The celebrated composer and pianist Frederick Zhewski, who died last year, was celebrated for his dedication. left wing politics his music too.
Politically, he tended to take a stroll – writing a series of variations based on the Chilean workers’ national anthem (in “The People United Will Never Be Defeated”), as well as contemporary classical cultural overtones. We have also weakened some of the traps. He plays at the fish market. He also distributed the scores online for all players to view.
He can also be harsh and strict in his artistic judgment. So when pianist Lisa Moore presented his one of Rzewski’s last works at the Bang-on-the-Can festival at Mass MoCA last year, the piece was her 60th birthday present. There was a murmur of amazement from the audience when she said that. Moore’s husband, composer and educator Martin Bresnick. (Bresnick has also mentored several artists in the Bang on a Can universe.)
ask this An artist who would write something for his wife’s birthday? Dangerous (if you have inspiration). But once Moore started playing his 15-minute “Amoramaro,” it all started to make sense. There were the familiar barbed modernist shards from other Rzewski productions, but there were also darts of disarming warmth.
In a telephone interview from his home in New Haven, Connecticut, Moore said of “Amoramalo”, “It’s like an old man looking back at his musical life.” as what Moore calls “a sort of Beethovian quotation.” To my ears, it’s also present in the aesthetic mixing bowl. It is Rzewski’s youthful experience as an early interpreter of Karlheinz’s Stockhausen’s experimental piano music.
However, some lushness of its chords are most striking on repeat listening. And it’s also because of Moore’s holistic approach to Jehusky. This often allows for a wider range of emotions than other interpreters, including composers, allow.
However, Moore said that Jehuski’s instructions at the top of the handwritten score were candid about the degree of freedom others bring to the music. So feel free to change the dynamics, the rhythm, whatever. “
“He was very liberal in that way,” Moore said in an interview. I know from my experience playing the music of
In an interview, Bresnick described a large and entertaining exchange with Czevsky during the drafting process, including how it would end. “I’m a composer too. I was surprised he wanted something like that,” said Bresnick. “I wanted to say something, but I didn’t want to over-determine it, so I finally said to him: Chekhov and other great writers have an ending, the end of the story. But we know the story continues.”
Bresnick is particularly pleased with the composer’s solution. “It’s the ending, but it’s not the ‘end’.”
Moore was luxuriating at Rzewski’s invitation to “freely” alter the dynamics and rhythms while playing his 60th birthday present. “When you wait for things to work out and wait for the harmonies to really settle down, the next harmony often changes like a kaleidoscope,” she said. “It just shifts and changes modes. It’s really, really clever.”
There’s something similarly clever about the balance on Moore’s new album. The title his track, “No Place to Go but Around”, is his Rzewski production from 1974 (just before “The People United”), an extensive early period. The only other official recording is his Rzewski’s, available on his release on obscure vinyl from the late ’70s.
On that LP, Rzewski’s composition shared space with his interpretation of piano works by Hans Eisler and Anthony Braxton. It offered some blatant interpolations of the song “Bandiera Rossa” (another political reference), but Moore’s rendition truly spills over that borrowed tune towards the end of the 12 minutes. .
Moore said her take was a considered attempt to emphasize the beauty of the work, adding:
That compelling quality of Moore’s album extends to his latest performance of “Coming Together,” one of Rzewski’s most famous contributions to the modern repertoire. The text comes from a letter from Sam Melville, leader of the Attica prison uprising. But unlike the perpetually galvanic performance of this minimalist composition, Moore’s solo voice and piano approach is a reference to the lovers’ “emotions in times of crisis” present in the literary source material. pays dramatic attention to (Moore, as a pianist, was an accomplished hand in Rzewski’s work for singing and speaking, recorded His setting for Oscar Wilde’s “De Profandis”. )
Equally impressive is her interpretation of the seldom-heard “To His Coy Mistress,” set in a 17th-century poem by Andrew Marvell. Moore’s playing is meticulous when it comes to her compact three-act music (and its text). She hits the gas with controlled force, just before singing the line “But I hear it all the time on my back / The winged chariot of time rushes nearby.” Later, the word “hug” triggers a new reflex mode.
Is this the secret ‘Rzewski for Lovers’ album? Moore wrote in an email: (Like him – he was Mensch – behind all his wrath.)”
Although the composer was famous for his political stance, Moore’s interpretation helps to emphasize the elusiveness of these works. “We disguise and obscure politics in a way that makes sense,” she said. is up to you.”
