Click on the links above for BASBWE, CBDNA, WASBE and NBA websites

STOP PRESS: OFFICIAL SITE FOR GORDON JACOB

Please note that the website about Gordon Jacob and his works is no longer at www.gordonjacob.com.  It is now at www.gordonjacob.org.

DAVID DEL TREDICI & RICHARD DANIELPOUR

…the rare, the rich, the exuberant, the heroic and the aristocratic…

TIM REYNISH WEBSITE

HOMEPAGE OCTOBER 1^ST  2007, Fredonia New York State

70th

BIRTHDAY CONCERT

for

DAVID DEL TREDICI

IN WARTIME

At SUNY FREDONIA, 

THURSDAY OCTOBER 18^TH at 8.00PM

Night sky in Fredonia

HOMEPAGE NOTES 1^ST OCTOBER 2007

There are few better places to be on a crisp Autumn day than New York State, with the leaves turning every shade of gold, yellow and brown, the lakes shimmering in the breeze, the sun setting in glorious and unbelievable Technicolor and sudden storms whipping down from Canada and the far North. This intense mix of contrasting weather is a perfect background for what David Del Tredici calls his “first piece for wind symphony”; it may be his last too, see below by putting your browser on In Wartime.

This homepage includes a brief report on another major composer whose 2005 wind band commission still awaits a premiere, a new recording of one of my most neglected commissions, Midnight Music,  and various mentions of a great jazz work by Chris Brubeck, and major works by the great Finnish operas composer Aulis Sallinen, by another New Yorker, David Chaitkin and by the Lindbergs, Magnus and Christian (No relation). I am still at a loss as to why two “golden oldies”, romantic tone poems by Joaquin Rodrigo and Jules Strens, rarely get played on this side of the Atlantic, and finally I myself have been lax in not getting to know the music of.

INDEX

1                    Programmes for Fredonia

2          David Del Tredici and In Wartime

3          Richard Danielpour and Voice of the City

4          Irwin Bazelon and Midnight Music

5          Richard Rodney Bennett Trumpet Concerto

6          Chris Brubeck, Aulis Sallinen and David Chaitkin

            7          Magnus and Christian Lindberg

            8          Two “golden oldies” from the thirties by Rodrigo and Strens

            9          Two great Hungarian works published this month by Ranki and Lendvay

            10        The music of Torstein Aagaard-Nilsen

SUNY FREDONIA WIND ENSEMBLE FALL PROGRAMMES 2007

Shun Yi (Grad Student)

Timothy Reynish

THURSDAY OCTOBER 18 AT 8.00PM

KING CONCERT HALL

WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 14 AT 8.00 P-M

KING CONCERT HALL

Jay East, Clarinet Soloist

"I use a combination of sentiment and lushness mixed with violence and an unpredictable, almost maniacal quality.”

                                                                                                                        David Del Tredici

DAVID DEL TREDICI & IN WARTIME

Despite this being Del Tredici’s  70^th birthday year, according to the Boosey and Hawkes record the work has notched up just a handful of performances since 2003. In Wartime is a work of strong contrasts, the gentle Americana of a chorale prelude on Abide with Me gives way to a sinister march which proceeds with implacable tread until it erupts in the fateful confrontation of East and West, the National Song of Persia Salamati, Shah hurled against the opening chord sequence of Tristan und Isolde. The Battlemarch is recapitulated and ends in a final wail of pain, an extraordinary coup de theatre  

Born 16^th March 1937 , David Del Tredici is now firmly established in the pantheon of American composers. “Del Tredici,” said Aaron Copland, “is that rare find among composers – a creator with a truly original gift.   I venture to say that his music is certain to make a lasting impression on the American musical scene.   I know of no other composer of his generation … who composes music of greater freshness and daring, or with more personality.”

David Holland of the New York Times wrote recently

Even if you didn’t like David Del Tredici’s music, you would be obliged to admire its intrepidity and self-confidence. This 70-year-old American composer has risen above a vicious Hundred Years’ War of opposing musical styles, nearly by himself and with remarkable serenity. Sidestepping the armed camps of Serialism, neo-Romanticism, neo-Classicism, Minimalism, New Age and world musics, Mr. Del Tredici reminds us that it is not how you write but what you write that makes music interesting.

