Dream Journal - Four works commissioned by the Network for New Music (2002)

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Dream Journal - Four works commissioned by the Network for New Music (2002)

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Dream Journal - Four works commissioned by the Network for New Music (2002)
Classical | EAC: FLAC+Cue+Log | 1 Cd, Covers | 295 Mb
Label: Albany - Date: 2002

Review of CD

DREAM JOURNAL

ALBANY RECORDS, TROY 488

Presented on this release are four pieces commissioned by the Philadelphia-based Network for New Music Ensemble. All prove to be worthy listens by composers of much ability.

The finest of the foursome by a hair’s breadth is Concertino by Bernard Rands. The featured instrument here is the oboe and the solo part is a daunting though idiomatic one, loaded with lightning quick passage work and expressive linear figures. The composer’s handling of textures, scoring, and melodic material—both in the oboe and seven backing ensemble members—is masterful. And structurally, the piece is most unusual and effective, laid out in two primary sections. The first of these gradually builds upon the oboe’s busy cadenza-like opener into a skittering and playful entity, while the second alternates expressive and showy music, culminating in a reprise of the bubbly initial material. Passion Prayers by Augusta Read Thomas, a composition for solo cello accompanied by an ensemble of six, might seem to the inattentive listener to be a series of unrelated mood snippets, ranging from expressive to intense to soulful to spooky to nervous. But in fact, Thomas expertly ties in these wide ranging emotional states by utilizing tightly motivic construction—ultimately, it all comes off rather like a set of free variations—furnishes smooth transitions between each section, and provides a recapitulation of the opening forceful music to ably suggest a return home. The cello writing takes full advantage of this instrument’s ability to put forth a delicious melodic line and the ensemble backing, while often sparse, is attractively colorful.

The two selections by composers based in the City of Brotherly Love occupy opposite ends of the tonal spectrum. Jennifer Higdon’s mixed sextet wissahickon poeTrees owes much in sound to the oeuvre of Copland, Debussy, and similar folk. Given that the piece depicts the four seasons in a local urban park, one might wonder if bucolic flabbiness is the order of the day. Happy, this pejorative description does not apply. Throughout, even in the slow movements, there’s an undercurrent of gutsy energy that imparts momentum and backbone. And the presence of ritornello style linking sections (in best Mussorgsky Pictures and Stravinsky Octet tradition), which here get varied in overlay fashion, provide formal grounding for the widely contrasting movements. Sonic debts to tape-and-live-instrument composers such as Mario Davidovsky can be heard in James Primosch’s Dream Journal. Scored for two pianists, two percussionists, and tape, the piece exudes an especially clangorous, disjunct harmonic language. But this is no style study: events are clumped in clearly defined larger sections that behave in less mercurial fashion than more typical East Coast fare. And its use of texture can be powerfully striking, as in the mysteriously atmospheric start to the first movement or the explosion of bell sounds at the climax of the finale.

The ensemble, conducted with flair and sensitivity by Jan Krzywicki, acquits itself well despite a few intonation glitches in the Higdon. Cellist Scott Kluksdahl and oboist Richard Woodhams expertly handle the solo parts. Editing is very good and sound is fine with the exception of one passage in Higdon’s piece, where some distortion is noticeable. This strong CD is definitely recommended.

–David Cleary

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Dream Journal - Four works commissioned by the Network for New Music (2002)

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Jennifer Higdon (born December 31, 1962) is an American composer of classical music. Higdon has received many awards, including the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Music for her Violin Concerto and the 2010 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition for her Percussion Concerto.

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Bernard Rands (born Sheffield, England, 2 March 1934) is a composer of contemporary classical music.

Rands studied music and English literature at the University of Wales, Bangor, and composition with Pierre Boulez and Bruno Maderna in Darmstadt, Germany, and with Luigi Dallapiccola and Luciano Berio in Milan, Italy.

He held residencies at Princeton University, the University of Illinois, and York University before emigrating to the United States in 1975; he became a U.S. citizen in 1983. In 1984, Rands's Canti del Sole, premiered by Paul Sperry, Zubin Mehta, and the New York Philharmonic, won the Pulitzer Prize for Music.

He has since taught at the University of California, San Diego, the Juilliard School, Yale University, and Boston University. From 1988 to 2005 he taught at Harvard University, where he is Walter Bigelow Rosen Professor of Music Emeritus. His notable students include Beth Denisch, Paul Dresher, Bun-Ching Lam, Michael Daugherty, Jing Jing Luo, Sidney Corbett, Daron Hagen, Marc Mellits, Vic Hoyland, Dominic Muldowney, Roger Marsh and Robert Scott Thompson.

Rands has received many awards for his work, and was elected and inducted into The American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2004. From 1989 to 1995 he was composer-in-residence with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Rands's music is widely recorded. The recording of his Canti D'Amor by the men's vocal ensemble Chanticleer won a Grammy Award in 2000.

Rands is married to American composer Augusta Read Thomas.

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Augusta Read Thomas (born April 24, 1964) is an American composer.

Augusta Read Thomas was born in Glen Cove, New York. She attended The Green Vale School and later moved on to St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, and then studied composition with Jacob Druckman at Yale University and at the Royal Academy of Music with Paul Patterson, as well as with Alan Stout and M. William Karlins at Northwestern University. She taught at the Eastman School of Music and received tenure there at the age of only 33, but left to teach at the Northwestern University School of Music. While still at Eastman, she was appointed Composer in Residence at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, a post she retained until 2006, when she was succeeded by Osvaldo Golijov and Mark-Anthony Turnage. In 2006, Thomas resigned from teaching at Northwestern in order to compose exclusively. She is Chair of the Board of the American Music Center, and lives in Chicago and Becket, Massachusetts. On November 8, 2010, the University of Chicago announced that she had been appointed University Professor of Composition in the Department of Music and the College.

Thomas's music avoids traditional models, such as sonata form, and traditional styles, such as folk song. One can hear the influence of jazz as well as that of composers such as Luciano Berio in her use of improvisatory-sounding rhythms and colorful harmonies.

An album by Chanticleer including her choral pieces "The Rub of Love" and "Love Songs" won a Grammy. Some of her other works are "Aurora", "Galaxy Dances", "Prayer Bells", "Words of the Sea", "Bells Ring Summer", "Silhouettes", "Purple Syllables", and "Ring Flourish Blaze".

Thomas is married to American composer Bernard Rands.

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James Primosch
When honoring him with its Goddard Lieberson Fellowship, the American Academy of Arts and Letters noted that "A rare economy of means and a strain of religious mysticism distinguish the music of James Primosch… Through articulate, transparent textures, he creates a wide range of musical emotion." Andrew Porter stated in The New Yorker that Primosch "scores with a sure, light hand" and critics for the New York Times, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Dallas Morning News have characterized his music as "impressive", "striking", "grandly romantic", "stunning" and "very approachable".
Primosch’s compositional voice encompasses a broad range of expressive types. His music can be intensely lyrical, as in the song cycle Holy the Firm (composed for Dawn Upshaw) or dazzlingly angular as in Secret Geometry for piano and electronic sound. His affection for jazz is reflected in works like the Piano Quintet, while his work as a church musician informs the many pieces in his catalog based on sacred songs or religious texts.
Born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1956, James Primosch studied at Cleveland State University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia University. He counts Mario Davidovsky, George Crumb and Richard Wernick among his principal teachers.