Radiant Outbursts: (In)Human Progress

Philadelphia Percussion + Piano Project

Leonard Bernstein wrote “I think it is time we learned the lesson of our century: that the progress of the human spirit must keep pace with technological and scientific progress, or that spirit will die. It is incumbent on our educators to remember this; and music is at the top of the spiritual must list.”  

This album embraces the struggle between human spirit and technological and scientific progress as a unifying concept connecting three bold compositions. With power and pathos as reference points, the music lays bare the continuum between the human and the mechanical.  Percussion supports and spars with solo flute in Bernstein’s Halil, Nocturne (1981), stands tall as a full-fledged chamber partner in Adam Silverman’s That Radiant Outburst (2015), and partners with four percussive pianos in the George Antheil’s Ballet Mécanique (1923-24/1953).

In Bernstein’s Halil, Nocturne (1981), tonality and atonality express the struggle between life and death and peace and war as he reflects on the loss of a young life. Adam Silverman’s modern That Radiant Outburst (2015) reflects upon Antheil’s emphasis on the “forward motion of percussion and incessant rhythmic texture.”  Antheil’s Ballet Mécanique (1923-24/1953) exemplifies an early mechanistic approach to art, reproducing sounds of modern life, and even including the sounds of an airplane propeller. 

Halil, Nocturne (1981)    

Bernstein’s Halil represents the human rather than mechanical side of the dichotomy he described. In his work, the percussion instruments engage in musical material more lyrical and personal than in the other two works, both in dialogue with flute and piano and at times, alone. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to perform this piece with Phillip O’Banion leading the Temple University Percussion Ensemble, and pianist Charles Abramovic, my longtime collaborator, for the Bernstein centennial in 2018. I identify Halil with my beloved teacher, the legendary flutist Julius Baker, who as principal flutist of the New York Philharmonic gave the New York premiere with Leonard Bernstein conducting. 

Another aspect with personal meaning for me is that Halil embodies Bernstein’s close relationship with Israel, where he led concerts and supported musical life throughout his career, even performing under threat of fire from Israel’s attackers during the War of Independence in 1948. He wrote Halil, which means flute in Hebrew, as a memorial to Yadin Tennenbaum, a soldier and flutist who was killed at the age of nineteen during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. In his program notes he writes that the work involves a musical struggle between tonal and non-tonal forces that represents “wars and the threat of wars, the overwhelming desire to live, and the consolations of art, love and the hope for peace.” The work is both elegiac and full of hope; there is a coexistence of lamentation for the young life lost and exultation in his youthful, musical spirit. Bernstein’s flute writing highlights the lyrical qualities and tonal nuances of the instrument in the intimate, nocturne music, and its virtuosic brilliance in the rhythmically incisive, almost jazzy sections. The energy builds inexorably to a flute cadenza at once anguished and suspenseful, with interjections from percussion instruments, until the “night-music” returns, leading to a conclusion of devastating beauty and power. As Leonard Bernstein writes:

This work is dedicated “to the spirit of Yadin and his fallen brothers.” Halil is formally unlike any other work I have written, but it is like much of my music in its struggle between tonal and non-tonal forces. In this case I sense that struggle as involving wars and the threats of wars, the overwhelming desire to live, and the consolations of art, love, and the hope for peace. It is a kind of night-music which, from its opening 12-tone row to its ambiguously diatonic final cadence, is an ongoing conflict of nocturnal images: wish-dreams, nightmares, repose, sleeplessness, night terrors – and sleep itself, Death’s twin brother... I never knew Yadin Tennenbaum, but I know his spirit.

Halil, Nocturne, is originally scored for solo flute with piccolo, alto flute, percussion, harp and strings. The version on the album is based on the 1987 version for flute, piano, and percussion. Phillip O’Banion expanded this reduction in number of percussion players and instrumentation, so that the rich textures and timbres of Bernstein’s original orchestration are heard, coupled with Charles Abramovic’s poetic pianistic interpretation of the music for strings. In the orchestral version, Bernstein wrote material for orchestral piccolo and alto flute, to be heard from a distance near the end of the piece (sometimes performed from offstage). In our version, I switch to piccolo for some of these lines, before returning to flute for the final notes.

--Mimi Stillman

That Radiant Outburst (2015)

Adam Silverman’s That Radiant Outburst is exactly that—an ebulliently colorful explosion of sound. The music simply ‘begins’ as if suddenly spoken into existence, bursting into the empty void of silence. There are no rules here; the lines dance and weave among the four instruments, each player sharing contour and color as equals in the quartet. The mood is yearning, hopeful, even youthful, as a newborn star.

--Phillip O’Banion

The overall spirit of the music, as its title suggests, is one of surging motion and colorful flashes of sound. The piece is entirely in a single, propulsive tempo, with moments of respite coming through two gentle passages, one in which the marimba and cello join in an expansive melody over gentle piano chords, and another parallel section in which the clarinet melody soars above strummed chords in the cello. Before long, however, the incessant propulsion resumes and the energy of the music seems almost unstoppable. This quartet for clarinet, cello, marimba, and piano was commissioned by Phillip O’Banion, a percussionist with whom I had worked closely on my marimba concerto. His request for the new work was that it be a substantial and earnest piece of chamber music in which the percussionist plays an integral role. For the premiere performance he enlisted an extremely distinguished group of musical collaborators, also heard in this recording, all playing instruments that are traditionally “leaders” in chamber compositions.

