Alan Cooper reviews: Christina McMaster, piano
COWDRAY HALL
Thursday, 30 October 2014
Pianist Christina McMaster has been described as a dynamic and vivacious performer. Having enjoyed her virtuoso performance at today’s Lunchbreak Concert given in association with sound 2014, I would have to agree wholeheartedly with that description. Born in Worcestershire, she now lives in London where she studies and works at the London Academy of Music. That was where she met one of the composers whose music she performed in today’s concert: Aleksandr Brusentsev. Listed in the programme as Alex Brusentsev, as his name suggests, he was born in Russia but later moved to the USA and now studies and composes at the London Academy of Music. I mention his background, particularly his connections with the USA, because all the other composers in Christina’s programme were American and in particular Charles Ives can be regarded as one of those who like Aaron Copland and others strove to develop a unique American voice in music.
The recital began with a piece by Stephen Montague, born in New York but raised in both West Virginia and Florida. Southern Lament was based on southern Spiritual tunes. Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen shone through as a familiar musical friend. Montague however used some fascinating extended piano techniques such as strumming the strings within the piano to produce a harp-like effect. Vocalisations also added a marvellous ghost-like atmosphere to the music. The sustain pedal was used extensively to provide much of the echo effects, some of them very powerful in this piece. Christina McMaster also produced some interesting galloping sounds on the piano – perhaps suggesting the slave workers desires to run away from their lives on the plantation?
This piece was followed by The Alcotts by Charles Ives, inspired by a visit to the house in which the story of Little Women was created. Christina mentioned two sources of inspiration for Ives namely American Church music and European classical music represented in this piece by Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Both of these elements were clearly expressed along with, I thought, suggestions of parlour music – and in the melody in the bass part of the piano, I felt a genuine American voice was emerging through the echos of Beethoven.
Another piece by Stephen Montague was his After Ives…Etude no.2: Songs of Childhood. As is the case with many composers who wrote pieces with the word “childhood” or “children” in their titles, this music was certainly not designed for children to play. It was a fun piece as Christina suggested but also dazzlingly virtuosic and the Lunchbreak audience certainly responded to what was an absolutely stunning performance.
Christina followed this with another virtuoso piece and this was the new commission from Alex Brusentsev who was present in the Cowdray Hall to introduce his Pink Party People Pile Up. Full of exciting rhythmic patterns this piece was also well spiced with outgoing good humour and had a marvellous crash ending.
One of the themes of this year’s Sound Festival is “new ways of looking at traditional music” and this was well expressed in a traditional Irish tune Irish Ho-Hoane twinned with Irishman Dances by Henry Cowell, born in California and much admired by the composer and critic Virgil Thompson.
Ruth Crawford Seeger was active as a composer in the nineteen twenties and thirties and thereafter committed herself to the study of American Folk Music. Her Prelude Tranquillo had pensive chords over which floated an advanced quite angular melodic line.
Frederic Rzewski is an American virtuoso pianist and composer. The fourth of his Four North American Ballads is entitled Winnsoboro Cotton Mill Blues and all of the contents mentioned in the title were in there. The mechanical sounds of the cotton mill were suggested by a rumbling rhythmic pattern on the lowest register of the piano rising up across the keys with Christina using forearm and elbow to get some of the note clusters. One was reminded that at heart, the piano is really a percussion instrument, though of course it is capable of a lot more. Out of a post minimalist sound picture of the mill machines at work, the blues melody emerged before the mechanical sounds came through again in the top register of the piano. This was a great piece, exciting, descriptive and atmospheric and having been composed by a musician who was himself a piano virtuoso, it demanded no less of today’s performer and of course Christina gave it her thrilling best in a great full blooded performance.
© Alan Cooper, 2014
