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 combination of two pianos and one violin is an intriguing one, and is the scoring chosen by Deon Nielsen Price for her Interruptions II. There is no sense of the violin being swamped. Perhaps the descriptive booklet notes do not do the piece justice; it is fascinating on a number of levels, and not just timbrally. Rhythmically, the piece is alive; Price’s music has real vitality, and her harmonic processes are infinitely malleable. Limor Toren-Immerman is the fine violinist, while Nora Chiang Wrobel and Sylvie Ollivier are strong pianists.
The scamperings of Watts 1965 bring in other aspects of Nielsen Price’s writing. Describing the infamous Watts riots, it is a dialogue between styles as well as between saxophone and piano. Popular music references depict the crowds; the composer herself was affected by these events of 1965 (hence the work’s dual-meaning subtitle, “A Remembrance”), as she kindly describes in the interview above. Chika Inoue is a superb saxophonist, slinky when required, infinitely expressive elsewhere, while Mary Au provides impeccable musical partnership on piano.
Personally, I love the idea of the combination of voice and viola (with no piano) in Nielsen Price’s Two Songs (to texts by Whitman). The use of a counter-tenor—here the excellent Darryl Taylor—only ramps up the intriguing aspect. Originally composed for baritone (intending to link the ranges of voice and instrument), the counter-tenor adds a real layer of passion in Taylor’s reading. His voice is incredibly strong, but capable of beautiful shadings. The first, “Song of the Exposition,” roams inquiringly, while the second, “The Hermit Thrush,” finds in Nielsen Price’s individual lines the still but disquieted nature of aloneness, and indeed the fragility of life and the proximity of death.
Taylor is no less expressive in the Love Songs, to texts by Robert T. Bowen. Here he is partnered by the composer herself, giving the performances a particular stamp of authority. Particularly impressive is Nielsen Price’s micro-sensitivity to the shifts in the first song, “The Connection”; the second, “Love,” is more disjunctive (perhaps reflecting the refracted nature of love as time goes on). The Spiritual Songs, also for counter-tenor and piano, brilliantly set passages from the Book of Mormon, a Psalm (139) and a traditional spiritual (Nobody Knows the Trouble I Seen). The Mormon setting, “Believe!,” is short and effective; the Psalm (“Whither Can I Go?”) is more long-breathed, rising to a significant climax; the Spiritual has a deceptive simplicity, with the left hand rhythmically doubling the voice but with harmonic complexities throughout that add Nielsen Price’s individual stamp again.
The Four Medieval Songs for counter-tenor and harpsichord add another layer to Nielsen Price’s art. Quasi-excavation in a compositional context is brilliantly achieved via the careful use of modes and interplay between counter-tenor and harpsichord (again with the composer at the keyboard). A similar sense of temporal distance exists in the Ancient Carols for two guitars, providing balm for the ears as the composer picks carols from three territories: Holland, France and England. The performances are simply beautiful. The scoring of two guitars is continued in the suite Villa di Fontani. The interview gives details on each movement; the musical results seem to move forward from Ancient Carols into a more sophisticated, and in the initial “Serenade” no less calming, space. The taps of “Harmony” seem perfectly in place, with a lighter touch before the patternings of “Radiance” perhaps implying a sort of sonic kaleidoscope. An eight-foot contrabass clarinet graces “Fearful” from Three Faces of Kim, The Napalm Girl, a piece that has appeared in a variety of settings. Playful but with a darker central section, it is given a brilliant performance here by Berkeley A. Price and the composer. Finally, Augury, for violin, sax and piano, is a virtuoso exposition of saxophone multiphonics, violin stoppings, and quarter-tones that explores the hopes and fears of fortune-telling.
The recording quality throughout is excellent, allowing Nielsen Price’s music to shine. This is fascinating music, and a most rewarding disc.
Colin Clarke
(Fanfare) May-June 2019