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| Imri Talgam (©Jean-Baptiste Millot) |
The draw to attend pianist Imri
Talgam's recital at the intimate venue of the Teiva in Jaffa, Israel, on
November 6th 2021 was the opportunity to hear works of Conlon Nancarrow played
live and to revisit the unique music of Morton Feldman. But Talgan's programming
had a surprise in store - a work of Frescobaldi.
Conlon
Nancarrow (1912-1997) was an American-born composer who lived and worked in
Mexico for most of his life. Much of his oeuvre was intended for the player
piano,
a parlour instrument found in many homes in the early 20th century. However, by
the time Nancarrow made the decision to write for- and produce the rolls for
these instruments in the late 1930s, pianolas had become almost obsolete.
But it was this first mass-produced instrument for the playback of recorded
music that enabled the composer to achieve the precise performance of the convolutedness
of his rhythmic ideas and the relationships between them. Talgam is one of
today's pianists who are undaunted by the ingenious complexity of Nancarrow's
writing. The recital opened with three of the composer's few pieces written for
live piano. In "Two Canons for Ursula" (1989), dedicated to Ursula
Oppens (an American pianist with whom Talgam has studied), described by the
artist as canons of tempi and ratios, Talgam gave articulate and pleasing
expression to the mathematical beauty and elegance of Nancarrow's style, to its
mix of both tonal chords and clusters and its many playful moments, as he met
the style's stringent technical demands with mastery. Following nearly 40 years
of composing for the mechanical piano, Nancarrow was drawn into Yvar
Mijhashoff's international tango project, one involving composers from all over
the world. The title of "Tango?" bears a question mark because the
piece has nothing to do with a tango. Indeed, it is a set of variations,
combining two to three tempi functioning concurrently. In contrast to some
muscular, soulless readings of the short piece heard, Talgam dips into his
palette of dynamics, sensitively colouring the various sections in different
hues, alternating forthright, jaunty playing with poetic, delicate, indeed
sotto voce sections, to wind the piece up with playing displaying a hearty
sense of well-being.
If
Nancarrow was known to have said "I don’t even remember what a tango sounds
like.", Girolamo
Frescobaldi's "Cento partite sopra Passacagli" (100 Variations on the
Passacaglia) does need some clarification. Frescobaldi (1583-1643), also
dealing in questions of tempi and multi-dimensional textures, was certainly
familiar with the passacaglia form and also with the chaconne, making use of
both here, but the title of "100 Variations" may just have been
a metaphor for "many variations", these based on a brief
ostinato. Talgam refers to the work as "one of the composer's
strangest", commenting on the fact that the bass figure never occurs twice
in the same way. What is interesting about the piece is that the composer, in
his typically free,
declamatory style and sheer fertility of invention, weaves other forms,
such as the courante, into its extensive fabric. Talgam's playing of the
separated, clearly contrasting sections, each with its own specific ambience,
made for intelligible and riveting listening. Usually heard played on the
harpsichord, Talgam's performance of the "Cento partite sopra
Passacagli" on the modern piano, his tasteful, clean use of the sustaining
pedal never blurring his eloquent fingerwork, was subtle and articulate in
voicing, as he called attention to the composer's occasional unpredictable
harmonies.
The recital concluded with American
composer Morton Feldman's final work for piano "Palais de Mari"
(1986), an introspective composition inspired by a painting of the ruins of the ancient Babylonian
Palace of Mari the composer had seen
at the Louvre in Paris. Feldman (1926-1987) was attracted to it for its quality of imperfect
symmetry. In keeping with the composer's idiosyncratic style, the work consists
of small individual motifs strung together in the manner of "sounds that
breathe" (Feldman). Talgam's fine-spun playing of the mostly consonant pastel-shaded,
shimmering sonorities, refined by the use of the damper pedal, invited the listener
to follow what would, at first, appear as static, identical
repetitions, but whose course becomes varied by gradual, slight changes of
rhythm, pitch, and temporal placement. Not the kind of work accessible to the
rapid-fire mindsets of many people today, but for those in the audience willing
to relax and give themselves to the style and its pace, Talgam's performance
presented an introspective and aesthetically beautiful and bewitching listening experience.
Imri Talgam grew up in Tel Aviv. Following graduation from Tel Aviv
University under Emanuel Krasovsky, then studying with Matti Raekallio
(Hochschule für Musik und Theater, Hannover), he took master's studies with
Raekallio and Robert McDonald (Juilliard School of Music, NY). He completed his
doctoral degree at CUNY’s Graduate Center with Ursula Oppens, with research on
the perception and performance of rhythmic complexity. He has studied
electronic- and computer music at the Brooklyn College Computer Music Center
with Red Wierenga and Douglas Geers. Talgam’s repertoire ranges from
Frescobaldi’s toccatas to contemporary music, including many premieres of works
by living composers
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