Richard Valitutto: nocturnes & lullabies

The tree falling in the woods idea holds true on the musical front, just as it always has. For New Music to exist in some validated or institutional sense there must be an audience of course. I hope I play some role in such things, originally as a consumer and physical presence on the scene, now as a writer, ever I hope also as a music-maker.

Today's selection exemplifies a good sort of "new" as a real contribution towards a special kind of solo piano music. Richard Valitutto is the pianist. The album goes by its title Nocturnes & Lullabies (New Focus Recordings FCR243). The label explains that this music concerns "themes of transitional states between light, dark, consciousness, and unconsciousness" or alternately-additionally night, sleep, and life/death Further the eight solo works contained in the program (seven or which are premiere recordings) engage the pianist in his striving for a kind of "anti-virtuosity," or more specifically directs him away from the sort of note-weaving typical of conventional piano playing-writing and concerned more with experimental goals, of widening the palette of sound colors and techniques obtained in the act of piano performance.

This program nicely opens and expands the sort of poetic piano Modernism of sound color one might trace from Ives, Cowell, Cage and his colleagues to George Crumb and his reflective pianism. All eight of the works on this album espouse a poetry of sound that invites a kind of expansive introspection. Tone clusters, mesmeric and sometimes ritualistic repetitions, thunderously or flashingly rapid single-note rollings, percussive dampened extreme upper register repeats, cavernous resonance and open sustains, inside-the-piano hand techniques, the enhanced use of aural space, the full syntactical recourse to all the available notes in all registers, an edgy Modern harmonic expansiveness that generally neither dogmatically favors consonance nor dissonance as a whole, those are some of the traits of the music at hand, all in the service of a thematic night of time and experience, of a nocturnal mood as we might look back upon it from John Field and especially Chopin onwards, only set free from typical cantabile stylings per se.

The full span of our Late Modern period comes into play in these works, from 1984 through 2015. Five of the eight works however are from the last decade.

The composers names may not be entirely familiar to you, yet the music shows us that each has a vision for the piano that intertwines as Richard Valitutto in effect curates wisely and judiciously, then performs each chosen work with a definite dedication and a dramatic musical proportionality. And so we are made aware of piano adventurousness from the likes of Nicholas Deyoe (two works included), Rebecca Saunders, Philip Cashian, Marc Sabat, Maura Capuzzo, Wolfgang von Schweinitz, and Linda Catlin Smith.

Heartily recommended for those wishing to remain fully versed in the most modern in solo piano music and for adventuresome souls in general. Well done!

-Grego Applegate Edwards, 3.10.20, Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review

— Grego Edwards, 3.10.2020

Richard Valitutto Releases Album of Premiere Recordings ‘Nocturnes & Lullabies’ Featuring Cashian and Catlin Smith

Described as “a keyboard superstar” (The New Yorker) and “Vigorously virtuosic” (LA Times) the Grammy-nominated Richard Valitutto’s new release brings together a set of works he has been working on with his distinctive approach over the past decade. Here he talks with Composers Edition’s Dan Goren about the making of this extraordinary album.

Dan Goren: Congratulations on a tremendously atmospheric album, as if encountering you alone at the piano in a huge hall. We know in darkness our aural attention becomes more acute and your performances here of these works demand my attention in a similar way. Tell me about how the recordings were made.

Richard Valitutto: Thank you very much—it’s incredibly meaningful to receive such affirming feedback on this album, from you and from many other listeners. In particular, hearing folks’ responses to it has confirmed my hopes for the record, a vision which began in some form or another about six years ago.

In November of 2014, I had just commissioned and premiered Nicholas Deyoe’s NCTRN on a Piano Spheres Satellite Series concert at REDCAT. The program was called NAKHT (punning the German words for “night” and “naked”, as well as an esoteric reference to the Ancient Egyptian god of the dead) and was the first of several nocturnal programs I would perform. I was also of course, drawn to Deyoe’s earlier piano solo Lullaby 2, and I had performed several other pieces by him over the years (including another commission, Lullaby 4, which gnarwhallaby premiered at Carnegie Hall in 2013). I knew these works and many other “nocturnal” pieces I had been collecting—including both Linda Catlin Smith’s A Nocturne and Philip Cashian’s Nocturne—made for compelling programming that spoke to me and, as it would turn out, audiences as well. Being that both of Deyoe’s big solo works were unrecorded, as well as several others (including Cashian’s piece), I knew I wanted to create a recorded document that would capture the spirit of these programs and present what became the “nocturnes & lullabies” concept in a special way, hopefully altogether in an album format.

