to me only with thine eyes
  
• Quilter – Over the mountain
  
• Traditional – Danny Boy, arr. Brodszky
  
• Brodszky – I’ll walk with God
  
• Tosti – Non t’amo più
  
• Tosti – A vucchella
  
• Tosti – Pierrot’s Lament
  
• Tosti – Goodbye
  
• Tosti – Ideale
  
• Tosti – Aprile

O rlando’s piano provided poignant contrast and astringency to counterbalance Costello’s warm singing. The effect was like that of a third-person omniscient narrator in a novel. Orlando’s piano: theotic; godlike; expressing an all-knowing perspective; telling us listeners things that the main character, Costello, does not know—things that that few mortals (or none) can fully know—the meaning of Life; the mystical depth and transcendence of True Love—short of attaining Buddhahood or assumption into Heaven. Through the piano, we appreciate what the human species feels like and how much we humans stand yet to learn, as this young male exemplar sings his account of, say, what Tosti says ‘Love’s Gift’ is. The almighty Piano has seen it all and knows Everything. The mortal singer is earnest and true, but has only learnt as much as his youth has so far afforded opportunities for him to experience.

T he whole program was excellent, but the Tosti pieces were especially interesting. So I go and read Francesco Sanvitale’s biography of Tosti (link below), to try to figure out why these compositions fascinate me so. Francesco Paolo Tosti was from Ortona, a town of 11,000 in Adriatic mid-coastal Italy. He was born in April 1846, the youngest of 9 children. He attended the Conservatorio di Napoli when he was twelve, studied violin with Pinto, and went on to become a gifted violinist and teacher as well as achieving fame and wealth as a singer, attracted royal sponsorship and employments, and enabled his success as a composer. He lived in Rome from 1870 through 1874 and was teacher to Princess Margherita of Savoy before moving to London in 1875 where he served as singing master to Queen Victoria’s kids. Tosti figured prominently with the Ricordi publishing house, who published all of Tosti’s art songs except for a few released by Thomas Patey Chappell & Frank Chappell (Chappell & Co) and Emile Enoch (Enoch & Sons) in London. In all, Tosti composed more than 400 works, including some that are way-droll or humorous—comedic in their coupling a jocular text with a ‘formal’ setting or delivery.

S   ignor Tosti is an agreeable and amiable composer. He has discovered the great weakness of the English for sentimental songs, and his ‘For Ever and For Ever’ is massacred in every schoolroom and drawing-room in the British Isles.”
  —  Vanity Fair, 14-NOV-1885.

B ut for all his outward humor and public drollery, we know that Tosti suffered from angina for a number of years. Early letters suggest that his cardiac symptoms began in his mid-30’s. He died of a heart attack at age 70, on 02-DEC-1916 at the Hotel Excelsior in the via Veneto in Rome. Possibly it was the recurrent cardiac reminders of his mortality and the chest pain dogging him through his productive middle age that imbued these piano parts with poignancy and paradoxical ‘omniscience’.

T his song ‘Aprile’ was one of two Romanze that Tosti wrote in 1882, when he was 36 (‘Aprile’ was in October and ‘Ideale’ was completed in December).

N   on senti tu ne l’aria—
il profumo che spande Primavera?
Non senti tu ne l’anima—
il suon de nova voce lusinghiera?
È l’April! È la stagion d’amore!
Deh! vieni, o mia gentil su’ prati’n fiore!

Il piè trarrai fra mammole,
avrai su’l petto rose e cilestrine;
e le farfalle candide
t’aleggeranno intorno al nero crine.
È l’April! È la stagion d’amore!
Deh! vieni, o mia gentil su’ prati’n fiore!

[Do you not smell the air—
the perfume of Spring?
Do you not hear the soul—
the sound of a new, enchanting voice?
Welcome, April, season of Love!
Ah! Come, my dear! Here, on this grass and on my flowers!

The feet will tread among violets,
while at your breast petals of rose and pale blue cavort;
and white butterflies
hover amorously around your adorable high black ponytail.
Hi-ho, April, season of Love!
Ah! Come, sprawl gently on my lawn and these here flowers!]”
  —  Francesco Paolo Tosti, ‘Aprile’, text by Rocco E. Pagliara.

