Search - Georges Gurdjieff, Linda Daniel-Spitz, Charles Ketcham :: Gurdjieff/de Hartman: Music for Piano, vol.1: Asian Songs & Rhythms

Skeptics might regard George Ivanovich Gurdjieff as a dilettante: interested in spirituality and the arts but only as they regarded his own following. But the piano works he composed with Thomas de Hartmann in the mid-1920s reveal tremendous depth. Born in the Caucasus and travelling into Asia throughout his life, Gurdjieff absorbed enough Asian musical and dance traditions to give these 49 piano miniatures--the sibling of another two-CD set, Music of the Sayyids and Dervishes--convincing depth. De Hartmann, who departed from Gurdjieff's circle in 1929--two years after these works were formulated--likely added the low-end harmonics and carefully dusky textures. But Gurdjieff is likely responsible for the rhythmic moodiness of these pieces. Given that they were pedagogic, in a very loose sense, they seem elementary at times. But they're always colored by a fine concatenation of modernist elements and seemingly indigenous Asian and Mediterranean elements. --Andrew Bartlett