Crumb: Variazioni, Echoes of Time and the River [Original recording remastered]

George Crumb (Artist), David Gilbert (Artist), Jorge Mester (Artist), Louisville Orchestra (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 11, 2003)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Original recording remastered
• Label: First Edition
• ASIN: B00008J2QT
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #159,065 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #59 in Music > Classical > Historical Periods > Modern, 20th, & 21st Century > Forms & Genres > Variations

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars two recordings of important historical significance for the Crumb admirer, October 20, 2007

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This review is from: Crumb: Variazioni, Echoes of Time and the River (Audio CD)

This First Edition Music reissue has an important historical significance for the Crumb admirer.

It gathers two Louisville premiere recordings made ten years apart. "Echoes of Time and The River (Echoes II)", a piece dating from 1967, was recorded in 1970 (but, if David Starobin's very useful but not always entirely reliable Crumb discography on the Bridge Records website is to be believed, not released until 1974 when it appeared as Louisville LS-711, paired with Merrill Ellis' Kaleidoscope for Orchestra, Synthesizer and Soprano) and is one of the early Crumb recordings, in a time when there weren't so many. But the previous releases of (among a few others) Jan de Gaetani's recording of "Ancient Voices of Children" on Nonesuch (now on CD as Crumb: Ancient Voices Of Children), of David Burge's recording of Makrokosmos I on the same label (alas not reissued on CD) and of no less than three recordings of Crumb's extraodinary String Quartet for electric strings "Black Angels" (by the New York String Quartet on CRI, the Gaudeamus Quartet on Philips and the Composer's Quartet on Vox, the latter available on American String Quartets, 1950-1970), had already established the composer's stature and originality.

Even without its visual aspect (Crumb has the performers walk on and out of stage in slow, ritualistic processions), "Echoes of Time and The River" is quintessential Crumb, a piece of confounding beauty and sonic invention, full of his unique compositional gestures: mysterious, ritualistic oriental-sounding bells (they are in fact crotales, e.g. antique cymbals), raspy brass playing in their lowest registers like the voice of an awakening giant, whispers and shouts from the orchestra members (brave Louisville players!), terryfying string glissandos anticipating "Black Angels" or mysterious ones playing on the strings' harmonics, piano strings directly harped or altered in various ways, piercing, Varèse-like calls from woodwinds and brass (track 2 at 2:40). Desite a few outbursts, the atmosphere is mostly delicate, crystalline, transparent, sounding very much like the composer's chamber music. For thirty years this was the only available recording. Bridge records has recently produced a new one which I haven't yet heard, by the Warsaw Philharmonic conducted by Thomas Conlin, as part of their on-going Crumb cycle: Complete Crumb Edition, Vol. 6 - Echoes of Time and the River, Gnomic Variations, Four Nocturnes, Lux Aeterna. But I could live very happily with this one alone.

The Variazioni were recorded as late as 1980 (and it remains to this day the piece's only recording), although it is an "early" Crumb composition, dating from 1959, before the composer developped his unique compositional style and sound (like Schoenberg, it started with a piano cycle: the 5 pieces from 1962). It was released on LP as Louisville LS-774, paired with Sidney Hodkinson's "Fresco". Crumb evolved such a highly personal and inimitable language that it is difficult to detect, in the music he composed from the early 1960s on, "where he came from" - except maybe for his use of some of the piano-playing techniques developped by Henry Cowell. It is particularly interesting then to hear him "pay his debts", so to speak: to Schoenberg (Variation 2, a violent and angry Toccata, is evocative of the Five Pieces opus 16, and there's apparently even a direct quotation at the end of the first Fantasia, but I'll confess that I haven't been able to recognize it - maybe the brief string theme at 8:11) and Berg (quotation of the Lyric suite, most in evidence at 11:29).

But a harbinger of the Crumb to come can be heard in the freedom of construction, with three free Fantasias interupting the normal course of the variations, and in some striking coloristic gestures, such as the eerie glissandos of the antiphonal Variation # 1, and the Fantasias, all three featuring the delicate and crystalline trio of mandolin, celesta and harp. The first (5:40) is a hauntingly atmospheric nocturne with harmonics, quarter-tone slides, flutter-tonguing techniques and suggestions of bird songs (reminiscent of those in the first movement of Mahler's first Symphony). The second is a delicate nocturnal serenade with the three instruments supported only by percussion, bringing Schoenberg's Serenade to mind or Britten's eerie atmospheres in "The Turn of the Screw". In the Variazioni Crumb may not yet have fully come to his own, but he would have already been a highly original and interesting composer, had he even stopped there.

As usual with the discs from this label the individual variations are unfortunately not cued. Playing by ear (I don't have the score), this is how I have it (some separations are approximative, when a variation leads directly into another without a clear-cut transition): V1 2:53/ V2 4:06 / Fantasia 1 5:40 / V3 10:49 / V4 12:13 / V5 14:35 / Fantasia 2 16:13 / V6 18:37 / Fantasia 3 20:43.

Too bad the disc is only 45+ minutes long - but this is all the Crumb Louisville have in their catalog, and program coherence was obviously given precedence over time value. Good sound, excellent and informative notes as usual with this series. Not the place to start then for the casual Crumb listener, but an indispensable acquisition for the composer's devotee.