CONTENTSCONGRATULATIONS
TO . . ., 3 LIVE EVENTS Veddy British Music
(Kraft) <> Going Into 'Understated Drive' (Kroll), 6 DOTTED NOTES from … Kraft, Kroll, Greenfest, Hickey, BLC, 16 SPEAKING OUT! Thoughts on the Pulitzer Prize, 17 AN INTERVIEW WITH … David Holzman, 19 THE PRINTED WORD Berger's Reflections (Kraft), 20 THE SCOREBOARD Sperry's Encores (Drogin), 21 RECORDINGSMini but Not Mousy
(Cleary) <> Bell's Echoes of Bela (Cleary) <> Just a Few Will Do (Cleary),
22 RECENT RELEASES, 24 THE PUZZLE CORNER, 25 COMPOSER INDEX, 27 BULLETIN BOARD, 27
WEB SUPPLEMENTA John Adams biography and an interview LIVE EVENTS Boston
Modern Orchestra Project CD REVIEWS Angel
Shadows: Laurel Ann Maurer |
Review of CD ERIC MOE: SONNETS TO ORPHEUS & SIREN SONGS KOCH 3-7524-2 HI Composer/pianist Eric Moe, faculty at the University of Pittsburgh and co-director of the Music on the Edge concert series, presents two substantial song cycles on this release. Both prove to be well-crafted, intelligent entries, ripe with music of much focus and personality. And neither is a carelessly thrown together hodgepodge of unrelated items—both are focused, carefully thought out collections where much care is taken in progression of mood and overall architecture. Written for soprano and piano, Siren Songs sets poetry and prose by six different authors ranging in chronology from three thousand years ago (a snippet from Homer’s Odyssey) to today (work by living poets Janet McAdams and Paula McLain). The feel here is predominantly introspective, subtle, almost dreamlike, the primary exception being the brittle song based on McLain’s “Beauty, That Lying Bitch.” Text setting is mostly declamatory in nature, backed until the final song primarily by high tessitura piano writing. One might be tempted to guess that the accompaniments owe a lot to Stravinsky or Barber when one reads that Moe liberally employs ostinato and pedal techniques within a harmonic language that is simultaneously tonal and unstable—but one would be wrong in doing so. Moe’s usage of patterned material is not expressed with a lockstep regularity: the patterns vary subtly in length and actual pitch content, parallel in some ways to watching the ocean, where waves roll in but exhibit slight differences in actual shape and size. The poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke provides the basis for Sonnets to Orpheus (1997), a wide-ranging collection scored for voice, string quartet, piano, and oboe that traverses numerous emotional states ranging from playfulness, anger, forcefulness, mystery, and warmth. But owing to a tendency to pair up songs that complement each other’s emotional states (the third and fourth are respectively impish and nervous in feel, while movements VII and VIII are by turns pensive and enigmatic), one feels an overarching sense of drama that lends much appeal. The altered ostinati much heard in Siren Songs are only one of many techniques Moe uses to spin out his music; the composer delineates these strongly etched emotional states with a wide ranging textural variety. The only significant criticism to make here involves text setting; not infrequently, one encounters high notes set on awkward words (“inward,” “ocean,” “children,” and “we know,” for example). Otherwise, the instrumental and vocal writing are idiomatic and effective. Performances are extremely good. Sopranos Elizabeth Farnum and Christine Brandes display splendidly flexible voices that sound strong and resonant in all ranges; Farnum’s diction is crisper, though. The composer at the piano and The Group for Contemporary Music (J. Karla Lemon, conductor) play excellently. Program notes and texts are provided in the booklet, though a composer bio would have been good to include. Editing is ably done. Sound quality sometimes shows distortion on high and loud soprano pitches, but is otherwise okay. Recommended. --David Cleary |