From Hammers to Bytes

* Wernick: Piano Sonata No. 2
* Primrosch: Sonata-Fantasia for piano and synthesizer, one player

Lambert Orkis, piano and synthesizer
Bridge 9131 Total time: 76:33

Summary for the Busy Executive: Hard.

I must admit my uncertainty as to whether I would review this.  Some
composers welcome you.  Others brandish quills.  Richard Wernick and
James Primosch fall into the porcupine genus.  Furthermore, both works
require attentive stamina.  Wernick's sonata lasts about 35 minutes (you
can figure out for yourself how long the Primosch lasts).  Wernick taught
Primosch, so no real surprise there.  At any rate, I kept listening over
about two weeks, in various moods.  Sometimes I initially couldn't stand
what I was hearing, but then something would grab me.  Always, however,
Lambert Orkis's playing impressed me no end.  I shudder to think how
these works would have fared with a lesser pianist.  Both Wernick and
Primosch might be described as "composers' composers," although most of
the composers I know probably don't listen to them out of choice.  In
fact, I can think of only two people in my circle of acquaintance who
would definitely enjoy them.  However, I mean merely that a composer
would very likely appreciate their art.  In any case, eventually Orkis
won me over to their cause.

Wernick studied with Toch, Kirchner, Irving Fine, and Arthur Berger.
Although I can't prove that he writes dodecaphonically, the music sure
sounds that way to me.  I would also claim that certain Schoenbergian
habits of structural thinking have influenced him, as well as a lyricism
ultimately traceable, I think, to Berg.  There's little memorable,
however, about the idiom, which comes over like many other twelve-tone
composers.  Instead, we get to spend time with a passionate, rigorous
mind.  There are all kinds of motific connections among the three movements
of the sonata: a tripartite first movement (march, arioso, toccata), a
"fantasy variations" second movement, and a tripartite third movement
(toccata, arioso, march - a kind of palindrome of the opening movement).
The music gives off a tremendous exploratory quality I also find in
Beethoven's op.  110, a fearlessness in the face of music breaking down
and starting again, a faith in one's ability to almost, but not quite,
drop the threads and not only recover, but make the music even more
cohesive.  Also, Wernick's emphasis on effortlessly independent counterpoint
means op.  110 to me.  Unlike many players of contemporary music, Orkis
conveys not only the unity of the work, but its drama.  The performance
that lets a mere civilian like me inside, that allows me to listen to
this piece as I would listen to Brahms or to Beethoven.  Very rare.  The
more I was able to listen, the more the music and the eminence of Wernick's
thinking took hold of me.  The inventiveness, the variety, the richness,
and the suitability of Wernick's piano textures gave me particular
pleasure.  This composer profoundly understands not only the capability,
but the soul of the instrument.

In contrast, Primosch's Sonata-Fantasia is more accessible and less
austere.  Primosch appears as one of those people whose mind is a messy
office, but who can put his hands on any piece he needs to.  "Accessible"
is, of course, a relative term.  I'm sure Primosch can turn off lots of
listeners all on his own.  However, his idiom is slightly less granitic
than Wernick's, and he reveals a rather daffy sense of humor.  Like
Wernick, he has a terrific ear for sonority, in this case the interplay
between a concert grand and a Kurzweil (Orkis plays both, at times both
at once).  The electronic sounds always seem to "grow out of" or "go
with" piano sonorities, and they're beautiful in their own right.  The
first movement is a massive variation structure longer than some complete
sonatas.  One can grasp the theme with little trouble.  However, Primosch
sometimes drops the theme and varies some of the subsidiary ideas of
previous variations.  His sense of contrast is sharp enough to be nearly
Manichean, and this works against the long architectural span important
to Wernick.  However, you don't really miss it.  The inventiveness of
the variations carries you along.  Primosch also comes up with fewer new
keyboard textures than Wernick.  Indeed, he makes homage to various
master composers of the piano: Chopin, Liszt, Beethoven, Webern (ok, I
stretch the point), and so on.  The slow second movement, based on choral
music Primosch composed soon after his father's death, is incredibly
beautiful.  Here, the Kurzweil carries more of the expressive burden.
It manages serenity and lament at the same time.  The allegro finale,
"Daddy-O's New Groove," takes off from Bernstein's evocations of jazz
(some of it put me in mind of the "Cool" fugue from West Side Story).
At this point, however, the sonata as a complete musical object hasn't
solidified in my mind.  The finale, delightful in itself, especially
doesn't seem to fit in yet with the other two movements.  Perhaps repeated
listenings will clarify its place in the rhetorical structure.

As I say, Orkis does these things so well, I don't even think of them
as new music, but as music.  It couldn't have been easy.  What a terrific
player.

Steve Schwartz