Giacinto SCELSI (1905-1988)
Suite No. 8 bot-ba (1952) [30:23]
Suite No. 11 (1956) [38:39]
Sabine Liebner (piano)
rec. 28 February 2013, 7 March and 4 May 2014, 30-31 September 2019, 21 May 2020, Deutschlandfunk Kammermusiksaal, Köln
WERGO WER 7328-2 [69:11]
Award-winning pianist Sabine Liebner has recorded Giacinto Scelsi’s Suites 9 & 10 for the Wergo label (review), and the slow progress and multiple recording dates for this second release bears witness to the meticulous research demanded in the preparation of these performances. Scelsi was one an unusual composer, and his importance was only recognised after his death. He was often dismissed during his lifetime, largely because he didn’t notate his music, instead recording improvisations at the piano and having these transcribed by others. The resulting voluminous catalogue of pieces was collected by Scelsi into suites, beginning with the number 8 on account of its mystic significance.
Suite No. 8 is subtitled “Bot-ba”, which means “Tibetan”, but the suite in fact has little or nothing has nothing to do with Tibetan ritual music, being apparently more an expression of Scelsi’s affinity with Eastern philosophy. There are some moments that may remind the listener of gamelan sounds, but this is quite a tough piece that often explores the lower register of the piano with atonal clusters, a technique he claimed to have used “much earlier than the others”, forgetting that Henry Cowell had been using them from 1912. Part of the essence of Scelsi’s philosophy was that sound “should be appreciated for itself and not in relation to what comes before or after.” This is less a negation of music in terms of sound over time but more, as Friedrich Jaecker points out in the booklet notes, “the dominance of sound over tonality.” Single notes do on occasion take on a pedal-tone quality when repeated, but the clusters that form variations over these suspended notes cancel out the ear’s search for conventional tonal centres. I find Scelsi more interesting when he is exploring quieter nuances, but while Liebner’s skill in retaining the improvisatory quality is truly powerful you may find yourself asking the question if you need to hear some of these movements more than once.
Suite No. 11 was his final work in this genre, and was assembled fairly late in Scelsi’s life, at least in the final version recorded here. This recording can therefore lay claim to being a world premičre of the work with its original sequence of movements. It opens ominously, with the tolling of a single low E, and march-like moments in this first movement do nothing to alleviate its gloomy presence. The Tonality of E is carried forward in a second movement that develops from “crystalline arpeggios… later intensifying with aggressive gestures before… ending in an extremely tender manner - ‘come campanelle lontane’ [like distant bells].” This is followed by a Barbaro movement with plenty of rhythmic drive, though the repetitions of one of the main patterns made me feel a bit ill. Again, the more transparent music here holds the interest more, the Velato or ‘veiled’ fourth movement giving new expression to Debussy-like impressionism, although Scelsi can’t resist returning to his splashy clusters as the thing progresses.
Listeners will make up their own minds, but the further I progressed through this recording the less seriously I was able to take it. There is an ‘emperor’s clothes’ feel to much of the keyboard stabbing and frankly naďve sounding cluster material here, and while I have every respect for Sabine Liebner’s skill and undoubted accuracy, the overall feeling is that this makes little difference in the end. Can anyone play the piano this way? Perhaps not, but make enough recordings and keep only ‘the best bits’ and I suspect many could come close, and perhaps fool the critics in a blind test. I have been intrigued by Scelsi in the past and still occasionally revisit Alessandra Ammara’s remarkable Preludi disc on the Arts label (review), but this release has done nothing to advance any affection I might have had for his Suites. The recording is of course excellent and again, I have nothing but admiration for Sabine Liebner’s musicianship, but the rising feeling of wanting to tell the composer to ‘for goodness sake, shut UP!’ is not one I want from a CD.
Dominy Clements
