City Research Online

Abstract

This recording consists of seven piano works of Marc Yeats, all first recordings: Enûma Eliš (2010) Ouroboros (2009, rev. 2015) professor wingard’s nameless force (2010, rev. 2015) the anatomy of melancholy (1998, rev. 2015) the viciousness of circles (1998) william mumler's spirit photography (2016) orange afternoon (1997) This series of recordings represents the culmination of a crowd-funded project and major collaboration between composer and performer, which also included several new pieces written specially for this (to be released 2018, so not included here). All are first recordings. The research towards producing the performances drew extensively upon a range of other experience and development of technical and interpretive strategies, derived from performance of wider repertoire. These include a full-arm throwing staccato method (drawn from the technical methods of my teacher György Sándor) combined with particular navigations of the wrist for accentuation, especially in Enûma Eliš and the anatomy of melancholy. I had earlier developed this combination of techniques when performing such works as the György Ligeti Études and works of Franco Donatoni and Pascal Dusapin in a related idiom. Elsewhere, as in Ouroboros, extensive use is made of an unpedalled legato technique, aiming for a ‘pure’ and desolate sound without overlapping dissonances (a strategy I use elsewhere when imitating a ‘Russian’ legato), developed when performing such works as Dusapin’s Fifth Étude or Brian Ferneyhough’s Quirl, and some of the monophonic writing of Michael Finnissy. In general, I have striven to foreground the articulations in this piece in such a way as to create ‘integrative’ lines constructed from small units, rather than treat the articulations as localised differences within longer phrases. This in turn draws upon wider research into Viennese piano schools and performance practice in the music of Brahms, as well as my own lectures and writings on notation. Otherwise, rendition of the manifold polyrhythms and complex tuplets in the scores of all of the pieces, which share some stylistic characteristics with those of other composers sometimes categorised as ‘new complexity’, vary between ‘metrical’ approaches and those which view such rhythms as topological distortions of time.

Publication Type:	Performance
Additional Information:	CD Recording - PFCD112
Subjects:	M Music and Books on Music > M Music
Departments:	School of Communication & Creativity > Performing Arts > Music

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