NIELSEN PRICE Interruptions II.1 Watts 1965.2 2 Songs for Voice and Viola.3 Love Songs.4 Four Medieval Songs.5 Spiritual Songs.4 Ancient Carols.5 Villa da Fontani.6 Three Faces of Kim: Fearful.7 Augury
• Lisa Berlacher Gregory, 1Limor Toren-Immerman (vn); Roland Kato (va); 7Berkeley A. Price (contrabass cl); 8M. Kent Gregory (sax); 2Chika Inoue (sop sax, alto sax); 6David Grimes, 6Gregory Newton (gtrs); 2Mary Au, 1Sylvie Ollivier, 1Nora Chiang Wrobel (pn); Deon Nielsen Price (4, 7, 8pn, 5hpd); 3, 4, 5Darryl Taylor (ct) • CAMBRIA 1236 (77:69)
The music of Deon Nielsen Price is one of my discoveries for this particular issue of Fanfare, and it was a pleasant one indeed. Because this review is part of a feature, I’m assuming that her biographical details will be found elsewhere, but I shall simply mention that she is the former president of the International Alliance for Women in Music, the president emeritus of the National Association of Composers, and the author of more than 200 compositions which span a wide variety of genres. A quick check of the Fanfare Archive indicates that this is her first exposure in these pages.
I must say that the title of the disc’s opening work, Interruptions II, is very reminiscent of the sort of appellation given to works in the 1960s and 1970s during the heyday of the avant-garde movement. This tonally traditional work, however, dates from 1988, apparently being revised in 2015, and is scored for the almost unheard-of combination of violin and two pianos. Actually, though, in its original version, it was scored for only two players, one of whom was called to play both violin and piano during the course of the piece, something perhaps even closer to unique status than the revised version heard here. Readers may recall the Gemini Variations by Benjamin Britten, a quartet for two players, one of whom was to play successively on flute and piano, and the other on violin and piano. That work was written for the Hungarian Jeney twins, who recorded it for Decca/London. Another slightly different variation on this theme was provided by Arthur Grumiaux, who was almost as gifted a pianist as he was a violinist. LP collectors may have seen the famous disc on which he recorded both parts of sonatas by Mozart and Brahms. I suppose Grumiaux never discovered this work by Price, especially since it was written two years after he died, but I can imagine him liking it enough to have played it. Its single movement employs adventurous sonorities, but always retains tonal integrity. Some moments of modality peek through at times, and the piece maintains the listener’s interest right up to its dramatic close. Effective use of violin harmonics and strumming of the piano strings adds luster to this captivating work.
Price’s free tonality continues into Watts 1965 A Remembrance, a recollection of the infamous riots in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angles in the turbulent 1960s. The single-movement work comprises three contrasting sections, “Barricades,” “Curfew,” and “Aftermath.” Much of the work has the saxophonist spin out some rather “bluesy” lines (meant to represent the onlookers), and the performer is called upon to play on both the soprano and alto members of the saxophone family. The rioting and gunshots are also portrayed through more dramatic gestures in both instruments, and the work makes a considerable positive impression. At the work’s first performance, an elderly gentleman who’d been a witness to the riot commented that the composer had “gotten” the gist of the event, both in its portrayal of a bad time, but also in reflecting the positive things that came out of it.
The Two Songs for Voice and Viola give further evidence of the composer’s seeking to explore new combinations of timbres. This may, in fact, be the first—and possibly still only—work written for countertenor and viola. The texts are drawn from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and When Lilacs Last in Dooryard Bloom’d. Generally cast in a similar range, the two music lines are skillfully woven around each other by the composer, with sometimes the voice and at others the instrument predominating. The gentle spirit of the poetry is exquisitely matched by the music. Love Songs employs two poems, “The Connection” and “Love” by Robert T. Bowen, and the spirit of mystery that pervades the previous work carries over to this one as well, but the practice of melody and accompaniment heard in the vast majority of songs distinguishes this work from its predecessor. The first song is gently flowing, while the second, perhaps surprisingly, contains a rather rhythmically disjointed accompaniment, almost but not quite verging into jazz territory in a few spots. In any case, it’s quite catchy.
With the Four Medieval Songs, Price goes in a rather different direction. Here, she has taken (apparently verbatim) the tunes from four songs from the 12th and 13th centuries and composed an original accompaniment on the harpsichord (which instrument she plays as well as she does the piano in two of the other cycles), effectively combining the old with the new, although in her accompaniments she hearkens back to a much earlier era than she does in the other works presented herein. Throughout this cycle, she utilizes typical musical devices from the era, including imitation and heterophony (the simultaneous variation of a single melodic line). The Spiritual Songs contain three settings, taken from the Book of Mormon, the Bible (Psalm 139), and the traditional spiritual Nobody Knows de Trouble I Seen. These brief pieces fall easily on the ear, and do exude a spiritual atmosphere. I find countertenor Darryl Taylor’s voice of pleasant quality through these four works, but not always spot on in intonation; generally, though, he turns in some exquisite phrasing, and is quite a fine singer. A friend who is currently a very active countertenor happened to be staying with my wife and me, and so listened along with me to Taylor’s singing. He agreed with my assessment, stating that he found him especially effective in the first two cycles.
The recital continues with two works for guitar duo. The first work, Ancient Carols, comprises effective settings of Sion’s Daughter; Dort, Dort; and Wonder Tidings, bringing their harmonies up into our own era while maintaining the centuries-old spirit of the original works. The Villa di Fontani is another slightly larger-scale three-movement suite, comprised of three contrasting movements. The second of them, “Harmony,” is particularly interesting as it interjects taps and other sounds at irregular intervals among the rather novel (by the standards of most guitar music) harmonies that pervade the piece. The CD closes with two of the most innovative works in the program. “Fearful,” a movement from The Three Faces of Kim, a suite for contrabass clarinet and piano, is characterized by motoristic movement in sequences of atonal harmonies. These flank a brief lyrical, if tonally diffuse, center section. Finally, the listener hears Augury, an eight-minute work for violin, saxophone, and piano that contains multiphonics on the saxophone, dissonant double-stops and quartertones on the violin, and ominous rumblings in the piano. The work is quite different and more tonally advanced than anything else on the CD, but does not represent a new direction for the composer, given that it is one of the earliest works presented by her here. It does suffice to give evidence of her versatility in writing effectively in many different styles—and indeed, no two works on this CD particularly resemble each other, although Price’s compositional fingerprints show up in all of them.
All of the performances of these works present them in a most favorable light, and I believe that the personal style and secure craftsmanship of Deon Nielsen Price will gain her numerous fans among the readership of Fanfare if its members will give her a listen.
David DeBoor Canfield
(Fanfare Magazine) May-June 2019