Looking at the titles
of some of these works — Crash!,
Screams — and reading that the
composer made his firm commitment to
serial music at the age of 20 in 1977
(That’s roughly equivalent to a Russian
joining the Communist Party for the
first time in 1990 in the sense that
in 1976 Philip Glass’s "Einstein
on the Beach" had opened at the
Metropolitan Opera in New York, and
within a year the anti-serialist Neo-Romantic
revolution was in full swing world-wide.).
When I put the disk on to play I wasn’t
expecting to enjoy or even make any
sense of what I heard.
Imagine my surprise
and delight then to discover what wonderful
music this is! Yes, Blank uses some
rough sounds, but he accomplishes much
more with them than, say, Boulez or
Varèse accomplish with these
very same sounds. There is everywhere
a sense of structure, balance, progression,
and drama. The photo of the composer
on the cover of the disk booklet shows
a handsome young man looking smug and
sure of himself, and, after hearing
his music, you smile with him and agree
that he has every right to be proud.
Of course Blank isn’t a young man any
more; he’s 47 (but he does what I do
in portraying himself as he wishes to
be seen). The music requires, and receives,
state-of-the-art recording.
The trio is
pretty scrapy in sound but not gratuitously
so. It’s a fascinating work that keeps
one’s attention and makes a worthwhile
statement. The Anacrousis — a
Greek word with several meanings, one
of which refers to the loud crashing
noise that got the audience’s attention
at the beginning of a concert — is one
of the best all-percussion works I’ve
ever heard. One is not put off by noise,
but is drawn into the sound and fascinated
by the contrasts and motion. Even the
work called Screams for large
ensemble is remarkably full of interesting
transitions and contrasts. Ebbe(n)
means "Ebbtides" and being
for full orchestra offers the composer
even more opportunities for substantial
musical statements and he makes good
use of them. All in all I look forward
to hearing this disk many more times
and to hearing more from William Blank
in the future.
Paul Shoemaker