Bridge to Release Album of Walker Piano Sonatas

courtesy of A440 Arts

This Friday Bridge Records will release a new CD of the complete (five) piano sonatas composed by George Walker. Walker’s name is likely to be familiar to many that kept up with the first half of this season’s concert offerings. When the Catalyst Quartet launched their Uncovered series for San Francisco Performances this past October, the first of their four scheduled programs included Walker’s first string quartet, composed in 1946 when he was a graduate student at the Curtis Institute of Music. More recently (almost exactly a month ago) mezzo Kindra Scharich included his vocal music in her LIEDER ALIVE! program at the Noe Valley Ministry. As usual, Amazon.com is processing pre-orders for this new release of keyboard music performed by Steven Beck.

The solo piano sonata was not a preferred genre among twentieth-century American composers. In that domain the best-known composer is probably Charles Ives; and, of the two sonatas he composed, the second (entitled “Concord, Mass., 1840–60”) is played far more often than the first. However, the challenges of mastering that composition are so legion that recital performances tend to be few and far between; but they tend to attract a large audience of Ives enthusiasts. There are also vigorous supporters of Aaron Copland’s only piano sonata, and my own personal opinion is that the composition receives far fewer recital accounts than it deserves.

On the other hand, over the course of his career as a composer, Walker composed five piano sonatas, the earliest in 1953 (subsequently revised in 1991) and the last in 2003, by which time he had established an extensive catalog in an impressive variety of genres. Some may joke that the number of Walker’s compositions is so large because so much of what he wrote was relatively short in duration, both for individual movements and for works in their entirety. That tendency toward brevity can be found simply by the fact that all five sonatas fit on a single CD, filling a duration of less that 55 minutes.

In all fairness I have to say that my personal tastes have nothing against such brevity. (After all, whenever I learn that a composition by Anton Webern is scheduled for performance, I do my best to make sure that I am in the audience!) As a result, my primary quibble with this new release is that each of these five sonatas is best appreciated when separated from the other four. This is due, at least in part, to the individuality of structure than unfolds over the half-century during which those sonatas were composed. Indeed, I find myself wondering whether the brief single movement of the final sonata may have been Walker’s playful way of telling his listeners, “That’s all, folks!” (Mind you, he did that without Porky Pig’s stammering.)

I also feel it fair to observe that, since this was my “first contact” with all five of these sonatas, I do not feel I have sufficient knowledge to comment on Beck’s approaches to these works as a performer. There is clearly clarity in his technique, but I would have to listen to these tracks while following the score pages to establish the fidelity of that clarity. The best I can say is that it is about time that we, as serious listeners, become more familiar with the Walker catalog. Hopefully, familiarity with this new recording will lead to other pianists deciding to include Walker’s music in future recital programs. Only then will we have a “knowledge base” from which we can begin to appreciate his achievements as a composer.