Holt, Danny: Fast Jump

Chronique

This recital of contemporary piano music is notable for its lack of any biographical material whatsoever, about either the composers or the pianist. Presumably pianist Danny Holt wants the music, apparently all American, to speak for itself. For the most part, it does. Much of it is representational, and even if you might not always guess the rather quizzical subjects of David Lang's memory pieces (1997), one of which is called "diet coke," the music on the album as a whole has a way of picking up older styles such as impressionism and mixing them with minimalism, popular and world influences, and other contemporary ideas. The least representational and perhaps the most compelling work is the opening In Time of Desperation by Caleb Burhans, composed in memory of Luciano Berio. It seems at first to consist of simple, lightly syncopated noodling on the notes of diatonic chords, of the sort many an amateur pianist produces. But it develops in quite unexpected ways, avoiding minimalist repetition and generating little swells of tension through the progressive alteration of small details. Not all the music relies on tonal centers, and some of it even employs abstract procedures opaque to the listener; Jascha Narveson's ripple, composed in 2005, combines a computer-generated right-hand part with what Holt calls a "freely intuitive" left-hand part. The contrast between the two evolves, and in Holt's words "breathes, over the piece's five minutes. Lona Kozik's Fast Jump: Etudes and Interludes for piano are the most outwardly neo-Romantic pieces in the group with their straightforward and detailed nature scenes, but these too take unexpected directions, including a full-fledged stride-piano finale that gives the work its title. There are plenty of engaging pieces here for pianists looking for an attractive recital work from the present day. The sound, with recording and mastering in several California studios, is well above average for albums of this type.

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