September 9, 2016

  • Strings and Whistles: New Chamber Music from Maine

     Brickman: 96 Strings and 2 Whistles
    8 Strings and a Whistle: Suzanne Gilchrist, flute/alto flute; Ina Litera, viola; Matt Goecke, cello.
    Beth Levin, piano.
    Ravello Records 7940
    Total Time:  58:25
    Recording:   ****/****
    Performance: ****/****

    Composer Scott Brickman is from Maine and currently teaches at the University of Maine-Fort Kent.  Ravello has released two other albums of his music.  The ensemble Eight Strings and a Whistle is featured on this album, two of the works having been written for the group.  Pianist Beth Levin also contributes.  The current release features five of Brickman’s chamber pieces, some with somewhat Baroque titles, though the music is most thoroughly modern and complex.  Brickman’s music sits in line with the techniques of Schoenberg, but with additional modern inflections as well.  Schoenberg tended to explore Baroque forms as a means of exploring his new twelve-tone system.  The forms in one way help to lessen the initial aural disorientation for those pieces.  Brickman’s music here can also be a bit stark at first, but his technique tends to focus on repeated motifs to help create a better accessibility.  The music can sometimes shift from very dissonant moments into stunningly beautiful harmonic areas.   Each of the soloists of the ensemble is featured in works for their instrument which are bookended by pieces for the entire group of musicians.

    The first work, French Suite (2013), is for viola and cello with an addition of flute or alto flute.  The music is centered often around a specific motif or gesture that becomes a structural foundation against a secondary layer that can be a long florid lyric line.  Here we are in a firmer reference to the Baroque with the way the tempos are chosen for each of the four unnamed movements.  The third movement in particular is rather fascinating as it feels like the flute line is often running in a more tonal universe with the strings set in a more atonal field.  The instruments feel more as if they are in a three-person dialogue in the work with the flute tending toward more prominence though each gets a say as the piece progresses.

    Wind Power (2011) has a more distinct suggestion of Schoenberg with its initial piano flourish.  The flute’s more jagged lines also suggest this more cerebral compositional approach.  It still is a fairly dramatic work with interesting rhythmic gesturers helping to provide a bit of a link for the listener to hold onto.   As the piece proceeds, there are different episodes that explore Brickman’s musical ideas and towards the end even venture into a slightly more tonal realm.  It is a rather fascinating work playing to ten minutes which is in stark contrast to the often shorter movements of the other pieces.

    The Divertimento from the same year switches to a piece for cello and piano.  The four movements here refer as well to 18th-century formal movements.  The cello has an almost romantic lyricism though the music itself is again focusing on serial technique.  The slower opening movement allows this to come through well with its “Song and Dance” moving from this lyricism into a slightly faster final section which helps set up the “Intermezzo”.  A bit of Baroque wit and form is heard in the “Sarah Band”.  The final movement allows for a bit more virtuosic expectations.  A Partita for solo viola and piano follows.  There are again four brief movements each exploring a particular motivic idea with this suite-like form.  The beginning is a sonata form structure.  The composer suggests that the second movement takes its inspiration from Schoenberg’s Klavierstucke Op. 19, no. 2.  The final two movements provide a scherzo and a final virtuosic exploration of the instrument.  Each of these solo works allows the different members of the ensemble to be highlighted.

    After these three solo pieces, the album concludes with Ninety-Six Strings and Two Whistles (2014).  The piece is sort of a culmination of Brickman’s approach in the earlier works on the album.  We have five movements that alternate with shorter more intense and angular styles separated by the more lyrical reposes heard in the earlier pieces.  The composer suggests that Schubert’s Erlkonig sort of inspired the finale movement here.

    One thing that is striking in Brickman’s music is this intriguing tonal sensibility that seems to overcome the stricter 12-tone technique at the heart of these pieces.  The music thus has an almost improvisational quality which works well especially in the pieces for solo instrument with piano.  It is fascinating to hear this tension between the seeming requirement of cerebral writing and resulting dissonance and the flashes of lyricism and tonal writing.  The result is an intriguing collection of modern chamber music.  The performances are all fine and fairly closely recorded.