Player Piano Volume 3: Nancarrow Volume 2
Bösendorfer-Ampico Player Piano
Why release yet another set of Nancarrow studies, given that these mechanical masterpieces merely replicate themselves every time a roll is activated inside the player piano? First, the wellknown...
Player Piano Volume 3: Nancarrow Volume 2
Bösendorfer-Ampico Player Piano
Purchase product
Why release yet another set of Nancarrow studies, given that these mechanical masterpieces merely replicate themselves every time a roll is activated inside the player piano? First, the wellknown...
About
On this new recording Nancarrow’s “Canonic Studies” transport us into a sound-world of 200 beats per minute, with incredibly fast time changes. Also the world-famous “Canon X” here gets its turn - this is a strict canon in which the descant gets off to a lightning start while the bass leisurely gets underway with only a few notes, but the bass gradually increases its pace, raising to nothing short of a sound storm, accelerating to a breathless 120 beats, while the descant, evidently exhausted, reaches the finishing line very slowly.
Contents and tracklist
- Bösendorfer Grand Piano
Awards and reviews
2010
Why release yet another set of Nancarrow studies, given that these mechanical masterpieces merely replicate themselves every time a roll is activated inside the player piano? First, the wellknown Wergo recording made in Nancarrow's Mexico City home in 1988 was flawed in certain respects. Of the two pianos equipped to play these studies, Nancarrow's preferred instrument – possessing a softer, warmer tone – was in need of reconditioning. It was decided to record the whole set on a piano normally reserved for more dense rhythmic studies. Its tinny honky-tonk timbre thus created a skewed impression of Nancarrow's studies. They sounded even more strange and eccentric than intended.
Second, after the Wergo release other player piano pieces have come to light, including ForYoko and the Study No 51 (aka #3750). Jürgen Hocker's new recording for MDG therefore plugs some gaps and restores the studies to their original state. And what a difference it makes to hear these works afresh, but also in sequential (though not necessarily chronological) order.
Like a well-oiled machine, the Bösendorfer grand plays out Nancarrow's highly inventive studies with surprising ease and dexterity, almost as if it had been designed to do nothing else.
This second volume in a projected five-part series, consisting of Nos 13-32, contains arguably some of Nancarrow's best music. The first seven or so studies explore a number of related canonic conundrums and proportional puzzles, playfully resolving onto a tonic chord or octave unison with Escher-like logic. Study No 20 sees Nancarrow relax mathematical processes for a more controlled improvisatory approach, but No 21 – the famous Canon X – is surely one of the disc's highlights. An extraordinary example of controlled chaos, two parts are made to pound out obsessively the same cyclical 54-note row while simultaneously speeding up and slowing down, their rhythmic trajectories momentarily coinciding.
