In the CD booklet, it's explained very clearly: that with My American Story – North Daniil Trifonov relives his immigrant journey in the 'New World' through American music, ranging from jazz and swing to modernism, minimalism, and popular soundtracks. "I didn't want to record an anthology," he says. "These are simply pieces I feel personally connected to. My favorites that speak to me musically."
This vibrant musical mosaic, according to Trifonov, "introduced me to many of the perspectives, styles, cultures, places, people, stories, and expressions that shaped and influenced my American experience."
The project is framed by two major American piano concertos spanning nearly a century: George Gershwin's daring, jazzy Concerto in F from 1925, and Mason Bates' equally brilliant Piano Concerto, specially composed for Trifonov and first performed by him in 2022 with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Yannick Nézet-Séguin (also represented on this album). Fortunately, both works offer more substance than just a virtuosic showpiece.
Trifonov moved from Russia to the United States in 2009 to study at the Cleveland Institute of Music (CIM) with Sergei Babayan. There he discovered Art Tatum and called his recordings his first experience with jazz. Raised on a steady stream of Scriabin, Rachmaninoff, and other Russian greats, the astonished student was deeply impressed by Tatum's inventiveness and dazzling virtuosity.
Vladimir Horowitz allegedly said about Art Tatum: "If he took classical music seriously, I would quit my job the next day." Tatum was born in nearby Toledo, Ohio, and performed in Cleveland for years before landing on the stage of 52nd Street in New York. Trifonov pays tribute to the African-American keyboard wizard and musical pioneer with his own auditory transcription of Tatum's 1949 recording of I Cover the Waterfront.
Gershwin was a contemporary of Tatum who expanded the riffs and grooves of American jazz into the classical idiom. Trifonov first heard Gershwin'sConcerto in F as a teenager in Moscow and was immediately seized by the desire to perform it.
The album also features perhaps the most canonical American composer, Aaron Copland. Rather than a work suggesting the gently rolling hills and open prairies often associated with Copland's name, Trifonov has chosen the tense, dissonant, and rarely recordedPiano Variations(1930), which he calls both a masterpiece and the 'most challenging to play' of the compositions onMy American Storynames.
More than anything else canMy American Story – North (the follow-up to the album,My American Story – South, will present the music of Latin America) be described as a love story: about Trifonov's affection for his adopted home and love for the life—and family—he has built there. We hear this sentiment echoed in the slow, contemplative, harmonically lush version ofWhen I Fall in Loveby jazz pianist Bill Evans. Trifonov first heard Evans' recording of the jazz standard from 1960 while scrolling through a playlist and indeed... fell in love. "There is an authenticity in the expression," he says, "that for me characterizes the best qualities of this authentic American musical genre."
Film music is another quintessentially American genre. Before Trifonov arrived in Cleveland, his first impressions of America were based on Hollywood films, a few of which he had seen in cinemas during his youth in Moscow at the turn of the millennium. Once in Cleveland, Babayan and his classmates provided him with a complete immersion in American culture, including 'must-see' films ranging fromThe Godfather-trilogy and Mel Brooks'The Producers.
Memories of Sam Mendes' dark comedyAmerican Beautyfrom 1999 and the film adaptation of John Grisham's novelThe Firmfrom 1993 also left a memorable impression. Both soundtracks offered Trifonov a fitting musical entry point. Dave Grusin'sMemphis Stomp, fromThe Firm, harks back to the vibrant blues and ragtime rhythms of the American 'Deep South' that pianists like Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis transformed into the foundation of rock 'n' roll in the 1950s. Meanwhile, Thomas Newman's theme isAmerican Beautypiano music at its most cinematic: atmospheric and introspective.
Pioneers like Steve Reich and Philip Glass characterized minimalism as a style that fuses 'the American ethos of perpetual motion' with modal patterns and harmonic progressions, which according to Trifonov creates an efficient, mesmerizing dynamic. John Adams'China Gates(1977) and John Corigliano'sFantasia on an Ostinato(1985) both employ their minimalist 'tools' with contrasting effects: while Corigliano bases his meditation on a quotation from Beethoven'sSeventh Symphony, isChina Gatesa sonic painting of nature, where the cyclical eighth notes suggest the delicate patter of rain in the California spring, a study in contrasts of light and shadow. For Trifonov, minimalism and naturalism are closely intertwined.
ThePiano Concertothat Mason Bates is in a sense a summation of Trifonov's highly personal American journey. Bates has explored much of the musical characteristics that Trifonov has included in his album. "The first movement is a witty, playful homage to the Renaissance," says Trifonov. "The second movement, in the Romantic tradition, is a soulful dialogue between the orchestra and the pianist. The third movement is eccentric and rhythmic, with a cinematic drive. I appreciate it when you can hear where music comes from. Mason's piece is one of the great concertos of this century – and it could only have been written in America!"
After his studies in Cleveland, Trifonov spent time living in New York City. With his young Russian-Latino family, he now calls home both North and South America. If he weren't a pianist, says Trifonov, he would have liked to be an urban planner. His sensitivity to the distinctive character of landscapes and urban cityscapes is evident in the connections he draws between the music he plays and the environments in which he lives. Trifonov's 'Field Version' of John Cage's iconoclastic 4'33" (1952) captures the essence of that connection: a journey from the Columbus Circle subway station in New York City, through the hustle of North America's most populated, densest, and diverse city, to the green, open space of Central Park. A walk of a few hundred meters that Trifonov has made countless times, and which encompasses the sound and spirit of this chapter in his American story. Thus the explanation by Julian Sancton and Oscar Alan.
What more is there to add? Only that this is a superb release, both in terms of the idiomatically styled interpretations and the recordings.
