This download-only release from Deutsche Grammophon Concerts preserves the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s March 24, 2006 “Minimalist Jukebox” program. With its companion release of an all-Steve Reich concert, this program has the potential to convert some listeners who until now have been turned off by minimalism’s lack of phrasing, interior form, and intellectual development.
Rather than engaging the mind, Arvo Pärt’s well-known–and very lovely–Tabula Rasa (1977) is like a bubble bath. You get into it, let it wash over you, and then tune out the world. Where this recording scores (aside from the excellent technical skills of the players and the rich recorded sound) is in providing a sense of subliminal connection to a real musical event, qualities lacking in at least some prior studio-made and small-orchestra recordings. The finely-played violin duet projects cleanly and naturally, and the small stirrings from the audience make the listener experience the spell of the performance.
Dutch composer Louis Andriessen’s music is more like an acid bath. Hard-edged, aggressive, wind-based, full of pop music patterns, it has greater variety and intellectual stimulation than the Pärt work, though again the target of the music is more the nerve-endings (with the object of jolting rather than soothing) and not so much the mind. De Staat (The Republic, 1976), with Plato’s texts about music’s supposed subversive effects, seems designed to create the unsettled emotions Plato fears.
The performance of what the notes say was the U.S. premiere of Andriessen’s Racconto dall’Inferno (2004) demonstrates that European minimalism over three decades has found ways to increase its emotional and even intellectual content. The title means not “Story from Hell” (although there are times the piece sounds like it), but “Tale from The Inferno”, the text being mainly from Canto XX of Dante’s La Commedia. It is sung (with microphone) by Cristina Zavalloni, who has a strong, accurate, and flexible voice, called upon to do the sort of singing Cathy Berberian used to do. The piece is a stunner.
Overall these downloads sound fine after their journey through the process of m4p compression and conversion to CD, and at nearly 90 minutes they make a 2-CD set for $9.99–a bargain if you like all the music. For those who want the bubble bath but would pass on the acid wash, Tabula Rasa alone can be downloaded for $5.48, but Racconto, apparently not otherwise available for commercial purchase, can be had only as part of the whole album. Still, this is recommended even to those who already own recordings of the other two works, and to adventurous others. [5/31/2006]
