Houston’s new music group Musiqa has programmed my Short Stories for saxophone quartet on their October 1 concert. Go here for info, and go here to hear Musiqa’s Anthony Brandt talk with Houston Public Media’s Joshua Zinn about the concert. Here’s my program note on the piece:
My title was suggested by a volume of stories by Sam Shepard that my wife gave me as a Christmas gift. I wanted to emulate that collection by writing a set of brief, powerfully characterized musical narratives that shared some common themes while contrasting highly in expressive type. The tales told here are, by turns, reflective, manic, declamatory, and ebullient, with the opening reflective music recurring in various guises to bind the set together. Written at the request of the Prism Quartet, the composition of Short Stories was supported by a Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.
There was a terrific concert last night presented by the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society: music by Philip Maneval and Richard Wernick as played by the Daedalus Quartet and pianist Charles Abramovic. This was, as Miles Cohen, the Society’s artistic director put it in his pre-concert remarks, the “exclamation point” to last season’s celebration of the Society’s 30th anniversary, with the impetus being the presentation of music by Philip, the executive director of the Society. Philip suggested adding music by Richard Wernick to the program; Dick was one of Philip’s teachers when studying at Penn, and the Society has long championed Dick’s music with commissions and performances.
Philip’s pieces – a piano sonata and a string quartet – were both substantial multi-movement works. I was particularly taken with the piano piece, not least because of the superb playing of Charles Abramovic: exquisitely balanced chords, a multitude of colors, the long line of the piece elegantly projected. It’s interesting to compare Philip’s compositional voice with that of his teacher. Both are working with a mostly dissonant post-tonal vocabulary, made coherent by the careful deployment of referential harmonies and motifs. But their gestural languages contrast. Philip’s voice is more rhapsodic, more directly related to older musics, while Dick tends to be more terse, with sharply etched shapes contrasting with lyrical music that often springs from an uncanny stillness. The music of both men is superbly crafted, and richly satisfying.
The Daedalus was its usual shining self in Philip’s new string quartet, and quartet members Min-Young Kim and Thomas Kraines joined Abramovic for a sizzling performance of Dick’s Piano Trio Nr. 2. (I linked to a video of the trio in this post.) The characterful epigrams of Pieces of Eight, a set of brief piano pieces by Dick, rounded out the program. It was nice to see a full house in the Curtis Institute’s Field Hall to celebrate the Society and two eloquent composers.
I have lately been demonstrating Robert Benchley’s observation about productivity in that I have a commission for a work for oboe and piano quartet, but instead I have been writing songs (click here and here) for which I do not have a commission. The latest is a setting of Christina Rossetti’sSleeping at Last. I used some of the sketches for this song in my recent piece for saxophone quartet and piano, Stratigraphy, but it is more a matter of shared motifs and phrases, rather than the one being a strict transcription of the other. You can see a page from the piece on the score excerpts page, and like all the individual voice and piano songs there (except Cinder from Holy the Firm), it is available as a PDF directly from me: jamesprimosch at gmail dot com. Visit the worklist page for a complete listing of my vocal music.
I think I have got this series of songs out of my system, and will now try to focus exclusively on the commission mentioned above, for oboist Peggy Pearson and her colleagues in the La Fenice ensemble.
“I want to sing with my spirit and with my mind as well”
– 1 Corinthians, 14:15
OK, so Paul was writing about liturgy, not composition.* But the equilibrium he seeks is one for which I strive as a composer. I’ve sat through too many new pieces that favored one element and neglected the other. The sweet spot is going to vary for different pieces, different composers. But some kind of balance we must seek.
*) Of course, it is good advice about liturgy as well, and not always followed, in my experience.
BBC Music Magazine recently posted a list of “Forgotten Piano Concertos”, and most of them are news to me. But I want to supplement the list with some concertos by American composers that very much deserve greater attention.
Richard Wernick’s Piano Concerto was written for Lambert Orkis and recorded for Bridge with the composer conducting Symphony II, an ensemble originated by musicians from the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s orchestra. There are exceedingly few American composers who are not underappreciated, but Wernick’s tautly constructed and passionately heartfelt music truly should be more widely recognized. Lambert Orkis is best known as a superb chamber musician, but acquits himself brilliantly as a concerto soloist, and Symphony II is highly impressive. The piece is not on YouTube, but the following offers a sample of a recent Wernick chamber work.
