PERSICHETTI Piano Sonatas New World 80677-2 [RB]: Classical Music Reviews

Persichetti - rather like New World - has rarely had a very high profile. His grown-up music has struggled to make itself known and appreciated. Notable among his works are the nine symphonies, four string quartets, twenty-four Parables for various solo instruments and small chamber groups, nine harpsichord sonatas and these sonatas. His twelve piano sonatas span his life from age 24 to five years short of his death. These are succinct pieces none longer than 22 minutes and as short as 5:55.

No. 1 is gawky, unafraid of Schoenbergian dissonance, runaway jazzy and indulging in flights of Nancarrow flyaway. The writing is grand and then sweeps down into bluesy honey and rhetorical angularity. The Second – shorter than the first - was written the same year. It has a devil-may-care casual mastery of the same idiom as the First. Struggle as portrayed in the finale is an integral part of the composer’s compositional make-up. The Third Sonata followed four years later in the thick of WW2. It has a strenuous stride and less of the dissonance than its predecessors. The rhetorical-heroic stance is in keeping with the epic times and with contemporary orchestral works of Harris, Schuman and Copland and indeed his own Third Symphony. This is tempered by a calming balm in the central two movements of four. No. 4 - from four years after the end of the war - returns to the Schoenbergian glimmer and angular rhetoric of the first two sonatas. The central movement and the finale are gentler conceits if hardly unclouded. From the same year comes the much shorter Fifth Sonata which ripples with pianola-chugging anarchy. The next year saw his Sixth Sonata which is a shade more relaxed than No. 4 but still energised by those motor rhythms in the outer movements. Like the Fifth its central core finds more piece though in this case it is a desolate thing looking for human emotion. The Seventh is the shortest of the sonatas running through sing-song folksong to off-key contentment and onwards to darting staccato. The Eighth follows much the same schema with those elysian asides as in 1:01 in the first movement. Its central ‘dream’ is warmly Mediterranean – a slow melting. The finale recalls sprightly Milhaud. The Ninth is a single movement piece in four segments: shatteringly assertive, New York sanguine, glitteringly opalescent, plangent and kindly (CD2 tr. 9) and stone-smashing. The big Tenth Piano Sonata is the longest: romantic and rippling with ringing and rather breathless kinetic power. Some of this recalls Shostakovich. The Eleventh is the most dissonant of the twelve with plenty of thorny rhetoric, macabre impacts and enigmatic clashes. The final Twelfth Piano Sonata (1982) is subtitled “Mirror”. It hums and shouts with upheavals alternating these passages with icy contemplation and stone-jazzy rhythmic assaults.

Geoffrey Burleson who plays the sonatas with such evident zeal and feeling also writes the thoughtful accompanying essay.

These sonatas stand in the same exalted row as the Cage Interludes and Sonatas, the jazz-inspired wildnesses of Kapustin, the Etudes and Sonatas of Sorabji, the piano music of John Foulds – especially the Essays in the Modes, Bowen’s 24 Preludes, Niels Viggo Bentzon’s Det Tempererede Klaver and Medtner’s Ballades. Do explore them – they are well worth your investment in time and attention.

Rob Barnett

Full track details

CD 1: 77:10
Sonata No. 1, Op. 3 (1939) [16:08
1. I. Allegro moderato 3:57
2. II. Adagio 5:03
3. III. Vivace 1:48
4. IV. Passacaglia 5:20
Sonata No. 2, Op. 6 (1939) [10:01
5. I. Moderato 3:05
6. II. Sostenuto 2:23
7. III. Allegretto 1:29
8. IV. Allegro 3:04
Sonata No. 3, Op. 22 (1943) [12:12
9. I. Declaration 3:38
10. II. Episode 4:11
11. III. Psalm 4:23
Sonata No. 4, Op. 36 (1949) [17:47
12. I. Broad 5:15
13. II. Moderately 5:37
14. III. Plaintively—Briskly 6:55
Sonata No. 5, Op. 37 (1949) [8:44
15. I. With Motion 2:36
16. II. Tenderly 3:24
17. III. Briskly 2:44
Sonata No. 6, Op. 39 (1950) [11:25
18. I. Lightly 2:58
19. II. Slowly 3:18
20. III. Blandly 1:38
21. IV. Fast 3:31
CD 2: 72:46
Sonata No. 7, Op. 40 (1950) [5:55
1. I. Moderato 2:41
2. II. Andante 1:27
3. III. Vivo 1:47
Sonata No. 8, Op. 41 (1950) [6:37
4. I. Lightly 2:13
5. II. Quietly 1:52
6. III. Fast 2:32
Sonata No. 9, Op. 58 (1952) [8:53
7. I. Moderato 3:35
8. II. Allegro agilite 1:50
9. III. Larghetto 1:04
10. IV. Allegro risoluto 2:24
Sonata No. 10, Op. 67 (1955) [21:37
11. I. Adagio 6:01
12. II. Presto 3:51
13. III. Andante 7:25
14. IV. Vivace 4:20
Sonata No. 11, Op. 101 (1965) [17:14
15. I. Risoluto 4:30
16. II. Articolato 4:16
17. III. Sostenuto 2:26
18. IV. Leggero 2:48
19. V. Conclusivo 3:14
Sonata No. 12 (Mirror Sonata), Op. 145 (1982) [11:37
20. I. Sostenuto-Risoluto 3:27
21. II. Amabile 2:25
22. III. Scherzoso 2:38
23. IV. Brioso 3:07

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