I'm pleased to say that I recently got back in touch with Alexander Hawkins. In the years since I lost touch with him, the British pianist-composer-bandleader has undergone metamorphosis, from a very promising and distinctive voice on the British creative music scene, to his present status as a world-class improviser and composer, much in demand, who performs all around the globe and issues recordings regularly via the prestigious Swiss label, Intakt Records.
Most recently mentioned in these pages as an integral part of B's "standards quartet" - who played many concerts together, from which the gigantic Quartet (Standards) 2020 box set was compiled - AH first came to my attention as an interpreter of B's music, and I'm delighted to report that he continues to work pieces from the Braxton canon into his live sets (though he has never yet done an album of this stuff... hint hint!). Our most recent exchange revealed that AH is particularly fascinated of late by Comp. 40c. For the benefit of those readers who may not have large sections of the discography committed to memory, I'd better point out that 40c is one of those (almost) unrecorded pieces from the old days; details will follow below of what precisely is meant by the gloss "almost" in that context, but in the meantime, don't waste time looking for the album which contains a straight reading of this one... because there aren't any. Described in the catalog(ue) of works as a "Madrigal-like slow pulse structure", the piece was basically unknown to this writer: having tantalised me with it, AH was then good enough to point me in the direction of a video of him playing it.
The occasion was the 2021 MONOPIANO festival in Stockholm - other videos are available, as a brisk internet search will reveal - and this performance was given on 23rd October. AH had decided beforehand that he would open proceedings with 40c: his solo sets often see him running his own works into each other*, and it didn't feel right to him to work one of B's pieces into the middle of such a process**, so once the decision was taken to include this composition, the natural thing to do was play it first. With some simple, but highly effective, preparation of the piano by way of (what I'm told are nothing more than) "strongish" fridge magnets applied to the strings spanning an octave or so, 40c proves to be an ideal way for the pianist to kick things off, allowing him to showcase many of his numerous strengths while giving an outing to an overlooked work. Beginning with an ominous emphasis on the sustain pedal, the first few minutes set up what will become the key elements of the reading: altissimo sprinkles in the right hand alternating with that same hand reaching across at regular intervals to set up powerful floor-tones in the bass, while the left hand cycles away within the "prepared" section of the keyboard, working up an effect both rhythmic and timbral without being precisely tonal, all the tonality being produced by the activity of the right hand. Around 3:30, the written melody starts up, a simple high-register figure played rubato against the tumbling, spidery left-hand scribbles on the weighted strings. The overall effect of this is quite spellbinding.
Whatever the written score might include, AH's studied reading strips away almost all of what might have been the more "normal" elements of the work, creating something entirely individual and unpredictable, devoid of the routine, melding what "should" be paradoxical elements - the almost-purely rhythmic left-hand, the chiming melody at the top end, and the dramatic splashes of dark colour in the bass register - into a hauntingly-beautiful confection which the pianist has made very much his own. It's a piece which AH has played regularly at his solo concerts in recent years, including once with B. himself in the audience. (Just imagine how delighted the maestro must have been with that!)
Just after ten minutes comes up on the clock, the magnets are removed and the piece gradually winds down, with a new tune altogether starting up around 11:23. This is a well-filmed performance, in which the multiple cameras and judicious visual editing allow us to witness (almost) all aspects of the pianist's art and craft: the hands, the body movement, the intense concentration and emotional involvement - and the spontaneity, a sense captured at times of the performer as his own first listener, pleasantly surprised by what emerges from the keyboard, a fraction before the quickest and most attentive members of the audience. The whole set is well worth watching and hearing; piano is still not my "main instrument" and I make no pretence of being able to comprehend much of the modern music which is written for it, but performances like this could yet convert me... there is a sustained level of creative invention and a refusal to settle for easy choices at any point, even when the music seems locked into rhythmic vamps which could remind the listener of someone or other - I know from previous exchanges that AH is fascinated by the implications and possibilities of rhythmic variation, but this is the point: even when in principle the music comes close to what might feel familiar, it always sounds sui generis, not really like anything one would hear from anyone else.
***
Comp. 40c has never been recorded on its own: the only recording (featuring B. himself) which even includes it as (listed) tertiary material is the ambitious "West Coast return engagement" Nine Compositions (DVD) 2003, where 40c makes an appearance as one of seven different tertiaries worked into the 85-minute opening GTM number***. Besides this, Restructures formerly listed just one other instance of the piece: the obscure 1997 album Circuit Breaker, by (Ben Opie's band#) Water Shed 5tet, included a medley of two recorded premieres, Comp. 23i (+ 40c), 23i being another very rare piece ("Medium fast line - Spanish melody") which, indeed, only appears on this album (to my knowledge). So I really can't speak for that one at all, but as for 40c..? Alex has observed to me that "this composition could very clearly be considered an iteration of the 'diatonic line forming' from the language music" - language type 10, according to the formal list - and it may very well be the case that pieces like this, composed as they were at a time when the idea of language types was still somewhat inchoate in the composer's mind, helped lead to the crystallisation of such concepts. AH says, by the way, that he's sure he has heard 40c worked into a GTM performance at some point; now that I would hope to recognise it, I will be keeping an ear out for it, for sure!
(Of course, it's not for me to suggest that Mr Hawkins commit one of his readings to posterity in the recording studio; but wouldn't that be a nice treat? He probably understands the piece better than anybody else alive, at this point...)
***
I seem to be in one of "those" phases just now, when I have several posts taking shape in my head and vying with each other to get out onto the screen, but none of them quite wants to be first. Still, given my renewed activity over the last twenty months I am not overly worried by this: it'll sort itself out. In the meantime, this seemed to be the perfect pretext for breaking a two-week "silence".
* Collaging, one might call that... ;-)
** I think I understand what AH means by this, but at the same time I am pretty sure the maestro would say he's being too diffident about it. Perhaps in the fullness of time these solo sets will evolve to the point where interpolating one of B's themes into the middle of something else feels entirely natural - I suspect B. himself would love that. (On the other hand, when it comes to unveiling a rarity such as 40c, it does seem only right to allow the piece its own space and air.)
*** I do own this (six-hour) monster release, and have heard everything on it at least once - but not for a few years, and I certainly would not have been able to identify 40c even if I had been specifically listening out for it, not having heard it before. (At the moment I don't even have anything to play this disc on, although that regrettable state of affairs will not be permanent...)
# I don't own this one; and given that it's clearly super-obscure and hard to find, I am maybe not likely to - though of course I would be extremely interested to hear it, at least for this track. (Annoyingly, the band's first CD - on Gino Robair's Rastascan label - is far more easily obtainable and not at all expensive. It features nothing by the maestro, alas...) Ben Opie, a saxophonist from Pennsylvania whose own collaborations with B. were a decade in the future at this point, is one of the duet partners I wrote about last October. He was also the driving force behind another project which is even harder to acquire, Ensemble (Pittsburgh) 2008 - an album I may never even lay eyes on, being realistic about it...
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