It’s really good to have a disc of Frederic Rzewski’s instrumental music, even if two of the works recorded here are arrangements (authorized by the composer). Les Moutons de Panurge is a rambunctious game of counting sheep–a melody that grows by adding a note on each repetition, with the process then reversed, all at high speed. This gives the work a certain minimalist aspect, and it’s brilliantly played by the sextet Eighth Blackbird, whose performances always represent just about the last word in virtuosity. Coming Together is a setting of a letter by Sam Melville written from Attica prison just before the famous inmate uprising. Rzewski is one of the few composers who can make the combination of spoken words and music really worth hearing, and this piece is no exception. The actual text is spaced out at large intervals over the course of the work, and the result makes you want to listen to what comes next. It doesn’t strike you as someone talking too much over music that you can’t hear as well as you want to.
Pocket Symphony was written for Eighth Blackbird. In six brief movements, it runs the stylistic gamut from easy lyricism and tonal, dance-like movement, to an enigmatic conclusion making all sorts of “modern” sounds. There’s even a touch of Jew’s harp, à la George Crumb. For the record, the piece is scored for flutes, clarinets, violin, cello, percussion, and piano, and the range of color that Rzewski finds in this theoretically restrictive format really is amazing. The sonics are absolutely state of the art, and the only thing that prevents me from giving this recording the highest rating is the fact that the combination of words and music (in Coming Together) and the more difficult sections of the Pocket Symphony will not be to every listener’s taste. Still, with entertaining notes featuring the players in conversation with the composer, this is as finely conceived a tribute as I can imagine to one of the most interesting and worthwhile figures in contemporary music today. [9/12/2005]
