The
Lost Sonatas Cd
(official CD release website) français
deutsch
WERGO RECORDS
US Release: January 12th, 2004
NPR Sunday Weekend Edition interviews Guy Livingston May 23rd, 2004...Listen
in! and buy
the CD...
mp3: Sonate
Sauvage, Guy Livingston, pianist, from the new CD
mp3: Woman
Sonata (2nd mov't), Guy Livingston, pianist, from the new CD
mp3: Woman
Sonata (3rd mov't), Guy Livingston, pianist, from the new Lost
Sonatas CD
Forty years after the death of the "bad boy of music," pianist
Guy Livingston has brought to light an extraordinary collection of
forgotten works by composer George Antheil.
“ Livingston is the champion
on all counts, and this is the best compact disc of George Antheil's
piano music ever. ”
—All Music Guide, December 2004
“ Livingston is shown at his dazzling best ”
— Le Monde, October 4, 2003
5/5
“Antheil fascinates in every way. And so does Livingston,
his ultimate champion.”
— Diapason Magazine, December 2003
“The recording is spacious but well-focused, with a
fine, rich piano sound. The playing is highly accomplished...”
– BBC Music Magazine, March 2004
“A pianist's labour of love on these little-known works
has really paid off”
– Gramophone Magazine, February 2004
“The highlight was Livingston’s performance of
the Fifth Sonata. It’s a masterpiece!”
– Frank J. Oteri
Guy Livingston: “a pianist with
a flair for modernism of all stripes”
– The New York Times
“An outstanding release and
an important one.”
—Jack Sullivan, American Record Guide
PLAYLIST
1-3 Fifth Sonata
4-6 Sonate Sauvage
7-9 Woman Sonata
11-13 Fourth Sonata
14-16 Third Sonata
total time: 66:46
guy livingston: pianist
Recording: July 2003 by Joël Perrot. FAZIOLI piano.
With the kind support of the PRO MUSICA VIVA Maria Strecker-Daelen
Stiftung and the Composers Guild of New Jersey.
Photo of Guy Livingston during the sessions on July 4th 2003, by Nikolaos
Samaltanos
PLAYLIST
Fifth Sonata (1950) * première
1. andante/allegro molto 7:05
2. minuet 5:16
3. allegro 6:23
Sonate Sauvage (1923)
4. à la négre 3:38
5. serpents 3:59
6. ivoire 1:08
Woman Sonata (1923) * première
7. woman (languor) 5:02
8. tree (prestissimo) 0:27
9. flower (moderato) 0:42
Fourth Sonata (1948)
10. allegro giocoso 5:12
11. andante 5:40
12. vivo 3:38
Third Sonata (1947) * première
13. allegro 5:12
14. adagio 8:47
15. diabolic 4:30
Liner Notes
Sotto Voce with Fist: The Story of Antheil’s “Lost”
Sonatas
Just as John Cage was probably the most notorious
American composer of the post-war twentieth century, George Antheil
was the most notorious of the pre-war era. Antheil’s succés
de scandale was astonishing, making him the rival of Stravinsky and
Satie. As with Cage, Antheil’s eagerness to foment revolution
came from his daring instrumentation, surprising pronouncements, and
anti-establishment attitudes. Works like the Ballet mécanique–scored
for 16 mechanical pianos, airplane propellers, percussion, and siren–literally
blew people away and caused riots in the concert halls.
An excellent pianist himself, Antheil had
full mastery of the instrument and how to write for it. Freest as
a soloist, he was unhampered by orchestration problems, or by conservative
performers. Up to 1940, he performed all his piano music himself,
experimenting with the juiciest, wildest and most radical ideas in
the sonatas. Writing about Antheil’s performances in Berlin,
critic H. H. Stuckenschmidt raved, “I had never heard playing
like it. It was a mixture of frenzy and precision which went far beyond
conventional virtuosity. A machine seemed to be playing the keys.
Unbelievably difficult and complex rhythms were combined ... Dynamics
and tempos were taken to extremes. It was a stunning success.”
This is the composer who carried a gun to concerts, and could wickedly
write a note to the performer: “sotto voce (with fist).”
