Tao's recording of Getty's piano pieces offers a hearing of seven works spanning the breadth of the composer-philanthropist's career. The miniatures on this recording are playful and simplistic. They do not threaten or disturb. 

Some listeners might find this refreshing, but Getty's stubbornly tonal language might be a detriment to the sense he tries to capture. He says of his compositions, "Whatever it was that the great Victorian composers and poets were trying to achieve, that's what I'm trying to achieve." It is hard to tell whether that is apparent here. When I think of Victorian poetry, I associate it with elegiac melancholy and the "long, withdrawing roar" in the sound- scape of Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach, or the anguish and dejection that borders religious crisis in Gerard Manley Hopkins's later poetry. If this is the case, Getty's pleasant tonal language is not very well suited to Victorian poetry. This is true for his other literary influences: I hear nothing of Edgar Allan Poe in the Ancestor Suite. In fact, if not for some Internet research, I would never have guessed that the pieces derived from a ballet on "THe Fall of the House of Usher".. A more varied harmonic vocabulary might have helped him convey Poe better, if that was his intention....

When compared to Dorken's Janacek or Koroliov's Prokofieff, these pieces cannot help but sound like an attractive surface, pretty but never going beneath that. Nevertheless, this is light, brief, and pleasing.

As I've mentioned in these pages on other occasions, I am generally a fan of the music of Gordon Getty, my unhappy review of his opera Plump Jack conditioned by the fact that it was an abridged performance and conveyed little or nothing of the theatrical atmosphere that the composer put into it. Tonal he is, but uninteresting he is not.

On this occasion, we are presented with a program of solo piano music written over a period of 50 years: The Homework Suite was composed in 1962, the Andantino and Scherzo Pensieroso written in 2012. As the composer put it in the liner notes, his composition teacher, Sol Joseph, once asked him if he "expected to move on to atonalism. I told him I kind of doubted it." The Homework Suite, as it turns out, is an utterly charming set of very short pieces (four of them either a half-minute or a minute in length, only one-the "Berceuse"-running on for a lengthy two minutes), yet wit and charm imbue these works, as they do nearly all of Getty's music. The Ancestor Suite is apparently Getty's homage to his European roots, consisting of waltzes, a schottische, polka-polonaise, gavotte, march, one enigmatic little piece entitled "Madeline" and another called "Ewig Du." In listening to these works, I couldn't help reflecting on the similar style of Karim Al-Zand which I had listened to the day before (see my review elsewhere in this issue). A similarly light approach to composing, but what a difference in quality! Every single piece in Getty's suite sparkles with not only wit but invention; there are, indeed, touches of polytonality or atonality here and there; and the music holds your attention. (And yes, I think that even a child, at least one over the age of six, will be attentive to Getty's pieces.) In a certain way, this suite is almost like Debussy's Children's Corner: The music is light in character but not in quality. It has sparkle, rhythmic drive, and also numerous little surprises within each vignette...particularly the "March-Sarabande-Presto," which starts out with a conventional (and tonal) march, but then veers towards a strangely modal and atmospheric "sarabande" before winding up with a quirky, bitonal Presto. Also the last two pieces, "Ewig Du" and "Finale," begin with the exact same little melody, but what stays relaxed and charming in the former quickly develops into a swirling mélange of sound, becomes quiet and mysterious, and then suddenly ends.

The Three Traditional Pieces begin with the Irish-tinged "Fiddler of Ballykeel," yet once again Getty's vivid imagination takes him onto side paths in his musical excursion. "Tiefer und Tiefer" (Deeper and deeper) is a slow waltz, while "Ehemals" (Formerly) is a lively piece that Getty once again breaks up into smaller musical fragments and puts together again in his own unique and charming way. First Adventure and Raise the Colors are brief, simple works, much like the component parts of the Homework Suite, but the Andantino is quite fine, with a quirky and unexpected atonal bridge, while the Scherzo Pensieroso wends its quirky way along a path of finely chosen single notes in the upper range of the keyboard, meeting the left hand in the middle before the latter rolls its way into a faster tempo, in which the left joins it for a bit of minor-key fun. Getty's music often has that effect on me: It raises my good-humor level.

Pianist Conrad Tao, with whom I was unfamiliar, plays these works with a great deal of charm and warmth, and in Gordon Getty's world charm is half the musical content... On musical grounds, this disc is a winner.

It would be all too easy to regard what he writes as claiming attention only because of [Gordon Getty's] billionaire status, but this would be as unfair as it is unwarranted. On the basis of Conrad Tao's program of piano music, Getty has genuine talent. He has at least a dozen recordings to his credit, and with his 80th birthday approaching next year (Dec, 20, 2014), maybe it's time serious attention was paid to this serious composer.

