infotext:
POULENC-MCPHEE-ADAMS Gamelan, minimal, parody Just as Gregor Piatigorski described him in his daring autobiography »My Cello and I«, he also figures in music history: as a dandy-like socialite, as a rascal of the notorious »Groupe des Six«, as the author of amusing trifles, who also appears in his symphonic clothed works that he was more interested in Maurice Chevalier and Edith Piaf than in the dialectics of sonata movements. Later he did not dislike hearing the words of a French music journalist that he was "mi-gamin" and "mi-moine", half rogue, half monk, which was certainly true of the second half of his career after he had returned to the bosom of Mother Church . The reason for this was the accidental death of a friend and Poulenc's increasingly pathological fear of life and death, which he thoroughly addressed in his late opera Dialogue des carmèlites. The Double Concerto in D minor from 1932 is not disturbed by such clouding of the ideals of cheerfulness propagated by the patrons of the »Six«, Erik Satie and Jean Cocteau Profile was respectfully mocked as "Aunt Dante". Born Winnaretta Singer near New York, the aristocrat was the daughter and heiress of the inventor of the sewing machine, Isaac Singer, and wisely invested her millions in art, primarily music. With the D minor Concerto dedicated to her (and premiered in her Venetian palazzo), Poulenc launched a stylistic syncretism that was rampant even by his standards – one encounters reminiscences of Mozart and music hall, Stravinsky and Spanish paso doble, ironic trivia and neo-baroque ornaments. Above all, Poulenc was proud of the influences that his memory of the previous year's Paris Colonial Exhibition had dictated to his pen: the gamelan music of Balinese orchestras, as it sounds most clearly in the enraptured coda of the first movement. Its most important characteristics – repetition figures around a D minor dissonant alternately with the tones Eb and Bb – can also be found at the beginning of this first movement and at the end of the last movement. French composers between Debussy and Messiaen were fascinated by the sound and compositional technique of the gamelan with its metallophones, gongs, xylophones and drums, adapted or imitated the instruments and listened to the tempered microtonal systems. Because of the world and colonial exhibitions imported to France, they were able to stay in the country in order to let the sound magic of these ensembles work on them. Other Western musicians learned gamelan "on the spot." The doyen of these exotics was the German musician, painter and bohemian Walter Spies, who made a significant contribution to the myth of the »happy island« of Bali and is a legend in Indonesia, but is hardly known in his country of origin. He enjoyed being hosts in his picturesque island retreat, where he was visited by Charlie Chaplin, Barbara Hutton and Vicki Baum - or composers such as the Canadian Colin McPhee, who spent many years in the Spies area in the XNUMXs and played four-hand gamelan transcriptions with him . (Later McPhee introduced Benjamin Britten to the music of the country, who used the Balinese color scheme with homoerotic connotations until his last opera Death in Venice.) McPhee gave his 1936 symphonic gamelan adaptation Tabuh-Tabuhan. »Tabuh« is the Indonesian term for the hammer used to strike the instruments, and the subtitle of the piece refers to its percussive character as well as to the fact that the Pianos are to be regarded as prominent orchestral instruments and here again - together with the celesta, xylophone, marimba, glockenspiel and harp - as part of the »Balinese« concertino. Characteristic of the outer movements are the "patterns" that are layered on top of each other and nested in each other in an increasingly complex manner, ostinato patterns (like the rotating pentatonic scale of the wind instruments over the piano rhythm of 2+3+3 semiquavers right at the beginning), where it also becomes immediately clear which considerable intercultural "intersections" of gamelan, Latin American folklore and jazz can be found here. The middle movement is based on the transcription of an original bamboo flute melody. When, in the XNUMXs, American composers bid farewell to the historical-philosophical cerebral exercises of the European avant-garde and proclaimed the cult of a new simplicity, they also did so with reference to African drumming rituals, Indonesian gamelan, pop art and pop music. They called the result "minimal music", the most important characteristic of which, like the gamelan, are repetitive "patterns" over a constant pulse ("steady beat"), which are transformed into other musical aggregate states by increasing and initially almost imperceptible disturbances, irregularities and phase shifts become. Together with the emphatic re-enthronement of the major