Composer du jour Salvatore Sciarrino has been attracting no small amount of attention on the contemporary music scene, the result at least in part of the advocacy of compatriot Maurizio Pollini, though truth to tell it’s a little hard on this evidence to see what all of the fuss is about. There’s little especially bad here, nor is there anything particularly new or interesting. The major works are the four sonatas, each composed in a single movement lasting from 10 to 13 minutes. No. 1 is the longest and finest: a luscious exploration of pianistic gesture beginning in the instrument’s lower reaches and culminating in an energizing cascade of scales, trills, and glissandos that animate the entire keyboard. There’s little doubt that Sciarrino understands piano technique and writes accordingly.
Sonata No. 2 explores the overtones resulting from a series of sharply struck chords, and fills in the space between them in a number of different ways. Sonata No. 3 intersperses aimless musical noodling with eruptive clusters and glissandos: sort of like Conlon Nancarrow with less structural control and harmonic imagination (never mind sheer inventive fun). No. 4 sounds simply stupid: petulant banging on dissonant chords in simple rhythm, an annoying childish conceit that wears out its welcome about 30 seconds into the piece. Of the shorter works, Perduto in una città d’acque holds the most promise. It’s a haunting meditation on silence and solitude, featuring quiet gestures of differing tonal orientation illuminated by brilliant flashes of rapid musical lightning. It has a feeling of “substance beneath the surface” that much of this music otherwise lacks.
For some reason, Sciarrino seems obsessed with the music of Ravel. De la nuit fiddles in a deconstructive sort of way with bits of the French master’s Gaspard de la nuit, “Ondine” in particular. It’s all been done before, and with far more cogency and point in, say, Sorabji’s gloss on the habanera from Bizet’s Carmen, to cite just one conceptually similar example. Anamorfosi combines Jeux d’eau with “Singin’ in the Rain”. It’s mildly amusing, even cute, but ClassicsToday’s own Jed Distler has not only composed a string quartet combining the Mister Softee ice cream truck tune with the “Mr. Ed” theme and Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge, but he can play “The Flintstones” in perfect imitation of the double fugue from the finale of Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony, all with far more witty results than Sciarrino ever achieves here. In short, this is nothing special. As for the remaining short works: in various ways they are all inconsequential, unobjectionable, and forgettable.
The notes to this recording, by one Claudio Tempo (hmm–a nom de plume, perhaps?), partake of pretentiousness bordering on the absurd. Of the First Sonata, he writes, “The cosmogony of virtuoso style stirs Sciarrino to attempt a deflagration of virtuosity in a magical excess of impossible articulations.” As for De la nuit: “Perception of details is enveloped in a ‘oneness’ so that the listener gives himself over to a sort of sensual, transcendental liminal reduction.” Sure pal, anything you say. If Sciarrino himself sanctioned, or even worse, believes in this drivel, he’s in big aesthetic trouble. Committed performances by the dedicatee of many of these pieces, Massimiliano Damerini, and atmospheric sound (the piano’s upper reaches are especially well caught), top off a program of wildly inconsistent but occasionally rewarding music by a potentially talented composer who could stand some work in the quality control department. At the very least, if the mysterious Claudio Tempo’s anything to go by, he could use a few honest friends.
