Andrea Centazzo, The Heart of Wax

Andrea Centazzo the composer continues to unfold before my ears as I listen to his minimalist opus The Heart of Wax (Ictus 301), a 12-part dance suite for a large chamber ensemble, string quartet and soloists.

This is an infectiously rhythmic and melodically memorable set of contrapuntal movements, inflected at times by rock, jazz and world elements, following out of similar mallet-wind-string ensemble works by Reich, yet bearing palpably the recognizable imprint of Andrea Centazzo's own originality.

For minimalism to work, there must be inventive scoring. Nothing can be more dreary to my mind than a minimalism of uninspired and uninteresting motifs and/or one-dimensional instrumentation. Thankfully that is not the case with Centazzo's work in the style in general and in Heart of Wax especially.

There is much to occupy the actively listening ear on this one. It's a refreshing hybrid that operates on a high plane throughout. Give it a listen.

David Lang, "This Was Written By Hand" for Solo Piano

David Lang has increasingly struck me as one Bang On A Can composer who is especially bent upon forging a minimalist/post-minimalizt language all his own. The solo piano opus This Was Written By Hand (Canteloupe 21073) puts that forward somewhat emphatically. The album consists of the 13-minute title cut and eight shorter "Memory Pieces."

The title cut (2003) has a very pianistic left hand-right hand split, the right hand repeating and developing a central melody line, the left hand repeating and varying a figuration accompaniment for the most part. It is lyrical, reflective and appealing in its spare but musically impactful utterance.

The "Memory Pieces" (1992-1997) have a bit more in the way of motoristic movement, sometimes marimba-istic figuration that is more typically classic minimalist. Yet it is not linear, post-African trance groove that is coming out of the figurations for the most part. For the first piece it's a matter of rolling wide-interval trills (to stretch a term) that together form an overarching melodic movement that has a slower, more majestic trajectory. The second piece calls for rapidly articulated arpeggiations that again don't have groove as the intent, but rather verticalized harmonic sequences. Piece three is a kind of largo. Piece four slows the trill idea down and makes each pulse a more fortissimo chordal block. Number five is mercurial, a kind of drumming on the piano with Lang's own sort of rudiment-like execution. Six slows things down again for some delicate interlocking sequences of expressive meditation. Seven is a whirlwind of rapid cycles of piano drumming. The final piece returns in some ways to the feeling of the first, a kind of slower series of related melodic cycles, this time in the middle range of the piano, with punctuations in the upper and lower registers.

Pianist Andrew Zolinsky realizes the parts with a restrained poeticism that seems right for these two works.

This is music that keeps my interest while playing upon the more positive emotional affects that the solo piano has often evoked from the days of Mozart onwards. It should find a good number of adherents, I would think. And it is some of David Lang's most intimate and appealing music to date.

Beyond the Second Stage of Boredom: Arnold Dreyblatt's "Resonant Relations" and Regenerated Minimalism

If I am in any way a typical listener, and I am not entirely sure I am, my experience of and reaction to musical minimalism conforms to a pattern that may be somewhat widespread. There were several stages for me. First I was perplexed and bored that "nothing was happening in the music." Then I became tranced and entranced with the best of it, allowing it to take me where it will and not worrying too much about my initial expectation of conventional event structure. Then there arose works and composers that to my mind did not discern rightly between what might be interesting musical motifs and combinations, and those that just keep on clobbering you over and over with a kind of banality that enervates. Then there came new works and new composers who found ways to keep it interesting. The trance element may no longer be as active a factor in the new works, but there are other things going on to compensate the listener for the time spent.

Belonging to this last category is Arnold Dreyblatt and his recently recorded work Resonant Relations (Cantaloupe). The CD contains the longish title work and a shorter "Twentyfive Chords in Ninety-Four Variations." The music is well performaed by the chamber ensemble Crash.

The composer seems to be working on a modified tuning (is it untempered?) and that gives the ensemble some complex aural beating between tones that adds to the sound greatly. Beyond that this is music with a consistent pulse (the title work, that is). It does not have a readily apparent processual bent--like Reich's early music and Riley's "In C" do. In fact along with the development of recurring motifs there seems to be a pre-minimalist attention to event periodicity. Not in some set of movements, but rather in terms of episodes. One sort of thing goes on for a while; then something slightly contrasting goes on for a while, and so on. Since there is not much trance-like sound happening in this music, the episodic structure keeps it from getting boring, as does the fairly complex interplay of instruments, counterpoint if you will.

The second piece ditches the pulse and articulates (untempered?) chord clusters singly with spaces in between (a little Asian-like/Cage-Feldman-like in that) in ways where the instrumental combinations, manner of articulation, and tone color are continually changing. It's quite interesting to hear and contrasts quite nicely with the title piece.

So here we have a rejuvenated sort of minimalism, one that does not sound much like the earlier works. It's original, in other words. Its tonality is overtone-like; its event structure is periodic; its aural makeup is engaging (thanks in part to the exotic tuning); and it changes over time in ways that are not like the superorganicism of early Reich. It's more like a sophisticated topsy, to the unmediated ear anyway.

I recommend this one. It has much to it that bears hearing. Arnold Dreyblatt has something going on that I hope we can hear more of over time.