VINCENT PERSICHETTI: Tenth Piano Sonata, Opus 67; Serenade No. 7, Op. 55; Eleventh Piano Sonata, Opus 101 – Ellen Burmeister, piano – Starkland

by | Dec 24, 2010 | Classical Reissue Reviews | 0 comments

VINCENT PERSICHETTI: Tenth Piano Sonata, Opus 67; Serenade No. 7, Op. 55; Eleventh Piano Sonata, Opus 101 – Ellen Burmeister, piano – Starkland R-3016, 47:07 ****:

Vincent Persichetti (1915-1987) studied piano, organ, and music theory at Combs College in New York, proving so outstanding in all fields that he became head of theory and composition at Combs, aged 20. At the same time, he continued his piano studies and even managed to take classes in conducting at the Curtis Institute with a gent named Fritz Reiner. Small wonder that Persichetti soon landed a professorship at Julliard, finally becoming chairman of the Composition Department at that institution. His students at Julliard read like a Who’s Who of late-twentieth-century American composers, including Philip Glass, Richard Danielpour, Peter Schickele, and Kenneth Fuchs.

Somehow, Persichetti still found time to write important books on musical theory and compose a great deal of music, not much of which is heard these days. Perhaps he’s best known for his band music, but he also wrote an opera, nine symphonies, and reams of piano music, including twelve sonatas. As a highly accomplished pianist, Persichetti knew everything the instrument is capable of and apparently didn’t shy away from requiring a performer to exploit most of those possibilities, from flying scales and arpeggios to thundering chords to cross-hands and opposing-hands acrobatics.

Perschetti did slow down toward the end of his career: ten years separates the Tenth Sonata (1955) from the Eleventh, and another twenty would elapse before he wrote his final sonata, which appeared the year the current recording by Persichetti specialist Ellen Burmeister was made. I don’t know if Burmeister got around to setting down the Twelfth Sonata, but all twelve are available in a recording by Geoffrey Burleson on New World Records (which I haven’t heard). However, Burleson would have to be capable of pianistic heroics indeed to outclass Ms. Burmeister, who flies through the zither-like runs at the start of the Tenth Sonata’s Vivace finale as if her fingers had sprouted wings.

The Tenth may be Persichetti’s most important sonata; it certainly distills and showcases the composer’s style at a high point in his career. Influenced by the harmonic experimentation of composers such as Stravinsky, Hindemith, and Bartók, Persichetti employed polytonality and pandiatonicism to create a kaleidoscopic harmonic language. As Ms. Burmeister writes in her notes to this sonata, “within the tonal structure of the sonata are passages in which modes in dorian, lydian, mixolydian, and aeolian, melodic minor, chromatic, and whole-tone scales are self-contained within one or two measures.” Whew! This results in a tonally and every-other-way restless composition that finds repose only in the quite Andante third movement, which, despite its marking, sounds like a speeded-up version of one of Bartók’s night-music excursions. The opening Adagio is too haunted and foreboding to be reposeful, while the Presto second movement is nonstop action, with its  jumpy jazzy rhythms, its lightning-quick succession of chords and runs.

A significant change had been visited on Persichetti’s style between the Tenth and Eleventh Sonatas. The Eleventh is spikier, more aphoristic, lacking the rhythmic variety of the Tenth. Tonally, it’s even more tenuous; Burmeister seems to imply that Persichetti comes up with his own twelve-tone system to tie the work together: “[This sonata] uses various combinations of twelve pitches different than the other sonatas, but it is a single set of twelve tones that provides the binding between the movements and that is seen repeatedly in its main themes.” It’s certainly less immediately appealing than the Tenth and frankly hasn’t grown on me with repeated listening.

Persichetti said of himself that his style embraced both elements of the steely and the lyrical. This is especially true in his compositions for less-than-virtuoso-class musicians. It’s true of some of his band compositions, written for student players, and it’s certainly true of the charming pieces in Serenade No. 7, with titles such as “Play,” “Sing,” and “Chase.” The serenade is Persichetti’s Scenes from Childhood, and like Schumann before him, Persichetti doesn’t condescend to his amateur performers; the pieces are uncompromising modernist miniatures, even if they have much more of that lyrical side of the composer about them.

This reissue of the original 1985 analogue recording has been digitally remastered for Starkland. The results: very big, very true piano sound (though today the miking might not have been quite so close and might have provided a tad more perspective). A fine reconstructive effort in support of Ms. Burmeister’s authoritative performances. The only objection I can mount is that the original release had timings geared to the LP era rather than that of the CD; less than fifty minutes is a skimpy program by today’s standards.

— Lee Passarella

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