American Intersections

The composers here all hail from the United States, and this is a great representation of American music, in many styles, from the 20th Century. We are consistently reminded of our nation’s roots and growth being attributable to the melting pot nature of the people. Our music is here described as an intersection of a variety of styles and influences. Schumann and Magalhaes are one of the premiere piano duo teams today, not only because of their fantastic piano skills, but for their adventuresome and varied repertoire. They have consistently supplied releases that touch on both familiar and relatively unknown music, often presented in rare arrangements. The label TwoPianists is theirs and has expanded over the past several years into a very reliable source of great artists and repertoire, with state of the art sound and consistently high quality booklet essays.

This music takes us to Mexico and South America, a cotton mill in the old south, a ballet of short dance scenes, and a minimalist exploration of the word “Hallelujah” and some of its musical history. In the excellent, substantial booklet essay we are told how all the European musical traditions came to the United States. Here they intersected with Latin and South American styles, as well as the blues tradition that began with the African slave population.

Of course with all of this thought and planning, we have to be presented with exceptional performances - and we are. Each work has come my way at least once before, but Schumann and Magalhaes go immediately to the top of my list as best available.

Samuel Barber’s Souvenirs was given a memorable piano 4-hands performance by John Browning and Leonard Slatkin some years back in New York. The arrangement here is for two pianos by Gold and Fitzdale, and the six dance movements are wonderful neoromantic music. Originally for piano duet, it was soon orchestrated by the composer for use as a ballet. Barber also made a solo piano version.

William Bolcom, despite a wide variety of compositions in many styles, is perhaps best known for his ragtime piano playing. While exploring Latin dance styles for his Recuerdos, he was able to relate ragtime to the widespread piano dance music trend in the second of decade of the 20th Century. In the 1930s Copland visited a dance hall in Mexico called El Salon Mexico, which supplied him with the inspiration and title of his next orchestral work. The arrangement played here is by no less than Leonard Bernstein.

Last year I reviewed a disc called “Powerhouse Pianists” (AMR 1039, July/Aug 2015) that introduced me to the Rzewski and Adams pieces also found on the current release. They are big, 10-to-15-minute works that are repetitious and, in a number of lengthy sections, quite cacophonous. The Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues began as an old blues tune sung by African-American workers that described never-ending factory work. Rzewski originally wrote a piano solo work, the final piece in a set of Four North American Ballades. The composer made the two-piano version, and from its soft beginning to the deafening climax it evokes the noise of a cotton mill. It reminded me of walking up to a building with all of the machinery running inside at full blast. When you finally open the door, it is overwhelming. Once the machines were turned off, the sounds conjured up a scene switching to an after-work bar where the mill workers listened to a old pianist quite adept at playing the blues. This is certainly not for everyone and is guaranteed not to work as background music. It will give your speakers a good workout.

John Adams is a minimalist composer. This implies that the smallest motive or rhythmic pattern is used as the basis of a work where it is repeated at length and varied. Hallelujah Junction got its title from the name of a truck stop on the Nevada-California border. Handel’s most famous use of the word hallelujah gives its four syllables a distinctive rhythmic motive: long, short, short, long. That plays a big role in this piece, but its most unique feature is the two pianos moving in and out of synchronicity with each other. It is soft and loud; fast, slow, and even faster, building to an exciting conclusion. It does seem very well suited to the dynamism of this exception duo.

The dynamism of dual piano performance asserts itself powerfully in American Intersections. Nina Schumann and Luis Magalhäes have performed together since 1999. Their latest recording seeks to reflect the melting pot of influences that defines American music, Blues, Latin, Ragtime, etc.

Souvenirs Op.28 is Samuel Barber’s collection of dances for piano four hands. Schumann and Magalhäes, however, play an arrangement for two pianos and take advantage of the opportunity for the richer performance that this offers. They adhere faithfully to Barber’s strong romantic leaning without neglecting his frequent modernist flirtations.

William Bolcom’s Recuerdos is a three-part set of homages to composers like Nazareth and Gottschalk. The Paseo opens and closes with a sublime Latin-influenced rag that is utterly captivating. But the show-stealer is the final homage to Delgado Palacios, in which the duo brings explosive energy to Bolcom’s Valse Venezolano.

When Leonard Bernstein arranged Copland’s El Salón México for two pianos in 1941, it soon eclipsed the version for single keyboard. This recording of the piece captures every orchestral nuance and turn of phrase. It’s a terrific performance.

Frederic Rzewski echoes the powerful pulse of American industry in Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues. The pounding episode that opens the piece surrenders to a mildly dissonant blues segment beautifully played, which then blends back into a combined machine-pulsed blues to close the piece.

Hallelujah Junction by John Adams is a complex and difficult piece. Schumann and Magalhäes perform this superbly. There’s a devilishly complex rhythm just before the slower middle section which they handle flawlessly. The work’s relentless drive to its finish seems no challenge at all to this very gifted pair.