Frederic Rzewski: The People United Will Never Be Defeated!

This Hyperion Records recording of three dozen variations by Frederic Rzewski, who died this past June at 83 years, based on Chilean composer Sergio Ortega's 1969 piece, ¡El Pueblo Unido Jamás Será Vencido! is a fascinating excursion into what Rzewski wrote came from a realization that "there was no reason why the most difficult and complex formal structures" in so-called classical piano music "could not be expressed in a form which could be understood by a wide variety of listeners."  Also motivated by what he referred to as "a crisis in theory, not only of music but in many different fields, including science and politics," Rzewski wanted, in "the absence of a general theory to explain phenomena and guide behavior," to develop his work so that "I explored form in which existing musical languages could be brought together."

Ortega's work was a merging of classical and popular forms, including the use of traditional Chilean folk instruments, in service of a left-wing movement under the Unidad Popular banner and Rzewski developed his version six years later.  It contains a theme with 36 measures followed by that number of variations, with the latter divided into six groups, so that there are six cycles consisting of six stagees involving what the composer called "simple events," as well as rhythms, melodies, counterpoints, harmonies and combinations of those five.

As formal as the structure is, and there is a place or the performer to improvise after the sixth cycle, which performer Marc-André Hamelin does wonderfully, the untutored listener only has to appreciate the variety of melodic content, other musical material, and, especially, the dramatic differences in dynamics rather than understand the form.  The last 16 minutes is comprised the last two of Rzewski's quartet of North American Ballads, which built on Bach's chorale preludes and American spiritual and blues influences and the results are fascinating and beautiful.

Christian Wolff: Pianist: Pieces

Christian Wolff, who is still among us as he approaches his 87th birthday, has survived all of his compatriots in the so-called New York School of experimental composers centered around John Cage and his theories and approaches to sound and including Morton Feldman, Earle Brown and David Tudor.  The exploration of the possibilities of expression of sound through prepared instrumentation, the use of indeterminacy and chance operations (using, for example, the I Ching to determine what to play next), and other aspects, can be understandably off-putting, though, with an open mind and ears, the ride can be quite intriguing and fascinating.

An example is the three-disc set issued by the Belgian label Sub Rosa called Pianist: Pieces and which provides the dramatic contrast between Wolff's early work during the 1950s heyday of the New York School and a slew of pieces issued between 2000 and 2010 after he retired from teaching from Dartmouth.  Perfomer Philip Thomas provided very useful and interesting notes, observing, for example, that Cage felt that Wolff was the most musical of the group and Thomas outlines how the experimentation and pedigree of musicality through Ives, Webern, Bach, Schumann, Hayden and others can be discerned in the music.

Most helpful is Thomas' evocation of how Wolff utilized discontinuity, silences, isolated and fragmented sounds and indeterminacy of notation. This latter involves indications of which fingers to use, but not which notes; unspecified duration of notes; playing notes in any octave or clef; leaving out instructions for tempo, articulation and dynamics and the "wedge," or a pause or breath of any length.  This allows tremendous freedom, along with significant challenges for the player in working towards a "meeting point" with the composer.  Thomas stated that the experiences of working with Wolff's work "provoke me to play in ways I would not ordinarily consider."

For the listener, at least this one, this also is the case, in that listening to experimentalists like Wolff leads to new ways of hearing music, though none of this is anywhere nearly as shocking and unnerving as it was to those confronting such approaches to sound back in the Fifties.  It is also apt that, when the set was burned to my computer, the pieces were not arranged in the order by disc, but, rather so that the three track 1s are followed by the three track 2s and so on.  This discontinuity and a sort of indeterminacy seems more than fitting and does not, in the least, affect the enjoyment of hearing Wolff's particularized approaches to composing for the piano.