Lentz: Point Conception, NightBreaker / Bryan Pezzone(p), Arlene Dunlap(p)

Signal To Noise (p.59) - "On this recording, Arlene Dunlap is the sole pianist; she's been overdubbed again and again to create a dramatic tower of sound."

Daniel Lentz was one of the most intriguing young composers to emerge on the California New Music scene in the last quarter of the twentieth century, although he has lived in the Arizona desert since the early '90s. (His has always shown a sensitivity to landscape, and his music underwent a stylistic shift after his move.) Lentz's 1979 Point Conception graphically and creatively evokes the turbulent waters surrounding Point Conception, a crescent-shaped headland on the California coast that marks the geological and climatic divide between Southern and Central California, which is notable for its unusually tumultuous waves. Lentz uses the simplest of conceptual means: the piece is scored for nine pianos, and each piano plays only ascending and descending octaves. It's not a process-generated piece, though; Lentz' development of his material is largely intuitive and has the characteristic exuberance of many of his California works. The accumulating layers add timbral, harmonic, and rhythmic complexity and create a wonderfully churning, whirling, oceanic soundscape that occasionally calls La Mer to mind. Listeners' reactions to the piece will probably hinge on their appreciation of early post-minimalism; Lentz's voice is his own, but Point Conception is clearly sonically related to trends of the era, and to John Adams' far gentler and less unpredictable Phrygian Gates and China Gates. Arlene Dunlap plays all the overdubbed piano parts with appropriately feral abandon. Nightbreaker, from 1990, uses only four pianos and is much freer, more emotionally mercurial, and more stylistically eclectic, but like the earlier work, it puts the composer's rhapsodic extroversion on full display, and Bryan Pezzone plays all the piano parts beautifully. The engineering in both pieces creates a vivid sense of separation between the pianos.

Al Gromer Khan -- Sitar // Al Gromer Khan -- Sitar // Frank Fielder -- Producer // Frank Fielder -- Engineer // Florian Fricke -- Piano // Robert Wedel -- Engineer // Danny Secundus Fichelscher -- Guitar // Danny Secundus Fichelscher -- Percussion // Hardy Bank -- Engineer // Werner Herzog -- Liner Notes // Manfred Gillig Degrave -- Liner Notes ~ Francois Couture