Clipper Erickson: Tableau Tempest & Tango
Navona Records

Being paired with Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition can be to a composer's advantage and disadvantage, the advantage being the greater exposure that results from the association and the disadvantage the likelihood that no matter how credible the composer's work is it will probably be overshadowed by Mussorgsky's masterpiece. Such is the predicament confronting Richard Brodhead (1947- ) and David Finko (1936- ) on Clipper Erickson's latest ambitious collection of solo piano works.

Finko's particularly well-represented on the release, with the first disc given over entirely to four works by the Leningrad-born composer. On the second CD, two pieces by Brodhead appear, after which this largely Russian-themed album climaxes with Pictures at an Exhibition in the original solo piano version that preceded Ravel's well-known orchestrated one. Brodhead and Finko clearly benefit from the attention given their works by Erickson, whose previous recording, 2015's My Cup Runneth Over – the Complete Piano Works of R. Nathaniel Dett, showed he has a special gift for giving lesser-known works their due.

Originally trained and employed as a submarine engineer, Finko graduated from The Leningrad Conservatory in 1965 and eventually left the engineering profession to become a full-time composer. Since emigrating to the USA in 1979, he's taught at numerous universities and written eleven operas, eighteen concertos, two symphonies, three tone poems, and a number of chamber compositions. A graduate of Yale and the University of Pennsylvania, the American-born Brodhead has composed material for symphony orchestra, vocal and choral music, chamber music, and works for dance; he retired in 2013 from Temple University's Boyer College of Music and Dance where he taught and held a number of administrative positions.

Finko's set begins with 1961's Fantasia on a Medieval Russian Theme, an alternately delicate and declamatory setting whose sombre mien can be attributed to its origins as a poem dealing with the oppression of the Russian people. By turns pensive, ponderous, and stately, the composer generated the work using the modest portion of the original song that survived as a foundation for eighteen variations designed to evoke images of cavalry pursuit, feet tramping, swords slashing, church alarm bells, people sobbing, and a so-called “March to Nowhere.” A folk dimension is audible from the first moments of 1964's Sonata No. 1 “Solomon Mikhoels,” its title a reference to an actor in the Moscow State Jewish Theater who was assassinated in 1948 on Stalin's orders, Mikhoels' body run over to suggest a traffic accident. Presented in four contrasting parts, the material alternates between high intensity (“Energico,” “Animato”) and gentleness (“Concentrato”), all of it executed by Erickson with dexterity. Arriving no less than thirty-four years later, the also four-movement second sonata deals with issues of personal suffering and struggle and in so doing advances through parts suggesting the extreme mood swings of mental disorder, from the panic-stricken “Affannosamente acuto” to the subdued “Largo assai, debole,” its gentleness a possible reflection of the depressed state that sets in after a violent psychic episode (interestingly, a sideways glance to Mussorgsky's piece seemingly emerges within the second movement, as do innocent, playful moments, their arising perhaps indicative of long-past childhood memories welling up). Disc one closes out with Finko's third sonata, which he wrote expressly for Erickson in 2009 and is rendered by the pianist with grace and sensitivity. Rooted in a single melodic theme, the material wends far afield during the nine-minute performance, its core material treated as a slow dance during one sequence and as a funeral-like procession in another.

Disc two opens with Brodhead's second sonata, 2016's single-movement Sonata Notturna, which true to its title has to do with night image-related sections that, like Finko's, are tempestuous in mood. That said, while the piece does progress through passages ranging from reflective to violent, it develops in a rather stream of consciousness-like fashion, its development as organic as thought processes unfolding through time. The titular tango dimension surfaces in Brodhead's second contribution, 2011's Una Carta de Buenos Aires – Tango Sonatina for Piano, which sees the listener transported to Brazil for another single-movement exploration, one in this case that draws upon the dance-related aspects of the Argentine tango without lapsing into straight quotation or cliche. The form in this case is present more as an element that subtly reconfigures Brodhead's material whilst retaining the composer's signature.

As artistically satisfying as Finko's and Brodhead's pieces are, they can't help but be overshadowed by the magnificence of Pictures at an Exhibition, which retains its capacity to dazzle despite familiarity. Ravishingly melodic, Mussorgsky's enduring, original work benefits from the concision of its movements and the extreme contrasts in style and dynamics between them. With the stately “Promenade” treatments providing five intermittent connections, the work is otherwise free to pursue adventurous, divergent paths that take the listener to places impish (“Gnomus (The Gnome)”), mysterious (“Il vecchio castello (The Old Castle)”), portentous (“Bydlo”), and haunting (“Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuÿle”). Erickson invests his performance with no small amount of passion, the rendering anything but indifferent and uninspired. Vividly bringing Mussorgsky's material to life, one can visualize a setting teeming with activity and people during “The Marketplace at Limoges” and then be awed by the grandeur of “The Great Gate of Kiev.”

August 2018