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Navona Records2
More Rivers
Christina Petrowska Quilico, piano
More Rivers is a suite of seven solo-piano pieces by Frank Horvat, commissioned and performed by Canadian pianist Christina Petrowska Quilico. These pieces are meant to serve as a continuation to Ann Southam’s piece, Rivers, by which Quilico is greatly inspired. While rivers follow winding trajectories and ultimately end up in the ocean, these pieces don’t really go anywhere. Each piece sticks to one mode and lacks forward motion. With little musical tension within the melodies, harmonies, or sound qualities, this album provides an overly sentimental vision of what are often violent bodies of water.
Rapids and waterfalls are awe-inspiringly strong. Standing near one, you can easily get lost in the power of the gushing sound. Horvat’s pieces seem to miss—or only slightly allude to—the twists, turns, and violent features that rivers have. Each track, with the same title of More Rivers, is more of the same: a consonant and repetitive line over a modal drone, which alters here and there, but does not ultimately lead to any harmonic or timbral resolution.
Steve Reich’s Different Trains and Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach are examples of minimalist music which create progressive tension with the slow addition of musical elements. They also play a lot with sound texture and quality. As Horvat’s pieces are almost entirely consonant, there is little in the way of tension and release. They are also played exclusively with a sustained piano pedal. So while the water of the river can be smooth, rough, swift, or still, the texture of Horvat’s pieces does not vary at all.
On another note, these pieces do have a strong pianistic quality. They sound like they are satisfying to play, and I think they would be interesting études for an intermediate student pianist.
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