Better not play this within earshot of any piano-tuners. They tend to regard Crumb's special effects as an infringement of their exclusive rights to the inside of the instrument, and Richard Wernick's Sonata goes in for such expanses of accented fff that even the toughest of modern concert grands cannot hope to emerge unscathed.
Pianistically though, both pieces, and the playing, are most impressive. Crumb carries the Impressionist's art a stage further, creating the illusion of a magical percussion orchestra. This aural titillation comes perilously close to a kind of contemporary kitsch—particularly when the Coventry Carol appears ''like a minstrel's harp''—and there are no new tricks to add to the repertoire of the Makrokosmos pieces. But there is more to A Little Suite for Christmas than just superior doodling—the fifth piece develops ideas from the first two and the seventh eventually returns to the attractive chiming figure of the very opening (an appropriately Messiaenic theme, given the inspiration of Giotto's Paduan frescoes describing the life of Christ).
Crumb's atmospheric effects are more difficult to bring off cleanly than they sound. Lambert Orkis gives a marvellous performance, as he does of the Wernick Sonata. Both works are dedicated to him and both demand extremes of delicacy and power. Wernick's declamatory style seems to owe much to Copland and to Schoenberg (specifically Op. 11 No. 3). It is difficult to avoid the suspicion that his harmony is over-disciplined and his gestures over-indulgent—he wears his brain on his sleeve, as it were. But despite the inordinate length and grandiloquence there is something genuinely impressive about the way in which extremes of tempo and dynamic are held apart, reaching an unreconciled co-existence at the end. Orkis is as uncompromising as the score invites him to be. The recording (available on cassette and CD only) and the instrument, though tested to the limit, also come through their ordeal with great credit.'