Music In Mixed Accents

On this CD:

1. Treatment, for piano
Composed by Tadeusz Trojanowski
Performed by Makiko Hirashima

2. Suite for viola and piano, Op 23
Composed by Aaron Rabushka
Performed by Alice Flajsingrova, Miroslav Kasny

3. On Wings of Angels, for flute
Composed by Gregory W. Yasinitsky
Performed by Ann Marie Yasinitsky

4. Music of Wood, Silver and Ivory I: Mist and Undertow
Composed by Gregory W. Yasinitsky
Performed by Gerald Berthiaume, Linda Wharton, Ann Marie Yasinitsky

5. Music of Wood, Silver and Ivory II: With a Whisper and a Prayer
Composed by Gregory W. Yasinitsky
Performed by Gerald Berthiaume, Linda Wharton, Ann Marie Yasinitsky

6. Music of Wood, Silver and Ivory III: Trees in the Sky
Composed by Gregory W. Yasinitsky
Performed by Gerald Berthiaume, Linda Wharton, Ann Marie Yasinitsky

7. Komoriuta: Berceuse sur une chanson folklorique japonaise
Composed by Toshiya Sukegawa
Performed by Makiko Hirashima

8. Sonata for oboe & piano
Composed by Randall Snyder
Performed by Catherine Herbener, William McMullen

9. Etude Fantastique for solo piano, Op 07
Composed by Aaron Rabushka
Performed by Alice Flajsingrova

10. Canzona e scherzo capriccioso for wind and percussion ensemble, Op 04
Composed by Aaron Rabushka
Performed by Bohuslav Martinu Philharmonic Orchestra
Conducted by Milos Machek

Tracks:

Music For Small Orchestra(1926): I. Slow, Pensive
Music For Small Orchestra(1926): II. In Roguish Humor. Not Fast
Three Chants(1930): 1. To An Unkind God
Three Chants(1930): 2. To An Angel (With Soprano Solo)
Three Chants(1930): 3. To A Kind God (With Soprano And Alto Solo)
Piano Study In Mixed Accents: Piano Study In Mixed Accents(1930)
Three Songs: 1. Rat Riddles(1930)
Three Songs: 2. Prayers Of Steel(1932)
Three Songs: 3. In Tall Grass(1931)
String Quartet 1931: I. Rubato assai
String Quartet 1931: II. Leggiero
String Quartet 1931: III. Andante
String Quartet 1931: IV. Allegro possibile
2 Ricercare (1932): Sacco, Vanzetti
2 Ricercare (1932): Chinaman, Laundryman
Andante For Strings (1938)
Rissolty Rossolty
John Hardy (1940)
Suite (1952): I. Allegretto
Suite (1952): II. Lento rubato
Suite (1952): III. Allegro possibile-Andante-Allegro-Meno mosso-Tempo primo

Amazon.com

Crawford is a neglected but significant figure in the development of American music in the 20th century. Perhaps it's that she took 15 years off from composing in the middle of her life to help found the American folk revivalist movement carried on by her children Michael, Peggy, and stepson Pete. But her early works define their own new territory next to contemporaries and friends Henry Cowell and Carl Ruggles. With a decidedly proletarian slant, Crawford's earlier works merge folk melodies and forms of meandering clarity and layer them between swirls of chamber dissonance. These include settings of her friend Carl Sandburg's conversational poetry, the political words of Daily Worker writer H.T. Tsiang, the curious and circular patterns in String Quartet No. 1, and the homespun-meets-high-art Rissolty Rossolty. The CD finishes with a song setting by her husband Charles, and her "comeback" work, 1952's Suite for Wind Quartet, which patchworks rolling contemplation, lyrical melody, and forceful irregular rhythms together. --Robin Edgerton

Customer Reviews:

The Best of 1930s Modernism.......2004-01-28

Ruth Crawford Seeger - A Portrait

The male-dominated atmosphere of most of the arts in history has made the search for women's voices often a very difficult one, even for women earlier in this century. So many women of original achievement or promising talent were eclipsed by the men in their lives; think of Alma Mahler for instance, who had a real talent for the human voice, but sublimated it to the promotion of the music of her husband, and then to the promotion of the arts of her other husbands. Sometimes this searching for earlier women's voices leads to the promotion of composers with somewhat dubious abilities such as Amy Beach. But other times it reveals composers of freshness and distinction. Such is the case with Ruth Crawford Seeger. Her output, though small, is some of the most distinctive and original of her generation.

