The University of Texas Wind Ensemble and Nathan Williams give such stunning performances of Frank Ticheli’s Concerto For Clarinet, and John Mackey’s “Wine-Dark Sea.” This is a festival of music in itself, providing over an hour of fairly new original music from the two composers, signifying the ways in which both the orchestra and the concert band are neck and neck with each other, competing for relevance and radiance. Add to this that the Texas Wind Ensemble itself is an awesome ensemble that is on the move making recordings of new wind ensemble music almost as soon as it comes out.
“Spumante” is a fairly light and colorful number with tons of runs in the flutes, piccolo and other woodwinds. It has a fairly brisk Allegro style tempo that makes it feel very festive.
“J’ai été au pal” is a very chromatically and jazzy piece about going to a dance. It is in a fairly moderate waltz type tempo and swims around the tonality of E-flat.
The main works are the band version of Frank Ticheli’s “Concerto for Clarinet,” featuring clarinet solo and the wind ensemble and John Mackey’s Wine-dark Sea.” If you’ve heard the orchestral version of the former piece, then you’d pretty much know what to expect in the band version. The intro on Movement One— “Rhapsody for George” has a sound like “The Flight of the Bumblebee.” The clarinet and low woodwinds actively buzz around in a highly chromatic style. The rest of the band, at least for a good part of the piece are accents to the soloist. “Song for Aaron” (the second movement) features a high woodwind (almost) drone on A while a solo trumpet takes the spot light and plays a song that is primarily in fourths. The lesson in this movement is that simplicity is beautiful.The last movement is again centered around a Jazzy riff that gets people’s attention in the clarinets and saxes. This is highly reminiscent of Ticheli’s earlier works like “Blue Shades.”
John Mackey’s “Wine-Dark Sea”, also features three movements. The first movement has a dazzling horn and trumpet lick that plays with major and minor thirds and then jumps around to E-flat Minor from C major in a rather long span (it’s a fine example of a chromatic mediant). The landing E-flat chord with both G and G-flat, featuring the whole band is pretty earth-shattering.
The second movement is interlaced with quieter passages of harp and woodwinds in the mid to low ranges, captivating the immortal span of life and time as he says in the title of the work “Immortal Thread, So Weak.” It is the most beautiful work of the whole piece. It’s one of many solemn moments in the repertoire of concert band music. The last movement of the piece sounds like you’re in the matrix or a deep, darkening abyss. It’s very film-esque. The last part of the movement fires up with exuberance and flashing color. I’ve actually seen the premier of this work and it was nothing short of astonishing. This CD deserves to be in a composer’s (and listener’s) classical music collection.
