A concert pianist and vanguard composer, George Antheil (1900-1959) became known as the "Bad Boy of Music." The ultimate American in Paris, Antheil was an avant-garde provocateur of the first order who made his name compos... more »ing iconoclastic compositions: the loudest and brashest classical music of his time. But this album gives us three new performances-two of them world-premiere recordings-which reveal another, forgotten side of antheil, the incurable romantic. Written in 1926, after the the height of Antheil's radical period, the Piano Concerto No. 2 is an experiment in classical form. The work contains the same sudden juxtapositions and abrupt contrasts of mood as his futuristic music. But the excesses of his recent Ballet mécanique (written for 16 player pianos!) are compensated for by an almost spare, baroque orchestration and motifs that draw on Bach as much as on Stravinsky. In three movements, Antheil employs a more restrained but still exuberant style. The beautifully meditative slow movement is followed by a virtuosic and compelling toccata. Each movement ends on an overtly Bachian cadence, most obvious in the sweetly naive coda of the final movement. The ballet Dreams (1935) had a prior existence in Paris. It was called Les Songes, and Darius Milhaud wrote the original music in 1933, later discarded in favor of Antheil's score. The plot was based on a surrealist poem by the painter André Derain. An Balanchine choreographed the production for his company Les Ballets. Antheil plays sarcastically with contradictions: waltz vs. march; folk song vs. orchestral romanticism. This is mavelous ballet music, and the unexpected structural and melodic changes keep us on the edge of our seat: amused and entertained. The lack of a formal structure does not hamper Antheil; he seemed to thrive on it, both in this piece, and in many others he wrote.« less
A concert pianist and vanguard composer, George Antheil (1900-1959) became known as the "Bad Boy of Music." The ultimate American in Paris, Antheil was an avant-garde provocateur of the first order who made his name composing iconoclastic compositions: the loudest and brashest classical music of his time. But this album gives us three new performances-two of them world-premiere recordings-which reveal another, forgotten side of antheil, the incurable romantic. Written in 1926, after the the height of Antheil's radical period, the Piano Concerto No. 2 is an experiment in classical form. The work contains the same sudden juxtapositions and abrupt contrasts of mood as his futuristic music. But the excesses of his recent Ballet mécanique (written for 16 player pianos!) are compensated for by an almost spare, baroque orchestration and motifs that draw on Bach as much as on Stravinsky. In three movements, Antheil employs a more restrained but still exuberant style. The beautifully meditative slow movement is followed by a virtuosic and compelling toccata. Each movement ends on an overtly Bachian cadence, most obvious in the sweetly naive coda of the final movement. The ballet Dreams (1935) had a prior existence in Paris. It was called Les Songes, and Darius Milhaud wrote the original music in 1933, later discarded in favor of Antheil's score. The plot was based on a surrealist poem by the painter André Derain. An Balanchine choreographed the production for his company Les Ballets. Antheil plays sarcastically with contradictions: waltz vs. march; folk song vs. orchestral romanticism. This is mavelous ballet music, and the unexpected structural and melodic changes keep us on the edge of our seat: amused and entertained. The lack of a formal structure does not hamper Antheil; he seemed to thrive on it, both in this piece, and in many others he wrote.
CD Reviews
Another Fine Release (don't listen to critics)
Miles Massicotte | Bristol, CT, USA | 03/20/2007
(5 out of 5 stars)
"I would like to take this space to quickly clarify a matter concerning Antheil. To his music I was at first dubious, especially looking at his detractors comments. But after listening to Ballet Mecanique, the Violin Sonatas, and Guy Livingston's impecable performance of the Lost Sonatas, I was soon on the bandwagon. But at the same time I wasn't sure whether I should like him or not. Everyone seemed to say that he was a charlatan and a copycat. History has treated Mr. Antheil poorly. His Ballet Mecanique was truly revolutionary, literally ahead of its time (if you don't know the story, he wrote a piece which included 16 synchronized player pianos, impossible to achieve until recently, and now the piece has been received with open arms as a hallmark and masterwork of 20th century radicalism.) Antheil was rejected here in the U.S. due to the technical failure and poor performance of the Ballet Mecanique. And that is a piece which is so chaotic if it is not played precisely perfect it would be hard to decipher anyway, hence the 1955? revision for a more conventional orchestra (nice, but the original is vastly superior.) America likes to exalt the few and kill the rest. Antheil should have far more praise than he gets. He, Stravinsky, and Schoenberg form the holy trinity of 20th century music (the latter I really don't care for as much as his followers.)
Now, concerning his romantic/neoclassic adventures. Once you get with the iconoclast program it is hard to make such a huge leap from his early insanly dense dissonant works and his latter unsettling but calm neoclassic works. But Antheil was done with that scene. He always said his heart was with traditional classical music, he just had something to say in terms of the role of mechanism in music. Upon first listen to some of his later works you might be detested. He leads you somewhere (and this is true for all his later works), and suddenly changes a few notes to the point where it sounds out of tune, jarring, horrible. It sounds stupid. But there is something oddly attractive. And so as you continue you must adapt yourself to it. Antheil waited for no one. It is in this fashion that his later music is too revolutionary. Critics cite obvious influences: Shostakovitch, Prokofiev, Copland, and above all Stravinsky. The problem lies that they use this as a means to escape unfair prosecution for not liking his pieces. They cannot discredit them really, so they call the cheap imitations of better neoclassical composers. NOT SO! In classical music, soul is rapidly dying. Listeners want easily palatable music that is stereotypical and boring, like pop music. If you want your art experience dumb and stupid, don't come to George Antheil.
