Pauline Oliveros: Sound Pieces

In the years since her death in 2016, aged 84, the popularity and influence of composer, musician, academic and author Pauline Oliveros have grown steadily in ways of which she would have been proud. Each year has seen new recordings issued, some featuring Oliveros herself, often on accordion, but increasingly recordings of her compositions played by others have overtaken those. Sound Pieces is one of the latter albums. It features six Oliveros compositions played by Apartment House, the earliest, "Horse Sings from Cloud," dating from 1975 and the most recent, "Sound Piece" itself, from 1998. Over half of the album's eighty minutes are taken up by the seven-part composition "Tree / Peace" from 1984; at the other extreme, the opening track "Quintessential" just tops six minutes. The pieces were recorded at Goldsmiths Music Studio, London, from September 2022 to January 2023.

Apparently, when Apartment House's Anton Lukoszevieze suggested a CD of Oliveros' music to Another Timbre's Simon Reynell, the latter was skeptical as he worried some of Oliveros' textual scores are so unspecific they could go in any direction, with too much left to the interpreting musicians. Lukoszevieze acknowledged that nearly all Oliveros scores are textual. Apart from "Tree / Peace" which is entirely constructed of pitch material plus interpretive instructions, all the pieces Apartment House recorded were textual. Given that, Reynell felt the ensemble proved his skepticism was misplaced, adding that they could probably take a page from a telephone directory and make something musically interesting from it.

As a result, the album comprises two halves; the first five tracks are interpretations by the ensemble, following discussion, while "Tree / Peace," which is for violin, cello and piano, is more structured. Despite that, there are no vast differences between the halves, and the music has a consistent sound and mood throughout. In the main, this is because Apartment House are so experienced at interpreting composers' works that their interpretations here sound as composed as "Tree / Peace," with all players contributing equally to the whole; most importantly, they capture the moods that Oliveros intended.

As for the label's 2023 Marco Baldini album Vesperi, a bonus track is available as a download. For Sound Pieces that track is "Quintessential 2," an alternative version of the opener "Quintessential," arranged for two instrumental groups compared to the album version's quartet, and playing for 4:51 compared to the album version's 6:11. When juxtaposed, the versions are significantly different but not radically as they have similar soundscapes and atmospheres. As with the rest of the album, they each reflect Oliveros' intentions and those of Apartment House, a near-perfect symbiotic relationship. Sound Pieces is wholeheartedly recommended to admirers of either party.