Beauty In Flurries of Sound

What no one else sees… Brno Philharmonic Strings/Mikel Toms; Niklas Sivelov, piano. Royal Scottish National Orchestra/Mikel Toms; Soren-FilipBrix Hansen, clarinet. Den Kongelige Livgardes Musikkorps/Giordano Bellincampi Opus Zoo Woodwind Quintet

New Focus FCR425 Total Time:  75:07 Recording:   ****/**** Performance: ****/****

A couple of years ago, New Focus released a collection of chamber music by composer Edward Smaldone (b. 1956).  Smaldone is Professor Emeritus of Music at the Aaron Copland School of Music, CUNY-Queens.  The current release shifts the focus to some of his larger works for orchestra and wind ensemble.  The album takes its title from a woodwind quintet that closes the album.

Beauty if Innuendo (premiered in 2013) which gets things off to an exciting start with its flurry of sound around a string tremolo.  There are splashes of color from across the orchestra that add to a sense of exhilaration.  A variety of extended harmonic clusters of sound provide a waning contrasting section before things begin to build again into a swirl of sounds.  All this eventually dissolves to a single held note in violins.  The piece is quite dramatic and rather exciting with its postmodern orchestral style.  The other orchestral work, June 2011, hearkens back to a mid-century American contemporary music with its Bernstein-like fusion of Americana and jazz and forays into third-stream styles.  This lends it a sort of swagger in some of the gestures and in the brass and mallet percussion. 

There are two works for solos and orchestra/ensemble are placed between the purely orchestral pieces.  The first is a piano concerto of sorts, Prendendo Fuoco (2020).  The work features five interconnected movements.  Here one gets a better feel for the colorful orchestral palette.  Some of the piano flourishes are a blend of post-romantic style with little jazz inflections.  It has an overall rhapsodic quality.  There are also some excellent moments of interplay between orchestral solos and the piano here.  Some of the more astringent harmonic ideas provide an added dramatic flair with their closer intervallic writing.  Within that language though are some equally romantic gestures that help create an interesting blend of sound.  There are some interesting rhythmic punctuations that add an additional jazz-like feel with the syncopated styles and harmonies as the piece enters its midpoint.  Murmurations is for clarinet and wind orchestra.  Here the solo line takes the part of a bird in flight.  The ensemble is provides interesting color here too with hints at “big band” sound and also a variety of interaction through the imitation that is a structural mark of the work.  It creates an interesting textural piece at times with interesting layers of sound.   

The album closes with a delightful little woodwind quintet, What no one else sees…The work is a bit more abstract in conception with a typical fast-slow-fast movement structure.  The central movement is notable for its gorgeous English Horn solo.  The sort of virtuosic writing on display is handled well by the quintet.  Interesting syncopation and groove elements all appear in this little coda of a work.

The opening work was recorded for Ablaze Records and has been reissued here along with recordings made over the past four years.  Predendo Fuoco has a very lively acoustic which results in a blend of forward piano that is quite crisp the orchestral textures which get moved to the back of the sound picture in the balance.  This is carried through to the clarinet piece a bit which helps add to the crisp attacks of the winds here.  The accompanying booklet provides some additional details about Smaldone’s works with some nods to the difficulties of performance and recording during the 2020 pandemic. 

The performances are all quite committed and tackle the music with great energy and excitement.  Niklas Sivelov certainly throws himself into the technical qualities here displaying a great command of rhythmic articulation as well as managing to help communicate the phrasing of the music well.  The beautiful playing of Soren-Filip Brix Hansen also invites the listener into the clarinet work with rich, full tones that give way to some great virtuosic demands. 

Here is another fine album of contemporary American orchestral music with engaging works that are quite accessible even within some of their more modern harmonic moments.