GEORGE FLYNN / EUGENE GRATOVICH
Play The Music Of Cage, Flynn, Ives, Messiaen
(Finnadar) Used LP $7.00
Piano and violin duets from 1982. “Ives and Messiaen remained touchstones in Flynn’s later compositions — specifically, the density, dynamic contrasts, and incongruity in Ives’ willful methods of construction, Messiaen’s self-designed harmonic and rhythmic systems, and the propensity of both toward a state of energetic ecstasy.”
Kanal
(Finnadar) Used LP $6.00
Flynn’s inspiration reaches back to the cruelty waged upon Poland during World War II as depicted by Andrzej Wajda’s film of the same name. The music evokes enormous physicality — the ear recognizes gestures, rather than motifs or intervals, which leap around, pummeling the keyboard. The effect is nearly inhuman. Kenneth Derus, in the accompanying booklet, makes an apt comparison with Conlon Nancarrow’s music for player piano. The texture thins out briefly, but erupts again into bristling flurries, like quickly shifting memories, leading to almost frantic episodes of crushing violence. From 1987
First Recordings
(Finnadar) Used LP $10.00
Solo piano performed by composer/pianist Rzewski, whose “No Place To Go But Around,” originally written for a production by the Living Theater, mixes piquant romanticism with forthright modernist techniques. The Braxton piece is “a thorny number in which the performer is given wide latitude as far as what portions of the score to utilize: tempi, repetition of areas, and so on,” according to Brian Olewnick. Eisler’s 1940s composition “Third Sonata” is “a rambunctious work played with [Rzekski’s] usual drive and passion…, rhapsodic one moment, thundering and bellowing the next.”