Kawai Piano Prices: Pascal Dusapin - Etudes Pour Piano [Paperback] Review

Pascal Dusapin's sensibility has been the theatre,H eis a Man of scaled measured passions: living in the center of Frenchcontemporary expression, Paris, some 70% of French-European composers live in Paris;his creativity never succombed to the complex paradigm merely for itself, there needs to be a narrative something,an image to free the imagination; some entity, some dimension that is communicative to whomever,even though he is well-versed in the spectralisms and complexity cadres; he left it: and the politics associated with making music in Paris, IRCAM etc, can be cut-throat as New York City.Beginning many years ago, the Eighties,(an eternity by today's Virilio-ian dromas)he studied with Xenakis, a physical universe person,but even his shortunaccompanied solos for Viola and one for Trombone have an intense, focused drama as a subterranean emotive current.Very sparce and understated;
His instincts told him to go directly to the theatre dealing with such Heavees as the formidable late Heiner Mueller, in the "MediaMaterial"a sparcedeconstruktive trip made into a dramatic opera. Then some years ago with his haunting "Perela, Uomo di Fumo",nothched a success; and Finally another "Faustus" (you can find the latter on YourTube in excerpts,that work is very impassioned, very post-avant-garde-romantic-Wozzeck-like, the Art product has this plurality of design this cross-referentialiality,to lure the populace into submission.

Likewise the genre of Etude,by comparison seems academic and one-dimensional for his sensibility;but in that we seem to be going culturally backwards retrogressively,Etude is now a vigorous exciting place to be; Recall where music history had a long arduous TREK to find/proclaim the individual work as something some entity within intellectual thought independent of aristocratic or bourgeous support;Music developed rendered as like a "document" of time,,monumental stand-Alone pieces,as Sonatas, then this romantic sensibility(one we live by in the Arts daily)came to the later the "Fragments of the Romantic" this was a search for pure subjectivity;as the piano music as Schumann, Mendelssohn Chopin and Listz latter, We've come a long Way Baby! pre-classic times the piano solo was considered incidental music of dance and suites a la Baroque. Here now today we simply have returned to the "incidental" music of the genre, it was "Tangos" that one held power over composers, everyone wrote a Tango, and ones to be really consumed within the habitations of where you may play piano solo, not public, although this music is played and made available to the populace. You can find the indefataguable Ian Pace playing most of these Etudes, with Dusapin turning pages on Youtube.

What can one do after Gyorgy Ligeti's ambitious yet modest sets, Three damn Books of "Etudes", here Dusapin takes the reins of the challenge and has enough of a strong persuasive personality to render his own voice within this time-worn genre.(The Etude as War-Horse). I suspect we will see more as time progresses, More Etudes!!!!For the record John Cage and Nancarrow earlier began this for the post-modern with his(Cage's) "Etudes Australes" also shaped into "Books"Four of them in the mid-Seventies, for Grete Sultan.Nancarrow had done musical automata with the player-piano(osmething Kyle Gann has developed into Disc-Klavier Etudes).The Cageare obscure incredibly abstrakt,aired, rarefied, and difficult to listen/experience.Gann's more playful and Pop; Ligeti solved this communicative paradigm with sheer speed invention and subterranean evocative-ness, as the Etudes "Autumn in Warsaw (First Book), and "Por Irina"('Endless Columns"after Brancusi) Book Three.
Dusapin's Etudes also have subtitles as "Oragami", and "Mikado",not falling into purely absrakt statements,creations; again some process is engaged with the image, some graven serious image, or playful to solicit a way of writing notes and textures. These are fairly propulsive, almost jazzy, with their incessant left-hand chords to punctuate whatever the right hand does.The registers are fairly contracted into the center and oddly enough these etudes sound like music you have heard before, Yet the genre does have hope in the future as we progress within the neo-liberal order, Dusapin has an exciting approach again pure communication with fairly accessible materials, very rhythmic, bound to a reocurring pattern.If you found the Ligeti interesting, or Jacques Lenot's Etudes"; so you will Dusapin's, the voice is compelling,uncompromising and more one-dimensional,(not in an inferior way); each etude seems to share gestural aspects/elements within itself of-and-amongst-themselves, Each does not drop too far from Dusapin's tree, as you progress through the set. These will certainly give the Ligeti a run for its money, and will soon replace. . . them at some point perhaps not.

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Product Description:
Dusapin (b. 1955), a former student of Messiaen and Xenakis, is among the leading French composers, with a large output in an attractive style.

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