ROmerican Avant-Garde

 Piano Recital

Thursday, March 2, 2023, 7:30 p.m.
Cook Recital Hall, 333 W Circle Dr, East Lansing, MI 48824

The daring works proposed by ROmerican Avant-Garde explore emotional themes ranging from anger to dreams and rebelliousness, with a whiff of nostalgia from Eastern Europe and post-war America. Echoing our 21st-century identity crisis, this program testifies to a need for a new, avant-garde approach.

Conceived as a “revisited” classical piano recital, ROmerican Avant-Garde is a concert experience lasting about 50 minutes, without applause, and almost without interruption, between the works. This unusual musical program, which presents American and Romanian compositions written mainly during the first half of the 20th century and dedicated to the piano, is centered around a work never performed in Europe until now, since its premiere in Paris in 1955: The Seven Deadly Sins by Jacob Druckman.

Teaser Trailer

The Program

John Cage (1912–1992)
In a Landscape (1948)

Remus Georgescu (1932–2021)
Three Miniatures for Piano (2004)
I. Berceuse
II. Sicilienne
III. Marche

Jacob Druckman (1928–1996)
The Seven Deadly Sins (1955)
I. Pride
II. Envy
III. Anger
IV. Sloth
V. Avarice
VI. Gluttony
VII. Carnality

Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990)
“For Aaron Copland” from Seven Anniversaries (1943)

Aaron Copland (1900–1990)
Four Piano Blues (1926–1948)
I. Freely Poetic
II. Soft and Languid
III. Muted and Sensuous
IV. With Bounce

George Enescu (1881–1955)
“Carillon Nocturne” from Pièces Impromptues (1916)

Program Notes

Program Note by Dinu Mihailescu

The daring works proposed by ROmerican Avant-Garde explore emotional themes ranging from anger to dreams and rebelliousness, with a whiff of nostalgia from Eastern Europe and post-war America. Echoing our 21st-century identity crisis, this program testifies to a need for a new, avant-garde approach.

Jacob Druckman, one of the principal composers of the American musical avant-garde, is also considered one of the greatest orchestrators of his generation. The Seven Deadly Sins is his only known piece for solo piano. Composed in Europe—more specifically in Paris—this work might represent an “experimental plane” for the composer, who continued to try out new forms, techniques, and styles of composition upon his return to the United States.

Adept in the atonal style, all the while including reminiscences of tonality that are magistrally “hidden” in his musical discourse, Druckman finds his principal sources of inspiration in the music of Igor Stravinsky and Aaron Copland—with whom he studied composition at Tanglewood. Beginning in the 1960s, this American composer became impassioned with electronic music and by opera, two elements that will contribute to the originality of his future musical creations.

John Cage, an emblematic composer of American experimental music, adept in the dissonant style, and in particular of the prepared instrument, is represented in the program by an early work, rarely played in public and very surprising in its melodicity: In a Landscape. This piece, written in 1948, is reminiscent of a meditation; it was composed during a period of profound questioning in the composer’s life, a period during which he became involved in Zen culture and wrote another work in the same style: Dream. In this program, In a Landscape symbolizes the opening toward an imaginary world that is sometimes burlesque—at once grotesque and sweetly nostalgic.

Remus Georgescu, renowned Romanian conductor and composer is represented in this context of musical avant-garde by Three Miniatures for Piano, compositions that are close to Béla Bartók and Igor Stravinsky’s music, dissonant and very rhythmically dynamic music, which expresses a great inner freedom.

Consequently, the respective atmospheres proposed by these short pieces are diverse, passing through the mystery of nocturnal life and the ambiguity of dreams/nightmares (Berceuse), postromantic nostalgia (Sicilienne) and caricature (Marche). The association with Druckman’s work is therefore obvious. These three miniatures, which follow the opening work (Cage’s In a Landscape), play the role of preparing the listener’s ear, and gradually lead them toward the fantastical reality of the post-war world (1955).

The third American composer, who completes the program, Aaron Copland, nicknamed “the Dean of American Composers,” is one of the most original and influential composers of the 20th century. Having studied composition with Nadia Boulanger in Paris for three years, his vast musical creation is interwoven with surprising mixtures of the artistic currents of the moment (such as as jazz, Postimpressionism, and neoclassicism) as well as the new musical languages with which the most “rebellious” composers experimented at the beginning of the 20th century: serial music, atonality, new sounds and effects produced on traditional instruments, etc.

As if in an avant-garde poem, almost out of context and in a fleeting manner, Leonard Bernstein “intervenes” and pays tribute to his teacher and friend, Aaron Copland, with the miniature titled “For Aaron Copland.” This work is taken from the collection Seven Anniversaries, which includes seven works for solo piano written between 1942 and 1943. These short pieces represent a musical gift for the birthday of each friend of the composer. The “miniature” character is again used to prepare for the entrance, this time, of Copland’s Four Piano Blues.

The last piece in this musical “collage” is “Carillon Nocturne,” by the renowned Romanian composer George Enescu. Inspired by Romanian folk music, the impressionist movement and, later, by Asian music, Enescu creates his own language by finding the perfect balance between his sources of inspiration and his own musical intuition.

Through this original representation of chimes, Enescu’s work suggests an atmosphere of tranquility and stability at the end of the program, which allows the audience to gently reconnect with itself. The dissonances are no longer the real harmonic conflicts of The Seven Deadly Sins, but rather a faithful representation of the natural resonances of the bells, at once high and at the same time deep, produced this time by the piano.

The Project

“The two years of the Covid-19 pandemic put a brutal halt to face-to-face cultural events: in particular, to live performances. Even after health restrictions were eased, audiences were reluctant to return for a quite some time; some never returned to concerts at all, which speaks to the fragility and fluidity of audiences. During this period, the following thought came to me: ‘In view of the habits that have radically changed since the beginning of the pandemic, I see here an opportunity to rethink classical concerts in order to make them accessible to a new audience beyond the habitual traditional music lovers.’ This thought was the impetus for the concept of ROmerican Avant-Garde. The choice to bring an American repertoire linked to Romanian works allows us to highlight the cultural links that exist through music of all times, despite wars, distance and social upheaval. If George Enescu’s nocturnal nostalgia in Romania at the dawn of World War I resonates with John Cage’s post-war imaginary landscapes in New York in 1948, American Jacob Druckman’s 1955 atonal “rebellion” in Paris can resonate with a young 21st century audience going through a period of profound transformation; an audience that is more and more concerned about the current dramatic global situation that humanity is facing, and that participates actively in its improvement.”