As for the music on this CD, I am once again amazed at the excellent musicianship. It is as if the only classical players left with soul all worked on Antheil (and other modern composers.) Put it this way: it is hard to find a poorly played Antheil recording. This one is no exception. Hopefully soon so much of his music will be on CD that Schirmer will publish more sheet music and we'll see complete works collections (my dream!). Dreams is a fabulous piece implying its title. It is exciting, but yet I feel like I could completely zone out to it. Piano Concerto 2 is virtuostic in every aspect, brilliant. And Serenade 2 is typically beautiful of his later period. You can't sum up music in words, hence why it is music. But for Antheil lovers especially, modern music lovers with an open mind, if you like composers like Sorabji, Ornstein, the neoclassical Russians, and radical Americans you should definitely enjoy this. I give it my highest possible recommendation, and long live Antheil!"
What a Pleasure .....
Samuel Ciurca | Rochester, NY | 11/10/2007
(4 out of 5 stars)
"What a pleasure - to discover some new classical music to me and to find out that this George Antheil fellow produced so many sounds that my brain finds so fascinating. Strikes the right 'chords' with me. This is my 3rd Antheil purchase. And what a dream ......
Sam Ciurca"
A Beautiful Recording
A Customer | 09/20/2006
(5 out of 5 stars)
"A welcome addition to recordings of Antheil's music. It's good to see an increase in interest in his work; he has been neglected for too long. Hopefully the operas and film scores will be recorded someday."
Disappointingly derivative
Discophage | France | 03/08/2007
(3 out of 5 stars)
"Like his great model Stravinsky, and like Picasso, whom he often refers to in his hilarious, fascinating and obviously unreliable autobiography "Bad Boy of Music", George Antheil underwent many changes in his compositional styles, from the provocative young braggadocio of the early twenties to the established neo-romantic of the forties, by way of the neo-classicist of the thirties. But unlike these two towering masters of 20th century art, Antheil (and he often candidly admits to it) was more an imitator than an innovator - and an imitator of Stravinsky at that. Notwithstanding, his early works (his piano sonatas, his first two violin and piano sonatas, his famous and infamous "Ballet Mécanique") display such swashbuckling bravado, such a taste for provocation and an attitude of "no punches pulled", such a conscious effort to "out-uproar" Stravinsky as to make his special brand of "imitation", beyond all recognizable borrowings, ultimately quite innovative, original and daring (in its "cubist"-like construction procedures based on the repetition of melodic and rhythmic cells without development), and also, in its willingness to relentlessly pound for the sheer pleasure of making a racket- irresistibly fun (see my reviews of George Antheil: Bad Boy's Piano Music, Piano Pictures: Satie Sports & Divertissements / Antheil La Femme 100 têtes and George Antheil: Violin Sonatas 1, 2 & 4 for more comments).
But not so in the later works presented on this disc.
In the 2nd piano concerto, composed in 1926 and performed (in the composer's absence) in 1927 - it didn't get a second performance until the 1970s - I hear some Prokofiev (the poised composer of the 4th and 5th Piano Concertos rather than author of the brash and colorful first to third) and a lot of Stravinsky (the Concerto for piano & winds and Capriccio, some whiffs of The Fairy's Kiss & Apollo Musagetes, and even premonitions of Agon), but without the Russians' unique turns and sleight of hand. But it must be noted that, except for the Concerto, all the above-mentioned Stravinsky pieces were composed later than the alleged date of Antheil's Concerto, so who knows who imitated who? In fact, so striking are the apparent Stravinsky borrowings, my guess is that Antheil's composition is actually later than it is purported to be, or that we are hearing a later rewriting of it.
Dreams was commissioned in 1935 by Balanchine who, according to the composer, "was looking for an American ballet sufficiently Parisian". And that's exactly what you get: a neo-classical ballet with references to circus music, which could have been composed ten or twenty years before by Milhaud or Sauguet for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, drops painted by Picasso of course (actually the sets were by Derain), on an argument by Cocteau. Pleasant, but neither very personal nor very memorable.
The 1948 Serenade No. 2 is a more neo-romantic work, almost mahlerian in its melodic and orchestral outlook, but also very balletic and descriptive, with strong whiffs of the kind of "prairie" music so typical of Copland or Thomson. It is colourful and busy, but not cutting edge nor very distinctive music.
In his autobiography, Antheil chastises the music critics for judging compositions not for what they are but for what they are not. In a formula supposedly passed on to him by Cocteau, Antheil uses the metaphor of a critic who, perhaps an excellent specialist of chairs, when presented with, say, a lamp, will examine it thoroughly and conclude: "this is not a good lamp. You cannot sit on it". There is a point there, of course, and Antheil's compositions should be listened to and judged on their own terms, rather than be expected to repeat forever his early, brash and outlandish style. Stravinsky's neo-classical style was long to be fully accepted and appreciated, but now one can value, say, The Rake's Progress for its uniquely and unmistakably Stravinskian color, rather than hear in it only a take-off of Mozart - and therefore reject it.
Still - and Stravinsky is a good case in point - even without expecting a new composition to fit perforce in some predefined esthetic box, one can at least legitimately seek in it what is typical of its very composer, what belongs to his unique creative personality, rather than being imitative, derivative, repetitive. In this respect I find the Antheil pieces collected here wanting.
Yet, despite these works' relative lack of originality and personality, this disc fills a documentational purpose and New World Records must be thanked for it. Antheil is an important American figure who deserves disc exposure, even, as here, in his lesser works. As usual with this label, the notes - contributed by Guy Livingston himself, also the pianist on these recordings, and equally skilled in both capacities - are excellent, thorough and informative, with a selected discography, bibliography and - ah, modern times! - links to George Antheil websites.
Track Listings (15) - Disc #1