Trompetas de Plata

'Draft' (1998) is written for piano, violin and tuned percussion. It is characterized by dissonant and rhythmically interesting (not to say challenging for the players) motivic cells which undergo extensive transformations and displacements spiced by extraordinary cross-rhythms, which chug along somewhat in the manner of those of, say, Philip Glass or Steve Reich. Often the piano and xylophone team up to make a sound reminiscent of a toy piano. The violin doesn't enter until late, and often it is the only legato instrument going it alone on its songful way. The outer movements remind me of the moto perpetuo writing of, say, George Perle. This music is full of events that keep one's interest. I cannot, without a score, suggest whether there are serial manipulations involved, but it sounds as if there may be. This 15-minute work is a real workout for the players, and Carla Kihlstead, violin, Jacqueline Chew, piano, and Ken Piascik, percussion (all resident at Berkeley) turn in an alert and committed performance. This five movement work grew on me the more I listened. It was my gateway into Liderman's style and repaid repeated listening.

'Piano Quintet' (2002) was written for the players here, the Cuarteto Latinoamericano and Sonia Rubinsky, piano. The Cuarteto (the brothers Bitran: Saul and Aron, violinists, Alvaro, cellist, along with violist Javier Montiel) has been long resident at Carnegie Mellon University and I was very favorably impressed by an earlier recording of theirs, a quartet, 'Inquiet Spirits,' by their Carnegie-Mellon colleague, Nancy Galbraith. That review can be found here at Amazon. Sonia Rubinsky has also made a fine impression with her recording of piano works of Villa-Lobos. The Quintet is a three movement work played without interruption. In general the Cuarteto plays rhythmic chordal patterns alone which are then frequently interrupted by chirping piano in its upper register. At times the latter sounds very similar to the slowed-down birdsong one hears in Messiaen's piano music. All three movements are in a fast tempo (Con brio; Scherzando; Leggero) and this 20 minute piece fairly flies by. Again, the music is so eventful that one never loses interest.
The playing of all five musicians is exemplary; it's hard to imagine this music being done any better.

'Tropes V' (1994) is a 12-movement, 13-minute piano suite whose organization tends toward sonata-form. None of the movements is longer than three minutes and the shortest lasts a mere 17 seconds. The nucleus for this work is a set of harmonies derived and altered from Lithuanian Jewish liturgy; 'Tropes' was composed in memory of the composer's Lithuanian grandfather. It is rhythmically complex and has some of the slowly evolving rhythmic cells one hears in music of some of the minimalists. But is it unabashedly non-triadic, unlike most minimalist music, and derives most of its interest from the gradual unfolding of both the rhythms and the harmonic juxtapositions. The fleet-fingered pianist is Karen Rosenak, also a Berkeley faculty member.

The final piece, 'String Quartet No. 3,' (1994) came about in an interesting way. The composer had a dream in which he was giving a lecture about his own music and playing a recording of it, but he kept thinking he could hear ghostly reminiscences of a quartet of Beethoven's. When he woke he couldn't remember which quartet it was, but when he came to write the actual quartet he chose as subtext a couple of passages from Beethoven's F Major Rasumovsky quartet (Op. 59, No. 1). Frankly I don't hear the connection - a result of my poor ear training perhaps - until he quotes quite baldly two proximate passages from the Rasumovsky's first movement, very close to the end of this one-movement work. Leaving aside my inability to pick up much hint of the Beethoven until it is literally quoted, I must say that this is a tightly argued 11-minute work in one-movement whose general form is a series of chordal passages interspersed with skittering or dramatic dissonant polyphonic passages. The asymmetric ostinati and cross-rhythms are again quite evident in the quartet. The playing of the Cuarteto is nothing short of sensational.

I was very happy to make the acquaintance of some of Liderman's chamber music and certainly look forward to hearing whatever he chooses to record with his recent grant. [Sidebar: I was puzzled by the CD's overall title, 'Trompetas de Plata' (if my rudimentay Spanish serves, I think that means 'Trumpets of Silver') until I read that the striking abstract painting on the booklet cover is 'Trompetas de Plata' by painter Andres Waissman.]

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Recommended.

Scott Morrison