SILHOUETTES • Kathryn Woodard (pn) • SONIC CROSSROADS SC01 (62:15)

SUN Pastoral Colors. YAMADA 7 Poems (For Him and Her). XIAO-SONG Ji No. 3: Silent Mountain. TEMOR Spiritual Gathering. YANOV-YANOVSKY Silhouettes

With this CD, obviously the very first for a new label called Sonic Crossroads, Kathryn Woodard has created a new genre in classical music: a mood album with substance. I’m not sure if she chose the format before choosing the program, but whatever way she did it, it works. Not one of these composers was familiar to me, so obviously none of these works were, either.

Muammer Sun (b. 1932 or 1934; I’ve seen both dates) is a Turkish composer who was a pupil of Adnan Saygun. I personally find this suite a little more accessible than some of Saygun’s music, being more lyrical to my ears. Conversely, the earlier Japanese composer Kosaku Yamada (1886–1965) wrote in a style as much if not more Western than Japanese, at least in Seven Poems. Track 10 sounds positively Schumann-like, and I wondered if those Yuppies who want relaxing classical dinner music would find it ambient or relaxing enough. Qu’s (b. 1952) Ji No. 3: Silent Mountain is, by contrast, the most ambient piece on the CD, consisting almost entirely of suspended notes and chords with little or no forward momentum. Woodard herself made the transcription of Spiritual Gathering from a song performed at the 2002 Silk Road Festival by Umar Temor, and it is a tour de force in both 4/4 and 7/8 rhythm utilizing some “prepared piano” techniques. Uzbek composer Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky (b. 1963) contributes a charming and eclectic suite dedicated to various 20th-century composers: Stravinsky, Gershwin and Ravel (a combined piece), Ives, Cage, Shostakovich, Debussy, and Schnittke (I could have lived without Cage or Schnittke, as I believe the first was just a jokester and the second only good at pastiche). Oddly enough, to my ears, the second piece sounds like Ives/Ravel, while the third sounds more like Gershwin to me (certainly, those are Gershwin rhythms and not Ivesian ones; perhaps Yanov-Yanovsky has his American composers confused). Happily, his homage to Cage is 33 seconds of silence, so you can skip that track entirely, unless you just want a break or to be confused for 33 seconds. (I want to play this piece at a piano competition … I’d win first prize! And just to be a smart-aleck, I’d have the sheet music on my piano, staring at it intensely!) The Shostakovich pastiche is utterly delightful, focusing on his whimsical humor rather than his dour moods. Again, however, I wonder if some of this music isn’t too busy for your “relax with Ravel, take Xanax with Xenakis” crowd. The Debussy is appropriately prelude-ish, the Schnittke appropriately awful. Well, at least he got Schnittke’s style right!

Throughout the recital, Woodard plays with excellent structural clarity, which helps bring across the varying styles of these composers. If you’re looking for such an album, and have an interest in world composers for piano, this is certainly a good choice. Lynn René Bayley