Pianist and composer Robert Weirich, a respected member of the Conservatory of Music at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, whose own pupils include Awadgin Pratt and Stanislaw Ioudenitch, turns his digital attention to the large keyboard works of Aaron Copland, 1930-1957, of which the 1930 Piano Variations still retains a Spartan, shocking power and abstract colorations that both mesmerize and confound us at once. In a parody of Beethoven’s Fifth, Copland uses a declamatory four-note motive that Copland subjects to a series of classical procedures, including some rude, octave displacements that may well have inspired Varese. The music well captures the ethos of 1930, its bleak economic and social prospects, on the verge of world calamity.
Copland’s Piano Sonata (1941) projects much of the same hard, uncompromising patina as the Piano Variations, though not quite so bereft of flora. The opening movement, Molto moderato, takes what might have been plainchant or a hymnal tune and subjects it to rough syncopations and metric conflict. The sentimental, increasingly staccato, second subject does little to alleviate the “dust bowl” mentality of the atmosphere A jabbing, resonant motif appears, easily reminiscent of Appalachian Spring, but its subsequent, clarion treatment is less lyrical than punishing, and we plunge into depths worthy of Moussorgsky. The movement ends on a note of uneasy, parlando reflection. The Scherzo (Vivace) in 5/8 proves incredibly quirky and moody, often exploring a jazzy series of riffs, but more often exploding in dire frustration. The heavy use of sixths seems to mock Chopin and Rachmaninov, although at times the music becomes diatonic, simple, almost peaceful. The last movement, an expansive Andante sostenuto, achieves some melodic charm, perhaps in spite of itself. A rather diatonic duet appears–it seems ripe for contrapuntal treatment–and plods on a series of chromatic shifts reminiscent of Beethoven’s Op. 53, Copland’s admitted favorite of the Beethoven sonatas. Despite becoming morbidly obsessed in its own rhetoric, the music moves in something of a belabored arc towards a preconceived end that embraces the opening of the entire work.
Take a deep breath to audition the Piano Fantasy (1955-1957), Copland’s homage to serial technique, given his own, idiosyncratic handling of the procedure, a testament to Copland’s spiritual restlessness of the period, his urgent desire to have “more notes” in his expressive arsenal. Much of the pulsation and 10-note declamation–the last two notes of the personal tone-row appearing at cadences–is angry, aggressive, then melting into bluesy improvisation that casts off the sound and fury of the first half. Still the “confused alarms of ignorant armies” persists, more than once in the style of Liszt’s Dies Irae. The last of the Fantasy’s three sections is slow, insisting on augmented triads and little, lithe figures that hint at Satie and Ravel. The tone-row gradually asserts itself, even passionately, though perhaps speaking of the dead in a dead language. Music that challenges us emotionally and spiritually on every page, convincingly rendered.
— Gary Lemco
