Composer/Pianist

George Walker, Tara O'Connor & Trent Johnson

Paru le 01.02.05 chez Albany Records
Artistes principaux : George Walker Tara O'Connor Trent Johnson
Genre : Classique

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Langue disponible : anglais

At 83, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer George Walker showed no signs of slowing down. This disc, George Walker, Composer, Pianist is his seventh for Albany Records. In terms of Walker's original music, the disc begins with a selection of art songs going back as far as 1954, sung by mezzo-soprano Patricia Green. The other pieces here are of later vintage; the organ works date from the 1990s and the chamber piece Modus from 2001.
Mezzo-soprano Patricia Green is a cut above the usual vocalists commonly engaged for recording projects on Albany. In quieter, more sensitive music it sometimes sounds like Green is swallowing her words, and while her pitch rings true in spots where one would expect might not, it falls flat occasionally in minor, transitional stuff. Walker's keyboard playing in no way lends the impression that this is a man who has lived to witness the advent of nine decades, but he does "play like a composer" when it comes to his own music, with impulsiveness more so than sensitivity. These songs, according to the notes written by the composer, "are among the finest written by an American composer" -- that's a pretty hard sell. Stylistically they bear some similarity to the songs of Samuel Barber, but Walker is not above using certain effects that are clichéd in art songs that utilize a primarily dissonant language.
The chamber piece Modus is not serially constructed, but sounds like it, with rapid-fire repeated notes sounding through practically the whole piece and acting like an anchor to the other bits of motivic ideas floating around. The best piece on the disc is the first of the three organ works, Prayer, a slow, meditative and mysterious work that truly is one of the finest pieces of music Walker has produced. The other two organ pieces are phrased in a more difficult idiom, and it does not sound like organist Trent Johnson has Spires quite under his fingers. With all of the music Walker has written that has yet to be recorded, it is hard to fathom why he would devote 30 minutes of this disc to works of Liszt and Chopin. In sum, George Walker, Composer, Pianist is a frustrating entry for a composer in a position to ask for and to presumably want higher quality representation on disc.

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Composer/Pianist

George Walker

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