Derus Simples

Editorial Reviews
Album Description
GEORGE FLYNN - DERUS SIMPLES” GEOFFREY DOUGLAS MADGE, PIANO THE SOUTHPORT COMPOSERS SERIES S-SSD 0085 “…Flynn composes and plays ruggedly articulate piano music..a vivid essay” (comments about Flynn's piano solo "Trinity,")

Julian Cowley, The Wire We begin 2001 with the world premiere of Chicago composer George Flynn’s piano solo “Derus Simples.” The extended composition is performed on this disc by the Australian born pianist Geoffrey Douglas Madge, who currently is professor of piano at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, Netherlands. Flynn’s 1999 Southport release was the 2 CD set “Trinity” (S-SSC-5501-2). George Flynn (b. 1937) was raised in Montana and Washington. He considers Charles Ives “Concord Sonata” one of his earliest influences. Since 1977 Flynn has chaired Music Composition at DePaul University’s School of Music, in Chicago. “Derus Simples,” in the words of Flynn, “is a continuous work whose gestures, shape and character result from expansions of simple sounds or ideas -“simples”- into complexities that frequently revert back to their simple origins.” The composition was commissioned by the philosopher Kenneth Derus as a way of celebrating the centenary of the composer Kaikhosru Sorabji (1892-1988). There is lyrical beauty and energy in the various levels of “Derus Simples” as it builds its extended structure with a variety of pianistic textures and gestures. Pianist Geoffrey Douglas Madge, who is admired for his interpretations of difficult 20th century music, including Sorabji’s “Opus Clavicembalisticum,” inhabits Flynn’s musical world and captures its essence in a compelling manner within his 41 minute seamless execution of “Derus Simples.” Melody, silence, space and dissonance create a diverse palate of symphonic pianism. The Southport Composers Series was formed to record and distribute “classical” contemporary solo, chamber, orchestral and electronic works generally not available elsewhere in the recording industry.

Tracks:

Derus Simples
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Derus Simples

Album Description

GEORGE FLYNN - DERUS SIMPLES” GEOFFREY DOUGLAS MADGE, PIANO THE SOUTHPORT COMPOSERS SERIES S-SSD 0085 “…Flynn composes and plays ruggedly articulate piano music..a vivid essay” (comments about Flynn's piano solo "Trinity,")

Julian Cowley, The Wire We begin 2001 with the world premiere of Chicago composer George Flynn's piano solo “Derus Simples.” The extended composition is performed on this disc by the Australian born pianist Geoffrey Douglas Madge, who currently is professor of piano at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, Netherlands. Flynn's 1999 Southport release was the 2 CD set “Trinity” (S-SSC-5501-2). George Flynn (b. 1937) was raised in Montana and Washington. He considers Charles Ives “Concord Sonata” one of his earliest influences. Since 1977 Flynn has chaired Music Composition at DePaul University's School of Music, in Chicago. “Derus Simples,” in the words of Flynn, “is a continuous work whose gestures, shape and character result from expansions of simple sounds or ideas -“simples”- into complexities that frequently revert back to their simple origins.” The composition was commissioned by the philosopher Kenneth Derus as a way of celebrating the centenary of the composer Kaikhosru Sorabji (1892-1988). There is lyrical beauty and energy in the various levels of “Derus Simples” as it builds its extended structure with a variety of pianistic textures and gestures. Pianist Geoffrey Douglas Madge, who is admired for his interpretations of difficult 20th century music, including Sorabji's “Opus Clavicembalisticum,” inhabits Flynn's musical world and captures its essence in a compelling manner within his 41 minute seamless execution of “Derus Simples.” Melody, silence, space and dissonance create a diverse palate of symphonic pianism. The Southport Composers Series was formed to record and distribute “classical” contemporary solo, chamber, orchestral and electronic works generally not available elsewhere in the recording industry.

Customer Reviews:

Derus+Simples, a Welcome Compound Fractal!.......2007-03-01

Chicago-based composer/pianist George Flynn has created a work unified with the "Complex of Simples", small tonal units of great potential. In something like a "self-reflective Bell-curve" Flynn takes the tiny tritone through a fantastic journey of harmonic, rhythmic, and magnificent (yet often subliminal) counterpoint, utilizing the "middle - sostenuto - pedal", that which holds both played and unplayed notes, while a massive mid-section propells through enthralling virtuosic hurdles, gradually returning to the base-Simples, that pay wonderful homage to Mr. Derus and Mr. Sorabji, to whom the work is dedicated.

Pianist Geoffery D. Madge, a pioneer of the music of Sorabji and many others, makes a potent, empowering statement with his performance of this most complex of "Simples".

rarefied,classic beauty,more abstract by comparison.......2001-07-15

this is the first I've heard of another pianist delving into Flynn's music, and the invitation is a powerful one. Madge as well has a special affinity with multi-textural interplaying traversing the keyboard,an elegant sense of balance proportion,shape,design from so multifarious,multi-dimensional music as Flynn.Madge seems more at home with Flynn less with his Wolpe or Krenek where it was a bit cautious, tedious and labored. If you've scoured Flynn's magnum opus to the world,his Trinity, Derus Simples is very much more fragmented,sparce and transparent not in a derogatory way either,more SIMPLE particles of piano sound, deeply elegant and evocative. With Trinity, and American Rest, it seemed Flynn's creativity inhabited a tunnel, a myopia waiting to break out of itself,which it eventually did with the advent of Salvage,which I've heard more than four times myself live,Derus Simples however still retains a music powerfully wrought, treacherously focused, well proportioned,with a classical beauty even if a varigated,thorny,asymmetrical one. There is much less extroverted passion here in Derus Simples,no seemingly uncontrolled furies of roaring piano textures,no unstoppable blizzards and cascades of tones,fistfulls of tones, all tightly controlled by Flynn looking from on high above. Derus Simples has more an abstract rarefied beauty, something I've yet to encounter with Flynn's dynamic multi-dimensional music. However you never sense the presence of deep physical models,geometric arborecences,or like configurations of ice frozen to a window pane through the morning light,no deeply engrained set theoretical lines as one would fine in Babbitt or Xenakis,or Ferneyhough. Flynn's music directed from the outside in,his subjectivity is always at the heart the center of the pianistic discourse. Again he has returned the piano its profound voice something lossed with the advent the eclipse of modernity and the post-war avant-garde.

Track Listings:

Track Listings

track listings

Track Listings

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