John Farrer [presided] over the Los Angeles premiere of Gordon Getty's Three Waltzes.... The Getty pieces, originally written for piano, turned out to be a very pretty, courtly, melodic, unabashedly diatonic set of miniatures with an occasional bent for the unexpected--like the violent chromatic gusts from the violins in the first waltz. Getty does have his own voice, a reticent, solitary one that keeps the noises from the 20th century at bay but not entirely out of earshot.

Orchestration was also a problem with philanthropist Gordon Getty's Three Pieces for String Orchestra, which sounded like a student work despite some nice melodies....

Getty redeemed himself, however, with his words and composition of the second of his Old Welsh Folk Songs, performed by eight choristers and the Symphony: “The kindest man alive? / Then bury me in state, boys / ... / Underneath the grate boys...” all interpolated with “Fal-dee-re-dee-ree-do” and sung at breakneck speed. Unlike the earlier suite; this number was on the money.

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.

Getty...doesn't seem to trust his own lyrical instincts or creativity. He comes up with ideas and gestures that have attractive profiles, but two bars later, he either repeats himself or goes on to something else. The music starts and stops and loses any flow.

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.”

...Engaging, consonant salon music that did not show Getty at his most creative, by any stretch. He is comfortable at orchestration, but painfully repetitive in this placebo background music.

Jekowsky opened with the premiere of three waltzes by the prominent San Francisco patron Gordon Getty. They are pleasant and brief, as their material and aspiration dictate. Unpretentious in the manner of incidental music for a play, they faithfully reflect their origins as pieces homemade for the piano, essentially melody with waltz bass, transcribed for orchestra.

The first waltz, "Madeline," named after a ghost in Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher," interpolates sections with light spectral effects. The second, "Tiefer und Tiefer" ("Deeper and Deeper"), rather stays on its nice, even surface, whereas "Ehemals" ("Formerly") did not so much lilt as hop a bit.

A light souffle was provided in the middle of the program, with "Three Waltzes" by Gordon Getty.

They were pleasing and...even a bit seductive and more pliant than in their local premiere two years ago.