Ruth Crawford began her career in Chicago, at the time, hardly a hotbed of musical experimentation. However, even in this out of the way location, she was able to keep abreast of the new musical experiments in Europe. Music for Small Orchestra represents her music of this time, impressionistic but non-tonal. There are echoes of Ives in the work, as well as Scriabin, and Debussy. The orchestral imagination is distinctive and both works show evidence of considerable formal innovation. The Three Chants continues in this mystical vein, but with even more evidence of development of craft.

In the 1930s Crawford Seeger moved to New York and became active in the most radical wing of American composition. Influenced by iconoclastic composers like Henry Cowell, Varese, Ives, and her husband, Charles Seeger, she adopted a technique of "dissonant counterpoint". This technique, though it tends to be forgotten now in favor of concentration on European serial procedures, was integral in the music of the American radicals. Crawford Seeger's work from this period makes the best case possible for the style, which she uses with facility and ingenuity. The Three Songs for Contralto and instrumental ensemble show her new-found abilities in this style. The work is highly expressive, with a constantly changing background "ostinato"...a truly impressive work.

Crawford Seeger's masterpiece in this style is her String Quartet of 1931. Tightly organized around pithy motives, this is one of the most impressive modernist works written by an American. Her freely atonal style is better developed than the styles of other similar modernists like Copland or Sessions at the time. Yet the work is also marked by logical clarity, and deeply felt emotional content. The Andante in particular is an impressive work and makes an even better string orchestra piece in its 1938 transcription.

As Crawford Seeger and her husband became more and more involved in Marxist politics, their musical interests changed as well. The Adorno influenced aesthetic they had both embraced in the early 30s (modernism in music linked with leftist politics) gave way to a more populist ideal, perhaps reflecting some of the political and artistic concerns in contemporary communist Russia. In any case, both Seegers gave up composing for a long while and became interested in the folk song revival. Moving to the Washington, DC area, the couple worked with Alan and John Lomax at the Smithsonian Institution, helping to collect and arrange a treasury of American folk music. This change to folk music deeply affected the music that Crawford Seeger did write at the time. Rissolty Rossolty from 1939 is an example of a rare piece of music from this time. Written in an idiom that suggests the forms of an Ives piece, with the harmonic restraint of Copland's American period, the work is pleasant, if not as strikingly innovative as her early work.

In the 1950s after taking time off to raise her children, the folk singers Peggy and Pete Seeger, Crawford returned to original composition with the intriguing Suite for Wind Quintet. This work suggests that she was on the brink of discovering a way to mix her early modernist style with her later interest in folk music. The melodies of the Suite are derived from folk music, but highly segmented and manipulated, so that all that remains of the original target tune is the mere suggestion of folkiness. Instead the work resembles a slightly more dissonant French-influenced music, rather like a spiky Poulenc. It is not a masterpiece, but it is an intriguing but ultimately sad picture of the composer. Tragically, she died soon after writing this work.

The performances on this disc are by the Schonberg Ensemble led by Oliver Knussen. They are exemplary. Crawford Seeger is one American composer from this period who I think that European musicians can "get" without much effort. The vocal music is sung by Lucy Shelton, who is terrific in modernist repertoire. I don't think one could ask for a better introduction to this wonderful composer than this disc.

A happy revival of music by an exceptional talent.......2003-12-25

In recent years, there has been something of a revival of interest in the music of Ruth Crawford Seeger, one of the less well known members of the American avant-garde of the first half othe 20th century. This disc collects a variety of her works from her brief career as an active composer--she largely retired from composition in her early 30s to become part of the folk music revival--and demonstrates what an extraordinary talent she had.

