Solungga Liu, pianist
[ Ссылка ]
Charles Tomlinson Griffes (1884-1920): Roman Sketches, Op. 7 (1915-16)
I. The White Peacock 00:01-05:34
II. Nightfall 05:41-12:36
III. The Fountain of the Acqua Paula 12:47-16:24
IV. Clouds 16:26-21:07
Perhaps the most fully realized of his character pieces, the Roman Sketches, Opus 7 (1915-1916), display a widely imaginative musical palette, inventive juxtapositions of themes into highly personal forms and a sublime sense of pacing and expression. Contrary to the other sets, these works were linked to their texts from the outset, yielding even greater programmatic associations than in pieces written earlier. The music itself speaks with such clarity and conviction, however, that the program never becomes a scaffold on which to affix musical ideas.
The White Peacock is composed of four central ideas: a haunting opening figure reheard only in the closing bars, a playful descending line, the strutting dotted figure that is perhaps the most purely ‘thematic’ and a lyrical, “languid” theme accompanied by rolling arpeggios. The way Griffes combines these ideas and plays them off one another is enchanting.
Beginning and ending in obscurity, Nightfall rises slowly out of dissonant darkness into an impassioned sensuousness that provides the central climax of the movement. Griffes balances bitonal dissonances with moments of tonal clarity expertly, creating a beautiful emotional swell.
The Fountain of the Acqua Paola, like many of the set, reveals a rich harmonic landscape. Griffes constructs several different themes into an elegant fluid design connected by rippling accompaniments. While some themes never return, the overall form – swelling in the middle and falling back to the sumptuous opening idea ¬– suggests a wave.
Clouds, like its cousin Debussy’s Nuages, is spacious, slow and replete with planar chords. The introduction of his much-loved rolling arpeggios and more impassioned melodies brings the movement to a certain pitch, but this dies back down to a detached calm. Pungent dissonances accent the final moments. Clouds is a reflective close to a work of great subtlety and force.
~ Gregory Mertl~
Provided to YouTube by NAXOS of America
℗ 2010 Centaur Records
Auto-generated by YouTube.
