Deutsche Grammophon are really making an effort to establish an online presence. Just today they posted on YouTube a live performance of a large excerpt from a new piano concerto by John Adams written for Yuja Wang and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. This was premiered last year. The excerpt, about twelve minutes long, is most of (?) the first movement.
First off, I have to say, I love, love the dress. I see that Yuja is reading her part from an iPad, which people are doing more and more. I can't figure out how she is turning pages though, as I don't see a foot-switch? If I were to give one of my one sentence catty reviews of the piece I would say it sounds like Bartók spent about a week listening to be-bop and then wrote this concerto. It's a fun, driving piece without a lot of emotional depth or distinctive character. But that's after just one listen of a part of it, so I could be all wet.
What do you think?
I found it poorly structured, boring, aiming to a climax that never really came.
ReplyDeleteIt has moments that can probably be sampled ... but it's like a lot of other concerti I've heard in the last twenty years where I don't remember much about it after I'm not listening to it.
ReplyDeleteTo bring up observations made by Leonard B. Meyer, and going out on a limb in terms of discussing form and gestural accumulation in newer music, this sounds like a piece that relies on what Meyer called statistical climax while not having what he called syntactic climax. Piling on what Meyer called secondary parameters is how the work proceeds. Moving from idea to idea can work, I was noticing that Sweelinck fugues can move from idea to idea but the development of each phrase or gesture in turn is clearer in those cases.
For more recent concerti where the dialogue between soloist and ensemble is clearer I'd say Leo Brouwer has done some solid work making sure that the soloist and the ensemble are differentiated so that aspect of the concerto can be heard clearly, something that, on first listen, didn't come across in the Adams.
I don't know if Wang has ever considered tackling more Kapustin but it would be fun if she does. Nobody has tried tackling his 20 piano sonatas, for instance, and he's got a variety of concerti that could get more exposure. Plus I know she's played his work in the past.
I can give it another listen but so far Adams' piece isn't sticking with me. It might actually be carefully structured for all I know (I don't have a score to study) but I admit to preferring music that has a syntactic climax in Meyer's terminology. This movement is a new music variation on what a rock music critic described as a pattern in "crescendo rock".
Those are my initial thoughts, at least.
Thanks to you both for comments. My further thoughts are that this is an uncomfortable marriage between the rhythmic and harmonic structures of minimalism and the traditional idea of a concerto. So yes, Wentatchee, statistical climax but no syntactic climax. It just doesn't seem to go anywhere plus it lacks the interest of the contrasts found in traditional concertos. Lots of business though.
ReplyDeleteMinimalism and the piano concerto "can" work, though. I think Arvo Part's Lamentate (that Helene Grimaud played in Seattle years ago) basically holds up. Sure, I don't remember tons about it fifteen years later but Part got the premise that the ensemble and soloist are supposed to be differentiated.
ReplyDeleteAdams' minimalism is more maximalist minimalism that never lets up from the start
Through the magic of YouTube we can listen to Lamentate right now. Yes, it certainly seems more expressive. The irony of the Adams piece is that even though it is frightfully "busy" it seems to have little to say.
ReplyDeleteListening again to the piece which seems to have the title "Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes?" I was looking to see how she was turning the pages in the iPad. I think there is a foot switch she presses with her left foot, but the camera angles don't show it. What impresses me on second hearing is how dull this piece is. Dull harmonies, dull melodies and even rhythmically dull. Especially in comparison with the costuming.
ReplyDelete😎