Frederic Rzewski (1938-2021)
Unite!
North American Ballads (1979)
Mayn Yingele (1989)
The People United Will Never Be Defeated (1975)
Benyamin Nuss (piano)
rec. 2021/2022, Klaus-von-Bismarck-Saal, WDR Funkhaus, Cologne, Germany
BERLIN CLASSICS 0302804BC [2 CDs: 113]
Not long after I left music college I took part in a tour of UK Arts Venues where the principal work was Peter Maxwell Davies’ Eight Songs for a Mad King. For those unfamiliar with the piece – spoiler alert – it climaxes with the King snatching ‘my’ violin and smashing it. I have to say it was a really enjoyable work to perform and genuinely effective both as music and music-theatre. However, it was not enough to fill an entire programme. One of the other works performed was Winsboro Cotton Mill Blues which is the fourth and final movement of the North American Ballads by Frederic Rzewski – a work and composer I had never heard of at that time. Returning to this work decades later I continue to find it very impressive especially in the context of the complete work. Indeed all three of the works on this two disc set are major pieces in the contemporary piano literature. In some ways Rzewski – politically motivated modernist though he was – can be seen as harking back to the 19th Century tradition of virtuoso pianist-composers who wrote music that exploited their own particular set of musical and technical skills. With Rzewski, his early adulthood was during the 1960’s and all of the music here has a distinct agit-pop aesthetic albeit expressed in ‘classical’ keyboard terms. There is a comment from the composer that appears in several of the articles written about him. To quote the very brief liner from this set; “Composers, Rzewski stated, were unlikely to influence politics. But it was his conviction that ‘you have to write as if you could’....”. Of course, many would go further and say that music alone – a sequence of pitches and rhythms – cannot mean
anything and that we as listeners can only impose our own meaning onto it.
All three works seem to have been written in a state of social/moral outrage and seek to illustrate the plight of exploited peoples and workers. Disc 1 opens with the four North American Ballads. This work dates from 1979 and was a commission from pianist Paul Jacobs and they featured on a Nonesuch release by that pianist in 1980. The third and fourth Ballads were included on Marc Hamelin’s feted Hyperion disc of The People United Will Never Be Defeated! 36 Variations on ˇEl Pueblo Unido Jamás Será Vencido! I know Jacobs’ fine and powerful recording but not the Hamelin. Jed Distler contributed a very useful liner for the Hyperion disc which can be read online. In that he quotes Rzewski referring to the ballads thus; “I took as a model the chorale preludes of Bach, who in his contrapuntal writing consistently derives motivic configurations from the basic tune. In each piece I built up contrapuntal textures in a similar way, using classical techniques like augmentation, diminution, transposition, and compression, always keeping the profile of the tune on some level.” Indeed Bach is a benevolent if distant presence in all three works on this disc. As a set this is a major composition with the four movements running to roughly thirty minutes playing time. Of the three works this is probably the one which is easiest for the listener to perceive an extra-musical narrative. The first three ballads are based on specific folk/protest songs; Dreadful memories, Which side are you on? and Down by the riverside. Broadly speaking, Rzewski follows a similar music arc to the big sets of variations of the disc. The melodies are stated clearly and simply and then are subjected to a virtuosic development and treatment with elements of the original melody emerging and submerging.
As part of Rzewski’s socialist beliefs he made his scores – which otherwise would still be in copyright – available online for free study and download. The ballads can be viewed here. The eye confirms what the ear suggests – these are ferociously complex and demanding works. That being the case, this would seem to be
the moment to comment on the playing of pianist Benyamin Nuss. To say the liner booklet for the Berlin Classics release is brief is an understatement. Nuss does not merit a single line of biography. So, courtesy of Wikipedia; Nuss was born in Germany in 1989 and his father is jazz trombonist Ludwig Nuss. I mention that because the jazz idiom is one that Rzewski references quite often throughout all the works and this is something Nuss is notably at ease with. I cannot compare his discs to any other versions except Jacobs’ Ballads. However, it strikes me that this is hugely impressive playing – technically imperious and musically insightful and expressive too. Clearly Rzewski had a formidable piano technique himself and it is interesting how all the works have a sense of being a compendium of keyboard technique from Bach to the present. The problem this fluency gives for other players is how to coalesce this ‘lucky-dip’ of piano styles into a musically coherent whole. It strikes me that Nuss achieves this most convincingly. Another important consideration – around the 6:00 mark of Which side are you on? Rzewski offers the pianist the option for an improvisation within certain quite clear parameters. Nuss plays an improvisation of nearly five minutes, Jacobs takes the alternative written out ending. Clearly what we hear on this disc is Nuss not Rzewski but given the composer’s background in improvised material I do enjoy hearing Nuss’ take on this, Rzewski offers a similar optional improvised section in Down by the Riverside which again Nuss takes and Jacobs does not. The composer instructs that if opted for the improvisation should last as long as the music that precedes it. By timing alone I guess that Hamelin avoids the improvisation too. The Jacobs performance is worthy of being in any collection just because of his stature as a player and as originator of the work. However, the Nonesuch recording was never great and sounds rather thin and wiry compared to this new version.
