North/South's CD American Women Composers features outstanding Mexican-born pianist and composer
Max Lifchitz in five pieces, none written before 1995, by contemporary composers whose dispositions fit the title designation. One might look at the title and automatically conclude as to what this is and what it sounds like -- perhaps a collection of semi-familiar nuggets from
Ruth Crawford Seeger, Louise Talma, or Beach -- and one would be wrong. These composers are living, and none would qualify as ingénues; as all of them -- I'lana Sandra Cotton, Mary Jeanne van Appledorn, Hilary Tann, and Binnette Lipper -- have careers in music that stretch back for decades and worklists to match. Tann, van Appledorn, and Lipper have likewise been moderately to extensively recorded already; that their names might not ring a bell may be due to their works being scattered among various releases devoted to multiple composers.
Lifchitz recognizes an additional dimension that ties this group together aside from the fact that all four are women and American -- they write expressive music that is personal, technical only as far as it makes the music practical, contemporary in idiom but romantic in tone.
Some might feel I'lana Sandra Cotton's suite Music for Midwinter is new agey, but it is genuine in expression and utilizes popular-sounding rhythms only to make the music sound familiar and warm. Hilary Tann's Light from The Cliffs is evocative and mysterious, and Binnette Lipper's Sonata No. 3, written in memory of her son, is an ambitious and moving piece written in a style reminiscent of the serious American piano composition of the 1940s, as though the serialism of the 1950s had never existed. This is not a competition, but in a way, Mary Jeanne van Appledorn's Fantasia is the most engaging piece on the disc; from the very first it is dramatic, strong, and visionary. Lipper's Bagatelles seems the slightest of the five only by virtue of their rather Bartókian, quasi-pedagogical milieu.
North/South's recording, made at the L. Brown studio in New York City, is a little quiet and a little dry, but is certainly very responsive to the sound of the interior of the piano:
Lifchitz suggests that listeners use a moderate volume level when playing it back in order to approximate the live sound of a concert performance. No matter how you choose to listen,
Max Lifchitz' American Women Composers will make one a believer in the notion that women composers in America have come a long way since Beach.