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Brion; 2 Songs from Silas Marner; Sindbad; Exiles
by Robert Carl, Fanfare Magazine 03/01/2011
Brion; 2 Songs from Silas Marner; Sindbad; Exiles
by Carson Cooman, Fanfare Magazine 03/01/2011
CD review: Harold Meltzer, "Brion, Sindbad, Exiles"
by Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle 10/31/2010
Sounds Heard: Harold Meltzer—Brion; Sindbad; Exiles
by Frank J. Oteri, New Music Box 10/26/2010
Concertos II
by Kilpatrick, American Record Guide 07/30/2010
The concertos for cello, solo bass clarinet and oboe makes this disc an inviting experiment in the contemporary concerto
by Robert Moon, Audiophile Audition 04/15/2010
Cellos Add Wordless But Lyrical Voices
by Allan Kozinn, New York Times 03/04/2008
Stylistic Wanderings and Flirtations With Multimedia And Jazz
by Allan Kozinn, New York Times 04/18/2007
Earthy Cuban Sounds, Rendered With An Urban Complexity
by Allan Kozinn, New York Times 01/10/2007
A Menu Of Familiar Signposts And A One-Woman Opera
by Anne Midgette, New York Times 04/02/2005
American Piano of the 1940s
by Jack Sullivan, American Record Guide 01/01/2005
Sequitur-Concertos
BBC Music Magazine 04/01/2004
Sequitur-Concertos
by Ian Quinn, American Record Guide 01/31/2004
Sequitur-Concertos
by Ken Smith, Gramaphone Magazine 01/01/2004
Sequitur -- Concertos (Albany)
by Christian Carey, splendidzine.com 01/01/2004
Sequitur-Concertos
by Steve Smith, Time Out New York 11/20/2003
Eclecticism and Humor in Works by Lewis Spratlan
by Allan Kozinn, The New York Times 11/14/2003
Meditations on Power, Old and Freshly
by Allan Kozinn, The New York Times 05/22/2003
Sequitur's new-music cabarets offer contemporary classics with theatrical flair
by Brian WIse, Time Out New York 05/15/2003
Music In Review: Sequitur
by Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times 05/24/2002
A High-Energy Romp Through The Raucous 1940's
by Anne Midgette, New York Times 10/27/2001
Seasons of Squawks on the Crows' Calendar
by Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times 03/01/2001
Two Flutists Explore the 20th-Century Repertory
by Allan Kozinn, The New York Times 10/28/2000
Concert Connects New With Newer
by Allan Kozinn, The New York Times 04/28/2000
Poetry as the Setting for Meditations on a Child's Death
by Allan Kozinn, The New York Times 11/16/1999
The Sound of the City
by Robert Hilferty, The Village Voice 01/26/1999
Music: Classical and New
by Rose Martelli, newyork.citysearch.com 01/18/1999
New Songs Spring Forth In a Lively Mixture
by Paul Griffiths, The New York Times 01/13/1999
A Cozy Cabaret Of Comical Sultriness
by Justin Davidson, New York Newsday 01/12/1999
Sequitur: George Crumb Concert
by Kenneth Goldsmith, New York Press 11/18/1998
Clash Of The Titans: Two Legendary Composers are Feted
by Ken Smith, Time Out New York 10/22/1998
Sequitur: Kaye Playhouse Concert
by Mark W. Greenfest, The New Music Connoisseur 05/18/1997
New Works Teeming With Fauna
by Allan Kozinn, The New York Times 02/22/1997
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Sequitur-Concertos
by Ian Quinn, American Record Guide 01/31/2004
The excellent New York-based ensemble Sequitur is led by the composer Harold Meltzer (artistic director) and by the group's keyboardist Sara Laimon (managing director).They give us here four pieces that aim to challenge the typical "heroic" role of the concerto soloist--though that's a characteristic strategy of many post-romantic composers confronting the genre, many of whom subvert the soloist-versus-orchestra paradigm by substituting a chamber ensemble for the romantic orchestra.
We begin with Meltzer's own Virginal, a well-made nine-minute composition in two continuous movements with Laimon as harpsichord soloist. Meltzer's materials are all light and airy bits of diatonic music, but he juxtaposes and synthesizes them in a great many ways, achieving something like a Stravinskian neoclassicism for the age of Bang On A Can. Meltzer's approach to form--fragmentary yet organic--is very much in line with his European contemporaries, but his nostalgic material calls to mind both David Lang and very recent Ligeti.
Next on the program is a horn concerto by David Rakowski. Again we hear a debt to Ligeti, particularly in Rakowski's decision to play the solo instrument against a counterpart in the ensemble, a technique Ligeti has used in all of his concertos except for the Piano Concerto. The five movements of Rakowski's piece are all based on the same basic melodic idea, a (sort of) 12-tone lick that he treats to Schoenbergian processes of developing variation. He is an expert orchestrator and crafts textures of remarkable subtlety and clarity; he is also an extremely funny guy (he taught me score preparation in college, and kept us laughing the whole time) and this shows in the music, especially when he makes fun of typical horn idioms.
A recent viola concerto by Thea Musgrave, with a rather programmatic structure detailed in the liner notes, is next. Like Meltzer's Virginal, Lamenting with Ariadne makes much use of traditional diatonic materials, but Musgrave doesn't do anything all that interesting with them (though the writing is solid and assured), and she rarely gives the soloist a break in this much longer piece.
The last track is Carter's Double Concerto for piano and harpsichord, something of a gold standard for the three other pieces on the program. Some 30 years older than any of the others, Carter's concerto must certainly have been in the ears of his fellow New Yorkers Meltzer, Rakowski, and Musgrave; and Sequitur's slick performance of it is a fitting conclusion to this excellent collection.
Laimon deserves particular praise for her subtle readings of her two very different solo parts (Meltzer and Carter). Liner notes by Frank Oteri, the editor of newmusicbox.org, give a helpful color commentary for each of the pieces, though he's prone to silly turns of phrase like "the wonderful meter of 9/16".
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