MESSIAEN: Visions de l’Amen – Marilyn Nonken, Piano I; Sarah Rothenberg, Piano II – Bridge 9324, 48:53 [Distr. by Albany] ***1/2:
“Stony Brook Soundings, Volume 2” = SHEILA SILVER: Twilight’s Last Gleaming; TYLER CAPP: Stranger Variations; PETER WINKLER: Fantasy (for cello septet); DARIA SEMEGEN: Vignette; MARGARET SCHEDEL: The Beautiful Don’t Lack the Wound – Gilbert Kalish, Christina Dahl, Cathy Callis, piano / Eduardo Leandro and Kevin Dufford, percussion / Colin Carr, Charlotte Muir, Jonathan den Herder, Heather Tauch, Adiel Shmit, Amber Docters van Leeuwen, Aron Zelkowicz, cellos / Esther Lamneck, táragató – Bridge 9319, 67:39 [Distr. by Albany] ***1/2:
On first blush, the only connection between these two CDs seems to be the producer, the adventurous independent American label Bridge. But I have in mind the connection, maybe mostly in my own head, between Messiaen’s Visions de l’Amen for two pianos and Sheila Silver’s Twilight’s Last Gleaming for two pianos and percussion. I haven’t gleaned through my reading that Messiaen, and specifically Visions, had an influence on Silver, who studied with Gyrörgi Ligeti, Harold Shapero, and Jacob Druckman among others. But both works achieve many of the same bell-like sonorities through clustered chordal writing. And both owe a large debt to Asian music, Messiaen occasionally mimicking the sounds of the gamelan orchestra, Silver augmenting the pianos’ chiming sonorities with a large battery of pitched percussion, including tuned nipple gongs, Tibetan singing bowls, and a High Temple Bell, among other Eastern instruments.
However, in Twilight’s Last Gleaming, Silver creates an almost anti-Visions de l’Amen. Whereas Messiaen’s work is an affirmative, ecstatic exploration of the different cosmic meanings of Amen as it pertains to God and his Creation, Silver’s vision is one of fear and loathing in the post-9/11 world. The first movement, “War Approaches,” starts with ominous rumbling sounds in the pianos that evoke the current air of global tension and lead to a chant-like passage that is soon replaced by the mood of the opening. The second movement, “Souls Ascending,” is a brief vision of peace and salvation, with swooping bell-like chords that most recall Messiaen. The last movement, “Peace Pretending,” unfurls fragments of the National Anthem against a backdrop that recalls both the tensions of the first movement and the arrested hopefulness of the second. The last movement stands, in Silver’s words, as “a wake-up call for our country to embody the ideals for which it claims to be fighting.” While I’m not usually one for music with a message, the language of Twilight’s Last Gleaming is so forceful and affecting that I think it transcends the message and the anxious time in history that produced it. At least I hope I’m right.
As for the other works on the album Stony Brook Soundings, Vol. 2, I make no such large claims although there are some interesting, attractive works here. Like Vol. 1, this CD showcases the talents of faculty members of the Department of Music at New York’s Stony Brook University. My favorite piece, after Silver’s, is Peter Winkler’s cleverly conceived Fantasy. The whole work takes off from the theme of the last movement, called “Slow Drag.” It’s marked by a slow ragtime beat and a backup “inspired by the Temptations, that wonderful Motown group.” How Winkler plays these pop-musical references off against the unfailingly elegant lyricism of seven cellos is well worth hearing—talk about a study in contrasts.
That also sums up Tyler Capp’s Stranger Variations, a series of variations and interludes for solo violin based on the traditional American fiddle tune “Poor Wayfaring Stranger.” The piece explores the tune “through a combination and juxtaposition of concert and fiddle styles” in an attempt on Capp’s part to “reconcile [his] love for two seemingly distinct kinds of music; contemporary concert and American folk music.” As with Winkler’s piece, Capp’s music suggests an attractive, viable rapprochement between two styles that are often seen as disparate (and that sound even more so when a less sensitive musician tries to yoke them together).
Daria Semegen’s Vignette is less successful as music and recording. It leaves no distinct impression as far as I’m concerned, and the 1999 recording from CUNY-Staten Island is marred by obvious distortion—not so for the remainder of the program, well recorded at Stony Brook’s own Staller Center in 2008.
As for Margaret Schedel’s elaborately titled The Beautiful Don’t Lack the Wound, the most interesting thing about it is that it’s scored for a táragató, a Hungarian single-reed instrument, here played by clarinetist Esther Lamneck. In addition to the táragató, the work “involves electronic generation and manipulation of sounds” and is based on a poem by Irish poet Nick Laird. How or why it is, I’m afraid I couldn’t care less; I tired quickly of Schedel’s exploration of real and manufactured sonorities.
Back to Messiaen’s Visions de l’Amen. It’s the first work with which Messiaen reestablished his compositional career after being released from the Silesian prison camp where he wrote his very different Quatuor pour le fin du temps. Premiered in 1943 by Messiaen (Piano II) and his student and wife-to-be Yvonne Loriod (Piano I), Visions was conceived with very different roles in mind for the two pianos. Piano I had all “the rhythmic difficulties, the clusters of chords, all that is speed, charm and quality of sound, while Piano II carried “the principal melody, the thematic elements, everything that demands power and emotion.” That being true, Visions is a composition you almost need to see to fully appreciate, so a well-produced DVD is probably in order. Till then, there are a number of choices available on CD, even though recordings of the piece tend to come and go—mostly go.
The current one by Nonken and Rothenberg benefits from the work of two gifted contemporary music specialists, one of whom (Rothenberg) studied with Yvonne Loriod. Nonken and Rothenberg’s performance seems to me the equal of other well-received performances and is powerfully recorded. However, Bridge’s decision to offer this music alone on CD seems to me unconscionable. As much as thirty more minutes’ worth of music could have been included if Bridge had see fit to do so. That being the case, you may want to seek out a rival version, such as the recent one from Martin Roscoe and Steven Osborne on Hyperion, which includes three additional Messiaen works. But if timing isn’t a consideration, then by all means go for Nonken and Rothenberg.
— Lee Passarella
