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PERILLO Antique Suite,
Hangoverature. Napoli, Piano Concerto No. 1 -
Yuval Waldman, cond;
Nina Kogan (pn); St. Petersburg Festival O - CENTAUR
CRC 2544 (61:42)
I reviewed Stephen
Perillo's last orchestral disc, Requiem for a
Goldfish, also on Centaur, and found myself
unexpectedly delighted. Napoli is more of the
same and is also quite winning. This is not music of
great consequence but it is utterly gratifying,
extremely well made with a vivid sense of
orchestration and occasionally hints at something
much darker than the bright surface implies. The
prize of this disc is the 12-minute Napoli
that gives the collection as a whole its title.
Described by the composer as a tone poem based on
fake Neapolitan melodies, in part a tribute to his
Italian comic. The good guys win, maybe, but the
victory is by no means stable or assured. It is a
wonderful piece. Almost as good is Hangoverture
written for the false millennium of January 1, 2000.
This is another unstable waltz and rather unsteady
on its musical feet, light music but with an edge.
It is a little too long for its own good, but fun
nevertheless.
The Piano Concerto No. 1
owes a great deal to Shostakovich's Piano Concerto
No. 2. The Russian quality of much of Perillo's
music, noted in the review of Requiem for a
Goldfish, is seized upon, naturally, by the
Russian musicians and perhaps emphasizing more
emphatically the relationship of Perillo's music to
the Russian tradition than would be the case in an
American performance. It is a well-made work,
although I am somewhat bothered by how severely
restricted Perillo's basic thematic material is. It
is not unlike the experience of Robert Altman's
detective film, The Long Goodbye, where
literally all the music is based on the title song.
It is immensely clever but you do get rather tired
of hearing the same theme over and over in its many
guises.
Antique Suite is
an orchestration of Perillo's Woodwind Quintet No.
2. He hears it as sounding French but again, perhaps
because of the provenance of the performance, I hear
it as sounding much more Russian. The brilliance of
the orchestration suggests Respighi's Ancient
Airs and Dances Suite No. 2, particularly in
Perillo's use of a harpsichord within the orchestral
texture. Perillo can write waltzes of the most
remarkable diversity and all the best music on this
disc is in fact in three-quarter time. The
performances are, as noted, brilliant and fully up
to the demands of the very colorful orchestrations.
The recorded sound captures this beautifully. If you
bought Requiem for a Goldfish and like it,
this latest installment of Perillo's music is
certainly going to be a required purchase.
— by John Story |
