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The Syracuse Newspaper Review
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Friday, March 30, 2001
THE SYRACUSE NEWSPAPERS
New Music Conference
comes alive in concert
Prize-winning composer Rands' "Concertino" is the stand-out work.
By David Abrams
Contributing Writer
The "Hill" was alive with the sound of new music Thursday evening,
as Syracuse University's Setnor Auditorium hosted an engaging
program of live music, penned by live composers from across the
country, and performed by the Center for New Music at the University
of Iowa.
The occasion is this weekend's 35th National Conference of the
Society of Composers Inc. (SCI) -- a three-day marathon of works by
more than 50 composers (all of whom are present to hear their works
performed), and hosted by Central New York's own Society for New
Music.
The standout from among the seven composers featured Thursday is
Bernard Rands, the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and distinguished
professor of composition at Harvard, whose "Concertino for Oboe
and Ensemble" (1998) displays the great imagination, originality and
technical mastery of a true artist.
Scored for oboe, harp, flute clarinet and string quartet, the "Concertino"
uses instrumental colors to great effect -- with timbres melting into one
another through long sustained notes that shimmer with dynamic shifts
and splashy shades of harmonic brilliance that at times recall
Stravinsky's "Firebird" and "Petroushka" ballets. Mark Weiger was most
impressive in handling Rands' virtuosic demands on the oboe, and the
well-rehearsed ensemble -- conducted by David Gompper -- navigated
the difficult writing with confidence.
Hillary Tann's "The Walls of Morlais Castle" (1998) scored for oboe,
viola and cello, is a charming work that alternates English-flavored,
pastoral moods (a la Vaughan-Williams) with a sharply syncopated
rythmic vivacity that recalls Libby Larsen.
Syracuse University profesor Andrew Waggoner's "Desires of Ghosts"
(1999) was inspired by his "long buried memories of the paranormal,"
which, the composer states in the program notes, began to assert itself
while he was writing this quintet. It is a dreamy, hypnotic work scored
for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano whose slow harmonic motion
and repetitions (through repeated notes and ostinato patterns) contrast
with sudden, sharply dissonant sections that alternately lull the
audience into a trance -- and then abruptly yank them out of it, in
bipolar fashion.
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