Matalon: Piano Music (MSR Classics) - MusicWeb International

Martin Matalon (b. 1958)
Formas del Tiempo
Trame IV – Concerto for Piano and Eleven Instruments (live) (2001) [16:33]
Artificios for Solo Piano (2014) [7:11]
Dos Formas del Tiempo for Solo Piano (2000) [11:42]
La Makina for Two Pianos, Two Percussionists and Electronics (2007) [22:34]
Elena Klionsky, Salome Jordania (piano)
Eve Payeur, Julián Macedo (percussion)
David Adamcyck (sound designer – electronics)
New Juilliard Ensemble/Joel Sachs
MSR Classics MS1789 [57]

The wide range of techniques and expressive forms Argentine-French composer Martin Matalon has employed over this century to date are reflected on this disc’s four compositions—all for piano, two with accompaniment. Besides a long list of ‘classical’ releases, he has written scores for several classic films, including Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Luis Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou and L’Âge d’or. Elena Klionsky is the piano soloist throughout—in the opening concerto, in both solo pieces that follow and as lead pianist in the chamber work for two pianos, two percussionists and electronics.

The sixteen-minute, single movement Trame IV – Concerto for Piano and Eleven Instruments, performed live here, evolves by variations of the piano and ensemble’s responses to a dull, initial foghorn-like utterance. A vivid, breathing music emerges from the playful yet tension-filled interplay between winds, percussion and other instruments, and the entire range of the keyboard. This comes to a deliciously artful rest, when a near-static music takes over until the piano reasserts itself, profiled again by woodwinds and percussion—including a gong, marimba and xylophone. The piano and ensemble then invoke some exuberant convolutions, vaguely along the diabolical lines of Ravel’s Scarbo, before the return of the initial flatulent blast, mostly from woodwinds. After a few final musings, the work hobbles to its end.

Trame IV is a spiky, searching music that never sets out to charm, but is likelier to excite, puzzle and mystify. While often relentlessly rhythmic, it has stretches of a far more tenuous coherence. Yet, as much for its poetry as for the more extrovert delights, Trame IV alone is worth the price of this disc. Without suggesting any direct resemblances, in modernism its kin may be Helios, by Thea Musgrave (b. 1928), or perhaps Light, the Third Symphony by Jesús Rueda (b. 1961)—both crisp, sharply-contoured works full of life and improvised musical sparkle.

Artificios, for solo piano, is an eight-minute study in contrasts, in shifts between the piano’s upper and lower registers, in timbre and different sound qualities—explorations that seem to be fundamental to all of Matalon’s music. Also, in the composer’s own words about Artificios: “The material and its unfolding are free and the rhythms [are] deployed as an improvisation.” Both the shortest and most recent work on the disc, it stands at the more searching end of Matalon’s creations—not unlike his recent Trame XI and Rugged (see below for performances of other Matalon works on YouTube).

Dos Formas Del Tiempo, a large, multi-faceted piece also for solo piano, is the earliest work on this disc. The left hand’s initial pulsing may suggest Conlon Nancarrow’s firm-fingered machinations, but some dance-like chordal splashes from the right soon dispel that notion. A thematic core arises from these articulations, yet after a stormy peak it is overtaken by a more haphazard excursion across the breadth of the piano—presumably to reflect inner forms of time, where tempi are not measured evenly. Dark and light sonorities and graceful turns lead to an ominous tick-tock passage that perhaps alludes to Ravel’s Le Gibet, and a hypnotic stillness then brings Dos Formas to a wistful close, with neither a synthesis nor a return to its initial cadences. This is a challenging yet at times exquisitely beautiful work with an unusual cohesiveness, and Ms. Klionsky delivers it with spellbinding conviction. At almost twelve minutes it may be long for an encore, yet attentive concert audiences would be sure to make this a winner for her.

The last and lengthiest piece on this disc, La Makina, for two pianos, two percussionists and electronics, belongs to an otherworldly yet very inward end of Matalon’s creative spectrum. For the most part, it strays far from the rhythmic core that often undergirds his earlier compositions.

As with Artificios for solo piano, from the start this work sets out to explore its instruments’ timbre, pitch and register. The pianos’ cascades, clusters and staccato articulations follow different courses but never overwhelm the ever-present percussion. In fact, this could be mistaken for a percussion concerto—not despite but in light of the pianos’ mode of attack. That said, as with Trame IV, this work displays Matalon’s talent for drawing genuine musical effervescence from his gamut of percussion instruments. Electronics appear only subtly, mostly as undercurrents that generate and enhance a spacey atmosphere. One waits in vain for anything like conventional music to take shape, and waste no time searching for connections to Bartók’s seminal work—whose instrumentation Matalon’s La Makina of course near-echoes.

As the close approaches, its aleatoric excursions recede and make room for the surge of an aggressive throbbing. Interactions between percussion and pianos take listeners to the more familiar territory of a chamber group vying to harmonize and articulate rhythmic patterns – even if the finale briefly returns to the enigmatic. While we may puzzle over just how the frantic delights of the energized close holds together with the longer, rarefied excursions prior to it, no doubt can remain about having been put through a bristly, exciting experience that resolutely avoids any whiff of a musical cliché.

Russian-born, and now US-based, Elena Klionsky is clearly committed to this stylistically diverse repertoire, and has the dexterity, inner fires, and sensitivity to win audiences to it. In a career devoted mostly to performances around the world, her outstanding turn on this disc should catch her up for time lost while she endured a hand injury that called for multiple surgeries.

The album’s booklet notes (in English only) include some by the composer. The Trame IV ensemble’s eleven instruments, however, are not listed. They are flute, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, two percussionists, violin, viola, cello, and double bass (see an online list of his works).

Lyon-based Matalon figures among a few accomplished composers currently proposing fresh, even sparkling directions for ‘classical’ music. For all the garment-rending of those who regard art music as in decline – what with ageing audiences and an uncertain industry – this recording indicates that the production of ground-breaking music faces no such danger – and only such material is likely to win over new generations of musically curious listeners.

Bert Bailey

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