Music for Small Orchestra, written in 1926, was her first work for a sizeable ensemble. It is in two movements, a slow first that might remind some of Ives without the eclecticism; and a second, faster movement that develops irregularly. This is a remarkable and very individual orchestral debut, even if the following works on the disc do somewhat put it in the shade.

The Three Chants for Women's Chorus, written four years later, are a remarkable achievement. Written in phonetic speech and complex atonal counterpoint, they are as remarkable for their musical content as for the pre-echoes of later composers that occasionally emerge. Not only are they consistently more radical than most of the European avant-garde of the day, they are also outstanding music in their own right. The outer movements are mostly slow: the first often in two-part counterpoint, the third much more complex and climaxing with a twelve-note cluster; in contrast the central panel is fast and vigorous.

From the same year comes Piano Study in Mixed Accents, an irregularly rhythmic toccata which is great fun if hardly a major achievement.

The Three Songs, written between 1930 and 1932, are written for an ensemble of contralto, oboe, percussion and piano with optional orchestral ostinato. Once again, their radicalism is dramatic and combined with an infectious joy in the sounds the unusual ensemble can create.

Crawford Seeger's most famous work is probably the String Quartet 1931 (in its original form and in the version for string orchestra of the Andante from it). This is a superb work, full of variety, contrast and atmosphere in its four movements. The evocative Andante is the best known part of it, but the rest of the work is on the same elevated level. The orchestral version of the Andante (also recorded here) arguably is even more impressive than the original--a rare case of a transcription that makes its point.

The rest of the disc is more problematical. The Two Ricecare are attempts at avant-garde Leftist agitprop--a ranting vocal line against an unrelated and largely repetitive piano background. Unfortunately they do not reach the heights that, say, Luigi Nono's political music was able to. Rissolty Rossolty (written in 1939) is a brief orchestral fantasy based on folk songs, written in a conservative style and not very interesting. Largely similar in style is John Hardy, written by Crawford Seeger's husband Charles (a far inferior composer to his wife).

The disc ends with the Suite for Wind Quintet, a long-delayed return to concert music from 1952--the year before Crawford Seeger died. This is a sprightly, largely neo-classical work: tuneful and rhythmic but without totally abandoning the modernism of her earlier years. It doesn't strike me as close to the earlier works in quality, but if she had lived, it might have been part of a new beginning for her.

Tracks:

Adagio Religioso/Giocoso - Allegro Non Troppo
Andante Tristo
Allegro Con Brio
Vibrante, Agitato
Buoyant
Mistico, Intenso: Allegro
Sacco, Vanzetti
Chinaman, Laundryman
Prelude No. 1 - Andante
Prelude No. 9 - Tranquillo
Study In Mixed Accents
Scherzando
Andante
Allegro
Moderato, Ritmico
Freely
Andante Cantando
Con Brio
Rat Riddles
Prayers Of Steel
In Tall Grass

Average customer rating:

The World of Ruth Crawford Seeger
Ruth Crawford Seeger , Jenny Lin , and Timothy Jones
Manufacturer: Bis
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Waltzes | Ballets & Dances | Classical | Styles | Music

Canons | Forms & Genres | Classical | Styles | Music

Etudes | Forms & Genres | Classical | Styles | Music

Preludes | Forms & Genres | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music

Lullabies & Berceuse | Vocal Non-Opera | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music

Caprices | Vocal Non-Opera | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music
Similar Items:

Ruth Crawford Seeger: Violin Sonata; Piano Pieces; Two Ricercari; Sandburg Songs
Ruth Crawford: 9 Preludes, Johanna Beyer: Dissonant Counterpoint, Gebrauchs-Musik
Seeger: Two Movements for Chamber Orchestra/Musgrave: Chamber Concerto No. 2/Mekeel: Planh/Corridors of Dreams
Ruth Crawford Seeger: Portrait
Voices from Elysium

ASIN: B00005YP2B
Release Date: 2002-01-29

Tracks:

Little Waltz
Little Lullaby
Jumping The Rope (Playtime)
Caprice
Whirligig
Mr. Crow and Miss Wren Go for a Walk-A little study in short trills
Sonata
Theme and Variations
Five Canons: I
Five Canons: II
Five Canons: III
Five Canons: IV
Five Canons: V
Kaleidoscopic Changes on an Original Theme, Ending with a Fugue
Five Preludes: Prelude No. 1
Five Preludes: Prelude No. 2
Five Preludes: Prelude No. 3
Five Preludes: Prelude No. 4
Five Preludes: Prelude No. 5
Four Preludes: Prelude No. 6
Four Preludes: Prelude No. 7
Four Preludes: Prelude No. 8
Four Preludes: Prelude No. 9
Piano Study in Mixed Accents: Version 1: ff sempre al fine
Piano Study in Mixed Accents: Version 2: pp crescendo poco a poco
Piano Study in Mixed Accents: Version 3: ff diminuendo poco a poco
We Dance Together
The Adventures of Tom Thumb: Tom Sets Out
The Adventures of Tom Thumb: Tom's First Adventure: Chased By the Angry
The Adventures of Tom Thumb: Tom's Second Adventure: Stealing the King's
The Adventures of Tom Thumb: tom's Third Adventure: Sleeping in a
The Adventures of Tom Thumb: Tom Meets the Mouse: They Gallop Home
The Adventures of Tom Thumb: Tom Recounts his Adventures

Amazon.com

Ruth Crawford Seeger had a brief life (1901-1953) and an even briefer career as a composer. After her String Quartet of 1931, she gave up composing to concentrate on folk music studies. She wrote only brief pieces for piano, and they make a difficult listening program. As soon as you become adjusted to the comfortable idiom of her early little pieces, you are plunged into music in a more advanced style. These too are little pieces, including a bold Sonata that lasts less than six minutes and a fascinating series of 11 Preludes. This disc is a fine presentation. Jenny Lin never shies away from dissonance or aggressiveness, while playing in a musicianly manner with particularly beautiful tonal qualities. Narrator Timothy Jones is clear and dignified in the text of the delightful "The Adventures of Tom Thumb," but the recording is seriously defective, underbalancing the voice so that you need to read the booklet to understand what he is saying. Overall, this is a fascinating byway in the history of American music, highly recommended to the adventurous listener. --Leslie Gerber

Ruth Crawford: 9 Preludes, Johanna Beyer: Dissonant Counterpoint, Gebrauchs-Musik

Average customer rating:

Significant, but stern

Ruth Crawford: 9 Preludes, Johanna Beyer: Dissonant Counterpoint, Gebrauchs-Musik

Manufacturer: New Albion Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Etudes | Forms & Genres | Classical | Styles | Music

Preludes | Forms & Genres | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music

Classical | Indie Music | Stores | Music
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The World of Ruth Crawford Seeger
Ruth Crawford Seeger: Violin Sonata; Piano Pieces; Two Ricercari; Sandburg Songs
Voices from Elysium

ASIN: B00005J72N
Release Date: 2001-06-26

Tracks:

Prld No.1: Andante Tranquillo
Prld No.2: Allegro Giocoso
Prld No.3: Semplice
Prld No.4: Grave, Mesto
Prld No.5: Lento
Prld No.6: Andante Mystico
Prld No.7: Intensivo
Prld No.8: Leggiero
Prld No.9: Tranquillio
Pno Study In Mixed Accents
Dissonant Counterpoint: I
Dissonant Counterpoint: II
Dissonant Counterpoint: III
Dissonant Counterpoint: IV
Dissonant Counterpoint: V
Dissonant Counterpoint: VI
Dissonant Counterpoint: VII
Dissonant Counterpoint: VIII
Gebrauchs-Musik: I
Gebrauchs-Musik: II
Gebrauchs-Musik: III
Gebrauchs-Musik: IV
Gebrauchs-Musik: V

