Customer Reviews

Nancarrow: Studies for Player Piano [Box Set]

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As Ligeti said in an oft quoted letter 'this music is the greatest discovery since Webern and Ives......his music is so utterly original, enjoyable, perfectly constructed, but at the same time emotional' - and this encomium should make one sit up and take notice. These recordings have been issued before - here they are packaged in one box and are available at mid-price. The 5 cd's are each arranged in chronological order - if you want to follow the progress from Study 1 to Study 50 in absolute order then you have to dot about from CD to CD - but I found this planning perfect as you get a variety of the evolving styles on each CD. It certainly is an encyclopaedic progess - and however strange, and clangorously unfamiliar the player-piano may sound at first, the variety, exuberance and death defying mechanical virtuosity, and sheer range that Nancarrow gets out of this medium is breathtaking - and one gets hypnotized. To start the journey, take the earlier studies - 1-12 as these are the most obviously based on blues, spanish idioms, ragtime or other jazz styles and are clearly tonal (or at least modal) - thus prepared, you are then able to take on, and follow the more abstract pieces that follow, which dabble in non-metric ratios and extraordinary feats of canon, which of course is possible as these are piano rolls playing - not technically fallible people. But 'abstract' is what this music never seems - however complex the compositional technique it is always precisely heard and can be enjoyed as exhilarating pungent sound for its own sake. Some of the later studies use two player pianos (overdubbed) and the references to jazz and spanish idioms re-appear in more obvious form - they are actually never quite expunged in the intervening studies.

The booklet that comes with this release cannot be recommended too highly - ranging from fascinating anecdotes about how to punch holes in pianola rolls and the problems of recording digitally all of the studies on one overworked player-piano, to complex compositional issues, resorting to diagrams to make some of the ratios and canons clear. It is a clearly written, user-friendly and a none too technical introduction to this unique, life affirming music. Explore!

A true compositional original, Conlon Nancarrow is best known for these mind-blowing pieces for player piano. Why this particular instrument? Because most of these short works are utterly unplayable by human beings, unless you are capable of say, depressing all 88 keys at the same time. While later in life Nancarrow also wrote a few small pieces for chamber ensembles, his work here is the core of his output and where his imagination truly took flight.

You may not be quite lucid after hearing something like Study No. 25, which has 1,028 notes in its final 12 seconds, or one of my favorites, the so-called "Canon X" (No. 21). It begins with two musical lines at opposite ends of the keyboard: the bass starts slowly and gradually accelerates, the treble begins in a super-fast blur of notes at the highest end and gradually descends, becoming ever-slower. In the middle of the piece, these two lines cross each other before they continue on their separate ways.

In study after study, Nancarrow explores complex relationships between meter and pitch, most of the time with absolutely astounding results. Some of these pieces are a bit more relaxed, with blues and jazz elements giving them an almost homespun quality. But soon the blizzard of notes returns, as the composer makes full use of the player piano's capabilities. You almost can't believe what you are hearing.

A word of caution: You probably don't want to program all five discs straight through. Well recorded as it is, the timbre of the instrument becomes wearing on the ear after awhile. Give your ears a break and to listen to something completely different, like Debussy, Copland -- or maybe Bob Dylan.

An essential collection for some -- I'm not sure whom! -- but something every listener should hear at least once.

Imagine for a moment that you have entered a room full of slightly beat-up upright pianos. These pianos begin to come to life by sputtering out unusual, irregular melodies. The melodies don't fit together exactly, but somehow they seem right sounding together. Before you know it, there are so many pianos playing that you can't keep track of them all and they begin to accrue into an impossibly dense spray of sound. Even if you had a roomful of humans playing these pianos they wouldn't get the overwhelming, unswerving independence of each individual line in each piano. The pianos stop playing and you wonder what just happened....

Hopefully this description will give you some indication of what you're in for with these wonderful studies for player piano. Because Nancarrow was working with these mechanical instruments, he could combine complex ratios of rhythms against each other. Some are so subtle that no human could replicate them exactly. This is not to say that the music is dehumanized. It has a great deal of warmth and humor. What Nancarrow gains from the very mechanical nature of these instruments is part of the appeal.

