Pianist Orion Weiss Releases Arc I: Granados, Janáček, Scriabin On First Hand Records

On Friday, March 18, 2022, acclaimed pianist Orion Weiss releases his new album, Arc I: Granados, Janáček, Scriabin, on First Hand Records.

Arc I is the inaugural album of an ambitious three-part series and features important works for solo piano from the frantic years of 1911-1913 - the precipice before World War I. The three musical stories on Arc I - Granados' Goyescas, Janáček's In the Mists, and Scriabin's Piano Sonata No. 9 "Black Mass" - each struggle with the same impossible awareness of what was coming for the world, and in doing so, plunge further into modernity and despair.

Of his Arc album series, Orion Weiss explains, "The arc of this recital trilogy is inverted, like a rainbow's reflection in water. Arc I's first steps head downhill, beginning from hope and proceeding to despair. The bottom of the journey, Arc II, is Earth's center, grief, loss, the lowest we can reach. The return trip, Arc III, is one of excitement and renewal, filled with the joy of rebirth and anticipation of a better future."

"Our world has suffered chaos, death, and much ugly change," Weiss reflects. "The foreboding we experienced in 2020 was probably similar to what the composers featured on Arc I felt in the countdown to World War I: a silence before the storm, a chilling drop in pressure, and vast uncertainty. For us and for them, the future became like a patch of absolute black, totally unknowable and threatening. The pain of our subsequent descent has surely been both personal and global."

The first work on Arc I is Enrique Granados' gothic piano suite Goyescas, Op. 11 (1911), a masterpiece of motivic development. Weiss explains the dark emotional plot as, "A man courts a woman (I. Los requiebros), they declare love for one another (II. Coloquio en la reja) but are separated (III. El fandango de candil). The two lovers are faced with sorrow (IV. Quejas, o la Maja y el Ruiseñor), and later, by his death (V. El Amor y la muerte - Balada). Motifs initially representing love, hope and innocence are gradually transformed to signify longing, fear and loss. Just before the end of the sixth piece (VI. Epilogo: Serenata del espectro), which is a macabre dance through grisly-comic flashbacks, the main love theme makes a final appearance, sounding almost unscathed, yet with one significant change: its last note is altered to rise instead of fall. The statement of love is thus changed to an existential question. Over the music's next gesture comes the question's answer: We are left on an empty stage, all the vibrant characters gone. Death is quietly triumphant."

Leoš Janáček's In the Mists (1912) consists of four short movements that are more like entries in a wild diary than character pieces. Weiss explains, "Its ideas grow organically and unpredictably, as if in conversation or thought, and the borders between accompaniment and melodic material disappear. Perhaps the most potent is Janáček's emblem of death, the falling minor third. After its first appearance in the third piece, it makes a startling, terrifying return in the fourth, just before the coda. The remaining music shatters and the work ends with despair and without resolution, stuck in hopeless, fragmented repetition."

Concluding the album is Alexander Scriabin's Piano Sonata No. 9, Op. 68, "Black Mass" (1913), which runs a similar plot as Granados' Goyescas, a taut story of hope succumbing to despair. Weiss says, "The opening music is a sort of sick chant sung by occult monks, followed closely by a group of other threatening and depraved themes. The second main theme, however, is one of innocence-it is to be played with 'budding languor,' and is 'pure and limpid' (Scriabin's indications). This hopeful and upwards-reaching theme doesn't last long, as it is beset by and then 'poisoned' by the opening group. At the climax of 'Black Mass,' the pure theme is reborn as a brutal march, totally metamorphosed; the opening music accompanies it with queasy, sadistic encouragement. The quiet chant concludes the piece, unchanged, the cycle of inevitable inexorable evil."

Orion Weiss' Arc trilogy continues with Arc II: Ravel, Shostakovich, Brahms, featuring works from World War I and II, during times of grief; and Arc III: Schubert, Debussy, Brahms, Dohnányi, Talma, featuring music from young composers after World War I and II, during times of joy. Both albums are forthcoming releases on First Hand Records.

"As we grieve what was lost, music born of suffering can bring us courage and succour," Weiss says. "As we envisage our ascent, music from times of joyful creation can create a road map leading us out and up. The final album in the trilogy, Arc III, is filled with young composers, post-war music, and music of celebration. It is my message of faith in humans - our resilience, our rebound, our irrepressibility."

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