This is music, and it is on the piano, but beyond that, whatever you expect, it isn’t. The ambi-ence is a little highly strung, even edgy, throughout. The sleeve notes say he thought the piano bourgeois, so perhaps he only wrote for it when he was grumpy.
The sound ranges from the rather solemn opening of the Second Sonata for Piano to the jolly, jazzy “Shimmy”, which has a touch of silent movie music about it (apparently an ironic nod to the foxtrot, a popular dance in his day).
“A Little Music for Dispelling Sentimental Moods” is presumably also ironic, as it is dryly senti-mental. “Cowboy Bauman Fell off the Crazy Horse” is the world’s longest song, as the end of the sheet music instructs the player to repeat ad infinitum. It doesn’t much sound like a man falling off a horse, though it does have the echo of cowboy era bar room piano, as seen in many a film. The pianist would probably be shot like a dog for not playing a tune, mind. In between the shorter pieces are compositions with several movements.
Intellectually interesting, and a programme of which one does not tire, bereft of tunes, melody and good humour as it is. Out on MDG, 613 2355 2.
