#53 - Listening to New Complexity in Music
Description
The 52nd episode of Dress Rehearsal, on 107.3 KBFG Seattle, featured musical movement called "New Complexity", which is characterized by the use of complex musical notation. During the hour we will listen to Michael Finnissy's entire English Country-Tunes. As Arnold Whittall reviewed it on Gramophone Magazine) he wrote "Anyone anticipating Graingerish essays in flamboyant folkishness will soon realize that they have been led up the garden path but, with luck, they won't mind too much. The tunes identified by Finnissy might ultimately be revealed if every one of the layers of transformation were stripped away. But there remains a certain Satie-esque spirit in the association of such evocative labels with such uncompromising music. Beneath its modernist surface Finnissy's piano writing has a Lisztian range, alternating bell-like meditations with virtuosic outbursts: as it happens, he studied with, among others, the Liszt expert Humphrey Searle". Don't miss it!
United States
