Phillip Bush: Concord; Piano Music of Charles Ives and Marion Bauer
Neuma Records

Agnese Toniutti: John Cage: Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano
Neuma Records

A tale of two mavericks, Charles Ives (1874-1954) and John Cage (1912-92) to be precise. The impact of both on contemporary classic music is immense if not incalculable, and each of these American visionaries profoundly transformed the musical landscape in different ways. On his release, pianist Philip Bush couples Ives's Second Piano Sonata, formally titled Concord, Mass., 1840-1860, with six preludes by Marion Bauer (1882-1955); playing prepared piano, Agnese Toniutti devotes her hour-long set exclusively to Cage with performances of nineteen compact sonatas and interludes.

In 1921, a Musical America reviewer deemed Ives's creation “without a doubt the most startling conglomeration of meaningless notes that we have ever seen engraved on white paper.” Today we hear the work differently, of course, and while it's possible to understand that a response of that time could be that vehemently negative, the work today falls on ears more receptive to and appreciative of its distinguishing qualities. For Bush, who teaches piano and chamber music at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, it's “one of those landmark works for the instrument that's worthy of a lifetime of study” and argues for its place alongside the Goldberg Variations and Beethoven's late sonatas. He's been playing Concord for three decades and has thus acquired a deep understanding of it, even if that perspective changes with each re-acquaintance. The release of his treatment comes mere months after one by Reed Tetzloff (on Master Performers) and thus makes for a fascinating comparison. You can't go wrong with either treatment, both superb and equally commendable.

Ever the innovator and iconoclast, Ives decided to pay musical tribute to four literary figures connected to Concord, Massachusetts between 1840 and 1860 and who championed nature's spiritual power. As catalyzing springboards for Ives's fecund artistic imagination, they inspired him to create the diverse portraits that compose the forty-five-minute work. In his Essays Before a Sonata, Ives characterized the work as his attempt to create an “impression of the spirit of transcendentalism that is associated in the minds of many with Concord, Mass., of over a half-century ago.” It is, in short, a piano sonata unlike any other. As audacious, imaginative, and original as the work is, it nevertheless conforms to the standard four-movement design of the sonata. That structure proves stabilizing for the multitudinous ideas that stretch the work in so many directions. And as experimental as it is, for Bush this, he argues, Romantic work takes its place within a continuum that includes Schumann and Liszt. Contrasting sides of Ives's music surface, what Bush refers to as the “thorny” (associated with dense clusters of notes and dissonance) and the “sentimental [and] tonal” (nostalgia evoked in myriad ways).

The work opens with “Emerson,” as, towering tumultuous, and tempestuous as a solo piano movement has ever been. Over the course of sixteen minutes, the monumental music alternates between engulfing with oceanic waves and haunting with shadowy gestures, the material directly expressive without losing its enigmatic quality. “Hawthorne”—the work's scherzo—is as action-packed, including as it does virtuosic runs that span the keyboard, and at a dozen minutes almost as long. Ives created it with the “wilder, fantastical” side of the author's short stories in mind, and certainly there are savage moments; there're also, however, elegiac, hymn-like passages to offset the tumult. The comparatively short third movement, “The Alcotts,” is largely lyrical and serene, though a dissonant gesture or two still emerges. Meanwhile, the closing “Thoreau” famously startles for the sudden appearance of a flute towards the end (Ives included it because, in his words, “Thoreau much prefers to hear the flute over Walden”), Bush's University of South Carolina colleague Jennifer Parker-Harley doing the honours. As striking is the fact that the composer opted to end the work with a brooding, ruminative tone-poem rather than the robust finale one might have anticipated.

In liner notes for her recording of Cage's Sonatas and Interludes (1946-48), Italian pianist Agnese Toniutti cites two key details about his prepared innovation, first that it was practically motivated, invented as it was to overcome “the lack of space and financial means to hire a percussion ensemble after the commission of dancer Syvilla Fort,” and second that, in Cage's own words, “the prepared piano is a percussion ensemble under the control of a single player.” That's the optimal way to broach this hour-long project, one featuring a seasoned performer who's presented this material in concert many times and is an expert at rendering his material into physical form. Utilizing bolts, nuts, screws, plastic, and rubber materials, Toniutti typically spends two-and-a-half hours readying the piano for performance. Though Cage provided the performer with exacting instructions (the sizes of bolts and screws, for example, specified and the location of their insertion precisely delineated), every piano responds differently to preparation, which makes every performance unique.

Familiar piano timbres sometimes emerge alongside clangorous, metallic-sounding noises (see “Sonata XII”), the music in places calling to mind the playfulness associated with a child's mechanical toy. When those prepared percussive effects combine with meditative moods, the material begins to suggest the hypnotic lilt of a gamelan ensemble performance (e.g., sonatas three, seven, eight, nine, and eleven). There are, among other things, gleeful explorations, meditations (“Sonata VI”), and even jazzy swing (“First Interlude”). It's easy to be so sidetracked by the prepared component that Cage the composer gets lost in the process, but Toniutti's stellar readings remind us that these works have musical value far beyond their treatments, something borne out clearly by the closing sixteenth sonata. Moods and rhythms of contrasting kinds assert themselves in the nineteen pieces, even if a general sense of tranquility underscores the work. As the listener becomes ever more acclimatized to the sound produced by the prepared piano, the attention gradually shifts more toward the musical content. Toniutti shows herself to be a model Cage interpreter in not only fastidiously preparing the piano in accordance with his instructions but in responding to his music with sensitivity and humanizing it in her performance.

May 2023