Why You Ned to Buy American Piano 1900 1930 Richard Zimdars
I'm pleased to agree with the NY Times, William Bolcom, Fanfare, etc.
Highly recommended, indeed. Zimdars' recording of the Ives 1st Sonata is absolutely riveting, performed with aplomb, assurance and absolute architectural control. This is an adrenaline-charged voyage through the exhilarating realm of this masterpiece. The Copland Piano Variations is another difficult-to-understand piece requiring careful study, and return study, even for the most adroit pianist. The more one returns to it, the more one sees. Zimdars' singular comprehension and perception make the music come alive through a fresh, exciting lens to someone like me who has performed this piece many times over the years. The grandeur and bold rhetoric of the Cowell and Rudhyar pieces are communicated with absolute authority.
The one-star review of this CD by Jordan Waring is likely to remain a minority opinion. To provide Amazon customers alternate opinions to mine and Mr. Waring's, three others follow, including one from composer William Bolcom, recipient of the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for music:
"...this has not only included Charles Ives, which he plays superbly with the right kind of Brahmsian nuance that most pianists miss, but also Dane Rudhyar, Roy Harris, Aaron Copland...but what makes it more remarkable is that Zimdars has gone to some length to play more than just the notes of these pieces. The note-perfect but uninhabited renderings of so much recent music have been the bane of new-music interpretation for such a long time, and what is rare about Zimdars is his showing of many levels of musical poetry beneath the surface. - William Bolcom, Oct. 15, 2010
"He displays breathtaking chops... at first, the listener is staggered by Zimdars' potent manual dexterity, but by the end of the Sonata [No. 1], it is Ives's music that has taken over our attention... Bringing this music to life is an even stronger form of musical virtuosity. Of the several pianists who have essayed it on records, only Joanna Macgregor...has come close to Zimdars. Whereas MacGregor seems more poetic and imaginative at a few moments, her performance does not leave us shaking our heads in wonder, as this one does...Zimdars approaches the music [Copland. Piano Variations] with a measured tread; his performance takes a full minute longer than any others I have heard...I had never cottoned to Copland's Variations, and now I know why: the piece makes more sense in this thoughtful performance--even compared to Copland's own 1935 recording." -- Fanfare Magazine,Jan/Feb 2010, James North
"Bringing these four elements together would not be an easy task for any pianist; ...Ives and Rudhyar are notorious for their extreme level of difficulty... his interpretation of this gargantuan work [Ives Sonata #1] is wonderfully clear... Zimdars does an exceptional job following the thread of Ives' argument and, on the whole, not getting bogged down in the details, numerous to the extent of being seemingly irresoluble. His Copland is crisp, on point, and true to the way Copland himself played this music; Henry Cowell strove to bring out the unique harmonic properties of his tone clusters and did not want them to be treated as mere banging. This requires a special kind of touch, and Zimdars has it; just listen to his take on The Hero Sun. Rudhyar's Third Pentagram is well plotted, expansive, architectonic, and vaguely spiritual in the way it should be." -- Allmusic website, August 2009, Dave Lewis
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