Frederic RZEWSKI (b. 1938)
The People United Will Never Be Defeated! (1975) [62:30]
Four North American Ballads: No.4.Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues (1979) [10:35]
Ralph van Raat (piano)
rec. Bachzaal, Amsterdam, 21-22 April 2007. DDD
NAXOS 8.559360 [73:05]
Greatness in art usually transcends politics. Shostakovich’s appeal extends
beyond communists; Diego Rivera and Pablo Neruda aren’t only admired by socialists;
Leni Riefenstahl has been (quietly) admired and copied, and even the quality
of Arno Breker’s work can be acknowledged without raising too many eyebrows,
these days. The intended (or unintended) political message takes a distant
second place to the artistic quality with which it is conveyed. Certain Frederic
Rzewski knew that, and while his own politics then favored the ‘well-meaning’
brand of totalitarianism, he studied Wagner to learn how to achieve maximum
narrative effect. Rzewski’s music — “19th century grandeur with
20th century compositional techniques” as Ralph van Raat calls
them — deserves to be wholeheartedly embraced.
“The People United Will Never Be Defeated! – 36 Variations on ¡El Pueblo Unido
Jamás Será Vencido!” is in any case tells rather innocuously of the universally
valid ‘human struggle for change’, in this case the struggle to resist the
perfectly undemocratic forces hard at work to unseat the almost-democratic
Salvador Allende. The theme for the Variation comes from Sergio Ortega who
wrote the anthem of the same name to a pop-tune he picked up at the time.
Rzewski’s hour-long treatment for piano takes this tune as its ever-recurring
kernel and goes far and wide with it.
Unfortunately Naxos’s new recording with Ralph van Raat performing gives only
one track for the theme and its 36 variations that very so greatly from the
aggressively abbreviated, to the fractured and dispersed, to dreamy
tinkles of beauty casually scattered about like flower petals. Even the piano
lid gets slammed. Given their similar politics, could it be that Rzewki was
familiar with Marc Blitzstein’s 1920s Piano Percussion Muisc that asks
the same of the performer?
The fourth of the Four North American Ballads—the Winnsboro Cotton
Mill Blues (background video here)—really
works up a storm that is totally irresistible, before dropping some of that
intensity for the lyrical, bluesy beginning of the second part. Van Raat goes
far in that overwhelming direction and in some ways further than the composer.
But he still remains surprisingly earthbound. Even Marc-André
Hamelin, with his more accentuated, machine-like attack and Hyperion’s
slightly better recorded piano sound, doesn’t come close to unleashing the
fury that the repetition-and-increase can unfold live… like I last heard —
with awe — in Severin
von Eckardstein’s 2005 recital at the Kennedy Center.
The authentic struggle of Rzewski himself in this music is gripping; the ridiculous
ease and devastating precision - almost beyond what the score indicates -
with which Hamelin cruises through them breathtaking—in both works. Ralph
van Raat falls between the two; closer to Hamelin but slightly heavier and
the individual notes slightly less defined. Especially in the “Blues”, this
undermines the feeling of being stuck in that factory, but it doesn’t undermine
Raat’s recording. I prefer Hamelin, but given Naxos’ price advantage over
Hyperion and the recording’s fine acoustic (the reverberation of the resonating
strings is superbly caught), Raat remains perfectly competitive and a great
introduction to those who wish to poke in and see what Rzewski’s compositions
are all about. The beautiful 7-CD box (Nonesuch)
of Rzewski playing his own compositions seems to be out of print, but the
mp3
version is still available.
Jens F. Laurson