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Recordings
Places in Time: The Musical Journeys of Richard Brooks Ravello Records releases Places in Time, an album that travels through composer Richard Brooks's career to date. Each piece represents a different period in the composer's life. Many of these recordings were originally released by Brooks's label, Capstone Records, but this is the first time they've been released collectively... Places in Time opens with 'Seascape: Overture to Moby Dick' from 1997's And the Eagle Flies, a grand yet suspenseful soundscape, the piece rises and swells with the droning low brass and tense tremolo strings, as if waiting for the emergence of the great white whale. 'Choral Variations for Two Horns and String Orchestra', from 1995's Tonus Tomis, is one in a collection of pieces recorded in Constanta, an ancient city on the shore of the Black Sea in Romania. This piece is a complex, theoretical, and emotional traverse through the realm of tonality, where the mood is described as "almost anguished in its search for resolution." 'Prelude and Lament' from 1986's Music Visions demonstrates both academic and raw elements of Brooks's compositions. It represents an example of the composers work in twelve-tone composition, a method devised by Arnold Schoenberg wherein each note in the chromatic scale is given equal emphasis. The track takes on a heavy, emotional tone in the Lament in response to a personal tragedy: the death of Brooks's younger brother in a traffic accident before the completion of the work. Of this album's 8 pieces (1 hour, 30 min, 39 sec) the standout highlight for me was 'Chorale', a beautifully melancholic and at times discordant piece which is incredibly haunting. Over time you'll find that each piece holds its own reward - that you'll find beauty in every track depending on your mood and mind set. This is an essential collection of varied works by an incredibly gifted composer. Rated 10 out of 10 —Darren Rea, Classical Music Review Richard Brooks 'Places in Time' This CD produced by Ravello Records offers a nice overview of the music of the renowned American composer Richard Brooks. His orchestral and chamber compositions possess a strong dissonant connotation and manage to be very evocative and involving. SEASCAPE: OVERTURE TO MOBY DICK, excellently performed by the Polish Radio National Orchestra is a wonderful example of suspended music, made of timbric effects and interesting sounds taken from the various orchestral combinations with great attention to detail. FOUR PLAY for saxophone quartet is also very unique. The technical and tonal skills of the saxophone are highlighted by a beautiful composition that alternates rhythmic moments with evocative chorales, harmoniously very elaborate. In the SUITE FOR PERCUSSION we can also appreciate the creativity of the composer, here engaged with a percussion ensemble. Brooks proves himself to be an author who seems to be at ease in writing for any orchestral and chamber music ensemble. —Luciano Feliciani, Kathodik Places in Time: The Musical Journeys of Richard Brooks Ravello Records releases Places in Time, an album that travels through composer Richard Brooks’s career to date. Each piece represents a different period in the composer’s life. Many of these recordings were originally released by Brooks’s label, Capstone Records, but this is the first time they've been released collectively... Places in Time opens with 'Seascape: Overture to Moby Dick' from 1997’s And the Eagle Flies, a grand yet suspenseful soundscape, the piece rises and swells with the droning low brass and tense tremolo strings, as if waiting for the emergence of the great white whale. 'Choral Variations for Two Horns and String Orchestra', from 1995’s Tonus Tomis, is one in a collection of pieces recorded in Constanta, an ancient city on the shore of the Black Sea in Romania. This piece is a complex, theoretical, and emotional traverse through the realm of tonality, where the mood is described as “almost anguished in its search for resolution.” 'Prelude and Lament' from 1986’s Music Visions demonstrates both academic and raw elements of Brooks’s compositions. It represents an example of the composers work in twelve-tone composition, a method devised by Arnold Schoenberg wherein each note in the chromatic scale is given equal emphasis. The track takes on a heavy, emotional tone in the Lament in response to a personal tragedy: the death of Brooks’s younger brother in a traffic accident before the completion of the work. Of this album's 8 pieces (1 hour, 30 min, 39 sec) the standout highlight for me was 'Chorale', a beautifully melancholic and at times discordant piece which is incredibly haunting. Over time you'll find that each piece holds its own reward - that you'll find beauty in every track depending on your mood and mind set. This is an essential collection of varied works by an incredibly gifted composer. —Darren Rea, Review Graveyard Places in Time: The Musical Journeys of Richard Brooks Featuring compositions by Richard Brooks, this album explores the composer’s various styles throughout his career. Brooks is an accomplished composer, with over one hundred works for a variety of different ensembles. The first two tracks, Overture to Moby Dick and Landscape…With Grace, are for large orchestra, although the first piece includes a distinctive woodwind section, and the remainder of the album is for various smaller ensembles. Overture to Moby Dick was written for his full-length opera and symbolizes the ocean by way of unpredictable swells of sound. In fact, both Overture to Moby Dick and Landscape…With Grace remind me of Ligeti’s use of blocks of sound. Landscape…With Grace ends with the hymn Amazing Grace executed in a long round, creating lots of layers. Sweet Betsy is more melodic and almost jazz-like ballad with the cello imitating a walking bass line, ending with an almost Copland-like trio with flute, clarinet, and violin. Four Play is a piece for saxophone quartet (soprano, alto, tenor, bari) and starts off with a repetitive first four notes of a minor scale motive that is passed around the ensemble. The piece goes through several distinct sections, including jazz. Chorale Variations goes back to the “blocks of sound” style before becoming a beautiful chorale, albeit with pops of dissonance occurring. His woodwind quintet, Prelude and Lament, features very playful pairings that act as a call and response to each other. The solos, although a bit off intonation-wise, are quite beautiful. The album concludes with Suite for Percussion a groovy work for five percussionists and Sonata for Violin and Piano. While this album is overall quite well done as far as recording quality, I wish that the order of tracks had been altered. Perhaps putting them in chronological order would give the listener a better representation of the journey through this “composer’s personal history” as the description of the album states. —Jeremy Wohletz, International Clarinet Association Brooks' Circular Motions on the CD The Phenomenon of Threes: Trios for Flute, Clarinet and Piano The five works on this disc are nothing like I thought they would be. With the instrumentation of flute, clarinet, and piano, I imagined that the music would be showpieces for the woodwinds while the pianist provided some kind of obligatory backdrop. Instead, I found delightful and engaging chamber music. It is nice when that happens. Each of the five works has its own sense of fluidity and flow... Richard Brooks' three movement Circular Motions takes the performers through spritely and playful material, keeping everything light and airy the whole time. The performances on the disc are first-rate. The ensemble has a wonderful sense of blend and a smooth, rich sound overall. The cohesiveness in their playing makes every piece shine, shimmer, and sparkle regardless of compositional language. I can't wait to hear more from them! —Jay Batzner, Sequenza 21 According to the notes, "The compositions on this disc make an exciting and significant contribution to the repertoire for flute, clarinet, and piano." I doubt there will be throngs of people jumping for joy to learn this, but I am excited to hear new pieces for this combination. It is difficult to find more than silly transcriptions for this trio. A quick search of every university library in Ohio (including several major conservatories and research universities) yields only a short list of music. I wanted this to be great, and I was not disappointed. There is a little of everything here, from forthright tonality to music based on the Fibonnaci series. It was all written or revised in the last decade. I kept returning to the Brooks - it's heady stuff, but still great fun. The musicians deserve high praise. They play with an ideal blend of passion and precision - just what this music needs. Every aspect of their musicianship - especially their intonation, tone, rhythm, and ensemble balance - is of the highest caliber. I hope we see some of this music on concert programs, and I look forward to hearing more from this outstanding trio. —Chaffee, American Record Guide |
