Walk in Beauty
Connor CHEE
Navajo Vocable, No.9 (2014) [3:32]
Peter GARLAND (b. 1952)
Walk in Beauty (1989) [16:55]
Kyle GANN (b. 1955)
Earth-Preserving Chant (2010) [11:24]
Michael DAUGHERTY (b. 1954)
Buffalo Dance (2012) [5:27]
John Luther ADAMS (b. 1953)
Tukiliit (2011) [6:47]
Raven CHACON (b. 1977)
Nilchi’ Shada’ji Nalaghali
(Winds that turn on the side from Sun) (2008) [7:34]
Martin BRESSNICK (b. 1946)
Ishi’s Song (2012) [8:43]
Louis W. BALLARD (1931-2007)
The Osage Variation (1967) [4:44]
Jennifer HIGDON (b. 1962)
Secret and Glass Gardens (2005) [11:47]
Peter GILBERT (b. 1975)
Intermezzi (2012-15) [9:22]
Carl RUGGLES (1876-1971)
Evocations – Four Chants for Piano (1937-43, rev. 1954) [11:26]
Brent Michael DAVIDS (b. 1959)
Testament of Atom (2008) [2:13]
Louis W. BALLARD
Four American Indian Piano Preludes (1963) [6:36]
Talib Rasul HAKIM (b. 1940)
Sound Gone (1967) [9:13]
Emanuele Arciuli (piano)
rec. 2016, University of New Mexico Music Department, Keller Hall. Albuquerque
INNOVA 255 [2CDs: 115:39]
Italian pianist Emanuele Arciuli is recognised as
an original and innovative performer, his repertoire ranging from J.S.
Bach to contemporary music, and with a particular affinity for American
composers. This affinity has found its expression in Walk in Beauty,
which reflects Arciuli’s love for the American South-West. Part
of his collection of art from the area appears on the cover of this
impressive two-CD programme, and many of the works performed were commissioned
by him.
Summed up as “a spiritual hike through New Mexico”, we are
taken straight away into the region’s native music with Connor
Chee’s Navajo Vocable for Piano, No.9, which takes a
traditional corn grinding chant and gives it a beautifully simple harmonic
setting, elaborating further into a complete fantasy work, with rising
virtuosity before the final return of the theme. Peter Garland’s
six-movement work Walk in Beauty was inspired by the nocturnal
peyote ceremonies of the Native American Church and the curing ceremonies
of the Navajo. Taking us from sunset to sunrise, the music takes in
the ritual style of repetition that reflects these ceremonies as well
as drawing in significant names as participants in a series of ‘songs’.
These include the dedicatee, pianist Aki Takahashi, as well as composers
such as Lou Harrison and Conlon Nancarrow. The spirit of Erik Satie
is also invoked as a ‘visitor’, and there is plenty of magical
atmosphere, enigmatic dance and monumental climax to be found in this
impressive ‘exotic sonata.’
Kyle Gann wrote his Earth Preserving Chant after hearing about
the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and integrating an American Indian
style chant or prayer in response to Emanuele Arciuli’s commission.
“The song would have to be a model of ecology, or carefully husbanded
resources, using as little material as possible.” A gentle ostinato
in open intervals provides a bed of sound for melodic shapes and developing
pianistic flourishes above, the whole creating a meditative and quite
hypnotic ‘pill’ to be taken before deciding on whether or
not to drill for ever more fossil fuels.
Michael Daugherty’s Buffalo Dance conjures the paintings
of American Native artist Fritz Scholder, celebrating “the spirits,
dreams, stampedes, colors and storms” of these works in a forceful
fantasy that takes full advantage of Arciuli’s remarkable technique.
Tukiliit by John Luther Adams takes us north in its representation
in music of Inuit stone sculptures. The title is the Inuktitut word
for a stone object with special meaning, and the piece itself is both
craggy and monumental in gesture, a reflection of stone’s permanence
and the power of the beliefs invested in them.
CD 1 closes with Nilchi’ Shada’ji Nalaghali or
‘Winds that turn on the side from Sun’ by Raven Chacon.
