Musical Connections

"The revered pianist David Holzman takes on a daring project here, where he performs the music of James Ricci and Arnold Schoenberg, and though many of the songs were recorded years apart, the entire listen flows together quite cohesively. The album leads with Ricci's vision of modernism, as "Bagatelle"starts the listen with Holzman's stunning finger acrobatics that make for a warm and diverse opener, and this talent continues to the stirring intimacy of "Nocturne", as well as the bare but flowing progression of "Sonata". In the middle spot, Schoenberg's work is highlighted across "Five Pieces For Piano, Op. 23", where the key manipulation varies from serene and pretty to jumpy and energetic, and the technical aspects are quite stunning and easily absorbed. Ricci exits the listen, and includes the aptly titled "Waltz"while the fluid melody of "Song Without Words"makes this the album's best. "Boogie Woogie"exits the listen with a charming delivery of rumbling and lively piano that will get your body moving to the jazz fueled finish. Holzman's performance is nothing short of captivating on this album, and though some of these songs are nearly 100 years old, he illuminates their timeless nature flawlessly in his inimitable vision. "

"Juxtaposing the music of James Ricci and Arnold Schönberg, while understandably quite stylistically appropriate and musically intriguing, is at the same time a little reductive. Declaring himself as a modernist composer, Mr. Ricci at least deserves comparison to many other composers of the period of modernism, like Arthur Louriè, the silver age composers of Leningrad, Viktor Ullman, and many others. Everybody certainly has the right to write in the style he feels is the most adequate to express himself, but in other forms of art, this is politely called d'apres. So if we had one Caravaggio, who created an entirely new painting style, we then had the scuola Caravaggesca, with hundreds of painters copying this style until rendering it pale and insignificant. There is a risk of using a twelve-tone, dodecaphonic technique nearly one hundred years after its invention – a way of composing largely abandoned by today's composers. Still, this music has a charm of its own because what was once called "modernist"is today perceived as extremely "old school,"and maybe through this acquires a flair in itself. The lucky combination of finding in Mr. Holzman an ideal interpreter who can deliver these steel-like cascades of cold notes, wholly deprived of any sentiment or romantic expressiveness, mixed with the fantastic work of the sound engineers, is a winning one. "