Donnacha Dennehy, Lisa Moore, Stainless Staining

The pulsation, the beat if you will, of some of the early minimalists was one of the things that attracted me to their music. Riley and Reich did landmark works in a gradualist realm, but they also "rocked out" in their own way. Some composers got away from the pulse in years following, for better or lesser results, but I still find In C and Reich's instrumental/vocal pieces of his early-mid post-electronic period to be works I continue to turn to with pleasure. And they all pulsate like the Dickens.

The EP Stainless Staining (Cantaloupe) brings back the pulsation in ways that appeal to me. Lisa Moore is the pianist here, playing the music of Donnacha Dennehy. There are two pieces on the 24 minute disk. "RESERVOIR for Piano" forms a rather attractive postlude to the main event, which is the title track.

"Stainless Staining" uses a "soundtrack" of samples of low G# retuned to accentuate 100 overtones derived from that fundamental. The samples involve playing inside and outside the piano. The result is a pulsating mass of piano sound, atop which Lisa Moore plays her "live" part.

In the end it is 15 minutes of very rhythmic, patterned, richly overtoned music. Lisa Moore plays her role perfectly and the music buzzes and swings its way through your head with irresistible drive and elan.

It's a disk that will be finding its way onto my player many times in the future I am sure. In its own way it has a perfection. It is a kind of heaven! Would you require more than that?

Arvo Part, Piano Music; Ralph van Raat, Pianist

Arvo Part no doubt occupies a rather central position as one of the world's foremost composers. He is known for many things, but his piano music is not especially one of them.

So when pianist Ralph van Raat offers up a new disk devoted exclusively to this part of his oeuvre, people like me take notice. Piano Music (Naxos 8.572525) covers most of his career: solo works begining with his Opus One, the fascinating neo-classical/modernist "Zwei Sonatinen fur Klavier" (1958/59), through other interesting works spanning the '50s, '70s. and the '00s. Finally there is the 2002 work "Lamentate: Homage to Anish Kapoor and his sculpture 'Marsyas', for piano and orchestra", for which van Raat is joined by the Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic under JoAnn Falletta.

The Opus One set of sonatinas gives you the Part of not-so-latent talent, a gifted young composer who shows the influence of Prokofiev and Stravinsky. The later works increasingly reveal his own meditative style, which culminates in the fully idiomatic "Lamentate." It's a sensitively and skillfully executed program of some interesting music. It is not all brilliance and light. It does offer revealing glimpses of the composer's development, sometimes via a kind of rummage through the "attic" of earlier works, some neglected, but all well worth hearing and well performed on this disk.

The disk is worth it for the early solo works alone; it is also worth it for the performance and presence of Part's "Lamentate". Put the two aspects together and you have a highly recommended program!