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Ernst KRENEK (1900-91)1. Twelve Short Piano Pieces, Op. 83 –

VI. A Boat Slowly Sailing (1938) 2:43G. Schirmer

Otto LUENING (1900-96)2. Six Preludes – Prelude No. 4 (1938-51) 2:15

G. Schirmer

Roger SESSIONS (1896-1985)3. From My Diary, No. 3 (1938) 2:06

Theodore Presser

Virgil THOMSON (1896-1989)4. Souvenir: Portrait of Paul Bowles (1935) 0:58

Mercury Music FIRST RECORDING

Aaron COPLAND (1900-90)5. The Resting Place on the Hill, from Our Town (1940) 5:04

Boosey & Hawkes

Leonard BERNSTEIN (1918-90)Seven Anniversaries (1943, rev. 1954) 2:30

6. I. For Aaron Copland 1:447. VII. For William Schuman 0:46

Boosey & Hawkes

Carl RUGGLES (1876-1971)Evocations (1934-43, rev. 1954) 10:55

8. I. 2:139. II. 4:17

10. IV. 4:25Theodore Presser

Roy HARRIS (1898-1979)11. American Ballads – I. Streets of Laredo (1946) 2:26

Carl Fischer

Morton GOULD (1913-96)12. Prelude & Toccata – Prelude (1945) 2:26

Mills Music

John CAGE (1912-92)13. In a Landscape (1948) 9:06

Henmar Press / C. F. Peters

George ANTHEIL (1900-59)Valentine Waltzes (1949) 7:15

14. I. 2:2815. II. 2:0316. III. 2:44

G. Schirmer

Virgil THOMSON (1896-1989)17. For a Happy Occasion (1951) 0:19

C. F. Peters

Earle BROWN (1926-2002)18. Three Pieces – No. 2 (1951) 1:45

Schott

Mel POWELL (1923-1998)19. Etude (1957) 2:21

Lawson-Gould Music Publishers

La Monte YOUNG (b. 1935)20. Study No. 2 (1959) 0:46 FIRST RECORDING21. Sarabande (1959, rev. 1980) 3:14

FIRST RECORDING FOR PIANOself published

Peggy GLANVILLE-HICKS (1912-90)22. Prelude for a Pensive Pupil (1958) 3:02

Lawson-Gould Music Publishers15

Charles IVES (1874-1954)1. Piano Sonata No. 2,“Concord, Mass., 1840-60” (1911-15)

– III. The Alcotts 7:08

Leo ORNSTEIN (1893-2002)2. Suicide in an Airplane (c. 1916) 4:42

Poon Hill Press

Charles Tomlinson GRIFFES (1884-1920)Three Preludes (1919) 7:30

3. I. 2:214. II. 1:595. III. 3:10

C. F. Peters

Percy GRAINGER (1882-1961)6. In a Nutshell – III. Pastorale (1916) 11:47

Aaron COPLAND (1900-90)Three Sonnets (1918-19) 7:54

7. I. 1:55 FIRST RECORDING8. II. 2:309. III. 3:29 FIRST RECORDING

Carl Fisher

Henry COWELL (1897-1965)10. Amiable Conversation (1917) 1:02

Igor STRAVINSKY (1882-1971)11. Valse pour les petits lecteurs du Figaro (1917) 1:04

George ANTHEIL (1900-59)Sonata: Death of Machines (1922) 2:03

12. I. 0:2713. II. 0:3414. III. 0:2515. IV. 0:47

G. Schirmer

Ernest BLOCH (1880-1959)16. Poems of the Sea – II. Chanty (1922) 3:59

G. Schirmer FIRST RECORDING

George GERSHWIN (1898-1937)17. Impromptu in Two Keys (1924) 1:15

New World Music Corp.

Edward Elzear “Zez” CONFREY (1895-1971)18. Nickel in the Slot (1923) 2:36

Alfred Music

Dane RUDHYAR (1895-1985)19. Third Pentagram (Release) – IV. Stars (1926) 3:56

Columbia University Music Press

Wallingford RIEGGER (1885-1961)20. Blue Voyage, Op. 6 (1927) 8:16

G. Schirmer

Henry BRANT (1913-2008)21. Music for a Five and Dime (1932) 2:56

G. Schirmer

Ruth CRAWFORD SEEGER (1901-53)22. Nine Preludes – No. 6 (1924-28) 3:17

Merion Music

Paul BOWLES (1910-99)23. Sonatina Fragmentaria (1933) 4:52

unpublished, from manuscript FIRST RECORDING

Conlon NANCARROW (1912-97)24. Prelude & Blues – Blues (c. 1935) 2:32

Smith Publications

John CAGE (1912-92)25. Quest (1935) 1:10


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Philip GLASS (b. 1937)1. Opening (1981) 5:21

Dunvagen Music Publishers

Lukas FOSS (1922-2009)2. Solo (1981) 13:04

Pembroke Music Co.

