ok, this is not the best recording you can get out there, but the only one i think that's commercially available is the one of the original commission by pittsburgh symphony and i'm not sure i can legally upload it. plus, this recording is one of me! this is the run-through I did of this piece last week when i ran rehearsal. and these are the program notes that i wrote for the concert that this orchestra is performing it on next weekend.
Eric Moe's No Time Like the Present
is a muscular, energetic, and invigorating five-minute exploration of
orchestral rhythm. Commissioned in 1996 by the Pittsburgh Symphony
Orchestra, it was premiered in 1998 by then-music director Mariss
Jansons. It seeks to respond to the proposition of what might have
happened had Stravinsky spent his time in the States absorbing the
rhythms of Detroit's Motown rather than Los Angeles's Hollywood.
The
work opens with a vigorous motor of sixteenths which underlies
fragments of jagged and “funky” rhythms distributed among solo
wind and brass, and interrupted by bars of siren-like triplets. A
horn solo emerges to inaugurate a rhapsodic contrasting mood,
characterized by solos which move to piccolo, english horn, and
eventually, strings. These are punctuated by outbursts from the brass
and percussion, which flare forth and then melt away as quickly as
they came.
A solo
bass clarinet colored by trombones commences the final section, a
series of angular, increasingly extended and instrumentally-layered
swells that crest in sudden explosions and unexpected silences. Bold
triplets in the horn urge the music forward to a percussion-driven
climax which ends abruptly, leaving only the soft glow of a cluster
of harmonics in the celli, like an “afterimage” of the explosion
we have just witnessed.
Moe is
an American composer and concert pianist who is currently Professor
of Composition and Theory at the University of Pittsburgh.
1926
OK once more i am sort of copping out by doing music everyone knows (and that wikipedia does a pretty reasonable entry on). who hasn't heard these preludes?
these are great examples of early 20th century american classical music, infusing jazz and coming out with all-american favorites.
here's gershwin himself.
a very unsentimental recording. turn up the volume.
here's something different:
part 1 is based on that famous five note motif with the bluesy half step at the beginning. standard a-b-a form with lots of virtuosic jazzy octave embellishments in the return.
part 2 is the paragon of bluesy blues. notice how gershwin himself doesn't even bother to swing anything (whereas virtually everything in the very cheesy bernstein recording is swung, and he even adds his own section...) the thing to notice in this movement is the bass line/accompaniment: classic blues chords (the chromatic line moving above perfect intervals, and then in the middle a sort of walking bass).
part 3 is a highly syncopated, in your face display of virtuosity that has become known as "the spanish prelude" of the three. the exposition has a recurring melody that forms a minor half answered by a major half.
ok, i am lazy today. here is a short, sweet little movement from the very well known rodeo suite.
this is a ballet suite which premiered in 1942 with choreography to five movements, one of which (the "ranch house party" which would have been third) is not heard in the orchestral suite which was subsequently arranged. this would be copland's second "cowboy ballet" in four years, but the choreographer (agnes de mille) convinced him that it would be different enough. her influence was such that she determined every member of the cast and to some extent controlled the music as well. wiki says that it's a result of this tight control that copland, rather uncharacteristically, leaves the myriad folk melodies he incorporates mostly untouched (as de mille transcribed them).
everyone knows the last movement of this piece, but i rather like the constant switching of duple and triple meter in this movement. (the first movement is definitely worth checking out, if you don't know it.)
unsurprisingly, youtube is swamped with high school/cc orchestras of this whole suite (i first played it myself back when i was in 8th grade... ugh). but here's a recording by indianapolis symphony.
this whole ballet is basically about the cowgirl - danced by de mille herself, originally - trying to find acceptance within her society. she is awkward and seeks acceptance among the cowboys, particularly the "head wrangler." a tomboy, she is much more of a kindred spirit to these men than her competitor ladies, all the local girls. this movement is what happens at a dance in which everyone pairs off, leaving the cowgirl awkwardly alone until the "champion roper" actually approaches her (after being bested by the wrangler in attracting someone else).
