Music of Meyer Kupferman

Meyer Kupferman - Music of Meyer Kupferman

Liner notes by Meyer Kupferman

The Celestial City
Gilbert Kalish - pianist, performing live and on pre-recorded tapes

When I composed THE CELESTIAL CITY in 1974 for my dear friend, Gilbert Kalish, I conceived of the work as a concerto for piano and orchestra even though the piece has no orchestra. The tape accompaniment is scored for two tracks of pre-recorded piano, which provide a background that is as imposing and as colorful as an orchestra and that is more flexible. The combined sound of these tightly coordinated pianos creates a contemporary 'SUPERPIANO!' which can dazzle us with its endless displays of astonishing keyboard sonorities and which apparently requires an indefatigable 'six-handed' virtuoso (like Kalish) to operate.

The Garden of My Father's House
Max Pollikoff - violinist; Meyer Kupferman - clarinetist

The piece is a musical ritual, based on a C-sharp drone, or pedal note, that is heard without interruption, across several ranges, throughout the piece. The violin's drone tremolos, often combined with perfect fifths and quarter-tone tunings, imply the key of C-sharp minor. The violin part is always rubato - lyrical, expressive and frequently very passionate. But, most importantly, the violin is always tonal.
The clarinet, on the other hand, is atonal, its pitches drawn from the twelve-tone row that i used to write my Cycles of Infinities. The style of the clarinet is contemporary, using wide-range intervals, biting accents and unusual instrumental effects, including fluttertonguing and quarter-tone trills.
In combining the 'contrasting' roles of the two instruments, I sought to create a musical ritual-game that would draw energy and bits of information from the polarized instruments. The language of the piece calls the listener's attention to the cogent features of both instrumental personalities in a manner that is somewhat similar to the way in which Yiddish combines German and Hebrew. The drone becomes more and more magnetic and begins to join the parts together until they become one in the final C-sharp unison.

Angel Footprints
Max Pollikoff - violinist, performing live and on pre-recorded tapes

ANGEL FOOTPRINTS, commissioned by Max Pollikoff, was completed in 1973. The use of a tape part, consisting of two tracks of pre-recorded violin, continues my experiments with 'mirror' tape procedures begun more than a decade earlier....Much of the focus of the work is on melody, and, in creating the tape parts, I chose to stress similarities, rather than contrasts, among the different lines; for example, strett-like canons are frequently draped around the live violin line.

Tracklisting:

Side 1

1. The Celestial City {24:52}

Side 2

1. The Garden of My Father's House {8:01}

2. Angel Footprints {18:11}

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