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█ █ P U B L I C . S O U N D
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█ █ presenting our latest release
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r e l e a s e . i n f o
Artist.....: Colin McPhee (Esprit Orchestra)
Title......: Tabuh-Tabuhan
Rip Date...: Mar-28-2009 Cat.No.....: SMCD5181
Style......: Avantgarde Label......: CBC Records
Quality....: VBRkbps Type.......: Album
Size.......: 91,10 MB Source.....: CDDA
r e l e a s e . n o t e s
Thanks to Canada's cultural apparatus for making this minor
treasure available!
McPhee was a rum-soaked composer who enjoyed the climate of the
South Pacific; he was so overtaken by Balinese gamelans that upon
returning to the States, he was unable to do anything other than
compose in gamelan style. Now, this was both good and bad,
depending on how you look at it: for us today, it was a blessing;
McPhee introduced Balinese music to the West--he transcribed it
and got it played. Thank you. For him, however, it was a disaster.
He became very depressed and basically drank himself to death in
the early '60s as a result of being ignored (or perhaps being
labeled as a one-trick-pony). Little did he know that the
Minimalists were just around the corner and had he lived, he
would've been canonized by them. Oh well, listen and enjoy the
fruits of this early modernist classic written in 1935. Lift your
glasses high to the memory of McPhee as you lilt to the warm
breezy gamelan-inspired sonic wealth of this oddball work and
composer.
-wfmu.org
Colin McPhee's music sounds like it could have been written in the
last fifteen years, not between 1936 and 1960. Probably the first
composer to effectively and respectfully synthesize the music of a
non-Western culture (in this case Balinese gamelan; McPhee lived
on the island of Bali, studying its music and culture, for most of
the 1930s) with Western art music, well before the advent of
"multiculturalism," his music is rarely performed today. This
recording is a fine record of his compositional output, including
all of his major surviving works for orchestra. The quality of the
performances is first-rate; the quality of the compositions
themselves is another matter. McPhee's output was adversely
affected by personal and financial problems after World War II,
and he never again attained the compositional heights reached in
_Tabuh-Tabuhan_, his Pulitzer Prize-winning work from 1936. His
Symphony no. 2 and the _Nocturne_ for chamber orchestra are still
excellent works, but his final two completed compositions,
"Transitions" and the "Concerto for Wind Orchestra" are pale
shadows of his earlier music. I still give this recording my
highest recommendation!
-some guy on amazon.com
Colin McPhee (1900 - 1964) could easily have been included among
that select group of composers known as "American mavericks" had
it not been for one minor technicality: McPhee was born in
MontrΘal and grew up in Toronto. Never mind that McPhee studied in
New York, under the tutelage of Edgard VarΦse, and eventually
settled back in the U.S. for the final two decades of his life
after spending a number of years in Bali; he is at least as
qualified as are VarΦse and Leo Ornstein to be included in this
group. (A curious lacuna in Michael Broyles's new book, "Mavericks
and Other Traditions in American Music," is that McPhee doesn't
even earn an index mention, whereas VarΦse and Ornstein are given
big bleeding chunks of commentary! But that is the subject of
another, different review.)
The title work of this album, "Tabuh-tabuhan," is the single work
that McPhee is most famed for. An orchestral toccata in three
movements, it incorporates Balinese gamelan instruments (in
addition to two pianos) which, because of their unique tuning,
provide a piquant "spice" to the harmonic flavoring of the work.
In this, he was years ahead of Henry Cowell and Lou Harrison (and,
in an "Eastern"sense, Alan Hovhaness as well) in the use of these
instruments. Even more, McPhee was more than a few decades ahead
of Steve Reich and Philip Glass in using percussive, driving
ostinatos in a thoroughly minimalistic sense in "Tabuh-tabuhan."
Two generations ago, Howard Hanson and his Eastman-Rochester
Orchestra committed a fine performance of this work to disk (so
long ago that it was "mono only"). But, good as that performance
was, this performance by the Esprit Orchestra de Toronto-a group
that specializes in contemporary music-tops it quite comfortably
in splendid stereo sound.
"Nocturne" (coming more than two decades later, in 1958) is
scored-and "flavored"-much like "Tabuh-tabuhan" except that it is
in a single, more relaxed, movement, as its title would suggest.
Even more like "Tabuh-tabuhan" is his "Concerto for Wind
Orchestra" (1960, his last completed work).
The three-movement "Symphony No. 2" (1957, commissioned by the
Louisville Orchestra) is quite Ravel-like in its clarity and, to a
lesser extent, McPhee's use of harmony (here again subtly affected
by his use of gamelan instruments). It has a "fairy tale"
atmosphere that brings to mind Ravel's "Ma mΦre l'oye" ("Mother
Goose") ballet suite.
"Transitions" (1954, commissioned by the Serge Koussevitsky
Foundation) is described in the booklet notes as McPhee's "...own
transition back into the world of western commercial
acceptability" after, literally, decades of Balinese
gamelan-inspired "Eastern-leaning" music. Scored for full
orchestra rich in percussion, it IS decidedly more conventional
than the other works on the album. Nonetheless, enough of the
"earlier" McPhee remains to identify this as one of his own.
Was McPhee our very first minimalist? He might well have been;
clearly, the minimalist characteristics are there for all to
compare with later Reich and Glass. He certainly predated Cowell
and Harrison in incorporating gamelan instruments. Interestingly,
I find no evidence of his early tutelage under VarΦse. (Can I have
a big "Hooray!"?) And he wrote with a sense of instrumental and
harmonic clarity of which Ravel might well have been proud.
Look no further for an integral compilation of the "important"
music of Colin McPhee, unsung and nearly-forgotten maverick. This
is the one to have!
-some other guy on amazon.com
p l a y l i s t
01 symphony #2 part 1 07:33
02 symphony #2 part 2 05:11
03 symphony #2 part 3 06:00
04 concerto for wind orchestra part 1 05:43
05 concerto for wind orchestra part 2 05:53
06 concerto for wind orchestra part 3 03:04
07 transitions for orchestra 13:36
08 tabuh-tabuhan part 1 06:17
09 tabuh-tabuhan part 2 04:58
10 tabuh-tabuhan part 3 05:11
11 nocturne 07:16
70:42 min
g r e e t i n g s
agw - amok - bass - bcc - bex - boss - cmg - cmc - cms - d2h
def - dh - disc0 - drum - emp - ftd - fwyh - gem - i8 - ipc
jce - jfk - jrp - just - khz - kinky - kw - lame - maem - mbs
mgc - psycz - r2r - rac - radial - rapid - rks - rtb - sb
sever - sfe - soup - sour - sq - tr - trt - ube - uc - upe
uki - xtc - yard - zi
respect to music lovers worldwide
never forget : go to the show. buy the t-shirt. order the vinyl