Alvin CURRAN (b. 1938)3. For Cornelius (1982) 13:47

Frog Peak Music

John CAGE (1912-92)4. Souvenir (1983) 7:03

Henmar Press / C. F. PetersFIRST RECORDING FOR PIANO

Nils VIGELAND (b. 1950)5. Nocturne:The Sensualist, Dying, Recalls His Protestant

Youth (1987) 3:13self published

Stephen PAULUS (b. 1949)6. Dance (1987) 2:03

Schott Helicon Music

Kamran INCE (b. 1960)7. My Friend Mozart (1987) 4:11


Joseph SCHWANTNER (b. 1943)8. Veiled Autumn (Kindertodeslied) (1987) 4:20


Otto LUENING (1900-96)9. Song Without Words (1987) 2:58

American Composers Alliance

Alvin SINGLETON (b. 1940)10. Changing Faces (1970/1987) 1:56

Schott Helicon Music FIRST RECORDING

Lou HARRISON (1917-2003)11. A Summerfield Set – I. Sonata (1988) 5:18

Frog Peak Music

Conlon NANCARROW (1912-97)Three Two-Part Studies (c. 1935, premiered by Yvar Mikhashoff in 1991) 3:29

12. I. 1:0413. II. 1:2914. III. 0:51

C. F. Peters

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Morton FELDMAN (1926-87)1. Vertical Thoughts 4 (1963) 3:36

C. F. Peters

Alan HOVHANESS (1911-2000)Five Visionary Landscapes Op. 214 (1965) 10:39

2. I. 4:343. II. 2:314. III. Evening Bell 3:34

C. F. Peters

Frank ZAPPA (1940-93)5. Piano Introduction to “Little House I Used to Live In”

(1970) 3:15Frank Zappa Music Inc.

Mario DAVIDOVSKY (b. 1934)6. Synchronisms No. 6 for piano & tape (1970) 7:19

Edward B. Marks Music

George CRUMB (b. 1929)7. Makrokosmos,Vol. 2 – VII.Tora! Tora! Tora!

(Cadenza Apocalittica) (Scorpio) (1973) 2:23C. F. Peters

Lou HARRISON (1917-2003)8. A Waltz for Evelyn Hinrichsen (1977) 2:28

C. F. Peters

Joan TOWER (b. 1938)9. Red Garnet Waltz (1977) 3:27

C. F. Peters

John CAGE (1912-92)10. 49 Waltzes for the Five Boroughs (1977) –

1st realization 0:1711. 49 Waltzes for the Five Boroughs (1977) –

2nd realization 1:13Henmar Press / C. F. Peters

Tom CONSTANTEN (b. 1944)12. Dejavalse (1977) 2:57


Robert MORAN (b. 1937)13. Valse “In Memoriam Maurice Ravel” (1976) 1:56

C. F. Peters

Philip GLASS (b. 1937)14. Modern Love Waltz (1977) 2:51

C. F. Peters

Frederic RZEWSKI (b. 1938)15. Four Piano Pieces – No. 4 (1977) 9:29

Zen-On Music

Christian WOLFF (b. 1934)16. Prelude No. 5 (1981) 4:15

C. F. Peters

James SELLARS (b. 1943)Nocturnes (1981) 10:18

17. I. Spanish Dreams 4:1718. II. French Dreams 2:1419. III.American Dreams 3:47

Hog River Music

Ross Lee FINNEY (1906-97)20. Youth’s Companion – V. Riddle Song (1981) 2:55

C. F. Peters FIRST RECORDING

6


T he unique sensibility of the pianist and musi-cal polymath Yvar Mikhashoff (1941-1993)permeates this collection. These discs feature

music ranging from Antheil to Zappa, and capturemany of the most important trends in the rich historyof American piano music in the twentieth century.This musical panorama runs the gamut from shorterworks meant for the pleasure of the amateur pianistto virtuosic works of the highest order. It gives the lis-tener a sense of the remarkable diversity of writing forthe piano in this country over the last hundred yearsas well as amply demonstrating the depth and versa-tility of Mikhashoff’s own musical thinking.

Mikhashoff cultivated a multifaceted musical persona from an early age. Born as Ronald Mackay in Troy, NY, his unusual talent was recognized whilehe was a teenager. One article from the SchenectadyGazette in 1956 made a special note of Mackay’scompositions as a feature of a recital he played withfellow students of Betty Roberge Weir. In his earlytwenties he studied cello and composition as well as piano at the Eastman School of Music and latercontinued his piano studies at the Juilliard School ofMusic and the University of Houston. His life awayfrom the keyboard often informed his activities at thepiano bench. His lifelong fascination with the tangocan be seen as an outgrowth of the few years hespent working as a ballroom dancer, and he was alsoactive behind the scenes throughout his career, serv-ing as Associate Director of the Almeida Festival in

the 1980s as well as editing and arranging the musicof Henry Cowell, Conlon Nancarrow, and others.

