Form IV (1969) - Katharina Wolpe, Piano

On this CD:

1. Early Piece for piano
Composed by Stefan Wolpe
Performed by Katharina Wolpe

2. Passacaglia (study on an all interval row in conjunction with eleven basic rows)
Composed by Stefan Wolpe
Performed by Katharina Wolpe

3. Zemach Suite, for piano
Composed by Stefan Wolpe
Performed by Katharina Wolpe

4. Studies for piano, Part 1
Composed by Stefan Wolpe
Performed by Katharina Wolpe

5. Studies (2) for Piano, Part II
Composed by Stefan Wolpe
Performed by Katharina Wolpe

6. Form for Piano
Composed by Stefan Wolpe
Performed by Katharina Wolpe

7. Form IV: Broken Sequences for piano
Composed by Stefan Wolpe
Performed by Katharina Wolpe

Customer Reviews:

difficult to assess a life all in one place.......2005-04-01

I found the playing here very personal, and introspective,not aggressive with the tempo when it needed it to propell the music forward; it is easy to examine Wolpe's piano solo music in retrospect, far more difficult gazing from different periods in time. I still prefer David Tudor's impassioned,clear,powerful reading of the :Passacaglia:.It is simply correct in every respect,not only the obvious (tempo,dynamics) but finding the emotive state of the work,something few actually find. This, the Tudor reading--if you can find it on an old Everest Vinyl I beleive is the label. Geoffrey Madge begins the :Passacaglia: too slowly as Ms.Wolpe trying to seize upon some "mystery"or darkness or perspective of musical space. I beleive there was/are such sensibilities here, 1936 was a paradigm a dark passage for all,and the lumbering measured trek through each variation,each intervallic renderings makes the work far more heavier, again a metaphor for the times.So you need to enliven and electrify this situation as Tudor admirably did.(Tudor had given performances of this work many times in New York City in the Fifties) Wolpe had lived in Palestine in the Thirties prior to coming to New York to live out his years.
Ms.Wolpe here has a wonderful sense of the lyricism of this music as in the beautiful "Early Piece" from 1925,You can sense even there all was not right with the human spirit, that it was trounced once or twice. Likewise the :Zemach Suite: also has similar gruffy features, edgee for the times despite its more light spirit, or relatively lighter character frames of fugues,Jubilations. It is really not until the mid-Forties where the dodecaphonic language imparts itself on Wolpe's sensibility,where he worked and laboured at it almost like sketch-work in preparation for something to come. The piano pieces here are in fact "Studies" (1944-1951) and 1948. He also wrote other :Studies: on intervallic rows of his choosing,that were not really intended to be performed live in a concert venue. They have however. Not till the two "Forms" for Piano one from 1959 another 1969 do we in fact get the mature Wolpe at the height of his creative sensibility now. Ms.Wolpe is much better here,where she senses the breakthru of concept,a freedom actually to write whatever one wishes now that a powerful language, a voice has been discovered. The 'Form' from 1959 is threadbare,onward moving, and if you miss this momentum you might as well give up on the piece for it is, this music is unforgiving if you do not find the right emotive posture, sure the correct pulse metronome indication but then play with a balance of aggressiveness and lyricism. Madge, seems to bring some desolation here to "Form 4 (1969) as Ms. Wolpe and for Madge to the 'Battle Piece', another problematical work.

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