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Haskell Small: Symphony for Solo Piano
(Haskell Small Website)
Albany Records, 2002
(Albany Records Website)
Haskell Small, piano
Nikolas J. Lund
January 21, 2007
(See a Review of Haskell Small’s Renoir’s Feast)
This release from Albany Records features the music of pianist-composer Haskell Small and presents the works contained within under the interpretative faculties of none other than the composer himself. In this way, one is granted the unique opportunity of hearing of relatively contemporary vintage (the works range in composition date between 1976 and 1999) executed by the same hand which has prepared the score, which thus presumably proffers a certain level of authenticity to the interpretation, upon which the composer himself would be hard-pressed not to concede at least a certain measure of un-transferable affinity and familiarity. So what to make of this familiar affinity?
Because Mr. Small follows from the tradition of the 18th and 19th century pianist-composer, this arrangement represents an interesting culmination of this historical performance-legacy (if one might call it such) in which the potential present obscurity facing all new music is juxtaposed with the very real presence and accessibility of the recording on the open market. Hence, the ability of the composer to release his own recording of his own notated work into a field of digital perfection would seem to finally provide a real material answer to that problem of interpretation that has menaced all reproducing artists of the eons past. No doubt all of Mr. Small’s well audible influences would have been green with envy.
The composer is writing/playing here with the piano itself well in mind. He clearly has written music to which his own hand is quite suited, and so it is naturally a perfect performance right out of the starting gate. As a composer working within the recording medium, he must surely know that the wide-distribution interpretation of a work must be a good one, no?
In listening to this disc I wonder perhaps if there is some a certain emotional register or degree of pathos contained within the score which is somehow lost when the composer brings his own virtuosic ease to the music, but Mr. Small’s playing of the music in question puts any possible doubt to rest. The music is perfectly well represented by the musician, and the composer seems satisfied as well.
My favorite track is the final Giocoso in the set of Three Impressions (1979), which departs from the chromatism of the composer’s other works on the disk in favor of a jaunty and tuneful dance somewhere within striking distance both of Schubert and Joplin. Here, I think, the composer’s playful sense of humor comes through, and I myself was certainly quite amused.
To make just one minor complaint on this otherwise flawless disc, the sound on certain tracks seemed slightly thin to me—due likely to the recording process—even though the music comes through with perfect transparency. Still, one supposes that a composer of Mr. Small’s sophistiqué deserves the absolute highest degree of sonic clarity when submitting a recording to posterity which boasts all the hallmarks of this finally perfect pianist-composer situation.
See Broadway shows this year such as the award winning Wicked Tickets, or other hot shows like Jersey Boys and Young Frankenstein which is coming soon. Or perhaps a concert is your fancy, better get your Hannah Montana Tour Tickets now before they sell out.
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