30 July 2005
By Joshua Kosman
San Francisco Chronicle
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FRED: MUSIC OF FREDERIC RZEWSKI
It would be hard to think of a more congenial pairing of composer and performer than Frederic Rzewski and the dynamic young new-music sextet Eighth Blackbird. Like the ensemble's performances, Rzewski's work is vividly theatrical -- his piano music, for example, calls for reciting, whistling, banging on the keyboard lid and so on -- and there's a visceral excitement to his music that remains constant even as it ranges from tender melodic writing to the most extreme dissonances. All of those features inform the "Pocket Symphony," a six-movement dazzler that Rzewski wrote in 2000 for the group and that serves as the headline attraction of this mostly knockout disc. The music covers all kinds of moods and approaches, from dreamy surrealism to caffeinated unison melodies, and the members of Eighth Blackbird deliver it all with their trademark panache. Just as thrilling is "Les Moutons de Panurge, " a little-known masterpiece from 1969 built out of a single melody that repeats and returns in ever-deepening iterations like waves hitting a shore. The disappointment comes at the end, with "Coming Together," Rzewski's turbulent, provocative setting of a letter from Attica inmate Sam Melville. This is one of the great pieces of political art in the new-music repertoire, and the group's placid, adenoidal rendition turns it into a self-help mantra.
Copyright © 2005 San Francisco Chronicle
