MAURICE OHANA SYMEONIDIS - COMPLETE PIANO MUSIC 1 CD

SKU/Barcode: 881488000900

This is one of a pair of discs by Greek pianist Prodromos Symeonidis (sounds like he might be coming down with something!) devoted to the music of Moroccan-born composer Maurice Ohana. It's a real revelation, and one is entirely prepared to believe Symeonidis when he writes in his notes (in English, French, and German) that listeners often react to his performances of Ohana's music by asking how it could be that they've never heard of him before. The answer is that Ohana, although born in 1913, worked mostly as a pianist as a young adult and came to composition mostly in middle age. Thus, he encountered the buzz saw of serialist totalitarianism and was largely ignored. His music, from the beginning, followed no school or national style, and this made things doubly difficult. Ohana was a British citizen, and if there is a distinct point of origin for his music it is the unique cultural mixture of Gibraltar, of which his father was a Sephardic Jewish citizen. Southern Spanish folk styles, French music (especially that of Ravel, for this is technically formidable stuff), Arabic and Berber traditions (which perhaps gave rise to Ohana's future interest in monodic styles), and jazz (which, as film buffs know, was popular in Ohana's hometown of Casablanca) all show up in his music. On top of all this, Ohana became interested through his studies in France in medieval and Renaissance music and in neo-primitive movements in general. He gradually abandoned harmony as such for a sort of virtuoso linear counterpoint in which, remarkably, some but not all layers might contain improvisational elements. So, imagine the neo-medieval experiments of Satie overlaid with Ravel's grasp of the keyboard and the young Stravinsky's interest in rhythmic intensity, and add hints of Spanish and North African melodic elements, each of which also adds considerable immediate appeal. And boil it all down to the briefest of dimensions in the 24 Preludes (1972), perhaps the most successful music on the album, although all of it is exciting. The four works here appear in chronological order, with the concluding So Tango, from late in the composer's life, standing apart from the rest of the music; a tribute to tango vocalist Carlos Gardel, it refers to the classic tango style. Though the effect is completely different, Ohana's music is comparable in its total originality to that of Mompou, which has been growing in popularity. Thanks to Symeonidis' effective championing here, it seems likely that Ohana's will do the same.