3 November 2007
New Music in the Rose
"It would take a heart (or ear) of stone to resist George Perle, whose two pieces, written in 1946 (the “Lyric Piece” for cello and piano) and 2004 (the solo “BassoonMusic”), were the highlights of the evening, both sophisticated and, in the case of “Lyric Piece,” outrageously gorgeous. The pianist Gilbert Kalish and Priscilla Lee, a cellist ardent and clear, gathered in reams of silky sound with little silver tacks of crisply placed dissonance."
-Anne Midgette, New York Times, November 3, 2007 |
George Perle: A Retrospective
"At 91, American composer George Perle remains one of the great unsung modernists, a writer of expressiveness and wit who has never let his idiosyncratic devotion to the 12-tone system stand in the way of lyricism or rhetorical clarity. Local music lovers will remember his stint as the San Francisco Symphony's composer-in-residence from 1989 to 1991, but this handsome collection of his music, spanning nearly a half century, offers a gratifyingly fuller picture of his legacy. The offerings range from the Quintet for Strings of 1957-58 to the elegant BassoonMusic, written just two years ago fo rthe Symphony's Steven Dibner. In between come the delectable Nine Bagatelles for Piano, the Second Piano Concerto and Brief Encounters, an extended suite of short pieces for string quartet. The performances can be a little rough, but the beauty of Perle's music shines through."
--Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle, December 11, 2006 |
George Perle: A Retrospective
"This double album is a stimulating survey of the music of an American composer, now 91, who is probably better known as a theorist, but whose creative work brims with vitality. Perle is a pioneering interpreter of Schoenberg's 12-tone technique, but his own music combines that approach with a use of tonality that emerges with unadulterated sweetness in Two French Christmas Carols, performed by the New York Virtuoso Singers. Richard Goode is a persuasive soloist in the deft Serenade No. 3 for Piano and Chamber Orchestra, played by Music Today Ensemble under Gerard Schwarz, while the pianist Horacio Gutierrez sparkles in the Nine Bagaetelles. Three stars.
--Paul Driver, The Sunday Times, January 21, 2007 |
George Perle: A Retrospective
Perle's gems collected for a set that's a shining example of a composer portrait. In his liner-notes, George Gelles tries to shine light on the nonogenerian composer George Perle as a theorist, performer and scholar. Making such a case for Perle as a thinking individualist seems a tad redundant, since any composer in the past 50 years who's written complex music that people actually want to listen to has had to chart his own path. Gelles's Perle is clearly a "complete musician", but I wonder why Gelles stops there. Any composer who commands such gravitas in thorny technique while keeping emotional depth and lightness of wit demonstrates the completeness of all humanity.
Much has been made of Perle's spiritual connection to Alban Berg, though the range of material on this two-disc collection shows just how much Perle has made of those influences. Just listen to the two earliest pieces here - the charmingly crafted harmonizations of Two French Christmas Carols and the darkly expressionist Quintet for Strings, both from 1958 - and it's hard to conceive of these as coming from the same mind, to say nothing of the same year.
A comparable range exists even in his works for solo instruments. Although Perle himself credits his impetus in solo works to avoiding harmonic structure in a post-diatonic world, there's no mistaking his sonorous feel for the bassoon in Three Inventions (1962) and its lighter follow-up in BassoonMusic (2004), his last completed composition. His Solo Partita for violin and viola (1965) and Triptych for solo violin and piano (2002) likewise show a kindred relationship not only with the instrument but with the individual performer in mind.
This latter connection revelas itself most directly in Perles works for piano, where the range of his musical expression has palpable roots in his writing for specific musicians. Horacio Guttiérrez's playfulness in the Bagatelles is everywhere apparent, whereas Shirley Rhoads Perle's poetic lyricism pulls a profound depth from the Adagietto con affetto from Chansonns cachées.
The best example of this comes in the contrast between the Piano Concerto No.2, which rounds out the first disc, and the Serenade No.3 for piano and orchestra, which opens the second. Pianist Michael Boriskin (for whom the concerto was written) gracefully negotiates a difficult piece, asserting a soloistic presence with the Utah Symphony despite his own description of the concerto as having a "chamber-music ideal work[ing] collectively toward a common goal". Richard Goode (who premiered the Third Serenade) offers a truly chamber-music collaboration withe Music Today Ensemble under Gerard Schwarz, who collectively refract a full spectrum of musical colour from Perle's crystailline shapes.
Ultimately, the Serenade No.3 (reissued from Nonesuch) and the Second Concerto (reissued from Harmoni Mundi) make more than serviceable anchors to this collection, which offers probably the best performances and recording quality any composer could hope for.
--Ken Smith, Gramophone, August 2007
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“George Perle is a remarkably gifted composer who
consistently manages to delight the ear while
simultaneously stimulating the intellect. His music is immensely
rewarding both as an aesthetic experience and as an object
of structural, musical discourse: it is both well made and
beautiful. The seemingly effortless balance achieved between
these two aspects of his music is not easily accomplished;
that he so consistently manages it suggests not just mastery
but genius.”
— Richard Brooks, Notes, March 1995 |
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27 January 2003; Premiere
Performed by Speculum Musicae
Triptych for violin
"...Mr. Perle's astringent atonal voice spoke through
textures and gestures of Haydnesque grace and lucidity."
-Anthony Tommasini, New York Times,
January 31, 2003 |
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“George
Perle is a sensational composer … His music is strong
and witty … Even a novice approaching these works will
find them intriguing and elegant and will hear immediately
that they make sense.”
— G. Gelles, Ovation, July
1989 |
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6
May 2002
Perle leads Chicago Chamber in eloquent tour of his favorites
"The
Chicago Chamber musicians and the Museum of Contemporary
Art could hardly have chosen a stronger program with which
to launch the second year of their spring Composer Perspective
series than the one presided over by George Perle...
...The concert's title, "Schoenberg and Us," had to be interpreted loosely. It was difficult,
if not impossible, to trace a line of influence leadkding
from Arnold Schoenberg through all six of the pieces Perle
selected. One must assume he simply chose works that appeal
to him and would make for a nourishing, widely ranging 2
1/2 hour program of recent chamber works.
Almost four decades separate the Perle pieces heard at either
end of the concert - Woodwind Quintet No.1 (1959)
and Critical Moments (1996) - yet their harmonic
grammar is the same. Each is characteristic of Perle in
it's beautifully enameled sonorities and deft, good-natured
instrumental interplay. The newer piece - six aphoristic
movements for six winds, strings, piano and percussion -
suggests a witty, capricious Anton Webern..."
-John von Rhein, Chicago Tribune,
May 8, 2002
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| "Genuinely
and deeply moving music."
-Oliver
Knussen, Tempo, London, June 1981 |
Paul
Lansky reflects
on George Perle's life in music. |
11
March 2002
Performed by Eight Blackbird
Critical
Moments 2 (Premiere)
"...the ensemble also gave the premiere of George
Perle's absorbing and beautiful Critical Moments 2,
the work of a master...Nine movements that employ his distinctive
12-tote tonality (an atonal equivalent to tonal consonance
and dissonance). This was music at once delicate and thorny,
by turns rigorously contrapuntal and breezily atmospheric."
-Anthony Tommasini, New York Times, March
11, 2002
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