In the Financial Times, Allan Ulrich reviews the Marc Blitzstein Centenary Celebration at last week's Other Minds Festival and describes Piano Percussion Music:
In Sarah Cahill's committed performance, the West Coast premiere of the unpublished 1929 Piano Percussion Music heralded a sophisticated musician, attuned to the emotive power of dissonance, the imitative capabilities of the traditional keyboard, a grounding in ornamentation and, in the repeated closing of the keyboard cover, a taste for the dadaist flourishes of the day.
Ulrich makes it sound fun and interesting. Regular readers may notice I have been fascinated by the piano music of the Twenties (and soon the Thirties). Lastly, Alex Ross mentions the historical importance of Blitzstein's music and how it reflected the "strange soul" of America during those times.
It WAS fun. Sarah did an AMAZING job. The piece is not easy, and she was reading from manuscript. I was surprised to see Ulrich's review in the Fincancial Times of all places. Alan used to be the reviewer for the S.F. Examiner before it dissolved. Now we're just left with one real music reviewer, Josh Kosman, who only came to one of the 4 Other Minds Festival concerts and ignored the rest. Too bad. He missed some incredible performances.
Posted by: Richard Friedman | March 03, 2005 at 09:22 PM
Congratulations to all involved. And I always thought Alan Ulrich's musical judgment was excellent so it was a treat to find his review in FT. http://del.icio.us/thestandingroom has the link to the FT review I had omitted:
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/8984f4cc-89f8-11d9-aa18-00000e2511c8.html
Posted by: Robert Gable | March 03, 2005 at 10:47 PM
Is this Piano Percussion Music never published?
Posted by: Hans Wallin | February 17, 2007 at 02:04 AM