Customer Reviews

Nancarrow: Studies for Player Piano (arranged for chamber orchestra); Tango?; Toccata; Piece No. 2 for Small Orchestra; Trio No. 1; Sarabande and Scherzo

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To put it bluntly, this is some of the most original and entertaining 20th century music you will ever hear.

Nancarrow's innovative player piano studies were written from the late 1940s to the early '80s and were intended, among other things, to explore ideas that were beyond the capacity of human performance. As electronic music was in its infancy when he began these studies, the player piano was Nancarrow's only outlet for these experiments. Unfortunately, their rhythmic complexities and furious tempos, as well as the unconventional instrument for which they were created, have limited their exposure. Nancarrow's audience in the US is still woefully small.

This recording by the Ensemble Modern does Nancarrow a remarkable service. They've taken pieces long believed to be too difficult for live performance, and play them with the exhileration of a great jazz band. The arrangements, prepared mostly for brass, woodwinds, piano, harpsicord, and percussion, are bright and beautifully played. This music is constantly inventive and enormously entertaining (Nancarrow is serious music's greatest humorist since Charles Ives). Personally, the performance of "Study No. 7" on this CD is my all-time favorite piece of music, period. Included with the dozen arrangements of player piano pieces are selections that Nancarrow wrote for convential instruments.

If you enjoy the more serious side of Frank Zappa, recent works of John Adams, Stravinsky, Bird, Bartok, Raymond Scott, Carl Stalling, or just want to hear a set of jaw-dropping ensemble performances, you've got to hear this recording.

Certainly a departure from his work on the player piano, these are very delicious arrangements of some of his most interesting studies. It was one of my first forays into the world of "serious music" and i have, frankly, never listened to anything, anything, quite the same ever again. I had had no idea music could be like this, like what it sounds like inside my mind. If you are even looking at this page, there is some curiousness; become its slave, and buy this here cd. There is no way you could regret it, even if you do.

The previous reviewers said enough about Nancarrows history so that I won't touch on it. I like the orchestrated versions of the player piano pieces much more than the originals, they're more emotional, have greater dynamics, are less robotic (they swing at times) and the variety of timbres adds a lot to the listening experience. What were originally studies are now fully realized pieces. Perhaps not groundbreaking in the way the originals were, but so what. The beauty of Nancarrows' melodic and sometimes humorous music is really brought out by the orchestration. Very nice.

Conlon Nancarrow composed several works for ordinary instruments at both ends of his career, but in the middle he focused on the player piano. This was partially due to the fact that his music met with little interest or appreciation before the 1970s and also because they require almost inhuman virtuosity to bring off, particularly due to the intensely complex rhythms and cross-rhythms. Indeed the main novelty of Nancarrow's music lies precisely in the ingeniously innovative rhythmic patterns and, well, rhythmic textures.

This disc features live performances - scintillating performances - of several works originally composed for player piano (transcribed by Mikhashoff for ensemble with the composer's blessings), and it should be mentioned that Nancarrow in many cases had ordinary instruments in mind. The music is always meticulously thought out, architectural in the sense of Webern (but also baroque masters); there are audible jazz influences here, and despite the fact that every detail is carefully computed the music achieves a sense of spontaneity and directness.

The result obtained in these recordings differs quite markedly in terms of textures from the player piano originals, however. Notably the music comes across as softer and more roundly shaped than its original form. It certainly add a different layer of excitement, but it also loses the almost alienating, hard and motoric effects of the originals. For the most parts, it works well, and this disc is indeed something as a must for fans of the composer. But it is, in the end, a supplementary issue that cannot in any way replace the remarkable originals.

The disc's interest is of course also due to the inclusion of some pieces originally written for ensemble. The very early Sarabande and Scherzo already displays some of the rhythmic quirks and ingenuities that would become the composer's trademark, but realized withing a light, neo-classical idiom. Piece no. 2 dates from 1986 (more than fifty years later, in other words), and although the style has undergone a metamorphosis, the composer is immediately recognizable. The thematic material is simple, even austere, but Nancarrow's mastery of rhythm makes the whole thing rather mesmerizing. I am less convinced by the Tango? Whether it is in the original pieces or in the arrangements the performances are in any case utterly magnificent, and in that respect this disc is a truly remarkable achievement. I have no qualms about recommending it to fans of the composer, but I am less sure that these versions play up the strength of Nancarrow's unique and remarkable style.

I couldn't get into this CD. I've heard some of Nancarrow's piano pieces and found them interesting, but when taken to a larger scale with an orchestra or ensemble, it sounds formless, senseless, and lazy. The piano trio is alright, but not worth getting the CD for.