Customer Reviews

Preisner: 10 Easy Pieces for Piano

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

 

 

The ten pieces on this CD are simple - and most of their beauty results from this simplicity. They have the lyrical, dreamlike tone we know and love in the music of Zbigniew Preisner. And it's always a nice dream expressed by these melodies - some are outright happy tunes ('To See More' and 'The Art Of Flying') or even funny ('A Tune A Day').
Lesdzek Mozdzer gives them a jazz-like touch in his improvisations, which prevents the music from turning into too sweat candy, but also lets the themes appear the more clear and fresh in their simple beauty (warning! some are earcatchers).
This is music you need no guide for, no knowledge of technique, history of music and biography of the artist, as it speaks for itself.
People who expect hard intellectual tasks, headaches when listening first, and proud membership in an exclusive circle of distinct experts when they got used to ('understood') a certain, 'difficult style' will not like this CD.
After all it's not pure jazz or demanding contemporary music, but something as difficult as simple, yet intelligent, music you can just listen to and enjoy.

Like most who've fallen in love with Preisner's work, I first became familiar with the very powerful, awe-inspiring music from Kieslowski films. 10 Easy Pieces is very different, but only inasmuch as it lacks the instrument combinations and complexity of his earlier work. As the title suggests, this was completely intentional by the composer, who perhaps just wanted to take a break or just do something different for a change after 'A Requiem for a Friend.' While the 'Preisner's Music' compilation may be better for someone generally interested in a range of Preisner's work, 10 Easy Pieces nonetheless captures his genius in its simplicity, and is a must for any fan.

I am a fan of all kinds of music - from hard/alternative rock (my last two CDs purchased were Staind and Nickelback) to house/trance and other kinds of club music, to country, to classical. I have to say that when I come home at the end of the day and settle under my down comforter with a book and a cup of tea, this has been the background music of choice almost every day since I picked up this CD a few months ago. This is some wonderful piano music, composed and performed with tenderness. It is sweet and melancholy and a refreshing 45 minutes of simplicity in this complicated world.

I must also state that saw "Blue" and "Red" a few years ago but don't remember the music he wrote for those movies especially moving me. I'll have to give them another look/listen now.

Wonderful work. I think Mr. Preisner really understands the piano, and has created a set of pieces that are exciting, modern, and emotionally charged. These songs have a feeling of freshness that is so lacking in today's music. The performance is equally exciting. Above all, they are, as the title suggests, easy pieces. One can really hear what's happening musically, and that is something that I, as a music lover and amateur musician, really appreciate. My 6 year old daughter, a talented beginning piano student, loves this CD as well, so I say - encore!

Preisner is a composer whose name is likely unknown to most, but whose music, at least for foreign film buffs, may be fairly well known. A Polish composer acclaimed primarily for his film work, he composed the music to the Three Colors films: Three Colors Blue, Three Colors Red, and Three Colors White and also the music to the Double Life of Veronique. His works in this area are well recognized and he has won several significant awards. The pieces on this EMI Classics disc, however, are not accompanied by fine acting, by beautiful cinematography, by vivid character depictions or intricate plot twists. Nor do they utilize the movie composer's standard bag of tricks-huge orchestras and choirs with every possible tone color available. No, the Ten Easy Pieces for piano stand alone, their only ornamentation short descriptive titles, such as Farewell, or Meditation, intended to orient the listener's mind in the right direction.

And herein lies the problem. Preisner may be a fine film composer, but he needs the visual and theatrical elements of film as well as a larger sound world to create meaningful music. This stuff is pleasant enough the first time around, for a while; but a concentrated listening to the entire disc had me hoping desperately for even a single moment of true emotion or drama. It never came--the closest Preisner got was to sound for a few minutes like bad Rachmaninoff. This music is as filling as whipped cream, and just as nutritious. I found it quite telling that one of the pieces is titled, A Tune a Day--about which Preisner says "I am already grasping things. Just walking, just speaking, just thinking, just playing. I just know that I know nothing." When any artist admits they are cranking out a work a day, and they know nothing, alarm bells should ring!

This is music to put on, then leave the room or perhaps fall asleep.

Although these pieces are not written for film, Preisner has taken his day job too much to heart. This disc reveals the dilemma of a film composer-essentially he is an employee hired to write background music, not art music. The two should not be confused--this is the musical equivalent of wall-paper: it may be nice, but you really aren't supposed to pay attention to it! Preisner's melodies are all very simple and banal, they are extremely limited in range, register and dynamic expression. And although a jazz influence gives some of the pieces some rhythmic interest, they all have the simpliest of forms- primarily repetition with very little development.

I don't mean to say there is nothing of worth on the disc, and those of you who delight in New Age Music may enjoy the Ten Easy Pieces. The piano performance of Leszsek Mozdzer, is excellent; and the liner notes attribute some improvisation to him. In the one piece where the amount of improvisation is clear, Talking to Myself, it is obvious that the improvisations are the most interesting of the music. Again, this is symptomatic of a film composer's work--so often they simply write either the melody or perhaps a lead sheet with some sketched-in harmonies and leave it to their assistants to work out the details.

EMI's marketing department provided a short write-up of the disc in which they claim Preisner's music is like "Erik Satie meets Keith Jarrett meets Gorecki" I've heard those composers, and let me tell you sir, Preisner is no Satie, Jarrett, or Gorecki.

This is a disc I won't be listening to again--maybe I'll give it to my wife's beauty salon to play during aromatherapy.