By the time he earned his master’s degree in1968, Mackay was performing under his grandfather’sname, Mikhashoff. Although it might seem unexpect-ed for a performer who adopted an “exotic” name tospecialize in American music, it was an apt choice in retrospect given Mikhashoff’s cosmopolitanism.After studying with Nadia Boulanger in Paris on aFulbright, Mikhashoff completed his doctoral work at University of Texas at Austin and built a career ofinternational visibility from his home base in Buffalo,NY, where he was a professor and artist-in-residenceat the University at Buffalo from 1973 until his deathin 1993. He arrived the same year that MortonFeldman was appointed Edgar Varèse Professor ofMusic, and Buffalo’s vibrant musical culture is indi-cated by Mikhashoff’s inclusion of Feldman’s contem-plative Vertical Thoughts 4 in this collection.

The extent of Mikhashoff’s globe-trotting musicallife is hinted at by considering the 184 recordingswhich are held at his archive in the University atBuffalo library. These tapes capture his concertsthroughout Europe and the United States and illus-trate how his approach to programming becameincreasingly ambitious and encyclopedic over thecourse of his career. In 1976 he began a series atBuffalo titled “The Contemporary Piano Concert,”which presented composers ranging from Ives toWebern to Scriabin. By 1981, he was organizing

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Yvar Mikhashoff, Panorama of American Piano Music, 1911 – 1990

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With Conlon Nancarrow in Nancarrow’s homePhoto ©Keith Gemerek


increasingly thematically oriented concerts, such asthe “Jazzy 20s” program from July of that year, whichfeatured Copland, Stravinsky, Antheil and Krenek. His long-running tango project, in which he commis-sioned some 127 tangos by contemporary composers,also gives an impression of his penchant for expan-sive musical projects which focused around a clearconceptual core.

In 1982 Mikhashoff hit upon the approach whichwould eventually lead to this Panorama. That sum-mer, he performed a gargantuan program of exclu-sively American piano music at the Holland Festivalin more or less chronological order, with some of theworks featured here: Ives’s “Alcotts” movement fromthe Concord Sonata, Antheil’s Death of Machines

and two of Leonard Bernstein’s Anniversaries allmade an appearance on that recital. The followingmonth Mikhashoff played a New Music America concert series in Chicago, and in 1984 gave a fullyformed mega-concert bearing the name “AmericanPiano Marathon: Seventy Works in Seven Hours from Seventy Years 1914-1984” at Symphony Spacein New York City. Tim Page reviewed the concert forthe New York Times, describing Mikhashoff’s “spirit-ed, imaginative, and technically adept pianism, shift-ing effortlessly from esthetic to esthetic.” The concertwas free to the public and they were encouraged tocome and go as they pleased. Mikhashoff organizedseveral other marathon-style concerts in the 1980s,including a tango marathon at the Almeida Festival inLondon in 1985 and another in Toronto in 1987, aswell as an all-American marathon in 1988 in NewYork. The latter project had an even larger scope,since it recruited twenty-two other pianists perform-

ing over the course of four concerts.The present recording is an outgrowth of this

approach to recital programming. Although presentedhere chronologically (as the 1984 concert was), thethematic interconnections among these works arewhere Mikhashoff’s skill as a curator comes to thefore. Mikhashoff was not content to review morewell-known repertoire by these composers: where we might expect Copland’s Variations we get insteadhis Sonnets and The Resting Place on the Hill; wherea more predictable choice to represent Gershwinwould have been the Three Preludes, insteadMikhashoff chose the less well known Impromptu in Two Keys. Such choices keep the Panorama frombeing a mere survey, instead giving us Mikhashoff’sunique perspective on trends in American pianomusic from the last one hundred years. We even get a sense of how Mikhashoff helped to create partsof that repertoire; some of the works included here,such as Lukas Foss’s Solo, were commissioned byMikhashoff himself, and by including them in this set Mikhashoff has enshrined them in his personalpantheon of admiration.

John Cage is the only composer who is featuredon each disc in the set, and Mikhashoff’s selection ofworks by Cage provides a remarkable cross section ofboth Cage’s career and a sense of Mikhashoff’s generalapproach when it came to choosing pieces. These fourpieces not only span Cage’s life but illuminate differentfacets of his compositional output. Perhaps surprising-ly, two of the works by Cage are only optionally forpiano — In a Landscape can also be played for harpsolo, and Souvenir, written late in his career, was writ-ten for organ but works beautifully as a meditative

1110

Elliott Carter, Mikhashoff, Michael McCandless, Henry Brant


12

piano work. The earliest, Quest, was written whileCage was still in the thrall of his studies with AdolphWeiss and Arnold Schoenberg, and is made up ofspiky dissonances and an angular, spare texture. In aLandscape uses Cage’s “square root” method of orga-nizing the time into fifteen statements of fifteen barseach. Its spare, modal language anticipates the mini-malist movement by some twenty years. The excerptfrom 49 Waltzes is comically short, virtually an apho-rism like other works in the Panorama such as VirgilThomson’s For a Happy Occasion and La MonteYoung’s Study No. 2.

