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PAN PIPES • FALL 2017 • sai-national.org 40 REVIEWS A CELEBRATION OF EARLY AMERICAN COMPOSERS: Amy Beach, Ruth Crawford, Charles Ives Margaret Mills, piano Cambria Music L istening to this latest CD by pianist Margaret Mills brings to mind a simple truth: A composer is at the mercy of the performer. In the case of Ms. Mills' well-chosen piano works of a trio of American composers, the composers are in excellent hands. The pianist is a seasoned interpreter; she uses her full powers of musical persuasion here, with a pianistic arc that comprises fine control to free flight, attention to detail to broad statement. All components are accounted for with musicality and clarity: range of dynamics, touch, resonance, phrasing, tempo, rhythmic definition, and drive. Long a promoter and commissioner of the music of our time, plus a stalwart performer of women composers' works, Margaret Mills has prepared repertoire for this CD with the same care that she has always given to more standard fare. Amy Beach's piano compositions begin and conclude the program. All are in the range of two minutes in length, and most date from the composer's later years. 2017 marks the 150th celebration of Beach's birth; Ms. Mills uses her skills to celebrate the composer's familiarity with the piano, opening the program with "By the Still Waters," unhurried, limpid, gently exploring the instrument. In contrast comes the immediate drama of "From the Depths," for which the pianist shows fine control of chromatic and leaping octave passages, in long lines and surging dynamics. There follow two works from Beach's mid-life years: how enjoyable is Ms. Mills's charming, unaffected playing of the Schumannesque "Scottish Legend" and the piquant "Gavotte Fantastique." Beach's last work for piano, "Improvisations," affirms that she was an attentive listener. These five pieces reflect some of the twentieth- century sounds that were abroad at the time. Beach adopts these, selectively, always maintaining her aesthetic, as exemplified in earlier works. The first is an homage to a Brahms inter-mezzo (B Minor, op. 119, no. 1). Next comes the shortest (just over a minute), a graceful invitation to musical delights, seamlessly, effortlessly delineated by Ms. Mills. The third is one of scene painting that has charming hints of MacDowell. The following piece has a delicate bittersweet quality, assuaged in the last measures. The concluding Improvisation sweeps in with a Brahmsian gesture, and glories in strong waltz time, buttressed by fullness of texture. Ms. Mills produces the requisite richness in warm tones and long breaths of rhythmic impulse, etching with sensitivity — in the last moments — a quiet, contained expression of regret. The recorded sound is excellent throughout the CD: full, warm, and without gimmicks— perfect for the repertoire. A caveat: The spacing, both between individual works (four seconds) and between the sets of each composer's works is routine — often too brief. The two middle movements of Charles Ives's Second Sonata are well presented. One would hope that Ms. Mills will soon be heard on CD playing the entire work: flute, wood block, the works. It is in her performance of Ruth Crawford's Nine Preludes that Ms. Mills shows how a thoughtful, attentive musician — with sterling keyboard chops — can give full voice to music that clears a new, personal path. Crawford explores the entire instrument — its wide scope of pitch and dynamics, of percussive and lyrical possibilities. Her palette can be (even seventy years later) wonderfully startling. Ms. Mills is an equal opportunity interpreter: she treats the idiosyncratic imaginings of Nine Preludes with a sure sense of their expressive content. A particular pleasure in listening to Crawford's works is how they enliven the CD. It all has to do with range: tempo (Grave to Lento), attitude (giocoso, mesto [a favorite Bartok advisory], leggiero, scherzando), and piano sound (skipping to smooth to percussive massive, and all that lies between). The pianist has taken full measure of each of these short pieces, and gives her all from the get-go, as in the first, featuring delicate, late-Scriabin tracery in a mere 52 seconds. The harmonic basis set forth here is apparent in most of the Preludes, in its flowing shifts from chromatic tonality to atonality. The fourth occupies this harmonic territory, and is intensely pianistic, adorned with graceful embellishments. Crawford adopts a simple A-B-A form for the second, its opening a kind of impish capering that spreads out to the entire keyboard more substantially. Also in A-B-A is the third Prelude, in which tone clusters are also a part. For the fifth prelude: tolling in lowest bass, which sets the ground for right-hand improvising. The sixth Prelude has a repeating passacaglia effect, presented in the treble rather than in the expected bass zone. The introduction of drama in the baritone register is beautifully, warmly etched by Ms. Mills' in- the-keys touch. For the seventh, she gives full voice to the overtone-producing property of the piano, the wellspring of its resonance. This is the purview of the piece, which features reverberating accumulations of chords and arpeggios. It is thanks to the remarkable clarity of the performance that the piece comes to full sonic life. The eighth prelude is a kind of perpetual mobile, a fleet toccata for which Crawford again chooses A-B-A. One might question the efficacy of returning to the opening section, and wonder if a simple diptych structure might better suit these materials. Perhaps a short, gauzy reminiscence of the opening might suffice? The ninth Prelude is an excellent close to the set of one-of-a-kind works: both hands converge from the outer reaches to the middle of the instrument. At the end, the left hand is a breathing gong; the right, silver shimmer. Composer Elizabeth Lauer became an SAI National Arts Associate over thirty years ago, after initiation by then-president Pat Stenberg. Lauer has been awarded prizes and commissions for her published and recorded works. An accomplished pianist, she also serves as a judge, critic, program annotator, and lecturer. She is a member of the Composers Bureau.

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