Fall 2000 Volume XXX, No. 1

Life with Fatha by Jeff Taylor Seven Steps to Piano Heaven: The Artistry of Sir Roland Hanna by Mark Tucker Visualizing Modernity and Tradition in Copland's America by Gail Levin Mark Tucker by H. Wiley Hitchcock Local Music/Global Connections Conference by Ray Allen ISAM Matters Reviews Country and Gospel Notes by Charles Wolfe Rediscovering the Sylviad by Douglas A. Lee Seeger Scholarship by Marc E. Johnson Zygotones by George Boziwick ISAM Home

Zygotones by George Boziwick Like her earlier recordings Soundbridge and Tone Over Tone, the latest CD released by the New York-based Australian pianist Loretta Goldberg, Zygotones: Contemporary American works for piano, Yamaha disklavier, and sampler (Centaur CRC 2470) includes both established classics and new works commissioned especially for the recording. Zygotones bears witness to Goldberg’s fascination with compositional experimentation, including the use of new tunings and timbres, and reveals the extent to which she continues the tradition of what Kyle Gann has approvingly called her “fearless pianism [which] respects no boundaries.” One of the most exciting piano compositions of the last century, Barbara Kolb’s serialist work Appello (1976) is an aural history lesson that establishes the composer’s lineage back to Boulez, Takemitsu, and Debussy. The composer’s ability to turn complex harmonic and melodic cells into dense, luxurious music is uncanny, and is effectively underscored by Goldberg’s sensitive performance. Composed for Goldberg, Warren Burt’s A Book of Symmetries for Yamaha Disklavier (1995) employs samples of microtonal piano pitches that are heard through loudspeakers positioned on the disklavier’s soundboard, resulting in a multitude of simultaneous clusters of pitches that give the composition a layered, rich depth, one that would be particularly explosive in a live performance. As the work progresses, these pitch densities gradually expand and lead fluidly to the CD’s next track, Copland’s Piano Variations (1930). In appraising Goldberg’s performance of the Variations, one naturally reflects on previous interpretations of this landmark work, including those by William Masselos, Gilbert Kalish, and Leo Smit. Her attentive performance does not get caught in hammerhead aspirations, but sustains the work’s inherent tension in a manner that emphasizes fluidity rather than angularity. Goldberg’s approach casts the work in a different light, one that plumbs the depths of this masterpiece. The results are quite satisfying. Sorrel Hays’s M.O.M. ‘N. P.O.P. [Music Only Music, and Piano Only Piano] (1984) is a highly expressive and humorous work for three pianos consisting of seven short movements, and is beautifully performed by the composer, Goldberg, and Margaret Leng Tan. A fictitious letter by Hays to the performers’ parents is used to script the execution of the work, which distills common technical lessons of young pianists. Hays’s Windy Gestures, on the other hand, is constructed entirely of quiet sonorous piano puffs. While the recording notes place this piece “in the tradition of terse musical moments such as Grey Clouds by Liszt,” the work’s mannerisms are also reminiscent of the piano music of Henry Cowell (of whom Hays is a preeminent interpreter). Listeners will appreciate Loretta Goldberg’s innovative interpretations of classic works on this artfully produced recording, while also gaining the opportunity to add fresh, original compositions to their palette of twentieth-century American music. —New York Public Library for the Performing Arts