SOUNDS OF AMERICA
Michael Koenig plays organ music by Hampson Sisler inspired by holidays and special occasions have a complex history, dating from various points between July/August 2010 (Kandinsky, three movements of the Clarinet Sonata and 14 of Thirty‑Three Ways to Look at the Same Object) and August 2014, when the final missing movements were added. The first 16 movements of Thirty‑Three Ways were set down at yet another time (January 2013). Quite why this should have been the case, from a group with a close working relationship with the composer, goes unexplained in the booklet.
Fortunately, the location (KAS Music & Sound, Astoria, New York) was constant throughout, and the discontinuities of the recording process have not impaired the finished result. The piano quartet Kandinsky (2003) was the one work set down at one time, its 11 movements providing expressive snapshots of Sierra’s intense and very Latin American reactions to specific paintings by the artist (not unlike Sierra’s Turner of 2002, based on six paintings of the English pre‑Impressionist). The four instruments play together only in the finale, ‘Colorful Ensemble’.
The Clarinet Sonata (2005‑06) – played by Moran Katz and Joel Sachs – is a real find, a very entertaining four-movement work that presents enormous technical challenges, especially for the pianist, who is often called on to play contrasting themes in different tempos simultaneously. Precisely calculated, it sounds almost improvisatory in its natural verve and swing. Sierra likes to conclude works with a Latin dance movement to trigger applause, and Thirty‑Three Ways has a whole series of them. This vibrant cycle for piano four hands (2005‑08) is essentially a set of quicksilver variations (some slow, most swift) not on a theme but on a hexachord which Sierra metamorphoses with seemingly inexhaustible élan. The performances are splendid, the sound clear and bright. Guy Rickards
Sisler ‘All Around the Year – Organ Music for Special Occasions’ Family Days Suite. Popular Monastics Suite Michael Koenig org MSR F MS1666 (48’ • DDD) Played on the Skinner organ of the Evangelische Saarkirche, Ingelheim am Rhein, Germany
Among the MSR label’s releases devoted to music by the American choral conductor, organist and composer Hampson Sisler (b1932), the present disc is the first to feature solo organ music, specifically premiere recordings of two large multi-movement suites. Like many organ composers, Sisler is not averse to interweaving traditional hymns and folk songs within his original works. He manages to do this without sounding forced, partly due to the fluency and textural discretion of his organ-writing.
The Family Days Suite’s opening movement, ‘Mother’s Day’, for example, opens with about 54 seconds’ worth of gentle chromatic exploration, followed by a hymn tune accompanied at first by simple drones in fifths. The harmony grows more complex yet never cluttered, as chorale prelude-like passages alternate with contemplative contrapuntal movement. Concerning the second movement, ‘Father’s Day’, Sisler’s description of a ‘playful and light’ style in melody and metre belies the music’s introspective chorale prelude character. The final movement, ‘A Salute to Grandparents’, appeals with its relative rhythmic variety, Impressionist-inspired harmonic ideas and mysteriously trailing-off ending.
Similarly, the subject of holidays inspires Sisler’s five-movement Popular Monastics gramophone.co.uk
GRAMOPHONE OCTOBER 2018 V
