George Antheil

Most of George Antheil's experimental piano music was written in Berlin in a single year, between July 1922 and June 1923. This disc gathers those pieces with a few from before and after, many of them heard together for the first time thanks to new discoveries and research. More than half the tracks are first recordings. The pianist is Guy Livingston, one of the most active performers and advocates of Antheil's music today.

Antheil (1900-1959) was born in Trenton, New Jersey, to German immigrants and grew up speaking German at home in a Lutheran household. In 1922 he left for Europe to make his name as a pianist, first in London, then in Berlin. He later recalled the city in "grey slow-motion", and the experience stripped from him what he called "old poesy, false sentimentality, and overjuicy overidyllicism". Livingston is joined by Philippe Keler in the Suite for piano four-hands and by Stéphane Leach in the closing Serpent mécanique. Livingston was born in Tennessee, studied at Yale, the New England Conservatory and the Royal Conservatory of the Netherlands, and is based in The Hague. He curated the Antheil Centennial Festival, and this is one of his three solo discs for Wergo.

Several titles point to machines and to jazz. The Second Piano Sonata: The Airplane (1922), the Third Piano Sonata: Death of Machines and the Fourth Sonata: Jazz Sonata (both 1923) last between two and six minutes each. The First Sonata: Sonate Sauvage (1923) is the longest of the solo pieces at nine and a half minutes. Earlier works, the Valses Profanes with an Introduction of Fireworks (1919) and Golden Bird, after Brancusi (1919/21), show where he started.

Later pieces extend the picture: the Sonatina für Radio (1929), Swell Music (ca. 1928), the Paris miniatures Little Shimmy (1923) and For Merle (1925), and the overture and tango from his opera Transatlantic (1928/30). The Suite for piano four-hands (1922, revised 1939) lasts seventeen minutes. Serpent mécanique was originally written for piano roll in 1921.

CD, Wergo WER 6762 2, released in 2013, 63 minutes.