Much of the neo-Romantic music of the 1980s may seem contrived and even a bit insincere today, but John Anthony Lennon came by his style honestly without resorting to postmodern appropriation or facile imitation of older music. The passionate quality of his work flows naturally from his poetic sensibility, and his language is recognizably romantic in spirit, even though it is still informed by modernist compositional techniques. Voices is both a work for four string parts and a study of harmonic voicings. Its rich harmonies, built variously from thirds and sixths, yield an open field of sonorities in which diatonic chords work rather well. The
Kronos Quartet's performance is the disc's strongest offering. Ballade Bellis' for violin and piano strikes a balance between logical organization and emotional content. Echolalia, for solo flute, is the slightest piece in this collection. The echoes implied in the music's reiterated pitch cells are not made explicit. The seven Translations is an interesting setting of English translations of Japanese and Latin poetry, but the soprano's over-theatrical performance is jarring. The dense harmonies and angular saxophone lines of Distances Within Me suggest that this might be a student work, though it anticipates Lennon's later stylistic developments.