Richard Goode is one of our most distinguished pianists in the standard repertoire, but earlier in his career he played and recorded several pieces by the late George Perle, including his Concertino for Piano, Winds and Timpani, and the Serenade Nr. 3 for piano and orchestra. Along with Perle’s solo Ballade, these pieces were recorded by Goode for Nonesuch, with Gerard Schwarz conducting his Music Today Ensemble. That album is available through Arkiv Music, but the Serenade performance was re-issued on a two-disc Bridge compendium of Perle’s music, along with a recording of the Concerto No. 2 with Michael Boriskin and the Utah Symphony under Joseph Silverstein that was originally released on Harmonia Mundi. Perle was a leading music theorist, explicating a variety of 20th century musics, with special emphasis on the Second Viennese School, but he should be no less renowned for his compositions. His piano writing is always attractive, with plenty of lyricism, but, most characteristically, fleet toccata-like textures. (Previously I wrote about Perle’ piano music here.) I nominate the Serenade No. 3 for revival. Here is the first movement:
Melinda Wagner’sExtremity of Sky is a piano concerto that was written for Emmanuel Ax. This is a grandly-scaled four-movement work by a master of the orchestral medium. The piano writing is no less eloquent, idiomatic but fresh, and harmonically rich, with perhaps some Messiaen influence. The slow movement, contemplative and dramatic by turns, is deeply touching. The piece is not yet commercially recorded, but as an example of her music, here is the opening movement of her Trombone Concerto:
Pianist Robert Miller died much too young, cutting short a career devoted to new music of many varieties, from Babbitt to Crumb, and including a 1978 Piano Concerto by the then 40-year old John Harbison. The piece was recorded for CRI with Miller, and the American Composers Orchestra, with Gunther Schuller conducting. Re-issued on CD by CRI as part of a disc of several early Harbison pieces, the album is now available through New World Records. Harbison’s concerto is one of the pieces that marked his turn toward a more direct and open idiom, sometimes characterized as neo-romantic, though jazz, Bach, and Stravinsky are perhaps more fundamental to his musical interests. The Concerto is not on YouTube, but as a sample of his orchestral writing, here is a later work, the Symphony No. 2.
I could continue this list for a while, with pieces by Peter Lieberson and Christopher Rouse among many others. Suggestions in the comments for additional pieces are, of course, welcome.
A little over a year ago, the Tanglewood concert that began with my Dark the Star continued with an all-too-rare performance of Dallapiccola’s Concerto per la notte di Natale dell’anno 1956, for soprano and a chamber orchestra of 17 players. John Harbison ably conducted, and the extraordinary soprano was Suzanne Rigden. Thanks to her formidable musicianship and gleaming voice, Dallapiccola’s angular lyricism came across powerfully. I’ve stayed in touch with Suzanne, and next month she will be giving the first performance of a set of songs for soprano and piano that I completed this summer. Her recital will be September 18 in Sherbrooke, Canada at the Maison d’opéra et de concerts à Sherbrooke (Québec) Plymouth Trinity United Church, 380 Rue Durrerin, and her pianist will be Francis Perron.
Like the Dallapiccola, my new set works with sacred texts, in this case a group of traditional songs in English. Three Folk Hymns is based on some familiar tunes: What Wondrous Love Is This?, Be Thou My Vision, and How Can I Keep From Singing? There is a somewhat complicated history that led to the version of the settings that Suzanne will premiere. I originally wrote an arrangement of How Can I Keep From Singing? in connection with a 1996 concert of my music at the Cleveland Museum of Art. The soprano was Christine Schadeberg, and I played the piano part. I later made a flute, harp, and voice version of that arrangement, along with versions of Be Thou My Vision and Wondrous Love, but the piano settings are preferable to the trio versions. I also used Be Thou My Vision as the theme for the variation set that closes my A Flutist’s Sketchbook (flute and piano, 2012)and I incorporated some material from that instrumental piece in my recent piano and voice arrangement. My first plan for Wondrous Love was to draw upon some material from my organ piece, Meditation on What Wondrous Love Is This?, and I tried that in the trio version, but this recently completed arrangement with piano seemed to call for its own gestures.
There are sample pages for all three of the Folk Hymns available on this page. No need to do the entire set if you want to program just one or two of the arrangements. Be in touch (jamesprimosch at gmail dot com) if you’d like to purchase PDFs of any or all of these.
OK, so Paul was writing about liturgy, not composition.* But the equilibrium he seeks is one for which I strive as a composer. I’ve sat through too many new pieces that favored one element and neglected the other. The sweet spot is going to vary for different pieces, different composers. But some kind of balance we must seek.
A little over a year ago, the Tanglewood concert that began with my Dark the Star continued with an all-too-rare performance of Dallapiccola’s Concerto per la notte di Natale dell’anno 1956, for soprano and a chamber orchestra of 17 players. John Harbison ably conducted, and the extraordinary soprano was 