Myths & Legends

Album review

One might not have supposed that a disc's worth of contemporary trombone quartets existed, but the combination is a popular one in the academic settings for which most of these works were originally composed. The medium of the trombone quartet both places restrictions on the composer's imagination and suggests a range of historical references and expectations running from the ensemble brass music of the early Baroque to early jazz heterophony. This attractively designed disc from Albany is surely aimed at players and lovers of the trombone, certainly, but it testifies to both the skill of the players, the entertainingly named Stentorian Consort, and to the variety of music written for this combination. All the music on the disc is contemporary, and most pieces are less than 50 years old -- the earliest are the first two movements of the 2002 quartet of John La Montaine, written more than 60 years earlier and finished, without a sharp break in style, in the new century. None is serial, none is neo-tonal or neo-Romantic, and none really makes use of extended techniques. Even given this additional set of restrictions, each piece is different, and there's a nice range from the serious, low timbres and complex metrical modulations of Charles Wuorinen's Consort of Four Trombones (1960) to the festive and evocative title work by Eric Ewazen. Leslie Bassett's quartet (1954) is unusually successful at incorporating hints of jazz playing into a context untouched by its rhythms, and several works effectively refer to the Renaissance brass music that was rising to popularity in the wider world surrounding the mostly academic one of these works. Several works (the central Shostakovich-like movement of Tull's quartet, Phillip Schroeder's For Jim) partake of the intense gravity of which this consort of low voices is capable, but the overall mood is bright. Fans of brass music who enjoy the more contemporary segments of crossover concerts and recordings might give this a try.

© TiVo