EARLE BROWN (1926-2002): Home Burial, Folio, Twenty-Five Pages, Four Systems, Summer Suite '95.

Description: With one exception, these pieces are important examples of Brown's attempts to blur the distinctions inherent in the composer-notation-performance process, by analogy with the 20th century abstract expressionist, dynamic process visual artists, with their emphasis on the end product being determined by actions and materials rather than preconceived forms. Thus the pieces are graphically notated to a greater or lesser extent, with a great deal of notational indeterminacy to be resolved by the performer. Sometimes rules are provided to somewhat direct, for instance, durations, as in the 25 Pages, while most parameters - pitches, sequence in which the individual pages are heard, even orientation of the score (the analogy here is surely with Calder's mobiles) are determined in performance. Summer Suite 95 was written 30 years after the others; the composer graphically notated it and played it himself into a computer that transcribed his performance into conventional notation, thus preserving his own actions in permanent form, like a Pollock canvas once it dried. The early (1949) Home Burial after Robert Frost, is a conventional, atmospheric piece of piano music, recently rediscovered and receiving its first recording here. Sabine Liebner (piano).