Multiples/The Lost Project

by Rocco Di Pietro
RDP (Di Pietro Editions), 2004
2 CD-ROMs, RDP00; 109 min. 25 sec., $24.95
Distributor website: http://www.dipietroeditions.com/.

Reviewed by Stefaan Van Ryssen
Hogeschool Gent
Jan Delvinlaan 115, 9000 Gent, Belgium

stefaan.vanryssen@pandora.be

Rocco Di Pietro's curriculum is impressive, to say the least. Studied with Hans Hage and Lukas Foss in Buffalo and with Bruno Maderna in Darmstadt; worked as a professor both in colleges around the USA, edited a hefty volume of interviews with Pierre Boulez and had his works performed by Kronos, Christobal Halffter, Lukas Foss, Bruno Maderna, Frances Marie Uitti, Yvar Mikhasoff and many others. His background lies in electronic, acoustic, and improvised music, and his work typically combines elements from these realms in a solid compositorial framework. Strangely, each piece builds on a firm structure, not so much exploring new grounds in the combination of sounds or the interaction of pre-recorded with improvised elements, but rather treating those elements as instruments in an ensemble. The performance of his severely classically composed scores has a surprising sounding result. What one hears is definitely composed, but it has the organic and sometimes chaotic unexpectedness of improvised music. In other words, the lessons of Maderna ripple through the unbounded pool of sounds in the composer's toolbox, creating patches of apparent turmoil on the surface over a steady undercurrent. Virtuosity is never far away, whether on the accordion or on acoustic or electric piano.

The first CD consists of five pieces under the umbrella name of 'Multiples': "Prison Dirges" (1995); "Choral Injured Bird/Multiple" (1997); "Dead Sleeping Soldiers" (1995); "Tears of Eros" (Torso Version B) "Live Multiple" (2001); and "Deconstructed Fountain from Ravel with Derrida Watching" (1995). Each piece is a renovated version of an earlier work, substantiating Di Pietro's claim that these CD's span his 20 years as a composer. Apart from that, there is nothing much that unites them, unless maybe the use of concrete and narrative sounds and the accompanying piano and accordion lines. The pieces range from the naive politically involved "Prison Dirges," which has five stories of jailbirds recited with some interspersed accordion, to the would-be shocking "Tears of Eros," where the sighing and moaning of lovers becomes absolutely laughable. Di Pietro explains the "meaning" of these pieces in a text of a considerable viscosity where lumps of Derrida, Michaux, and Baudrillard bob along. I much prefer to listen and hear than to be told what to read and know.

The second CD has three pieces from the 'Lost' project, "Wave Fugue with Electronic Lost" (2003); "Chamber Lost for Christian Boltanski" (2002) and "Mobile Phone Dreams B with Lost" (2002), and it offers, by far, the most interesting listening experience. The first part is an expressive introduction, followed by two instrumental suites of five movements each. The musical material of "Chamber" comes from the names of lost children, hence the reference to the French artist Christian Boltansky, who has built an impressive oeuvre round the themes of human evil, mortality, and (un)forgetting, with pictures of children who died in the Nazi camps. Because the references are much less literal than in the "Multiples" pieces, Di Pietro and the Avant Collective, whose improvisations are intense, lively, and intelligent, at times creating beautiful textures, reach a more involving emotional effect.