I disagree in some important ways with what Janos says about George
Tsontakis's 'Ghost Variations'.  I wrote a review of Stephen Hough's
recording for the Moderated Classical Music List almost two years ago.
Forgive me for repeating it:

I will drop many names in this note.  I can't help it.  And I will admit
that I'm biased in favor of the composer whose work I will discuss.  I
can't help that either.  Further, I will admit that I'm a nut for large
keyboard works in the form of variations.

I think the piece I'm about to discuss can take its place with the two
greatest American piano variations:  Copland's 'Piano Variations' and
Frederic Rzewski's 'The People United Will Never Be Defeated.' And this
piece is easily, for me, the most exciting American piano piece since
Rzewski's.

It's George Tsontakis's half-hour long 'Ghost Variations,' written
in 1991 and just released on a Hyperion disc (CDA67005) called 'New
York Variations' featuring the Copland 'Piano Variations,' plus John
Corigliano's Etude Fantasy, and Ben Weber's Fantasia (Variations).  The
superb pianist is that intrepid British virtuoso, Stephen Hough, whom most
of us first heard when he recorded two obscure Hummel piano concerti and
showed what wonderful pieces they are.  Hough is noted for his exploration
of unknown and poorly known repertoire.

I will not comment on the other pieces on this disc.  I'm too smitten by
the Tsontakis to do them justice.

George Tsontakis is a 47-year-old New Yorker who studied at Juilliard with
Roger Sessions, and, as I recall, in Italy with Franco Donatoni.  He has
been, for a number of years, the director of the Contemporary Music
Ensemble at the Aspen Music Festival.

Tsontakis does not tell us why these variations are called 'Ghost
Variations.' Several guesses come to mind:  the ghosts of many composers
are heard, there may be a dramatic scenario that harks back to Strindberg
or even to 'ghost stories', there are ghostly reminiscences as the piece
progresses.  There is even, at the very end, a spot where the pianist
knocks on the wood of the piano perhaps sounding like the rattling of a
danse macabre.  However, to the music:  The piece is in three movements.
No melodic 'theme' is discernible.  A ghostly reminiscence of the Enigma
Variations? One has the sense that the variations are more organic, each
succeeding section growing out of some variation of an element that
occurred earlier.  So this is not a typical 'theme and variations.' The
piece moves from fast to faster to reckless abandon, only to slide into a
serene tonal finish.

Each movement begins in tritonic harmonies and ends in major triadic
harmonies.  The tritones, as used, make for a gauzy scrim of harmony that
also sounds ghostly.  This is music laid out in several layers.  I haven't
seen the score but would be surprised if much of the music isn't written in
three or four staves.  In the first movement in particular, the 'slowest'
of the three - although it isn't all that slow except for one section
marked 'languid'- there is a theme based primarily on an upward (or
sometimes downward) semitone followed by a drop of a third, fourth or
fifth.  This echoes the DSCH theme used by Shostakovich (and others, like
Ronald Stevenson in his gargantuan 'Passacaglia on DSCH').  The movement of
the music in the bass staves tends to be stately, triadic, like a Bach
chorale, and often above that there are Scriabinesque fluttering moths
or Messiaenic twittering birds.  There are occasional Chopinesque bass
arpeggios heaving up and down the keyboard, always with something
quasi-romantic, if slightly askew, in the right hand.  And then suddenly,
towards the end of the movement, and completely unprepared, there is a
fairly straight quote of the rondo theme from the third movement of
Mozart's K.  482 piano concerto which is then subjected to Beethovenian
variation, but always with 20th-c.  commentary above, below, in the middle.
In Hough's notes he calls this 'Beethoven as ghost-writer for Mozart.'
There are Stravinskian accent displacements that give the section a rough
humor that perfectly matches the stumpy Beethoven bass chords.  The
movement ends with repeated B-flat chords in the rhythm of the Mozart
theme.

The second movement, much faster throughout, is marked by jazzy
syncopation and right-hand filigree for all the world like an chromatic Art
Tatum; you have to hear it to believe it!  It perhaps owes something to the
scurrying manner of George Perle's piano music.  A cheerful 'wrong-note'
and 'wrong-accent' movement.  The motoric drive reminds one of Prokofiev's
Toccata.  There is an insistent repetition of material in this movement as
if the composer is saying that he's going to keep at it until he gets it
right.  One can't help but smile.

The third movement, faster yet, is in places like crazy Mendelssohnian
fairy music.  But there are more and more frequent islands of triadic
serenity until they win out in the end.  This reminds me of dialectic in
the middle movement of Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto.  But between
the uncertain beginning and the quiet and soul-satisfying end there are
excursions into Reichian strumming chords, granitic blocks of
quartally-based chords like those of Tsontakis' mentor, Roger Sessions, and
some sections that sound aleatoric.  Just before the end an upward rushing
recollection of the Mozart theme runs out of keyboard and ends with the
pianist knocking softly on the wood of the piano frame.  In the background
Ives is smiling.  This music could not have been written by anyone but an
American.

I'm afraid my powers of description and lack of musical education render
this report a mishmash.  For that I apologize.  But I don't apologize for
my hearty urgent recommendation that you rush out and buy this disk.

Scott Morrison