Steps

Jorge Martin (Composer), Claude Debussy (Composer), Jeanne Golan (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Jeanne Golan
• Composer: Jorge Martin, Claude Debussy
• Audio CD (July 27, 2004)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Albany Records
• ASIN: B0002IQDDI
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #907,799 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Wand'ring Steps and Slow

2. Piano Fantasy on Sredni Vashtar

3. Deux Arabesques

4. Jeux/Games

Editorial Reviews

With Debussy’s Jeux comes the notion of steps as a progression from one point to another in location, time and/or psychological state. As Debussy was a pianist-composer grappling with changing aesthetics in a time of turbulence, so Cuban-born American composer Jorge Martin is engaged in a similar pursuit today. His style is both accessible and provocative, equally using and breaking free of formal compositional technique, achieving its own unique voice. Martin and Jeanne Golan met as students at Yale University. Best known for his vocal works, Martin’s first piano piece, Wand’ring Steps and Slow, was written for her. Its title comes from the last lines of Paradise Lost and suggests the loss of childlike innocence symbolized by the expulsion from Eden. Having written his first piano piece, Martin was inspired to delve into another. The Piano Fantasy on Sredni Vashtar also has a literary association. Saki wrote a tale of an orphan boy who defies a ferret he spies in his aunt’s barn, to wonderfully horrific consequences. Martin turned this tale into an opera in 1992. He has reworked some of its music into the Piano Fantasy.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Most beautiful Piano, January 14, 2011

By 

Terrence - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Steps (Audio CD)

You don't usually find this beautiful lyricism in contemporary composers.
I was extremely pleasantly surprised. Jorge Martin displays Pure genius.
This CD is highly recommended.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting Program, Especially 'Jeux' for Piano, August 10, 2004

By 

J Scott Morrison (Middlebury VT, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Steps (Audio CD)

Clearly the most interesting thing on this CD is the last track, Debussy's piano reduction of his last orchestral score, 'Jeux,' ('Games'). 'Jeux' is treated by the musical establishment almost as a Debussy step-child. In fifty years of concert-going, I've never encountered it live. But I treasure several recordings of it and count it among my favorite Debussy works. I particularly like the Haitink/Concertgebouw recording (available here at Amazon in a budget price Philips twofer). I had never known Debussy made a piano reduction, and so I was really thrilled to get a chance to hear it. Not surprisingly, the orchestral colors are missing and missed, but one has a chance to listen more clearly to the structural and harmonic inner-workings of the piece without the 'distraction' of that inimitable Debussy color. And I quite liked Jeanne Golan's playing as well. She really has a way with the half-lights of Debussy, not only in this but in the two 'Arabesques' included in this program.

Over thirty minutes of this CD is given over to two one-movement works by Cuban-American composer Jorge Martín; Ms Golan, in her rather muzzy booklet notes, says that she has known Martín since their student days at Yale. Obviously, this recording is an act of friendship and homage to an old classmate. The first work is 'Wand'ring Steps and Slow' whose title is taken from the last two lines of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' ('They hand in hand with wand'ring steps and slow/Through Eden took their solitary ways'). It is not otherwise clear why the piece was so named, but it is an attractive 15 minute piece whose primary elements seem to quartal (both perfect and augmented [tritonal]) harmonies and melismatic melodies that includes lots (LOTS) of trills. It comes across as a slightly middle-Eastern grandchild of Scriabin's later sonatas, and although there seems to be a certain amount of noodling and meandering, it builds to several climaxes before coming to a calm, even serene, ending. The second piece, 'Piano Fantasy on Sredni Vashtar' is reported to inspired by themes from Martín's opera 'Sredni Vashtar' which is itself based on a short-story by Saki (H.H. Munro, an early 20th-c. Scottish writer). For the life of me I can't find much about this 17 minute piece that is engaging. It strikes me as self-indulgent noodling (there's word again), in a word, improvisatory and, like in 'Wand'ring Steps,' much of it seems to be vaguely Middle-Eastern melismata over either endless bass arpeggios or droning obbligato bass. This is not to say that there aren't some interesting moments, but it simply doesn't hang together for me. I'm convinced Golan gives the piece everything it requires, and indeed there are some startlingly virtuosic moments that she handles with brilliance.

So, in summary, this is a mixed program that is mostly interesting, and very well played by Ms Golan.

TT=61:48

Scott Morrison