As I kept presenting partial or full programs of this material over the next couple years—including on such series as wasteLAnd and Omaha Under the Radar—I noticed that ambience and intimacy were a huge part of the program’s impact. Obviously, this is always the case with live music, especially acoustic “Classical” music, but if the space didn’t have a great acoustic, or had too much ambient noise, or the lighting was too severe, it really detracted from the energy and impact of the pieces to a particular degree. I suppose I’m also really drawn to the introspective, meditative side of concert experiences, both as a performer and an audience member. On the recording side of things, I’ll be frank: I was getting more and more disillusioned (or, perhaps better put, bored) with the traditional classical recording aesthetic, especially for solo piano. There are so many solo piano records out there that seem to have a single aesthetic goal simply to recreate the “clean” sound of an acoustic grand in a nondescript, medium-sized hall—usually pristine and warm, sure, but often lacking in personality and immediacy. In a simultaneously oversaturated and undervalued recording market, I really don’t see the point in that. Knowing I wanted something that presented these pieces in a way that heightened their intimacy, rawness, and fragility (as well as their occasionally terrifying power and intense sonority), I was picky about working with an engineer who was curious, artistic, and highly skilled, and my friend Nick Tipp was all of these things and more. It didn’t hurt that I had worked with him on a number of other recording projects, both as a performer and a production assistant, so we had a rapport, and I knew and was inspired by his predilection for progressive approaches to recording acoustic concert music.

Together, Nick and I planned the technical and artistic approaches to the recording over several weeks leading up to the sessions. On the artistic side, we talked a lot about the specific feelings and psychologies of each individual piece, getting really nuanced about the moment to moment shifts of feeling and texture, and what type of emotional and experiential journey the album as a whole should convey and evoke. This also partially informed the technical side of things, for which we discussed how many and which types of microphones would be used and where they would be placed in the studio. For a few sections of music, we ended up having as many as 10 separate tracks, capturing the piano strings’ resonances at varying distances and degrees, but also for recording the various auxiliary sounds and vocalizations I made for the pieces. Because of the wide-array of techniques and sounds called for in some of the music, for a couple pieces we even used an over-dubbing approach, capturing the strings’ sound from “normal” piano playing on one take, and then overdubbing the prepared piano, extended technique percussive effects, and, in one instance, my whisper-singing(!) towards the end of Deyoe’s Lullaby 2. While this approach complicates the recording logistics somewhat (more takes had to be done, we needed a click track at times, and editing takes longer, etc.) it actually saved some time in post-production. Most importantly, it enabled Tipp to mix and EQ the disparate piano sounds to their optimal capacity. Add onto that his amazingly curated mixing studio setup, ample reverb library, and fastidious and virtuosic skills at the board and with ProTools, and I was more than excited to know that these recordings would sound really special: a fresher, unique aesthetic approach to the solo piano record. This type of pop-music production approach was really exciting for what it could allow in the final product, presenting the pieces together as a collective in a recorded object, artistic in its own right, not merely some sort of simulacrum of an idealized “live” performance.

DG: There is of course a long tradition of piano Nocturnes, originating in nineteenth century Europe. What has been your relationship as a pianist with that heritage?