Other American originals are well represented on this collection. Charles Ives, Leo Ornstein, GeorgeAntheil, and Carl Ruggles were among the leadingAmerican composers who wrote music which paral-leled the upheaval occurring in European composi-tion during the first three decades of the twentiethcentury. In this set, we have the third movement from Ives’s Concord Sonata, which is perhaps themost accessible movement of the four that make upthe whole work. “The Alcotts” develops one of thecentral themes of the entire sonata, first as a quiethymn at the beginning of the movement, and then asa rhapsodic climax (not only for the movement, butfor the whole sonata) at the end. Ornstein’s Suicide in an Airplane — a remarkable enough title for a workwritten in 1912 — features thick handfuls of chordsin kaleidoscopic tremolos which manage to evokeboth the dull roar of a propeller as well as the grimtopic of the title. Antheil’s Sonata: Death of Machinesis a compact four movement sonata (packed into twominutes), which plays its awkwardly robotic melodieswithout apology. Ruggles’s Evocations, by contrast,

feature moments of extraordinary dissonance as wellas ones of exquisitely controlled attacks and releasesfor the piano. The composer Elliott Carter once sin-gled out the Evocations as one of the signal works inthe repertoire of American piano music, writing thathe didn’t “remember any other pieces that show offthe gradual dying away of chords and the conflict ofbeat notes that constantly redefines itself as momentselapse so well.”

The hulking stature of Ives and Ruggles in thehistory of American composition revolves in partaround their status as “authentically” American com-posers, ones who neither traveled extensively norstudied outside of the United States. But Ornstein wasborn in what is now the Ukraine, and Antheil built asignificant part of his career in France and Germanyduring the 1920s. These quirks of biography point toanother important aspect of Mikhashoff’s Panorama:the way in which it traces composers who lived andworked all over the world. At least one composer inthe Panorama, Igor Stravinsky, is hardly considered“American” despite the fact that he did live in theUnited States for the last thirty-one years of his life.But other composers featured on this collection defy simple national classification as well: Joan Towerwas raised in Bolivia; Alan Hovhaness, while born inWatertown, Massachusetts, wrote music which hasoften been interpreted in terms of his Armenianancestry; the Argentinian-born Mario Davidovsky didn’t come to the United States until he was almosttwenty-two. Kamran Ince grew up in Turkey, andHenry Brant and Ernest Bloch were both transplants(from Canada and Switzerland, respectively). Thisquestion of composers’ backgrounds goes beyond

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With Aaron Copland


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considering where their passports came from. It indi-cates Mikhashoff’s understanding of the porous bor-ders of the very idea of “American” music and hisembrace of the diverse origins of this country’s musi-cal repertoire.

Although the bulk of the music in the Panoramacan be situated rather comfortably within the concerttradition of American music, Mikhashoff also in-cludes a number of pieces which point to the broadrange of more popular styles heard in America duringthe twentieth century. Edward Elzear “Zez” Confreywas one of the most well-known composers of so-called “novelty” piano music in the 1920s, anincreasingly harmonically and rhythmically compli-cated style which traced its roots to ragtime. InConfrey’s piece Nickel in the Slot, on the first disc,we hear the hallmarks of the novelty style, with a left hand bass moving in a smoothly alternating stridepattern against a heavily syncopated and often har-monically surprising right hand. Mel Powell, althoughknown as a jazz pianist and an arranger for BennyGoodman, is featured here with his Etude from 1957, a thorny and dissonant work which reflected a change in the composer’s priorities following hisstudy at Yale in the late 40s and early 50s. GeorgeGershwin’s ability to straddle the popular / concertdivide is one of the most important aspects of hiscareer, and Frank Zappa’s irreducible hybridity is similarly central to his output. Tom Constanten’sDejavalse highlights the work of another composerwith a strikingly boundary crossing career.Constanten played keyboard with the Grateful Deadfrom 1968 to 1970, before going on to receive hisPh.D. in composition from Harvard. This waltz, from

1977, is structured around a languid, nostalgicreturning theme, with lyrical excursions that presentnew tunes.

Mikhashoff’s selections tend to be brief, allowingfor the inclusion of more pieces by different com-posers. Only six pieces are longer than ten minutes,and most are shorter than five. Such concision allowsthe listener to sample broadly, and is one way thatMikhashoff’s recording provides an analogous experi-ence to the live concerts where listeners were free tocome and go. Moreover, many of these shorter worksembrace genres that have a long history, contributingfurther to their accessibility. Over the course of theset, we encounter several preludes, a sonata, asonatina, a number of etudes (sometimes called bytheir English name of “studies”), as well as two noc-turnes and a suite of waltzes. But the preponderanceof existing genres serves as a counterweight to theavant-garde holdings of the collection, and indicate a sensibility that also seeks to highlight the continuityof American practice with European genres.

