Classical album is a gathering of forces
Never let it be said that concert pianist Gloria Cheng isn’t up for a challenge. She’s known for tackling some of the knottiest and most technically difficult contemporary classical music of the last century. Nor does she lack for inspired conceptual premises. In her newest album, “Montage” (Harmonia Mundi), she interprets new piano pieces written for her by six of the most renowned living movie composers. The result is an album that will probably become a milestone for its insights into the respective engine rooms of a half-dozen highly accomplished and highly individual contemporary writers.
John Williams is the standard-bearer of present-day symphonic soundtrack composers. He had mused for years about writing a piece for Cheng. Nothing happened, though, until she played a recent program of music by Tanglewood-associated composers — where Williams was represented — at the celebrated Massachusetts showcase. The project was inadvertently set into motion.
“That was the first movement,” Cheng says, from her cellphone in traffic, “of the three that you hear on the album. After that I sent out offers to other composers I admire.”
Williams (born 1932) shares “Montage” selections with Bruce Broughton (born 1945), Michael Giacchino (born 1967), Don Davis (born 1957), Alexandre Desplat (born 1961) and Randy Newman (born 1943). Cheng will perform music from the album at Pasadena’s Boston Court on Friday.
Piano pieces serve as X-rays and DNA tests for composers: The grandest orchestral opuses all have to begin at the keyboard. Cheng’s impetus for the project came as much out of artistic curiosity as it did a commercial premise.
“I wanted to see who these people are,” she says, “when they’re not writing to fit a specific narrative or cinematic vision. It’s like asking, ‘We know you can write for other people in any kind of situation, but what do you have to say about yourself?’ The music that they gave me amounts to lifting their veils.”
The best music writers have personal syntaxes and vocabulary; in this grouping, their work was disparate, to say the least. “I think the Broughton piece will become part of the standard piano repertoire,” Cheng says. “It’s that good. Giacchino’s ‘Composition 430’ is Italianate and sweet. Don Davis’s ‘Surface Tension’ is masterful, imaginative and completely un-pianistic; I don’t think he thought about whether it’s playable or not.”
The Newman material is a soulful Americana homage to his film-composer uncles — Alfred, Emil and Lionel Newman.
Not one to miss an opportunity if she can help it, Cheng recognized an historic moment around the recording of the album. “We had five of the composers in town at the same time,” she relates with palpable excitement. “We were able to get them to the Zipper Hall in the Colburn School of Music, and the idea for a documentary film came together quickly. We got funding together and this great little film came out of it; it’s an important document.” Excerpts from the movie will be shown at Boston Court in tandem with Cheng’s recital.
Cheng was told of the musicians who played in the orchestra of jazz composer Toshiko Akiyoshi. Upon looking at her scores, they often concluded that what she wrote was unplayable. After a month or so of serious grappling with the technical hurdles, phrasing, and mechanics of execution, they usually found a way to play the music.
Cheng affirms the process. “That’s what I do on a daily basis,” she advises. “I take things home — by Bruce Broughton or Elliott Carter — and after a year I’ll finally be able to play them. I find that it’s actually refreshing, because when I come back to a Haydn sonata, it’s as though it’s a contemporary piece. And I find myself thinking what it would be like to have Beethoven in my practice room as I’m working on his music — what kinds of questions would I ask him?”
Pausing for emphasis, she states with certainty: “I think of all composers as contemporary.”
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KIRK SILSBEE writes about jazz and culture for Marquee.
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Infobox
What: Piano Spheres: Gloria Cheng
Where: Boston Court, 70 N. Mentor Ave., Pasadena
When: Friday, Feb. 20, 8 and 9:30 p.m.
More info: (626) 683-6883, www.bostoncourt.com