No easy listening here,
but there are many rewards for the brave.
Philip Howard is a young pianist (he
was born in 1976) who is himself a composer.
He won the BBC Young Musician of the
Year Composer Award at the age of 15.
He seems to be a staunch advocate of
the more hard-hitting face of modernism,
as well as being pretty fearless, if
this repertoire is anything to go by.
The mix of young and
more established composers is a fruitful
one. The programme starts with a piece
by Northern Irish composer Paul Whitty,
a name new to me. Unfortunately no biographical
material on Whitty, or any of the other
composers on the disc, is provided
(try http://www.composer.co.uk/composers/whitty.html
for a fuller picture).
Together with another featured composer
on this disc, Paul Newland, Whitty is
a founding member of Ensemble [rout].
The disc, indeed, takes its title from
Whitty’s piece, which focuses on the
idea of the skin holding secret information
about ourselves. This is translated
into musical terms by having tiny cells
of notes ‘all colliding, contracting
and expanding in high-energy bursts
of information relayed with frantic
intensity’, as Howard puts it in his
accompanying commentary. It is certainly
hectic (Track 1), with a moment of repose
which reveals ‘the ever-present background
to all music: silence’. Max Wilson’s
Zeitlin [on] of 1988 takes the
jazz of Denny Zeitlin as its starting
point (Zeitlin, as a by-the-way, provided
the music for the 1978 remake of the
film Invasion of the Body Snatchers).
Zeitlin [on] even includes an
allusion to Zeitlin’s take on Round
Midnight. There is an obvious jazz
influence, but Wilson manages to speak
with his own voice that seems to emanate
more from the sphere of ‘Classical’
contemporary music (Track 2).
The fiendish, individual
music of the great and sadly missed
composer Iannis Xenakis is captured
here in an account of the 1973 piece,
Evryali. Evryali was one of the
three Gorgons of Greek mythology (the
others being Stheno and the much more
famous Medusa), whose hair was comprised
of serpents. Xenakis’s piece oozes energy
and it is a pity that Howard misses
out on the purely elemental side of
this piece. A shame, as this is the
stuff of legends and, indeed, nightmares,
in its horrific imagery. Claude Helffer
has made something of a speciality out
of Xenakis’s piano music and his version
on Montaigne MO782137 is ultimately
to be preferred.
Paul Newland (http://www.bmic.co.uk/Composers/cv_details.asp?ComposerID=1546)
has stated that ‘simplicity allows the
mind freedom to imagine’. Single, violent
notes stab their way out of a pristinely
beautiful pianissimo bed of sounds
and punctuating silence. The work was
composed in Hiroshima and the composer
quotes haiku on the score – their enigmatic
aspect suits Newland’s music perfectly.
The disc finishes with
two works by established composers,
Michael Finnissy and Morton Feldman,
each of which is fairly extended. Finnissy’s
Eadweard Muybridge-Edvard Munch
of 1997 is very, very sparse music (Track
5). Muybridge was a photographer who
experimented with successions of images
of objects in motion (horses, wrestlers,
etc); the Munch reference is to a disturbing
series of photos that artist made between
1902 and 1908. Thanks to companies like
Metier and NMC, Finnissy enjoys a fairly
large discography at present, and Eadweard
Muybridge-Edvard Munch is a welcome
addition. There are more explosive moments
(around eight minutes in, for example)
and here, once again, perhaps Howard
could have been even more frenetic in
realising these outbursts.
The disc ends with
Feldman’s very last piano piece, Palais
de Mari. The title refers to archaeological
discoveries around the ancient city
of Mari in what is now Syria. The work
contains shifting repetitions that inspire
Howard in his booklet notes to wax lyrical
on the concept of time and memory. Howard
has all the qualities of intense concentration
to bring the work off – and listen to
the stunning way he projects the music
around the seven minute mark as being
as delicate as porcelain. This is truly
meditative music that is ultimately
uplifting and refreshing.
Highly recommended,
but bear in mind it is no easy ride.
Colin Clarke
Philip Howard (piano). 