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CONTENTSCONGRATULATIONS
TO . . ., 3 LIVE EVENTS I
Hear Museum Art (B.L.C./Greenfest) <> Mad Dreams and Brits
(Hickey), 6 DOTTED NOTES
INTERVIEW SPEAKING OUT!
THE PRINTED WORD RECORDINGSÀ outrance
à la Anderson (de Clef Piñeiro) <> RECENT RELEASES, 31 THE
PUZZLE CORNER: COMPOSER INDEX, 34 BULLETIN BOARD, 35 WEB SUPPLEMENTLive EventsEquinox
Chamber Players In Concert for Impact CD ReviewsHarrison
Birtwistle: Refrains and Choruses ObituariesArthur
Berger (1912-2003) |
Review of CD FLUTE FORCE: EYEWITNESS INNOVA 556Sheryl Henze, Gretchen Pusch, Rie Schmidt, and Wendy Stern make up the all-female quartet of flautists alliteratively titled Flute Force. Judging from this release, one can confidently state that this foursome is highly accomplished, performing with splendid ensemble sensitivity, possessing finger technique both fleet and spotless, and boasting a wonderfully blended group sound. They also actively commission new repertoire for themselves to perform, but sad to say, a good bit of the music presented on this CD doesn’t do justice to Flute Force’s excellent playing. The best selection heard here by far is Robert Dick’s two-movement work Eyewitness. While it can be seen as a veritable catalog of striking special effects for the flute, the piece fortunately doesn’t stop there. In fact, Dick goes to great lengths to craft a capable entry that exhibits a decent sense of long-range architecture and manages to combine the extended techniques convincingly with more traditional styles of playing. It’s a pleasing listen that possesses substance. Travelogue by Elizabeth Brown also utilizes unusual modes of sound production, if not as extensively as Eyewitness. But Brown’s piece stumbles by trying to combine them with a tonal idiom shot through with self-consciously old-fashioned items such as Alberti bass figures. Somehow, it all proves too dissimilar to reconcile—in brief, a noble roll of the dice that comes up snake eyes. Adding a string quartet to the four flutes, Eric Stokes’ Tantamounts constitutes the most professional sounding of the triadic based compositions, consisting of distinctive, confidently molded material put together with a modicum of cogency. It’s a little bit of a lightweight, though, and the string quartet writing seems rather cramped (this latter perhaps stemming from an understandable desire not to have the strings overshadow the flutes). Compared to the remaining two entries on this disc, however, the Stokes piece projects an almost Shakespearean gravity. Despite some pop music colorings, Gary Schocker’s perky quartet Nymphs is so close in sound to neoclassic Ravel and Stravinsky that it could be a style study. To give due credit, it does also exhibit a certain flashy flair in its scoring. And despite its problems, it is still a better listen than David Alpher’s Land of the Farther Suns, a work that adds piano and narrator to the four flutes. Sadly, Land’s lengthy last movement balances poorly in relation to the seven that precede it. And the music, strongly redolent of jazz and pop stylings and sentimental to the point of being corny, proves to be a singularly ill fit with the well turned late 19th century poetry by Stephen Crane read with it. Flute Force’s choice of accompanying players is much more successful. The Meridian String Quartet (Sebu Sirinian, Lisa Tipton, Liuh-Wen Ting, and Wolfram Koessel), pianist Alpher, and narrator Garrison Keillor (of A Prairie Home Companion fame) are first-rate. Sound is all right, if sometimes a little stuffy or wan, and editing is fine. --David Cleary |