Coates: Piano Quintet & Symphony No. 10

Album review

The music of Americo-German composer Gloria Coates does not fall into any of the large styles of the late 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, during which she has continued to be vigorously active in old age. She uses microtones and other methods of defining local tonal structures without reference to traditional tonality. A hallmark of Coates' style is her reliance on rhythm, which drives the composition and organizes the music into large, slowly evolving structures. Much of Coates' chamber music has received fresh hearings and recordings, but this Naxos release may be an ideal introduction: in the second movement of the Symphony No. 10 ("Drones of Druids on Celtic Ruins"), the rhythmic basis of the music is boiled down to all-percussion forces, and the entire symphony (the "orchestra," a role here filled by the CalArts Orchestra of the San Francisco Bay Area, consists of brass instruments) is built on an ongoing series of percussion events. Sample a good-sized chunk of any of the symphony's three movements for a taste of Coates' evocative structures, which live up to the epic subtitles she gives her works. In the Piano Quintet the percussive role is played by the piano, and thanks to the grasp of its role on the part of pianist Roderick Chadwick, joining the Kreutzer Quartet, the effect of the work, with its "A something so transporting bright" finale (the work is externally inspired by the poetry of Emily Dickinson), is perhaps even stronger. Naxos engineers deserve kudos for their work at separate locations in Munich and Los Angeles, capturing the unsettling effect of the microtones used in the Piano Quintet and the subtle layering of percussion throughout. A major contemporary chamber music release.

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