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Marc Peloquin's disc of piano music by Otto Luening (19001996) comes as a welcome and illuminating surprise. It is yet another documentation of Luening's wide-ranging musical powers, a set of tightly organized keyboard works written over the course of half a century.
Those who know only Luening's groundbreaking electronic compositions from the early 1950s-experiments in sound that managed to be both radical and charming-may be startled initially by the structural clarity of these piano pieces. It should not be forgotten that the most important influence on the young Luening was Ferruccio Busoni, among the greatest piano virtuosos in history and a composer of highly cerebral, markedly original music. (His unfinished opera Doktor Faust is generally regarded as the most intellectually engaging of the many settings of the old tale.) Although Luening was only a teenager at the time of his studies with Busoni, some of the Master's brooding sense of mystery remained with him.
Yet the young Luening was also a pianist and composer for silent films-and the vigorously energetic qualities we find in this music have less to do with Faustian ruminations from the Old World than they do with raffish, vibrant America during the period of its greatest growth. "I've always tried to be in touch with people who wanted to free this great creative force we have in this country," he once said. "In American music today there's a terrific amount of differentiation, a variety of styles and approaches. And that's the American story: this enormous, broad thing."
In short, Luening was a pluralist; he seemed to be interested in everything. Moreover, he was absolutely without dogmatism: during his tenure at Columbia University, he taught composers of radically different stylistic orientations-John Corigliano, Charles Dodge, Charles Wuorinen, Mario Davidovsky, Wendy Carlos, and John Kander (Cabaret)-a diverse group of creators indeed.
On May 24, 2000, Peloquin played several of these pieces at an Otto Luening centennial concert in Columbia's Miller Theater (the same place where the pioneering electronic pieces had received their premiere forty-eight years earlier). Paul Griffiths, covering the concert for the New York Times, wrote an accurate and poetic summary of Luenings aesthetic: "A typical Luening movement will start with some small musical point and fluently extend from it under the shadow of the masters, often with a dance rhythm gently in the background, though also, less conventionally, with a mysteriously wobbly sense of harmony. In a musical world where the old major and minor keys were losing their grip, Luening found ways to go on taking random walks, serene and sunlit, never minding that his chord progressions would have to slip in almost every measure."
It is well worth taking Luening's "walks"-and Peloquin is a splendid and authoritative guide.
-Tim Page
Pianist Marc Peloquin's journey into the universe of Otto Luening started with Henry Cowell.
A dedicated champion of modern music and an appreciator of the historical aspects of this music, Peloquin developed an interest in pieces originally published in Henry Cowells quarterly New Music, which the composer founded and ran from 19271958 to promote new composers. Some peers Cowell published were Charles Ives, Edgard Varèse, and John Cage-but the music that caught Peloquin by surprise was that of century-spanning composer Otto Luening (1900-1996).
Luening the "tape music" pioneer, Luening the co-founder of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, Luening the composer of works with titles like "Fantasy in Space" and "Low Speed"-these Luenings did not prepare Peloquin for Luening the writer of lyrical, Satie-like piano preludes.
"Those preludes and études go back to Chopin," says Peloquin, whose main attraction to and criteria for learning a piano piece is the pieces lyricism. "Did Luening's electronic creations have any influence on his instrumental music? I'd have to say no. You would never know from listening to this piano music that he was in a lab at Columbia with Babbitt and Ussachevsky." Throughout a life that begins when Puccini was still alive and ends after John Cage died, and in spite of all comings and goings of musical trends, "Luening's piano music maintains an integrity, a sincerity of expression," says Peloquin.
In 1997 the pianist performed a three-concert series focusing on piano pieces published in New Music, Luening's Eight Preludes among them. Luening's widow, Catherine Luening, attended one of the concerts, and a year later, Peloquin, along with other artists who had a connection to Luening's music, received a letter from Mrs. Luening and The Otto Luening Trust inviting the recipients to be involved in the upcoming Luening centennial in 2000. Scores would be available for perusal. That caught Peloquin's eye. "I was very happy to get the letter," says Peloquin, "and I was eager to respond."
The first step, Peloquin decided, was to visit Mrs. Luening and take her up on her offer to review her husband's compositions. Entering the Riverside Drive apartment the Luenings occupied for more than a quarter century "brought me into Otto's world," says Peloquin. In the tidy living room were music stands at which Luening had practiced flute, an exhaustive library of his books-and a large stack of the late composers piano music, thoughtfully pulled out by Catherine Luening. Peloquin suggested sifting through them at the piano, which his host readily agreed to.
