griffithscomposer

Celebrating a milestone for this composer

July 30, 2017 Reviews

BY CHLOE SANGER

Alan Griffiths
50th Birthday Concert
University of Melbourne, 16 July

A full time artist’s life is inevitably filled with a mixture of commissions and passion projects, and often the balance is difficult to strike. To remain afloat as a composer, the many necessary jobs and commissions may overtake the importance of one’s personal pursuits, often to leave them unfinished or unheard.

Australian/New Zealand composer Alan Griffiths has enjoyed a career spanning about 30 years, which have consisted of dozens of commissions from commercial works to feature films. However, he celebrated his 50th birthday with a concert featuring the compositions that mean the most to him. This included world premieres of some recent chamber works, and a full performance of his new solo piano album Introspection. The line-up for this concert was world class, featuring multi award winning violinist Zoe Freisberg and cellist Gemma Tomlinson, and internationally recognised pianist and Young Steinway Artist Nicholas Young.

The opening work, Etude, was composed in 2004 originally for the erhu, but aptly interpreted by Freisberg – she emulated the bright tone, wide, steady vibrato and earthy glissandi for which the Chinese string instrument is famous. It was certainly a highlight of the concert, as was the following piece, an unfinished trio, Lullaby Lost; dedicated to Griffiths’ brother Michael, who passed away in early 2016. The piece began with dark, foreboding melody, played unison by Freisberg and Tomlinson and minimally backed by Young. When the piece lightened in tone, the violin and cello lines drifted further and further apart, losing touch with each other in both melodic material and range. A hopeful final section was cut short by a long silence, then a singular high note drawn out by Freisberg with simplicity and feeling. As an outsider in a concert hall filled largely with family and friends, the feelings of loss were palpable. I looked around the room and the audience, including myself, were visibly moved by such a personal and excellently delivered elegy.

Introspection is a solo piano album pieced together from Griffiths’ compositions that he’d written over the years, in between composition jobs. Griffiths never intended to curate an album from these compositions but at the concert, Young noted how nicely these pieces work as a song cycle. Introspection is not in chronological order – in some areas, the pieces flow into one another; in others, there is distinct contrast and departure from musical material. Griffiths’ piano music is largely influenced by big names of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including Elgar and especially Rachmaninov. But there were also pieces influenced by the likes of Gershwin and Herrmann, jazz and cinema composers from the 20th Century.

Reverie I, II and III, three works interspersed in the program, were outstanding examples of the great compositional balance of virtuosity, simplicity, fragility and drama that Griffiths achieves in Introspection. This is not an easy task for solo piano music. Young performed Introspection with full commitment as a satisfying communicator of the works.

Young said he believes Introspection is a remarkable exploration of a living composer’s life and personality, something that he considered a great honour to be part of. Personally, it was a pleasure as a young musician to celebrate an Australian/New Zealand composer, hearing the works that did not represent a career, but rather the individual behind it.

Ukrainian-born Evgeny Ukhanov, based in Australia for the past 20 years, is an established performer of new music originating in his adopted homeland. Now he has teamed up with friend and Melbourne composer Alan Griffiths on a new CD of selections regrouped under the title “Introspection”. 

This isn’t “new music” in the contemporary sense but a coherent assemblage of Griffiths’ favorite solo piano pieces. Griffiths tells me he selected these compositions from 27 years of his archives to create a song cycle. It works marvelously. 

He lists as his influences Krzystov Penderecki, Rachmaninov, Shostakovich and Prokofiev. In these seven compositions, the echos of great antecedents ring clearly. The over-all impression of this album is of pleasant ambient music but with a special depth of harmony and melody, impressive pianism by Ukhanov, and linkage of selections. 

One personal influence over the album is the premature death of the composer’s autistic brother Michael, to whom the opening piece, Reverie II, is dedicated. Griffiths explains in his program notes that he settled on a theme and developed it through a series of variations. The closing piece, “Till We Meet Again”, is in a reflective mood, but with his brother’s death in mind it carries “a tender poignancy”.

After several hearings, the “Touch of Tango” stands out as the most memorable selection. Griffiths writes in his program notes that he relied on  a four-bar syncopated rhythm that was not intended as a rigorous tango but reminded listeners of the tango bounce. 

Griffiths is an accomplished pianist but decided to work with Ukhanov on this debut album due to his own “deterioration of technique”. “We had a great rapport and we both admire Rachmaninoff,” Griffiths says. “Evgeny was able to draw out more from my repertoire than I thought possible. His interpretive skills are exceptional and added considerable value.” 

Griffiths plans a second album of solo piano and chamber works. His long-range plan is for five albums, including his film scores, an a cappella choral work and a larger orchestral work. 

CD Review – Evgeny Ukhanov Performs Griffiths – Introspection for Piano Vol 1, reviewed by Clinton White

Self-taught Australian composer, Alan Griffiths, can rightly be proud of the debut album of his music.  And he can be proud on two counts: first that the Ukrainian-Australian pianist, Evgeny Ukhanov, has done a very nice job of interpreting the music and, second that the music is very accessible and perfectly suited to the album title, Introspection.

The composition styles vary quite remarkably through the programme.  There are new age styles, pieces that could be for a film soundtrack, others that evoke piano studies and still others that can calm the soul or lead the listener into a flight of fantasy.

Then there are the influences.  Griffiths’ bio notes acknowledge that many great composers over the last 150 years have been his guide.  Still, Griffiths really has developed his own style.  There are the occasional hints of the influences, but he can be confident in calling all of his compositions uniquely his own.  Even the quite strong Rachmaninov stylings in the “Motif and Variations” serve more to underscore the writing than dominate it.

Whilst, on the whole, the works are not overly technically difficult, Ukhanov has taken them and put a great deal of soul into them, turning the notes on the page into truly beautiful and sensitive musical interpretations cleverly nuanced with a tiny tenuto here, a subtle ritardando there, or perhaps a delicate accelerando somewhere else, just to give the music his personal touch and add that extra little bit of personality.

The titles of the works are largely descriptive of their technical nature rather than of the story behind them or their source of inspiration.  There would be some value in giving the titles a little more personality, even if it’s just by way of nicknames, to add to the charm of the music they produce.

If I had one tiny gripe, it is the closeness of the recording.  A close listening (I reviewed the album using a pair of Sennheiser HD 600 headphones) will reveal a subtle thud of the keys hitting the strings particularly in the upper registers.  I would have preferred a slightly more expansive sound to give a better spread and balance across the instrument.  It’s almost as if the piano is “bottled up”, unable to escape.

But others will appreciate the very clearly defined registers of the piano, which, in fact, are nicely and faithfully captured in the recording process.

The presentation of the album is nicely done, with good liner notes about the composer and the artist as well as the “personality” behind the works.

On hearing the first few bars of music on Introspection, the listener might be tempted to think it is one of those albums you can put on and then drift off.  But it’s not long before the listener becomes aware of music and playing that demands just that: listening.