William Grant Still
is often seen as the nexus between European
derived classicism and African-African
procedures. And that’s something that
emerged from his studies with Chadwick
and Varèse and his writing for
the Paul Whiteman band et al
and also of course his espousal of jazz,
spirituals and blues in his own music.
This disc collates
some significant piano (or piano adapted)
works from the 1930s, with the exception
of Africa which is in any case
an orchestral work heard in this realisation
for solo piano by the composer’s wife,
Verna Arvey.
The notes by Judith
Anne Still are very keen to co-opt everything
here to the religiose and to black experience
so maybe I’m missing something but the
Three Visions sound to me pure
Ravel-and-water. The jagged impressionism
of Dark Horsemen, the first of
the three, is followed by big hued romanticism
and the radiant chords of the last are
attractive – but no more. There’s more
Ravel in the Seven Traceries, written
in 1939, where the tints of the blues
in the second Mystic Pool is
more evident. But these are really disappointingly
undifferentiated from each other for
all the pictorialism and quasi-descriptiveness.
Wailing Dawn is perhaps one of
the more distinctive with its strong
chording, the subtlety of which was
a Still speciality.
Many will know The
Blues, which is derived from the
ballet Lenox Avenue and was so
memorably recorded by Louis Kaufman
and receives a pleasing reading here,
though I prefer the bite of the string
and piano arrangement. A Deserted
Plantation was one of the works
Still wrote for the Whiteman orchestra
and he writes a nicely harmonised Spiritual,
an echt-Broadway type song and a jazzy
dance, with Ragtime hints, in that order.
Africa embeds some ruminative
bluesy chord sequences with clear impressionism
but it doesn’t sustain its length and
it’s no surprise that Still took it
apart and recycled it later in other
works.
Still was at his finest
in his larger scale orchestral music
and his piano works, however adeptly
done by Mark Boozer, left me disappointed.
I’ve no problem with political agendas
(they exist to be ignored) but I do
have a problem with thinness of thematic
material. Much of this sounds like the
scraping of the Still barrel.
Jonathan Woolf
Mark Boozer (piano) 
