Micah Behr - "Breaking" and "Setting"

 Micah Behr - Breaking and Setting

Composer and performer Micah Behr premiered a set of two companion pieces, Breaking and Setting, at the Stoughton Chamber Music Festival. Finishing its fifth season, Stoughton Chamber Music put on a "Sun & Moon" chamber concert series this summer, featuring a string septet and clarinetist Brad Cherwin. Behr's two pieces were written exclusively for the "Sun & Moon" concerts, with Breaking and Setting representing a sunrise and sunset respectively. 

While pretty pieces, Behr plays the musical symbolism a little heavy-handed, with both Breaking and Setting sounding more akin to scoring practice for student level films. Behr's musical ideas are quite wonderful, but not orchestrated in a manner which fully supports the aesthetic. Breaking is so dense, with everyone playing all the time, it just becomes tiresome. While the solo clarinetist sounds great, having him always doubled at pitch with either viola or cello weakens the overall effect and creates general awkwardness in the ensemble sound. Even over orchestrated, both of Behr's works are quite approachable in terms of audience and player level, and succeed his goal of creating a set of companion works which establish a clear theme for this concert series.



© 2023 Brutal New Music Reviews

originally written and published 21 August 2023

please send any and all questions/comments/complaints/suggestions to:

brutalnewmusicreviews@gmail.com

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fatrin Krajka - "The Space In Between" album review

Image
 Fatrin Krajka - The Space In Between   album review Krajka focuses on approachability in his simple and tonal music, relying on harmonic cliches to evoke a melancholic emotional response. Albanian-American composer and pianist, Fatrin Krajka , is known for his film scores and continued approach to classically inspired minimalism. His latest album release, The Space In Between , intimately connects individual perspectives with a sense of communal emotion. The Space In Between is a full-length album for piano and strings divided up into 4-5 minute long tracks. Within his exploration of the short-form piece, Krajka solidly focuses on approachability in his simple and tonal music, relying on harmonic cliches to evoke a melancholic emotional response from the listener. There is a negligible difference in his approach to scoring for film and this album of more traditional classical music. While I would have appreciated some experimentation and variation within Krajka's minimal...
Read more

Constellation Men's Ensemble - "Man Up / Man Down" album review

Image
 Constellation Men's Ensemble - Man Up / Man Down Constellation's impeccable blend and intonation brings out a resonant beauty for the duration of the album. After ten years, Constellation Men's Ensemble  has released their debut album, Man Up / Man Down  on the Sono Luminus label. The album's longer and intense titular work is bookended by two shorter bursts of peaceful reflection, Home and manifesto . Constellation's impeccable blend and intonation brings out a resonant beauty for the duration of the album, and are becoming a prominent force within the new music vocal community. Jeffrey Derus ' Home , setting text by Carl Sandburg, opens the album with beauty and tonal simplicity. Derus' music is drawn from his personal experience with choirs, resulting in Constellation creating a beautiful resonance with stellar intonation. Home is in a traditional three-part form, with the middle section in a pulsating quintuple meter. Derus' repetitive text setting...
Read more

Pathos Trio - "Polarity" album review

Image
 Pathos Trio - Polarity album review Polarity  is such a highly polished example of how rewarding it can be to merge contemporary classical music with electronica. Released September 15th on the Imaginary Animals label, Polarity wedges itself in a specific niche between contemporary classical music and electronica. The collaborative album combines the performance capabilities of  Pathos Trio with six composers, all of whom have written pieces specifically for the trio, and Four/Ten Media , which is creating accompanying music videos for each track. With the only unifying feature being the implementation of electronics, it is quite impressive how the six new works form such a cohesive collection. Pathos Trio, made up of two percussionists and a pianist, completely reimagines the idiom of the chamber ensemble, embracing the possibilities of electronic integration within live performance. For many non-classical audiences, these instruments and setup may already be com...
Read more