Conlon Nancarrow

Conlon Nancarrow is one of the most unusual and yet most influential American composers of the twentieth century, known for the studies he wrote for player piano. On this disc the Bugallo-Williams Piano Duo, Helena Bugallo and Amy Williams, play eleven of those studies transcribed for piano four hands, together with works written for two hands and transcriptions of others for duet.

Nancarrow was born in Texarkana, Arkansas, on 27 October 1912 and died in Mexico City on 10 August 1997. He settled in Mexico in 1940. In 1947 he bought a player piano in New York and had a machine built to punch the rolls by hand, which let him write rhythms no pianist could play. Recognition came late, from the mid-1970s, and György Ligeti called him "the biggest discovery since Webern and Ives". The duo formed in 1995 at the University at Buffalo, where both were graduate students. In 1998 they began a large transcription project of the studies, starting from Yvar Mikhashoff's four-hand version of No. 15 and adding arrangements of their own and with the composer Erik Oña.

The Studies for Player Piano heard here are Nos. 9, 6, 4, 3B, 3C, 3D, 15, 14, 18, 19 and 26. Several are canons in which the voices move at different speeds, their tempo ratios given in the titles: 3:4 for Nos. 15 and 18, 4:5 for No. 14, 12:15:20 for No. 19. The Three Canons for Ursula work the same way at 5:7, 6:9:10:15 and 2:3. They and Tango? belong to the pieces Nancarrow wrote for live players again once commissions arrived in the 1980s. Alongside them stand a Blues, a Prelude, the Three Two-Part Studies and a Sonatina in three fast movements.

Reviewing the disc for MusicWeb International, Hans-Theodor Wohlfahrt heard pieces "sometimes romantic or jazzy, abrupt or wild," and praised the duo for bringing "the mechanical element to light but with incredible charm." Playing on two hands and four hands music conceived for a machine, the duo shows how much of Nancarrow's rhythmic layering can survive in live performance, and where it becomes a feat of coordination.

CD, Wergo WER 6670 2, released in 2004, 63 minutes. It was the duo's debut recording.