The rear cover of this
CD boldly states that Dennis Eberhard
is "one of America’s leading composers"
although I suspect that his work will
be new to many British listeners. It
is a shame then that the insert notes
provided by the composer himself are
not embellished with any biographical
detail or background. Instead there
is an account (somewhat disjointed)
of the events that were influential
in the composition of the pieces themselves
and the inspiration afforded to the
composer by his friendship and admiration
for Russian pianist Halida Dinova, the
dedicatee of the Piano Concerto.
Both works share the
common theme of human-instigated technological
disaster and the concern of nuclear
proliferation. In the case of the Piano
Concerto, the composer was at work on
the second movement when he heard news
of the Russian submarine, ‘Kursk’, stranded
with its crew at the bottom of the Barents
Sea. Prometheus Wept draws on
unlikely parallels between Aeschylus
and Greek mythology and the Chernobyl
nuclear catastrophe, whilst the initial
stimulus originated from a commission
from Performers and Artists for Nuclear
Disarmament for a memorial to the victims
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Eberhard states that
the Piano Concerto was composed as "a
celebration of our indomitable human
spirit". It is a major concerto
in every way: three substantial movements
totalling over forty-one minutes. The
work’s subtitle, Shadow of the
Swan, is drawn from Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s
poem ‘Requiem for Challenger’, in which
the poet describes the explosion of
the ill-fated spacecraft as "this
great swan of death made from the last
breath of seven evaporated souls".
The imagery is powerful, as is the opening
movement, The Fall. The music
takes us from densely chromatic, billowing
clouds of string sonority that gather
ominously over the piano line through
passages of anxious agitation and nervous
repose, punctuated on a number of occasions
by climaxes of cataclysmic proportions.
The Polish school of Lutosławski
and Penderecki could be cited as one
of the influences here although the
transformation is stark when, following
the movement’s final devastating descent
into the abyss, there is a sudden switch
into music of contrasting simplicity
in the second movement, Requiem.
To draw a further Polish comparison,
the string writing here recalls at times
the Third Symphony of Gorecki; the stylistic
metamorphoses all the more moving for
its stark and sudden immediacy. So far
so good. However, when the final movement,
The Quickening, opens with familiar
repeating ostinato patterns in the piano
and wind accompaniment that could very
easily be mistaken for the work of John
Adams, the effect is both disconcerting
and disorientating. Eclectic the language
may be, but the stylistic shift is one
step too far, the cumulative power of
the music destroyed by the apparent
stitching together of a pot-pourri of
external influences. As a result, the
work as a whole struggles to sustain
its substantial duration - a great shame
as elsewhere there is much to admire
in the undoubted sincerity of Eberhard’s
inspiration.
Combining texts from
Revelation and Aeschylus, Prometheus
Wept begins with a four-minute chant
in Russian liturgical style, in which
the solo bass progresses chromatically
from the lowest to the highest notes
of his register. The music for strings
that follows takes us back once again
to a language not too far removed from
that of Penderecki, long string glissandi
combining with passages of more diatonically
orientated harmony to create a static
and ultimately deeply depressing sound-world.
In truth I had already lost interest
by the time the bass had completed his
opening declamation. Despite the gravity
of the anti-nuclear statement the composer
intended, the piece has the effect of
numbing the emotions rather than striking
at their very core.
Of the two works it
is the Piano Concerto that comes off
the best. It is a major undertaking
that shows initial promise but in the
end fails to deliver. Both the performances
and the sound are acceptable although
Naxos have produced better on both counts
elsewhere in their American Classics
series.
Christopher Thomas
St. Petersburg Cappella Symphony Orchestra/Alexander
Tchernoushenko