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Tamara Anna Cislowska

MYSTICAL PIANO MUSIC

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ERIK SATIE@ Gymnopédie No. 2 2’44

LUCIANO BERIO 1925-2003£ Wasserklavier (Water Piano) 3’03

CHARLES KOECHLIN$ En vue de la ville (In View of the City) from The Persian Hours 4’13

ERIK SATIE% Chorale No. 10 1’33

ALAN HOVHANESS ^ Andante (First Movement) from Sonata Ananda 3’45

ERIK SATIE& Gymnopédie No. 3 2’34

CHARLES KOECHLIN* Sieste, avant le départ (Rest before Departure) from The Persian Hours 3’15

DAVID CHESWORTH b. 1958( Apparent Heavenly Movement 2’55

ARVO PÄRT b. 1935) Für Alina 2’04

Total Playing Time 60’21

Tamara Anna Cislowska piano

ERIK SATIE 1866-19251 Gymnopédie No. 1 3’252 Gnossienne No. 1 2’54

JOSEPH SCHWANTNER b. 19433 Veiled Autumn 4’21

CHARLES KOECHLIN 1867-19504 Chant du soir (Evening Song) from The Persian Hours, Op. 65 2’27

ERIK SATIE5 Gnossienne No. 3 2’186 Gnossienne No. 5 3’27

ALAN HOVHANESS 1911-20007 Vision of a Starry Night (Fourth Movement) from Sonanta Ananda, Op. 303 3’50

CHARLES KOECHLIN8 Aubade (Dawn Serenade) from The Persian Hours 3’18

HENRYK GÓRECKI b. 19339 Intermezzo 2’38

ALAN HOVHANESS 0 Mystic Flute, Op. 22 2’03

CHARLES KOECHLIN! Les collines, au coucher du soleil (The Hills at Sunset)

from The Persian Hours 3’54

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After attending the Paris Exposition Universelleof 1899, and witnessing music of non-Westerncultures, Satie wrote the exotically-tingedGnossiennes. Again, the textures are clean, theharmony serenely repetitive, the melodiccontours graceful. The composer’s tendency tomark his scores with whimsical annotations ispresent already in these early pieces. Theperformer is guided in the third Gnossiennethus: Take advice carefully – Arm yourself withclairvoyance – Alone, for a moment – So as toobtain a hole – Very lost – Take this further –Open your head – Bury the sound.

Born just one year after Satie, the Alsatiancomposer and musicologist Charles Koechlin

experienced similar shifts from the Frenchmusical mainstream to obscure tributaries – andback. With a less eccentric lifestyle than Satie,but a more unkempt and old-testamental beard,Koechlin’s output was more varied. Fivedecades’ worth of expansive orchestral scoresand choral works joined a long list of songs,piano and chamber pieces. Following an earlyattraction to the mystical qualities of the forest,and subsequent interests in classical mythology,dreams and the vast unknowns of the universe,Koechlin in his later years became drawn to –even obsessed by – the greatest fantasies ofour own age: motion pictures. Captivated mostof all by the ‘insolent beauty’ of the earlytalkies’ female stars, the latter part of hiscatalogue reveals a stock of titles almost as

bizarre as Satie’s. Opus 132 is the Seven Stars’Symphony, including movements for DouglasFairbanks, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich andCharlie Chaplin. Op. 163 is 5 Danses pourGinger Rogers. Lilian Harvey alone inspired over100 touching cameos.

The 16 piano pieces entitled Les HeuresPersanes (The Persian Hours) were writtenbetween 1913 and 1919. Koechlin never visitedPersia himself, and this music was conceived asa ‘voyage imaginaire’ – a piece of armchairmusical travel. His primary inspiration was thepart-seductive, part-melancholic travel book VersIspahan (Toward Isfahan) that appeared in 1904,written by the naval-officer-cum-novelist PierreLoti. Other influences on the composer werethe writings of the diplomat Count Joseph-Arthur de Gobineau – particularly his 1859 workThree Years in Asia – and the stories from AThousand and One Nights. The intenselyatmospheric pieces of The Persian Hours passthrough two days and nights, evoking an exotic,hot, desert world of the Caravan, the siesta, thebazaar and night-time dervishes. Koechlininvestigates the mysterious textures of thepiano, the extreme registers; with his finely-tuned sense of timing, he manages somemoments of great harmonic subtlety andpolytonal sonority.

To a greater or lesser extent, the othercomposers featured on this album are linked

‘Monsieur Erik Satie is, quite rightly, taken for apretentious cretin. His music is senseless &makes people laugh & shrug their shoulders.’

Fortunately for Satie, this harsh appraisal camenot from someone else but from his own pen –a spectacular piece of self-deprecation written(but not sent) for a Dictionary of Musiciansbeing compiled in 1915. Better to anticipate thetaunts, and wallow in them, than to have toabsorb or deflect them from others.

