Tansman, Alexander: Anyone here have opinions?

[lontano]

The latest PS Blog shows us Maggie Fingerhut's new release of the piano music of Tansman, a composer I know by name alone. The CD is available at amazon.com and all tracks can be sampled free, as I'm doing right now, and I hear lots of styles, including a couple VERY Gershwinesque works, and only towards the end of the list do I hear anything near the Scriabin-like harmonies referred to in his Wiki bio.

I do like to discover new (to me) music, and with the ready availability of mp3 files to download from Amazon (and others), it's sometimes too easy to be tempted to grab them, and after a couple listenings, forget them, and I'm thinking this might be such case, so...

If anyone wants to advise me on the [de-]merits of exploring the music of Tansman, please let me (us) know.

I know M. Fingerhut is a fine pianist who admirably explores the works of lesser known composers. I admire anyone with the skill and guts to go after composers who never got much press, and I hope she continues this path.

Lontano

[retrouvailles]

I'm personally looking forward to hearing Fingerhut play Tansman's music because the recording I have of the complete sonatas with Daniel Blumenthal leaves a lot to be desired in terms of how it's played. The music itself is very admirable, though. You are right to call some of them Gershwinesque because he was definitely one of the many composers in that time to be influenced by jazz. I personally would like to play a few of these pieces someday.

[indutrial]

I've been a huge Tansman fan for quite some time and the Blumenthal recordings are pretty satisfactory. One must remember that sonatas 2 through 5, the first sonatine, and perhaps also the Suite Variee have no other accessible recordings and are pieces on the borderline of complete neglect. Alongside Diane Andersen's recording of the 36 mazurkas (in four books), that two disc set has helped my study of his work along pretty well. The Fingerhut recording is good also, though I haven't really warmed up to her version of the first mazurka book vis-a-vis Andersen's. Many other piano works, including many preludes, toccatas, etudes, etc... have not yet been recorded.

Tansman's music comes highly recommended, especially if you like chamber music. He tends to touch the same bases in a lot of his works, but the general standard of excellence he adhered to is noteworthy. I'm reluctant to label him a Gershwin imitator, although doubtlessly some portion of his work bears similarity (the works I've heard for piano and orchestra call this to mind). My favorite works of his are the string quartets, the piano trio no. 2 (no. 1 was lost), the sonata for two violins, the Partita for cello/piano, and the 'Musique' pieces for clarinet, strings, and piano. Now is a prime time to really explore his monstrous oeuvre (perhaps on the same magnitude as Martinu), seeing that Chandos recently finished a three-disc series covering his complete symphonies (including an exceedingly-rare performance of the 3rd one, which is a concert-setting of a piano quartet in front of an orchestra).

I've recently been puzzling through his youthful works from the early 1920s, which found him early-on writing in a heavily free-tonal language that often yields end results none-too-dissimilar from dodecaphonic compositions (simply lacking any discernible serial methods). Attempting harmonic analysis of his work requires one to take into account that he often worked on pieces with key centers a tritone apart, a polytonal springboard which renders all twelve notes game. The first sonatine (which I'm currently studying) uses this quite a bit, and plays a lot with harmonies built atop the common B natural that exists in both the keys of C and F#.

All in all, I find him to be a solid, excellent composer, worthy of the level of attention that similar composers like Milhaud and Martinu deserve. Like those two and others of that generation, I feel that he's in need of a slightly better critical appraisal, as snob music enthusiasts are often quick to shelf him as being 'neoclassical' or a Gershwin/Stravinsky regurgitation while they rush to fellate the newest holy-minimalist post-modern bullcrap. On another note, the more I've become downright disgusted in our current variety of budding 'composers', whose scant level of creative output and overwhelming level of Cage-inspired philosophical horseshit hamstrings them and alienates musicians, the more I've come to value composers of Tansman's ilk who actually knew how to work/learn/play with discipline and showed respect to the classical and baroque traditions while keeping up to speed with modern changes.

I also think more musicians need to play his works...not just bassoonists who can't find repertoire.

I hope this is helpful. Sorry for responding to this post a month or so behind.  

[gerryjay]

good topic and very interesting post by indutrial.

tasman is a very old friend, due to my guitar background. his cavatina is one of that pieces that every guitar play (or, as my old master would say: "you have two choices about this piece: play it or play it").

anyway, i never play any of his piano music, although there are very interesting pieces. i'll look forward for this recording, because it's very important to mantain alive this repertory and let it available for students and professionals.

best!

[indutrial]

I'd be interested in hearing more pianists' opinions on the nature of Tansman's work. I've showed it to a few half-assed piano teachers I know and they seemed to find it slightly daunting, or at least considerably difficult to read through because of his heavy usage of accidentals and rhythmic patterns that cross measures (Tansman was not a big fan of using specified key signatures or time signatures other than 4/4, even when the music would clearly not be key-of-C and common-time). These teachers are not the best yardstick, though, since almost anything I bring them from after 1880 seems to be alien to their shoddy musical backgrounds.

Tansman's piano output is vast and includes many very-difficult-looking etudes, including three transcendental etudes and an even harder-looking set of Etudes de Virtuositie and an Etude-Scherzo that he wrote for Arthur Rubinstein.