Donald Berman was a student of the great pianist John Kirkpatrick whose work with both Charles Ives and Carl Ruggles may be unique in its closeness over decades of hard, dedicated work.* Both composers depended heavily on Kirkpatrick to put some of their most important work into a form which was both faithful to their vision and, also, performable. Donald Berman was a part of that work in the period when Kirkpatrick carried on after their deaths and his performances of those pieces are astonishingly good. The CDs of his performances of the music of both are among the finest ever issued or likely to ever be issued. As mentioned the other day, you have to hear the CDs to get the full impact and range of subtle treatment. You get the feeling and sound of direct transmission of the visions of both of those great American composers though Kirkpatrick.
The St. Gaudens' is, of course, The Robert Gould Shaw and Massachusetts 54th Regiment Memorial relief on the Boston Common. Robert Lowell, in his most famous poem, also meditated on the St. Gaudens monument. His vision, brought up to date in the Vietnam era, is bleak, it would be even bleaker if he had seen the next half century. I'd rather think about that on the 4th of July than that document of, by and for aristocratic slave owners, Indian killers and land thieves worshiped by the secular and decaying empire we have allowed the country to devolve into.
* If one of my enemies had been a more careful reader he'd have kicked up some hay over something I posted yesterday. If he had, I had the answer.
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