Räder 
Xenia Narati : Solo (D,2010)****'
Xenia Narati was inspired before by Moondog who had his own distinctive personality and who created his own sounds and instruments, within the tiny space of a street corner he often created a sort of rondo minimalisms that defined rhythmic-melodic sonically interesting musical poems. It was a challenge to resume his thoughts and visions into harp interpretations of his compositions. Some composers musical pieces are so much part of their personality and of their world of experiences, their world has an expression of its own. For me such composers work like teachers, because they reinvent the ear and attention which results in the music, their visions work inspiring to creativity in its essence. For Xenia Narati it is also about the ability to meet these people joyfully and in full range of sharing visions in their music. Their worlds starts to find and express a life, it becomes a new meeting point. These become one with the shared understanding and become partially an expression of friendship. The starting point for this CD were the “4 pieces for harp solo” op 135 by the American composer Gordon Sherwood (born 1929), who were especially written for Xenia Narati. The ARTE documentary called “The Beggar from Paris” featuring Gordon Sherwood, shows a different choice in life compared to Moondog another completing vision. There exists other sincere artists /musicians / composers who found other completing visions, being one with their personality. Compared to how Xenia Narati interprets this aspect, also she tends to go beyond the obvious, beyond the melodic tendencies and thinking, while keeping all traditions intact only to deepen the sound and movements from inside.
About Gordon Sherwood. After Gordon Sherwood had won the first prize for his first symphony in Carnegie Hall, New York, in 1957, he decided to travel all over the world, to get the fullest of impressions of all continents. Instead of earning a living as a composer, he preferred to be a self sponsoring person. He has been a bar-pianist in Egypt, studied music in Kenya, spent time in India, Japan, Latin-America and France. In his works he mixed ideas from Gershwin, Bartók and Russian expressionism with some Arabic influences. He very much showed the restless cosmopolitan life.
With some comparable starting points towards life and music Xenia Narati also came to look closer into Lou Harrison's work. For her it was also clear every title from Lou Harrison is dedicated to another person. The pieces can be considered as a sort of musical postcards for his friends, like special greetings. That is how each piece shows something different, where the starting point are focused on someone else's essence. “Threnody to the memory of Oliver Daniel” was written for Donald Ott. “Jahla "was written for Leopold Stokowski on his 90th birthday", the famous conductor and musician. The piece, Lou harrison says, is India´s answer to the Alberti bass : the tones of the drone note are played between the notes of the melody, thus producing a perpetum mobile. “Avalokiteshvara" named after the Buddha of compassion. This piece is written in the Korean mode called "the delightfull". “Tandys tango” is for the dancer Tandy Beal. With each person and piece is hidden a different story.
Lou Harrison had been working with different instruments from India and tried to find a new sound or voice. The majority of his music is written in just intonation instead of temperament. He's one of the more known composers to have worked with microtones. From wiki : “He took lessons from Henry Cowell's "Music of the Peoples of the World" course, and also studied counterpoint and composition with him. He later went to the University of California in Los Angeles to work at the dance department as a dancer and accompanist. While there, he took lessons from Arnold Schoenberg which led to an interest in Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique. The pieces he was writing at this time, however, were largely percussive works using unconventional materials, such as car brake drums, as musical instruments. These pieces were similar to those being written by John Cage around the same time, and the two sometimes worked together.” After that he has worked as a music critic for the Herald Tribune, supporting, also financially and promoting composers like Charles Ives, Edgard Varèse, Carl Ruggles and Alan Hovhaness. Then he followed Colin McPhee's explorations on Indonesian music. With his (homosexual) partner William Colvig he constructed a tuned percussion ensemble, using resonated aluminium keys and tubes, as well as oxygen tanks and other found percussion instruments. They called this "an American gamelan". He also played and composed for the Chinese guzheng zither and presented traditional Chinese music in the 1960s. He had to take many jobs to be able to make a living. When he taught at Mills College one of his students was Jin Hi Kim.
The last and third generation composer who Xenia Narrati preferred to include, and who work slightly like a bridging artist was Erik Satie. A very unconventional composer in his time, Satie described himself as a phonometrical composer. The “Gymnopedies” as one of the true timeless masterpieces in classical music were one of the first compositions for piano that dealt as much with space and silence as with melody despite also other new aspects. In his times he was one of the first to be interested in Indonesian gamelan music. He also experimented with what he called furniture music.
What all three composers have in common is that despite a strong root in traditions they expanded this in such a way that the ear to the music and to the musical instruments become more important. As if reaching beyond the conditioned mind and limitations of thinking with and for the instruments they play and compose with, they are also reaching and expanding a few worlds behind this, so that within the frames of recognition, the mind transcends to something more than the material it contains. Their music is already expressing something from another area than its own material content, giving different spiritual possibilities inside a composition or in the playing and experiencing of the instruments itself.
Most pieces here were originally written for piano and guitar and have been reworked with slight modifications for harp.
Myself I still miss a little insight in the listed composers here to give a perfect idea of how the interpretations showed something extra because I don't know where all the original pieces come from.
A piece like “Serenade” (Lou Harrison) shows already very well how the concert harp has stronger sonic possibilities and qualities compared to the guitar and especially the piano. This piece ,has something cheerful and contains a lightness of being expressed with a strong melodic range. I also love very much the rondo by the same “Lou Harrison”. It has these parallel world Pre-Raphaelite atmosphere being described like a cloud of a vision, growing expansively with its melody.
Eric Satie's “Gnosiennes” are well adapted for harp, have different characters in the accents of melody or accompanying tones. “Gnosienne n°5” for instance has a more gentle second layer for the chord-like accents with a faster and stronger lead melody. Xenia makes them work perfectly for harp. I have heard versions on piano which were far less convincing, even though the composition can hardly be spoiled, I have heard that some piano players could.
The strangest pieces are in fact Xenia's starting point, Gordon Sherwood's “4 pieces for Harp Solo”. Also more unusual sounds “Jahla” from Lou Harrison, still not non-logical for harp at all.
“Music For Bill and me” shows different ways of playing the harp, with different sounds, as if being inspired from different instruments like a guitar or a zither, with different picking techniques. At the same time in the composition there's an eastern flavour noticeable in the melody too.
Most of the pieces are highly accessible and not too strange at all. The differences lie in all the details. A few melodies are really more song-like, like Lou Harrison's “Tandy's Tango”, showing clarity and beautiful melody.
Not an album just to play occasionally.
