Métier to Release First Half of Craven Cycle

from the Amazon.com Web page for the recording being discussed

One week from today Métier Records, a division of the Divine Art Recordings Group, will release the first half of Pieces for Pianists, a collection of 50 short piano compositions by Eric Craven. As usual Amazon.com has created a Web page for processing pre-orders. All 25 tracks on the album are performed by the Irish pianist Mary Dullea.

Craven’s motivation in creating this collection was, in his own words, “to reward any pianist with even modest ability with immediate success.” I have to “come clean” about this objective, which I feel rubs me the wrong way. For much of my adult life, I have been inspired by a simple Zen observation: “Hard work succeeds … naturally.” Whether it has involved scientific research or trying to get my hands around Franz Schubert’s D. 960 piano sonata in B-flat major, I have consistently treated that phrase “immediate success” as an oxymoron.

In other words, whatever the undertaking may be, the journey itself is just as important as the destination, if not more so. Thus, in all fairness, I have to say that my own attitudes make me an unsympathetic listener to Craven’s compositions. I am sure there are any number of pianists that will be drawn to this collection; and many of them will take pleasure in attempting to play them, possibly in response to having listened to them. For my own part, even as the joints of my hand grow gradually stiffer, I have any number of sources of music I can take to the keyboard and derive considerable satisfaction. After listening to Dullea’s performances on this new recording, I have to say that none of the 25 tracks have motivated me to download the music itself and take it to my own keyboard.