Henry Cowell: Instrumental, Chamber and Vocal Music, Vol. 1

Henry Cowell: Instrumental, Chamber and Vocal Music, Vol. 1 | Henry Cowell, Joel Sachs, ... | An overview of Cowell's various compositional styles - but not always his most innovative and interesting music

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Henry Cowell: Inst...

	Henry Cowell: Instrumental, Chamber and Vocal Music, Vol. 1 Henry Cowell, Joel Sachs, ... Naxos American, 2005 average customer review:based on 2 reviews view larger image
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About Time

It is indeed about time that we get recordings of this American Master's work. His centennial passed in 1997 with all too little fanfare and many of his works unavailable to the listening public.
But leave it to the wonderful folks at NAXOS to bring such essential music from unjust obscurity and make it available at such friendly prices.
The venerable new music ensemble "Continuum" has recorded much obscure, difficult (at least to perform) and essential American music. Past recordings have included the works of Ives, Babbitt, Kirchner, Seeger, Wolpe, etc. And NAXOS is planning to re-release their recording of music by the expatriate genius Conlon Nancarrow as well.
This disc and its companion volume 2 (both apparently re-releases)contain great performances of this listenable repertoire by a composer whose work inspired the likes of John Cage, Lou Harrison, Aaron Copland, Roger Sessions and a host of significant composers. His experimental work gave rise to new musical techniques he later outlined in his seminal book "New Musical Resources".
These chamber works come from a range of times in Cowell's career and are representative of his talents in the chamber and solo repertoire.
Joel Sachs and Cheryl Seltzer along with their colleagues have given us great musicianship and fine recordings. Anyone interested in American classical music of the early and mid-twentieth century will not be disappointed. These discs belong in your collection.

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An overview of Cowell's various compositional styles - but not always his most innovative and interesting music

This disc - a Naxos re-release of a recording made in 1990 and first published by Musical Heritage Society - provides a good overview of Cowell's various compositional styles - but not always his most innovative and interesting music.

The sunny Quartet for Flute, Oboe, Cello and Harpsichord (1954) would make a fine companion piece to Manuel de Fallas's Concerto for Harpsichord. Its neo-classical style (including a Bach-derived melody erupting at 1:40 in the 1st movement and a kind of medieval court dance at 0:50 in the finale) and somewhat rarefied textures are close to Falla's, but without the Spaniard's unique compositional voice. It is the kind of music that Poulenc, Milhaud, Sauguet or Françaix at their lightest could have written. "Polyphonica" (1930) is a short (3:45) study in dissonant counterpoint, again sounding quite neo-classical in its perky sonorities and rhythmic sprightliness.

The 6-movement Suite for Violin and Piano from 1925 again is modeled after the baroque suite. While the piano part (especially in the 1st and 5th movements) has some of the traits so characteristic of Cowell's compositions for the instrument, like deep sounding tone clusters, the violin melodies are mostly Bach-derived, making it all sound like the kind of Bach transcription so much in favor in the fifties. The suite's concept reminds me of George Antheil's 2nd violin and piano sonata (see my review of George Antheil: Violin Sonatas 1, 2 & 4), in which the violin part is supposed to represent the trite music of past and present and the piano, the pounding, dissonant music of the future - but Antheil's composition is much more original, provocative and fun than Cowell's. In the same style, Stravinsky's Suite Italienne (an arrangement of his Ballet Pulcinella after music attributed - at the time of the composition - to Pergolesi) is also a more endearing composition. Violinist Mia Wu's pitch is not always perfect and her tone verges on the sour.

The three "Anti-Modernist" (e.g. anti modern music) Newspaper poems that Cowell set to music in 1938 are hilarious - and there is obviously a personal message in their selection by the composer: the first, written in 1884, castigates the "clang, clash, clatter, clatter, clang and clash" of... Wagner's music, the second, from 1909, denounces the "Symphonic cyclones", the unchained "dogs of war", "the wild sarrusophones", the heckelphone suggesting "the crack of doom", the earthquake-producing "tonitruone" in... Richard Strauss' operas, and the last, in 1924, berates the "crash, clash, cling, clang, bing, bang, bing" - "what right had he to write the thing?" - of... Stravinsky's "fiendish" Rite of Spring! So Cowell makes it clear that new and innovative music like his own is always first decried and accused of being mere noise, before gaining universal acceptance (which sadly is not yet really the case with his). That said, the three songs are somewhat disappointing, in that they are couched in a musical idiom that is far removed from Cowell's customary "crashes, clashes and bangs", but quite traditional, full of grand Romantic gestures. Mezzo Ellen Lang acquits herself serviceably but with a voice of no particular bloom.

Ultimately, the most interesting pieces on this disc are those in which Cowell the experimenter and innovator is more in evidenceevidence: the four piano pieces and the Irish Suite for "String piano" (as Cowell called it) and Small Orchestra - actually an arrangement in form of a concerto of three of the solo string piano pieces, and a fascinating etude in mysterious sonorities. Sachs is excellent in the piano pieces, with a breath-taking dynamic progression from pianissimo to fortissimo in the clusters of "Deep color", a hauntingly slow tempo in the keyboard questions and harped string answers of "The Fairy Answer" (an approach very different from the composer's faster paced own), precise in his voicing of the polyrhythmic and dreamy "Fabric", frenzied in the massively pounding "Tiger" and with superb rendition of the mesmerizing resonances produced with silently depressed keys. But still, for Cowell's extraordinary piano music, arguably his major contribution to the history of the instrument and of music in general, the 1963 composer-performed selection of 19 of them on a Smithsonian/Folkways CD of Piano Music, despite the disc's sonic insufficiencies, is a better choice, and an insdispensable acquisition for any one interested in 20th-Century music, or in the piano, or just in music (see my review).

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