Eastman School of Music - Score Yearbook (Rochester, NY)

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f X V: ,,,,,, 4 ' Q , --new ' ir if 32455lgggg.....,'...'..... uu- f, 5 it 3 ,f,, , ,, . gf ....- 'I 4 y g an Q it - 1 Q t ,Ji M A , NN '- , , t ig , . , y Z f , S, W, f ' ,- ' '1 ai, 5 ,, 4 ff at ad ', M wc 5- The Eastman School of Music ushered in its second 50 years with the first of 22 special anniversary commissions last night in Kilbourn Hall. Ulysses Kay received his master's degree from Eastman in the early Forties, and has since established a stable reputation as a compositional craftsman. His Facets for flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon, horn and piano, given its world premiere last night, was performed by a faculty ensemble conducted by Walter Hendl, director ofthe Eastman School. Facets is an 11-minute mosaic in which silence plays a logical role in the association by timbres which weaves through its three con- nected movements. A declamatory curtain of sound, immediately set in motion by the piano's jagged upbeat to a deep-throated G-flat octave, introduces a free . l ll T-.-'ang -,,,,,g,,,,,, .W ,AX PV y . ' 'tif' .-, W '. iv X i y l k x .P -- l C' - fantasy, followed by a three-part study rich in lyricism and the tinal rondo with its retrograde-reflection structure. Kay's new piece is laden with many nuanced gestures that almost seem to caress the very nature of the instrument for which they are written tlilce the bassoon solo set against the pianos law arpeggios tol- lowed by an oboe restatement of the same phrase. But its central fasci- nations were how the piece gravitated toward and away from natural silences as resting points, and the fertile, imaginative development of facets of its first phrase of declamation. - Theodore Price i f f ' I

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THE MORE HOT-TEMPERED HCONSORTIUMH by joseph Schwantner, a 20-year-old assistant professor teaching theory and composition at Eastman for his second year, was exciting in another, newer dimension. Consortium, being heard for the first time in Rochester, was ably performed by a student ensemble. lt had already been premiered Sept. 23 at Harvard Univer- sity's Busch-Resinger Museum by the Boston Musica Viva, to whose conductor, Richard Pittman, Dr. Schwantner had dedicated this nine-minute score of grip- ping intensity, Pittman originated the Eastmans Musica Nova series in 1966. Truly an activity piece, which is relentlessly energetic in its rhythmic lan- guage and expansive in its wide-range demands upon performers and listeners, Consortium seems to blend the bag-of-tricks approach of less successful com- posers into a dazzling, convincing work where continuity is the order of the day. Schwantner has assembled a fine collage from the very materials which many contemporary composers have been doodling with for the past Z0 years. He's integrated con batuto effects with staggering slashes of sonic lightening. A short passage for muted strings momentarily ices its surface. While clarinet and flute softly improvise rippling patterns in close quarters, the three string voices sing a unison pitch for a precarious moment before sliding like billiard balls to three opposing corners. Put simply, Schwantner has made a new, expressive music by mustering instru- mental effects in the service of expression, not experimentation for its own sake. In Consortium he is at the front of a new wave of composition that is roman- tic in outlook, rational in expression. And anyone truly serious about Rochester's developing appreciation of music written in our own time will want to watch for other Schwantner works. 4 I EA WALTER i-le:-lou., utxssee aww sr'.22-.'f sC e:az.j TH,Ei5'iC?3NY a , ,,,.. I , , musou F-r-L'+A SW g x . t s .. t l ' '- - ,lx Ri.-il'-Ll' it-.4 Ulm .-1 Q' 5 1 'sr -Q '-, ' x 1 --4 I N 8 wg c...- fire l For cra pie en: in H81 pi: Z f 4 Z, in A U A V V I l V H' M ' i' ' W f ' 3' -'firm .- fit: , Q

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Eastman Quartet Kilboum Hall November 9,1971 l lame L-.aiu lxox mid l.w:x.xr.l Millard Tavlor, Francis Tursi, Warren Benson, 10 A A I' x - : XQ V3-Z? l - v i I