RV: Ever since I first started playing, I connected particularly deeply with the piano repertoire of the 19th-century, and some of my earliest favorite pieces were anything considered “conventionally” beautiful and/or brooding and in slow tempos: voilà, the Chopin nocturnes. Two of my go-to recital pieces in my middle and high school years were the Op. 9 No. 2 in E-flat and Op. 27 No. 1 in C#m—those pieces, along with some moody Rachmaninoff ones, were the closest I came to singing without opening my mouth. Part of what was initially so compelling to me about the project as a whole is precisely the connotative baggage the term “nocturne” carries with it and the sorts of inquiries and investigations it provokes. Obviously, for most people, Chopin immediately comes to mind, and if you’re a little more well-read you might also know about Chopin’s predecessor in the genre, John Field, and hopefully the later Fauré nocturnes, which are totally beautiful and amazing in their own right. What struck me as weird was that, at a certain point, I kept discovering one or a few pieces in so many modern and contemporary composers’ catalogs called “Nocturne” or with nocturne in the title, often for solo piano. Why that word? You don’t see many (or any) 20th- and 21st-century pieces called “Romance”, “Impromptu”, or “Bagatelle” or whatever. In some ways, you could point to Debussy’s Nocturnes for orchestra as responsible for the modernist shift from the Chopinesque genre’s focus on arpeggios and bel canto melody imitations. Other pre-modern and modern composers had a lot to do with the stylistic shift in “night music” as well: Bartók, Britten, Scriabin, etc. But I view this project—both the recording and various concert programs I’ve done which feature contemporary nocturnes and/or lullabies, as interacting with the heritage, at least conceptually, and not eschewing it. At first, I thought I wanted to include 19th-century pieces alongside the 20th/21st-century ones, but to my delight, I was finding so many great recent pieces, I often didn’t have the space to do that. I soon realized I didn’t want the programs to become all about inviting comparison across centuries, or demonstrating some sort of manufactured, myopic teleology for the genre: as if everything Chopin, Fauré, and others did was old-fashioned and out-dated and “thank god for modernism” and all that nonsense. There are some ways that a nocturne by Fauré for example, is way more immediate and relevant than one by, for example, Sciarrino or whoever.

DG: Your attention to the resonance is vital to your performance here to the poetry of Philip Cashian’s Nocturne. It’s the oldest work on the disc – what’s your relationship with/to it?

RV: Philip Cashian’s piece was one of the earliest I discovered in the research quest I described earlier. I knew a little about Cashian’s music having read through his wonderful duo for violin and piano Stobrod’s Violin with my friend (and then teacher), violinist Mark Menzies, while I was a student at CalArts. I found Cashian’s music attractive and enjoyable to play, so I guess I was just perusing his catalog and saw this early piece from 1984, and that hadn’t been recorded. I think most contemporary pianists’ interest is piqued to some degree if there is a possibility to get first recording rights to a piece, but that was just a small part of it for me. From the first gesture and resonant sonority in Cashian’s Nocturne, I knew it was a piece that I would enjoy playing and presenting on programs, and eventually, this album. In addition to performing it in the US, I even gave the Macedonian premiere, alongside the Deyoe and Saunders solos, at the Macedonian Philharmonic in December 2018.

DG: Nocturnes are often associated with uncertainty or disquiet. For me, Linda Catlin Smith’s A Nocturne distinguishes itself as the work which most embraces the nocturnal world and that seems reflected in the distinct recording quality here. Does this description chime with how you relate to it?

RV: Absolutely. Over the last few years, I’ve become totally infatuated with Linda Catlin-Smith’s music, in particular the way she communicates an effortless formal logic and poignant emotional content with minimal means and unassuming materials. Practically all of her pieces are mostly slow and soft, and generally quite peaceful, but they each have their unique character and raison d’être. But this piece, more than any other of hers I know, seems to have buried within its placidity and luminosity a particularly beguiling beauty, mixing some really complex emotions, that at times border on an almost existential dread. Recording this piece was one of the most memorable parts of the album-making experience, because it was the only sizable piece on the album that Nick Tipp and I recorded without an extra person in the booth to take notes and give feedback. So it was just Nick and I, basically doing complete take after complete take, like half a dozen, until finally at a certain point we both confessed to each other that we were having a really emotional experience. Like, we were both becoming more and more vulnerable and quiet energetically. Then came the only point in the tracking sessions where we just sat and really listened to a full take of a piece—not listening for cosmetic imperfections or mistakes or whatever—just feeling the music of the piece flow by and reacting to it emotionally. Then we did like a couple pickup takes of each page for safety, but I think the majority of what ended up on the album was just big sections from a couple complete takes performed in a pretty heightened emotional state. Once we got to mixing the track in Nick’s studio, I definitely remember how exciting it was when he started applying some markedly different reverbs and EQs for the various sections in Smith’s piece, which are obviously so different from each other in both mood and which register of the instrument they occupy. Interestingly, A Nocturne is the only piece that isn’t a premiere recording on my album: I had come to obsess over the piece in the recording by its dedicatee Eve Egoyan, on her album thethingsinbetween. Furthermore, I wouldn’t have known about her music at all, had it not been for my performing Marc Sabat’s Nocturne back in 2011, which is dedicated to Smith and which caused me to look her up in the first place. (Thanks, Marc!)

DG: It’s certainly a very intimate listening experience, something which I know from attending a concert of yours recently is an important part of your performance aesthetic. Making it was clearly a real labour of love and it’s a wonderfully distinctive album as a result.

