Looking into Rex Lawson, I discovered that this is a re-release
of The Pianola Institute’s own first CD, given the catalogue number
Aeolia 1001. This is out of print, put was produced in collaboration
with the Other Minds Festival of California whose alternatively
designed release is still available, though I’m not sure if supplies
are that abundant.
The pianola is a
strange and wonderful phenomenon, and takes numerous forms both
in its technical functioning and appearance. Rex Lawson has
long been one of the leading names associated with the pianola
or ‘player piano’, and like Jürgen Hocker, has in the past worked
with Conlon Nancarrow, a composer who singlehandedly brought
the instrument into the light of 20th century creativity.
Hocker has been able to create a superb body of state-of-the-art
recordings for the MDG label, but the production of this older
recording is certainly of a very high standard. The University
recital hall is fairly dry as an acoustic, but mechanical rumble
from the machinery is very low in the aural picture even with
the close microphone placement, and only featured ever so slightly
when I listened through my second-mortgage headphones. The only
other thing I noticed through repossession headphones was a
slight tick here and there as if listening to a new LP. I have
no explanation for this and pass it off as a very minor irritation;
probably not noticeable in normal circumstances.
Collectors familiar
with Stravinsky’s own rather abrasive 1959 recording of Les
Noces might balk at the thought of this piece played on
piano alone, and through a mechanical pianola at that. During
the 1920s, the firm of Pleyel provided Stravinsky with a studio
in its headquarters in the rue Rochechouart. He seemed virtually
to live there for a while, being able to use it as an office,
a studio for composition, and a workshop for creating new piano
roll versions of most of his early works, as well as an environment
away from not always the easiest of domestic circumstances.
He made new arrangements of The Firebird, Petrushka,
The Rite of Spring, Song of the Nightingale and
Pulcinella, as well as Les Noces. Rex Lawson’s
pianola performance of The Rite of Spring appeared on
an intriguing CD pairing, back to back with a slightly dodgy
live recording with Benjamin Zander conducting the Boston Philharmonic
with the same piece on IMP MCD 25. The attempt then was to restore
Stravinsky’s original intentions in terms of tempo to the orchestral
version, but with Les Noces the most intriguing thing
for me is how the music is transformed into an almost entirely
new and fascinating work. Shorn of wobbly singers and the extraneous
colours of percussion and chorus, the pianola seems like a ‘soft’
alternative at first. All of the inventively angular melodic
shapes and repetitions take on a different life however, and
rhythmically the work generates a rich tapestry of contrasts.
Some passages have a much more potent ‘groove’ than can be heard
in the full scoring, and the relationship of this piece to the
Rite jumps out more frequently as a result.
The ‘reproducing
piano’ as it is called in the booklet notes, is a highly complex
instrument. Looking at diagrams of a typical machine would seem
to indicate that the ‘driver’ needs at least three of each limb.
The player controls tempo, dynamics and pedals in a variety
of ways, and anyone who imagines it’s just a question of turning
a switch and waiting until the roll has finished needs to think
again. Rex Lawson’s legendary technique turns Les Noces into
a remarkably fresh sounding tour de force, making it
easy to hear why Stravinsky was so enthusiastic about the potential
for this medium for his own work. Any fan of Stravinsky, early
or late, needs to hear this version of Les Noces.
The other works
on this disc are all arrangements by Rex Lawson, and while the
programme is a bit of a strange selection all of the pieces
are unified by the virtuoso pianolist’s expertise and sensitivity
of touch. Lutosławski’s Variations on a Theme of Paganini
covers a great deal of ground in its relatively brief time-span,
from wide athletic leaps to lyrical legato, and is an ideal
showcase for the reproducing piano. The same goes for the two-piano
arrangement of Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini,
although the familiarity of this piece as a technical extravaganza
in numerous guises makes the ear forget the machine origins
of the performance more easily somehow.
Handel’s Arrival
of the Queen of Sheba is treated with a certain amount of
artistic licence, and there is something going on in the treble
between the two pianos which makes some passages sound like
a turbo toy-piano. Such arrangements have plenty of legitimacy,
and this is apparently one of Rex’s highly popular best-selling
rolls. Widor’s Toccata from the 5th Symphony
for organ sounds fine here, but is the only one out of the pieces
here which I felt might have benefited from a bit more wow factor
in terms of tempo. All of those running figures sound a bit
like a Czerny etude, and the ‘left hand’ rhythms end up a bit
pedestrian. We know this piece well enough, so why not make
it sound really ‘unplayable’. The final surprise is a clutch
of movements from Pineapple Poll, tunes by Sir Arthur
Sullivan, arrangement by Sir Charles Mackerras. This is all
great fun as you might expect, but the penultimate movement
Reconciliation also shows how wonderfully sensitive this
mechanical reproducing thing can be when allowed to perform
a real lyrical melody.
This disc is no mere
novelty, and having this rare recording of Stravinsky’s own arrangement
of Les Noces for pianola is something all serious collectors
should consider. It would be a truly fascinating project to have
as complete a set as possible of all of Stravinsky’s own pianola
rolls, and there must surely be plenty of motivation for bringing
them together on record. European readers keen on having a live
demonstration are urged to visit the Amsterdam Pianola Museum,
whose floor to ceiling stacked walls are a living symbol for the
problems of storage and the benefits on insulation when it comes
to piano rolls. Rex Lawson’s own well written notes for this release
top off an attractive package which goes way beyond expectations
at just about every turn.
Dominy Clements
Rex Lawson (pianola)
