Latest / The Piano Maven with Jed Distler / Conlon Nancarrow's Studies for Player Piano

Transcript

Conlon Nancarrow's Studies for Player Piano · The Piano Maven with Jed Distler

• 0:00
  This is Jed Distler, and welcome to the Piano Maven, your friendly podcast guide to piano
• 0:17
  recordings.
• 0:18
  I'm going to introduce this episode with a quote from a well-known letter that was written
• 0:24
  by a well-known composer.
• 0:26
  Here's the quote.
• 0:27
  It goes like this.
• 0:28
  Last summer, I found in a Paris gramophone shop the records of Conlon Nancaro's music,
• 0:36
  volumes one and two.
• 0:37
  I listened and listened and became immediately enthusiastic.
• 0:42
  This music is the greatest discovery since Webern and Ives, something great and important
• 0:49
  for all of music history.
• 0:51
  His music is so utterly original, enjoyable, perfectly constructed, but at the same time
• 0:57
  emotional.
• 0:58
  To me, it's the best of any composer living today.
• 1:03
  That was a letter written by the composer Georgy Ligeti to Charles Amarconian, who also
• 1:12
  is a composer and who produced the first integral recordings made of the studies for player
• 1:19
  piano by Conlon Nancaro.
• 1:22
  Conlon Nancaro was an American composer who became frustrated with the inability of musicians
• 1:29
  to perform his rhythmically complex scores accurately.
• 1:34
  So he hit upon the idea of creating music for player piano where he could punch his
• 1:40
  own piano rolls to ensure the most precise results he could desire.
• 1:47
  This also allowed him to explore tempos and rhythmic complexities far beyond what two
• 1:54
  human hands could play in real time.
• 1:58
  Many of Nancaro's earlier player piano studies are jazz influenced.
• 2:03
  For example, the Boogie Wiggy Suite, which is study number three.
• 2:07
  The first time I heard this, it reminded me of a Boogie Wiggy pianist like Albert Ammons
• 2:13
  trapped in the body of Cecil Taylor.
• 2:17
  And many of Nancaro's later studies are canons that are constructed in ratios that involve
• 2:24
  irrational numbers.
• 2:26
  For example, rather than having a canon and an imitative voice moving in the same tempo
• 2:32
  as the original voice, or at a ratio that's twice as fast or twice as slow like augmentation
• 2:39
  or diminution, Nancaro will have irrational proportions.
• 2:45
  And with a player piano handy and his own custom made piano roll cutter, Conlon Nancaro
• 2:51
  could execute these proportions with the utmost precision.
• 2:57
  Yet beneath the surface rigor of Nancaro's compositional strategies, there's always a
• 3:03
  playful side.
• 3:04
  For instance, you'll hear what seems to be dry and arguably academic sounding two part
• 3:13
  dissonant counterpoint suddenly break out into the fastest arpeggiated figurations in
• 3:20
  the West.
• 3:21
  Or it'll break out into hyperactive repeated chords that just hammer away until you beg
• 3:27
  for mercy.
• 3:28
  The study number 20, for instance, explores repeated notes in circumscribed ranges.
• 3:36
  And then there's this piece called Canon X, where two voices respectively slow down and
• 3:42
  speed up, crossing in the middle.
• 3:46
  One especially memorable study is the study number 25, which is a veritable orgy of supersonic
• 3:55
  glissandos, chords, and asymmetrical patterns that all culminate in this cataclysmic coda
• 4:04
  where 1012 notes are played in 12 seconds with the sustain pedal slammed down.
• 4:13
  It's kind of amazing to hear this and obviously no two human hands can do that.
• 4:19
  So as you can see, this music is undoubtedly original and I think it's endlessly fascinating.
• 4:25
  My first encounter with the Conlon Nancarro player piano studies was on a Columbia Masterworks
• 4:32
  LP that came out I think in 1968.
• 4:35
  And it had selected studies that were recorded in Conlon Nancarro's own Mexico City studio
• 4:42
  on his own player pianos.
• 4:45
