Quiet Rhythms - Book I

(The following is excerpted from the liner notes to Nicolas Horvath’s recording of Quiet Rhythms Book I.)

Susman composed the pieces in a kind of creative frenzy, while following a rigorous approach to structure, without necessarily anticipating that the cycle would finally take on such a vast scale. Each book includes 11 Actions, each of which is preceded by a Prologue. The Prologues are fluid pieces, laid out like the ebb and flow of waves in a harmonic ocean, like rhythmic ostinati which prepare the ear for the Action that will follow. These descriptive Prologues, sometimes having the character of a toccata, were composed after the Actions to which they correspond, and use different compositional techniques. The Prologues provide a “smoothed out” version of the harmonic tapestry of the Actions, in which Susman gives full rein to isorhythmic invention.

“The term ‘Action’ expresses first the movement: we are going somewhere. Its meaning is also philosophical, reflecting a desire to move the pianist and the listener to a different space. Through something different from what I‘ve done in the past, more syncopated. For me, it was also a way of ‘putting into action’ the innumerable ideas that I had mentally accumulated for several years concerning rhythm. These Actions are like bursts of inspiration, snippets of ideas that I needed to extend. I tried to develop these fragments into something that moved my ideas forward...”

The Actions, above all, are about movement. Strictly speaking, they are not “studies”, but each explores an idea or (iso)rhythmic cell with a continually changing metrical structure, borrowed either from montuño - the rhythmic and harmonic framework that is the foundation of the Cuban sound, or from clave - a rhythm of African origin, which is found in both Cuban rumba and Brazilian samba, formed by two measures of two beats each, the first of which (tresillo in Spanish) contains three sounds and the second, two.

The total effect is captivating. The combination of rhythmic instability with a carefully developed harmonic ambiguity intensifies the intoxicating, dizzying sensation of the music, and creates a fascinating internal energy, a breath that is both suspended and active. Nicolas Horvath finds “something both eternal and fragile,” in these virtuosic pieces. They seem at times to have always been there, like the iridescent reflections of the sun on the ocean. It is as if these syncopated yet unperturbed rhythms, like brush strokes which in turn rise and fall, triggered a palette of harmonious sound colors with endless nuances. Through “snippets of ideas that would simply take much longer to disappear,” these syncopations reach forward and backward, as in a dance, like the waves of the sea, surging in and flowing out. The tide has a life of its own.

— David Sanson

Translated from the French by Nicolas Horvath and Stephen Eddins