As well as being a superb technician, the pianist Herbert Henck always
puts together his discs with great thoughtfulness. This brilliantly
executed programme of the renegade American composers Conlon Nancarrow
and George Antheil may seem an unlikely juxtaposition, but it makes
musical sense. ... The sources of Nancarrow’s inspirations are clear –
the rhythmic energy and the syncopation come from jazz, while the
clarity and the contrapuntal ingenuity stem from neoclassicism in
general and Stravinsky in particular. Jazz and Stravinsky had also been
the main inspirations of Antheil’s music more than a decade earlier,
when this self-styled “bad boy of music” left the US (in 1922) to live
in Europe for 11 years, touring as a pianist and scandalising his
audiences with his own provocative compositions. At a recital in Paris
in 1923, he played his Airplane Sonata, Sonata Sauvage and Mechanisms
(all three included here by Henck, alongside the Jazz Sonata, and the
Sonatina, of the same vintage, and the Sonatina for radio written six
years later). ... The music is still immensely attractive, full of
vigour and harmonic daring – some untethered harmonies anticipate the
more abandoned moments of Messiaen, other insouciant tunes sound like
close cousins of the music of the Parisian Les Six, and yet other works
are entirely rhythmic. ... As far as I know, the two composers never met,
but had they done so, they would have found they had a lot in common,
as Henck so lucidly demonstrates. (Andrew Clements, The Guardian)As well as being a superb technician, the pianist Herbert Henck always
puts together his discs with great thoughtfulness. This brilliantly
executed programme of the renegade American composers Conlon Nancarrow
and George Antheil may seem an unlikely juxtaposition, but it makes
musical sense. ... The sources of Nancarrow’s inspirations are clear –
the rhythmic energy and the syncopation come from jazz, while the
clarity and the contrapuntal ingenuity stem from neoclassicism in
general and Stravinsky in particular. Jazz and Stravinsky had also been
the main inspirations of Antheil’s music more than a decade earlier,
when this self-styled “bad boy of music” left the US (in 1922) to live
in Europe for 11 years, touring as a pianist and scandalising his
audiences with his own provocative compositions. At a recital in Paris
in 1923, he played his Airplane Sonata, Sonata Sauvage and Mechanisms
(all three included here by Henck, alongside the Jazz Sonata, and the
Sonatina, of the same vintage, and the Sonatina for radio written six
years later). ... The music is still immensely attractive, full of
vigour and harmonic daring – some untethered harmonies anticipate the
more abandoned moments of Messiaen, other insouciant tunes sound like
close cousins of the music of the Parisian Les Six, and yet other works
are entirely rhythmic. ... As far as I know, the two composers never met,
but had they done so, they would have found they had a lot in common,
as Henck so lucidly demonstrates. (Andrew Clements, The Guardian)
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