Customer Reviews

Rzewski: Four Pieces; Adams; Phrygian Gates

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Oddly enough the "Four Pieces" are not on the Rzewski 7 Disc Set, with rzewski playing his oeuvre. But these are quite extraordinary. Rzewski's creativity kinda gives itself away with the more conservative language he likes now and then of the fifths and half-steps, like the East Coast school, Barber, and Piston, the overly lyrical bends, predictably oriented. This musical language the "second piece" here is quite different than the haunting one of octaves, the "third piece", displacing different registers quite beautiful,yet not without an anxiety-ridden kind of tension. The "fourth piece" has entered the repertoire, it begins on the top on the piano, and descends, a repeated study here, the little single tone builds to massive proportions, Do we believe in it?, I suspect since we know where it came from, but I suspect this repeated note is a common part of the piano avant-garde, I suppose since Stockhausen the "ninth klaveirstuck", that Rzewski played decades ago.Still Rzewski knows how to make his own lyricism work for his music. The "first piece", has more a folkish charm to it, more American I suspect. But these are all quite brilliant pieces.

The Adams's "phyrigian gates" you can take it or leave it. He is quite an honest creator and claims no dimensions of originality in his work. He "tail-ends, "tail-gates" achievements elsewhere and makes them work for himself. Well we all do that, but Adams' music seems to always be closer to the shortest distance between two lines than his other minimalist brethren, Glass and Reich, less so the more esoteric Riley, and SW culture Garland.Well minimalism had to have a WASP in its cultural frame to make it complete.The way Carter functions on another level.I don't make the systemic cultural rules, they are just given thusly. The Adams really is "coffee-table" music of the highest expression, an expression perhaps of the meetings of cultures the global environment,although looked at through Adam's gaze no one else's.The musical language is quite dilute, like making a Xerox copy of a genre, an expression, a gesture without the original, hundreds of times. This piece is quite old, and old sounding, time works brutally on the popular post avant-garde; its way much faster on Adams,curiously less so the Rzewski, that has more of a positive longevity factor working for it. Adams we will not miss, Rzewski I think we will.