Word: sonata
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...main event of the evening was the premiere of a new saxophone sonata by Harbison, performed by Ian Carroll '97, with Professor of Mathematics Noam Elkies. The sonata, titled "San Antonio," was the most attractive of the three works performed, incorporating Latin dance rhythms and some of the jazz effects usually associated with the saxophone; as Harbison's program notes indicate, the three-movement work recalls an actual dance party upon which the composer stumbled while in San Antonio...
...spirit of dance is clearly present in the sonata, in which the saxophone and piano trade off short, melodic phrases and nervous, jagged notes. In the third movement, the lyrical quality of the dance music comes to the fore, with longer, even languorous saxophone solos that seem reminiscent of the mellow, probing style of a Grover Washington, Jr. or David Sanborn...
...work also manifests those qualities which make so much post-war music difficult for the untrained ear: irregular tempo, unresolved chords and absence of melody. These qualities were less in evidence in the sonata than in the String Quartet #1, a work which even the composer describes as "grim and terse." The quartet begins with a mysterious Gypsy-like phrase, which is quickly flattened into harshness; the four instruments repeatedly diverge and then return with a burst of two or three dissonant notes. While the quartet is affecting and succeeds in communicating a certain nervous emotion, it is far from...
...largely devoted to Wild's own dazzling transcriptions, among them the delightful Reminiscences of Snow White, a fantasy on Frank Churchill's music for the 1937 Disney animated film. But lest one think that Wild is all flash and no substance, his recent recording of Beethoven's thorny "Hammerklavier" Sonata, on the Chesky label, is grandly conceived and brilliantly executed, from the soulful (and lengthy) Adagio to the triumphant final Fugue, a supreme test of both fingers and musical intelligence. Wild's reputation may rest on his pyrotechnics, but his musical sensitivity is growing even richer with...
...played a Telemann sonata and some Bartok and the audience was pretty enthusiastic; they liked it," Chen says...