Martin Scherzinger: Scherzinger Etudes
New Focus Recordings

To say that Martin Scherzinger's second album for New Focus is fascinating conceptually could be taken to imply it's less striking at the level of pure sound. Nothing could be more untrue: yes, Scherzinger Etudes does dazzle on intellectual grounds, but the collection is as satisfying when experienced in its musical form with details about its genesis stripped out. That there is a striking conceptual dimension shouldn't surprise given Scherzinger's background. An Associate Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU Steinhardt, he was born and raised in South Africa and as such has dedicated a major part of his study to Africa's musical traditions. Paired with that is a concomitant study of how Western artists have engaged with them in their own work. Both converge in a strikingly original way on Scherzinger Etudes when existing material by composers such as Chopin, Liszt, Brahms, Schumann, and Paganini are subjected to a kind of prismatic refracting.

Performed by pianist Bobby Mitchell (with fellow pianist Tom Rosenkranz joining him on one of the fifteen pieces), the worlds of European solo piano and traditional African music meet, with the rhythms of the latter often giving a dynamic momentum to the material. Scherzinger, however, is quick to address the bias towards rhythm that many a listener brings to any music with an African dimension; his view is that while rhythm is inarguably a central element in its music, it's also extremely complex and nuanced.

In putting the works of those aforementioned composers through a “hall of mirrors” of a particular kind, new pieces result, ones that might bear vestigial traces of their origins but for the most part sound like novel creations. What the composer describes as “a topological study of found musical sound” ends up sounding more like a dazzling set of originals by Scherzinger. While one could persuasively argue, as Dan Lippel does in notes written for the release, that the opening part of Mbiras de St. Gervais, for example, hints at “French Baroque style as well as spacious kora improvisations,” one might also hear the piece as a fully integrated original that integrates Western and African musical realms in seamless manner.

Many of the pieces exude urgency and high energy, especially when Scherzinger assembles them into multi-tiered tapestries; a mood of ecstasy also gives certain pieces a jubilant, even rhapsodic charge. The graceful elegance of the opening to Verso il capo calls to mind Bach's Goldberg Variations; the rhythmic drive propelling what comes after, however, sounds like some heady mix of ragtime and African music. Errata Erratica likewise alternates between ruminative passages and others racing helter-skelter. That one passage so eloquent can sit cozily alongside another so earthy speaks to Scherzinger's daring. Connections one wouldn't have imagined possible reconcile in these constructions.

The kind of splendour one hears in Schumann and Brahms surfaces in Fast zu sorglos, their styles and sensibilities present as faint echoes; the trills that make Mbiras de St. Gervais so enticing similarly draw a connecting line to the Western solo piano tradition. Anything but a dry academic exercise, Kinderreim touches the heart with its delicate folk strains, while Chopi-Chopin and Occidentalism intersperse more than a few moments of lyrical beauty amidst vivacity. The rollicking dance swing powering Likembe-Liszt clearly reflects a strong African influence, though again that's merely one facet of many. The coup de grace Verso il capo II arrives at album's end, with Rosenkranz joining Mitchell for a ten-minute ride that's so rousing it bewitches.

September 2021