Winsboro Cotton Mill Blues is the work which is most clearly pictorial and least subjected to this quasi-variation technique. The origin of the song was the workforce of the eponymous cotton mill in the 1930’s who created this song reflecting the brutal conditions of the factory. Rzewski’s genius is to recreate the shattering mechanistic cacophony of the mill out of which din the song emerges but is ultimately subsumed by. This remains one of Rzewski’s most popular and frequently played works which is not surprising; it combines a modern aesthetic with a compelling narrative while also having a clear kinship with the virtuoso display pieces of the 19th Century. My initial reaction all those years ago has clearly been shared in the intervening decades by players and audiences alike.
Disc 1 is completed by Mayn Yingele – a theme and twenty four variations on the Yiddish poem - latterly song - “My Little Son” of that name written by Morris Rosenfeld in 1887 which embodies the harsh living conditions of Jewish immigrants in New York. Rzewski wrote the work to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Kristallnacht between November 9th 1988 and January 11th 1989. The score can be viewed
here. At some point the poem became lyrics for a song – a version of which can be heard
here. Rzweski clearly did want this set of variations to encompass musical expressions of the desperate lives these immigrants led but there is a danger for the listener who tries to create a too-specific linkage between a given variation and some element of that suffering. Without wishing to diminish the extent of that suffering or the goal of the composer, I must admit that I found the best way to listen to the work was as absolute music. The work lasts just 17:31 in this performance to cover the theme and twenty four variations. Given that Variation 22 alone takes 4:30 it can be deduced that many are almost fragmentary. This underlines again for me the skill of both composer and performer to be able to weld this multi-faceted and fascinating compendium of piano techniques together.
Disc 2 is devoted to Rzewski’s most famous work; The People United Will Never Be Defeated! 36 Variations on ˇEl Pueblo Unido Jamás Será Vencido! A quick look at Discogs shows at least six other versions of the work with Nuss the seventh. I cannot think of a contemporary piano work on a similar scale that has received a similar number of recordings. The work was written in a remarkably concentrated period of time during September and October 1975 in response to a request by Ursula Oppens for a piece to be a companion work in concert with Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations. This recording lasts an epic 65:36 – you do wonder how Oppens felt once she received the finished score and contemplated that first concert performance! Courtesy of the Hyperion liner by Jed Distler we learn that the work has a thirty six bar theme followed by thirty six variations. There is a pattern to the modulations through the work that means all twelve of the minor keys are covered. Likewise the variations are grouped into six sets of six. Distler explains these groupings in some – very interesting – detail, but suffice to say that what this demonstrates is Rzewski’s remarkable achievement in taking a rigorously imposed structure and form, which embraces just about every musical style and technique imaginable whilst also ‘obeying’ his overarching requirement of celebrating the spirit and resolve of the people embodied in the original folksong. Along the way, Rzewski adds some effects; the piano lid is slammed, the pianist whistles a counter-melody but these are passing almost inconsequential ‘novelties’ with the abiding impression being of a massive often awe-inspiring piece of real emotional and musical stature. The only ‘problem’ for the listener – let alone the shattered player – is absorbing the work in a single sweep. This is a piece that requires the complete attention of and submission to by the audience – it is not a piece for dipping into.
Again I have nothing but admiration for Nuss’ playing which encompasses fistfuls of notes in an aggressive contemporary idiom or passages of nightclub schmooze with equal utter conviction. Likewise the Berlin Classics recording is able to accommodate his very wide dynamic and expressive range with seeming ease. As mentioned, I have not heard any of the alternative versions – I can imagine Hamelin being toweringly impressive here. One of Rzewski’s own performances can be heard on
YouTube with the score scrolling by at the same time. The playing is again remarkable although on the YouTube stream the piano is rather clangourous. After the thirty-sixth variation [usefully Berlin Classics have tracked every-one on the CD] and before the final return of the theme, Rzewski offers the player the option of another improvisation which Nuss takes – as does Hamelin apparently. Unusually – but annoyingly not explained or indeed mentioned in the liner – there is a mini-appendix at the end of the whole work on this new disc which offers two further improvisations by Nuss that I imagine a listener could programme into the performance on different occasions.
Rzewski was described – until his death in 2021 – as the most important and impressive composer-pianist of our time. On the evidence of this passionately committed and technically commanding pair of discs that is hard to argue against.
Nick Barnard
Published: October 17, 2022