These studies are as rugged and individual as the composer and, as mentioned earlier, Ligeti's Etudes would never have been possible without Nancarrow's wonderful music.

Conlon Nancarrow is one of those composers who could exist only in real life, as he would be too implausible for fiction. Nancarrow was a composer for player piano, who spent much of his life an expatriate in Mexico, composing music steeped in both early 20th C. jazz and "modernist" classical traditions, and yet music that is entirely individual.

For me, Nancarrow's work functions best when he illustrates the sheer possibility of the keyboard freed from the limitations of a human player or players. The player piano in Nancarrow's work is an acrobat, ready to twirl on wires from which human piano players are unable to dangle. I find least satisfying the experimental works which are centered less on the possibility of the player piano, and more on the synthesis of 30s jazz into a unique classical aesthetic. I freely confess to being a listener rather than a musician in my own right, and some of the experiments just don't keep me hooked.

Still, if you're longing for something quite different and of high quality, Nancarrow may be what you are seeking.

Listening to Nancarrow is a must-do experience. Some might never actually "enjoy" this music but part of what makes it so special is that from the very first minute, like it or not, you are treated to this overwhelming and refreshing presence of an entirely new aspect of music. Nancarrow might remind one of Bach, and I think while this doesn't do justice to the wide range of sources noticeable in his style, there is the transparent utilisation of techniques that reflect Nancarrow's sharp understanding (what many would call "genius" or "natural"), similar to what Bach emits. This grasp of material is wonderfully presented in all sorts of ways and I believe you needn't be an old hand to contemporary classical music or clued up on mathematical composition in order to experience this quality. The amazon review mentions the breaking of internal codes of the imagination. Better to encounter such admittedly explosive music with a mind open to the arousal of expressions - maybe dormant, maybe active - constitutive of any imagination.

I don't own the box set, and I think if you weren't interested in splashing out for the 5 cds, then you should go for the first two volumes. I loved the pieces in them. Volumes 3&4 weren't quite as good, and I have yet to hear the 5th (thus only four stars). If you want to see another side to Nancarrow, check out the Arditti Quartet playing his 3rd quartet, which is different from the studies and will have you hoping for more chamber works to surface. There are also orchestral transcriptions of these piano studies which made clear the inherent diversity of instrumental gestures that Nancarrow breathed into the rolls of the player piano.

Listening to Nancarrow is a must-do experience. Some might never actually "enjoy" this music but part of what makes it so special is that from the very first minute you are treated to this overwhelming and refreshing presence of an entirely new aspect of musical potential. Nancarrow might remind one of Bach, and I think while this doesn't do justice to the wide range of sources noticeable in his style, there is a incisive and technical resourcefulness similar to what Bach radiates. This grasp of material is wonderfully presented in all sorts of ways, and you needn't be an old hand to contemporary classical music or clued up on mathematical composition in order to experience this quality. The amazon review mentions the breaking of internal codes of the imagination. Better to encounter such admittedly explosive music with a mind open to the arousal by forms - maybe dormant, maybe active - constitutive of any imagination.

I don't own the box set, and I think if you weren't interested in splashing out for the 5 cds, then you should go for the first two volumes. I loved the pieces in them. Volumes 3&4 weren't quite as good, and I have yet to hear the 5th (thus only four stars). If you want to see another side to Nancarrow, check out the Arditti Quartet playing his 3rd quartet, which is different from the studies and will have you hoping for more chamber works to surface. There are also orchestral transcriptions of these piano studies which make clear the inherent diversity of instrumental gestures Nancarrow breathed into the rolls of the player piano.

These works are absolutely impossible to describe with words. If you like prestississimo (human hands couldn't play it), polychromatic, highly imaginative works, you could do worse than to listen to this. I have listened to it a dozen times, and it grows with the listening. Nancarrow uses a hole puncher and piano roll paper to create something almost supernatural.

Re-open any closed ideas you had about musical structure, architecture, harmony, rhythm, melody -- and what brings pleasure to your brain. Listening to these pieces inspires whole new forms of composition.

This stuff influenced Ligeti's "Etudes" for solo piano. The music is mind-blowing.