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.

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.

Above all, in an era when serious music has thundered inexorably along paths of increasing elaboration, Getty's works are simple. They have a direct, immediate appeal to the average, not especially sophisticated listener. Getty knows how to write a tune, how to make a harmony sound distinctive, and particularly how to use the psychological overtones of music. Otherwise, he avoids undue elaboration like a plague.

Bay Area composer Gordon Getty's earliest piano pieces emerged in the symphonic world premiere of "Homework Suite," a collection of five movements whose only disappointment was their brevity. From the mesmerizing "Seascape" through "Giga's" Irish-laced jig to the galloping "Night Horses," the symphony here demonstrated what was to be the evening's shining achievement: a tenacious command of American composers' widely diverging styles.

The opening night concert at Oakland's Paramount Theatre for the OEBS officially celebrated Democracy, in tune with the recent national election. As Music Director Michael Morgan's "Message from the Maestro" put it:

We should celebrate the fact that we live in a country where nearly everyone is eligible to vote and therefore has a role in running the Republic. There has been a great and historical struggle to bring us to this point and for those who choose to participate, it is a moment that brings us together....

The concert began with American Fanfare (1985) by the African-American educator Adolphus Cunningham Hailstork... Next came the lightly scored Homework Suite (1961-62) by Bay Area composer and philanthropist Gordon Getty, written while he was a conservatory student. Its five very short unassuming movements run eight minutes in total. The most memorable is the first, "Seascape," which suggests a calm but wistful day on a lonely shore by means of a beautiful but unexploited melody for oboe.

Gordon Getty is mainly known for his vocal works but that he writes very well for orchestra proves the CD Orchestral Works. Neville Marriner leads the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields in contemporary music that touches the listener surprisingly well. It begins with the overture to his opera Plump Jack. American Getty, in his sixties, does not feel embarrassed to say that for two/thirds he stands in the nineteenth century. That other part is responsible for the fact that his music sounds everything but old-fashioned. Stravinsky, Copland and Prokofiev have inspired him here and there without affecting his originality. For example the Ancestor Suite smells very American although it is a series of old European dances: waltz, Scottish dance, polka, gavotte and sarabande. It is very colourful composed ballet-music, inspired by the story The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe. A beauty is Tiefer und Tiefer for strings. What a splendid intense sounding simplicity. The Homework Suite opens seductively with an oboe part, followed in the other small movements with beautiful, dancing-like roles for the other soloists. With The Fiddler of Ballykeel he refers catchingly to a neighbourhood near Belfast where his ancestors came from. Raising the Colors is a beautiful fanfare-like encore for brass, virtuoso finished with wood and strings. Not only in super audio this music is a surprise.

Gordon Getty, who describes himself as “two-thirds a 19th-century composer,” is nevertheless a creative and original one and, as this CD proves, the other one-third makes its presence felt often enough to provide interest and flexibility…. The performances by Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields display this orchestra's metamorphosis from its chamber roots in the 1960s to its more robust sound today. PentaTone's sound, undeniably resonant as a result of SACD mastering, is nevertheless clear and transparent at all times.