Conlon Nancarrow appears on both the first andlast discs in the set, a consequence of his long lifeand the fact that a number of his works were redis-covered long after they were written. His presence inthe Panorama also points to Mikhashoff’s broader fas-cination with Nancarrow, evidenced by the chamberensemble arrangements he prepared of what wereperhaps Nancarrow’s most famous works, his Studiesfor Player Piano. Mikhashoff also edited Nancarrow’smusic, preparing a version of Nancarrow’s Sonatinaand making an arrangement of the same work forpiano four-hands. On the Panorama, however,Mikhashoff showcases Nancarrow’s jazz-inflected

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With John Cage


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music with his Blues before turning to the tight rhyth-mic and tonal constructions in the Two-Part Studies,which Mikhashoff himself premiered in Cologne in1991, more than 50 years after they were written.Although Nancarrow worked in obscurity for much of his career, Mikashoff’s work on the composer’sbehalf was an important advocate in the growth ofNancarrow’s reputation over the course of the lastthirty years.

Given the experimental thrust of so many of the composers featured here, it is worth noting thatMikhashoff keeps his hands firmly on the keyboardfor most of the Panorama. Although some of the mostfamous works of American modernist piano musicfeatured so-called “extended techniques”— such asHenry Cowell’s strumming inside the piano in TheBanshee, or John Cage’s insertion of various objectsbetween the strings in his works for prepared piano— in the Panorama we come across such unfamiliarsounds in only a few places. Mario Davidovsky’sSynchronisms No. 6 is played throughout with a tape accompaniment, although Davidovsky explainsin his program note that “the electronic segmentshould perhaps not be viewed as an independentpolyphonic line, but rather as if it were inlaid into the piano part.” Immediately following Davidovsky’sSynchronism is a selection from George Crumb’sMakrokosmos, a work which uses amplified pianoand requires the pianist to employ numerous tech-niques of plucking and manipulating the instrument’sstrings directly.

Mikhashoff was also strongly attracted to theplainer, more homespun evocations in Americanmusic. Paul Bowles and Virgil Thomson, for example,

were known in the 1930s and 1940s for writingmusic of a spare and utterly straightforward aesthetic.Bowles’s Sonatina Fragmentaria on the first disc is agood example of his concise, jazz-influenced style,packing three movements into a scant four and a halfminutes. On the second disc, they are both represent-ed by “Portraits”, of which Thomson composed morethan 150 in his lifetime. They were all composed in a way similar to the approach a painter might take to create a visual likeness: with the subject sitting infront of Thomson, in silence. Thomson executed hisportraits in a single session, and we hear the resultantspontaneity clearly in Thomson’s Portrait of PaulBowles, from 1940. This work features rapidly alter-nating phrase groups, and moments of slidingbitonality, all held together with a rhythmic textureand language which might make it seem like a dis-torted classical character piece.

The Waltz Collection, also on the third disc, was one outgrowth of Mikhashoff’s ongoing interestin dance and is a remarkable snapshot of contempo-rary composition in the late 1970s. These are newrecordings of Mikhashoff’s contribution to “The WaltzProject,” issued by Nonesuch Records in 1981, inwhich 17 waltzes by living composers were per-formed by Mikhashoff, Robert Moran, John Cobb,and Alan Feinberg. Their contours are as distinctive asthe composers who wrote them. Lou Harrison’s Waltzfor Evelyn Hinrichsen is a brooding lilt in A minor.Joan Tower’s Red Garnet Waltz never locks into aclear triple meter, instead rhapsodically expandingaround its own thick harmonic language. John Cage’s49 Waltzes for the Five Boroughs was a visual scoreat first, a commission from the magazine Rolling

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With Frederic Rzewski at The Almeida FestivalPhoto ©Sarah Ainslie


Stone to celebrate the relocation of its offices. In itsoriginal version, 49 Waltzes referred to the groupingof 147 addresses into 49 “waltzes” which wereintended to be visited either for listening, performing,or making a recording. Cage later composed a pianorealization of the work, which Mikhashoff plays fromhere. Robert Moran’s Waltz “in Memoriam MauriceRavel” evokes the dreamy harmonic palette of theFrench composer in a readily digestible slow dance.Philip Glass’s Modern Love Waltz is a distillation ofhis spare but expansive language into three shortminutes, but stops short of a complete embrace ofminimalism for which Glass is so well known. Tohear Glass in full minimalist garb we have to wait for Opening, the first track on the fourth disc, with its understated and undulating triadic harmonic lan-guage distributed against tricky cross rhythms (wherethe left hand plays two notes in the same amount oftime that the right hand plays three).

Minimalism is one of the strongest currents inAmerican music of the late twentieth century, castingits shadow even on composers who would deny itsinfluence. For example, Foss explains in the programnote to Solo that it is neither truly serial nor minimal-ist, since “in spite of an insistent repetitive element,… each repetition is also a change implying develop-ment, growth, and forward movement.” Similarly,Alvin Curran’s work For Cornelius embraces a strikingtwo-part structure. The first section is a slow, lyricallament, repeated three times, which gives way to asecond section which features hypnotically alternat-ing chords which gradually morph from one to thenext. Kamran Ince’s My Friend Mozart pursues a simi-lar strategy in a more compact form. This piece alter-

nates between a slow melody and hazy blocks ofchords which alternate between the two hands, lend-ing the work a disjointed character despite its com-pact proportions. The high water mark for this juxta-position of minimalism with other styles in thePanorama is almost certainly in Frederic Rzewski’sunapologetically repetitive Piano Piece No. 4. Thiswork, which begins on a single high note, and thenmoves into the lowest registers in the introduction,creates a meditative haze which Mikhashoff drawsthe listener into. Among the “classic” minimalists, La Monte Young is surprisingly represented here byhis Sarabande (a work which idiosyncratically revisitsthe baroque dance genre), and the wildly brash andsuccinct Study No. 2. Of course, given the scope ofYoung’s most well-known minimalist work for piano,The Well-Tuned Piano (lasting several hours in perfor-mance and requiring a specially-tuned instrument),such choices are eminently sensible if Mikhashoffwanted to include Young at all.

