Anthony Iannaccone: Looking Back, Moving On

Album review

The music of composer Anthony Iannaccone could be classified, if one had to make a classification, as neo-Romantic, but really, he straddles the divide between modernist and neo-Romantic composition, with scores that are highly atmospheric but also rigorously constructed. This release offers a sampling of Iannaccone's orchestral music that will inspire many listeners to look further. Consider the innocent-sounding Waiting for Sunrise on the Sound, where the intended pictorial content is clearly communicated, but in place of an impressionist haze, are little stabs of light deployed in entirely unexpected ways. The album includes two of Iannaccone's symphonies; the three-movement Symphony No. 4 is an especially imposing contemporary orchestral work but also sample the shorter single-movement pieces. Consider the Concertante for clarinet and orchestra, which is strong enough to have brought the veteran clarinetist Richard Stoltzman out of what is presumably a reduced schedule in his ninth decade, and which gives an idea of the composer's powers. The problems of reconciling the solo clarinet with an intensely turbulent orchestral part are substantial and are elegantly solved by Iannaccone here. There are a couple of orchestras involved, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the Warsaw Philharmonic, each with its own conductor, and the album does not really make a sonic whole. However, it is worth it to have all this exciting music in one place.
© James Manheim /TiVo