Amazon.com

The American composer Ruth Crawford [known after her marriage as Ruth Crawford Seeger] and the German-American Johanna Beyer were not just contemporaries, they were friends. Traveling in musical circles that included composer-pianist Henry Cowell, the two women were vital in their generation's forging of a new musical idiom--one that shaped American music in the 1920s, 1930s, and beyond. Unfortunately, their work has been largely eclipsed by that of their male contemporaries. While Crawford's music has experienced something of a resurgence of interest in recent years, Beyer's work is all but unknown. Indeed, this is the first commercial recording of her music.

Pianist Sarah Cahill is seeking to remedy this injustice, and her disc of solo piano music by the two composers makes an unshakable case for their revival on the concert stage. Cahill is a strong advocate, both in her obvious passion and her technical and emotional fluency. Her articulation is crystalline: each note of Crawford's concise 9 Preludes is finely etched against a background of silence. Clocking in at just over a minute, Crawford's Piano Study in Mixed Accents is a devilishly difficult, densely packed work, but Cahill's fluid playing outlines the piece's structure clearly. The thrill of discovery surrounds the two Beyer suites. Beyer's indebtedness to Crawford's writing is clear: Dissonant Counterpoint even takes its name from the theory devised by Crawford and her husband, musicologist Charles Seeger. But Beyer's music is not mere mimicry; her writing, while harmonically linked to Crawford's, is lyrical where Crawford is angular. Cahill plays up the distinction, remarkably altering her sound to suit Beyer's more rounded lines. Crawford and Beyer couldn't have a better advocate than Cahill; here's hoping for an encore. --Anastasia Tsioulcas

Album Description

An important new recording of Ruth Crawford's (1901-1953) transcendental "Nine Preludes" and "Piano Study in Mixed Accents," and the premiere recording of "Dissonant Counterpoint" and "Gebrauchs-musik" by Johanna Beyer (1888-1944), a revolutionary but tragically neglected figure in American modernism. With their piano compositions, these two women made phenominal contributions to American experimental music.

Customer Reviews:

Significant, but stern.......2007-04-07

Before the revival of interest for the music of Ruth Crawford that took place in the 1990s, her Piano Preludes (composed between 1924 and 1928) were one of her regularly performed and recorded compositions. Stylistically the musical language is somewhere around Berg's Piano Sonata - but without the Viennese's lush post-romantic sweep and seductiveness - or the early "expressionist" piano compositions of Eisler, Krenek and Hauer. The deep-sounding rumblings of # 9 "tranquillo" are evocative of Cowell's clusters. The moods are not very varied, and except in the (slightly) more playful # 2 "Allegro giocoso" and # 8 "Leggiero" they are mostly somber, stern, brooding. The 1931 Piano Study in Mixed Accents is a brief (1:05) and virtuosic tour de force, an angry ascension from low to high register and back.

I first discovered the music of Johanna Beyer through her impressive 1937 Suite for Violin and Piano played by Miwako Abe and Michael Kieran Harvey on a New World Records collection with works by Cowell, Antheil, Ruth Crawford and others (see my review of Works for Violin by George Antheil; Johanna Beyer; Henry Cowell; Ruth P. Crawford; Charles Dodge; David Mahler, Larry Polansky, Stefan Wolpe), and it made me want to explore more of this composer. Very little is known of her, there are not even any known photographs. She was born in Leipzig in 1888, moved to New York in 1924 where she participated in the circle of modernist musicians around Henry Cowell, Charles Seeger, Ruth Crawford and Carl Ruggles. She died a premature death in 1944 of Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis , a neurodegenerative disease, and she fell into oblivion, until the late 80s and 90s, when a rediscovery of sorts took place. Her main output dates from the 1930s, as with "Dissonant Counterpoint" and "Gebrauchs-musik". Dissonant counterpoint is the theory formulated by Charles Seeger, consisting of a reversal of the rules of traditional counterpoint, establishing "dissonance, rather than consonance, as the rule". Well - what you see is what you get, in the same-titled piece as well as in "Gebrauchs-musik", which apparently pays tribute to Hindemith's "utility music" in title only, but not in compositional style. Beyer's dissonant counterpoint is terse, enigmatic, quasi-Webernian in its sparse, pointillistic textures (the piano part of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire also comes to mind), stylistically pretty close to Crawford's preludes. The liner notes are quite honest about it: "they are difficult, both to play and to understand, and the casual listener may not at first hear the rich musical detail embedded in the straightforward, two-part invention piano style".

