You know that change in the winds is about when there is a collection of contemporary works by two men and two women and the names of the ladies are more familiar than those of the fellows. The album Reflections is an installment in the long series of contemporary music recordings by
Max Lifchitz and the North/South Consonance Ensemble, containing four works, three being composed as observances of North/South Consonance's 25th anniversary season. Composers Emma Lou Diemer and
Judith Shatin are known quantities; Christopher James and Randall Snyder perhaps less so, but it is a well-balanced program of works for mixed chamber ensembles. Such groups are made up through varying combinations of winds and strings, a format increasingly attractive to composers as it delivers a roughly orchestral sound, yet one does not need to assemble a full orchestra, or otherwise engage one.
James' Sinfonia Concertante at times has a vaguely Stravinskïan sound, mainly in the resemblance of its 10-instrument makeup to the rescored chamber ensemble version of
Stravinsky's Concertino. James comments that the opening movement of the piece is intended as a tribute to his teacher,
Milton Babbitt, but it doesn't sound like it; the opening of the concluding "Variations" movement seems a bit closer. The inclusion of Diemer in this commemorative album certainly makes sense, as one of her best-known pieces, Sextet (1992), made its first appearance on the North/South Consonance collection Music at the Crossroads. Diemer's Requiem is an understated, restrained, and deeply felt piece written as a memorial for her late sister.
Judith Shatin's Spin is a slightly jazzy piece that is light on its feet and the shortest of the four works featured. Randall Snyder's Chamber Symphony, by his own admission, is inspired to some degree by Arnold Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony, Op. 9, but is not quite as deadly serious as that. On the contrary, the concluding movement marked "Antic" is rather lighthearted in tone and even breaks into dance rhythms toward the end of the music, as opposed to Schoenberg's endlessly flexible and complex approach to rhythm.
All of the pieces are well crafted and reasonably well entertaining; they do not feel too foreboding or overly academic. It might have been useful to include some systematic way to list the instrumentation for each piece; two composers list it duly in their notes, but the other two do not. Moreover, one might ask for slightly crisper execution of the opening of the
Shatin work, but apart from that, North/South's Reflections is a strong entry among contemporary chamber music collections and a fitting tribute to the ensemble's 25 years of achievements.