— Dan Goren, 4.01.2020

Pianist Richard Valitutto is a fixture in the thriving (prepandemic) Los Angeles new-music scene, spotted most frequently with the ensemble Wild Up as well as in Monday Evening Concerts, the LA Phil’s Green Umbrella series, and whoever else needs a fearless keyboard explorer. Now, following the recently-established habit of giving umbrella titles to classical albums of various pieces — as they have been doing in pop music since the invention of the record album — Valitutto groups eight solo piano pieces spanning three decades on a CD titled nocturnes & lullabies (New Focus).

At first pass, I listened to this CD casually without referring to the titles or liner notes — and it seemed to me like one giant, continuous, contemplative, sparely upholstered suite in which it was often hard to tell where one piece ended and the next began. Digging into it more actively later, the differences between the pieces and the overall structure of Valitutto’s concept became clearer, but a good deal of my initial impression still held true.

The album is divided into three sections in which pairs of longer pieces roughly 12-to-15 minutes in length form a sandwich around four short pieces ranging from under four minutes to seven minutes. The disc begins and ends with two works by Nicholas Deyoe, the artistic director of L.A.’s wasteLAND cocnert series. The other composers are Rebecca Saunders, Philip Cashian, Marc Sabat, Maura Capuzzo, Wolfgang von Schweinitz, and Linda Catlin Smith.

With gloomy, doom-laden chords and the whacking of a prepared piano key, Deyoe’s NCTRN proceeds in a fog that Saunders’s shadow extends by using the sostenuto (middle) pedal on the piano to produce halo-like aftereffects from a series of banging clusters. Gradually, the collection seems to grow more and more close to tonal centers as it goes, from Cashian’s post-Debussy questioning to Sagat’s minimalism and Capuzzo’s strumming of the piano strings that conjure a ghostly Tristan chord.

When Deyoe returns in Lullaby 2, so does the gloom. Yet after he shatters the mood violently about two-thirds of the way through, he ends the piece — and the CD — by quoting the slow second movement of Schubert’s B-flat Sonata, D. 960. This of course does not sound like the rest of the recording, and it has the perhaps unintended effect of erasing the other pieces from the memory as Valitutto poignantly offers Schubert’s benedictory lullaby. Such are the risks you take with found material.

— Richard Ginell, 4.14.2020

Contemporary keyboard exponent Richard Valitutto has released a timely, meditative new record that features seven premiere recordings of works by six composers. (The penultimate track on the album – Linda Catlin Smith's A Nocturne – was first recorded by Eve Egoyan in 2012.) each written within the last 35 years. Valitutto claims to have been “focused on cultivating a sort of pianistic ‘anti-virtuosity’…performing music that seems simple on the surface but in actuality affords a great many challenges.” The tracks are, generally, connected to the theme of night and its various dimensions: dream-haunting nocturnes and lullabies, uncertain of – or anachronistic in - their 21st century functions.

Admirable ranges of expression are displayed here through experimental modes of resonance. The disc’s chronology is well curated, moving through dark soundscapes to brighter moments of lucidity and repose. Immediately striking is Valitutto’s intimacy with each of these works, collected and considered from a specific time and place with fortitude and explorative zeal. Amongst the many highlights of the disc is shadow (2013) by Rebecca Saunders, a study in so-called “acoustic shadows.” Valitutto relishes this music’s intensity and sculpture, urging a keen ear when listening to every last brilliant moment of the score. Another intriguing track is Philip Cashian’s Nocturne (1984). Modelled on Oliver Knussen’s Sonya’s Lullaby, Cashian’s newer piece supersedes Knussen’s, grabbling its way to overcome all aches and sighs. Now morbid and jazzy, now contemporary and timeworn, this entire album grips both performer and listener alike, glimpsing a hazy yet urgent future where nocturnes and lullabies still haunt our dreams.

— Adam Sherkin, 5.15.2020

Richard Valitutto is a GRAMMY-nominated pianist based out of L.A. With a focus mostly on contemporary repertoire, Valitutto has become a champion of new concert music as a soloist, collaborator, and member of the modern music collective Wild Up. His latest album, nocturnes & lullabies (New Focus Recordings), is a solo project based on the resonant properties of the piano and the idea of a new virtuosity, or as Valitutto puts it, “anti-virtuosity.” The project features composers Nicholas Deyoe, Rebecca Saunders, Philip Cashian, Marc Sabat, Maura Capuzzo, Wolfgang von Schweinitz, and Linda Catlin Smith, with seven of the eight tracks being world premiere recordings.

