Pianist Christina Petrowska Quilico released a collection of interesting French Piano music earlier on the Navona label and now turns her attention to a survey of American music on Retro America (Navona 6361) available as a digital download and on streaming platforms.  

The music on this release covers a quite wide gamut of music moving from early avant-garde to jazz.  It is interesting to see Henry Cowell's (1897-1965) brief Six Ings (c. 1922) kick off this release.  It is an early example of the composer's experiments expanding sound.  In this work, Cowell takes a basic interval, the third, but somehow creates a quality that is more atonal.  The brevity of each movement (the whole piece takes about 9 minutes) is also in keeping with the short piano works of Webern and Schoenberg, and yet Cowell's rhythmic ideas are still well-rooted in American syncopations.  Next up is a movement from Frederick Rzewski's (1938-2021) North American Ballads in its solo version, Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues (1979) is another example of American avant-garde piano writing.  Rzewski liked to take American popular forms (blues, jazz, folk song, etc.) and then merge them into often dense and powerful textures with tone clusters being a common technique as well.  His work often shifts from simplicity to complexity and that can be experienced in this piece.  George Gershwin is the iconic American composer whose plethora of great songwriting made his wish to be respected as a serious concert composer always elusive.  Quilico shifts gears to present a suite of eight of the composer's greatest tunes rather than his Preludes.  Of course, one intriguing connection is that Gershwin took some private composition lessons with Cowell.  Thus by placing these brief little performances here on the album we have a rather nice overall balance to the opening piece.  It also provides even greater context for what the other composer's were familiar with and how that influence was integrated into their music.  The performances also seem to be informed by the composer's piano rolls and performance practice/style.

Composer Bill Westcott (b. 1948-), like William Bolcolm, has spent his life exploring jazz and blues forms of the early 20th Century.  His little suite features four movements that explore ragtime, blues and boogie woogie.  Four pieces by Meredith Monk (b. 1942) move us closer to some of the later developments in music that merges American jazz and concert music.  The great jazz pianist Art Tatum (1909-1956) is honored with performances of two jazz standards ("I'll Never Be the Same"; and "Don't Get Around Much Anymore").

The program of Retro Americana is a well-thought out one with music that all has one finger in the pie of early 20th-century musical forms.  From the serious to the more popular and accessible styles, Quilico's skill both as an interpreter of lyrical romantic writing, technical virtuosity, and a fine sense of jazz syncopation styles and performance make for a real treat for fans of American music.

Mozart: Solo Keyboard Works
Keiko Shichijo, piano
Bridge 9570
Total Time: 76:24
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

Musicologists love to speculate about what music sounded like in former eras.  In the Classical Period, in particular historians are given a variety of details about what courts had what instruments and the possible performance practices that may have occurred there.  It is also hard to realize that this could be quite regional which lends a whole other dimension to rediscovering many familiar works.  Mozart’s keyboard music is an endless source of speculation in this regard as artists gain access to the different keyboards developing into the modern piano.  The instruments themselves often have quite distinct characters and sounds which can lead to endless variety as different performers apply their own interpretive skills and techniques to these repertoire pieces.  They do allow us to hear them with new ears and often this can be quite striking.

For this recording, Keiko Shichijo is performing on a Stein fortepiano ca. 1802 (restored by Sietse Kok).  Mozartean’s may recall that Mozart met Johann Andreas Stein (1728-1792) in 1777 while in Augsburg.  Stein’s new piano had an improved action that allowed the hammer to move rapidly to the string allowing for a lighter action translating into a performer’s opportunity to create more subtle performances.  It also made rapid passagework a bit easier.  All told, it allowed for a quite different experience from a traditional harpsichord, though admittedly the instrument does have moments where that ancestor can be discerned in its sound still. The middle register has the most “piano-like” quality.  The restored keyboard here does allow for a crisper sound and one can also hear how one can also shape and add more emotional flexibility in playing.  There is a nice resonant quality to the instrument as well.  Other period pedagogical approaches have also been explored for this performance which makes it a fascinating listen.

This new collection of Mozart’s keyboard music brings two shorter works and three full sonatas that allow for a blend of technical finesse and poise as well as interpretive flexibility.  The opening Fantasia in d, K. 397 allows for an easing into the sound of the fortepiano that Shichijo is using and that helps set the stage for the rest of the program.  The substantial Rondo in a K. 511 also provides an interesting piece to add some flair. The Sonata in D, K. 311 allows for an “Allegro con spirito” that can move along at a nice clip and there is some rather striking passage work here that helps elevate the performance.  Shichiko’s shaping of phrase and her ability to bring out the accented left-hand material is quite impressive.  Slow movements also have a nice flow and subtle beauty that reaches that sublime quality which is a hallmark of Mozart’s music.  The Sonata in G, K. 283 and Sonata in a, K.310 provide some additional opportunities to hear some of the interesting ways rhythmic vitality can be achieved on this particular instrument.

Bridge’s production matches the excellent performances here as well.  The accompanying booklet focuses more on the instrument and less on the overall structure of the music to help provide some historical context for Shichijo’s approach.  The performance space captures the sound well with just a touch of room ambience to warm the sound a bit.  The crystalline quality of the instrument does come through well and the repertoire allows ample moments to show off the unique qualities of the instrument itself.  The instrument adds its own character as a result which will likely delight fans of period performance while giving an interesting alternative sound for the more familiar of these sonatas.