C ostello excels when he’s portraying human emotions at their extremes and most over-the-topness. The program last night provided opportunities to sing with candor, lust, longing, righteous youthful enthusiasm, loss, and sorrow. (As he enters at least into his 30’s, he will be able to more fully inhabit roles that are propelled by greed, malice, deception, jaded cynicism, illness, and depression?)

T he Italian lyrics for ‘Aprile’: far more sensuous and suggestive than the standard English translation. Costello captures this and nails it.

A fter the voice enters, the piano either supports the melodic line or intervenes during the vocal part’s rests and ‘volumizes’ the production at the cadences. Sometimes the piano modestly doubles the melodic line—a gesture that is prominent at the end of the first stanza and becomes more so—more insistently so—in the second one. The effect welds the timbre of the piano to the tenor melody. The orchestration and this emphatic gesture is, surely, part of the ‘melodramatic school’ of Tosti’s late-19th Century training.

N o mere accompanist, Orlando had as many great ‘lines’ as Costello, and she delivered them with great ‘sparkle and wit and wry social commentary’. Her brilliant performance reminded us of how spoiled we can be with truly great collaborative piano.

T he vocal writing is syllabic and, apart from the ‘Ah!’s and ‘Oh!’s and other spots where the text doesn’t have to be intelligible per se, Tosti indulges the singer and the listener by spinning out highly-embellished fioritura passages and small-scale vocalizations that are plain fun to sing (and to listen to), as well as vehicles for displaying the technical prowess of the singer. The piano part offers its own sort of ‘fioratura’ opportunities, which Orlando executes with perfect poise—with godlike virtuosity that is not anxious to prove its divinity and never steals the show from the vocalist.

W hat I mean is—the supreme ‘omniscience’ of Orlando’s narratorly interpretations was not so astringent as to be indifferent toward mortals, toward the singer. When you, a poor mortal singer, need something; when your prayerful glance meets hers, she can be relied upon to bless you and keep you; to make Her face to shine down upon you and be gracious unto you. She lifteth up Her countenance upon you and giveth you peace. As collaborative piano goes, Orlando is one hell of a kindly personal god, one Who does not hesitate to answer urgent prayers and intervene from time to time in the still-young world below.

T he blessings of The Piano—spiritual (Nerves!); physical (Memory!)—ought never to be taken for granted. And so it came to pass at the conclusion of the recital Costello offered a heart-felt benediction, one that recognized the Pianistic source of all good things and of salvation itself.

A nd we were lifted up, and went forth! Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domina, quia viderunt oculi mei salutare tuum quod parasti ante faciem omnium populorum, lumen ad revelationem gentium. Artsong and opera without end, Amen!

B orn in Philadelphia in 1982, Costello is a 2007 graduate of the Academy of Vocal Arts (AVA). Costello is the recipient of the 2009 Richard Tucker Award. Additionally, he won First Prize in the 2006 George London Foundation Competition, First Prize and Audience Prize in AVA’s Giargiari Competition, and First Prize in the Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation Competition. Costello has established himself as one of the current generation’s most impressive artists, with a prolific schedule of performances both in the U.S. and throughout Europe.

O rlando began her piano studies at the Settlement Music School in Philadelphia and continued at the Eastman School of Music. She earned a Master of Music in Piano Performance at Temple University. She currently serves as Master Coach on the music faculty of The Academy of Vocal Arts and is currently the Principal Opera Coach at the Curtis Institute of Music. Ms. Orlando collaborated for many years with Luciano Pavarotti as accompanist, judge, and artistic coordinator for all of the Luciano Pavarotti International Voice Competitions. Additionally, she spent nine seasons with the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy, as the Artistic Coordinator and Coach for the operas, in addition to editing and arranging some of the compositions and performing recitals with the Festival.

• Stephen Costello at Harriman-Jewell Series
  
• Stephen Costello website
  
• Stephen Costello at Askonas Holt Artists Management
  
• Danielle Orlando at Academy of Vocal Arts
  
• Paolo Tosti page at CPDL.org
  
• Tosti ‘Aprile’ free score download at ArtSongCentral.com
  
• Tosti scores at IMSLP.org
  
• Sanvitale F. The Song of a Life: Francesco Paolo Tosti. N. Hawthorne, tr. Ashgate, 2005.
  