The reputation of this singularly unusualFrenchman has been as mixed in the decadesafter his death as when he was living – hisdetractors pointing to his wholly limitedtechnique and slender, compensatingeccentricity. His friend Debussy judged him tobe ‘a gentle medieval musician who strayed intothis century’, and Ravel regarded him as a‘precursor both brilliant and clumsy’. (Whatambiguity there is in the term ‘precursor’ –implying both the sagacity of being ahead ofone’s time and the impotence of not quitemanaging it oneself!) John Cage was in nodoubt: ‘It’s not a question of Satie’s relevance.He’s indispensable.’ And Jean Cocteau, withwhom the composer collaborated in 1917 on theremarkable ballet Parade, saw only positivethings in what others regarded as his miniaturistlimitations: ‘The smallest work by Satie is smallthe way a keyhole is small. Everything changeswhen you put your eye to it.’

Satie’s life trundled mysteriously through anumber of different periods. There was anextended low patch when he was a café-pianistand composer of music-hall songs. In his fortieshe returned to academic study at Paris’s ScholaCantorum. There was a period when his musicshowed a particularly absurdist, surreal bent –from 1913 and 1914, for example, there werepieces like Tiresome Peccadilloes, BothersomeGlobs, Dried Embryos and Three ElegantWaltzes by a Squeamish Pansy. And towards theend of his life, his star shone more brightlywhen his own artistic aventures clicked in withthose of a younger crowd – not just composers,but artists such as Picasso, Man Ray and Derain.

The Trois Gymnopédies were written betweenFebruary and April 1888, during a period oftransition in Satie’s life, from shy, retiring habitsto the more flamboyant, bohemian lifestyle ofMontmartre, the café Chat Noir and ostentatiousreligiosity. As a publisher’s announcementstated for his Ogives of the following year, thiswas a time for a ‘mystico-liturgical style idolisedby the composer.’ We can only assume Satie didnot also idolise the prospect of theGymnopaidiai in its literal sense. With gymnosmeaning naked, and pais child, this was a choraldance performed in ancient Sparta by nakedmale youths. It is thought that Satie was merelydrawn to the title per se, and that his musicalrecreation strove towards purity and (tonal)nakedness, ‘music of our origins,’ as he thought.

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with the preoccupations of both Satie andKoechlin – the mystical, the exotic, the visionary,the ancient and the other-worldly. Alan

Hovhaness has been influenced in his vastoutput of symphonies, choral and chamberworks by diverse elements such as Renaissancerepertoire, Indian and Asian music, and folkstyles from Armenia (a part of his ancestry).Mystic Flute is one of his earliest piano pieces,dated 1937. Underpinned by a steadily rockingset of open fifths – seven beats to a bar – themelody evokes the hypnotic wanderings of amiddle-eastern pipe. The Sonata Ananda waswritten in 1977 and features, in both the first andlast movements, similar arpeggio figures in theleft hand and fluid, almost childlike melodies inthe piano’s highest tinkle register. The sonata isdedicated to Francis Bacon.

Both the Estonian Arvo Pärt and the PoleHenryk Górecki started out composing in theavant-garde style of the 1960s. And both haveachieved popular acclaim in recent years for theirmore audience-friendly, less dissonant works.

Pärt virtually gave up composition for nearly adecade between 1968 and 1976, devotinghimself instead to a period of artisticreorientation and study of Medieval,Renaissance and Russian Orthodox music. Apartfrom his quasi-ancient Third Symphony in 1971,the first work to emerge from this compositionalchrysalis – and thus announcing his new

‘tintinnabulist’ style – was a piano piece ofexquisite, precious delicacy. If Satie intended tocreate a language of musical nakedness andpurity in his Gymnopédies, the bareness ofmaterials and effect in Für Alina is even morepronounced: two gently colliding strands of bell-like serenity hanging above a bass wash.Górecki’s Intermezzo, from 1990, is a similarlycalm miniature that contrasts the piano’s highand low registers.

The use of the piano’s sustaining pedal plays alarge part in creating the glassy, floating soundsin much of the music on this disc. In VeiledAutumn (subtitled Kindertodeslied – Lament forthe Death of Children) by the American Joseph

Schwantner, there are further instructions forthe use of the damper pedal, which createspecial harmonic effects and dreamy textures.

The great Italian modernist Luciano Berio setout to be a concert pianist, but was hindered inthis by a wartime injury. His music for solo pianohas not been extensive, but includes four shortpieces for the elements Earth, Air, Fire and Water.