The CD offers a program of miniatures composed over the span of half a century (1962 to 2012), but with no stylistic development. As the composer says in his brief program notes, they might as well have been written in reverse order. Two approach five minutes in length, but most are in the two-to-three minute range. I listened to the curiously titled Homework Suite (five pieces) and Ancestor Suite (eleven pieces), the bulk of the program, before I learned the names of the individual numbers, and couldn't help trying to guess what each might be describing. In character, they much remind me of Schumann's Kinderszenen and Album for the Young, each a unique gem, light in spirit but generous in content. Heard in succession, they provide enough variety to warrant continuous listening. It turns out most of them bear dance titles (waltz, polka, gavotte, etc.), but regardless of what you choose to call them, they exude charm and elegance. Getty freely admits that “my music seems to belong more in the nineteenth century, with inklings of others…” Think Schubert distilled through the alembic of Satie or Poulenc in a playful or irreverent mood.

The 19-year-old American pianist (and violinist and composer) Conrad Tao plays these pieces with obvious love, commitment and meticulous care in matters of dynamics, color, contrast and rhythmic nuance. This is no toss-off exercise. Tao tells a story, paints a picture or creates a little adventure with every piece. His playing is so imaginative and persuasive that he virtually commands your attention. The music is for the most part technically simple enough for a third- or fourth-year piano student to handle, and offers highly attractive material for recital purposes to complement well-worn repertory. The recorded sound is clear and clean, though the piano (a Steingraeger) is rather brittle and clanky in the upper register – my only complaint about an otherwise highly enjoyable release.

Gordon Getty is a major musical philanthropist in the Bay Area, and a composer as well. His PentaTone SACD release will be of value to those who appreciate terse, melodic, and simplistic piano music that at times evinces a subtle sophistication. The 23 tracks on the CD, half of which last less than two minutes each, consist of three suites and four individual numbers.

The Ancestor Suite is the longest set on the release at 10 tracks. The program notes, even more abbreviated than the music, relate nothing about this composition or its title. However, a search on the Internet reveals that the music was composed for a ballet on Poe's Fall of the House of Usher. Perhaps the story appealed to Getty because in it, the ancestors of Roderick Usher had been noted for “repeated deeds of munificent yet unobtrusive charity” as well as a “passionate devotion to the intricacies … of musical science.” In any case, the dances of the suite are far lighter entertainment than the tone of the Poe. Most of them are in an obvious ABA form; some are two or three ABA dances strung together. Many are given central European titles (Zwei Walzer, Schottische, Ewig Du). Chords are uncommon; linearity is emphasized in a predominate two-part harmonic texture. Some numbers display a child-like naiveté; others move briefly into more mysterious realms. My favorite of the bunch is “Waltz of the Ancestors,” which you can hear in the excerpt from the CD.

The Three Traditional Pieces are the most attractive numbers on the CD. “The Fiddler of Ballykeel” features a melody with a nice Scotch twang. While the title of “Tiefer und Tiefer” (deeper and deeper) doesn't make sense to me, in the absence of a booklet explanation, it is a pleasant waltz. Unlike most of the other music on the CD, “Ehemals,” (German for “formerly” — why?) offers a few technical challenges for the pianist, has a more complex form, and toys with a paraphrase from the third movement of Beethoven's “Emperor” concerto.

Two of the four individual pieces are light and brief, one referencing a phrase from the “Irish Washerwoman” jig. The last two, Andantino and Scherzo Pensieroso, are the most recently composed. Contrary to Getty's assertion that they “might easily” have been composed in 1962, the year of the CD's Homework Suite, a collection of pieces written when he was a San Francisco Conservatory student, they display far more melodic and harmonic variety, and a more malleable rendering of materials. Whether he admits it or not, Getty has matured over the years, and for the better.

Pianist Conrad Tao rightly takes Getty's pieces on with a minimum of flamboyance, emphasizing clarity and linearity. A couple of the endings sound a bit too abrupt for my taste; perhaps a greater ritard may have been in order. But other than that, his work is flawless, deserving of Getty's accolade to him: “Everything came out as I had imagined it.”

Super-talented young Illinois native Conrad Tao has made a little recorded detour through some piano works of American composer-philanthropist Gordon Getty, with wonderful results — hopefully contributing to the liberation of art music world from some enduring prejudices in the process.

First of all, let's deal with the music itself. The Pentatone Classics album contains 23 sketches and miniatures, most of them collected into two suites: the Homework Suite of five pieces, which dates from 1962, while Getty was studying at the San Francisco Conservatory, and the later Ancestor Suite, which contains 11 pieces.

Although this isn't complex or serious music, having a true virtuoso interpret it puts each piece into the best possible light. Tao (who turns 19 in a few weeks) brings an easy, beguiling lightness to Getty's creations, many of which do make serious technical demands.

There are many young pianists throwing themselves into the performance of miniatures these days. They present a fine challenge in conveying mood, structure and narrative in a very short space of time.

So that's prejudice No. 1 dispelled. There is value and enjoyment to be had from short works.

Prejudice No. 2 is also in the process of being demolished: that tonal writing has no place in the new music universe. Getty, who is in his late-70s, has spent his whole life battling an atonal aesthetic.

