Margaret Mills Plays Piano Works By Liebermann & Schonthal

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SCHONTHAL Canticles. Gestures. Self-Portrait. LIEBERMANN Piano Sonatas: No. 1; No. 2, op. 10, “Sonata Notturna” • Margaret Mills (pn) • CAMBRIA 1094 (58:30) Ruth Schonthal’s...


SCHONTHAL Canticles. Gestures. Self-Portrait. LIEBERMANN Piano Sonatas: No. 1; No. 2, op. 10, “Sonata Notturna” • Margaret Mills (pn) • CAMBRIA 1094 (58:30)


Ruth Schonthal’s Canticles (1987) is an imaginative piece that takes Hieronymous Bosch’s triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights as inspiration, replacing the pained symbolism with musical symbolism. There are three (untracked) sections: “Creation,” which includes high dissonance as well as upper-register pianissimi thirds representing the angels; “Garden,” a shimmering section that leads to “Hell,” the work’s battle scene (between the forces of Darkness and Light). I enjoyed Schonthal’s Sonata Breve on the Meditations and Overtones disc. This confirms her stature as an imaginative force in music. Mills gives a powerful and committed reading of the piece.


The work titled Gestures (1978) certainly lives up to its name. It is actually 11 short sound etudes. Musical material is shorn down to the very minimum. Occasionally the effect is Webernian; sometimes the musical surface is more fleshed out. This is certainly the most challenging of the pieces by Schonthal that I have encountered and one of the most rewarding. The Self Portrait of the Artist as an Older Woman dates from 1991. Schonthal attempts to illustrate both herself as a person and as a composer in this nine-minute piece, as well as injecting some of the frustrations she felt during the aging process (hence the anguished outbursts in the midst of plateaus of sweet serenity). Mills plays the nostalgic section toward the end with an almost music-box quality that is most affecting.


Lowell Liebermann actually studied with Ruth Schonthal for several years before attending the Juilliard School, so the present pairing of composers makes complete sense. These two sonatas have also been recorded by David Korevaar for Koch. Mills hits just the right tone for the gentle darkness of the Second Sonata (the “Sonata Notturna,” composed in 1982–83 for the pianist Stephen Hough and heard first in playing order here). The composer sees the work as a companion to his First Symphony. The feeling is of a music that is remarkably fragile, if not vulnerable even. Fugue plays a part, too (the second theme is a two-voice fugue derived from the first theme). Mills sustains the held-breath intensity well throughout.


The First Sonata dates from some five years earlier (1977), when the composer was a tender 15 years old. He himself premiered it at the Carnegie Recital Hall. Later, the work was dedicated to Stephen Hough. It begins with an Adagio (the sound world is distinctly related to that of the Second Sonata), but contrast comes in the form of the tricky little (1:07) scherzo, delightfully dispatched here by Mills. A shadowy Lento, well shaded by Mills, precedes the helter-skelter finale.


FANFARE: Colin Clarke


Product Description:

  • Release Date: August 30, 1994


  • UPC: 021475010943


  • Catalog Number: CD1094


  • Label: Cambria


  • Number of Discs: 1


  • Period: Cambria


  • Composer: Lowell Liebermann, Ruth Schonthal


  • Performer: Margaret Mills