"I started playing through the music and I was really taken," recalls Peloquin. "The music fired my imagination. There were pieces in there that I didnt know existed and the ones that I did know I had never seen or heard. I had this feeling of discovering a treasure."
He did. All of the pieces on this recording have at some point been published, but knowledge of their existence is scant. Performances are rare and recordings are even more rare.
"About an hour into playing Luenings pieces," says Peloquin, "I was convinced that I should record them. I decided to extend my stay that afternoon. Mrs. Luening said stay as long as you would like. I took that opportunity to show her on the piano what the possibilities are."
When Peloquin had played through the stack of music, he and Mrs. Luening sat and talked, looking out over the Hudson River. "I want to do something with this piano music," he told her. "These pieces should be recorded."
Thrilled with Peloquin's playing and especially impressed at his instant rapport with her late husband's music, Catherine Luening directed Peloquin to CRI, the record label Luening himself founded in 1954. Peloquin's Luening piano project officially began.
With close to three CD's worth of rarely heard Luening piano music, Peloquin's first enjoyable task was to winnow the lot down to one album. "There are certain piano pieces that are great works, but your fingers dont have a physical connection to them. They seem very foreign. I took the time to select pieces that I knew I could communicate. I wanted the pieces I picked to spark my imagination."
As it was, the works chosen for this disc-pieces from the Preludes of the 1930s to the Etudes of the 1990s-span Luenings entire writing life. "I hear connections between them," says Peloquin. "As academic as he was, his music is very unacademic. He didnt adhere to specific compositional methods, such as serialism or chance music.
"For someone who wasnt a pianist, he wrote a lot of piano music," he continues. "And it all works pianistically. Some composers you play and say This was not written for the piano, this is really a string quartet. That a flutist and conductor wrote so much piano music is really fascinating. Except for the lengthy sonata that Ursula Oppens recorded (Sonata for Piano in Memoriam Ferruccio Busoni-CRI 716), his piano works are really not played, so this is a rediscovery. Someone whos been around for awhile, someone we know of-but have we experienced this music?"
In keeping with his nature, Peloquin approached the programming of this disc in an archival way. Pieces were chosen for their connection to Luenings life as well as their expressive qualities. "I was interested in programming the Fantasia Etudes, Luenings last piano works (he was 94 when he composed them), because of the process he went through to write them," explains Peloquin. "He was having trouble with his eyesight-this was before he had eye surgery and his vision improved-and he would write on extra-large staff paper with a huge pencil, almost a crayon, or dictate the notes to his assistant."
Two of the pieces heard here, the Tango and Song Without Words, were written for Luening's friend and colleague, the late pianist Yvar Mikhashoff. Peloquin also has a connection to Mikhashoff, with whom he studied in the Tanglewood high school program. "He was a big influence on me," says Peloquin. "Yvar was a specialist in modern music and we had a month immersion into Ives, Crumb, Cage, and Stravinsky. My ears were completely stretched after that. I had trouble listening to Mozart for awhile."
Luening's Tango was commissioned by Mikhashoff for his Tango Project, in which he asked composers from John Cage to Lukas Foss to compose a tango. "This is one of the tangos in that collection," Peloquin says. "It's very straightforward because hes using the tango rhythm in a blatant kind of way, but what he does harmonically and the variety that comes out of it is very interesting. And I like the ending-it's very bizarre, that big chord at the end. It kind of just goes thunk! Unpredictability is a wonderful part of Luening's language."
"Song Without Words was one of the pieces that I fell completely in love with at Catherine Luening's. It had sentimental meaning for me, too, because it also was written for Yvar. Like Otto, Yvar was interested in the lyric potential of the piano, as I think many great composers were."
Along with interesting archival pieces, Peloquin picked works from Mrs. Luening's stack of music that "spoke" to him, music that was expressive, rhythmically energized, unique in some way, or presented an intriguing side of Luening.
At eleven and a half minutes, Sonority Forms I is the longest piece on this album and one of Luenings most extensive solo piano works. The piece is also unpredictable-a quality Peloquin holds in high regard.
There is a stately march, a form Luening uses often (perhaps an influence of his teacher Busoni, who liked the march as well). There is an expansive chordal, almost Coplandesque section. And there is a rollicking-and quite unexpected-boogie-woogie. "When you hear it," says the pianist of the barrelling bass line, "you chuckle." And finally, there is a "grand Otto ending," as Peloquin likes to call Luenings regal reiteration of an ending chord.
