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For Tyranny and Duckworth:
Producer . Thomas MacCluskey
Engineer . Tom Lazarus, first engineer; Saundra Palmer, second engineer
Editing . Tom MacCluskey and Lois Svard, Sonic Solutions at Classic Sound, NY, NY
Mastering . Tom MacCluskey, BMG Studios, NY, NY
Recorded . BMG Studio A, New York, March 25-26, 1993
Piano . Steinway CD327
For Ashley:
Producer . Robert Ashley
Engineer . Robert Spangler, Jr.
Editing . Tom MacCluskey and Lois Svard, Sonic Solutions at Classic Sound, NY, NY
Mastering . Tom MacCluskey, BMG Studios, NY, NY
Recorded . Weis Center for the Performing Arts, Lewisburg,PA, June 18-19, 1993
Piano . Steinway No. 134676
Label . Lovley Music, Ltd., 1994 (LCD 3051) |
Reviews
"Svard's performance casts a radiant spell." – Wayne Schneider, American Music
"Svard's performance--Ashley wrote Van Cao's Meditation for her--impresses me as so in keeping with the music's soul as to sound a syncretic marvel." – Mike Silverton, Fanfare
"Svard is a marvelous musician, and I find it impossible to tune her out." – Arved Ashby, American Record Guide
"This whole CD is absolutely exceptional ... Lois Svard's playing is flawless, beautiful and sensitive ..." – The Alberta New Music Review
"Lois Svard has commissioned a thorny and ravishing album here . . . if you've been meaning to leapfrog over your Michael Nyman discs, here's a good place to start." – San Francisco Weekly
"The ten entrancing miniatures that comprise William Duckworth's Imaginary Dances bring out the best in solo pianist Svard's probing, delicate sensibility." – Keyboard |
"Blue" Gene Tyranny is one of the finest improvising pianists of our time, a genius at whipping up complex structures in which every note feels right. It is a tribute to Svard's place in new music that this is his first solo piano work recorded by someone other than himself. Tyranny's harmony is dazzlingly versatile, ranging from easy-going jazz sonorities to impressionism to brittle dissonance.
William Duckworth has been called the modern Robert Schumann for his beautifully unified sets of character pieces. If his widely celebrated Time Curve Preludes is his Carnaval, then Imaginary Dances is his Kreisleriana. The dances are engagingly simple, and lively because they are more complex than they sound. The first and third dances use bluegrass and jazz patterns; the eighth is designed to make the pianist sound like she has at least three hands. The seventh dance combines jazz rhythm, medieval technique, and Hindu melody, but weaves them so tightly together that only the musicological mind would be tempted to separate them. The less analytic listener hears an intricate dance of sensual joy.
Van Cao's Meditation is a rare instrumental work by the late 20th century's most influential and innovative opera composer, Robert Ashley, best known for his ground-breaking operas Perfect Lives and Improvement (Don Leaves Linda). The piece was inspired by a photograph in the National Geographic magazine for November, 1989, of Van Cao, the composer of North Vietnam's national anthem, sitting at one of Vietnam's two grand pianos. Ashley imagined Van Cao improvising in his studio and humming to himself. In Ashley's imagination, Van Cao plays an endlessly ruminative line of single notes, using five pitches. The piece breathes a constant air of mystery and the quiet of the undulating curves never settles into calm.
From the CD liner notes written by Kyle Gann, composer, author of several books, music critic for The Village Voice, and author of the Peabody Award-winning radio show "The American Mavericks" for Minnesota Public Radio. He has been on the faculty at Bard College since 1997. |
