Life in Light-Years
Stuart Greenbaum’s Piano Sonata No 3
Georgina Lewis, piano
Salisbury Records SR40125
★★★
“My music aims to evoke an atmosphere apart from the routine of modern life. I believe in the need to allow space in a world increasingly filled with commercialism, light and noise pollution and 24/7 thinking.” So says Australian composer Stuart Greenbaum and the recent release of his Piano Sonata No 3, subtitled Life in Light Years, certainly sets out to do just that. Until now it was generally accepted that the longest piano sonata in the classical repertoire was Beethoven’s Sonata No 29, the Hammerklavier, which reins in at around 45 minutes. Well Greenbaum has certainly put that record to bed. His 3rd Piano sonata plays at 69 minutes and 22 seconds, just a tad short of Feruccio Busoni’s massive 73 minute concerto, but happily well short of Kaikhosru Sorabji’s monumental Opus Clavicembalistum which plays for just under four hours!
Life in Light Years is in six parts and carries such titles as the working day, stay the course, hardship and homecoming. The end of each part has a quick fifteen second ending called the wind sweeps through and then we’re off to the next part of life. It’s an inspired composition. My only quibble with it is that much of it sounds very similar and I wonder whether it really needed to be that long, though I suppose there were those who said the same thing about Tolstoy’s War and Peace!
I don’t know the pianist Georgina Lewis, who hails from Victoria and seems to specialise in playing modern Australian compositions, but her playing is at all times fluid and precise. She and Greenbaum make a perfect combination here. It’s what you might call music for a new age.
By Michael Morton-Evans