So, what's the difference between a "concert band and a wind ensemble"? At Rutgers, the Concert Band is three score in membership, while the Wind Ensemble is hardly a dozen fewer. In Haydn's day, a symphony might be played by whomever showed up. Parts written for oboe might instead be played by flute or trumpet if the oboe player did not show up. Bands are today a bit little that. While wind ensemble connotes a select group that is balanced in its aural composition.
Clearly, at Rutgers the Wind Ensemble is the premier organization of the two, professional in both appearance and performance. The BandÑand many school concert bands are simply the concert version of the marching ensembleÑwas less precise throughout, and this showed also in their appearance. Women wearing all black or black skirts and white blouses and men in black pants and white shirts seemed called for. But one lady wore a print dress, another a green sweater, while one man had light green pants, another medium blue. The visual element was disconcerting.
But what a treasure of riches in the music that was offered! Only one item was truly an arrangement, while eight others were composed for winds, brass, and percussion. History does not present us much in this combination: Alan Hovhaness (Symphonies 4, 20, 29, and 53 are known to this writer), Vincent Persichetti, Percy Grainger, and Gustav Holst are the big names in original composition for wind ensemble, but Rutgers had the daring to present nine pieces, any one of which would have been unknown to all but aficionados.
The Concert Band began with a piece by Stephen Melillo. Erich! Battle at Sea, part one of three in a suite, and written as a tribute to Erich Korngold, who died the year Melillo was born (1957). A brash and angular piece, composed more in phrases than lines, sort of a band concerto grosso for winds, brass and percussion, it left one wondering if it were an homage to, or parody of, Korngold. This was conducted by William Kellerman.
Joe H. Brashier took over for the remainder of the concert band works. Van der Roost's Canterbury Chorale opens with dominant winds leading to a brass statement of the chorale theme. There were too many tentative or insecure solo entries in what should have been a band version of Brucknerian sonority, producing an organ-like effect.
The only piece on the evening's program composed by someone born before the turn of the century was by Louis Cahuzac, his Variations sur un air du pays d'oc (Variations on a tune of the French Oc people) with a main tune reminiscent of "Flow gently, sweet Afton". This was a set of four variations preceded by a cadenza (which usually comes only after a theme on which the cadenza can be based) and closed with a short finale. For this, Anthony Pasquale was clarinet soloist.
What a performance! While the band provided a varied background largely dependent on extended brass chords, the clarinet bounced from one end to the other of its range with rapid passagework that was almost beyond belief. Pure mastery was present in Pasquale's bravura performance, which was worth the evening's visit by itself. The finale was quite enchanting, with staccato wind interjections punctuating the soloists and leading the audience back down to earth!
Paul Hart's Cartoon is an evocation in music alone of a Hollywood cartoon. Until the wolf whistle, the audience seemed to miss the humor, which was everywhere evident in Brashier's well-shaped performance.
After the intermission we were greeted by Chester Leaps In by quarter-century old Steven Bryant, who was in attendance. Short and lively, the performance under William Berz was precise, the tonal quality warm and liquid, in a tradition that suggested the Eastman Wind Ensemble under Frederick Fennell, the first such ensemble to gain worldwide acclaim. With this piece, Bryant estab-lishes himself as a mature composer. Technically, this might be called an arrangement, for it is the composer's wind ensemble version of a work originally composed for piano and two marimbas. The "Chester" tune -- some will know it from William Schuman's transcription for band -- leaps in and out of the work, interrupting it with devastating, comic effect, lifting the work above its original format.
Also, with this Berz established his Wind Ensemble as one with few peers. The sound and the precision of the group were as good as any heard in or out of Rochester, and without the rhythmic rigidity that often crept into Fennell's performance. Reflections by Roger Nixon (second oldest composer on the program, born 1921) is an ingratiating piece for flute solo (played with complete technical assurance and fluid phrasing by Kevin Willois) in a Hansonesque romantic idiom. Again, a flawless performance under Berz's baton.
Masada by Ralph Hultgren is a programmatic piece, portraying qualities of the Jewish zealots who held the fortress for almost two years against the Roman legions that outnumbered them 15:1. The clash of these warring entities calls for very complex musical polyphony, occasionally oriental in flavor, elsewhere something of the sound of Holst, but everywhere a commanding orchestration, with quite a virtuoso obbligato from bassoonist Ivy Haga.
Joe H. Brashier returned to lead Calvin Hampton's Variations on "Amazing Grace" which featured Susan Hicks Brashier as English horn soloist. We all know the tune, but here the English horn performs ten variations, some unrecognizable as to their source unless, perhaps, you have previously analyzed the score and understand the methods available to composers for varying a theme. As conductor of the piece, Brashier was sympathetic to Brashier the soloist, but his arrangement allowed her "horn" to be submerged in the ensemble in several of the variations, even to the ears of this writer sitting in row four, less than twenty feet from the soloist.
For the finale, Berz chose well. Frank Ticheli's Blue Shades is written in the "Big Band" era style and though not containing twelve-bar blues progressions, it uses blue notes (flatted thirds, fifths and sevenths) throughout, building heavily on the minor third. The work demonstrated the diversity that can be achieved in a wind ensemble, where the sound depends on how choirs blend, rather than on their physical numbers (which may also be a difference between wind ensemble, and concert band). First chair clarinetist David Dunn danced on to the lip of the stage for his lively solo lick -- a future Benny Goodman here? -- while bass clarinetist Dawn Kariotakis remained trapped in the second row for her solo. Do you know of any ensemble being led by a bass clarinet? She could do it!
By popular demand, the wind ensemble gave us an encore, a repeat of Bryant's crowd-pleasing Chester Leaps In. There were a few unfilled seats in the beautiful modern Nicholas Music Center auditorium. Since the concert was free, shame on readers for passing up this infinitely fascinating presentation of, for 99.9% of us, marvelous new music.
