Classical
The first CD by the remarkable young Israeli pianist David Greilsammer combined Baroque and contemporary works in an eloquent dialogue, and this new release offers an even more brilliant piece of programming. In one unbroken stream, he alternates between the crisp, slightly brittle keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti and John Cage's sonatas for prepared pianos, which are crisply percussive in a different but related sense. Cage's inventions are written for a piano with various metal, rubber and plastic items inserted in the strings, to produce an eerie, rambunctious sound palette, and their formal structure mirrors those of Scarlatti's pieces. So hearing the two composers back-to-back, in Greilsammer's deft and forcefully clear-eyed renditions, is a small miracle of thematic cohesiveness, in which some of the same concerns of texture, rhythm and form echo back and forth across the centuries.
