Three Pieces

This album exemplifies the depth to which Larry Polansky (b. 1954) explores and connects different musical ideas: In Three Pieces for Two Pianos and Old Paint, mathematical models and algorithmic processes are used to set folk songs; in k-toods, simple text scores outline complex musical processes that Polansky has theorized extensively; and the Dismissions are culminations of lifelong musicological investigations. His unique compositional style is unified through diversity and a constant reexamining, questioning, reformulating, and mixing of ideas.

This recording of Alban Berg’s Three Pieces from Lyric Suite and a Suite in Three Parts from Richard Strauss’s opera Der Rosenkavalier, compiled by Franz Welser-Möst, pairs two early-20th-century masterpieces grappling with an all-consuming love and lust through vastly expressive but different means.

Larry Polansky (b.1954) - Three Pieces for Two Pianos (2016) {New World Records 80777-2 Official Digital Download}
FLAC (tracks) - 16bit/44kHz - Official Digital Download (qobuz.com) -> 183 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 140 Mb | Artwork | 5% repair rar
© 2016 New World Records / Anthology of Recorded Music | 80777-2
Classical / Modern Classical / Chamber Music / Piano

The music of Bay Area composer Larry Polansky is a marvelous combination of the mathematical and the expressive. The blend is so seamless, in fact, that it serves to point out the absurdity of regarding those two strains as opposite, or even especially different. The works on this splendid release, mostly written for two pianos, are steeped in algorithmic processes — sometimes subtle, sometimes overt — that give the music an audible sense of structure.

Born in 1885, Alban Berg was one of the most significant composers of the Second Viennese School, whose output proved tremendously influential in the development of music in the twentieth century. He was a student of Schoenberg, who found that his juvenile compositions were almost exclusively written for voice; his natural ability to write lyrical melodic lines (even in later life while following the restrictions of twelve-tone serialism) probably remained the most outstanding quality of his style. His Op. 1 Piano Sonata was the fulfilment of a task set by Schoenberg to write non-vocal music. The Passacaglia, written between the sonata and World War I was only completed in short-score, and may have been intended to form part of a larger work. Both pieces are recorded here in skilful orchestrations by Sir Andrew Davis. The Three Orchestral Pieces were composed alongside his first great masterpiece, Wozzeck, and could be seen as a tribute to his musical hero, Mahler.

You spoke, they listened. BMG and Yazoo responded to the minor furore about the lack of a CD edition of the forthcoming Four Pieces release and quickly moved to ensure that this package (which includes remastered albums, remixes and unreleased BBC sessions) would be available on CD.