and minor keys, these processes often – and by no means unintentionally – produce psychedelic effects. John Adams' Grand Pianola Music from 1982 exemplifies these minimalistic qualities in a singular sound: the instrumental ensemble – consisting of the two grand pianos, fifteen wind instruments and three percussionists – is joined by three female voices singing vocalises. The formula with which Adams sets the piece in motion is a staccato of E flat - F - A flat - B flat (according to the wind opening of the McPhee concerto - or Gershwin's I Got Rhythm), a sound that gradually becomes more lively, fans out, interspersed with sustained tones, stumbles rhythmically and then gets into considerable symphonic restlessness. The cessation of the quarter-pulse signals the beginning of the slow movement, which is appended to »Part I« without a break. »Part II« deals – as the title suggests – with monomaniacal (and highly virtuosic) one-sidedness with the elementary cadence formulas I–V–I and very soon builds up to an uninhibitedly magnificent hymn in E flat major. Adams gave a particularly vivid account of the inspiration behind his Grand Pianola Music: He dreamed that two black stretch limousines approached him from behind while driving on Interstate Highway 5, which turned into the longest Steinways in the world when overtaking and then would have fired salvos of B flat and E flat arpeggios at 90 miles ph. There was also the idea of him walking the hallways of the San Francisco Conservatory to the sound of twenty or more pianos, "playing Chopin, the Emperor Concerto, Hanon, Rachmaninoff, the Maple Leaf Rag, and much more." Rainer Peters |
program:
Concertos III Frances Poulenc (1899-1963) Colin McPhee (1900-1964) John Adams (* 1947) Total playing time: 71:02 GrauSchumacher Piano Duo |
Press:
09/2017
(…) This splendid disc offers three works which directly or indirectly owe something to Balinese gamelan. Poulenc's Double Concerto in D minor (1932) bristles with wit and fire, referencing everything from Mozart to Spanish two-step alongside a glistening evocation of Balinese gamelan, as heard by Poulenc at the 1931 Paris Colonial Exhibition. The GrauSchumacher Piano Duo perform with great spirit and charisma alongside the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, here on sparkling form. (…)
Kate Wakeling
29.05.2017
“The GrauSchumacher Piano Duo plays everything to the point, concisely, atmospherically and very present,” writes Eckhard Weber. Read the full review here!
June 2017
A CD that spans a wide arc over 50 years of music history. Because what has the sparkling-witty double concert by Poulenc with a multi-movement toccata the well-known Canadian Colin McPhee or the Grand Pianola Music by John Adams to do? More than you think, because all three works take on influences of Balinese gamelan music in an individual way - a consonance that astonishes and makes you think about temporal, spatial and stylistic distances. Once again, the piano duo GrauSchumacher, with their subtle instinct for obvious concepts, looked into the endless depths of the repertoire. The sound is a bit dry, but suits the scores perfectly.
Michael Kube
June 2017
For the third installation in their 'Concerti' series, the GrauSchumacher Piano Duo bring together three works, the first two written in close proximity. Poulenc's Concerto in D minor (1932) is typical of its composer's earlier music in using classical and popular idioms so their abrupt alternation becomes its own justification. This account emphasizes the breezy neoclassical framework giving focus to the frequent high jinks, and if the Larghetto's Mozartian pathos is underplayed, the gamelan patterning at the close of its predecessor feels undeniably hypnotic.
Balinese gamelan was central to Colin McPhee when he composed Tabuh-Tabllhan (1936). This toccata for a 'collection of percussion instruments combines indigenous textures and harmonies with a Stravinskian incisiveness and a jazzy rhythmic freedom to the fore in the propulsive outer movements. It is here that this duo are heard at their commanding best, while missing out on some of the mystery that can make the central Nocturne so spellbinding.
Similar interpretative qualities are found in Grand Pianola Music (1982), one of the pieces that ensured John Adams's reputation and whose leaving of its minimalist aesthetic with elements drawn from pop and gospel- not to mention audibly Beethovenian figuration – has proved influential and popular. Persuasive in those long-breathed cumulative spans of the first part, GrauSchumacher feel a little inert in the limpid eloquence of its postlude or the charismatic immediacy of what comes next. Yet the ingenious conception of this collection is undeniable, and those keen to hear these works outside of their usual recorded context need not hesitate.
Richard Whitehouse