In Celebration: The Piano Trios of Stanley Silverman

Chronique

The presence of Sting should draw listeners to this release of music by Stanley Silverman, and that is all to the good, even if the septuagenarian rock star's voice has been made a bit papery by decades of singing to stadium crowds. His inclusion in the project seems to stem from a few different factors. He sang in the premiere performance of Silverman's Piano Trio No. 2 ("Reveille") in 2011, which memorialized a family friend of Silverman's who had also contributed to Sting's Rainforest Fund. Further, that performance followed Sting's recording of songs by John Dowland, and Sting's performance here of a neo-Renaissance movement that takes its text from Shakespeare's Cymbeline is in the same vein. Really, though, the music, rather than Sting (who is present in only one movement), is the main attraction. The "Reveille" Trio is a marvelously eclectic thing, with a finale based on the main figure in Paul Simon's You Can Call Me Al, from the 1986 album Graceland. This, too, draws on the past; it was Silverman who took Pierre Boulez to a 1970 party where Simon was also present and was mistakenly called Al by the famed serialist. The bulk of the work consists of a "Guajira y Fuga," with prelude and postlude inspired, Silverman indicates, by the fact that classical and Latin music radio stations in New York are next to each other on the dial. The Piano Trio No. 1 ("In Celebration") is an earlier work but recognizably the product of the same composer, with a Cuban-rhythm finale. The Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio is on top of all the multiple styles involved, and their crack performances seem unlikely to be surpassed in music that is a great deal of fun and quite innovative besides.

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