The album starts off with Nicholas Deyoe’s NCTRN, a dark piece the uses tonal clusters and long sustains throughout. The percussive strike of broken bells starts to interject, disrupting the hazy suspensions and rapid sputtering figures that make up most of this sound world. Eventually, the bells take over and become the presiding idea by the end of the piece. Valitutto makes NCTRN sound easy, lending an almost improvised feeling to it.

Rebecca Saunders‘ shadow is aggressive and harsh by comparison. Quick and loud tonal clusters open the track, sounding almost random and freely dispersed. In between the bursts are quietly suspended sympathetic vibrations that shimmer as they decay, achieved through a combination of pedal work and silently depressing keys while violently striking others. These “acoustic shadows,” as described by the composer, draw the listener in and make the flurry of attacks that produce them that much more powerful. Valitutto’s mastery and control in producing these effects is impressive.

Nocturne is one of Philip Cashian’s early works, which shifts gears yet again to a different listening experience. Cashian’s sound world meanders through different gestures and registers, while continually pulling the listener through a dense fog. It’s quite beautiful and has a dark foreboding feel to it. Similarly, Marc Sabat’s Nocturne is quiet and meditative. Described by the composer as “a study of metric modulations in slow tempo,” Sabat’s Nocturne presents different ideas over the course of the track, each one unvaried and unyielding in establishing its own time and tempo. With this demand, Valitutto’s touch, focus, and care is remarkable.

With one of the pedals used as a percussion instrument and the strumming of the strings inside the piano, Portami con te nel mattino vivace by Maura Capuzzo is a piece that encourages what most piano teachers do not. This work plods along slowly, using the upper range of the piano almost exclusively. Capuzzo’s writing is hypnotic and draws the listener in continually. Wolfgang von Schweinitz’s Plainsound Lullaby, Op. 59 puts Valitutto’s hands inside the piano, as well. Using mostly accented and suspended multiphonics from the bass strings of the piano, the resulting “chords” have an ethereal beauty to them. Very few times does Schweinitz move away from these harmonics, but when it happens, the effect is further intensified.

Commissioned and dedicated to Eve Egoyan, A Nocturne by Linda Catlin Smith is subtle, ambiguous, and quietly powerful. The work is mainly comprised of a polytonal collection of major and minor chords floating through the air. A single E-flat becomes the constant obsession of the piece. There is a delicate and fragile air that is constructed throughout the work. Eventually thick, complex chords build up and break the trance before bringing the energy back down. Valitutto’s ability to direct aural drama is on full display in this track.

Lullaby 2, another work by Nicholas Deyoe, bookends the album. Lullaby 2 slowly constructs itself into a dark and foreboding soundscape. Pulling quotes from the metal band Death and Schubert’s B-flat Sonata, the work revolves around the idea of death as an endless sleep. Starting with a lone tremolo at the top of the piano’s range, Deyoe is slow to add in other gestures and accompanying elements. The texture eventually grows thick and brittle before pulling back again to a low, single, repeated note that gives the sense of dying away. As if fighting for life, the tremolo from the beginning builds up violently in this low register, racing to a brutal climax. Suddenly, the Schubert quotation is played reverently, but is left unresolved.

Richard Valitutto not only does an incredible job of bringing life and dedicated care to these works, but also displays a great aptitude for programming. nocturnes & lullabies is a journey through the lyrical, exploratory, and unconventional possibilities the piano still has to offer the 21st century. The overall arc of the album helps to highlight the contrast between compositional styles while still keeping the music tied together. Valitutto is a true champion of new music, and I look forward to hearing how much further he will help push the boundaries of what is possible.

— Jarrett Goodchild, 6.04.2020

Pianist Richard Valitutto releases nocturnes and lullabies, a collection of works organized around themes of transitional states between light, dark, consciousness, and unconsciousness. Featuring premiere recordings of music by Nicholas Deyoe, Rebecca Saunders, Philip Cashian, Marc Sabat, Maura Capuzzo, and Wolfgang von Schweinitz, Valitutto’s poignant performances and poetic curation make this a unique and compelling release, containing works that explore a new virtuosity engaged with the delicate management of the piano's resonant properties. SFCV reviewed the recording earlier this year.

— Peter Feher, 12.16.2020