Rebeca Omordia: African Pianism
SOMM Recordings

No one would seem to be better equipped to present the music of African composers Akin Euba, Ayo Bankole, Christian Onyeji, David Earl, Fred Onovwerosuoke, J. H. Kwabena Nketia, and Nabil Benabdeljalil than Rebeca Omordia. Born in Romania to a Nigerian father and Romanian mother, the London-based pianist released EKELE: Piano Music by African Composers in 2018 and followed it a year later with the world's first ever African Concert Series, monthly concerts in London featuring works by African classical composers; she's also toured Nigeria as a recitalist and appeared as a soloist with the MUSON Symphony Orchestra in Lagos and Abuja. Yet while the focus of her new album is on on African composers, her interests extend widely. To cite two examples, she recently issued an album with pianist Mark Bebbington called The Piano Music of Ralph Vaughan Williams and also enjoys an ongoing partnership with British cellist Julian Lloyd Webber.

Yet in casting her gaze exclusively on the seven composers featured on African Pianism, Omordia has created something truly special. Not only does she bring attention to figures whose names might be new to many a Western listener, she also presents a compelling argument on behalf of the classical music originating from their homeland, especially when so much of it entices for its distinctive melodic quality, rhythmic drive, and folk-influenced tone. A number of world premiere recordings appear, and adding to the release's appeal percussionist Abdelkader Saadoun joins the pianist on two tracks. The seventy-seven-minute collection, her solo debut for SOMM Recordings, casts a potent spell indeed.

The album takes its name from Nketia's set of Twelve Pedagogical Pieces, which finds the Ghanaian composer drawing on (in his own words) “procedures of African percussion music as exemplified in bell patterns, drumming, xylophone and mbira music” and deftly merging African and Western forms in four concise settings. Others also weave African drumming elements into their pieces, such as Onyeji for Ufie (Igbo Dance) and Euba the Three Yoruba Songs Without Words. Inaugurating African Pianism in striking manner is Egun Variations in G major by Bankole (1935-1976), who created a considerable body of work before dying tragically at only forty-one. Here we witness, not for the only time, the influence of folk music and the blending of European and African models. Based on an Egun song “Tona Nowe,” the piece first arrests the ear with an unadorned voicing of its theme after which Omordia tickles the ears with a number of charming elaborations. Nketia's African Pianism—Twelve Pedagogical Pieces follows, the four exuding considerable charm too, from the buoyant “Play Time,” with its ear-catching hiccup, and exuberant “Dagarti Work Song” to the dignified “Builsa Work Song” and haunting “Volta Fantasy.”

In his three-movement Ufie (Igbo Dance), Onyeji aspired to transfer Nigerian drumming techniques to the keyboard (fittingly, the title refers to a wooden slit drum played by the Anambra people in the Igbo land of Eastern Nigeria). The application of percussive playing to the piano figures more prominently in the rapidly flowing first part than perhaps anywhere else on the album. Aggressive unison patterns alternate with tranquil expressions as the theme is subjected to multiple treatments throughout the three movements, two breezy and the brooding central one slow. Omordia commissioned Onovwerosuoke's Five Kaleidoscopes for Piano (2013) and gives its world premiere recording here. True to its title, the material presents a cumulatively sweeping view, with each part different in style and tone. While the first (“With vigor”) and heavily percussive fifth (“Vivace con brio”) are suitably animated, others are an enigmatic abstraction (“Adagio molto parlando”) and a lyrical statement conveying affection for Africa's landscapes (“Larghetto espressivo”). From Earl's suite Scenes from a South African Childhood comes “Princess Rainbow,” its title derived from a bedtime story his fly fishing-loving father used to tell. Understandably nostalgic in tone, the graceful five-minute rumination is also more Western classical-like in form than the other material.

Moroccan musician Benabdeljalil's represented by four pieces, including three nocturnes written between 2015 and 2020. Again the influence of the Western tradition is discernible in the composer's poetic expressions, the fourth tender and the fifth (by the composer's own admission) redolent of Chopin. An early composition by Benabdeljalil, En attente du printemps is performed in an arrangement for piano and tar, the element enlivening the album with percussive colour and rhythm. The recording ends with Euba's Three Yoruba Songs Without Words, with the singing melodies of the chant-like “Ore Meta (Three Years)” spiked by Saadoun's tar, “Mo Ja'we Gbegbe (I pluck the leaf of remembrance)” touching in its longing, and “L'ori Oke ati petele (On the hill, on the plain)” a folk-inflected closer.

June 2022