What were the musical antecedents for the
young Antheil growing up in Trenton, New Jersey? According to his
autobiography, his inspiration came from “the music of the future”
that he heard one night in his sleep. No less importantly, the factories
of industrial Trenton would have provided ear-splitting sounds of
sufficient variety and loudness to excite any budding avant-garde
composer.
During the 1920s, Antheil thrilled European
audiences with these same cinematically spicy concoctions, mixing
jazz and ragtime, sweetness, and explosive noise. Virgil Thomson recalled,
“I envied George his freedom from academic involvements, the
bravado of his music, and its brutal charm.” Nothing could describe
better the Sonate Sauvage, a work radical in its structure and unexpected
in its organization. Cross rhythms, pounding ostinati, clusters, accretion
techniques, sudden juxtapositions of themes, styles and dynamics are
all taken to extremes.
Like many composers, Antheil refused to acknowledge
his debts to others. However it is easy enough to pinpoint some sources:
Ornstein for clusters and power, Schoenberg for basic harmony, Chopin
for the arpeggiated left hand, Liszt for virtuosity, and Debussy for
chords. Milhaud and Stravinsky also play a major role. But Antheil’s
most important influence is from the African-American, Ragtime, and
Creole music of his youth, expressed in the Sonate Sauvage with powerful
effect.
Repetition was everything to Antheil. Development
was irrelevant. In the futurist sonatas, particularly the Woman Sonata
and the Sonate Sauvage, there is no development, no recapitulation,
and no exposition. Grinning from ear to ear, he hints at sonata-form
(A, B, A’) but always ducks out at the last moment. Themes are
presented, dropped, and re-presented on the basis of an overall metrical
scheme which is deliberately obscure. Events succeed each other on
gut instinct, as if he were accompanying a silent film, reacting instantly
to the surprise of each cinematic cut. Contrasts are stark and unsettling,
and the toccatas that conclude virtually every piano work are nightmarish
in their compositional intensity. Yet Antheil’s music is exuberant
and joyous, saved from sheer mechanics by humor and lighthearted parody—of
himself, and of his favorite composers.
In the late 1930s Antheil headed for Hollywood,
where his music took a decidedly traditional turn, to the point that
he was referred to as the “Shostakovitch of Trenton.”
During the forties and fifties this neo-romantic music enjoyed wide
popularity, and his stirring and patriotic symphonies found acclaim
across America. With the post-war sonatas, Antheil mellowed out and
adopted sonata form and classical structure in three massive Prokofiev-inspired
compositions. But he was still harboring peppery surprises, as the
diabolic finale of the Third Sonata, premiered in 1949 by Winifred
Young, amply illustrates.
The Fourth and Fifth Sonatas are more sober
works, and were written for the pianist Frederick Marvin, who premiered
them in New York at Carnegie Hall in 1948, and Town Hall in 1950.
The central movement of each is based on a Prokofiev theme, which
Antheil elaborates and elongates via a dazzling and tragic transformation.
Stricken by the early death of his brother in Russia, Antheil may
have intended to memorialize him in these works. Both have concluding
toccatas which plunge the pianist into a maelstrom of prestissimo
octaves and ostinati. Composer Frank J. Oteri writes, “The Fifth
Sonata is a masterpiece. To my ears, it seems like the synthesis between
the earlier and later music and makes the case for the unity of Antheil’s
polystylistic vision perhaps better than any other piece.” Indeed,
the Fifth is perhaps the summit of Antheil’s career as a sonata
composer: it is an extraordinary summary of the power and creativity
he brought to the piano. An intensely personal work, it is brutal
and tender, grand and expressive, Antheil’s final masterpiece.
Antheil died suddenly in his fifties, and
his music, tarnished by his association with Hollywood and by his
tell-all autobiography, was largely forgotten after his death. A series
of feuds with his publishers meant that even the few works that had
been published languished in obscurity during the sixties and seventies,
a time when “futurism” seemed hopelessly rear-guard to
the contemporary experimentalists and serialists. Of Antheil’s
thirteen piano sonatas, only two were in printed circulation at the
time of his death. The orchestral music, the large catalog of chamber
music, and Antheil’s operas were similarly neglected.
