Michael Finnissy: Piano Works
Ian Pace, piano
Metier MSV CD92027 [76:02 + 70:49]
The trouble with Finnissy—and it’s a productive trouble—is that he makes you work. Not in the dreary, dutiful way of so much contemporary piano music, but with the kind of engagement that leaves you exhilarated and slightly unhinged. This double-disc set from Metier offers a substantial cross-section of his solo piano output, and Ian Pace proves once again that he’s the ideal guide through this forbidding terrain.
The Verdi Transcriptions, composed between 1972 and 1988 with later revisions, occupy the heart of the set. Finnissy takes Busoni’s idea of operatic fantasy and pushes it somewhere Busoni never imagined—perhaps never wanted to imagine. The first six pieces of Book 1 are essentially keyboard studies, though that phrase hardly captures their strangeness. They’re more like archaeological digs through the piano’s possibilities, turning up fragments and shards that may or may not connect to Verdi’s originals.
When melody finally emerges more clearly in the later pieces, it arrives transformed, refracted through layers of harmonic distortion and rhythmic displacement. The concluding movement of Book 2—over twenty-five minutes of unrelenting density—tests both performer and listener. Does it help to know your Verdi? Probably. But Finnissy isn’t playing parlor games here. This is music that uses Verdi as a point of departure for something entirely its own.
The two piano concertos included here follow Alkan’s model of concertos for solo piano, though Finnissy’s conception of virtuosity bears little resemblance to nineteenth-century display. Piano Concerto No. 4, revised in 1996, is—according to Pace’s own description—“the most manically virtuoso piece that Finnissy has ever written.” He’s not exaggerating. Every artistry in the modern pianist’s arsenal gets deployed, and some that probably shouldn’t be in anyone’s arsenal. Yet Finnissy never writes against the instrument, never resorts to the prepared-piano gimmickry that became tiresome decades ago. The writing is fiendishly difficult but idiomatically conceived.
Piano Concerto No. 6 takes a different path. Where the Fourth is manic, the Sixth is spectral—long stretches of near-stasis punctuated by sudden eruptions. The extended coda feels like watching fog roll in over a landscape, familiar contours dissolving into gray. It’s eerie music, genuinely unsettling in ways that have nothing to do with mere dissonance.
Snowdrift (1972) and To & Fro (1978, revised 1995) provide necessary breathing space, though “lighter” would be the wrong word. They’re simply shorter, more concentrated. Snowdrift in particular has a crystalline quality—you can almost hear the individual ice crystals forming and reforming.
Pace’s performances are beyond praise. He’s lived with this music for years, premiered much of it, and his command is absolute. More importantly, he finds the expressive core in even the most forbidding passages. The recordings, made at various locations between 1998 and 2000, are distinguished—close enough to capture the music’s textural details without becoming clinical.
This isn’t music for casual listening. It demands attention, rewards patience, and occasionally tries one’s endurance. But Finnissy is one of the most original voices in contemporary piano music, and this set makes a compelling case for his importance. The planned recordings of Folklore and the complete History of Photography in Sound can’t come soon enough.
Metier deserves credit for its commitment to Finnissy’s catalog. This is essential documentation of a major composer’s work, superbly performed and handsomely presented. Recommended, with the caveat that you should clear your schedule and prepare to concentrate.