The recording sessions themselves took place inthe final year of Mikhashoff’s life at Slee Hall on thecampus of the University at Buffalo. Mikhashoff fund-ed the recordings himself, and they were remem-bered as a focused and urgent affair. Luk Vaes, one of Mikhashoff’s students who worked as a factotumfor the recording sessions, recalled that Mikhashoffwas increasingly ill, at one point dozing off in the car as Vaes drove him to the hall for the recording.Mikhashoff moved rapidly through the pieces, mostof which he had performed many times before, oftendeciding as soon as a take was over whether or not itneeded review. With only four people in the room,the setting was extremely intimate, and Vaes recalled

1918

With Lukas FossPhoto ©Irene Haupt


that Mikhashoff sought to keep that proximity to hislisteners present in the recording itself, seeking “asound as from a salon with lots of carpets, and aBechstein-type piano: cozy, warm, woolly.”

Today, Mikhashoff’s legacy reaches far into thenooks and crannies of contemporary music practice.Some of his students and friends have followed hislead and developed ambitious, curated, and commis-sioned projects. His student Haydée Schvartz hasgiven all-tango recitals featuring and honoring someof the works that Mikhashoff had commissioned dur-ing his lifetime as well as commissioning new tangosby Argentine composers. Anthony de Mare, a friendand former student of Mikhashoff’s, has commis-sioned 36 different contemporary composers to prepare piano arrangements of songs by StephenSondheim as part of his Liaisons project. Mikhashoff’srecorded legacy lives on, not only in this set, but inthe posthumously released recording of Europera 5(1994), a work he commissioned from John Cage, aswell as a two disc set of opera transcriptions issued in 2006. Taken as a whole, this set celebrates theremarkable life’s work of a musician who refusedclassifications, and whose omnivorous, cosmopolitan,and epic sensibility is demonstrated amply acrossthese four discs.

— Drew Massey

John Cage invited me to join him and to record the premiere of his Europera 5 inBuffalo in 1991. Yvar Mikhashoff commis-

sioned the work, and it was there that I really came to know him.

Yvar was a “larger than life” person — both hispersonality and physically (a large man with verylarge hands). He had incredible, large ideas, and wehit it off. He would talk about his concepts for pro-grams and recordings, inclusionary and very com-plete programs. As a record collector and completistmyself, this appealed to me. Kindred spirits.

For the premiere of Europera 5, Yvar used virtu-oso piano transcriptions of operas by Liszt and others.But ultimately he wanted to use his own virtuosoopera transcriptions in future performances. And hesuggested that we make a recording of his transcrip-tions, ranging from Verdi and Bellini to Berg andVolans.

So plans were made to return to Buffalo to makea recording of the Transcriptions and the Panorama. I (happily) had no idea what I was getting myself into.

What was to be a single CD quickly grew. Yvarwould arrive at the session with a huge portfolio con-taining his scores under his arm. Problem is, it con-tained not only the scores for the scheduled record-ing but also many others as well! During breaks, Yvarwould show me scores, often seated at the piano:“Brian, do you know this piece?”, and he would sightread the score for me. He was a remarkable sightreader. Of course, most of these “suggestions” justhad to be included in the recording. We were likekids in a candy store. And so the Panorama grew tofour very conceptually sound CDs.

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With Virgil Thomson, being filmed by Lawrence Brose at Thomson’s apartment at the Chelsea Hotel, New York City. Photo ©Keith Gemerek


Working intensely on the Panorama collectionagain — after all of these years, to prepare it forrelease — I am astounded at the quality of the musicin the program, and the breadth and variety from thecomposers represented as Yvar curated it. Virtuallyevery American composer of note (and some not) isrepresented in this recording. I recall that some, JohnAdams for instance, were omitted at the recordingsession because of the length of their works or simplylack of time to record them.

But the Panorama was not all. Yvar had othersuggestions: “how about a CD of Feldman, ofThomson, of Tangos...?” And another fascination of his, the Melodrama, works of which he had per-formed with his friend and colleague, the actor PaulSchmidt — which led to potentially three discs worthof Melodramas, one each of Richard Strauss, Lisztand assorted composers from Beethoven and Mozartto present day. All of these were recorded.

Of these, sadly the only Transcriptions andStrauss Melodramas, along with a disc of AlvinCurran (which I did not personally record), and, of course Europera 5, have been released thus far.

