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Boston Modern Orchestra Project (Performer), Lee Hyla (Composer), Gil Rose (Conductor), Laura Frautschi (Performer), Tim Smith (Performer)

Product Details

• Performer: Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Laura Frautschi, Tim Smith
• Conductor: Gil Rose
• Composer: Lee Hyla
• Audio CD (February 1, 2004)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: New World Records
• ASIN: B0001DHQNK
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #383,367 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

"The Boston composer Lee Hyla writes works that deftly blend expressionistic, complex contemporary atonal idioms with elements of avant-garde jazz, rock and even punk... While American orchestras keep commissioning the same handful of tame Neo-Romantics, here is a truly original composer who has yet to gain the attention he deserves." —Anthony Tommassini, The New York Times

In the music of Lee Hyla (b. 1952), without exception, I have always felt that the jagged, honking, barking, raucous, strongly articulated rhythmic layer patrols and protects an inner layer of timeless, crystalline beauty, almost too fragile to survive on its own. His obsessive recycling of material, subtly transformed over the course of the piece, rude interruptions, and unexpected glimpses of an internal radiance all add to a sense of uneasy striving towards a kind of transcendent experience.

The three works on this disc—Concerto for Bass Clarinet and Orchestra (1988), Trans (1996), and the Violin Concerto (2001)—are intelligent, but not intellectual. Lee has chosen, in all of these works, to tell a tale, to work within a musical space whose boundaries consist of wildly contrasting elements.

The performances on this disc are breathtaking in their perfection. Conductor Gil Rose leads his Boston Modern Orchestra Project into and out of this challenging terrain with panache, convincingly transplanting rock-and-roll riffs into the orchestral environment —a truly impressive accomplishment. —Ted Mook, from the liner notes

Of related interest: 80491 We Speak Etruscan

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars High Tension, February 29, 2004

By	Sam A. Mawn-Mahlau (Winchester, MA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a wonderful CD with a tense, precise performance. Sections of the music are frantic and turgid, yet still carefully controlled. Hyla's music always seems ready to careen wildly out of control, yet always stops, comes back, ties together the divergent melodies and rhythms, and then drives on. The music is deeply informed by both the classical new music tradition and improvisational jazz, and brings the two together in an often harmonious clash.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars complex modern music (no free jazz or punk rock), June 13, 2005

By	R. Hutchinson "autonomeus" (a world ruled by fossil fuels and fossil minds) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Based on some of the promotion for this disc, a listener might be quite disappointed -- where's the jazz? the rock? the punk? It all sounds quite wild and exciting, complete with jagged honking and barking. For better or worse, Lee Hyla's compositions are nowhere near as eclectic as all that, and as brilliantly performed by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, conducted by Gil Rose, they can be much more plausibly compared to works by Elliott Carter, Roger Reynolds, and Olivier Messiaen.

Tim Smith in the "Concerto for Bass Clarinet and Orchestra" (1988 -- 10'52) is no doubt the source of the honking and barking. Not continuously, but at certain junctures. There are no long romantic cadenzas (someone should give that a try -- a romantic cadenza on bass clarinet!), but rather carefully structured exchanges with the clarinet as pivot for complex maneuvers by the orchestra. The title piece, "Trans" (1996 -- 18') is a maddeningly elusive work for orchestra in three movements. It opens with strong declamatory passages that remind me of Magnus Lindberg, fades into a more subdued central passage, and then unfolds the maximum of complexity in the third movement, reminiscent of Elliott Carter's orchestral scores.

Up to this point, Hyla has led the listener deep into the heart of a modernist vision, but with the "Violin Concerto" (2001 -- 24'22), he turns in a more accessible direction with a vivacious piece that to my ears is obviously influenced by Messiaen. There is a recurring theme in the brass that could have been lifted from the "Turangalila-Symphonie," and Hyla even uses percussion, strings and winds to create bird song! The jazzy effect of these elements is not avant jazz, but rather the Gershwinesque sort of jazz that Messiaen incorporated into his music in the 1940s. Quite a tribute, it is a puzzle that Messiaen is nowhere mentioned or credited in the title or liner notes. The violin, played by Laura Frautschi, sounds naive and pastoral, and is given several extended, mainly slow and expressive passages rather than lightning-fast features.

Lee Hyla, chair of the composition department at the New England Conservatory, clearly deserves greater recognition, and should be heard by all those devoted to contemporary music.