Arnold Rosner’s Music for Wind Band: Bold and Unfiltered
This release was a real surprise for me. Long-time readers know I love Arnold Rosner's music. He combined Renaissance and Medieval harmonies and voice-leading. And he eschewed the major/minor structure of the Baroque (and later) periods. His use of tonality makes his music accessible to modern audiences. And yet there's a sense of timelessness to it.
What surprised me is that this release features works for symphonic wind band. Without strings, Rosner's music has an immediacy to it, bristling with raw power.
Rosner's masterful orchestrations are idiomatic to the ensemble. None of this business of just substituting clarinets for strings! That gives Rosner's wind band music a distinctive sound.
Any instrument (or combination of instruments) can have the melody. Any instrument (or group of instruments) can provide supporting harmony. These combinations shift throughout the work, providing fresh insights into the material.
All these works are world premiere recordings. I hope we'll start seeing them show up on concert programs. Every piece is a gem. Eclipse, Op. 100 is a tone poem depicting the celestial event. Rosner wrote it for a high school ensemble, creating an engaging work using simple materials.
Wind band arrangements of folk music are fairly common. Rosner's are uncommon. RAGA!, Op. 104 uses an Indian raga. But he doesn't just set the raga in a Western tonal framework. Rather, he closely follows the Indian traditional form. He uses a shifting combination of instruments to develop the material.
"Lovely Joan", Op. 88 is a setting of an English folksong. But Rosner does more than simply present the tune a few times. His work explores the underlying harmonies of the piece. Each part of the melody is examined in detail. The work ranges far and wide, held together by the source material.
Density512 is a first-rate ensemble, dedicated to contemporary music. They play with commitment, expression, and enthusiasm. Arnold Rosner was truly a unique composer with a voice all his own. And it's a voice that is accessible to modern audiences. If you'd not heard Rosner before, this is the album to start with. This is Rosner unfiltered.
Arnold Rosner: Music for Symphonic Wind Band
Density512; Jacob Aaron Schnitzer, Nicholas Perry Clark, conductors
Toccata Classics
