Julius Penson Williams
Composer and Conductor
Moments of Arrival = Symphonic works and songs by ROUSSANOVl; McQUILLAN; WILLIAMS; QUALLIONTINE; BURNS – Linda Lister, soprano/ Chorus of Prague/ Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra/ Julius P. Williams – Centaur
Audiophile Audition
May 28, 2018
Gary Lemco
Russian-American composer Elena Roussanova, Associate Professor in
Composition at the Berklee College of Music, has a notable symphonic
work in her three-movement Moments of Arrival, a celebration of
those inspiring impulses that arise spontaneously, either through Nature
or through human interactions. The musical syntax, tonal and highly
suggestive of the American influences of Copland and Creston, achieves
an appealing melos as well as rhythmic engagement. The first
movement, “Moving Forward,” opens with raindrops and proceeds to bucolic
musings on landscape. “Reflections” pays likely homage to Thoreau, a
lakeside scene upon which the moon casts images upon the willows and the
water. Set as an Adagio – Espessivo, the music enjoys a glossy
patina, somewhat of Hollywood, somewhat of Howard Hanson. “Moment of
Arrival” takes up the spirited-journey motif, Allegro Energico,
rife with brass and wind colors, optimistic, the writing reminiscent of
good wind-band music on a sunny Sunday afternoon. This is the music
perhaps heard in James Agee’s imagination of a family outing.
Lee T. McQuillan (b. 1950) conceived his nine-minute Poet’s Song
as a response to a work by Margaret Carbo. McQuillan centers much of
his music-making in the Connecticut areas of Hartford and New Haven. Set
for soprano and chorus, the piece proceeds in a groping fashion, the
words’ searching for a form in the manner of Pater’s aesthetic, that all
arts aspiring to the condition of music. Tonal but no less harmonically
askew, the music’s achieving the very “cacophonous climax” of color and
kaleidoscopic, numinous, rapture ascribed to the poet’s power for
creativity. Another Carbo poem, “The Long Goodbye,” also calls upon the
soprano Linda Lister to incant a lament for the composer’s father, who,
dying of Alzheimer’s disease, confronts us with slow deterioration and
divestment of self. Resignation looms throughout the seven-minute work,
the strings serving as a chamber ensemble, love mixed with implacable
loss.
The death of Trayvon Martin in Florida in 2012 drives Julius P. Williams’ InEquities in a Society,
a “political” piece that laments this country’s tendency to crucify
young men of color. The oboe carries us forward, merging with a string
melodic line whose angularity will result in a full “confrontation” with
the repressive agents of “authority.” The syntax shares elements with
Shostakovich, insofar as dissonances and ostinati carry the
brutal tension of an environment poisoned by racial profiling and
oppression. The tympani marks the fatal encounter, and the battery soon
crushes any lyric consolation the oboe tries to offer.
Comment by email:
Thanks Bill!
Comment by email:
Thanks Bill!
Julius P. Williams
Artistic director/Conductor Berklee Contemporary Symphony Orchestra
No comments:
Post a Comment