The Buffalo recording sessions were heady,marathon affairs. We often had the concert hall atBuffalo for the entire day(s), so we would record endlessly. There was no clock to watch. Yvar alwaysseemed to have the energy, fueled by occasionalbreaks for “Le Roi Burger,” as he like to refer to hispreferred snack, to plow on. Luckily, I was surround-ed by willing participants — my engineer DavidAvidor, and Yvar’s enlisted students Haydée Schvartzand Luk Vaes (who produced the sessions) — all werewilling to work the long hours. I had no clear idea at

the time that I was preserving a great pianist’s legacy.Haydée recalls, for instance, that “…during

the loud “Tora! Tora! Tora!” movement of Crumb’sMakrokosmos, Yvar played it two or three times non-stop, in such a fortissimo and energetic way that thepiano was “trembling” afterwards… literally! He leftthe piano completlely out of tune, and Gary Snipe(the piano tuner) had to come to tune it.” And further: “I do remember that Yvar would NEVER stop playing.Once we arrived and he sat on the piano, he kept onplaying and playing. When not recording, he wouldplay Chopin Studies, or Liszt works. He was really,like, possessed!!!”

These were still early days of recording for me. I had a “purist” concept of recording then, utilizing 2 to 4 microphones, mixed direct to stereo and ontoDAT tape (including live mixing Davidovsky’s tapepart). DAT, that era’s miracle digital recording solu-tion, was not all it was proposed to be. The DATmedium proved to be very unstable, and over timethe tapes are prone to drop outs and developing allsorts of digital noise. Yvar worked quickly, sometimesrecording only one or two takes of a particular pieceor section. These were often not sessions of meticu-lous exactitude, going after every note perfect. If heand Haydée or Luk thought it good, we moved on.And so, some pieces are now lost to the unstableDAT medium, impossible to resurrect from the digitalnoise. Or, we had to choose less perfect takes overthe damaged better takes in order to salvage a workfor inclusion on this record. Even so, some digitalartifacts may still be heard on these CDs. I trust themusic makes these blemishes worthwhile.

And what of this recorded legacy? Sad to say

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With Otto LueningPhoto ©Irene Haupt


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that these recordings have leaked out slowly over the years, for many reasons. Working on this project,preparing it to observe the 20th anniversary of Yvar’sdeath, brought back a lot of fond memories. And areminder of what a wonderful musician Yvar was. Ihave a renewed vigor to work on the other archivedrecordings. Luckily the material is there.

— Brian Brandt

The following are Yvar’s texts for the original, single-CD concept for Panorama of American PianoMusic. Written in Yvar’s inimitable style and eventhough incomplete as far as the complete set is con-cerned, I thought it valuable to include them here:

Charles Ives: “The Alcotts” (1911-15)Charles Ives assembled the four movements that com-prise his Concord Sonata (Piano Sonata No. 2) in orabout 1914-15. Of “The Alcotts,” the third move-ment, Ives has written: “We won’t try to recognizethe music sketch of the Alcotts with much besides thememory of that home under the elms — the Scotchsongs and family hymns that were sung at the end ofeach day… And there sits the little old spinet-pianoSophia Thoreau gave to the Alcott children on whichBeth played the old Scotch airs, and played at theFifth Symphony… All around you, under the Concordsky, there still floats the influence of that human faithmelody… a tune the Concord bards are ever playing,while they pound away at the immensities with aBeethovenlike sublimity.

Charles Tomlinson Griffes:Three Preludes (ca. 1917)After his untimely death, Charles Griffes’ three pre-ludes were found in sketch form. They were completeexcept for all tempo and dynamic marks; any per-formance requires a great deal of fantasy and imagi-nation from the pianist. I have chosen to play thesepieces emphasizing their remote and oriental qualities.

Percy Grainger: Pastorale (1916)Australian-born Percy Grainger became an Americancitizen in 1916, the year he wrote his magnificentPastorale. This extended fantasy on a single rockingmotif of English folk character is a stunning and virtu-osic example of the variation form, clearly demon-strating why Grainger was regarded as one of thegreatest pianists of his time.

Aaron Copland: Three Sonnets (1919-21)Aaron Copland sent me copies of his Three Sonnetsin 1977 when he was in Buffalo, as a gift, after heheard my transcriptions of his piano music for stringquartet, American Landscapes. The Three Sonnets,from the period before he left America to study inParis, show that he was already clearly under theFrench thrall.

Igor Stravinsky: Valse pour les petitslecteurs du Figaro (1922)The inclusion of this micro-waltz is a bit of a conceitas Stravinsky did not visit the United States until1925. It originally appeared in Le Figaro newspaperon May 22, 1922 and would have been seen by

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With Nils Vigeland


author of “Nightwood” and inscribed “To DjunaBarnes, my inspiration.”

Henry Brant: Music for a Five-and-Dime(1931)Henry Brant has written only one work for solopiano, his Music for a Five-and-Dime, originally forviolin, household utensils (knives, rolling pin, glasses,alarm clocks) and piano. Mr. Brant indicated to mewhich lines to play to reconstruct the solo version he often performed. He said about this work that inthose eponymous emporiums, there were often pianoplayers who would perform the latest hits from thesheet music collection available for sale, always in a flashy, jazzy, novelty piano style.

