<<  -- 7 --  Roderic Dunnett    LISZTIAN SPARKLE

'Not so long ago I read a description comparing Mompou with Satie : what it pointed out was, they both use elements of childishness. Satie has a kind of eyes narrow, cynical, streetwise feel to his music, poking fund at the pomposity of adults. Mompou has his eyes wide open, and is just enthralled with the magic of childhood, this exalted age when youngsters are growing up and discovering, and that comes right through Mompou's music. It's free of extraneous frills, it has a direct, wonderful melodic feel, plus sometimes a Moorish quality as well.'

Certainly Mompou's Charmes - seven exquisite miniatures included in Haskell Small's latest London recital -- worked their magic in his hands, whether it be 'Pour endormir la souffrance' (a sort of Passepied-en-l'aire), 'Pour penetrer les âmes', with its parallel and contrary motions over a kind of organum bass, or perhaps best of all, 'Pour évoquer l'image du passe', a sort of sad ghost march not wholly out of sympathy with Small's own funereal Prelude. Small brings the same quality to French music (Franck's Symphonic Variations is among his concerto repertoire), teasing out the Warlockian neo-classic charm of 'Bransle de Bourgogne' (the first of Poulenc's Suite Francaise d'apres Claude Gervaise), the lovely neo-Renaissance resonances of the ensuing 'Pavane', the deep, bell-like fourths of 'Bransle de Champagne', the enticing resolution (or non-resolution) of sevenths at the close of 'Sicilienne', or the Campanile outburst of 'Carillon' with equal love and finesse.

Small introduces his own inventive programme, and speaks especially eloquently of Takemitsu. 'I think of him as if he were laying out a little Japanese sound-garden : every little rock is planned, and placed in precisely the right place.' (One is reminded of Sunil Freeman's comment in the Washington Post on Small's own music : 'Each note a liquid jewel'). 'The score', Small points out, 'is full of detailed markings and almost over-zealous tempi details. Takemitsu's Rain Tree Sketch depicts a huge, mammoth tree with larger overhanging branches and lots of foliage, so that the tree somehow retains water, but drips continuously.' Certainly, in Small's deft hands, the work is a kind of arboreal Oiseaux Exotiques-cum-Banquet Celeste, shimmering in the upper and middle registers, with hefty Messiaenic block chords in the left hand, and two lovely, bewitching final flurries.

Ginastera's Three Argentine Dances demands agility galore : not just in the wildly percussive patterns of 'Danza del Viejo' ('Shepherd's dance'), but in the dazzling demands of the Tango-like final, 'Danza del Gaucho Matrero' ('the rebel cowboy'), which feels like Prokofiev's Seventh Sonata -- a sizzling toccata Small (I would hazard) plays to staggering effect, and one which one senses as an influence on his own Symphony for Solo Piano -- crossed with a kind of Hispanic, jazz-fired Gershwin. By contrast the central 'Danza de la Moza' ('Country Lady's dance') has, in Small's reading, the evocative, lulling feel of a habanera.

The 'childhood' element mentioned above has further ramifications. Small is presently composer in residence to the Mount Vernon Orchestra, based in the township of Alexandria on the Virginia side of the Potomac river. And one of his recent successes has been a fifteen minute work for orchestra and narrator, entitled Fantasy of the Red-Eyed Creature.

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