This departs from conventional piano sonorities in its use of electronic
oscillation, the piano strings freed to vibrate by the player and tones
feeding back through an amplifier turned up to 11. “The pianist
finds that the subtleties in each gesture are determined by the reactions
of the unwieldy instrument.” The listener hears strange sustained
sounds that seem as remote from the piano as can be imagined, the aeolian
effect indeed like a high wind blowing through the metal cables and
struts of some abandoned factory.
A Native American theme opens CD 2, with Ishi’s Song
from Martin Bresnick. Ishi was one of the last of the Yana tribe that
lived in Northern California. He ended up at the University of California
at Berkley, and the initial melody of Ishi’s Song is
based on a recording of his singing in a language that is now lost.
The upper line is a rhythmic pattern around three notes, below and above
which the piano grows in intensity with figures that plunge and leap
around the central ostinato, finally opening out into a reflective coda
in which the inner monologue is re-harmonised with impressionistic colours.
Louis W. Ballard is represented by two widely pieces, The Osage
Variation with its expressive lines being taken from a ballet score,
and the Four American Indian Piano Preludes composed while
Ballard was still a young student and taking lessons from Darius Milhaud.
Ballard was one of the first, if not the first Native American to become
a composer of Western ‘art’ music, but his music remains
hardly known even in America. These pieces have a sparing power, the
Preludes filled with narrative drama, forming vignettes such
as The Hunt and Warrior Dance. These pieces are interestingly
some of the more modern and experimental sounding of this entire programme,
and with their strange, compact character, certainly deserving of attention.
Jennifer Higdon is one of the better known composers in this recording,
her Secret and Glass Gardens “a journey of wonder and
discovery… [reflecting] the paths of our hearts.” Written
for the Van Cliburn International Competition, this is indeed a fantastical
musical traversal of a space in which “every turn of a corner
brings new discoveries.” The only problem with this kind of meandering
is that it gives a rather formless impression, as if we were witnessing
an improvisation by someone searching for ideas with flamboyant style
rather than hitting us with their best material.
Peter Gilbert’s Four Intermezzi are “in many ways
an oblique homage to Brahms.” Gilbert’s attraction to 19th
century music finds its expression in “attempts to encounter it”
rather than imitating or referencing it directly. This creates a personal
and expressive pianistic soundworld with gestures and resonances that
have a neo-romantic basis. With greater abstraction and less of a connection
to the surrounding works this and the following Ruggles cycle are somewhat
remote, but the Four Intermezzi still a fine collection, especially
in the restraint of the final piece. Carl Ruggles’s Evocations
– Four Chants for Piano “is a short cycle which does
not reflect a coherent project nor a predefined dramaturgical strategy.”
With their inclination towards dodecaphony and late-Romantic rise and
fall of intensity the Evocations are comparable with Alban
Berg to a certain extent. The best of these is the captivating final
Adagio Sostenuto.
Brent Michael Davis’s jazz-infused Testament of Atom
is a little lighter than the previous work, but by no means a casually
thrown-together miniature. The title refers to an opposite stance to
the religious ‘Testament of Adam’, thereby celebrating “the
more natural world of science, evolution and free thought.” The
final work, Sound Gnome, by Sufi convert Talib Rasul Hakim,
is a slow and experimental work that takes on some of the hallmarks
of Hakim’s former teacher Morton Feldman. This is arguably to
be found in the sense of space and suspended time in some of the music,
though the more overt repetitions come from jazz-influenced improvisation.
Other effects derive from Crumb-like playing directly on the piano strings,
but the overall impression is of a fine conclusion to this ‘Walk
in Beauty’ – both spiritually and for its inner landscapes.
Well recorded and supplied with notes on each piece, many written by
the composers themselves, this is an unusual but extremely fine and
wide-ranging collection of piano works that has certainly broadened
my horizons. The remarkable pianism of Emanuele Arciuli is rewarding
in its own right, and his refined taste in music will provide a stimulating
listen for anyone willing to explore.
Dominy Clements
