Composer, pianist, and educator James Adler, with close ties to the Lesbian & Gay Big Apple Corps (LGBAC) Symphonic Band and Queer Urban Orchestra (QUO), for which his life partner Scott Oaks plays flute, has a magnificent new CD, “Homages & Remembrances,” just issued by Albany Records and available through www.albanyrecords.com, www.arkivmusic.com, and www.adleroaksmusic.com.
The emphasis here is on Adler’s virtuoso pianism, as displayed in his work with the two New York City ensembles cited above; in his periodic James Adler and Friends recitals; and in performances at venues from the Madison Square Garden Felt Forum, now the Hulu Theater, to the Cornelia Street Café. Here Adler plays works by late colleagues, tributes to departed siblings, and classic favorites, which also reflect the theme of “Homages & Remembrances.” Adler recorded this music this year and last at Yamaha Artist Services Piano Salon in Manhattan.
The recording opens with Paul Turok’s “Passacaglia,” a dark, quietly thundering, imposing and contemplative piece, as Adler’s thoughtful salute to his late friend. Adler’s sensitive account of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Classical work Sonata Number Nine in D Major, Köchel 311, follows. The pianist’s allegro con spirito, bright and rousing, akin to a Mozart opera overture, introducing characters grand, canny, and mischievous, whets the musical appetite for the remainder of the sonata. Adler’s searching andante con espressione could almost be the rumination of one of Mozart’s soulful yet dignified dramatic operatic figures. The musician’s rondeau—allegro stands as a joyous finale, with serious underpinnings, aptly summing up the diverse emotional strains introduced earlier.
“Deux Arabesques” of Claude Debussy, music Adler associates with his late older brother, Dr. Norman T. Adler, the andantino con moto flowing gently, colorfully, and with warmth, and the allegretto scherzando contrastingly sprightly, introduce the world premiere recording of his tribute, with deep feeling, “Elegy for Norman.” Adler is at the Yamaha, with Cain-Oscar Bergeron on flute. The opening, Lamentation, concerns attending to the burial with a heavy heart, but with touches of wistfulness and wonder. The following Celebration takes off from traditional melody “L’Chah Dodi,” which welcomes the Sabbath, a time of rest and reflection, but also elation, these two parts encompassing Adler’s memories of his brother. “Herinneringe,” reflections, in Afrikaans, by Adler’s South African-born colleague Henco Espag, Musical Director of LGBAC, is a generally upbeat portrait of its composer’s late brother Manus, with pauses that consider the loss.
This brings us to Adler’s bravura performance of the vastest piece here, Modest Mussorgsky’s massive “Pictures at an Exhibition,” its composer’s remembrance of his late young artist friend, Victor-Edouard Hartmann. The opening, and recurring, Promenade represents a walk through the Hartmann exhibit, with a stride of determination, yet uncertainty. The mood darkens with Gnomus, as the painting of a grotesque wooden nutcracker is considered. Il vecchio castello depicts a towering ancient edifice and a troubadour limning it with melancholy so long ago. Tuileries (dispute d’enfants après jeux) finds children, in the gardens, both playful and quarrelsome. Bidlo shows a cart, led by oxen, with their heavy tread, as they pursue their almost mournful task. Ballet of the Chicks in their Shells, at once airy and prickly, is a whimsical scherzo for ballerinas portraying fledgling birds. Two Polish Jews contrasts well-to-do gentleman Samuel Goldenberg, with his dignified air, and poor beggar Shmuyele, with a variant of the same first name. Adler’s Limoges: the Market Place is lighthearted, as it realizes the agora busily bustling. Catacombae: Sepulcrum romanum is an underground necropolis, a place of gloom, but also of awe, that puts one at one “with the dead in a dead language.” In the Great Gate of Kiev, Adler grandly realizes the monumental structure, designed by Hartmann, but never built, with strains of a Russian Orthodox hymn and triumphant bells tolling, comparable to the Coronation prologue to Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov,” and standing as an overwhelming climax to this powerful piano recital.