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Martin Arnold
Flax
Kerry Yong, piano
One other Timbre
Martin Arnold’s solo piano work Flax has a tragic backstory. It was initially commissioned by the abundantly gifted new music pianist Philip Thomas, who shortly afterward turned critically in poor health and was unable to premiere the work. Kerry Yong performs the piece in his honor on an One other Timbre CD. The piece was already properly underway when this transpired, however one can not hear the appreciable poignancy and stylish gracefulness of Flax with out connecting it to Thomas’s lack of well being.
Arnold is a Canadian composer whose work is influenced by Morton Feldman and the Wandelweiser Collective. Feldman is a nexus between Arnold and Thomas, whose recordings of Feldman’s full piano music are superlative. Flax, at over eighty minutes in period and in a gradual tempo all through, is actually harking back to the aforementioned influences. Nevertheless, when creating Flax, Arnold additionally had different issues to ponder. Within the CD’s program be aware essay, we be taught that Thomas had talked about to Arnold that the composer’s use of the higher register had made the pianist rethink it. Thus, Flax prioritizes the highest two octaves of the piano. When writing the piece, Arnold was additionally contemplating bebop and early fashionable jazz, how there are dissonances added to the modifications that create harmonic ambiguity. The primary two thirds of Flax use prolonged verticals garnered from this apply. The ending part of the piece returns to modality and organum, each points of a lot of Arnold’s different music.
Thelonious Monk’s voicings and Feldman-esque delicate slowness are an attention-grabbing combine. The location of a lot of the music within the higher register additionally reframes the concord. Till practically midway via, when a bass be aware seems, it looks like an occasion. At that time, there begins to be a duet between diminished chords and bass notes within the left hand and gradual movement bop in the precise.
Kerry Yong is a persuasive interpreter of Flax, with an in depth method to dynamics and phrasing that punctuates distinctive registral areas within the music. Voicing of the concord is a pivotal part of this piece, and it’s the place Yong actually excels, offering a way of trajectory all through.
I don’t assume that I’ve heard a Wandelweiser adjoining work that embodies something near this one. That mentioned, Flax is a profitable experiment from Arnold, stretching his language in shocking and interesting methods. Really useful.
-Christian Carey
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