New Piano Trio Contemplates Time

Cover of the album being discussed (courtesy of Jensen Artists)

Today marks the release of Sonic Alchemy, a new album of performances by members of a piano trio, violinist YuEun Kim, pianist Mina Gajić, and cellist Coleman Itzkoff. It is worth noting that Kim will probably be familiar to those following early music in the Bay Area. She is a recipient of the Jeffrey Thomas Award from American Bach Soloists (ABS); and, in addition to performing with that ensemble, she has also played with Voices of Music. This new album, however, marks a significant departure from the repertoire for those ensembles.

Indeed, the album contents consists of what those of us with a mathematical background would call a “bimodal distribution.” That simply means that there are two “clusters” from two different eras in music history. The earlier of those “clusters” consists of two compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. These are his two fantasias for solo piano, K. 397 in D minor and K. 475 in C minor. The second “cluster” is shared by two Eastern European composers, Estonian Arvo Pärt and Latvian Pēteris Vasks.

The essay found at the beginning of the album’s booklet is entitled “How do we even measure time?” Addressing that question is no easy matter, but the question is certainly relevant to the “nuts and bolts” associated with both performing and listening to music. Nevertheless, trying to answer that question is the tip of an iceberg, whose depth extends further than one can see if limited only to sea level and above. Thus, before we try to measure time, we need to understand the basic properties of what Edmund Husserl called “time consciousness;” and anyone that has ever tried to approach Husserl casually knows how difficult this undertaking is.

Less intimidating is merely trying to understand how we account for the act of listening. Where the Mozart fantasias are concerned, this becomes a matter of recognizing how each piece amounts to a series of episodes; and what seems to matter most are the transitions from one episode to the next. Most important was that Mozart was not afraid to compose very abrupt transitions.

On the other hand both Pärt and Vasks have composed music that seems to be grounded in a rhetoric of stillness. Listening to this album becomes a journey of discovering that there are many different kinds of stillness. Indeed, Pärt takes a call-and-response approach to stillness. That approach basically consists of taking the Adagio movement from Mozart’s K. 280 piano sonata in F major as a call and then recognizing a response to it.

Mind you, many are likely to shy away from music that appeals to cerebral qualities. Such would-be listeners should rest assured that one can listen to the tracks of this new release without fear of being overwhelmed by the “deep end.” However, those that decide that the album deserves more than a single listening experience will probably begin to recognize that, when taken as a whole, the recording takes some innovative approaches to the interactions between foreground and background. In other words, once you put your toe in these waters, the music itself may persuade you to wade into a greater depth!