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Spahlinger - Extension

from: Unknown Label

Release Date December 01, 1993
The Piano Sonata is a fine piece of music, but I want to write of "De Profundis". Rzewski has written a piano accompaniment to his own recitation of Oscar Wilde's terrifying essay on the destruction caused by imprisonment. This works to emphasise the humanist core of the work - and the use of struck chest and groans, despite sounding naff, is as moving as anything I've ever heard. This is a true original - and I believe it should be much better known. The ideas on time within Wilde's text are used within the music as it speeds and slows, dances and drags. As always with Rzewski there is the meeting of "classical" modernism, of jazz sonorities and counterpoint, and the rolling rythms of popular song; but not as a "crossover" melange, but as ... Read More: