By C. Michael Bailey
Blogcritics
08-Apr-2008

Performance:
Sound:

The political Left of the 1970s may or not have been confined to history, but as with any such period, some of its artistic creations will endure. The People United Will Never Be Defeated!, Frederic Rzewski's sequence of 36 variations on the song by Chilean composer Sergio Ortega, was composed in 1975 for his own wonderful pianism.

Ralph van Raat responds to these demands in impressive style. His sound is ideal: at once incisive and full. Moreover, he switches brilliantly between the music's further-out extremes (for instance, the famous slamming of the piano lid that occurs in mid-Variation 11) and its long, wry, ruminative stretches. His deliver of Winsboro Cotton Mill Blues, too, legitimately links this eruptive piece to the driving toccata style of Prokofiev. The competition in The People United includes Marc-André Hamelin's recording (phenomenal pianism, but much less sharply characterised); Rzewski himself, with matchless light and shade but recorded in rather brittle sound that not everyone will like. Van Raat's complete package, then, is arguably the best.

more....

By C. Michael Bailey
Blogcritics
08-Apr-2008

Concert music (what we are going to call "modern classical music" for this article) is alive and well in the United States and abroad. This is largely because of the efforts of Klaus Heymann and Naxos Records, who have created a new paradigm for marketing concert music, one that has left the big names (EMI, BMG) reeling. Naxos' two prong attack is based on one, providing affordable compact discs of the standard repertoire recorded by smaller orchestras, ensembles, and lesser known solo musicians. The second prong is the label branching out into the lesser represented repertoire not typically addressed by the larger labels.

The People United Will never Be Defeated! / Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues by Frederic Rzewski is an example of the latter marketing prong of attack. Frederic Rzewski is a living American composer known for his dazzling piano technique, his militant composing, and his left-wing politics. The People United Will never Be Defeated! (1975) is an hour long set of 36 variations on the melody of El Pueblo Unido Jamas Sera Vencido by Chilean composer Sergio Ortega (1938-2003), a likewise leftist fixture in South America. "Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues" is the fourth in four pieces composed by Rzewski under the title, Four North American Ballads (1979).

The pianist for this unusual recital is the Amsterdam trained Ralph van Raat. He also provides the liner notes for this release and opens them with the long acknowledged observation about modern classical music:

"If there has been a general opinion that musical modernism of the twentieth century has led a priori to inaccessibility of its compositions for a wide audience, then it is the composer and pianist Frederic Rzewski who has provided one of the strongest testimonies against this belief. A landmark in American piano literature, and perhaps one of the most important variation sets ever written, The People United Will Never Be Defeated! has a strong programmatic thread which is able to carry the listener through some very complex music in a natural way."

Ralph van Raat goes on to prove both his stated point and his implied expertise in Rzewski's music. The People United Will Never Be Defeated! is a mammoth piece. It begins with strongly emotive melody and harmonic progression upon which the composer elaborated in a manner exploring all of piano performance history.

The variations are presented in such a way that an untrained ear can recognise that these are variations on a theme even when the cognitive going gets tough. Think of J.S. Bach composing Goldberg Variations as a member of the Shining Path (el Sendero Luminosa). Pianist van Raat navigates the desperate variations expertly, steering from tonal to atonal, from assembly to disassembly, from acceleration to deceleration. The People United… offers just enough challenge to the listener to amply reward him or her in the end.

"Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues" is even more accessible if not more disturbing, taking its time to develop from a simple rocking two note figure into a low-register-driven juggernaut that might make the listener think of 19th Century logging or coal mining. A nervous pastoral interlude begins after a manically industrial section that could make the argument that it represents a weekend's rest after work. However, all is not restful as the pastoral melodies become more dissonant.

Should the listener be bored with another Well-tempered Clavier or Hammerklavier Sonata, he or she need look no further than The People United Will never Be Defeated!.

Selections:
The People United Will Never Be Defeated!; Four North American Ballads: No. 4 Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues.

By Bob McQuiston
Classical Lost and Found
30-Apr-2008

Frederic Rzewski's (b. 1938) thirty-six variations for piano on the melody for El Pueblo Unido Jamás Será Vencido, or The People United Will Never Be Defeated, has three distinctions. First, it's one of the most outstanding American solo piano pieces ever written. Second, as far as the theme and variations genre is concerned, it ranks with the best. And third, this is modern music that's listener friendly and has immediate appeal.

Back in 1973 Chilean composer Sergio Ortega (1938-2003) heard a street-singer shouting, "El pueblo unido jamás será vencido," and immediately came up with a tune to accompany the words. Set to Ortega's melody this soon became an international protest song against any form of dictatorship. It had great appeal for the politically left-wing oriented Rzewski, who used it in 1975 as the basis for a monumental set of variations for piano. The piece lasts about an hour, and was written in response to a commission by American pianist Ursula Oppens. It’s subsequent popularity would seem to indicate she certainly got her money's worth!

Rzewski has purposely written an extremely long and tortuously difficult piece, which is as much of a challenge for the most gifted of keyboard artists, as the music is representative of mankind's continual struggle for a better existence. The piece begins with a simple statement of the theme, which is at first subjected to some rather straightforward augmentative and rhythmic transformations. But the composer's extensive academic training (he studied with Walter Piston, Roger Sessions and Milton Babbitt at Harvard and Princeton, as well as Luigi Dallapiccola in Italy) shows through in some of the highly sophisticated, complex variations that follow. Not only that, but the piece becomes increasingly demanding to play.

The variety of stylistic as well as formal musical devices the composer uses stagger the imagination. Folk music, blues, jazz and quotes from other revolutionary songs are thrown into the creative pot, and Rzewski even tips his hat to Arnold Schoenberg with a variation based on a twelve-tone row derived from the theme. A few special effects for the piano worthy of John Cage are also employed. These include slamming down the lid to represent a gunshot, and the repeated hammering of one key to symbolize an alarm bell. Our soloist also strums and dampens the strings with his fingers in the optional cadenza that’s performed in this recording just before the final triumphant reprise of the main theme.

As an encore, Rzewski's Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues from his North American Ballads (1979), ends the program. It's a fascinating, highly demanding piece named for a song cotton mill workers used to sing. Brief repeated patterns of notes mimicking the sound of mill machinery begin the piece and reach "Excedrin Headache Number One" proportions – shades of Alexander Mosolov’s Iron Foundry (1926-28)! Gradually, the melody of the song appears in bluesy and then ragtime guise. But it's soon obliterated with the return of that mechanical clatter made all the more intense by the use of tone clusters.

None of this music is for amateurs, and even most virtuosos wouldn't attempt such an endurance test. Fortunately our soloist here, Ralph van Raat, rises to the occasion with performances that are not only technically impeccable, but totally capture every nuance of these emotionally charged, rather programmatic works. His success with these pieces was helped by his working closely with the composer over their proper interpretation. Consequently van Raat plays with a clarity, directness and heartfelt passion which should make them appealing to those normally wary of contemporary music, particularly at Naxos’ usual low price.

The piano is one of the most difficult instruments to capture digitally as evidenced by the many inferior sounding CDs of piano music out there. Fortunately this is not one of them. In fact it's one of the best sounding piano discs you could ask for. Obviously the venue, microphones and digital-to-analogue conversion equipment used were ideally suited to the occasion, resulting in a CD that's demonstration quality. But you'll have to hear it to believe it!

By David Denton
01-Apr-2008

In modern terms it is a very worthy piece of craftsmanship offering the soloist a massive showcase for their virtuosity