As usual with the wind world, the musical press have yet to attend a performance of In Wartime, even though it was played at the New York CBDNA Conference. However, in a review for Music Web International, Jonathan Woolf wrote

David Del Tredici’s In Wartime was written in 2003 during the time of the Iraq War and is cast in two movements – Hymn and Battlemarch. It opens in hymnal hope with high piccolo and low trombones exploring the registral potential of a wind band, the percussion opening into a welter of sound. Del Tredici introduces Abide With Me in fragmentary form, stated only to be immediately broken up before it’s stated, memorably, in full. The second movement drives ever onward, sometimes with mechanistic venom, quoting the Persian national song Salamati, Shah! and the beginning of Tristan und Isolde in oppositional contrast. The dense implacability of the writing gives way to mysterious ascending arabesques, vaporous instrumental fillips by each instrumental section in solo voices. The work ends with a wounded siren, a wail of pain as the composer aptly puts it in his own programme notes. Some of the sonorities he conjures put me in mind of Milhaud in La Création du Monde – especially his writing for the saxophone - and part of it evoked Janačék’s Sinfonietta in its abrupt but striking brass writing.

Compared with Milhaud and Janacek, admired by Copland, Pullitzer prize-winner,  – seventy years old with a new work for band that is being generally ignored by the wind band fraternity. Can it be that the great man has penned a turkey, or are we just not ready for him yet?

INDEX

VOICE OF THE CITY

In my second concert at Fredonia, I plan to give the world premiere of the complete Voice of the City by Richard Danielpour, another New York composer of huge importance, importance in orchestral, vocal and chamber music but not in the wind world.  His work is championed by, among many others, Yo-Yo Ma, Jessye Norman, Emmanuel Sax, Frederica von Stade, and conductors Zinman, Dutoit, Alsop, Litton, St. Clair and Slatkin. I was first drawn to his music by the ravishing In the Arms of the Beloved, a double concerto for solo violin and ‘cello written to celebrate the 25^th wedding anniversary of Jaime Laredo and Sharon Robinson,  and one of the most beautiful pieces of music I know.

VOICE OF THE CITY PREMIERE

I heard the premiere of the first movement of Voice of the City, and remember vividly its funky driving trombone ostinati underlying screams on the upper woodwind, a kind of funky Bernstein meets Varese . I am very curious to hear the second movement, and if it is anything like the slow music of his double concerto, we have another New York winner on our hands. Again no press coverage of that abortive premiere, but you can get a flavour of his music from a review of his symphonic work Elegies for Mezzo Soprano and Baritone soloists.

[Danielpour's] Elegies is a deeply moving work. Reminiscent of one of Mahler's symphonies for orchestra and vocalists, along with a generous dollop of jazzy influences, it is a well-crafted combination of seriousness and accessibility that is appealing. At the heart of the work is [the] "Benediction." This song of acceptance is profoundly sad, with strings and winds creating a delicate air of mystery. [In] Danielpour's atmospheric score, several of the [movements] -- "'Benediction"; the penultimate song, "Litany" featuring a lovely a capella duet; and the mezzo-soprano's finale, "In Paradisum" -- are gems. Elegies [was] sublime.

John Fleming, St. Petersburg Times

INDEX

MIDNIGHT MUSIC FROM DEPAUL

I am delighted that Don De Roche will be recording Midnight Music by graduate of De Paul University, Irwin Bazelon. I commissioned this in the early nineties, and we premiered it with the RNCM Wind Ensemble at the barbican in 1991, recording it with the three main works by his good friend Richard Rodney Bennett on  DOYEN CD 037. Budd Bazelon was an extraordinary character, who had studied with Milhaud, began his composing career in movies and television, and wrote several exciting uncompromising pieces, such as Churchill Down. Midnight Music, published by Novello, is one of the great neglected wind works of the end of the last century, and I hope that this new recording from Chicago will give it many new admirers.

INDEX

ELEGY TO MILES DAVIS

Also on that disc was Richard’s Trumpet Concerto  with that haunting blues slow movement based on not only his tone row but also Davis ’s Maid of Cadiz .  The slow movement is available now as a stand-alone solo, the whole concerto is available with piano accompaniment. University of Kentucky Symphony Band under George Boulden will perform it in the Spring at KMEA with Mark Clodfelter as soloist.

