Hidden Sparks

1. Riconoscenza (Per Goffredo Petrassi) for violin solo
Composed by Elliott Carter
with Maryvonne Le Dizes-Richard

2. Hidden Sparks, for violin solo
Composed by Tod Machover
with Maryvonne Le Dizes-Richard

3. Fantasy for violin & piano
Composed by Ralph Shapey
with Maryvonne Le Dizes-Richard , Jean-Claude Henriot

4. Concerto for violin and computer-synthesized tape
Composed by John Melby
with Maryvonne Le Dizes-Richard , Jean-Claude Henriot

Tracks:

Riconoscensa
Hidden Sparks
Fantasy For Violin And Piano: I. Variations II. Scherzo III. Song
Concerto For Violin And Computer-Synthesized Tape

Customer Reviews:

Unrepentant, Unrelenting Modernism.......2005-03-10

The title of my review is not necessarily meant as a criticism; it's an observation from which you, with your own tastes, may judge. Modernism is a drink which some find refreshing, others absolutely poisonous. I myself am a professional composer; for over two years I studied with Ralph Shapey, the composer of the third piece on this disc, and so modernism is not repellent to me. But I do very much take the stance that there is good, effective modernism, and there is bad, tiresome, unengaging modernism, bland at its least offensive and noisy at its most. And for me, the pieces on this disc are for the most part good but not great representatives of that approach. The performance of Maryvonne le Dizes-Richard (violin) and Jean-Claude Henriot (piano) is superb, and does much to make these pieces as effective as they are.

The two major works are Tod Machover's Hidden Sparks, for unaccompanied violin, and Ralph Shapey's three-movement Fantasy for Violin and Piano. Shapey's music has sometimes been described as "neo-romantic" and the CD notes call him as a "'neo-romantic' who owes absolutely nothing to Richard Strauss...but whose Byronic grasp nonetheless eminently justifies the description." I take great exception to this, as I do to Jacob Druckman's appropriation of the term for a concert series with the New York Philharmonic--Shapey's works and the majority of the works programmed on that series make a nonsense of the term. As I've said, I knew Shapey well; he was primarily a brilliant technician as a teacher--all of his students went through his "basic course" which was a detailed method for manipulation of small pitch cells and a primer in rhythmic complexity. Students who successfully studied with Shapey knew what their music sounded like--no 20th century charlatainism was allowed and they could tap complex rhythms in four parts simultaneously. Their music may have lacked emotional depth or stylistic variety, but it never lacked consistency and they became superb craftsmen. I never once heard Shapey mention emotion or feeling with regard to a piece, and when I tried to discuss proportion with him his only comment was that proportion was an personal thing and that he couldn't comment on it. Shapey had no use for eclectism either--Post-Modernism struck him as an intellectually weak position, I believe, and I'm confident that being labelled a "neo-Romantic" of any stripe would have amused him to no end. But the liner notes do describe his work as astringent, dense, and dissonant--these words are completely appropriate. Gesturally and texturally the Fantasy is by far the best piece on the CD; the broader shape of the work compels attention in ways that the other pieces do not. Shapey's work is more than a succession of events; those events seem logically connected and even though as a teacher he couldn't tell me about proportion, I certainly think he got it right in this piece.

In contrast, Tod Machover's Hidden Sparks succeeds more on a momentary basis--individual sounds are more intriguing than in Shapey's piece--but flounders as a whole. A 13 minute unaccompanied violin piece is a substantial work, but I fail to note the reasons for the succession of events. Only at the end does the shape of the work seem to come together in a meaningful way for me.

The disc is filled out with John Melby's Concerto for Violin and Computer-Synthesized Tape and Elliott Carter's Riconoscenza for unaccompanied violin. It's hard for me to imagine most listeners finding enthusiasm for either work--their merits lie mostly in a selection of pitch and rhythm that probably fail to manifest much meaning for any but the narrowest audience. Melby's composition has the benefit of unusual computer sounds, but at 15 minutes fails to combine shape or gesture in a very compelling way. Carter's four-and-a-half-minute miniature might be a textbook of modernism--long disjunct lines alternate with short, fast and frentic scurrying. The discerning listener will recognize that the pitches are not random, but the descriptions in Tim Page's CD notes--"craggy, rough-hewn grandeur...innate sense of the epic, even when couched in miniature form."--these words describe a different aesthetic reaction than I have, which is of mild interest at most. Carter's own comments about his music seem oddly disinterested as well; " My music sounds like confusion at first, but if you hear it more often it really isn't as confused as you might think." I can agree with that wholeheartedly, but still fail to summon enthusiam.

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