Conlon Nancarrow: Blues (ca. 1936)This piece is the second of two pieces that were published in New Music Magazine in the mid-1930’s.No work could be more aptly subtitled cubist, withits sharp-edged ostinato, angular rhythms andblocked harmonies.

Paul Bowles: Sonatina Fragmentaria (1933)Novelist-composer Paul Bowles effectively gave upmusical composition in the sixties when he movedpermanently to Tangiers. His Sonatina Fragmentariaexists only in manuscript form. Its three exquisitemovements — slow, fast, slow — are ephemeral moodpictures, ever-shifting, like psychological light playsand are reminiscent of his incidental music for theplays of Tennessee Williams.

—Yvar Mikhashoff

Produced by: Brian BrandtAssistant Producers: Luk Vaes, Haydée SchvartzEngineer: David AvidorEdited by: Michael HynesEditing produced by: Samuel Clay Birmaher,Sheridan Seyfried, Michael HynesPostproduction supervision & research:Samuel Clay BirmaherRecorded at: Slee Hall, University at Buffalo, New York inAugust & November 1991, January 1992

Art direction: Brian BrandtBox cover photo: © Steven Maxx Book cover: cover of 1984 Symphony Space concert flyerLiner notes: © Drew Massey, Brian Brandt,Yvar Mikhashoff

Mode Records wishes to thank Michael Hynes for his dedicated work, Samuel Clay Birmaher for his more thanthorough research and assistance, the ever helpful JohnBewley, Amy Williams, Sheridan Seyfried, and The MikhashoffTrust

This recording funded in part through a grant from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Inc.

Also by Yvar Mikhashoff on Mode Records:

John CAGE: Europera 5 (mode 36)

John CAGE Performs Cage: Empty Words with Music forPiano — with John Cage, voice (mode 200)

Alvin CURRAN: Piano Works (mode 49)

Richard STRAUSS:The Melodramas – Enoch Arden;TheCastle by the Sea — with Paul Schmidt, voice (mode 78)

VIRTUOSO OPERA TRANSCRIPTIONS by Puccini, Bellini,Verdi, Debussy, Berg, Bussotti,Volans (mode 154/55, 2-CDs)

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many of the new young generation of American com-posers who had just arrived in Paris to study withNadia Boulanger — Copland and Thomson amongthem. In this waltz, for children, the left hand partseems to have gotten itself somehow backwards.

Ernest Bloch: Chanty (1922)Swiss-born Ernest Bloch came to the United States in1916 and made his entire professional career here.His Chanty (a seaman’s song) is the second move-ment of his Sea Pictures. This piece is nostalgic, andevocative of his proto-impressionistic style.

Henry Cowell: Amiable Conversation (1917)Cowell’s Amiable Conversation is one of his mosthilarious compositions. Mrs. Cowell told me that itdepicted the composer’s conversation with hisChinese laundryman, neither of whom could under-stand each other. Thus the alternation between mea-sures on white keys and measures on black keys.

George Antheil: Sonata No. 3 “The Death of Machines” (1923)This work, subtitled The Death of Machines is datedJanuary 23, 1923, Berlin. He called it a micro-sonata,and indeed, it has four tiny movements, with a re-prise of the first at the close. In the tradition of hisrole as the “Bad Boy of Music” whose performancescaused riots and disturbances, this piece is mildindeed. It however contains many of his favoredeffects —glissandi, bitonality and Stravinskianrhythms.

“Zez” Confrey: Nickel in the Slot (1923)“Zez” Confrey, composer of Kitten on the Keys andDizzy Fingers was the foremost composer of noveltypiano solos, a genre extremely popular in the 1920’sand 1930’s. This piece, Nickel in the Slot, is a rhyth-mically sophisticated and quirky quasi-rag whichmight have come out of an old jukebox.

Dane Rudhyar: Stars (1926)Astrologer-composer Dane Rudhyar, born in France(1895) came to the United States in 1917 and madehis life and career here in his twin professions. Thiswork dates from his first productive period as a com-poser (the other is fifty years later) and is like a beau-tifully etched nocturne with flashes of lightning in adark summer sky.

Wallingford Riegger: Blue Voyage (1929)Riegger, one of the “American Five” (with Ives,Cowell, Becker and Ruggles) was a composer ofmany faces. This piece is a marvelous example of virtuoso post-impressionism, full of grand gesturesand silvery sonorities. The title is from a poem ofConrad Aiken.

Ruth Crawford Seeger: Preludes (1931)Ruth Crawford, later Seeger, was one of the most bril-liant talents on the American horizon in the 1930’s —pungent music of striking originality and mystery.After her marriage she and her husband devotedthemselves to the anthologizing of American folksongs and ballads. She returned briefly to formalcomposition shortly before her untimely death in1953. This prelude, one of nine, is dedicated to the

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