Walk in Beauty
When an Italian pianist falls in love with the American Southwest, he or she is apt to respond in some grand, expansive and colorful way to the space, light, and culture of the region. This at least was the case with Emanuele Arciuli, international concert artist and keyboard virtuoso, who started collecting artwork and piano pieces connected to the area. Walk in Beauty is a double album of fourteen of those works, many commissioned and premiered by him. Together they form an intimate love letter as well as a tribute as toweringly magical as the Sangre de Cristo mountain range.
Early attempts to use American Indian themes in Western art music, while sincere, often betrayed the composers’ lack of cultural understanding. This collection, however, includes works by indigenous composers alongside those of Anglo heritage; those who have spent serious time and energy researching their subjects and incorporating what they have learned deeply into their compositional method.
The Native composers here include a wide range of approaches and styles: Connor Chee’s fantasy on a Navajo theme, Raven Chacon’s exploration of noise and feedback from the piano mechanism, Brent Michael Davids’ sultry jazz miniature, and ballet transcriptions by inspirational forebear (and former Milhaud student) Dr. Louis Ballard.
The other composers pay homage to particular themes, such as John Luther Adams’ stone figures, Michael Daugherty’s bison dance, Peter Garland’s peyote rituals, Kyle Gann’s chant to save the earth (while modeling ecology and using Hopi rhythmic methods), and Martin Bresnick’s homage to Ishi, the last of his tribe.
The program is rounded out with complementary works by Jennifer Higdon, Carl Ruggles, Peter Gilbert, and Sufi convert (and former student of Feldman and Ornette Coleman) Talib Rasul Hakim.
Together, Walk in Beauty represents a spiritual hike through New Mexico, a terrain long filled with peoples, cultures, stone, weather, and rugged desert plants.
Emanuele Arciuli has established himself as one of the most original and interesting performers on today’s classical music scene. His repertoire ranges from Bach to contemporary music, with a strong affinity for composers from the United States. Having gained the respect of distinguished composers such as Helmut Lachenmann, Frederic Rzewski, John Adams, and George Crumb, Arciuli has had many new works written for him, including piano concertos by Michael Nyman and Louis W. Ballard, whose Indiana Concerto he premiered in 2008 with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. He lives and teaches in Bari, Italy.
