Filharmonie Brno - Edward Smaldone: What no one else sees... (2024)

Composer Edward Smaldone, heard here on his fifth full length album and second New Focus release, is omnivorous in his influences. He cites jazz musicians from Miles Davis to Joe Pass to Maria Schneider, late century twelve-tone modernist composers such as George Perle and Ralph Shapey, and the architects Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid as just some of his sources of inspiration. The composite result, heard in the five works on this recording, is an artist with a natural way of integrating different aspects of his own voice into an organic style, one that reflects these diverse influences without being restricted by their associations. Smaldone uses conventional materials of harmony, rhythm, and thematic development in a personal way. Smaldone's music balances a sense of inevitability borne from his fluency with the syntax of traditional vocabulary and surprising compositional turns that are the byproduct of his nuanced approach to invention.

The album opens with the energetic exuberance of Beauty of Innuendo for orchestra. The strings establish a taut harmonic frame through tremolo entrances that accumulate into shifting chords. The brass instruments provide splashes of color with fragmented fanfares, punctuated by swirling passages in the strings. After the powerful introductory section, individual wind instruments take the lead with a series of lyrical solos, first in the clarinet, then the flute, and finally an unaccompanied solo oboe turn. A bravura ascending theme in the strings propels the work forward, passed to the horns and low brass and eventually subjected to development and disseminated throughout the orchestration. Beauty of Innuendo climaxes with ferocity as the sections of the orchestra spar with each other before the orchestration gradually thins over the work’s final minute and a half to end on a single pitch in the violins.

Prendendo Fuoco (Catching Fire) for piano and orchestra is set in five movements (with its third movement “Fire Dances” itself divided into three parts) that are heard here in one track. The opening “Introduction: Smoldering” portends the breadth of the work with a pointed thematic fragment in the strings, expansive harmonies in the winds, subtle march-like rhythms in the percussion, and flights of virtuosity in the solo piano. In “Ballad, Singing,” a mournful melody in the strings provides the foundation for fleet trills and passagework in the piano marked by crotale accents that articulate arrival pitches. Smaldone traverses an engaging range of territory in his piano writing, from Rachmaninov-esque romantic largesse, to giddy virtuosic facility worthy of Oscar Peterson, to angular accents one might hear in Stravinsky or Bartok. “Fire Dances” pivots to a vigorous, muscularly rhythmic texture with figures that explode between soloist and orchestra before the movement moves to a playful spinning out of motivic material. The final movement, “Incendiary,” is divided into two sections: “Quiet Before the Storm” is an elegiac fantasy that explores lush harmonies with improvisational material in the solo part, culminating in a free cadenza. “Catching Fire” returns to the crackling energy of “Fire Dances” with blistering passagework in the keyboard that are marked by fierce tutti unison accents and jousting dialogue between soloist and orchestra.

Murmurations for clarinet and wind orchestra is inspired by the apparent improvisatory behavior of a flock of starlings. Smaldone’s clarinet solo part takes the role of the lead bird, with the wind orchestra following in elegant flight. The wind orchestra timbre is luminous and brilliant, at times evoking the shimmering ecstasy of a big band and at others the delicate precision of an orchestral soli section. Fluid, elastic lines in the solo clarinet are echoed with pastels of color in the winds, often shaded by an icy vibraphone arpeggio or ride cymbal pattern. Imitation is a key rhetorical feature in the unfolding of the piece, with the “flock” grabbing phrase ends from the clarinet and extending them in mid-flight. Brief moments of reflection feature the clarinet solo over less active accompaniment, a contrast to the multi-layered texture Smaldone has established for much of the work.

The album’s second orchestral work without soloist is June 2011, a piece that evokes a Bernstein-era ethos of American contemporary music. Towering chords open the work with urbane optimism, and a swung line in the ensemble featuring xylophone and glockenspiel evokes ambitious third stream works and forays into incorporating jazz into adventurous music theatre pieces. A wistful middle section features nostalgic melodic material, heard in rich, tutti string passages.

The title work, What no one else sees… for woodwind quintet, is a non-programmatic piece that revels in intertwined chamber dialogue and the joy of developing motivic material in a transparent context. The opening movement, “Playful,” features syncopated figures, interconnected hybrid melodies, and pointed tutti arrivals. After a series of accented chords, “Serious” is led in turn by solo lines in the individual instruments of the quintet that frame its thoughtful expression; of particular note is the beautiful English horn material. “Free Spirited” opens with an easy, moderate groove that supports fleet, virtuosic lines from the players, returning to the syncopated accents from the opening movement, with thoughtfully placed moments of reflective contrast in between.

– Dan Lippel