My last podcast was a celebration of the voice and song. This mix is a celebration of the instrument as an art-form. Starting out with the still futuristic-sounding Theremin of Clara Rockmore, I slip into the avant-pop work of Colleen, an excellent composer whose primary instruments are her sampler and her cello. From there, I take a detour back a few decades to the virtuosity of Pablo Casals playing the first movement of Elgar’s exceptional Concerto for Cello Op 85.
After such a rich feast can you blame me for wanting something spare and simple? Schoenberg’s Kleine Klavierstücke, op.19 : VI. - . Sehr Langsam serves the purpose as a between-course-snack nicely– a slow, unwinding series of chord changes that seem to be more about the space the instrument inhabits than the music itself.
From there I veer into the third movement of Charles Ives’s Three Quarter Tone Pieces for Piano. Repurposing the piano, the instrument of temperament by committee, for such an atonal yet glorious piece expands the idea of instrument as tool of man, rather than given set of rules. John Cage’s Sonata #14, a rich percussive piece for treated piano that seems to generate itself from thin air follows. And from that, to end the exploration, I return to the voice and the recording studio with the excellent minimalism of Nico Muhly, the greatest composer of my generation yet to emerge.