As he relates in the album notes: “My teacher at the Conservatory, Sol Joseph, once asked me if I expected to move on to atonalism. I told him I kind of doubted it.”

And so Getty would have been dismissed there and then.

Which brings us to Prejudice No. 3, concerning the wealthy dilettante.

Getty inherited billions in oil money, so anything he has done has been for the sheer pleasure of doing it rather than to make a living. As is the case with a 17th or 18th century prince taking an interest in music, we condescendingly smile, nod, then return our attentions to the serious composers, the ones who had to struggle for their art.

But Getty has a clear sense of what he's trying to do. The results are not just coherent but compelling. And we should applaud that.

The opening Oath of the Ushers, based on Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher", has surprises both good and bad. Under the baton of Emil de Cou, currently Music Director and principal conductor at Pacific Northwest Ballet, the orchestra brings to life the original score by San Francisco-based composer Gordon Getty from his Ancestor Suite.  The combination of an experienced ballet conductor with a talented ensemble highlights the composition's structure,  shifting between neo-classical and a more contemporary feeling while still providing a clear rhythmic framework for the dancers.

Gordon Getty...[is] a fine composer who speaks a very tonal language. This collection of orchestral works shows that, while vocal music is Getty's specialty, he obviously has no trouble working with instruments.

The 12-minute Overture to Plump Jack (Shakespeare's nickname for Falstaff) is a collection of loosely connected themes and episodes, some contemplative, others dramatic, all easy on the ears. Ancestor Suite (2009) is a ballet score written for the Russian National Orchestra. The 12-movement, 36-minute work is about Poe's Fall of the House of Usher, where the living (Poe and friends) meet the immortal members of the Usher family at a ball. Much of the time, you'd swear you are hearing 19th century ballet music, but the interesting twists and turns are contemporary.

'Tiefer und Tiefer' (Deeper and Deeper, 1991) is a haunting little waltz. Homework Suite is an orchestrated version of a piano piece Getty wrote in 1964; its five little movements are character-pieces with solo lines for oboe, piccolo, violin, English horn, and harp. 'The Fiddler of Ballykeel' and 'Raise the Colors' salute Getty's Irish roots.

If you want new music that sounds old yet fresh, this is for you.

Getty's influence on the evening's program suggested a keen interest in different settings of the human voice, apparent also in the variety of form in his own composition. He's consistent, though, in seeking out poetry as inspiration, and soprano Lisa Delan effectively showcased his Four Dickinson Songs, with light and lively intonation and an ingenuous theatricality conveying both the era and the affect of the 19th-century New England poet. The composer's musical lines, in which Delan was prettily paired by Symphony pianist Robin Sutherland, were similarly unaffected and accessible, supporting the verse and the refined but earnest emotion.

Getty openly champions and allegedly channels 19th-century tonal approaches to classical music, and there were bows to Johann Strauss in his orchestral Three Movements from Ancestor Suite. But there were also surprising and delightful hints of 20th-century Russian modernism therein, particularly in the Polka: Polonaise section. These appealing pieces of program music appear in different form in Getty's Usher House, recently released by PentaTone Classics and due for a production by the San Francisco Opera.

The new piece's power contrasted with the private delicacy of the composer's soloist-and-piano outings, and suggested Getty's mastery of broader strokes, with massed singers and instrumentalists.

On his way back to his seat from Intermission, Getty confided to a reviewer his excitement about the upcoming premiere of his A Prayer for My Daughter, which began the evening's second half. The new piece enjoyed a splendid reading by the full Symphony and Chorus. Although Prayer made use of devices favored in the Dickinson settings, including alternating arpeggiation and unison, the new piece's power contrasted with the private delicacy of the composer's soloist-and-piano outings, and suggested Getty's mastery of broader strokes, with massed singers and instrumentalists.

Both groups of musicians displayed the composer's appeal as a colorist, highlighting sections of the chorus and orchestra (with horns and woodwinds particularly noteworthy to this reviewer) to illustrate poet Yeats' references to sea and stormy sky. Prayer affected an impressive dynamic range, from a gutsy beginning on to a place of parental resolution, if not absolute certitude.

The evening opened with a surprise.... This was Oath of the Ushers, to a score by Gordon Getty, a complex, strange 30-minute work. It is a movement from Getty's Ancestor Suite, the story based on Poe's 1839 The Fall of the House of Usher, about the mysterious destruction of the Ushers' immortality....

Getty has long concentrated on Ancestor Suite, having The Oath of Ushers movement premiered by the Bolshoi dancers and RNO in 2009, in Moscow, Perm, Voronezh, and Krasnoyarsk. Friday night was the U.S. premiere.

Besides the dancers' performance, the good thing about this dramatic discombobulation is the music, perhaps Getty's best. It begins as gentle circus music, transforming into something reminiscent of Prokofiev ballets, and ending in hesitating, stretched-out phrases. It could work well as abstract music, without reference to Ushers, et.al.