September 23–30, 1999

music|review

Maxfield Parrish Composers’ Competition Concert

Maxfield Parrish Composers’ Competition Concert

Philadelphia Classical Symphony, Karl Middleman, conductor
September 15, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

Commissioning new music inspired by paintings carries the risk that the composers would attempt to representvisual images in sound. The five works chosen in a competition of 39 composers for this concert, in conjunction with theAcademy’s Parrish retrospective, are compelling precisely because the composers avoided this programmatictemptation.

Only one composer, Baltimore native Beth Denisch, chose an overtly visual image in her work. “The SingingTree” is inspired by Parrish’s painting “Princess Parizade Bringing Home the Singing Tree.” Denischwanted to portray a journey to and from a mountain peak, so she placed a tracing of the mountain in the painting on amusical staff and then filled in the notes. But the effect is natural and uncontrived, and the use of whole-tonemelodies honors the painting topic’s Asian origin.

Virtually every composer commented on Parrish’s distinctive contrasts of dark and light. Philadelphian MauriceWright made this tension the wellspring for his music, reflecting on Parrish’s “Arizona.” Much of hismusic assigns reverberant low tones (cello, percussion, piano) to darkness, and bright, dynamically more aggressivesound (clarinet, flute, violin, harp, piano and percussion again) to lightness. But he also captures those transitionalboundaries of shifting light with great thoughtfulness.

Margaret Fairlie-Kennedy, of Ithaca, NY, also took “Arizona” as a subject for her “DesertEchoes.” Using long strands of undulating chromatic scales and trills, she eloquently expresses the colors andlight of the American West in her music, as well as the loneliness of the vast desert in plangent solos on the flute,bass clarinet and cello.

Both Chia-Yu Hsu, a Taiwan-born composer now studying at Curtis, and Randall Bauer of Princeton, were drawn to thecelebrated Parrish depiction of “The Dinkey Bird.” In 23-year-old Hsu’s trio for flute, cello and piano(the bird represented by the flute), a gently rocking interval serves as the central motif of this sweet, mellifluouspiece. Bauer’s take, which he calls “Catch in the Turn… ,” also translates Parrish’s fairy-taleimage of the nude boy swinging. Bauer utilizes a minimalist-inspired ostinato pattern and perky syncopated rhythms tocreate a whimsical, playful feel — so much a part of Parrish’s outlook — that was generally missing fromthe music of his colleagues this evening.

This concert took place in the rotunda of the museum, and not the fine little auditorium. Though the musicians had tobattle overly resonant acoustics and the steady hum of the air-conditioning units, it was nice to be surrounded by theart that the music was honoring.

—Peter Burwasser