Most helpful customer reviews
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5.0 out of 5 stars
effulgent beauty,erudite exquisite pieces, Sep 27 2001
Can't add much to the Babbitt brethren here,except merely to comment on 'ex cathedra' the 'Three Compositions',has still a compelling fascination, it's loose,high convulsive energy wonderful for a post war piece, 1947-1948. Can't say enough about the threadbare 'Duet', a mere 36 seconds duration a gestural bon-bon,arpeggiated mildly atonaly chords, to his daughter. 'Semi-Simple Variations' from 1956 continued from the earlier excursions into violently controlled energy. I suppose we will listen to violent import in music differently with the new age terror permeating our consciousness now. Like wise 'Tableaux' and 'Canonical Form' are seminal works encompassing relatively longer durational frames, where Babbitt learned to layer the registers of piano timbre frequently writing on four separate lines.The beauty I think is the focus on particular tones, with dynamic indication as far as a fffff, as loud as possibly to barely perceptible. Elegance is the result as opposed to coldy wrought spatial distributions of tones as Stockhausen so successfully accomplished in his early "klavierstuck" 1 to 5 in particualr.
Robert Taub simply comprehends this music wonderfully, a high level of precision mixed with profound muscianship renders great synergistic processes.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Babbitt Cares If You Listen, Mar 12 2001
Babbitt's music has often enough not been well served by its interpreters, who sometimes take his wide intervallic leaps and occasionally difficult rhythmic structures as an excuse for reading discontinuity into the music. True, Babbitt's music is not for everyone, at least at the moment--the finest art music often excludes much of the listening public, as it requires some real knowledge of or at least sympathy with the musical idiom and goals of the composer: there are many honest artists, like Babbitt, who choose not to work on the easiest level of accessibility. This recording will probably not convert those who customarily listen to less complex music, but the most wonderful quality of this particular issue is the linear continuity and formal tautness that Taub brings out in Babbitt's work. And no, Taub doesn't invent these things, they are there for any musician to hear who has some grasp of later 20th-century classical idioms, or (perhaps) who is simply willing to listen carefully.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
New and fascinating, Oct 17 2000
By A Customer
This CD is really cool. The melodies and notes just jump out and grab you, taking you along for quite a ride. I've heard Taub in concert too, playing Babbitt and other things (Beethoven, I think) and his playing is awesome. I'm definitely drawn in to whatever he does. The sound on this CD is great. Whoever has a free mind will love this!
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