George Flynn: Derus Simples

This 2001 release on the Chicago-based Southport Composers Series label represents the follow-up to pianist/composer/educator George Flynn's 1999 two-CD production entitled Trinity. Yet here, the composer's extended composition is performed by Australian-born pianist Geoffrey Douglas Madge, professor of piano at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, Netherlands. Basically, Flynn's creation is constructed upon tritones, utilization of space, and intersecting axes, whereby Madge executes linear passages amid a seemingly centralized vortex or perimeter of sound and space. Otherwise, to the untrained ear or perhaps non-musicians, much of this may seem improvised, as Flynn's music skirts the boundaries of abstract classicism, the avant-garde, and chamber-like motifs, while serious students of the piano may reap huge rewards here. Overall, Madge demonstrates remarkable agility amid sweeping arpeggios rendered throughout various octaves as he also embraces dissonance and melody in relation to Flynn's dissimilar musical ideologies.