“In a scintillating display of virtuosic pianism, Michael Kieran Harvey introduces seven engaging new Australian works for solo piano.”
Five of the works were recorded at live events, three at The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Hobart in 2018 and two at the Brunswick Beethoven Festival in 2019. The one-take nature of live recordings amplifies Harvey’s artistic achievement on this release.
The CD’s title is taken from the title of the opening track, Brendan Colbert’s Dancing to the Tremors of Time for solo piano (2017). This piece was inspired in part by Australian surrealist painter James Gleeson’s 2004 painting with the same title. The painting is used as the cover art for the CD.
Apart from the subtitle of the CD, “surrealist piano music from Australia’s east coast”, the back cover of the CD has the heading “A collection of music reflecting the art of Mona – eclectic, surreal and powerful”. The extent to which Colbert’s offering, and indeed any of these piano works, can be considered surrealist is debatable. Certainly a case is not made in the fairly sketchy booklet notes for any of the unexpected and jarring historical juxtapositions usually associated with musical surrealism. It would be easier to make a convincing claim that MK Harvey’s own compositions, as represented for example on his CD, Psychosonata (Move, 2013), are genuinely surrealist in spirit.
Colbert’s Dancing to the Tremors of Time lasts for a very long 28’39”. It has very few, if any, discernible sections, but rather consists of an endless rapid flow of similar textural, rhythmic and melodically decorative gestures. There are very few dramatic contrasts and no definite stops and starts, although the piece does ebb and flow with some subtle dynamic and tempi variations. Despite the modernist language, there is a soothing, mesmeric, almost ambient mood maintained throughout. Frankly, on listening to it, I cannot relate to the “Baconesque nightmare figures of Gleeson’s surreal imagination” that the composer ascribes to the music in his program note. Maintaining with aplomb the constant flow of these complex textures for so great a duration is a tour de force in Harvey’s interpretation of the work.
Scott McIntyre’s Piano Sonata No. 4 (2017), also a long work at 15’23”, uses an atonal musical vocabulary, but is much more varied in its compositional approach than Colbert’s piece. The composer presents a notional basic structure in his program note, namely “Prelude”, “Toccata”, “Interlude” and “Epilogue”, but there is no clear demarcation of these sections. The piece starts with a fairly static texture of sustained resonant tones across the range of the piano. At around 5 minutes, the articulation changes to one based on staccato, which could be interpreted as the start of the “toccata” section, except that this very soon develops into a more fluid and less detached sonority. Around 9’25” there is a rapid and flamboyant textural change, which could be interpreted as the beginning of the “Interlude”. Towards the end of the piece there is a return to ideas reminiscent of its beginning.
In stark contrast, Don Kay’s Piano Sonata No. 9 (2018) conjures up an earlier period of music using tonal and modal melodies and harmonies and the inventive development of motifs. Although in three movements, the work is continuous. The first, mostly slow and contemplative, is reminiscent of post-Debussy French piano music, using a variety of scalic and chordal resources. The second is even more subdued and more tonal than the first, and the third, a boisterous toccata-like construction. As with many of Kay’s compositions, birdsong elements are introduced particularly in the finale which features a descending minor third call, as with the European cuckoo. The contrast of gentle and vigorous textures allows Harvey to display the full range of his expressive powers.
Elliott Gyger’s D E G (2019) is a reference to his father, David Elliott Gyger’s initials. To create the pitch materials of his piece, Gyger uses both the initials and a “cipher” of the full name of his father, to whom the work is dedicated. It is a modern example of a composition technique, Soggetto cavato (carved subject), dating back to the Renaissance period. The initials are clearly stated at the start of the work as a minimalist set of chords. This is shortly followed by a more flamboyant and chromatic expression of the full name. In his program note Gyger writes of creating a “character portrait of the man: softly spoken, authoritative, thoughtful”. Indeed, the composition exhibits all these qualities. It is mostly soft and demonstrates a thoughtful but rigorous interrogation of the materials. Despite of, or perhaps because of, the absence of piano histrionics, I find this work the most satisfying listening experience of the release.
With a background in screen and theatre music, Elizabeth Drake has written Rabbit Song (2019), a spin-off of an idea from one of her theatre shows. Her work is a classic example of musical minimalism. There is a rapid unbroken flow of equal-value notes divided between the two hands, and based entirely on scale and melodic patterns. This flow outlines a slowly evolving set of chordal sonorities, some aurally predictable, others pleasantly unexpected. It is a simple idea realised with consummate craft and is very sonically appealing.
Vanishing Point (2019) by Martin Friedel is a fascinating exploration of piano resonance Most of it appears to inhabit the lower half of the piano with the sustaining pedal depressed throughout. The idea of the piece involves contrasts between slow chord sequences and rising and falling passages of rapid (often furious) alternating notes between the hands. It is a very unique approach to piano composition presented with a mixture of great energy and subtlety by Harvey.
As a reviewer of CD compilations, I find it interesting to speculate on the rationale behind how tracks are ordered. With this CD, I initially thought that the works were going to be arranged in descending order of duration, but this last track, Brendan Collins’ Prelude and Fugue for solo piano (2018) breaks the pattern. Also, returning to the notion of surrealism in the selection, this work perhaps fits the bill best of all. It has contrasting elements: a baroque form realised with classical and jazz/blues/pop styles. But rather than these being in a jarring collage, the elements are fairly seamlessly blended.
After a fairly serious selection of mostly modernist works, Prelude and Fugue provides a light-hearted finale to the project.