FRED LERDAHL: Cross-Currents; Waltzes; Duo; Quiet Music – Rolf Schulte, violin/ Scott Nickrenz, viola/ Fred Sherry, cello/ Donald Parma, bass/ James Winn, piano/ Odense Symphony Orchestra/ Paul Mann, conductor – Bridge 9269, 66:18 ***1/2 [Distr. by Albany]:
Lerdahl’s music is obviously a craft given much thought; you do not for a moment come away thinking that this is a composer who tosses notes on the page without carefully considering each and every nuance he puts down. Currently Fritz Reiner Professor of Music at Columbia University, Lerdahl writes with passion, sophistication, and a genuine sense of trying to connect with the listener.
Yet some of the music smacks of academia. He works in his own system, devised as “expanding variations” part of his “generative theory of tonal music” as set down in a book he authored. Systems like this to me are always suspect, at least in proportion to the deal being made of them. While I agree with him in essence as to the selection of variation as one of the primal forces in musical structure (whether actually named that or not), a listener should be able to enjoy any composer’s music in complete ignorance of the underlying structure. What matters is the emotional and intellectual impression made by the music, and nothing else, even if it may be of ancillary interest.
In that spirit I must say that I find his latest work here, the Duo for violin and piano, disappointing. The two instruments wander around each other like dogs deciding whether to mate or not, and then go their separate ways. Perhaps that is the point, this dissipation of relationships. It is inspired, if that is the word, by the loss of three friends over a two year period and certainly makes its point in that regard, but it is not something I would want to return to. His 1994 Quiet Music, on the other hand, is eminently returnable. Though it uses a large orchestra, the title determines that various instruments and sections are kept muted for much of the work, and there is always some kind of underlying motion going on, including a sixteenth-note undercurrent that adds disquiet to the quiet. But the reflective, even mysterious nature of the piece is haunting and beguiling in a way.
Cross-Currents, the other orchestral work on this album, is very much in the same vein, but more demonstrative and effervescent, a fine opener and good example of Lerdahl’s skill with a very large orchestra. Waltzes, a 12-movement work that imitates all sorts of noted pieces in that form (for violin, viola, cell, and bass) from Ravel, to Strauss, to Chopin, is not the boldly inviting piece that the title might suggest, but a subtle and rather cautious work that draws the listener in closely to hear its many subliminal points about the waltz form.
All in all, not bad, though probably not everyone will respond positively. But this is a voice worth hearing, and recorded well.
— Steven Ritter
