Last fall, the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra released an outstanding album of music by three composers, three concertos, and three world premieres. Entitled Triumvirate, this recording (on the Summit label) features works by three American women composers: Gabriela Lena Frank, Lera Auerbach, and Joan Tower. Perhaps this fixation on the number three was part of a larger equation, because the ensemble, based in Columbus, Ohio, is in its 33rd season, and Triumvirate is the first of three recordings that the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra, under Music Director Timothy Russell, will release.
The CD starts with the Frank’s “Compadrazgo,” a light and playful piece for that the chamber ensemble plays with cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han. The music seems to address the multicultural nationality of the composer, whose comes from Peruvian/Chinese stock on her mother’s side and Lithuanian/Jewish stock on her father’s. Sometimes Han’s pianism stands in high relief against the constantly modulating lines on Finckel’s cello. Highlights of this four-movement work, included impeccable glissandi from the strings, bright, hammer-dulcimer-like passages from Han, climbing, tension-filled strands from Finckel’s cello, and an array of snaps from various percussion instruments. It’s all combines to make an engaging opener on this recording.
Auerbach’s “Fragile Solitudes (Shadowbox)” for string quartet and orchestra moves back and forth from moody and very contemplative spaces to agitated and aggressive ones. At times, the orchestra paints a background of colors upon which the Borromeo String Quartet accents sharp, defining lines. Here and there the music sags up and down, drifts across foggy surface before it becomes jolted by the orchestral ensemble into a different state. This piece has a lot of ebb and flow with sounds that surge, become thicker, and then thin out or evaporate.
Violist Paul Neubauer summoned all of his virtuosic powers to make Tower’s “Purple Rhapsody” a knockout of a piece. This one-movement work, flexes its muscles from the get-go with a forceful style in which the viola is pitted against the orchestra. Neubauer creates a plethora of intriguing sounds (including a buzzy one) and makes his instrument soar into the stratosphere that most of us associate with the violin. The orchestra and soloist bring out the tension and drama in the music, and make this piece a fitting close to exceptional recording.
James Bash writes articles for a variety of publications, including magazines such as Opera America, Open Spaces, Opera, MUSO, International Arts Manager, American Record Guide, Symphony, Opera Canada, and PSU Magazine. The newspapers include Crosscut, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, The Oregonian, The Columbian, The Portland Tribune, The Register-Guard, and Willamette Week. James has also written a number of articles for the Oregon Arts Commission and contributed articles to the 2nd edition of the Grove Dictionary of American Music. James was a fellow to the 2008 NEA Journalism Institute for Classical Music and Opera. He is a member of the Music Critics Association of North America (mcana.org) and lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife, Kathy.
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