The New American Scene III

Album review

This live concert recording by the Cleveland Chamber Symphony conducted by Edwin London presents four recent works by four American composers of varying aesthetic persuasions. Donald Erb's "Solstice" (1987) celebrates both the Ohio Chamber Orchestra's fifteenth anniverary and the summer solstice. The piece is actually serious and dissonant in nature with heavy percussive densities. Intermittent passages offer softer sustaining or tremolo chords or swift on-rushing figurations. George Perle's "Lyric Intermezzo" (1987) is in five movements in a delicate style that Perle refers to as "twelve-tone tonality". The clear gestures recall many works of atonal or pantonal music of the 1920's and 1930's but have an individual emotional expression of their own. William Duckworth's "Mysterious Numbers" (1995-96) grew out of open workshops in which the composer created a piece before an audience working with musicians. Duckworth prepared a series of templates with 38 scales, 58 primary harmonies some of which came from Erik Satie and 15 secondary harmonies. From this material and interaction this delightful three-movement work was born. The first movement is "Dancing, Singing" which uses scale-wise patterns in syncopated rhythms. The second movement "Quietly Flowing" is built of similar materials as the first but has more sustained tones and is played quieter with more limited orchestral forces at any one time. The patterns of the thrd movement "Always changing, moving ahead" are even more jazzy and rhythmical. Salvatore Martirano's "Isabela" is a tone poem with many modernistic and odd effects concerning Columbus's patroness queen.

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