The subtle co-mingling of piano pieces from distant time and space gives us a flavor for those placid moments in sleep when anything is possible in the dark tranquility of matter. A pensive set of compositions played with determination. A welcome introduction to Timo Andres and Mohammed Fairuz.
Solo pianist Bruce Levingston‘s Heavy Sleep, released this year on the Sono Luminus label, carries a conceit of heritage and lineage that makes an interesting concept and reason for this particular collection of works to coexist. The album features works by Americans Timo Andres and Mohammed Fairouz, in addition to J.S. Bach (with original works and arrangements by Reger, Siloti, and Kurtag)– the new work by Andres is said to echo Bach and Chopin, Fairouz tributes Ligeti; Kurtag, Reger, and Siloti arrange Bach (and it is argued, reflect on Bach in doing so), and the original Bach works offer the symbolic voices of man and God. The record makes a musical argument for close spiritual connectivity between these artists.
There’s really three releases here: Heavy Sleep, a single; the collection of Bach works, a record; and the Fairouz set, an EP. By that assessment, you’ve got quite a deal. Still, I would have liked to have heard more space devoted to the works of Andres or someone else, to have heard the ideas in Heavy Sleep furthered, or at least heard others facets of Andres’ style, and Levingston’s lovely realization of it. One reason for it could be simple economics. Andres was commissioned by Premiere Commission, Inc., a nonprofit foundation founded and artistically directed by Levingston that has commissioned and premiered over fifty new works.
Andres is a wunderkind rightfully compared to John Adams by the New Yorker in terms of his early career ascendancy. The eponymous track, Heavy Sleep is based on the poem ‘Nocturne’ by the Swedish poet Tomas Transtömer. Levingston graciously lays out some behind-the-scenes process in the liner notes (always read the liner notes– hard to do in the age of Spotify, but that’s another topic), offering a frank mea culpa of sorts: “I know, super nerdy,” Andres opines, describes his contrary-motion chaconne that chromatically modulates on repetition, a “Debussy + Bach vibe if such a thing is even possible.” “Maybe nerdy, but also gorgeous!” Levingston offers, and I certainly can’t disagree. He makes the Steinway Model D sing with clairty and depth.
The right pianist with the right imagination can fashion a program that is very...right. Pianist Bruce Levingston has done this vividly on his album Heavy Sleep (Sono Luminus 92183). What we have in the artist's vision is a series of piano works where "each relates either directly or spiritually to the theme of death, rebirth, or both," to quote the pianist from the liners. Every work also refers obliquely or directly to other composers and/or their own works. The idea is that "together, these works offer a touching perspective on the close spiritual connectivity we all share as artists and as human beings, culture to culture, past and present."
This germinating set of ideas gives Levingston the inspiration to make the music express deeply. It is a pianistic monument in its own way to the ideas and composers involved.
Two modern works serve as bookends to the music of Bach himself or his music as represented in piano transcription. It begins with Timo Andres' "Heavy Sleep," then proceeds to the Bach-Reger "Chorale Prelude in B Minor," the Bach-Siloti "Prelude in B Minor," continues with a Bach Prelude and a Fugue, both also in B Minor, his "Chromatic Fantasy in D Minor," a Fugue in D Minor, Bach-Kurtag's "Gottes Zeit Ist Die Allerbeste Zeit" and finally Mohammed Fairouz's "El Male Rachamin" in memory of Gyorgy Ligeti.
This is a very unusual piano collection. It is in many ways a thematic or “concept” album where you should expect all the pieces herein to be quiet and fairly slow-paced. In many ways it is kind of sleep inducing, but that is not a criticism. Neither should it be criticism that all the works here are a bit elegiac and not at all virtuosic and propulsive.
The title, “Heavy Sleep”, according to publisher’s notes is meant to reference not only the opening work on this album, but also to note the phrase’s allusion to death and eternal sleep. Surely we have musical references to death, eternal rest, and so forth. In some ways, I guess the whole is a bit dark and melancholic. However, there is also a lot of excellent music here. The works of the great J.S. Bach are synonymous with the Baroque and with greatness. They may or may not be one’s favorite style (not mine, I confess) but they are brilliant. Some of his very best- known keyboard and choral music is represented here (and mostly in one of the master’s most often used keys; B minor). I was surprised and impressed with the transcriptions by Max Reger (he himself an organist), Alexander Siloti (a Russian pianist-composer) and György Kurtág. Each of these is expectedly beautiful and delicate to listen to.
I admit that that the two new works held the most interest for me. Timo Andres is a very talented “up and coming” New York- based pianist and composer whose work I am just starting to get familiar with. His title work, Heavy Sleep, takes its name from a poem by Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer. It is essentially a chaconne inspired by a Chopin coda. In Andres’ words, it provides a kind of “Debussy + Bach vibe.” It is a beautiful work that I could listen to repeatedly.
I felt very positively as well about El Male Rachamim (A Prayer in Memory of György Ligeti) by Mohammed Fairouz – as I do all of his music. This young New Yorker is already a force in American contemporary music and quite a talent. Fairouz studied with the late Ligeti for awhile and this touching five-movement work takes its inspiration from the poem “El Male Rachamim (God full of mercy)” by Yehuda Amichai and the funeral rites that inspired it. There are moments of great respite in this work and also moments of great unrest; of sorrow and a lack of resolution. There are always elements of Fairouz’s culture that run through his music and the result is always beautiful and sad; hopeful and worrisome all at once. For me, this was the highlight work of this album.
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