Fanfare Reviews
from March/April 2003
Reviews: Rochberg - Symphonic Excursions
ROCHBERG Black Sounds. Cantio sacra. Phaedra1 • Gil Rose, cond; Boston Modern O Project; Mary Nessinger (mez)1 • NAXOS 8.559120 (73:59)
George Rochberg has the conviction to compose in whatever idiom best suits his creative instincts. He has always refused the straightjacket that the changing dictates of taste would impose, whether avant-garde or neo-Romantic. The works on this superb new release show different aspects of his musical character, but they share a common integrity and a common voice.
The harder edges of Black Sounds were composed to accompany an Anna Sokolow ballet about the act of murder. Written for winds and percussion, it sounds larger in this stunning recording. Powerfully and unrelentingly direct in expression, it receives a tightly argued performance from conductor Gil Rose and his virtuoso musicians, who maintain an extraordinary degree of tension throughout these riveting 17 minutes.
Compelling in a different way is Rochberg's transcription from the early 1950s of a set of organ variations by Samuel Scheidt, based on the chorale Warum betriibst du dich, mein Herr? Rochberg's interest in and willingness to engage with music past places him squarely in the tradition of contemporary masters of each era. The scoring, for small orchestra, is straightforward and effective, respecting the solemn nature of the chorale's theme. I would have enjoyed this even more with a somewhat larger body of strings, as in Otto Klemperer's recording of his transcription of Rameau's Gavotte with Six Variations, available on Testament.
Engagement with the past for many composers prior to the current era has included a strong connection with classical antiquity. As I began listening to Rochberg's striking setting of sections of Robert Lowell's poetic translation of Phèdre, I thought immediately of Samuel Barber's dramatic Andromache 's Farewell. Yet, Barber's score is on a grander scale and mines a vein of poignant and soaring lyricism appropriate to its text. Rochberg's setting is more intimate, yet similarly operatic in its expression of the larger--and in this instance, the darker--emotions. The recurrent use of fanfares, distant, echoing, and dark is--and I hope Mr. Rochberg will take this as a compliment--cinematic. Mary Nessinger's strong performance would be even better if the production team had afforded her a bit more presence. This would have abetted her projection of the text as well. Highly recommended.
Michael Fine
Copyright © 2003 by Fanfare, Inc. Reprinted by permission from Volume 26, No. 4 (March/April 2003), pages 167-168.
SYMPHONIC EXCURSIONS • Eugene Corporon, cond; North Texas Wind S • KLAVIER K 11127 (74:26)
HESKETH Masque. PATTERSON Symphonic Excursions. WELCHER Songs without Words. ALKEMA Sunset Jericho. GRAINGER Irish Tune from County Derry (arr. Joseph Kreines). "Lads of Wamphray" March
ESCAPADES • Micah Standley (bn);1 Eugene Corporon, cond; North Texas Wind S • KLAVIER K 11128 (77:34)
STAMP Escapade. HIDAS Bassoon Concerto.1 GRAHAM Harrison's Dream. MASSENET (trans. Verne Reynolds) Le Cid: Ballet Music. GRANTHAM Variations on an American Cavalry Song. GRAINGER Molly on the Shore. The Gumsuckers March
These two latest, generously timed wind ensemble CDs from Klavier find common ground in the music of Percy Grainger and for that reason I am reviewing them together.
The "Symphonic Excursions" disc leads off with Masque by English composer Kenneth Hesketh (b. 1968), a transcription of the composer's Scherzo for Orchestra of 1987. A simple heraldic tune is passed around, and the revelry rarely ceases. Tennessee-domiciled Robert Patterson (b. 1957) contributes this collection's eponymous work, a three-movement affair, which at more than 23 minutes is long by wind-ensemble standards for a work that isn't a symphony. An opening fanfarish passage on the horns provides the thematic motif from which the entire piece springs, or as the composer so charmingly puts it, provides "the musical bone that the entire piece chews over." Movement two is anticipatory music; the very cool, soft timpani introduction sets up an air of expectation that lasts through the movement, interrupted only by a brief hard-driven scherzando passage a little more than halfway through. The third movement is a self-described "snake-dance," composed, the composer acknowledges, in the spirit of those two prime examples of symphonic sensuality, Revueltas' Sensemaya and Fernandez's Batuque. I just wish Patterson's music hadn't been quite so directly imitative--and at a much lower wattage at that.