INDEX

BRUBECK, SALLINEN AND CHAIKIN

Being back in academia this Fall gives me the chance to discuss repertoire with my Music Lit and Conducting students. Mention of Frederica von Stade reminds me of her recording of River of Song by Christopher Brubeck, who has contributed a really good fun piece to the wind ensemble repertoire, Spirit of Freedom, with some very exciting jazz riffs.  Many of the students have been listening to and reviewing other works often by major composers which are lying neglected. Aulis Sallinen’s Palace Rhapsody, a joint commission from BASBWE and CBDNA has gained a number of admirers who have relished his simple contrapuntal lines in the threnody, and the witty ironic dated jazz inflections. Many of us do not do irony very well.

I was happy to introduce David Chaitkin’s wonderfully lyrical Celebration for Winds, a companion piece to his Summersong;  commissioned by the US Marine Band, premiered in 2007 it is now available from

Nottingham Square Publications
c/o Music Publishing Services
Attention: Paul Sadowski
236 West 26th Street, Suite 11 - S
New York , NY 10001
Phone: 212-243-5233
Fax: 212-675-1630  Email

INDEX

MAGNUS AND CHRISTIAN LINDBERG

The jury here in Fredonia seems to be out on Magnus Lindberg’s extraordinary commission from Simon Rattle, Gran Duo, for me a twenty-first century equivalent of the Stravinsky Symphonies of Wind Instruments and, I find, more wide-ranging in its emotional appeal. A work which has attracted critical approval in the Music Lit class is by the other Lindberg, Christian, and is his post-Zappa Concerto for Wind Orchestra written for his beloved Swedish Wind Ensemble. 

INDEX

FROM THE THIRTIES  - GOLDEN OLDIES NOW AVAILABLE

Both Lindberg works were recorded in concerts given by the University of Kentucky Wind Ensemble, who also featured two fine works from the early  20^th century, Strens’ Danse Funambulesque (1925-30), now available in a great new publication by HaFaBra, and Per la Flor del Lliri Blau (1935) by Rodrigo, edited by Frank de Vuyst for Rodrigo Ediciones and available through Piles Editions, both terrific romantic pieces.

INDEX

HUNGARIAN MASTERPIECES NOW AVAILABLE

News from STORMWORKS of two new major publications from Hungary. I have long been a passionate advocate of the eleven minute Concertino for piano, Winds, Percussion and Harp by Kamillo Lendvay, composed in 1959 for Hungarian Radio. I met Gyorgy Ranki shortly before his death; aged over ninety, he arrived off a plane frolm Beijing straight to a rehearsal of his hilarious Tales of Father Goose for trombone and wind ensemble. Jetlag had no effect on him, he was very exacting throughout rehearsal, and after the concert he was one of the last to leave the reception. His ballet music King Pomade is exhilarating and also very funny, a rare commodity in wind band music. Both are strongly recommended.

INDEX

TORSTEIN AAGAARD-NILSEN

Finally, I plan to investigate a composer whose work I have admired but with whom I have never really got to grips, Torstein Aagaard-Nilsen, a m ember of WASBE, who has written extensively for wind and brass bands. Many will remember his magnificent Cantilena  for Trombone and Band, premiered in WASBE Sweden conference by the Danish Concert Band. I wrote in my review:

Torstein Aagaard-Nilsen, if memory serves me (the programmes were not informative), was a staff composer with the Norwegian military, and he has contributed a considerable number of works for winds. His Cantilena for Trombone and Wind Orchestra is a considerable piece, about twelve minutes in length, with some striking sonorities, cadenza passage for the soloist playing octaves, and a haunting coda which stays with you for some time.

I plan to spend more time with Torstein’s music but meanwhile you can explore his website  http://www.torsteinaagaardnilsen.no

INDEX

What an extraordinary wealth of great literature there is to be explored, and how timid and conservative we are in our programming. As Sir Michael Tippett reminded  us:

We all know that the big public is extremely conservative and is willing to ring the changes on a few beloved works till the end of time, and that our concert life, through the taste of this public, suffers from a kind of inertia of sensibility, that seems to want no musical experience whatever beyond what it already knows.....Surely the matter is that the very big public masses together in a kind of dead passion of mediocrity, and that this blanket of mediocrity is deeply offended by any living passion of the unusual, the rare, the rich, the exuberant, the heroic and the aristocratic in art.

INDEX