Henry Cowell - Piano Music (Smithsonian/Folkways)

A deceptively simple title for a disc that is anything but. Cowell’s signing with Mose Asch’s Folkways label makes perfect sense since both viewed sounds of any stripe and sort as potential conveyers of musical & cultural information. He regularly looked to the natural and industrial worlds for sources of inspiration, rigorously eschewing conventional structures and patterns in his piano works. He also pioneered elements of atonality and ‘extended techniques’ such as venturing into the innards of his instrument to maneuver the strings directly. The nineteen pieces collected here are mainly representative of his early works, which made groundbreaking use of tonal clusters amongst other innovations. But Cowell plays them in a relaxed, offhand style that leavens some of surprise. The clever titles mask music that is often of equal or greater intrigue. My favorites are “Harp of Life,” which veers close to melodrama in its grand thundering chords and stabbing melody, “The Banshee,” a wash of rubbed strings that result in an interlude of spectral scraping tones, and “Aeolian Harp/Sinister Resonance” where Cowell’s fingers forge a harmonic maze of pizzicato piano filigrees. An interview segment closes the disc and finds Cowell verbally running through the program’s pieces, offering brief explanatory comments on each, once again in a matter-of-fact mood. With a current discography so deplorably slim this disc is an instant keeper.