Steve Reich @ 70 and STL Orch performing Berio Sinfonia

What a great birthday week! I got to attend Steve Reich's birthday celebration. Good pieces and performed well (with the exception of Proverb). I was completely in the wrong about the You Are Variations. I rellay don't like the recording but hearing it live is a completely different experience. The STL winds were spectacular. I've never heard an oboist with such ppp control. THe Synergy vocals while spectacular in their pitch and rhythm I just found them cold. On the otherhand the Berio Sinfonia was AWESOME. Life changing in fact to hear it live and I applaud STL for programming it. You can actually here the spatial seperations Berio creates. Of course Mvt. II and III were the most amazing. I left wishing the third had a little more sarcastic bite however.

Frederic Rzewski: VANGUARD Series UMKC performance

Wow, been a long time since I've posted. School has been CAR-RAZ-EE. Anywho!!! Frederic Rzewski gave a performance of his own works at UMKC last night. There is no doubting Rzewski's amazing facility at the piano; I've never heard anyone be able to get so much sound out of a piano for such a long time. That being said I definitely like Rzewski's older compositions better than his new ones. The Four Pieces from 1977 were the entirity of the second half and were amazing. His newer aestethic of disorientation and unrelated ideas juxtaposed next to each other in his first half pieces Stop the War!, Dust, and Cadenza were just that series of musical events meant to show off virutosity. Cadenza had a bit more for listeners to grab onto because of it's Beethoven quotes. I know you're supposed to push yourself as a composer to explore other means of expression but I feel Rzewski is taking a path that will dead end into musical drivel.

Emilio Mendoza: RainForest

I got this CD for free. I was actually pleased at the results. Thank goodness. So I haven't done a percussion ensemble piece yet so Mendoza's RainForest just happened to be on the disc. Nice piece. Not great. Just nice. I did like the woodpecker noises and the general overall low-keyness. So often with percussion ensemble pieces they tend to go super loud because they can. I'm glad Mendoza used restraint. His limited sound palette was also refreshing. He didn't bust out the lithophone or the 1239827149873-octave marimba. So yeah. Not the best piece for percussion ensemble but it would serve as a nice contrast on programs.

Music and Nature Symposium Recap

So after many many delays at the airport I'm finally back home in KC. The Symposium was great. Everyone was very supportive and the comments and reception was great. Denise von Glahn, Catherine Cole, Theo Cateforis, Rebecca Jemain, and Diane Luchese were exceptionally nice and thoughtful with their critiques and their papers were great as well. I made a new friend Sam who goes to SUNY Buffalo, so that's cool. New friends are always welcome!

Mara Gibson: Vocalis e

I heard this piece last night at the newEar concert in KC. Utterly stunning. Gibson managed to control the soprano in such a way it was seamlessly blended with the rest of the ensemble (clarinet, percussion, piano, violin, cello) in timbral quality. And brava to Kara Douglas for being able to that! The piece's opening clarinet line ascends gradually upward with the other instruments entering unobtrusively until a massive suspension-resolution section of extreme beauty and wonderful orchestration takes hold. The only fault I found with the piece is it isn't long enough. I was unsatisfied by the ending especailly after the gorgeous sections that came before it.

Magnus Lindberg: Corrente II

Now even though I'm a Nordo-phile, I really haven't gotten into Magnus Lindberg, which personally I find shocking because I adore Saariaho, Salonen, Kaipainen, and the other Ears Open! folk, but Corrente II may make me change my mind. The opening is great. Very simple yet utterly dark and the utterances of when that material returns is great and recognizable yet changed and altered into more bright sounding passages. The dark rumblings are also tranfered upwards thus giving the whole piece lift. Great piece. I may have to go back and relisten. Oh and oddly enough the piece doesn't have flutes, a tuba and uses sparse percussion.

Vittoro Giannini: Symphony No. 3

I absolutely adore this piece. Not because it was one of the few pieces that I actually wanted to practice (the oboe licks in the 4th movement are KILLER) but Giannini's control over chromatic harmony is astoundingly lush. This recording is also the first that I've heard that I feel the third movement is as it should be. Both the recordings by Dallas and Eastman take it way to fast so it's always on the verge of lossing control and actually there are audible mistakes. So congrats to Tom Bennett and the University of Houston Wind Ensemble for actually playing the third movement Allegretto as marked and having a clear delinitation of the 2 against 3 in a 1 pattern. I just wish the piccolo player wasn't so present on the recording, thank goodness they are in tune! The oboe melody in the second movement is strikingly simple yet engaging and modernly melancholic. The first movement is very bandy, but hey I'd rather play this piece from the late 1950's than anything Creston or John Barnes Chance wrote for band.

Jakov Jakoulov: Viola Sonata

I mean come on, the composer's name just screams awesomeness. This is a dark dark brooding piece, but then again what Viola Sonata isn't. SO no points for not breaking with tradtion. But the lines are crisp and the glissandi aren't cheap added effect-- they add to the mournful conglomeration. I like the piano part for its incessantness; it's as equally dark as the viola part. I found the fast two outer movements for successful than the slow inner movement. The rhythmic playfulness of the middle movement was charming though and the sul pont technique was used effectively as coloration.