Sarah Rothenberg: In Darkness and Light
DACAMERA Editions

No composer better personifies the character of the recent pandemic than Morton Feldman, what with the time-suspending stillness of his work, so it makes sense that pianist Sarah Rothenberg would have gravitated to his final piano piece Palais de Mari (1986) in early 2020 to seek solace and help make sense of a discombobulating time. Her playing of the thirty-three-minute piece also helped her deal with the death of a close friend from COVID, and it led her to Beethoven's last sonata and the idea of juxtaposing two dramatically contrasting statements in a shared project. A fitting complement to the two is Vijay Iyer's For My Father, which was written for Rothenberg and appears in its premiere recording on Darkness and Light, the second release from the nascent DACAMERA Editions label. While Rothenberg's fourth solo recital disc is being released now, it was recorded in December 2022 when the worst days of the pandemic were still a painfully fresh memory.

While the Beethoven and Feldman works are extremely contrasting, the “metaphysical and spiritual journey” of the Sonata No. 32 in C Minor does, as Rothenberg convincingly argues, find “a strange continuity in the contemplation and suspended time” of Palais de Mari. That Iyer's 2021 memorial was composed during the pandemic lends it extra resonance for a piano recital project so themed, and as Rothenberg notes, one more intriguing connection emerges in the fact that Iyer's piece was written exactly 200 years after Beethoven's. Further to that, just as his sonata smoothly segues into the Feldman work, so too does Iyer's two-part For My Father transition into the two movements of the sonata—even if the opening work's thirteen-minute duration is dwarfed by the half-hour lengths of the others.

While Iyer's established himself as a creative force in jazz, the work he's produced for classical contexts is also being recognized, a case in point For My Father. Weeks after his dad's 2021 passing, Iyer happened upon a recording of Shostakovich's 24 Preludes and Fugues and found himself transfixed by its sixteenth prelude and fugue. While so immersed, a prelude and fugue of his own began to crystallize that seemed to channel his father's spirit. In keeping with its title, “Prelude: Orison” is prayerful, and the affection Iyer felt for his elder is palpable. Rothenberg executes the hymnal expression with meticulous attention to detail but also intense feeling. Iyer also wanted to sing his father's praises with the piece and does so during “Fugue: Upastuti.” Less mournful yet still dignified, the material here gradually swells in energy, vitality, and drama, as if to suggest Iyer's recovery from tragedy and re-engagement with life at its fullest.

Beethoven's Sonata No. 32 in C minor follows, its opening “Maestoso-Allegro con brio ed appassionato” comprising two parts, a regal introduction and tumultuous allegro. Written between 1821 and '22, the piece is strikingly forward-looking in its deployment of dissonance and striking also for its quasi-macabre theme and general sense of agitation. Ever teetering on the edge of instability, Rothenberg delivers it impeccably, from its tender passages to its florid, keyboard-spanning ones. Arresting for the peaceful stillness of its cantabile intro is “Arietta. Adagio molto semplice e cantabile,” especially when its gentle radiance seems so far removed from the turbulence of the opening part. With twenty minutes at its disposal, the material takes its time developing but soon blossoms as the pace quickens and the music turns jaunty in some wildly visionary anticipation of ragtime. That episode slowly dissolves until the music resumes its climb, the piano now unmoored, fluttering in its upper register, and becoming increasingly abstracted as it searches for stabilizing ground. As if penetrating through mist, the opening theme reappears, assertively stated and gaining strength, before morphing into celestial trills that eventually settle into a final chord.

That quiet ending provides a fluid segue into the luminous near-stasis of Feldman's piece. Rothenberg says of his music that it's mobile-like, “goes nowhere,” and “hovers,” astute characterizations that are all applicable to Palais de Mari. Its drifting quality and unhurried unfolding demand a temporary recalibration in listening habits when normal expectations about development, tempo, and narrative structure are challenged. Our customary anticipation of forward progression is thwarted by music that aspires to achieve stillness. While subtle harmonic shifts are present, notes reverberantly intone so minimally that little semblance of formal structure appears aside from the repetition of a four-note pattern. Recalling the pandemic-related feeling of being moored in an unchanging moment, Palais de Mari locates us in a temporal present that's paradoxically advancing through time. Needless to say, it's vastly different from the Beethoven sonata, which changes shape mercurially throughout its thirty-minute run.

June 2026