Reason & Reverence: Works for Orchestra
Lucie Kaucka, piano. Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra/Petr Vronsky
Navona Records 6166
Total Time: 68:58
Recording: ****/****
Performance: ****/****
Music by five unique composers is presented here in a collection of orchestral works. Each piece has its own philosophical musings but together the music here explores musical explorations of space, rhythm, and unique soundscapes both in abstract conceptions and real inspirations.
In Christopher Keyes, An Inescapable Entanglement a burst of energy creates a post-minimalist orchestral backdrop. A piano solo is eventually added into the texture, taking on this same rhythmic motif and expanding upon it. Through the addition of microphones in the piano, Keyes is able to further manipulate the textural structure through signal processing. This is an important aspect to take into consideration as this modern antiphonal approach might thrust the piano forward into the sound picture. The orchestra maintains a good continuous minimalist momentum across this fifteen-minute work. It gives soloist Lucie Kaucka a chance to display her own virtuosic capabilities in often florid gestures with an intensity of a Rachmaninov concerto. The piece is cast in different sections with a central section making use of gradual crescendo ideas with an ever thickening, bright harmony. In this way, the piece sort of spins forward with flashes of beautiful lyrical writing.
Red Rock by Diego Vega take on musical materials from the aspect of their music aesthetics as inspired by the landscape near Las Vegas. The first aspect is a more “traditional” one in harmonic and thematic structure. The second takes on a more modernist approach with angular lines an increased chromatic writing. The two are formally organized along a sonata form structure of exposition, transformation and development, and then recapitulation. The opening has an equally similar drive that gets more manic as it progresses. An almost cinematic quality develops here as the piece progresses creating an interesting soundscape of color and orchestral texture but with a rather unusual final chord that seems to leave us poised at the edge of the canyon.
Aspects of Ferdinando de Sena’s music can have an almost serial feel at times with his denser textures and close intervallic writing. It perhaps pops out more when preceded by the more immediately tonal works on the album. His Deciphered Reverence is an orchestral essay that seems to pull apart motivic ideas sometimes moving them through the orchestra in intriguing combinations. Other times, these ideas seem to mass together for more dissonant chords seemingly struck by the overlying aspects of the sounds and ideas themselves. The music has this sense of exploration and arrival with the latter aspect providing the tenser moments. The music does move through these somewhat more dissonant sections, but gradually moves into a more accessible harmonic style ending on a fairly hopeful note.
Some might recognize the name Willem Van Twillert from his performances as an organist and subsequent works for the king of instruments. Branches of Singularity is a multi-movement work, originally for band (and orchestrated here by Timothy Lee Miller, that is a set of theme and variations. The theme itself has a somewhat Baroque-like feel and the development of the material owes itself somewhat to that idea. The Moravian brass get a chance to really come to the forefront of the music here as does the percussion section. Along the way there are some rather wonderful asymmetrical rhythms that lend the work an interesting energy. This is combined with a jazz-like syncopation and a variety of orchestral colors that explore different aspects of the opening theme and lends the music some of its exciting forward energy. Overall, it is a rather surprisingly engaging piece with moments of delicate wind writing and large, glorious orchestral statements.
The final work on the program is a single-movement symphony by Andrew Schulz: Symphony No. 2 (Ghosts of Reason), Op. 76. With some delicate colors and sounds, the work opens with a sense of stillness and yearning (beautifully captured by an English Horn solo). Horns and brass introduce a rich harmonic pulse that feels a bit restrained, almost otherworldly. It is a rather captivating effect as the result is almost a shadow of a bygone era. The music tends to slowly grow in waves with gradually a fuller sound, or focus on a specific section. A sense of mystery hovers throughout the first quarter of the work to explode at its center in an almost mid-period Sibelian way. The bigger orchestral moments thus move us into an evolving series of thematic statements that feature some rather beautiful arrival points. Along the way, Schulz then brings us back to a much sparser texture, often a single instrumental color, that comments on what we have heard and then often moves us forward into another moment of brilliance. The music’s dramatic flow creates a rather entrancing effect that culminates in a John Adams-like finale.
The Moravian Philharmonic navigates their way through these various styles quite well and gets a real chance to show off their rhythmic ensemble skills and interpretive muscle across disparate music. The performances here allow them to really shine, especially the van Twillert. Each of the works here are quite captivating and stand up well on their own. Taken together, Navona has managed once again to create an opportunity for those who support new music to hear the way composers continually are discovering new ways to create engaging and communicative music for modern audiences.
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