In 1970 composer and radio host Charles Amirkhanian
met Antheil’s wife Böski, and was astonished to find that
she still had the original pencil manuscripts of almost every work
of her late husband’s prolific career. Realizing the massive
importance of this collection, Amirkhanian promoted further interest
in Antheil with impressive concerts in California, Holland and Germany
and became the executor of the Estate of George Antheil in 1978. Scholar
Linda Whitesitt began a catalog of the music in 1981, and in 1991
The New York Public Library purchased the collection, and began the
complex task of cataloging it.
When I first saw the collection, I found the
magnitude of Antheil’s piano compositions astonishing on every
level: hundreds of pages of music, most of it virtuosic, bold, brash,
innovative, funny, and brilliantly ahead of its time. Working with
the generous assistance of curator George Boziwick of the New York
Public Library and invaluable advice from Antheil scholar Mauro Piccinini,
I performed and presented the piano manuscripts in 6 concerts over
6 years in the Bruno Walter Auditorium.
The “lost” piano sonatas were
never completely missing but they are not exactly “found”
either. Over the years, historians and catalogers of George Antheil’s
music have had to leap a frustrating set of hurdles, the result of
Antheil’s memory, which was selective, his business sense, which
was bad, and his handwriting, which was worse. Adding to the confusion,
Antheil was a notorious revisionist of his own catalog, and some works
changed title, dedication, and movements several times.
Preparation for the performance of all six
of these unpublished sonatas is based on my research at Princeton
University and The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
This CD is the first recording of three of these “missing”
works, which illustrate so well Antheil’s wit and brilliance.
Notes by Guy Livingston
BIOGRAPHY
Guy Livingston leads a varied career as a pianist and producer on
both sides of the Atlantic. Based in Paris, Mr. Livingston has given
recitals at the Louvre, Chatelet, and the Centre Pompidou. His performances
have also taken him to Holland (De IJsbreker, Paradiso, Korzo, Vredenburg),
Russia, Italy, Poland, Germany, and South Africa. In the United States,
Mr. Livingston has performed recitals in New York at Lincoln Center,
the Knitting Factory, the Cooper Union, the New York Public Library
for the Performing Arts, and Columbia University.
Guy Livingston is one of the foremost performers and promoters of
Antheil's music today, and directed the Paris Antheil Centennial Concert,
and the 2003 George Antheil Festival in Trenton. His articles have
been published in NewMusicBox, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, and
the Princeton Library Chronicle. He is presiding secretary of Les
Amis de George Antheil in Paris.
Livingston holds degrees from Yale University, the New England Conservatory
of Music, and the Royal Conservatory of the Netherlands. Prizes and
awards include the Huntington Beebe Scholarship, the 1995 Gaudeamus
Competition, the Harriet Hale Woolley Scholarship, and finalist at
the Orléans Twentieth Century Piano Competition and the Sitges-Barcelona
Concorso de Piano Segolo XX. Livingston is managed by Omicron Artist
Management.
Guy Livingston’s most recent recording (Don’t Panic: Wergo
CD 6649-2) contains 60 one-minute premieres by composers from eighteen
countries, and has been featured in Le Monde, Sports Illustrated,
The New York Times, and on NPR’s Weekend Edition. Recent concerto
appearances include the Orchestre de la Gironde, the NCRV Radio Orchestra
of the Netherlands, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
CREDITS
Warmest thanks to these friends for their generosity and support:
Bill Anderson, Bob Antheil, Peter Antheil, Gillian Barlow, Claudia
and Scott, Connie Bradburn, Frank Brickle, George Boziwick, Corinne
Le Briand, Bernadette Collette, Geoff Council, Garance Dilan and family,
Bradley K. Edmister, Eric Gorouben, Maia Gregory, Christian Hym, Paul
Lehrman, Hugh Livingston, Philip and Lona Livingston, Frederick Marvin,
Jonathan McElroy, Morna, Monica, and Neale McGoldrick, Arthur Antheil
McTighe, Gretchen Oberfranc, Frank J. Oteri, Alan Pally, Joël
Perrot, Mauro Piccinini, Marcos Pujol, J. Rosado, Juliya Salkovskaya,
Nikolaos Samaltanos, Don Sipe, Viswanath Subbaraman, David and Becky
Tepfer, Farrell and Lori Thicke, Françoise Thinat, Tim Vardy,
Dan and Marie Warburton, and Linda Whitesitt. Special thanks to Cyril
Roux, on whose piano I prepared this program.
