Tag: Boston Modern Orchestra Project

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Best of 2021: BMOP plays Piston and Barber

Walter Piston: Concerto for Orchestra 

Variations on a Theme of Edward Burlingame Hill, Divertimento, Clarinet Concerto

Michael Nosworthy, clarinet

Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Gil Rose, conductor

BMOP/sound CD

 

Samuel Barber: Medea

Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Medea (complete ballet), A Hand of Bridge

Kristen Watson, soprano; Matthew DiBattista, tenor; Angela Gooch, soprano, David Kravitz, baritone, Krista River, mezzo-soprano; Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Gil Rose, conductor

BMOP/sound CD

 

Although the Boston Modern Orchestra Project has undertaken commissioning and recording music from our time, another important part of their mission has been reviving symphonists from mid-century America. Two recordings spotlighting music from the 1930s to the 1960s stood out this year. Many may know Walter Piston (1894-1976) as a teacher of composition and author of music textbooks (Harmony, Orchestration, etc.), but during his lifetime he was in demand as a composer of chamber and orchestra music. BMOP’s recordings of four of his ensemble works are Exhibit One of the substantial pieces of evidence that his work is worthy of revival. The earliest, and largest piece on the recording is 1933’s Concerto for Orchestra, following Hindemith’s 1925 work, both in terms of overall design but also the degree to which the piece features many instruments of the orchestra in solo turns. It is also a masterclass in canonic counterpoint. Piston evokes Stravinsky as well by recycling the “Psalm chords” from Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms (which had been written just three years prior) in identical spacing and scoring. Variations on a Theme of Edward Burlingame Hill was written for a Massachusetts municipal orchestra and would be an excellent programming choice for today’s educational and community ensembles. 

 

Divertimento, for Nine Instruments, showcases Piston’s proclivity for chamber forces. Once again, Stravinsky’s neoclassicism is a touchstone: one might think of this as the Octet plus one. The standout work is the late Clarinet Concerto (1967). Cleverly shaped, it is cast in four attacca movements with several cadenzas and interludes featuring the soloist. Piston acknowledges the clarinet literature from Brahms’ sonatas to Benny Goodman, providing a challenging and varied showcase. Soloist Michael Nosworthy plays superlatively, navigating challenging registral changes and elegantly sculpting the rhythms of the cadenza material. BMOP is at its best here too; Rose brings out the various countermelodies embedded in the score while deftly supporting the soloist throughout.

 

There are plenty of opportunities, live and on recording, to hear Knoxville: Summer of 1915 (1947) by Samuel Barber (1910-1981); this year proved there is room for another. BMOP’s rendition is excellent, with fluid, but not languid, tempos and delicate, detailed singing from soprano Kristen Watson. Watson is joined by singers soprano Angela Gooch, mezzo-soprano Krista River, tenor Mathew DiBattista, and baritone Kravitz in A Hand of Bridge, a ten-minute long piece from 1959 that has become an opera training center staple. It is refreshing to hear it performed with such professionalism, and here Rose elicits a jaunty swagger from BMOP’s musicians. 

 

Posterity has been less kind to Barber’s ballet Medea. Composed in 1947, the same year as Knoxville, it is a bit edgier than his other works but remains within the spectrum of neoclassical tonality for which he is best known. The orchestration is vivid, with excellent solo writing for winds and brilliant chorales for brass in particular, witness the opening solo of the “Dance of Vengeance.” There is a “re-tunable moment” or two in the strings, but otherwise the performance is eminently assured. The rhythmic vivacity of Medea is particularly memorable, part mixed meter writing with just a hint of Hollywood filtered jazz around the edges. I would love to see a dance performance of it. 

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
Best of, Boston, CD Review, Conductors, Contemporary Classical, Criticism, Critics, File Under?, Orchestral, Recordings, Review, San Francisco, Saxophone

Best Orchestra Portrait CD: BMOP Plays Peterson

Wayne Peterson

Transformations

Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Gil Rose, conductor; PRISM Quartet

BMOP/sound 1053

 

Composer Wayne Peterson (b. 1927) served as one of his generation’s fixtures on the West Coast music scene where, in addition to several other academic appointments, he elevated the composition program at San Francisco State to prominence. Despite fine recordings of his chamber music, this is his first portrait disc of orchestral music. 2017 has been a year where Boston Modern Orchestra Project, under the inspired direction of Gil Rose, has released a number of fine recordings, including CDs of works by Paul Moravec, David Del Tredici, Stephen Hartke, and Jeremy Gill (more about these in a forthcoming article). All are worthy of recommendation, but it is the Peterson disc that sticks out for me, both in terms of filling in a gap in late Twentieth century repertoire, and in the considerable durability of the works it contains.

 

Transformations (1985), which resembles a concerto for orchestra, is a marvelous display of timbre, with recurring fanfare-like gestures of repeated notes and chords, punctuated by interjections from percussion, juxtaposed against solo passages and richly overlaid ensembles for each of the orchestra’s sections. Frequent changes in demeanor create an almost kaleidoscopic effect. While the playing is excellent all around, pianist Linda Osborn deserves kudos for tackling a formidable part.

 

Jazz played an important role in Peterson’s development as a composer. There are jazz influences in all three of the pieces presented here, none more so than And the Winds Shall Blow (1994), a saxophone quartet concerto. PRISM Quartet are the estimable soloists here, often playing ensemble passages with such precision and fluidity that they sound like a single mega-instrument. The saxophone solo passages are where the flavor of jazz most keenly persists, and all of the PRISM members play them displaying a strong sense of jazz history, appropriately inflecting each successive homage to swing, bebop, and modern styles. In other places, quartet and orchestra alike are filled with contrapuntal intensity. Rose balances the many competing elements, artfully complex, and assures that each line receives due clarity.

 

Peterson won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for the last of the selections on the BMOP disc, The Face of the Night, The Heart of the Dark, but this honor was not bestowed without controversy. Ralph Shapey had been tipped off early that his piece was the music jury’s recommendation, and raised hell when Peterson was selected over him by the board. After many years with only Shapey’s score to consult, I was grateful to finally acquaint myself with the Peterson piece and judge for myself (The Face of the Night… was played only once and a commercial recording wasn’t released at the time – nor has Shapey’s been recorded commercially. In fact, it would be wonderful if BMOP turned its attentions to Shapey on a future portrait CD – they would play his work just as eloquently as they present Peterson’s). As a Shapey scholar, and based on some of the press I had read about the debacle, I’ll cop to a bit of bias: I had presumed that his Concerto Fantastique would win handily: I’m happy to admit that I was wrong. Both are excellent compositions. The Face of the Night, The Heart of the Dark is expressive and labyrinthine in form where Concerto Fantastique is taut and sectional, but both display a compelling, complex harmonic language and masterful use of the orchestra.

 

Face of the Night… is cast in two movements. The nocturne form is given a modern treatment not unlike the insomniac reveries of Elliott Carter’s Night Fantasies. Rapid shifts in demeanor betray the stray thoughts that sometimes keep us from sleep or inhabit our dreams. Peterson’s Face of the Night, The Heart of the Dark has passages that underscore the portentous quality suggested by its title. However, all is not nightmarish: there are beautiful moments of repose and reflection that suggest the coming darkness is not entirely enveloping: dawn awaits. The work’s climax is stirring and resolute – one imagines bolting upright from bed.

 

Transformations is Sequenza 21’s Best Orchestra Portrait CD of 2017.

by Christian Carey