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Creators of music — whether notated, improvised, or somewhere in between — have been drawn to the piano from its earliest days. Its symmetrical division of musical space, large range, ease of tonal production, and polyrhythmic potential are a natural inspiration for musical ideas, and an invitation to their actualization. Incapable of true legato, the piano can suggest the most exquisite binding of one tone to another through adroit manipulation of infinite shades of grey (provided that the manipulator is sufficiently endowed with imagination and digital control.) It's no surprise that the majority of the great composers of the Western classical tradition of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were pianists, many of them capable of offering virtuoso performances of their own works. Composer/pianists had arguably become a bit scarcer by the end of the previous millennium than at its beginning, no doubt a product of the twentieth century's tendency towards specialization in all forms of human endeavor. Nevertheless, the death of the composer/pianist is more than a Twainian exaggeration — it is an impossibility. One sign of the continued health and vitality of the breed is the program you're about to hear on this compact disc.
The musical output of its creator, Haskell Small, is difficult to categorize with ease (thank God!). Nevertheless, it's clear that Small is a throwback to the great composer/pianist tradition of the past four centuries. For almost three decades he's been performing internationally as a soloist, including appearances at New York's Carnegie and Alice Tully Halls, Washington's John F. Kennedy Center and Phillips Gallery, London's Royal Festival Hall, and major recital venues in Germany, Holland, and Italy. Adept at playing various jazz and rock styles by ear throughout his teen years, he did not acquire fluent musical literacy until age 18. Inspired by contact with pianist and composer Robert Sheldon, he more than made up for lost time; it wasn't long before Small received high ranking in Washington's International Bach Competition and a solo recitalist fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Although his compositions include works for cello, voice, and various chamber and orchestral groupings, solo piano music is the thrust of his work. The program of solo piano music found on this disc was conceived, and is presented, with the intense concentration, wit, and quirky juxtapositions that Small's audiences have learned to expect.
Conventional programming wisdom enjoins the programmer to begin with a short work that does not subject the listener to music of excessive intensity, or demanding excessive concentration. Instead, this CD opens with a musical behemoth — but make no mistake, a tonally captivating behemoth. One writer who was captivated by Small's Symphony for Solo Piano was veteran music journalist Tim Page. His Washington Post review of the premiere of this work states "The Symphony is remarkably all-of-a-piece. One inevitably had the sense that Small knew where he was going and exactly how to get there. He was never shy about employing dissonance, yet it seemed only one more element in the vast musical cosmos at his command." Small's 30 minute plus journey through this cosmos is not without some striking stops along the way. In a recent interview, he observed: "What fascinated me with the fifth movement was searching for a timeless nature-like feeling, basically an endeavor to stop time and get off the train for a while. There's a little of that in the third movement, which is essentially a march framing a slow movement with moments of great intimacy. In the final movement, one of the rondo episodes is essentially a summary of the entire piece. You know how they say about near death experiences that you have a kind of life review. This is my musical life review, reliving and wondering whether I did worthwhile things, a summary." When asked for an explanation of the title Symphony for Solo Piano, its composer replied, "I think of it as symphonic in the sense of a narrative, of taking you somewhere. When I'm using the title `symphony' I don't mean that it's emulating orchestral instruments or orchestral textures. It's symphonic in the sense of using the instrument to the fullest." Segments of this work have also been performed as part of the ballet Subterranean; in its complete form, Symphony for Solo Piano is currently available through MMB Music, Inc.
With the ending of the Symphony slowly and quietly resonating in one's ears (shades of the finale of the Sonata in B Minor of Franz Liszt!), the listener is presented with a work with the promise of a "standard" sonata layout. Or so it might appear at first; according to the composer, "My Sonata Number 3 begins with a fairly hefty movement and a passacaglia section which fizzles out. Then there's a short rondo, which dovetails with the first to form essentially one long movement. I originally planned to end it this way but found it too abrupt, so I added the final Mesto." Small's organic concept of form is evident from the opening, in which a high grace note motive is answered by a "misterioso" section. After a brief development, this latter idea returns to accompany the "real" first theme (which also comes up at the end of the second movement.) The short slow finale provides relief and, in its reference to the passacaglia section of the first movement, crystallizes our perception of the character of the work as a whole. (Another example of Small's fascination with passacaglia form is the opening theme in the Symphony, which provides the structural design of the entire piece.) One feature of the Sonata found in much of his writing is a form of bitonality that relates dissonant chords through common tones. An example might be a chord containing the sound of b minor and B flat major, with the note D as their commonality. When asked about this usage, Small remarked "It's a sound I use consciously and otherwise, I'm looking for an interesting bite to a chord. A major triad for its own sake doesn't mean anything to me, but in combination or offset by something else it would. I think basically it's kind of a bluesy attempt to try to bend notes that don't bend, kind of get that in between something." This suggests Page's previously quoted reference to Small's lack of shyness about using dissonance. Even more to the point, it's another example of striving for the piano's highest art: the art of suggestion.
The Three Impressions for Piano began its life with the creation of its Andantino for the Piano Quarterly magazine. When the Theodore Presser Company decided to publish Small's Andantino, they requested that he add two more pieces to complement it. Written in the tradition of nineteenth century character pieces, these musical sketches present a concise development of three varied moods, while remaining technically accessible to the intermediate student.
