Rzewski: The People United Will Never Be Defeated

F. Rzewski (Composer), Ralph van Raat (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Ralph van Raat
• Composer: F. Rzewski
• Audio CD (March 25, 2008)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Naxos American Classics
• ASIN: B0013JZ49O
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #378,340 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Inspired Variations on a Theme, March 31, 2008

By 

Dean R. Brierly (Studio City, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rzewski: The People United Will Never Be Defeated (Audio CD)

I have to confess that I approached this disc with a certain amount of trepidation when a friend insisted I give it a spin in my CD player. It consists of two pieces by the composer Frederic Rzewski, one of which, "The People United Will Never Be Defeated," consists of 36 variations on the famous protest song of that name. I feared that three-dozen variations of any kind of song, based on a simple melodic line, lasting 62 minutes, and played solely on the piano to boot, would tend to induce nothing beyond extreme tedium. But as I listened to the unfolding variations, my fears were quickly swept away and my senses became fully engaged. Hats off to Rzewski, who pulls off this feat by subjecting the melody to a variety of styles, among them blues, jazz, folk, martial and modernism; as well incorporating a staggering range of moods, tempos, keys and tonalities. The result is a unified soundscape of astonishing subtlety and power. After a few minutes, I forgot I was listening to music built around a single theme, so rich are varied are the changes Rzewski rings out of it. The variations are evidently intended to evoke various aspects of the universal working class struggle for change, but one need not be tuned into the music's political subtext to fall under its spell. Kudos also go to pianist Ralph van Raat, a musician of rare sensitivity, who wrings every nuance out of the work while lending it his own stamp of individuality. Van Raat summons up additional interpretive magic in the disc's companion piece, "Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues." This is based on another socially conscious song that cotton-mill workers used to sing in the 1930s. Rzewski's music is meant to evoke the sound of such a mill--harsh and mechanistic. The piece is duly driven by a repetitive and ominous percussive line, to which is gradually introduced a counterpoint passage that seems to represent a human voice struggling to assert primacy over the machinelike rhythm. The "human" piano part eventually wins out and transforms into gentle ragtime figures. Both of these pieces are testament to what truly creative musicians can conjure out of the most basic material. Simple, yet anything but simplistic, they make for a truly enjoyable and inspirational listening experience.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Late Twentieth-Century Masterpiece, April 6, 2008

By 

J Scott Morrison (Middlebury VT, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Rzewski: The People United Will Never Be Defeated (Audio CD)

One pleasant memory of my thirty years attending the Aspen Music Festival was a conversation I had with the esteemed New York Times music critic, Harold C. Schonberg, as he was giving me a ride back into town from a performance at the Music Tent. He had recently written a controversial article about Frederic Rzewski's 'The People United Will Never Be Defeated!', calling it "an electrifying work, one of the most significant piano pieces of the generation." And he had taken some attacks from those who felt that Rzewski's piece was simply left-wing agitprop, not worthy of serious critical attention. I told him how fervently I agreed with him, having heard its dedicatee, Ursula Oppens, give a stunning performance of this hour-long work. I felt then, as I do now, that it was one of the most brilliant sets of piano variations in the entire history of such works and that it stood up as music qua music, regardless of its political implications (although there are plenty of those in the music as well). Since then his opinion has been strongly endorsed and probably twenty pianists have now included this dauntingly difficult work in their repertoires. There have also been a number of recordings (by Oppens, Rzewski himself, Stephen Drury, and Marc-André Hamelin) each one of which is marvelous in its own right. Now comes this new recording -- at budget price -- by Dutch pianist Ralph van Raat.

Raat's performance is probably closest to that of Oppens in that it tends to round off some of the work's rough edges -- one can hear them aplenty in Rzewski's recording -- but it also includes some appealing improvisation as indicated in the score as well. (I must say that I was a little let down, though, by his improvised cadenza just before the end of the piece. It seemed a little timid.) Impressive also are van Raat's brilliant booklet notes in which he speaks in detail about the construction of the set. Even with the experience of thirty years' familiarity with the work, I learned some things from his notes. For instance, I had never realized that the work also quotes another revolutionary song, Hanns Eisler's 'Solidaritätslied'.

The CD is rounded out by a fine performance of one of Rzewski's most popular pieces, 'Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues' from his Four North American Ballads.

One complaint: the entire set of Variations is given only one track, rather than a separate track for each variation. This makes detailed or repeated listening to a single variation difficult.

I would not want to be without any of the various recordings of this work. And this one's budget price is a real plus. Still, I suspect I'll continue to prefer Drury, Rzewski and Hamelin.

Scott Morrison

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not the Best Place to Start, April 28, 2008

By 

Sor_Fingers (Boulder, CO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rzewski: The People United Will Never Be Defeated (Audio CD)

Before I get into my criticism of the recording, I must tip my hat off to the performer, Ralph van Raat. Any performer who plays this titanic 20th century masterpiece without playing wrong notes certainly has some chops. Due to its length and blistering technical and artistic complexities, any performer playing this work certainly is very accomplished.

That being said, I don't like this recording. I appreciate what Naxos is trying to do here by offering classical music to the public at a very affordable price and therefore exposing people to music they may never listen to otherwise. However, I don't think that this particular piece is going to profoundly impact people without a performance that is just too marvelous for words, which in short, this one is not. The tempi are a little too slow in places, the phrasing is fairly flat and the sheer passion is lacking a little. The improvised cadenza before the return of the theme is quite a lackluster non sequitur (though I like the playing of the strings inside the piano and the way he returns to the theme is quite effective). Also I didn't hear the shouting and whistling from the performer that occurs in a few places during the piece, which just sends chills up and down my spine. This is a good performance, but this piece needs a sensational performance to really knock the socks off the audience. No one will listen to a 62 minute long piece without being on the edge of their seat the whole time. And frankly van Raat's playing bores me enough in places where if I was a common listener hearing the piece for the first time, I would stop caring.

That being said, I think that you SHOULD become familiar with this monumental piece, but this recording is not the place to start. The piece is a visceral musical experience, an apocalyptic display of technique and a social bullhorn for injustice. So start with Stephen Drury or Marc Andre Hamelin, and if you need to be a completist, than grab this one later. And if you want to watch a sensational performance for free on youtube (and are questioning the concept a 62 minute piano piece), then go here and watch all 8 installments: http://youtube.com/watch?v=_s0H38-NJe8. Frankly, I think this guy should have recorded this piece instead.