December 24, 2018

  • Joyous Chamber Music

     

    Gentle Winds: Chamber Music of Samuel A. Livingston
    Arcadian Winds: Vanessa Holroyd, flute. Alicia Maloney, oboe.
    Mark Miller, clarinet. Janet Underhill, bassoon. Marina Krickler, horn;
    Yhasmin Valenzuela, clarinet. Pedroia String Quartet
    Navona Records 6197
    Total Time:  54:08
    Recording:   ****/****
    Performance: ****/****

    The Boston-based ensembles Arcadian Winds and the Pedroia String Quartet are featured in this new release exploring the chamber music of New Jersey Composer Samuel A. Livingstone.

    Each of the four works here feature three movements with a common sonata-allegro like opening structure, a central, reflective movement with an ABA structure, and a final movement often taken with theme and variation technique.  Livingston likes to explore asymmetrical rhythms lending a nice dance-like feel.  There is a great deal of joyous music making that moves along in beautifully-written music that gives equal time well to the whole ensemble.

    Gentle Winds is a delightful little work for wind quartet (flute, oboe, clarinet, and horn).  The opening movement has a pleasant 7/8 rollicking motion and good thematic ideas that make for an engaging start to the program.  The central movement switches to 5/4 with a nice horn idea in it’s a section.  The final movement returns us to a nice 7/8 feel with an overall pastoral quality to the piece.

    A trio for flute, oboe, and clarinet follows.  The Old Man is Dancing is another delightful piece where the thematic materials serve as the dance partner being passed to each instrument as the music bubbles along.  The opening movement has a somewhat wistful quality and a minor mode feel.  The central movement is a delicate affair that maintains a somewhat reflective quality.  One gets the sense of memories of the past dance and the present in an equally touching finale.

    Call to the Mountains is a more traditional woodwind quintet that continues to explore Linvingston’s delightful dancelike melodies and rhythms.  The music is in that Americana landscape mode with breezy melodies that interact within the ensemble as the rhythms propel us forward.  The horn gets to have a few grand statements as well.  The piece has an almost 1940s small film quality (think Virgil Thomson more than Copland).

    Livingston is a clarinetist and so the final work on the album, Quiet Summer Night is a fitting close to this collection of chamber music.  It is clarinet quintet and brings along the same sort of dancelike material coupled with engaging and delightful melodies though in this equally intimate dress.  The result is no less wonderful than the works that preceded it.  The solo clarinet part, played by Yhasmin Valenzuela, is exquisitely realized.

    Each of these pieces, constructed as they are with similar formal outlines and metrical patterns, work well as individual pieces.  As a whole, they do have a similar feel, but Livingston’s melodic ideas sparkle uniquely in each work.  The music is purely tonal with a traditional harmonic understanding, but the asymmetric meters bring out the joie de vivre of this wonderful discovery of chamber music.  The performers seem to really be enjoying themselves and are stunningly recorded.