Bobby Mitchell Plays World Premiere Rzewski

Composer Frederic Rzewski died in Montiano, Tuscany in Italy on June 26, 2021 at the age of 83. The cause of death seems to have been a heart attack. Like many of my generation, I first learned about him by reading the issues of Source: Music of the Avant-Garde; and he subsequently received a fair amount attention when Larry Austin and Douglas Kahn compiled their anthology of Source articles entitled Source: Music of the Avant-Garde, 1966–1973. During that particular interval of years, Rzewski was based in Rome, where he had co-founded Music Elettronica Viva with Alvin Curran and Richard Teitelbaum.

In the years that followed, he would divide his time between Europe and the United States. Much of his work involved using music to tap into his own deep political conscience. Even when his compositions involved fantasias on folk music and work songs, there was a consistent sharp edge to his rhetoric, along with a tendency to inject fierce improvisations into notated music that was already prodigiously complex.

Sadly, I never had a chance to see Rzewski in performance. However, I continue to treasure my Hat Hut CD of him playing “The People United Will Never Be Defeated!,” which is available on Amazon.com for both physical CD (although the album cover on the Web page is incorrect) and digital download. I have been more fortunate in opportunities to listen to concert performances of his North American Ballads suite.

courtesy of Naxos of America

Today Naxos released the latest album in its American Classics series. Pianist Bobby Mitchell performs Rzewski’s much later piano compositions. The earliest of these, “War Songs,” was composed in 2008; and it amounts to a pastiche of war-related songs (both pro and anti) from the last seven centuries. This is preceded by the last two movements of the Dreams piano cycle, which was completed in 2014. Continuing in chronological order, “Winter Nights” is a three-movement composition (one movement for each night), which Rzewski composed for Mitchell in 2015. The album then concludes with “Saints and Sinners,” composed in 2016.

Here in San Francisco Mitchell is best known for his performances in the annual San Francisco International Piano Festival. He played music by Rzewski at Old Saint Mary’s Cathedral’s Noontime Concerts series in August of 2022; and, in August of 2020, he played the complete seven-movement “Songs of Insurrection.” That performance was captured on video and now has its own YouTube Web page. Thus, while all of the selections on the new Naxos release were new to me, I could listen to them with confidence in Mitchell’s authority in his performances.

However, in spite of that authority, I have to confess that none of the compositions on this release moved me as viscerally as either “The People United Will Never Be Defeated!” or the North American Ballads collection. Thus, while Rzewski likened “Winter Nights” to Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 988 (“Goldberg”) variations as an antidote for insomnia, I felt that Igor Levit’s coupling of Bach with “People United” on his 2015 solo piano album (along with Beethoven’s Opus 120 set of 33 variations composed on the waltz theme given to him by the publisher Anton Diabelli) made for a far more satisfying listening experience. Nevertheless, Rzewski’s music deserves attentive listening; and it is likely to benefit from multiple encounters. In that context I am perfectly happy to let it share space with “The People United Will Never Be Defeated!” in my CD cabinet.