this is the folk song which was transcribed to become the main theme.
the movement starts with the orchestra "tuning up" in preparation. presumably everyone is sort of pairing up during this interlude, and then the waltz proper begins.
i love the ambiguity between 3 and 2 with this theme. pick either and it will feel natural, but always with a slight tug at some point into the other meter.
a much faster interlude begins at 2:43. solo winds and celli play with two meshed seventh chords (a-flat minor, and e-flat minor) until all of a sudden a very short "development" theme blossoms out, dovetailing nicely into the main theme. presumably at this point the cowgirl has gotten her man and is dancing with him (or maybe i'm just making up all this? it's kind of hard to find info on, actually :o)
enjoy.
Something easy for today. After I get into the habit of doing this I'll start branching out.
I. Allegro
II. Andante
III. Presto in moto perpetuo
this concerto was written/published in 1939 on commission by this industrialist named Fels and originally was to be performed by one of Barber's Curtis classmates, a violinist named briselli. the entire complicated history of its composition is readable on the wiki page in much more detail than i care to discuss. we'll just note here that briselli rejected the premiere of the work because in his opinion, the last movement needed to be heftier. it's only about 3-4 minutes long (there is somewhat of a competition about how short one can make's one's recording of this movement, which hilary hahn has pretty much dominated thus far at a handy 3:24 and 216 bpm which is actually as fast as my metronome goes. i can't remember the original metronome marking, but it's well below 200... wtf).
because of this work's relative simplicity it's kind of difficult to only do one movement unless i'm planning on doing a formal analysis, so here is anne akiko meyers's recording of the whole thing.
(for some reason blogger doesn't have a tool for inserting google videos into blogposts, only youtube videos. what?)
i really like this recording, btw, although maybe that's just because of the mounds of student ones i had to wade through to find it. she is a very, very aggressive player sometimes, so i find her climaxes fantastic, especially the one in her first movement. but i guess sometimes she doesn't quite achieve the lightness that i am searching for, for instance in the second sixteenth-note subject in the first movement.
here also is the first movement of gil shaham's, which i have to say is probably one of the only recordings he does that i genuinely like.
most of shaham's stuff leaves me sort of unfulfilled, and maybe his last movement of this concerto also falls into that category. but it's a very sweet recording of a very sweet and pretty simple concerto.
most discussions of this work just point out that this is generally a great example of the sort of "popularism" that was emblematic of these couple decades in American classical composition - the same sort that copland, weill, and a lot of others engaged in during this time. gibson is pretty much correct when he says that it was idiotic of the violinist to reject the concerto, which "just about screams, 'i am going to be one of the most popular violin concertos in history, and i will make your career.' " with like a thousand student recordings of it on youtube, who can really argue? it's no wonder that the songful nature of the first movement have made it a favorite among violinists. with listeners, though, it's actually probably the last movement which really impresses. brief though it is, it's the only really virtuosic thing of the concerto, and i once attended a concert in which the audience probably would not have given more than two ovations if not for the finale (you could feel the dampness in the air after the second movement...)
it's a good leadin to the discussion of popularism during this period of america's compositional history but i'm not really in the mood, so i'll just say that it is so accessible in its structure and yet very sophisticated in its harmonies (uniquely barber - lots of major seconds imposed on fifths and the like), that it's hard to "feel bad" about liking it. i think the fact that it's such a favorite among violinists is very telling.
i will also mention that the second movement is actually by far my favorite. get a load of the augmented tenths. also the oboe solo at the beginning (brahms anyone?)
it's actually a little hard to see how the piece hangs together. the melodies are so clear, so simplistic, it's a bit hard to see how anything in the first movement is reflected in the latter two movements. but as i was working on this piece a few years back i held onto exactly one moment in each movement that seemed to tie the movements together - near the end of each movement (in the cadenza section for the first and second movement, and somewhere in the second half of the third, though i may just be dreaming about this one and it is probably a coincidence) there is an attention-getting two-octave thing.
anyway it's a great bit of fun to play. i can blabber about it for a while, but i'd rather just go listen to the second movement, bye!
