Jacob Greenberg: Neo/Classic.

Ravel’s two-minute tidbit on the notes B, A, D, D, G is not really Ravel nor Haydn. Greenberg’s program notes make much of Haydn’s D-Major Sonata being “about omissions: what’s implied in a rest and not stated….” His Haydn playing is beyond cavil, except I think he makes a bit too much of the rests. He does play all repeats. Greenberg’s playing of Haydn’s B-Minor Sonata is also exemplary, although I prefer a touch more Sturm und Drang in the opening Allegro moderato, which his notes cite as “austere pomp.”

Elliott Carter’s 90 + is not about his own age; it was composed for his friend Goffredo Petrassi’s 90th birthday (between the two of them, they logged well over 200 years). It’s based on 90 “regular pulses” which constantly threaten to become tonal but never quite make it. The pianist sounds perfectly comfortable with its shattered, irregular lines.

Greenberg sails brilliantly through Mozart’s Fantasy, yet his playing doesn’t quite match the “uninhibited extravagance” his notes ascribe to it. In the Fugue, he notes “a dignified theme, thoughtfully examined,” which perfectly describes his performance. His stabbing bass notes capture Mozart’s tongue-in-cheek statement of Gluck’s pompous comic aria, and his fleet, airy playing follows Mozart to a higher plane while keeping the humor bubbling. He plays Stravinsky’s Serenade with greater elegance than either the composer or Charles Rosen, pointing up the Chopin that Stravinsky was riffing in the opening “Hymne.” But Rosen’s gravitas finds more Stravinsky in this un-Stravinskian piece than either Greenberg or the composer.

Phyllis Chen, a young New York composer/performer known for her attachment to the toy piano, is courting high company on this disc. Her Sumi’Tones scatters a few notes in the night air, then gradually gains momentum and coherence before fading back again. Greenberg convinces us that this is lovely music.

This is not repertoire by which we normally judge pianists (say: Chopin, Beethoven, Schumann), but Jacob Greenberg acquits himself nobly, by both technique and sensibility, in these 18th- and 20th-century compositions. The avoidance of dynamic extremes, to which a somewhat cautious recording may contribute, can be considered an asset or a debit, depending on one’s tastes.

— James North, 5.02.2020

This curious melange of a program was produced by Jacob Greenberg on his own label, with no booklet, biography, or photographs. One has to visit the Internet to learn more. The order of the program is Ravel, Haydn 42, Carter, Mozart (K394), Haydn 32, Stravinsky, Chen, Mozart (K455). Apart from Ravel’s homage to Haydn, there is no obvious relation among the pieces, but according to Greenberg they have in common a rejection of opulence and indulgence in sound, and an orientation towards form, transparency, and concision. The selection is certainly not hackneyed. The Haydn sonatas are not the most popular ones, the Mozart works are rarely played (the Fantasy and Fugue is a somewhat academic exercise), and that is even truer for the rest of the program. As Greenberg points out, the Ravel piece makes use of the notes B-A-D-D-G, but he should have mentioned that B is H in German, or else someone might wonder why Haydn’s music seemed B-A-D to Ravel. The Stravinsky suite is a rather unattractive work from early in his neoclassical period. Carter’s music, “90 regular accented pulses in a constantly changing context”; makes no sense to me at all. Phyllis Chen is a young and evidently highly creative Chinese-American composer and pianist, a founding member of the International Contemporary Ensemble, to which Greenberg also belongs. He commissioned her piece, SumiTones, said to be a meditation on the dance between brush and paper in Chinese calligraphy. Sumi is a kind of Japanese ink used in this art. Chen creates a dreamy mood by juxtaposing a slow bass line with high-pitched curlicues. (This term occurred to me before reading that the piece has anything to do with calligraphy.) The middle register makes a brief appearance in the middle, and the birds (a possible alternative to curlicues) get excited briefly before the piece ends quietly. I quite enjoyed it. Greenberg, who is also on the faculty of Hunter College, has made many previous recordings, some of which have been praised highly in these pages (Busoni; Schumann, N/D 2011; Debussy, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, N/D 2018). Perhaps he races a bit too quickly through Mozart’s Fantasy here, but generally his playing is excellent. The recorded sound seems more resonant and lush in the Chen piece than in the others, contrary to the rejection of opulence and indulgence in sound; mentioned above. Anyway, this is worth exploring.

— Bruno Repp, 5.22.2020