The first to be written was Wasserklavier (WaterPiano) in 1965, the same year that Berio workedon his more substantial piano work Sequenza IV.Marked ppp sempre et lontano (always veryquiet and distant) and with the una corda pedalconstantly in use, there is a pensive classicismabout the whole piece (indeed, there are motivic

references to Brahms’ Intermezzo Op. 117 No. 2 and Schubert’s Impromptu Op. 142 No. 1).A closing pedal note of F brings this gracefullyerrant piece to rest, but not without the final,faltering irony of a delicate harmonic blur.

The Australian David Chesworth creates a senseof delicate repose and (qualified) spirituality in hisintriguingly titled Apparent Heavenly Movement,written in 1976. He explains:

‘While researching and writing an opera about a cosmonaut marooned in space, I becamereacquainted with old notions of the harmony of the spheres and long-held beliefs that the‘apparent heavenly movement’ of the sun, moonand stars could be explained and represented by huge clockwork mechanisms of cogs andwheels within wheels. The phrase struck me asan appropriate title for this previously untitledwork which I had uncovered. The piece is shortand fluid. However, the constellation of pitchesyou hear results from a precise, clockwork-like structure.’

Meurig Bowen

Recording Industry Association awards) for Best Classical Release.

Her wide repertoire includes 40 pianoconcertos and she has given 15 worldpremieres of new works.

In recent years Tamara Anna Cislowska hasperformed regularly with the Mozart PianoQuartet, including tours of the USA andrecordings of Brahms and Mozart quartets onSony BMG’s Arte Nova label, the Dvořák PianoQuartets on MDG, and the complete chambermusic of Gustav Jenner on cpo. She continuesto perform regularly in Australia and overseas.

Tamara Anna Cislowska has made discs with theSydney and New Zealand Symphony Orchestrasand the London Philharmonic Orchestra for ABCClassics, Chandos and Naxos. Her most recentreleases are Alan Rawsthorne’s Concerto for TwoPianos and Orchestra with Geoffrey Tozer andthe London Philharmonic Orchestra, conductedby Matthias Bamert, and Peter Sculthorpe’sPiano Concerto on Naxos.

For ABC Classics

Executive Producers Robert Patterson, Martin BuzacottEditorial and Production Manager Hilary ShrubbPublications Editor Natalie SheaBooklet Design Imagecorp Pty LtdCover Photo Steve Cole/PhotolibraryPhoto p8 YangHee Kim

Recording Producer Andrew McKeichRecording Engineer and Mastering Ross SheardPiano Preparation Wayne Stuart

Sound recordings originally released by Artworks(Armchair Productions Pty Ltd) on AW010.

Recorded February 1997 at the Conservatorium ofMusic, University of Newcastle on the Stuart & Sons2.9 metre grand piano housed in theConservatorium’s Concert Hall. The exceptionalclarity, superb bass register and unique sustainingresonances enhance the mystical and exotic flavourof many of the pieces on the album.

PREVIOUSLY RELEASED RECORDINGS� 1998 Australian Broadcasting Corporation. © 2008 Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Distributed inAustralia and New Zealand by Universal Music Group, underexclusive licence. Made in Australia. All rights of the owner ofcopyright reserved. Any copying, renting, lending, diffusion,public performance or broadcast of this record without theauthority of the copyright owner is prohibited.

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Tamara Anna Cislowska

Tamara Anna Cislowska is one of the best-known and highly awarded Australian pianists ofher generation. She has performed as soloistwith the London and Romanian PhilharmonicOrchestras, Tokyo’s NHK Symphony Orchestra,the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and thesix major Australian symphony orchestras.

As a guest performer and chamber musician shehas appeared for Musica Viva and in the Barossa

and Huntington Festivals, the Mostly MozartSeries and Sydney Spring International Festivalof New Music, and at festivals in Germany, Italyand the UK. As a recitalist she has performed atthe Purcell Room in London, the Concert Hall ofthe Sydney Opera House and the Kleine Zaal ofthe Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. She has alsoperformed in Japan, Poland, the United States,Italy and Greece.

Tamara Anna Cislowska began her career at anearly age, studying with her mother, NetaMaughan. She gave her first public performanceat the age of two, playing Bartók, and recordedseveral pieces for ABC Radio at the age of three.She began studies at the SydneyConservatorium aged six, and two years latergave her first performance with an orchestra.She was the youngest pianist ever to winAustralia’s most prestigious classical musicaward, the ABC Young Performer of the Year, in 1991. Soon after, she was named ‘Sydney’sFinest Performer’, resulting in a tour of Japanand the United States as a cultural ambassador.

Tamara Anna Cislowska won the David PaulLanda Memorial Scholarship for pianists and hasbeen a major prizewinner at several internationalpiano competitions. In 2003 she was awardedthe Music Council of Australia/FreedmanFoundation Fellowship for Classical Music. Shehas been nominated for three ARIAs (Australian

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