Dan Welcher's Songs without Words (2000) is subtitled "Five Mood Pieces for Wind Ensemble," and the movements carry the headings "Manic," "Reflective," "Giddy," "Stunned," and "Confident." Welcher sought five contrasting moods that could be portrayed by the quite different sound qualities of brass, woodwinds, and percussion. The center section, "Giddy," prances along, carefree and spontaneous, until it very suddenly runs into the chording and held notes of "Stunned," which the annotator points out is "what happens in life when we aren't looking." Bells hint at an unspecified tragedy. "Confident" concludes the suite, with the music slowly picking up speed and optimism, even reprising measures of music from earlier movements.
Henk Alkema (b. 1944) is a Dutch composer and former student of Leon Orthel (who is a composer whose symphonies I would love to see some CD company explore). Alkema's two-movement Sunset Jericho of 2000 is based on the often-used B-A-C-H motif, and, with a solo body of no less than eight trombones, the piece is a concerto grosso of sorts. At one point, the trombones scurry around like monstrous, incensed water bugs. A funereal opening movement gives way to a highly animated second movement expressing anger and anguish, a thought that comes to mind very directly in the work's final minutes. Anger can be fun!
The Grainger pieces are wind-ensemble staples. The solemn "Danny Boy" melody and freewheeling Wamphray tune are good foils for one another and end this program well within every listener's pleasure zone. I don't think that the CD's program contains any candidates for the windensemble repertoire's hall of fame, but there is much colorfully-imagined music here that one can sense that composers labored over seriously.
The title of the second CD--"Escapades"--was inspired by the opening work, created by veteran wind-ensemble composer Jack Stamp, who is also the recording producer for both of these discs. Stamp's 2001 Escapade is typical Stamp--rhythmic and exciting in a Persichetti mold. Seventy-five-year-old Budapest-born Frigyes Hidas has always produced tuneful pieces (most notably his Oboe Concerto of 1953), and has even attracted an international artist of the stature of Andras Schiff to play his 1972 Piano Concerto. In recent years, he has concentrated on symphonic band works, and here we have his Bassoon Concerto of 1999, possibly the sole work of its kind in the wind repertoire. It is a winsome piece, though I confess that I found its melodies lacking the charming, irresistible lilt that a Lars-Erik Larsson, Dag Wirén, or even earlier Hidas bring to such consonant music. But Micah Standley's performance is very persuasive, almost masking, for me, the rather pedestrian tunes.
Scotsman Peter Graham (b. 1952) created Harrison's Dream in 2000 with this most unusual program: Due to the lack of accurate measurement of longitude at sea, there was a massive wrecking in 1707 of four Royal Navy ships against the rocks of the Scilly Isles (an archipelago of five uninhabited islands 28 miles off Great Britain's extreme southwest coast). Plotting positions at sea using longitude required highly accurate clocks, but seafaring clocks could not keep their accuracy due to temperature variables and other adverse conditions on water. So Parliament funded a prize for a solution to this problem, and clockmaker John Harrison (1693-1776) dreamed of developing clocks so impervious to weather conditions that accuracy could be maintained and thus lifesaving longitude calculations at sea could be made. It took him more than 40 years, but he created his sturdy, super-accurate clocks. Graham's tone poem is structured fast-slow-fast, possibly reflecting the urgency of his task, the drudgery of the work on the project, and the final joy of success. There are quasi-Dies Irae motifs, tingling of bells and ratcheting sounds of clockworks, and plenty of John Adams-like motor excitement. The piece won a 2002 award for Original Composition for Symphonic Winds, and Harrison's Dream is one of the program highlights of these two CDs.
This wind-ensemble version of Massenet's Le Cid ballet music retains all of the famous dances of the 1885 opera, and the colorful transcription by Verne Reynolds, a composer in his own right, is most welcome. Donald Grantham (b, 1947), another veteran wind-ensemble composer, delivers a high-stepping Variations on an American Cavalry Song (2001), a song that he describes as "a jaunty march of uncertain origin that I've known for years." Easy-to-follow transformations and varied moods always make for an attractive composition in variation form, and that's what we have here. The concluding Grainger pieces, like the ones that concluded the first CD, are charmers.
Neither CD is among what I consider the most "vital" wind-ensemble discs produced by Klavier, but the discs retain all the by-now expected high-quality performances and sound from the North Texas Wind Symphony under Eugene Corporon, and I recommend them to the faithful.
Stephen Ellis
Copyright © 2003 by Fanfare, Inc. Reprinted by permission from Volume 26, No. 4 (March/April 2003), pages 235-236.
Home - Favorites - Composers - CD Big List - Reviews - Books - Links - Search - About Us