We would also like to gratefully acknowledge the following organizations:
Les Amis de George Antheil, the Composers Guild of New Jersey, The
Estate of George Antheil, Fazioli Pianos, Médecins sans Frontières,
The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Omicron Artist
Management, Paris Transatlantic Magazine, and Princeton University
Firestone Library.
This disc is dedicated to my teacher Galina Belenky.
Piano: FAZIOLI F-278
Engineer and Artistic Director: Joël Perrot
Piano technician: Jean-Michel Daudon.
Photographs: Morna Livingston and Nikolaos Samaltanos
More information at www.GeorgeAntheil.com
COMPOSERS GUILD OF NEW JERSEY
The Composers Guild of New Jersey was founded in 1979 by composer
Robert
Pollock to promote and encourage the work of New Jersey Composers.
The current
director is guitarist/composer William Anderson. The Guild produces
concerts
and recordings, and sponsors events including the 2003 George Antheil
Festival, held in Trenton, New Jersey. The Festival featured twelve
lectures by
prominent scholars, and four concerts of the music of Antheil. Other
major
events in the season 2002–2003 included: a gala concert celebrating
the work of
New Jersey composer and Pulitzer prize winner George Walker; a new
musical
installation piece at Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton by member
Daniel
Goode, the first such installation at the Grounds; and the release
of the compact
disk recording of member Frank Lewin’s spectacular opera Burning
Bright. For
more information about the Guild, its members, upcoming events and
projects,
educational materials, and the importance of New Jersey in the history
of music,
visit www.cgnj.org.
PRESS and PROMOTIONAL INFORMATION
MANAGEMENT: Don Sipe, Omicron Artist Management
donsipe@omicronarts.com +1 414 332-7600
LABEL: Wergo Schallplatten wergo.management@schott-musik.de
+49 6131 246-891
INFORMATION: Les Amis de George Antheil www.GeorgeAntheil.com
+33.6.03.80.49.65
SPONSOR: Composers Guild of New Jersey www.cgnj.org
FRONT COVER
(99k gif)
BACK COVER
(80k gif)
RELEASE CONCERTS 2003-04
Pre-Release (Orléans) Sept 21
Launch Party (Paris) Nov 9
American Church (Paris) Nov 23
Groningen (Holland) Dec 2
Regard du Cygne (Paris) Dec 6
LACMA (Los Angeles) Jan 12
Bruno Walter (New York) Jan 31
Drew University (NJ) Feb 9
NPR Weekend Edition May 23
BUY THE CD
amazon.com
or get a discount at: sonatabop.com
Press
“He has spent some years preparing
and presenting these little-known works, and it show: his interpretations,
like his pianism, deserve the highest praise”
– Gramophone Magazine, February 2004
These lively, witty, impressive works…represent the entire range
of Antheil’s art, from bad-boy crazy stuff like Sonate Sauvage
to the grim monumentality of late pieces like Sonata No. 5. Some,
like the opening of Sonata No. 4 and the finale of No. 3, have a childlike
impishness and exuberance similar to Prokofiev. Livingstons’s
performances can only be called heroic : unflinchingly wacky, and
over-the-top in the
avant-garde sonatas, sober and stark in the late ones. An outstanding
release and an important one.
—Jack Sullivan, American Record Guide
ALL MUSIC GUIDE
Pianist Guy Livingston has brought his considerable
talents to bear on the "bad boy of music" in the Wergo disc
George Antheil: The Lost Sonatas. Livingston attempts to reconcile
George Antheil's late
"populist" music with the clangorous early piano compositions
that have
become Antheil's calling card to posterity. In the process Livingston
uncovers a host of masterworks from both periods, proving that in
his piano music, Antheil was neither a publicity hound, a "fake"
futurist, nor a slavish imitator of mid-century trends hoping to graze
from the same gravy train as Copland.
In a sense, of the three late piano sonatas
heard here, Sonata No. 4 has never been "lost" so much as
terribly neglected; it was duly published by Weintraub back in 1951
and has been recorded a few times.