  Then in 1988, Charles Amarconian went to Mexico City to make digital recordings for all of
• 4:53
  Nancarro's studies.
• 4:55
  And these were released on the Virgo label.
• 4:58
  But the only problem was that one of Nancarro's two player pianos was in disrepair.
• 5:05
  So only one of these instruments could be used.
• 5:08
  So for the studies involving two pianos, they had to resort to overdubbing.
• 5:13
  However, a decade earlier in 1977, Amarconian had visited Nancarro in Mexico City and at
• 5:22
  that time he made analog recordings of studies numbers one through 41, which were all that
• 5:30
  existed at that time.
• 5:32
  And these were all issued on four LPs on the 1750 Arch label between 1977 and 1984.
• 5:42
  These were the LPs that Ligeti was talking about in that letter earlier on.
• 5:47
  But what's really important about these analog recordings is that they used both of Nancarro's
• 5:54
  instruments and they have the advantage of each piano's distinct timbre.
• 6:00
  For instance, one of the pianos had metal covered felt hammers and the other piano had
• 6:06
  leather strips on the hammers.
• 6:09
  I personally prefer these analog recordings over the digital remakes, mainly because the
• 6:16
  sonics convey an immediacy in a bite that I think is a little bit lacking in the drier
• 6:22
  yet possibly more realistic ambience of the digital recordings.
• 6:28
  And also the analog recordings employed generally faster tempos.
• 6:34
  The 1750 Arch analog recordings eventually were released on CD in a box set on the Other
• 6:42
  Minds label.
• 6:43
  And I've posted links in my episode description to both the Other Minds release and the Vergo
• 6:52
  release.
• 6:53
  There still is another edition out there of the Nancarro studies for player piano that
• 7:00
  was issued on the MDG label.
• 7:03
  And these recordings are different because they play the rolls back on a Bozendorfer
• 7:09
  grand piano fitted with an Ampico player piano mechanism whose hammers were modified with
• 7:16
  leather strips and metal parts according to Nancarro's direct specifications.
• 7:23
  So this way you get the percussive clarity of Nancarro's own instruments, but you also
• 7:28
  get the sonorous and resonant advantages of a first rate concert grand as opposed to Nancarro's
• 7:35
  two upright pianos.
• 7:37
  Also the MDG recordings were made in a resonant church acoustic that offers a totally different
• 7:45
  ambience than the close microphone placement and the dry acoustic of Nancarro's home studio
• 7:52
  in Mexico City.
• 7:54
  Personally, I think the wiry, almost harpsichord-like sound that emits from certain registers on
• 8:02
  Nancarro's uprights have more timbral diversity than what he hears from the more evenly regulated
• 8:09
  Bozendorfer grand.
• 8:11
  And there's more bite and edge to the closer microphone placement in the Charles Amarconian
• 8:18
  recordings, especially the 1977 analog sessions.
• 8:23
  But on the other hand, the Bozendorfer's tuning proves to be more reliable and sturdy.
• 8:29
  The bottom line is that the MDG series on a Bozendorfer and the other Minds and Virgo
• 8:35
  recordings on Nancarro's own upright player pianos complement one another.
• 8:41
  And so I'd advise you to try to sample all of these recordings and then you can draw
• 8:47
  your own conclusions and make your own preferences.
• 8:51
  But whatever you do, do not miss out on experiencing Conlon Nancarro's studies for player piano.
• 9:00
  They add up to what I consider to be one of the most significant bodies of keyboard work
• 9:07
  of the 20th century.
• 9:09
  This is Jed Disler, and you've been listening to the Piano Maven, your friendly podcast
• 9:15
  guide to piano recordings.
• 9:17
  And I envy you hearing Conlon Nancarro's player piano studies for the first time.
• 9:23
  I just love these pieces, so I hope you'll check them out.
• 9:27
  And I hope you will be with me for the next episode.
• 9:31
  I look forward to being together.
• 9:33
  Take care.