--Adam Silverman

Ballet Mécanique (1953 revision; originally composed 1923-24)

When it premiered in Paris in 1926, George Antheil’s Ballet Mécanique caused a riot at the Théâtre des-Champs Élysées, much like Stravinsky’s ballet Rite of Spring had done a dozen years earlier. Antheil’s autobiography indicates this riot was staged, and filmed for inclusion as a scene in a movie years later. Nonetheless, the scene helped to propel Antheil into advantageous Parisian social and artistic circles. Antheil would never enjoy the kind of success that Stravinsky did in his own lifetime, but was a multi-talented, creative artist and author who had great respect for his elder colleague. This respect is evident in the similar instrumentation of the Ballet Mécanique to Les Noces, of which Antheil heard the premiere just after arriving in Paris in 1923.

Many of Antheil’s early piano works, the Sonata Sauvage, Mechanisms and his Airplane Sonata include elements that sound like mechanical machinery. Indeed, the Ballet Mécanique score called for eight to sixteen Pleyel pianolas or ‘player pianos,’ whose rolls were to be synchronized and played in unison, a difficult technological feat for the 1920s (and one that caused another riot at Carnegie Hall). Antheil also found it impossible to sync his score with Fernand Léger’s film of the same name, for which it was intended to provide the soundtrack. The two artists parted ways during the project as they made this discovery.

The original scoring for Ballet Mécanique is noisy and clamorous, perhaps like the tumultuous sounds Antheil heard in his youth growing up alongside the steel industry in early 20th century Trenton, New Jersey. His 1953 revision of the Ballet Mécanique could be considered a rewrite more than a revision. The scoring is dramatically different – the player pianos were removed altogether, replaced by four grand pianos and the musical lines are not blurred by incessant repetition. Almost ten minutes of music were removed. The xylophone parts are still difficult but not impossible to execute, even though cut down from three to two. The percussion sounds are more detailed than the original score, calling for very specific but varied instruments. The electric bells and airplane propeller sounds remain but their material is radically reworked. The key motives of the original Ballet Mécanique also endure, but are now conspicuous as they are not drowned out by the noise of the mechanical pianos. The newer version’s leaner orchestration also lends itself to beautiful moments of softer, more mysterious textures – much like a nocturn of Bartok (or Bernstein). In this sense, there is greater contrast in the revision, although some accuse Antheil of compromising the ‘rawness’ and cacophony of the original.

Antheil himself said that the work was “never intended to demonstrate the beauty and precision of machines (as has been erroneously said...).” He does concede, however, that if there were a program, it would “be towards the barbaric and mystic splendor of modern civilization.” This is according to Antheil’s own view of modern civilization between World War I and World War II, the piece was also “…a signal of these troubled and war-potential times placed in a rocket and shot to Mars.” Compositionally, his hope was to create a work where ‘time and space’ were the principal architectural elements. These 18 minutes then are a large canvas on which he paints with broad percussive strokes, his principal concern always rhythmic and spatial. There is a mathematical formula, a musical palindrome, that appears specifically in the third part consisting of successive bars in 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2. The Ballet is in three large sections, continuous movements which correspond to the places where the three original piano rolls had to be cut.

--Phillip O’Banion

Stream and Download

Radiant Outbursts: (In)Human Progress is available for streaming and download on all major platforms.

Performers

The Philadelphia Percussion + Piano Project is an ongoing chamber music consort, with a mission to underscore the variety and depth of the chamber percussion and piano repertoire. The ensemble is the result of frequesnt collaborations between percussionist Phillip O'Banion and pianist Charles Abramovic. Versatile by nature, this ensemble draws from a pool of virtuosic talent across the region, adjusting in size and instrumentation as needed to maximize the range of works it performs. The ensemble’s performances have included everything from Antheil to Reich, from ‘classics’ of the modern repertory to newly commissioned works.

Phillip O'Banion, conductor
Amy Barston, cello
Mimi Stillman, flute soloist
Ricardo Morales, clarinet
Charles Abramovic, piano
Gretchen Hull, piano
Anna Kislitsyna, piano
Nam Hoang Nguyen, piano

Additional Percussion
Austin Andrulis+
Caleb Breidenbaugh+
Joseph Callahan+
Matt Flanders*
Travis Goffredo*+
Santiago Grimaldo+
Griffin Harrison *+
Andrew Henry*
Hanna Kim+
Sung Eun Kim+
Salina Kuo+
Andrew Malonis*+
Connor Nixdorf+
Anthony Passante-Contaldi+
Alyssa Resh*+
Emilyrose Ristine+

* Halil
+Antheil

Halil was recorded in Temple Performing Arts Center in March 2019
Recording, Editing and Mixing: David Pasbrig
Assistant Engineers: Austin Johnson and Andrew Kiefer

That Radiant Outburst was recorded in Rock Hall Auditorium in September 2016
Recording Engineer: David Pasbrig
Editing and Mixing: Ray Dillard

Ballet Mécanique was recorded in Temple Performing Arts Center in November 2017
Recording Engineer: George Blood
Assistant Engineer: Tadashi Matsuura
Editing adn Mixing: George Blood and Jeff Chestek

Produced by Robert T. Stroker
Mastering: David Pasbrig
Design: Greg Gonyea