However, the others, save Sonata Sauvage,
have not been played in five or more decades. The Piano Sonata No.
5, which opens the disc, is a real gem, particularly the concluding
Allegro, which seems to bring boogie-woogie stylings into the orbit
of Prokofiev. The melting lyricism of the Adagio movement of the Sonata
No. 3 may surprise some listeners, but it is not so astonishing if
you understand the milieu of the short second movement of Antheil's
"Airplane" Sonata.
George Antheil: The Lost Sonatas' great strength
is not so much in that it introduces so many works never heard before
as it shows us how much Antheil's later music is like his earlier
music. Hopefully this will bury for all time the criticism of "stylistic
inconsistency" that has
dogged Antheil in posterity and has contributed to his neglect. Wergo's
recording is perfect, picking up the piano's full range, from intimacy
in the Sonata No. 3 to the blistering loudness of the Sonata Sauvage,
reproducing it all faithfully. The task of playing Antheil's piano
music well is in itself quite a feat. It requires the stamina and
agility of a boxer tempered with the sensitivity of a poet and a mathematician's
sense of logic. Livingston is the champion on all counts, and this
is the best compact disc of George Antheil's piano music ever.
—David Lewis
3/9 2004 Stockholm:
George Antheil
The Lost Sonatas
Om någon förtjänar beteckningen
futurist inom amerikansk musik så vore det George Antheil. På
tjugotalet i Paris, som beundrad konsertpianist i kretsarna kring
Stravinsky, Picasso och Pound, gjorde han allvarliga försök
att leva upp till etiketten Bad Boy of Music, som också blev
namnet på den underhållande självbiografin.
Guy Livingstone har länge ägnat
sig åt Antheils pianomusik och på denna skiva med fem
pianosonater från 1923-1950 får vi inte bara ett miniatyrporträtt
av Antheils musikaliska utveckling, utan därtill tre av sonaterna
för första gången. I den brutala ”Sonate Sauvage”,
med satser som ”A la nègre”, tar Antheil in rag
och jazzsynkoper i musiken och avslöjar en stark böjelse
för repetitiva ostinaton. De återkommande citaten från
Stravinskij är dock säkert gjorda med en blinkning.
Efter hemkomsten till USA 1933 blir jazzinfluenserna vagare och Antheils
ostinaton hamrar i mer patriotiska och klassiska fåror. Att
hans sena intresse för de traditionella formspråken ändå
bär god frukt visas i den sista sonaten då han i mogen
medelålder minns sin musikaliska ungdom.
—Teddy Hultber
FRESNO BEE, Nov 6, 2004
The Philip Lorenz Memorial Keyboard Concerts series is throwing in
some nonsubscription concerts with a
special flair this year. The first of those is "Antheil and the
Jazz Age," a concert Friday featuring pianist Guy
Livingston.
The "Jazz" in the title doesn't refer to the style of music,
but to the era when classical composers were being influenced by jazz.
The program will focus on music coming out of Paris in the 1920s,
especially music composed by George Antheil, but also will feature
music by George Gershwin, like Antheil an American in Paris, and by
French composer Erik Satie, a friend of Antheil's.
Livingston, himself an American living in Paris, is considered one
of the foremost performers, scholars and promoters of avant-garde
composer Antheil's music. Antheil cut a unique figure even in that
colorful era: A sort of " gangsta" pianist, he is said to
have brought a gun with him to each performance, and even claimed
to have fired it once or twice when the crowd got out of hand -- which
it often did over his controversial music.
The composer was all the rage in Paris then,
his "machinery-in-art" style of composition capturing the
imaginations of the likes of poet Ezra Pound, writer James Joyce and
composers Aaron Copland and Igor Stravinsky. He literally wrote ahead
of his time -- the technology was not yet available for much of what
he was writing in the '20s. His "Ballet Mecanique," perhaps
his best-known work, was written for 16 player pianos; only four could
be used at its premiere.
The Livingston concert -- with no guns, but
much flair -- begins at 8 p.m. in the Concert Hall at California State
University, Fresno. Livingston also will give a free lecture and film
presentation on Antheil at 1 p.m. Thursday in the Concert Hall.
—M Berry