This recording, made in 1999 and released in 2001, was the first commercial recording of music of Johanna Beyer. It contains thorough and informative notes by composer and musicologist Larry Polansky, who is the driving force behind the rediscovery of Johanna Beyer. Sarah Cahill, also highly instrumental in the rediscovery of this music, seems to acquit herself expertly.

This is not easy and seductive listening, but it is a significant recording, in that it enables us to hear two important female composers and early American modernists.

Average customer rating:

A nice concept, not always consistently carried out, but an enjoyable survey nonetheless
Tasty little survey

The American Innovator

Manufacturer: Polygram Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Dances | Ballets & Dances | Classical | Styles | Music

Tangos | Ballets & Dances | Classical | Styles | Music

Etudes | Forms & Genres | Classical | Styles | Music

Preludes | Forms & Genres | Classical | Styles | Music

Suites | Forms & Genres | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Classical | Styles | Music
ASIN: B00000E55N
Release Date: 1993-10-12

Customer Reviews:

A nice concept, not always consistently carried out, but an enjoyable survey nonetheless.......2007-06-07

"The American Innovator", mind you, and not "innovators", as if, beyond a haphazard and motley collection of individuals, there was a particularly American compositional strain in favor of innovation - and maybe there is. The sheer geographical distance from Europe possibly made it easier for American composers (such as Cowell and Cage) to reject the weight of European tradition, and the widespread sentiment, arising after World War I, that the United States was a new major power that stood on its own and owed nothing to its European ancestors, worked in the same direction.

Of course one is always tempted to discuss the contents of such a collection, both for what it includes and for what it leaves aside. Young George Antheil and George Crumb - two essential American innovators, I think - are absent. But then to include Griffes' Debussysms is far-fetched - unless you consider that anything that strayed from the Salon romanticism of an Amy Beach or a Horatio Parker is "innovative". What then is an "American innovator"? Is it, as the notes put it, one of those "outsiders who consciously shun the dominant European-oriented culture" and are "isolated from the mainstream"? But Ives, the unquestionable epitome of the American Innovator, could dynamite the European traditional only because he was so deeply steeped in it, through the teachings of his professor Horatio Parker at Yale. And the American serialists, such as Babbitt, far from shuning the European model, took on the compositional "system" invented by Schoenberg and applied by Webern and pushed it to its limits. So maybe an American Innovator is just an innovator that happens to be American, or just an American that happens to be featured on this disc (part of a tryptich that includes American Virtuoso and The American Romantic), offering an enjoyable selection of rarely performed and recorded 20th century piano pieces.

It is an amusing test to try and forget the track listing and even the composers' names, and try and recognize them from their compositions. Ornstein is easy; once you've heard his "A la Chinoise" from circa 1918 (for instance by Marthanne Verbit on Valentines or by Marc-André Hamelin on Piano Music: Suicide on an Airplane / La Chinoise), you can hardly forget it. Feinberg plays it excellently, with dynamism and kaleidoscopic colors.

2. Clockwork repetitive chime-like piano over child-like, dreamy harmonies? No other than John Adams (China Gates, 1977). From Ornstein to Adams, apparently the American Innovator is inspired by China.

3. Muscular and angry short etude with strong off-beat accents, rising from the depths to the heights of the keyboard and back? Ruth Crawford's Piano Study in Mixed Accents (1930).