Next comes Small's Introduction and Fugue, commissioned by the first Three Rivers Piano Competition (formerly known as the WQED-FM Piano Competition) in Pittsburgh as a test piece for contestants: "It's a fugue in the sense of having a subject and countersubject. It goes through the normal exposition of what a fugue would do except for that instead of using the interval of a fifth I use a tritone. But after that, although it continues in a fugal style there are sections that emulate the first and second theme of a first movement sonata form. It basically has an exposition, development and recapitulation, although it's pretty much contrapuntal throughout, except where it drifts." In the tradition of the Prelude, Chorale, and Fugue of Cesar Franck (another great keyboard playing composer), the formal elements coexist gracefully with pianistic excitement. This performance, like those of the Sonata No. 3 and the Three Impressions, is reissued from The Music of Haskell Small, an LP originally on the Orion label. (The remaining Small works are appearing for the first time in recorded form; none of these compositions have been previously issued in a digital format.)
The title page of Haskell Small's 60-Second Puzzle bears the following inscription: "this miniature contains a hidden mathematical puzzle involving the missing parts of a twelve-tone sequence." Upon further questioning, Small fessed up: "I'm not a serially oriented composer, let me put that on the table to start. But I just got fascinated with the thought of this thing as an exercise, that I could vary every note as I went. So it's strictly 12 tone immediately, and then the puzzle basically involves bookkeeping, where I'm strict, and where it's later made up for. But it's not a complex puzzle, just a kind of mathematical exercise within a short piece of enigmatic character. It's kind of an antidote to the Symphony — I won't say `offset' but it kind of makes one wonder `What's this guy doing with something mammoth and then this little speck at the end'?"
Hailed by England's Musical Times for his "dazzlingly prodigious technique," Haskell Small first came to public attention after winning the Pittsburgh Concert Society auditions at the age of 21. A recipient of a solo recitalist grant form the National Endowment for the Arts and of a top prize at the Johann Sebastian Bach International Piano Competition, Mr. Small's concerts throughout the United States, including Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, National Gallery of Art, Kennedy Center, and the Spoleto Festival have won him an enthusiastic following.
Following in the tradition of 18th and 19th century pianist/composers, Haskell Small is also an accomplished composer, who often performs his own works. He has received commissions from such organizations as the Washington Performing Arts Society, Three Rivers Piano Competition, Georgetown Symphony and Paul Hill Chorale. He was the 1999 winner of the Marian Ballet Dance Score Competition, portrayed in an internet review as "gorgeous and dramatic." "Subterranean," a ballet score commissioned by the Washington Ballet, and which depicts the interaction of eight characters waiting for a subway, was described by an audience member who said, "If that's what goes on in the subway, I'm heading down there tomorrow." Small's recently premiered Symphony for Solo Piano was called by Tim Page in the Washington Post "a serious and substantial composition that deserves a permanent place in the keyboard repertory."
A recording of Mr. Small performing "Gershwin in Black and White," piano transcriptions (by himself and others) of four Gershwin works, caused the Washington Post to note, "Who could ask for anything more?" "Recommended as that special treat" wrote Fanfare about his CD Twenty-Five Preludes: a Musical Odyssey. In recent seasons, Mr. Small has taped a television special at Wolf Trap for the Public Broadcasting System called "Live from Wolf Trap: A Celebration of the Piano," and, with Robert Aubry Davis as narrator, he regularly performs Francis Poulenc's The Story of Babar, which has been recorded by Ongaku Recordings. 4-Tay Records is producing The Twisted Pine-Branch, a CD of Mr. Small's chamber music. In the 2000-01 season Mr. Small will tour in Japan, where he has performed previously. In addition, he has been commissioned by the Mt. Vernon Orchestra (with funding from the American Composers Forum) to write a children's story for orchestra and narration, for performance in 2001.
Currently a faculty member of the Washington Conservatory, Haskell Small received his musical training at the San Francisco Conservatory and Carnegie-Mellon University. He has studied piano with Leon Fleisher, William Masselos, Robert Sheldon, Harry Franklin and Jeanne Behrend, and composition with Roland Leich and Vincent Persichetti.
Sonata No. 3, Three Impressions, and Introduction and Fugue originally appeared on an LP recording, The Music of Haskell Small (Orion, 1983).
Symphony for Solo Piano is published by MMB Music, Inc. Three Impressions is published by Elkan-Vogel. Sixty-Second Puzzle is published by Brazinmusikanta.
Symphony for Solo Piano and Sixty-Second Puzzle were recorded by Joanna Nickrenz and Marc Aubort (Elite Recordings) on June 7-8, 1999 at St. Peters Historic Church, New York City. All other works were recorded by David B. Hancock in1983 in New York City.
Editing by Haskell Small and Joanna Nickrenz.
Mastering by Joanna Nickrenz.
Mr. Small is represented by Jane Music Management, New York, New York and Jeffrey James Arts Consulting, Massapequa Park, New York.
All works on this recording are ASCAP.
Cover Art: Barbara Kerstetter
Symphony for Solo Piano (1999) [33:37]
1 Lento mesto, Allegro energico [9:41]
3 Adagio sostenuto, Ritmico [6:47]
4 Allegro molto scherzando e sarcastico (attacca) [:50]
5 Molto sostenuto (attacca) [3:22]
6 Allegro non troppo, Fuga, Lento mesto [10:37]
Sonata No. 3 (1982) [12:22]
7 Allegro non troppo, misterioso [7:02]
8 Allegro energico [2:17]
Three Impressions (1979) [2:29]
Introduction and Fugue (1976) [6:33]
15 Sixty-Second Puzzle (1998) [1:09]
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