Basso Profundo

BUSSOTTI: Sensitivo; ROSENMAN: Bass Concerto Chamber Music IV; CEELY: Hymn; Logs;
XENAKIS: Morsima-Amorsima; KAGEL: Sonant
Buell Neidlinger, Ed Mears, Don Palma, db; Ida Kafavian, v; Fred Sherry, vc; Peter Serkin, p;
Stanley Silverman, g; Jan Willams, John Bergamo, perc.                 
 Vivace 8801 – 56 minues

Boy, this takes me back! Remember the 1960s, when music was totally exploratory and dissonant? Well, this is a relatively amusing way of experiencing that period with a double bass player who was there. These works were all recorded in the 60s and 70s under varied circumstances, from rehearsal to concert, and in different places, from Buffalo to Los Angeles. Half of the fun is following Neidlinger's liner notes through the forest of sounds. We are reminded of people we may have forgotten, like Robert Ceely, whose two short pieces run the gamut between consonance and dissonance, and Leonard Rosenman, whose work blends four string quartets, held together by two double basses (don't ask how). Then there are composers of wider fame. Sylvano Bussotti writes a piece for double bass with viola squeaks in the background, Iannis Xenakis puts his together by computer, and Mauricio Kagel ends his with a general discussion by the players of what they are playing.
    The music, though mainly abstract, is not hard to listen to and not as threatening to the psyche and the ears as I remember from names like Xenakis, Bussotti, and Kagel. I guess in those days it seemed as if music was in danger of going permanently mad, wheras now it merely seems to be going permanently to sleep. No, that's not fair–there's more stylistic variety today. Then it seemed that if you wanted fame, you had to be abstract, or at least atonal. It took real guts on the part of composers like George Rochberg to start writing romantic music again.  
    This program may not appeal to everyone, but it is a relatively human introduction to a particlar period of the 20th Century that is not much heard today. The playing is good, and you'll hear musicians that you'll recoginze, even if you never heard them play like this before.

     – D. Moore