Customer Reviews

Michael Torke: Color Music

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I was turned on to Michael Torke's music when I saw the San Francisco Ballet dance to several numbers from this CD. Ash is my favorite. I can still close my eyes and see the complex interweavings of form and chaos that the dancers so beautifully performed. But it was the music that captured my imagination. It spoke to me of the complexity of our times. I listen to this CD often. Unfortunately, the SF Ballet company does not sell videos of their works.

I have had this CD for a while, and it remains to be one of my favorite in the collection. Bright, perky, and with a little bit of jazziness, the pieces come off well. The pieces themselves might resemble something minimalist, but it definately has a forward movement. This propulsion is powered mainly by motifs and colorful chords, and less by melody. While some may find this drab and boring, it is really just another way of listening to music. Unlike wrapping your mind around an atonal piece, you just have to relax and let it flow.

Torke claims to have a synthesis of his senses (which is uncommon but not rare) in that he hears colors, and thus different sounds resemble different colors. Hence the name of the music. Realize of course that the titles refer to the color that he perceives, and is open for interpretation.

One of the great attributes of the disk is David Zinman and the Baltimore Orchestra. They sounds great and the engineering provided by Argo results in a crisp clean sound that has a punctuated freshness to it.

The individual pieces vary in tempo and mood, from exciting and invigorating to mellow and relaxed. They are not necessarily intended to go together in a set, and in fact there are other "color" pieces that Torke has written. Take them as you will, but they form a nice package for the disk.

Michael Torke is an up and coming composer of twentieth century music. By combining the jazz rhythms which have given American music a style all its own with the brilliant orchestral timbres of a classical orchestra, Torke proves that classical music is not dead, but, on the contrary, very much alive! I have gained a whole new respect for minimalism because of this cd. It is the subtleties and the unusual sonorities in his work that brings his colorful titles to life. I would highly recommend this cd to any open-minded music lover.

Yes, two of the five works here also appear on the Javelin album. That leaves three works uncovered: Purple, Ash, and Ecstatic Orange. So the choice to acquire this album in addition to Javelin is ultimately driven by a referendum on the merit of these three works in their own right. For my money, the acquisition of this earlier album is more than justified by the presence of Ash. What makes Ash distinctive is the clever Beethovenian conceit that Torke dishes up. The illusion of linear progress is created in individual sections, but at the macro level this sense of purpose, like water to a thirsty Tantalus, is pulled away. Form follows function, however, and Torke is putting the Beethovenian idiom to an entirely different use than the archetype did. This is assuredly not parody, but a transmutation in the service of a fresh, modern aesthetic. It's as if the IDEA of Debussy's impressionism is being realized with Beethovenesque building blocks (cobbled from the idiom farthest removed from Debussy's).

On this album, the best works are Green, Ash, and Bright Blue music, in that order. Ecstatic Orange stands out as the dissonant member of the set, while Purple comes off as an effective interlude (a breather, as it were) bridging the effervescent Green to Ecstatic Orange. While some have inferred associative relationships between music and color on Torke's part, I don't think we should lump him in with Scriabin on this account. I've written a series of compositions named after Los Angeles area freeways, but there is no deeper meaning to be sought in that circumstance.

With the recent release of "Jasper" on Naxos, it's no longer true that all the orchestral Color Music of Torke's can be found on this one album. But the best selection of it is surely to be found on this CD...

Having played Ecstatic Orange myself was what originally led me to buy this CD. The music may seem rather repetitive and perhaps even annoying after a while (you may even wonder if the composer was drunk or something), but one should keep an open mind. It does have structure and it does make sense if you care to listen. Baltimore plays it quite well, but I can understand why some may not like it. Just remember nobody especially liked Mahler or Stravinsky when their pieces first appeared either. Whether Torke will someday be considered a composer in the ranks of Beethoven or Shostakovich is completely impossible to say, but if you have an interest in something a bit different, go ahead and check this disc out.

This is music that you can listen without being annoyed. This is genuinely beautiful music, with a great orchestration, with moving masses of sounds that move in parallel with the complex rhytms like brush strokes of an inspired painter.
This is simple, but not naive, since the structural complexity is extreme, despite the appearance (and this is another achievement). Torke is one of the most personal voices of new postminimalist music. And this is Torke at its best! Definitely a must for anybody interested in modern music...

"You know, I'm no art critic, but I know what I hate. And I don't hate this." --- C. Montgomery Burns, from "Brush With Greatness."

That about sums it up. As minimalism goes, this pieces are some of the more engaging examples of the genre. It still contains the repetitive rhythms & chord progressions, so beloved by the devotees of minimalism, spun out in innumerable variations for several minutes. But the music remains strangely engaging despite its minimalist qualities. I found that the energy in "Green," "Ecstatic Orange," and "Bright Blue Music" overcomes the repetitive qualities, and is enough to keep all but the most fervent haters of minimalism interested. I cannot say the same for "Ash," with its classically-inspired chord progressions, which became really irritating to listen to after just a few minutes. It would figure that "Ash" is the longest piece on this album.

3 1/2 stars --- catalogue it under "Minimalist music that isn't totally annoying."

What would Michael Torke do if he ever lost his score for Stravinsky's Symphony In C ? He wouldn't have anything to spice up the Bernstein-ism's with ! But the little Mike Post cadences would still save the day... Eat your spinach, dear ! I say it's Academic Minimalism, and I say the Hell with it! It just proves again, if proof were really needed, that any Avant Garde movement carries the seeds of its own decadence within itself from its inception. Those who find this "listenable Minimalism" should be locked in a room with a recording of The Well Tuned Piano on eternal repeat. Philosophical question: does repeating some cleverly orchestrated trifle in a flaccid loop make that trifle "minimalist" ?

The thing about Torke is that he "tries too hard to get people to like him." Furthermore, his rationale, albeit honest in his intentions of departing from academic views, on composing vernacular polyglot works is superficial and artistically light-weighted.

the music contained on this cd can only be described as musical wallpaper -- musical patterns of no or little significance -- only the wallpaper michael torke designs must be categorized as irritating and an eye, or rather, EAR sore.