• Katz M. The Complete Collaborator: The Pianist as Partner. Oxford Univ, 2009.
  
• Collaborative Piano at New England Conservatory
  
• Collaborative Piano at Boston Conservatory
  
• Collaborative Piano at Juilliard
  
• Collaborative Piano at Eastman
  
• Collaborative Piano Blog
  
• PianoAccompanists.com
  
• List of collaborative piano training programs around the world, compiled by Wei-En Hsu
  
• Warren Jones, 2010 Collaborative Pianist of the Year and pianist, Camerata Pacifica
  
• Numbers 6:22-27

Keve Wilson’s ‘Pure Imagination’

I   saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set her free.”
  — Michelangelo, on imagination and the creative process.

T he new CD by oboist Keve Wilson and colleagues is really good: 14 tracks showcasing her atmospheric lyricism. This CD was just released by CCR/Naxos on 04-JAN-2011.

T he account of Astor Piazzolla’s ‘Fracanapa’ in fast additive 3+3+2 meter or polyrhythm (almost in 1) is driven; conspiratorial—with Wilson’s blazing double- and triple-tonguing; juicy come-what-may bravado, interleaved with suspenseful diminuendos that withdraw into a secret, interior space but soon emerge again, like a wild animal from its lair. The ‘Imagination’ of the disc’s title is no lie; it is a promise kept.

T he Jeff Marder arrangement of the Lady Gaga hit ‘Poker Face’ is an adventure in 3+3+2 tango minimalism—microtonal passages convincingly convey confrontational aloofness and nothing-to-lose abandon that cohere with the spirit of the Lady Gaga original.

C  an you imagine—imagine what I would do if I could do all that I can?”
  — Sun Tzu.

J eff Marder’s phrasing is particularly thoughtful—an example of collaborative piano at its best. The playing of Greg Heffernan on cello, Mr. Lei on erhu, Charles Pierce on guitar, Mat Fields and Michael Valerio on fretless bass (on separate tracks), Bernard Fox’s whistling on track #7 ‘Moonbeams’, and Andy Beall on percussion are compelling as well.

I t’s tough to blend double-reeds with other instruments, and doing so requires a lot of knowledge and experience of the tonal properties and the articulative and dynamic constraints—knowledge on the part of the composer/arranger and the performer(s) alike. Close harmony doesn’t necessarily favor the blend, and, given the prolific overtones that oboe and English horn have, wider intervals in the lower register of these instruments are especially risky.

W ith those factors in mind, I must say the blend here is superb, and the miking and mixing are first-rate. Keve’s finesse is all-over phenomenal, but the hairy figures she is able to navigate with panache and control in the lower register are nothing short of astonishing.

Y  ou have to imagine it possible before you can see something. You can have the evidence right in front of you, but if you can’t imagine something that has never existed before, it’s impossible.”
  — Rita Dove.

T he need for sufficient rests or phrasing allowing for breathing: more risks that composers/arrangers may create for double-reeds. For Keve, such challenges are taken in-stride. Circular ‘snorkel’ breathing is likely how Keve accomplishes some of the very-long-duration feats and expressive effects in here (although I am unable to detect any wavering of tone or other evidence of it). Brilliant!

T hrough the inspired, empathetic playing and Joe Castellon’s and Mike Aarvold’s fine engineering/mixing/mastering, you also hear on this disc the considerable merits of the studio environment at Kaufman Astoria Studios (KAS). Without any acoustic isolation, everyone plays like they can hear everyone else perfectly, because, in fact, they can hear everyone else perfectly. These days, there are not many recording venues that are conducive to this, especially for small ensembles on a budget. The environment at KAS is one that is especially congenial to performers. The sonic result is not only clean and consistent and technically precise, but one that also embodies the players’ true selves or authentic identities—‘who’ the performers were and ‘who’ they experienced, each of one another, during the recording session. This is not a self-conscious experience per se; any musician who has spent time in recording studios will attest to this. Instead, it’s like encountering each other on a delicious, clear, and invigorating day—out in the open, breathing the purest of air, imagining anything you want, anything that’s possible.

B ravo to all who contributed to the compositions, arrangements, performances, and engineering and production of this wonderful disc!

