Conlon Nancarrow (performed by Ensemble Modern) - Studies, Tango, Trio etc (1993)

Yvar Mikhashoff (1941-93) was a New York-based pianist, composer and professor; he is notable in relation to Conlon Nancarrow for his ensemble arrangements of Nancarrow's studies for player piano.  A couple of these were heard on this blog last year in a Proms performance (links below) - now, here's an album's worth, filled out by a handful of other Nancarrow compositions.

The seven early Studies presented here were arranged by Mikhashoff in consultation with Nancarrow, who it turned out had envisaged fiendishly complex ensemble arrangements from the outset, perhaps performed by mechanical means.  That the technology wasn't feasible at the time to make this happen led to the eventual adoption of the player piano as Nancarrow's main mode of expression.  The performances here, by Ensemble Modern, are therefore as close as they can be to the instrumentation Nancarrow originally had in mind, and are tons of fun to listen to as they burst into life, like crazed, hyper-polyrhythmic cut-ups of Gershwin or Ives.

Mikhashoff's correspondence with Nancarrow, and his own investigations, also led to the definitive presentations here of some of Nancarrow's lesser known chamber works.  The Trio for clarinet, bassoon and piano (1942) was restored to its complete score here; the Piece For Small Orchestra was written as late as 1986, and the Sarabande and Toccata date back to the 1930s.  Lastly, Mikhashoff had a bit of a thing for commissioning tango pieces from various composers, so Nancarrow duly obliges.  All of it is wonderful, joyously bonkers music from a true original.

link

pw: sgtg

Conlon Nancarrow at SGTG:

Studies For Player Piano, Vol 1-4

Two Studies (Live at BBC Proms 2020)

Reich, Glass, Nancarrow et al performed by London Sinfonietta (BBC Proms 2020)

A programme of "pulsing cityscapes" from the London Sinfonietta, recorded live at the Royal Albert Hall sans audience on Tuesday 1 September.  Some wonderful, ear-bending sounds came out of this - as soon as the stately chords of Glass' Facades fade away, what comes next is a miniature for toy piano and toy boombox.  This piece is East Broadway by Julia Wolfe, one of the Bang On A Can founders - after her grand epic Flower Power earlier this year, it was nice to hear the contrast of something so brief and bizarre.

Orchestral arrangements of two of Conlon Nancarrow's Studies For Player Piano follow, with the expanded instrumentation really highlighting the fiendish complexity of Nancarrow's writing.  A spotlight for three more contemporary composers is next, with Tansy Davies' funk-influenced Neon, Edmund Finnis' renaissance/baroque-cut-and-paste In Situ and Anna Meredith's distorted bassoon piece Axeman.  The finale is Steve Reich's City Life, which more than ably demonstrates its title in the trademark pulse and orchestration, and in the sampled sounds from the streets of NYC.  These include voices used both in the style of Different Trains, where the cadence of the speech informs the melody, and in phased overlays like his early work Come Out.

link
pw: sgtg

Conlon Nancarrow - Studies For Player Piano, Vols. 1-4 (rec. 1977)

I'd been seeing the name Conlon Nancarrow (1912-1997) crop up for a while, and decided to take the plunge a little while ago.  What I've been struck by, perhaps to an even greater degree than with Harry Partch, is some of the most unique, single-minded music ever created.  There might be fewer instruments here than in Partch - just two slightly modified player-pianos - but Nancarrow's music is so stunningly original I could probably listen to it for the rest of my life and it would still sound fresh.

Starting from an early Art Tatum influence, but already with much more ambitious 'sliding' tempi, Nancarrow went on to develop an interest in the canon structures of J.S. Bach, taking them to the nth degree and far beyond the limits of human playability.  If you're interested in more detail on the theoretical side of this style of composition, the YouTube video below explains it beautifully - and/or you can just go ahead and download these four volumes of  Nancarrow's music that he supervised in 1977 and released one at a time in the next few years after.

The sequencing of each album is wonderfully effective - Volume 1 kicks off with one of the most accessible Studies, No. 3, aka the Boogie-Woogie Suite.  The sheer joy and exhilaration in this 15-minute stretch of Nancarrow's music alone was enough to get me hooked - and three hours worth, of wildly varying complexity, harmony, and breathtaking rhythm/tempo, is just sheer bliss.  Unreservedly recommended.

Disc 1
Disc 2
Disc 3
Disc 4