Reviews

Originally published by: Colin Clark, Fanfare

This is a follow-up album to Canadian pianist Jeri-Mae Astolfi’s disc of music by Betty R. Wishart, Piano Sonorities (itself the subject of an interview in 2016, Fanfare 40:1).

A meditation on the sounds of rain and thunder, Phantasmagoria is fascinating in its use of both tonal and atonal constructs in its depiction of insomnia which cedes to a restful close. There is no doubting Astolfi’s understanding of Wishart’s processes. This is almost program music: the composer hears the storm as “a clarion call to action”; as the storm subsides, “a lyric wind” eases the composer into a restful sleep. The idea of musical stratification of layers was central to the music on Piano Sonorities; it appears again here, twos against threes at the opening, the slow unwinding offering the opportunity to relish Wishart’s expressive harmonies.

The narrative element retreats almost entirely in Atmospheres, ceding to descriptions, perhaps more accurately evocations, of four atmospheres: “Apprehensive,” “Frustrated,” “Self-Confident” and “Tranquil”. This is a really a set of four aphorisms: the longest is 1:31, the shortest 37 seconds. Webernian concision is clearly attractive for Wishart, and Astolfi relishes the gestural nature of “Frustrated” as much as she does the quiet assurance of “Self-Confident” with its references to traditional tonal structures. “Tranquil” is almost a Schumannesque miniature, a flowing right-hand melody against innocent left-hand figuration.

Everyone, surely, knows the tune of “Shenandoah”. Wishart’s Variations on Shenandoah was commissioned by Nancy Bogen for a video entitled Of Wandering Forever. Wishart chops up the melody, sectionalizing it, during the course of the variations, zeroing in on one aspect. This really is taking a line for a walk, to borrow from Paul Klee: en route we find bluesy harmonies; and yet repeated listening reveals a deep sense of organisation. The Divertissement is another set of variations, this time on a folk tune used as a victory song in World War II; it also crops up in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Again, it is fascinating to see just where Wishart takes her chosen theme within her limited (four-minute) duration, this time via distorted jazz very much into the heart of her own expressive palette; though never, importantly, losing a sense of the original. Another piece to include populist music is Vibes, with its clear “Blues” first movement, a “Quiescent” second that seems to invoke a sepia-tinged 1920s and a more active “Ebullient” finale. Each of the first two movements comes with a scenario: the first, sitting beside the boat pond at Central Park, listening to a guitarist entertaining tourists; the second appreciating Nature while strolling through that park. The third is marked “ebullient” but with the word used in the archaic meaning of “boiling”. Astolfi is brilliant at finding just the right expression for each.

-Colin Clarke, Fanfare