The picture gets more complex. I previously described Tim Parkinson’s opera Time With People as “warm-blooded reductionism”, noting how his music had emptied out the form, transforming structure into content. I didn’t really do him justice, neither fairly nor in full. Hearing Philip Thomas’ recording of two piano pieces on Wandelweiser a couple of years ago, I announced that “I plan to discuss this in greater detail in the near future” but never did.
Luckily, the other CD release in this second batch of albums on All That Dust is Parkinson’s Piano music 2015-16. All of it, apparently. Lest I gave anyone the impression that he is the sort of composer who gets sneeringly described by most benighted critics as “an artist”, rest assured that there is craft in abundance on this disc. piano piece 2015 and we’ll meet again from the same year sandwich seven prosaically-titled 2016 works, presenting a cornucopia of musical ideas and techniques. A reductionist cornucopia, but all the same. Moods, effects, tricks and references proliferate; some present only fleetingly, while others are dwelt upon at length. More than a diary or sketches, each piece reflects a musical mind contemplating and reconsidering music, as played and heard upon the piano.
The reflective piano piece 2015 develops in its own way, with pianist Mark Knoop sustaining an atmosphere of tenderness through its pauses and more subdued dynamics. It’s hard not to hear the 2016 pieces as a suite, each work presenting a contrast in dynamics, consistency and phrasing. Knoop can make 2016 No. 1 sound monomaniacal, before suddenly changing to a new but equally obstainate approach to the reiterated chords. Subsequent pieces bring in more variety, creating continuity out of juxtapositions of disjointed passages. I was going to say ‘phrases’ but in these pieces they sound more like sentences: each one self-contained yet with each successive instance building on what has come before or suddenly diverting the expected course, thickening the plot. Chords merge into unbroken sonority, then break apart into a Cubist study in Stride. Modernist rigour is pricked by a single postmodern flourish. Knoop sets the right tone of serious playfulness, neither po-faced nor ingratiating, revealing a multitude of facets for listeners to discover for themselves.
“A musical mind contemplating music,” but not in a systematic way. That playfulness shows Parkinson’s piano pieces to be as much about the musician as the music, a subjective response to its pleasures and conundrums; the process itself is analysed in preference to pursuing a conclusion. we’ll meet again happily throws all these problems into creating a grotesque fantasia on the song of the same name. The old-fashioned sentimentality starts off-kilter and immediately veers into the ditch, advancing by fits and starts. Distorted fragments flit by from time to time, at times teasing that the tune may eventually get back on some recognisable track, at others leaving the listener wondering if they’re starting to imagine a resemblance that is no longer there. Milton Babbitt would be delighted.
