The New York Times
June 12, 2009
Music Review Orchestra of the League of Composers
The Debut of the Players Who Honor the Writers
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI
“The debut of an orchestra during bad economic times is good news. So there was much to celebrate at the Miller Theater on Wednesday night when the Orchestra of the League of Composers gave its inaugural performance. The League has been promoting contemporary music for 85 years and has long sponsored a sizable chamber ensemble. With this concert, it introduced a 37-piece orchestra and got back into the business of commissioning works.”
“The orchestra, conducted expertly by the composer Louis Karchin, sounded terrific in this varied and demanding program. It began festively with Britten’s 'Fanfare for St. Edmundsbury,' a short work for three trumpets and a lesson for young composers in how to write an interesting piece for a public occasion. Mr. Dietz’s 10-minute 'Gharra' was an elemental, atmospheric score in which slinky themes and combative voices struggle to break free of an engulfing, dense, harmonically murky orchestral maze.
“Alvin Singleton’s 'After Choice,' one of two commissioned premieres on the program, was an engaging work for string orchestra in which mysterious yet playful plucked lines are juxtaposed with fitful, spiraling yet oddly calm legato lines. Julia Wolfe’s 'Vermeer Room' is inspired by Vermeer’s painting 'A Girl Asleep,' which depicts a young woman sitting at a table, dozing, her head propped up by her hand. But from Ms. Wolfe’s agitated, harmonically gnashing, brightly colorful score, the sleeping girl is having fitful daydreams. The concert ended with the premiere of Charles Wuorinen’s 20-minute 'Synaxis,' a boldly complex and texturally transparent work for four solo instruments and orchestra. In its uncompromising way, the music recalls the concertato pieces of Stravinsky. The soloists played brilliantly: Robert Ingliss (oboe), Alan R. Kay (clarinet), Patrick Pridemore (horn), and Timothy Cobb (double bass). That the orchestra dispatched Mr. Wuorinen’s challenging piece with such vibrant authority boded well for the future of this new ensemble.” [Full Post]
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