The profile of American composer Charles Tomlinson Griffes was severely damaged by the delayed arrival of Charles Ives onto the American scene, not to mention the heritage of his German musical training and his undeserved reputation as a composer of salon pieces beloved by amateur pianists. On New World's Charles Tomlinson Griffes: Collected Works for Piano, pianist Denver Oldham draws back the veil that began to cloak Griffes' music, thanks to mid-century misconceptions, and reveals it for the strong, daring, original, and innovative force that it is. Far from being a second-string MacDowell, Griffes' Americanism peeks through in even his most Europeanized music, for example as in the strangely bluesy gestures employed in Nightfall and in the second movement of the Three Preludes. The final section of Griffes' Piano Sonata, a milestone in American keyboard composition to those who know it, almost sounds like something written in the latter half of the 1940s, rather than in the late 1910s.
Recorded at RCA Victor's New York studios in 1977 and 1982, Charles Tomlinson Griffes: Collected Works for Piano was made under state-of-the-art conditions by the standards of late analog recording. It is neither as bright nor crisp as most digitally made piano recordings, but the added warmth and darkness do nothing to injure this music. The original form of this release was a two-LP set, and in order to make it fit to a single compact disc, New World had to sacrifice some pieces, namely Oldham's performances of Griffes' Notturno, Barcarolle, and Scherzo and Griffes' own reproducing roll of The White Peacock. Oldham's pianism is devoted to delivering Griffes' music as it is from the page, representing a "definitive" rendering of the score with only limited interpretive nuances. Oldham departs from this approach in the case of The White Peacock, where he deliberately points up some of the thornier aspects of Griffes' harmony in this familiar piece. Dame Myra Hess may not have played it that way, but it does serve to bring The White Peacock into the harmonic realm suggested by Griffes' other, lesser-known late piano music.
Intended as an authoritative mouthpiece for Griffes' best piano music, more than 20 years after its release Charles Tomlinson Griffes: Collected Works for Piano still fits the bill. It should be part of any library of recordings, public or private, devoted to American music of the serious variety.
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