Perle: Solos & Duos
Alexi Kenney, violin; Curits Macomber, violin;
Charles Neidich, clarinet; Jay Campbell, cello;
Edwin Barker, double bass; Steve Dibner, bassoon;
Horacio Guiterrez, piano; Leon Fleisher, piano; Richard Goode, piano;
Conor Hanick, piano; Michael Brown, piano; Shirley Perle, piano;
Bridge 9546 A/B
Disc One: Total Time:  58:46
Disc Two: Total Time:  58:59
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

American composer George Perle (1915-2009) is best known for his exploration of a more accessible 12-tone language focused around sets of pitches that in and of themselves created their own “12-tone tonality”.  This focus more on intervallic relationships allowed for an often more expressive style.  One can hear how this develops throughout Perle’s career in this new collection of a cross-section of works for solo instruments on Bridge Records.

Most of the recordings here come from the last decade, many around the centenary of Perle’s birth.  Performers here are among the best in interpreting 20^th-Century repertoire and here perform pieces often written specifically for them.  The music is a sort of overview of Perle’s approach to writing for solo instruments from the earliest set of clarinet sonatas from 1943 (aptly performed by Charles Neidich; who also performs the 1972 Sonata quasi una fantasia) to the more recent Bassoon Music (2004) written for Steven Beck who is featured here (as well as in the earlier 3 Inventions from 1962).  These are the sole wind pieces on the album.

Perle wrote several works for solo cello that are performed here by Jay Campbell.  A set of Hebrew Melodies (1945) opens disc two which also includes a 1947 solo cello sonata and the Lyric Piece (1946).  These provide an interesting microcosm of approach for the instrument that can me compared to the composer’s 1985 cello sonata with piano that appears on disc one.  That album opens with solo violin sonata (1953) featuring Alexi Kenney.  This is a quite accessible way to invite listener’s into Perle’s musical approach.   Serial composers also tend to find kindred spirits in the Baroque and its forms and one can here this in the aforementioned bassoon inventions as well as in the “Sarabande” from the Solo Partita (1965).  A Monody II (1962) features Edward Barker in a work that allows us to compare the timbre and approaches to the double bass and then hear an equally brief work for solo bassoon thereafter.

Spread throughout the album are three works for solo piano.  Horacio Gutierrez brings us the 9 Bagatelles (1999), which were composed for him.  Here is a collection of different moods that features interesting exploration of rhythm and harmony while also exploring the range of the keyboard.  Also featured are the Musical Offerings (1998) written for Leon Fleisher’s 70^th birthday, who performs it here.  The piece is notable as a sort of protest work that was connected to Fleisher’s departure as Music Director at Tanglewood in 1984.  The piece also has a reflective quality that finds Perle connecting some of the stylistic tonal composers of the early 20^th Century (Schoenberg, Scriabin, and Debussy) into subtle references in the writing.  The set closes with Richard Goode’s performance of a work also written for him, Ballade (1981).  In keeping with a trend that was appearing in contemporary music in this period, Perle also shifts away from the more Baroque models and instead flirts with Romanticism with a variety of lush harmonies and a sort of emotional rollerscape ending in a whisper.

While one might prefer to hear the chronological progression of Perle’s music, the set does a good job of balancing the different solo timbres which allows for some aural comparison across the spectrum of Perle’s development.  The music itself is quite accessible and that is another of the hallmark’s of Perle’s musical language that, as intricately designed as it is, it communicates well.  As a sort of overview of his chamber music, the current collection is an excellent way to enter in to the composer’s sound world with excellent performances that are captured in a fine acoustic.  Many of these recordings come from a wide swath of locations and times but they have been balanced well to provide a smooth transition from one to the other.  Those who come across this release will likely already know what is in store, but there is a great opportunity to discover one of the unique voices of the 20^th Century.

Walker: 5 Piano Sonatas
Steven Beck, piano.
Bridge 9554
Total Time:  53:13
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

Pianist Steven Beck’s new release provides an excellent way to get a sense of the music of George Walker (1922-2018).  He was one of the first of a small group of African American composers in the 20^th Century to break through into the modern concert world both as a performer and composer.  In the case of the former, he was one of the few composer-pianists to record excellent versions of the Beethoven “Emperor” concerto and the Brahms second concerto.  More importantly, his work as a composer brought him recognition and acclaim including a Pulitzer Prize in 1996 for his work Lilacs.  Walker was among the many Americans who studied with Nadia Boulanger.  As the first black person to be accepted at the Curtis Institute, he would study with Rudolf Serkin and that would lead to his debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Walker is one of the few 20^th-Century American composers to have written such a great number of sonatas.  The five pieces on the present release provide an overview of his compositional development across a fifty year period.

The first sonata was revised in 1991, but was composed in 1953.  The style has a decidedly modernist feel with interesting splashes of jazz harmonic flirtations.  Heavily contrapuntal in its outer movements, the center provides a nice contrast of lyricism in a set of variations.  At fourteen minutes it is the longest of the sonatas in his oeuvre.  Written in 1956, the second sonata is cast in four terse movements.  Here motivic development and a more expansive angular style comes to the forefront with a noir-ish Adagio movement providing a stark contrast to the preceding Presto.  Both these early works feature melodic lines that seem to lie at the edge of serialism and by 1975 when he completed the third sonata, this compositional approach was beginning to appear in his music.  While not quite strictly adhering to rows, the third sonata does have a harsher tone and scalar writing that is a distant cousin to Messiaen.  With titles like “Fantoms”, “Bells” and “Choral and Fughetta”, the sonata is a microcosm of an almost deconstructive reality that has stripped music to its barest components.  Perhaps Walker is also asking his listener to consider what music is in this work as well with its small outbursts seeming to connect to the frustrations of the age.  The fourth sonata was written in 1984 and is comprised of just two lengthier movements.  In many respects, this work feels like a reflection of Walker’s sense of place in American music with veiled nostalgic gestures that hearken back to his earlier modernist style and even a quotation of a spiritual.  The latter is a bit rare in his work, but here “Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child” seems to add a sense of poignancy to the piece with deeper, personal meaning in what is an otherwise more abstract piece.  Only one brief self-contained movement greets us in Walker’s final sonata from 2003.

Walker’s music is quite accessible with its modernist harmonic ideas providing an easy point to enter into his music.  There is a great sense of drama and a great deal of interesting contrapuntal writing that propels the music forward with great energy.  Slower sections can provide a rather reflective moment that allows for briefer repose as these harmonies expand.  Walker’s focus on motivic components provides a further component that helps make the pieces a bit virtuosic as these segments need to be brought out.  Beck handles these aspects quite well with crystal clear articulation and just enough pedal for the slower movements to bring out the harmonic clusters.

Steven Beck’s performances move us carefully through these stylistic shifts in Walker’s style while also playing in a way that helps us hear the overlapping contrapuntal writing that appears across all five works.  Each of these sonatas are spread across Walker’s life and their intricate sound feel like they are also hearkening to the composer’s experiences at some deeper, abstract level.  Beck’s performance bring these threads out well and his performance is captured in excellent sound.  He reminds us that it is more than time to bring George Walker’s music to a greater public with pieces that sit alongside any of the other great 20^th Century American piano music.