SMALL The Rothko Room: Journeys in Silence. Visions of Childhood. A Glimpse of Silence • Haskell Small (pn) • MSR 1497 (52:40)
Haskell Small has appeared in the
pages of Fanfare, both
as pianist (I have a performance of Pictures
at an Exhibition by him in my
archive, although that disc apparently has
not been reviewed) and as composer. Since
I’ve found little biographical information
heretofore in these pages, a few words will
be in order. Small received his training at
the San Francisco Conservatory and
Carnegie-Mellon University, studying piano
with Leon Fleisher, William Masselos, Harry
Franklin, and Jeanne Behrend. His
composition studies were under the tutelage
of Roland Leich and Vincent Persichetti, and
he currently chairs the piano department of
the Washington Conservatory of Music. His
piano playing has taken him to major venues
in London, Paris, and Japan, and in the
autumn of 2013 he toured the U.S. with his
“Journeys in Silence” program.
Compositionally, he has received commissions
from the Washington Ballet, Three Rivers
Piano Competition, Georgetown Symphony, and
others, and for several years in the early
part of this century, he was
composer-in-residence with the Mount Vernon
Orchestra.
I suppose it is not even a “small”
surprise that this composer should have
written a good amount of music for his own
instrument, and the disc in hand presents
three fairly major works. The opening work,
The Rothko Room: Journeys in
Silence is, at a half hour,
the most substantial work on the CD. It
sounds nothing like Bartόk, Stravinsky,
Poulenc, or Shostakovich, a point I make
because of a review by former Fanfare
reviewer John Story who,
reviewing other piano works of this
composer, didn’t “hear a note that is not
underdigested Stravinsky and Bartók by way
of Poulenc and Shostakovich.” Either Small
has changed his style in these works, or
Story has quite a different idea of what
those composers sound like than I do.
Rothko is a one-movement
work that seeks to outline the life of the
noted Abstract Expressionist American
painter Mark Rothko. I don’t know enough
about Rothko’s life to give my opinion as to
how successful this attempted description
is, but Small has written an effective piece
that sustains interest throughout its
subdued, rather atonal, bell-like opening
through several contrasting sections which
contain momentary driving ostinatos, very
tonal chorale-like excursions, polytonal
block chords, and a return to the bell-like
motive that the composer here terms “bells
of doom.” Also portrayed are Rothko’s
struggle with mental illness, his final
burst of creativity (represented by the
polonaise form), and the blood draining from
him as his life slipped away (he committed
suicide by slashing his arms with razor
blades), the latter represented by the work
fading into nothing. While there are
certainly overtly tonal ideas to be heard in
the work, the better part of it utilizes
stark and severe tonality, much of which
borders on (but doesn’t really cross into)
atonality.
Haskell Small, the pianist, certainly
knows what to do with Haskell Small, the
composer. The challenge in performing a
piece such as Rothko
would seem to me to be the pacing of the
piece. Much of it is quite episodic, and the
space between the notes is as important as
the notes themselves. In lesser hands, the
piece would not cohere, but Small sees that
it does so quite splendidly.
Visions of Childhood is,
not surprisingly, inspired by Schumann’s Kinderszenen.
None of the movements (including such titles
as “Playing Rough,” “Feeling Lonely,” and
“Roller Coaster”) of this 10-movement suite
lasts more than three minutes, and most are
a good bit shorter. The tonal language of
this suite is similar to that of Rothko,
but the movements are self-contained
miniatures, each with its own “idea,” and do
not exhibit the episodic nature of the
preceding work. I enjoyed the occasional
humorous touches that the composer has
interwoven into this suite, including the
quintessential children’s “taunt” motive
(i.e., g-g-e-a-G-G) that shows up (albeit in
gentle fashion) in Feeling
Lonely. Small either has
children, or well remembers what it was like
to be a child in this work. The work would
make a good companion to its Schumann
inspiration, either in recital or on disc.
The CD closes with A
Glimpse of Silence, an
eight-minute opus that explores the concept
of silence through such devices as a music
box and a funeral march. The music box
doesn’t sound like any that you’ve ever
heard, but the effect is quite stunning,
given its piquant and ethereal harmonies.
Haskell Small’s music is well worth
exploring, and he gives it what sound to my
ears to be superlative performances, and the
recording engineer has well captured the
piano sound. Heartily recommended.
David
DeBoor Canfield
Issue 38:3 (Jan/Feb 2015) of Fanfare
Magazine