T   he most obvious effect of getting used to hearing one’s own recordings... is to be come highly self-critical about details... Making a recording becomes a process of detailed self-examination. There are also more subtle forces at work. If you hear the sound of your own voice [or instrument], you are made aware that you cannot hear yourself as others hear you. You learn to hear what others hear... You start adjusting it to something which sounds more like what you thought you were doing.”
  — Robert Philip, Performing Music in the Age of Recording, p. 25.

F   irst-rate recording can achieve] a more effective unity between intensity of action and displacement of sound than could be afforded by the best of all [live concert] seasons at Bayreuth.”
  — Glenn Gould.

K eve is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music and 1997 winner of the International Concert Artists Guild Competition. Keve studied oboe with Richard Killmer and dance with Elizabeth Clark in Rochester. She lives in NYC with her husband, trombonist Kerry Farrell. Keve is a co-founder of the chamber music series Project Accidental in Los Angeles and is solo oboist with Kristjan Järvi’s ‘Absolute Ensemble’. Apart from her concertizing and recording, Keve is deeply committed to educating the next generation and contributes to Pasadena Conservatory, Henry Mancini Institute, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Caramoor Center, and American Festival for the Arts in Houston and Argentina, as well as public school outreach programs in New York City and Los Angeles.

I   doubt that the imagination can ever be suppressed. If you truly eradicated it in a child, (s)he would grow up to be an eggplant.”
  — Ursula LeGuin.

K eve’s up-coming performances include an appearance with Westchester Chamber Orchestra on 12-FEB and with Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas at Alice Tully Hall on 24-MAR.


    [30-sec clip, Keve Wilson, Astor Piazzolla, ‘Fracanapa’; (track 4), 2011, 1.1MB MP3]

    [30-sec clip, Keve Wilson, Astor Piazzolla, ‘Oblivion’, arr. K. Wilson; (track 10), 2011, 1.1MB MP3]

    [30-sec clip, Keve Wilson, Lady Gaga & RedOne, ‘Poker Face’, arr. J. Marder,; (track 6), 2011, 1.1MB MP3]

• Keve Wilson website
  
• Composers’ Concordance Records website
  
• International Double Reed Society website
  
• Spring R. Circular breathing: A method. Arizona State Univ, 1993.
  
• Ashby A. Absolute Music, Mechanical Reproduction. Univ California, 2010.
  
• Azzi M, Collier S. Le Grand Tango: The Life and Music of Astor Piazzolla. Oxford Univ, 2000.
  
• Gorin N. Astor Piazzolla: A Memoir. Amadeus, 2003.
  
• Greene P, Porcello T, eds. Wired for Sound: Engineering and Technologies in Sonic Cultures. Wesleyan, 2004.
  
• Katz M. Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music. Univ California, 2010.
  
• Mosalve J. Astor Piazzolla, Tango del Àngel, Tango Diablo: 100 Personajes y Autores. Panamericana, 2009.
  
• Nancy J-L. Listening. (Tr. C. Mandell.) 4e. Fordham Univ, 2007. [esp. the essay ‘How Music Listens to Itself’]
  
• Philip R. Performing Music in the Age of Recording. Yale Univ, 2004.
  
• Steinitz R. György Ligeti: Music of the Imagination. Northeastern, 2003.
  
• Sterne J. The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction. Duke Univ, 2003.
  
• Taruskin R. Text and Act: Essays on Music and Performance. Oxford Univ, 1995.
  
• Théberge P. Any Sound You Can Imagine: Making Music/Consuming Technology. Wesleyan, 1997.
  
• Toop D. Sinister Resonance: The Mediumship of the Listener. Continuum, 2010.
  
• Kaufman Astoria Studios, 34-12 36th Street, Astoria (Queens), NY 11106; Tel: 718-392-5600 / 3711 35th Ave, Long Island City, NY 11101; Tel: 718-472-1176
  
• Sear Sound, 353 W. 48th St, New York, NY 10036; Tel: 212-582-5380. [Studio C]
  
• Systems Two Recording Studio, 117 Ditmas Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11218; Tel: 718-851-1010.
  
• Water Music Recorders, 931 Madison St, Hoboken NJ 07030; Tel: 201-420-7848.