[CAUT] Robert Weirich - Aaron Copland - CDs - Music - Review - New York Times

[Horace Greeley]

Hi, Kent,

At 06:37 AM 2/3/2008, you wrote:
>Rarely do I get to enjoy reading the newspaper on a Sunday morning 
>as much as this morning. The following review is of a CD produced at 
>the University of Missouri - Kansas City. I provided the piano 
>service. Fine recording.

Some of my favorite "contemporary" literature...not often-enough 
performed.  How might one get a copy of this CD?  Will it be 
commercially available?

Thanks very much for letting us know about this!!

Best regards.

Horace


>Kent Swafford
>
><http://www.nytimes.com/>
>The New York Times
>
>
>February 3, 2008
>Classical Recordings
>
>
>Discs Filled With Discoveries
>
>
>
>By THE NEW YORK TIMES
>
>COPLAND: PIANO VARIATIONS, PIANO SONATA, PIANO FANTASY
>
>Robert Weirich, pianist. Albany Records TROY 989; CD.
>
>IN general the concertgoing public may not think of 
><http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/aaron_copland/index.html?inline=nyt-per>Aaron 
>Copland as a composer of piano music. Yet three of his most 
>original, important and thorny compositions are works for that 
>instrument: the Piano Variations (1930), the Piano Sonata (1939-41) 
>and the Piano Fantasy (1955-57). It's inexplicable that these 
>landmark scores are not repertory staples. So thanks go to the 
>acclaimed pianist Robert Weirich, also a noted teacher, author and 
>composer, who has recorded the three works here in brilliant, 
>probing and austerely beautiful performances.
>
>Those who know only the Americana Copland may be shocked by the 
>ascetic, unabashedly modern Piano Variations. It begins with a 
>steely, slow, angular four-note motif, followed by a dissonant, loud 
>and lingering chord. The pitches announce themselves, to quote Mr. 
>Weirich's liner notes, "as if delivered on stone tablets from the 
>mountaintop." Thus begins an exhilarating 13-minute exploration of 
>the theme through a myriad of means: canon, inversion, augmentation, 
>transposition and other techniques championed at the time by the 
>composers of the Second Viennese School.
>
>The Piano Sonata was written after Copland had enjoyed great success 
>with populist scores like "Billy the Kid." Yet despite moments of 
>hymnal beauty and tart tonality, the sonata has a spare-textured and 
>rigorous character. The three-movement structure is also 
>unconventional, with slow outer movements framing a scherzo: perky, 
>slightly jazzy music that keeps mischievously slipping out of its 
>asymmetrical 5/8 meter.
>
>In the mid-'50s Copland appropriated the 12-tone technique for his 
>Piano Fantasy, but on his own terms. The row, such as it is, has 
>just 10 notes, and the piece has passages of lush yet fresh and 
>acute tonal harmony. Mr. Weirich's gripping account of this 
>volatile, ingenious 30-minute fantasy makes the question of how 
>Copland fashioned its harmonic language seem beside the point. 
>ANTHONY TOMMASINI
>

_______________________

The Rev. Horace Greeley
Priest-in-Residence
St. Peter's Episcopal Church
178 Clinton Ave.
Redwood City, CA 94062
650.367.0777

www.stpetersrwc.org

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