4. Mesmerisingly nostalgic and dreamy strummed strings: Cowell evidently (Aeolian Harp, circa 1923).

5. Pointillistic serial piano with pointillistic tape sounds spaced-out stereophonically, sounding like a cliché of contemporary music from the sixties (but quite fascinating nonetheless). Would that be Babbitt? Ooops! Sorry, it was already 1970, it was Davidovsky (a Babbitt pupil, nonetheless), it was his Synchronisms No. 6, and it would possibly make a good sonic counterpoint to some Jackson Pollocks drips (or do you prefer Mondrian's abstract canvasses?).

6. A tango. I know Astor Piazzola is not on this disc. Ah, yes, Harbison, "Tango Seen from Ground Level" (1991). Not very significant, I must say, and so much the liner notes admit, but reveal that it was written for the birth of Alan Feinberg's son - "and birth is always an innovation".

7. Debussy dreaminess? Sure, Griffes: "White Peacock" from the Three Roman Sketches (1915). There is more American and more innovative, I should think - even in Griffes' own Piano Sonata.

8. Another pointillistic serial post-Webern "clonk-clonk", without tape this time: is it now Babbitt? Well, yes it is (Playing for Time, quite remarkable for its serial radicalism, as it was written as early as 1938, when the composer was 22).

9. A Simple folk-like tune of Celtic tinge over sweet-sounding clustered chords: here's another Cowell (Exultation - 1919).

10. Jagged rhythms and frenetic counterpoint, sounding like a boogie-woogie on cocaine or a player piano gone berserk? Unmistakably Nancarrow (his Prelude from 1935).

11. And again another pointillistic serial "clonk-clonk" - you'd think someone was trying to monkey the animated variation from Webern's Opus 27. Now who other than Babbitt among the American serialists was represented on the disc? Ah ah, good ear! It is another Babbitt, and a Serial Tango to boot (It Takes Twelve to Tango, 1984).

12. Now comes something like "dissonant counterpoint" in stern mood. Is Ruggles represented on the disc? Nope, a check indicates that it is "Vestiges", one of Cowell's "non-celtic" compositions, from 1920 - but I wasn't so far out: as Carol Oja indicates in her seminal book on the American modernists in the 1920s (Making Music Modern: New York in the 1920s), there were strong stylistic as well as personal ties between Cowell; Ruggles and Dane Rudhyard, another American Innovator not represented here.

13. Machinistic rhythms, prepared piano sounding like a mixture between Balinese ritual music and a crazy array of struck boxes, cans, metal rods, and a possible sonic accompaniment to a sculpture of Jean Tinguely? Cage's prepared piano of course (Bachanale, his first composition for prepared piano, from 1940).

14. Massive chordal writing in polyrhythms and polytonality, leading to zany ragtimes and demented take offs from American popular tunes (including Dixie)? Ives naturally (Etude # 20 probably from 1908).

15. More Debussy watery ripples: Griffes' "The Fountain of Acqua Paola" (1916), another Roman Sketch.

16. Brutal onslaught in jagged rhythms. Nancarrow without the playfulness. I pass on this one. No wonder, it was Ralph Shapey's "Seven" (1963), hardly a staple of the piano literature, even for modernist aficionados such as myself. By the way, it is supposed to be for piano four hands, but we are not told whose are the two additional hands playing on the disc: presumably Feinberg's own in re-recording.

17. Cool Jazz in a smoked-up Club around 11 pm. Thelonious Monk, "an odd bedfellow with Babbitt and Davidovsky" indeed, to quote again the notes. But for Jazz, it is somewhat innovative, I guess.

Tasty little survey.......2004-12-19

Alan Feinberg is one of the finest pianists interpreting contemporary music today. Anything he does deserves a listen. This album is a little survey of mostly mid to late 20th Century piano music. And it is a delight. It covers a variety of styles from jazz age through serialism and even a little minimalism. Many pieces recorded here are not to be found elsewhere. It is a shame that this has gone out of print. Get a used copy if you can you will not regret it. Perhaps some visionary record company can re-release it. Do you hear me New World Records, Naxos?