As we know from Beata Moon’s previous CDs
her music is unfailingly melodic and unerringly emotional. By all means
have a look at how we have received her previously: piano music on Naxos
(
review)
and a selection of her Albany CDs (
review).
Dinner is West is a piano trio in eight little movements. These
range through various brands of delight that veer between a hint of
minimalism in the ostinatos, open-air Copland-like Americana, ear-tickling
rhythmic invention, frosty romanticism, early-Fauré cantabile,
a touch of syncopation and smiling rhapsodic serenading. It is by no
means boneless either.
Wood, Water & Land is for solo marimba.
It’s catchy, conspiratorial, confiding and conspicuously virtuosic.
There are plenty of lovely subtle touches, as in the way the music almost
murmurs at 1:50 - quite a feat for a percussion instrument.
Tenancy is for cello and piano. Its three movements are big-hearted
and pulsatingly dramatic and rhapsodic - progress feels instinctive
and the instincts are good. A healthy sense of movement courses through
Dragonfly which is for viola, clarinet and piano. Its clarinet
line occasionally seems to reference Nyman’s
Where the Bee
Dances and none the worse for that. The end is thoughtfully inconclusive.
The music-making and imagination at play in the
Dickinson Songs
pay an individual homage to a style very familiar from Barber’s
songs. The
Dickinson Songs are as quirky as the words they set.
The witty and zany
I Felt a Funeral is truly memorable as also
is the extremely engaging
Hope is the thing with feathers.
Moon surprises with
A Collage of Memories for violin and piano.
The libation of dissonance, disconnect and hysteria is stronger in the
first two pieces than elsewhere. The third,
Reflective, has the
rounded passion and poetry of
Tenancy. In the last two pieces
we meet an exotically dank mix of RVW’s
Lark and Bartók’s
Rumanian Dances plus elements that are loose-limbed and bluesy.
I loved the name of the last piece in the sequence:
Campy, ma non
troppo. The
Rhapsody for solo piano is played by the composer
- she is the pianist throughout. It comes from the part of Moon’s
glossary that accommodates big-hearted dramatic romance alongside fragments
that recalled Einaudi - but there is more active detailing here.
There is nothing here to harm and much to bless yet Moon manages to
steer clear of the land of bland.
You can hear the composer talking about her music
here
and her own
website will offer
further insights alongside those in the fold out ‘sleeve’.
Criticise this disc because it runs for under an hour but the music
assuredly pleases: a tirelessly sincere and touching combination of
song, drama and dance.
Rob Barnett
Full Contents List
Dinner is West for violin, cello and piano (2005)
1 First Impressions 2:34
2 "God Laughs" 3:07
3 Juxtaposin 2:22
4 "The Night Watch" 1:59
5 Form with Circumstance 1:50
6 "A Dream" 2:12
7 Curtain Call 1:24
Wood, Water & Land 4:40
Tenancy for cello and piano (2011)
9 Reflective; Expansive 4:48
10 Playful 2:14
11 Lyrical 4:21
Dragonfly for viola, clarinet and piano (2010) 4:16
Dickinson Songs for soprano and guitar (2006)
13 I'm nobody! Who are you? 0:49
14 The bustle in a house 1:00
15 I felt a Funeral, in my Brain 2:47
16 Hope is the thing with feathers 2:00
A Collage of Memories for violin and piano (2005)
17 Dramatic; intense 1:17
18 Rambunctious 1:18
19 Reflective 2:32
20 Intro; freer 1:50
21 Campy, ma non troppo 2:19
22
Rhapsody for solo piano (2009) 4:22
