TRACTS
Music for solo piano by British composers
BRIAN FERNEYHOUGH
Lemma-Icon-Epigram
JAMES ERBER You done torn your playhouse
down *
CHRISTOPHER FOX lliK-relliK *
CHRIS DENCH Topologies *
RICHARD BARRETT Tract
*
*=first recordings, from NMC
Recordings
Ian Pace (piano)
NMC D066 [80 mins]
(PGW)
NMC
Ian Pace is a powerful advocate for 'hard-edged' contemporary piano
music, in which he is an acknowledged leader at the keyboard, and also a
prolific writer. He has just given a five-hour marathon Finnissy recital
(a review is promised for S&H) and this uncommonly well-filled
CD is a perfect introduction to the esoteric field in which he flourishes.
The programme is a personal choice devoted to music by British composers,
with all of whom he has worked closely. It begins with Fernyhough,
whom I usually enjoy, and do so here, but can't explain quite why. Perhaps
Pace can? He tells us, in a typically thoughtful, illuminating essay, that
this music which he admires (Birtwistle, Dillon, Saunders, Skempton are a
few other favourite composers, a very disparate group) emphasises clarity
of line, is unsettling in structure, stimulates and challenges rather than
soothes and consoles. A different world from what many readers seek of their
CD purchases. But read on.
Pace believes also that it is not unnecessarily arcane, using as it does
contrasts of dynamics, register and texture, providing 'immediacy exceeding
that of conventional tonality'. There is the wide gulf to be bridged - and
an approach to doing so.
Variety in plenty is there to find, contrived defamiliarisation of romantic
& serial gestures, recast jazz/rock styles, delicate finger work as well
as repetitive, rhythmic pounding, and Tract, a half hour work by
Richard Barrett which seems to require a separate brain for each finger!
This is all exciting music 'which forces pianists to expand tactile, emotive
and intellectual range'.
You are unlikely to enjoy it all but you will surely marvel at Ian Pace's
virtuosity. It is all about sound (which is readily perceived) and structure
(which demands expert knowledge to be fully understood). Forget the latter,
and discard your belief in received wisdoms that Liszt's transcendency
(whether
hard or made easier), Balakirev's Islamey ,
Rach 3, & Chopin Godowskied, represent the ultimate in pianistic demands
- not in this century, nor at the end of the last, they don't!
What right does an amateur pianist/scribbler have to appraise Pace's performance,
or to convey its character in words. Or indeed to take a view about the
recording, made in an acoustic chosen and 'specially created' in a Tilburg
studio by composer/producer Richard Barrett, who is unlikely to have let
Pace get away with many mistakes in his Tract, 'one of the
most demanding piano works ever composed'? Ian Pace is a fine pianist with
a wide repertoire of music through past ages as well as of now, and his manner
seen playing is always quiet and undemonstrative, taking it all in his stride
with apparent ease. He is now in the middle of a three recital project in
London which it is intended to cover in
Seen&Heard.
Purchase
this CD as an appetiser; try to get to
Wigmore Hall for Ian Pace's
A Portrait of John
Ogdon to hear him in a less far-out,
but still unusual programme, or wait until 26 February for his appearance
at King's College.
Peter Grahame Woolf
9 February 2001 : Wigmore
Hall, London. A concert sponsored by the John Ogdon
Foundation.
JOHN OGDON -
Ballade
LISZT - Mephisto Waltz No. 3 **
JOHN OGDON - Sonata
PETER MAXWELL DAVIES - Five Pieces Op. 2 **
JOHN OGDON - Theme and Variations
SCRIABIN - Sonata No. 10
BUSONI - All'Italia; Turandot's Frauengemach
JOHN OGDON - fromKaleidoscope: Sonata No. 6: Reminiscences of Scriabin;
Sonata No. 11: Sonata super Boris
MUSSORGSKY-OGDON - Varlaam's Song
26 February 2001 : Great
Hall, King's College, London
Early evening programme:
N.A. HUBER - Darrabuka; Beds and Brackets; Disappearances
Main programme to include:
GYÖRGY LIGETI - Touches Bloqueés
MAURICIO KAGEL - Metapiece/Mimetics
RICHARD EMSLEY - For Piano 10
HELMUT LACHENMANN - Serynade
SALVATORE SCIARRINO - Nocturnes
SYLVANO BUSSOTTI - Pour Clavier
Ian Paces's website
is
http://freespace.virgin.net/ian.pace/index.htm
