Conlon Nancarrow is the acknowledged grandfather of any modern
player piano ‘school’ which can be said to exist, not only for
the fact that he brought the instrument back from almost total
obscurity. Having become little more than a footnote in music-instrument
history, Nancarrow’s single-minded purpose in using the player
piano to explore remarkable compositional techniques and the performance
of ‘unplayable’ piano music which is nonetheless approachable
and often quite good fun is one of the great legacies of musical
thought and research in the last century, and so it is hardly
surprising that composers have been inspired to follow in his
footsteps. Ligeti is a notable example of one who responded to
Nancarrow’s imagination, and one whose style is eminently suited
to some of the extended technical possibilities of the player
piano. The realization of all of the remarkable music on this
and MDG’s other excellent Nancarrow discs is the work of Jürgen
Hocker, who worked closely with Nancarrow and many of the composers
on this disc. He has restored his own Ampico-Bösendorfer, performed
and promoted Nancarrow’s music all over Europe, and motivated
and created the possibility for commissions from new generations
of composers.
Something akin to
the seemingly infinite possibilities in electronic music, the
player piano is a musical playground which requires careful
use unless it is to become a kind of ego-trip fantasy fairground.
Fortunately for us, Hocker and MDG have used sensitivity and
discretion in the composers and works which are presented here.
True, there is plenty of madness and some heavy piano-bashing
which may drive many up the wall, but if you know and appreciate
the work of Nancarrow then you will most certainly want to extend
your appreciation of his remarkable instrument. Many of the
works here are remarkable, some incredible, some great fun,
others more enigmatic and heavier on the brain, but all have
their own rewards and share that sense of pioneering experiment
which seems to be a built-in feature of the player-piano.
Earliest of the
works here is James Tenney’s Music for Player Piano,
which is rich in the avant-garde spirit of its time. Both of
Tenney’s works owe a technical debt to Nancarrow, the first
being a sequence presented in its ‘normal’, and subsequently
inverted form. The Spectral Canon for Conlon Nancarrow reveals
much in its title, but the effect is quite startling, like Glenn
Branca’s overtone music. The piece is a rhythmic canon with
24 voices, building steadily until the texture is saturated
with an impossible density of notes on one monumental chord.
Tom Johnson’s work
is often minimalist and monothematic in terms of themes and
ideas, and his Study for Player Piano is ‘as much music
as possible with as little effort as necessary.’ Instead of
rows of perforations, Johnson uses continuous slits in the piano
roll, resulting in pure glissandi or absolute clusters over
40 notes. This is another remarkable effect, but the musical
rewards are ultimately mechanical rather than anything else.
Daniele Lombardi’s
Toccata for Player Piano is another spectacular experiment
with ‘some of the peripheral aspects of the mechanical system,
such as unplayable elements and the mirroring of complex patterns.’
The work is indeed impressive, but actually sounds fairly approachable
to a skilled piano duo or duet. More interesting to my mind
is some of the work of Steffen Schleiermacher, whose mad sound
palette includes prepared ‘percussion’ piano effects. His pieces
involve two player pianos, which engagingly contrast different
rhythms and effects, often with a good deal of humour. This
is reflected in some of the titles, such as the incredible and
highly entertaining Björk’s://prep@red pl@yer pi@no p@ir
p@s@c@gli@, and The Loneliness of the Key in the Lock,
in which identical material from the standard player piano is
gradually taken over by that of the prepared instrument. Other
highlights come from Schleiermacher’s oeuvre is from his excellent
set of studies, the Fünf Stücke für Player Piano. These
works were originally conceived for fairground organ but were
essentially re-written for the player piano, and the influences
on Ligeti and Nancarrow are freely acknowledged by the composer,
who has a knack of making the impossibly technical bravura of
the player piano both approachable and enjoyable by throwing
all kinds of eclecticism into the mixture.
Krzysztof Meyer,
a Polish composer whose work includes larger scale symphonic
and choral work, introduces different colours to the music with
the addition of a synthesizer for Les Sons Rayonnants.
The synthesizer part was originally intended for live woodwinds,
but this turned out to be too difficult to realise in performance.
Meyer’s work has a different feel and atmosphere to the ‘crash
bang wallop’ of some of the other pieces, grand though they
are. The contrast is welcome, but the synthesizer sounds often
sound a bit weedy and redundant next the butch percussiveness
of the two player pianos. I’m not sure what effect the original
concept would have sounded like, but Meyer and Hocker could
always go all out and synchronise the pianos with another live
instrument, say, a decent barrel organ. Many of the artificial
sounds are pipe based, and percussion effects are also a feature
of such instruments: maybe not quite ‘The Busy Drone’
in full cry, but speakers next to live instruments are often
problematic (and yes, that opening tune is Alec Templeton’s
Bach goes to Town!).
Talking of Bach,
Marc-André Hamelin takes us further with a remarkable Solfeggietto
a cinque after C.P.E. Bach, which reminded me a little of
Bob James’ experiments with Scarlatti on the Moog synthesizer.
This is a kind of extended or hyper-Bach, de-humanised and brought
into entirely different realms, but fascinating and refreshing
nonetheless. Hamelin’s Pop Music transports us with
a tremendous adaptation and development of ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’,
whose obsessional repetition, jazzy interjections and cumulative
build-up towards the end create a romp almost beyond imagining.
Just when you thought the player piano could be taken no further,
Hamelin gives us the Circus Galop for two player pianos.
This showstopper has elements of Gershwin, Gottschalk, Grainger
and Gawd knows who else, and as a novelty item is worth the
price of this disc on its own. Hamelin freely admits that the
reason for having two player pianos is that there are too many
notes for the pneumatic system of one instrument to cope with,
and the building crescendos are describes as human pyramids,
that of the coda having ‘each added member juggling something
different, and ending with a fatal accident’.
Heavens, this is a
cracker of a CD. MDG’s production is well-nigh perfect as ever,
with extensive booklet notes by Jürgen Hocker and some of the
composers, and an exemplary recording. As ever with this series,
the motor noise of the air pumps for the player pianos has been
eliminated by placing them in a room outside the recording location,
an attractively roomy church acoustic which gives the music an
appealing concert setting without clouding the detail through
having too much resonance. The use of two instruments provide
some spectacular antiphonal/stereo effects for the hi-fi buffs
and the music, while sometimes a little wild and abrasive, is
more often than not stimulating and life-enhancing, to my mind
at least. The end of Circus Galop made me laugh out loud
the first time I heard it, and I know this will be one of those
soundtracks I can always turn to for the darker moments in life,
like having to clean the cat box or losing the tax returns.
Dominy Clements
Bösendorfer
Grand Piano with Ampico Player Piano Mechanism (1927)
