Customer Reviews

Complete Crumb Edition, Volume 5: Easter Dawning, Celestial Mechanics, A Haunted Landscape, Processional

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

While this may not be the best introduction to Crumb's music (the sudden and jarring opening of Easter Dawning may be a turnoff to the uninitiated), it still clearly demonstrates Crumb's innovative genius to the newcomer. The performance of Celestial Mechanics is fantastic -- well balanced, clear, and captures every knock and pluck inside the piano. For this alone, the CD is worth buying.

The other works are lesser masterpieces, but worth exploring. They seem to be focused on suspending time. A Haunted Landscape ambles its way through a myriad of sound textures -- it's over just as you wonder what other sounds the orchestra can produce. The Processional is a stately piece for piano with bittersweet and changing harmonies. When compared with the amplified fireworks of Celestial Mechanics, it's a little tame and unexpected.

As for Easter Dawning, I personally find it kind of weak. The first minute or two are interesting in the harmonic textures that arise from the use of carillon, but the momentum disappears about halfway through it. It's only 3 minutes, but seems a lot longer. And why have two performances of it? Maybe I have very weak ears or a poor attention span, but the two performances that frame the disc sound exactly the same -- they're certainly not different enough to justify the encore.

Still, these are minor points for an outstanding CD. Very highly recommended.

I bought this because my piano duo was to be performing Celestial Mechanics. The performance by Shannon and Song (and their page turner!) is beautifully clean and shimmering. The rest of the pieces on the CD are also fantastic. Even my boyfriend, who is not a musician, loves listening to it.

Crumb's music is multifaceted and diverse, yet distinctive and of a piece. "Easter Dawning"(performances of which open and close this disc) is a short carillon piece. It's dreamy, but compact. "Celestial Mechanics", the longest work here, is for two pianos, and explores an astonishing array of sonorities; some achieved by plucking/scraping strings and utlizing the body of the piano as a percussion instrument. This is often sparse music, with scurrying figures and sustained clusters emerging within the hushed, almost Oriental atmosphere. The louder sections of the piece combine Debussy-like clouds of sound and Bartokian dynamics with an unpredictable, yet logical, structure. The orchestral and solo piano piece are similarlly unique without merely being experimental for the sake of it. This is resolutely Modern music, atonal for the most part, but warm and inviting in a way serial music isn't for many people. Form has been arrived at by intuition, but with an underlying complexity that reveals itself in the sudden blossoming of sound out of pregnant silence. Over the course of a piece, these sound events create a multilayered ecosystem-in-time; like patches of vegetation in a semi-arid expanse.