Sonority Forms II, written for composer and pianist Lionel Nowak, who lost the power of his left hand, is for right hand alone. "Its Satie-like, very static," says Peloquin. "Sonority Forms III is rather pointillistic. You play it twice through, the first time with no dynamics, and then you repeat with the dynamics. Its very difficult to do the former, especially with some of his figurations that are jumpy in the way Messiaen can be, but you have to keep them static. Only when I heard it in playback in the studio did I understand why he was doing that-it's effective. First you hear the material in a static way and then it comes back and pops up as if you've put the plug in."
He includes two Short Sonatas: "The first one really struck me, particularly its second movement. I thought for cohesion it might be good to include another one that's very different stylistically, and the fourth Sonata fit the bill."
The suspended feeling of Chords at Night conjures images in Peloquin's mind similar to the photographs by Jill Waterman used on this album's cover: the night sky, the Midwest. "Maybe it was something he dreamt or thought of during the night," Peloquin muses. "It has a nostalgic quality."
Chords are first stated, then rolled, creating a regular, walking rhythm. "I can't think of any other Luening piece like this," says the pianist, who found himself most intrigued by the composer's later works (Chords at Night was written in 1989). "Blocks of sound-very sonorous, chordal throughout. This is a good example of what Paul Griffiths (in his New York Times review of Luening's centennial concert) called Luening's mysteriously wobbly sense of harmony."
Image, with its basic A-B-A structure and clarity of expression, is less formal, more of a character piece. "I can almost picture him writing this," says Peloquin, who feels like he has gotten to know Luening through his music. "He doesn't complicate the music. He contrasts a simple, dreamy tune with some of that wobbly harmony."
Image exemplifies Luenings timelessness. "If you had said this was written in the 1930s or 40s, I wouldnt think twice," says Peloquin. "Just like the Preludes-if they were from the 1980s, I wouldn't find that unusual. The pieces could have been written at any time during his career."
The Preludes, now part of Peloquin's repertoire, are "somewhat Satie, somewhat Chopin-particularly the one in E minor, which evokes Chopin's E Minor Prelude," Peloquin says. "These pieces caught me by surprise-an aspect of Otto Luening I didnt know about."
Naming his pieces sonata, prelude, and étude give them a classical underpinning, but Luening imbues these traditional forms with "a sense of adventure." "Theyre not confined to any one system," explains Peloquin. "Not necessarily free-form or improvisational, but feeling no need to adhere to a particular system. His harmonic language is basically tonal, but there are times when its atonal-yet not 12-tone. Luening has many different pianistic styles."
In May 2000 Peloquin performed Luenings Six Preludes, Tango and Song Without Words at the Otto Luening centennial concert at Columbia University's Miller Theater, garnering praise in the aforementioned review by Paul Griffiths in the New York Times and the enthusiastic response of the audience. It seemed to be a cosmic stamp of approval on Peloquin's Luening piano project. He recorded in the summer of 2000, buoyed by the success of the centennial and the newly provoked interest in Luening's music.
These short, jewel-like piano pieces present an Otto Luening most listeners probably have never met: a composer of lyric, playful, delightful piano pieces. Listening to them, you are more apt to imagine a Chopin-like modern romantic than a man in black horn-rimmed glasses, suit, and skinny tie wrangling music from tape recorders and vacuum-tubed synthesizers, the usual photographic depiction of Luening or his Columbia-Princeton collaborator Vladimir Ussachevsky. (Interestingly enough, Luening never wrote a piece for piano and electronics.)
Though Peloquin never met Luening, Luening has in a way met Peloquin. Composer David Shohl, the pianist's friend and Luening's assistant for many years, played Luening a recording Peloquin had made of Shohl's piano piece Dynamophone. Luening liked Peloquin's playing very much. One would like to think Luening can still hear Peloquin's playing, listening to these crystalline piano pieces through microwave, infrared, sonority forms, chords at night, or however those who have left this reality can experience such transcendent music.
-Mic Holwin
Otto Luening
With a long-standing interest in developing thematic concert series, Peloquin has programmed and performed several series at New York's Bloomingdale School of Music, including a Henry Cowell series, a series of Latin American piano music, and a series featuring works with water as a theme, including his own transcriptions of Mahler lieder and Bizet arias.
Peloquin received his bachelors degree from Boston University and both his masters and doctorate degrees from the Manhattan School of Music. His 1995 doctoral thesis focused on the early piano works of John Cage. Born and raised in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, Peloquin resides in Manhattan. This is his first recording.
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