Augusta Read Thomas & Tania Leon & Barbara Heller & Diana Burrell.(Review)

Augusta Read Thomas. Spring Song for Solo Cello (1995). Bryn Mawr, Pa.: Theodore Presser, c1996. [Score, 4 p.; notes, back cover verso. 114-40830. $5.95; duration: ca. 5'30".]

Tania Leon. Four Pieces for Violoncello (1981). New York: Peer Music (Theodore Presser), c1996. [Score, 7 p.$6.]

Barbara Heller. Lalai: Schlaflied zum Wachwerden? fur Violoncello und Klavier (1989). (Cello Library/Cello-Bibliothek.) Mainz: Schott, c1995. [Score, 7 p.; notes in Ger., Eng., p. 7 and part. CB 155. $9.95.]

Diana Burrell. Heron: For Cello and Piano [1988]. London: United Music Publishers (Theodore Presser), c1995. [Score, p. 3-24 and part. $45.]

Cellists faced with the task of finding shorter pieces to fill out a program or recording or selecting repertory for students must often turn to flashy (and usually banal) showpieces, such as those by David Popper and Karl Yul'yevich Davidov, or fall back upon relatively unchallenging, song-based pieces, like Pablo Casals's "Song of the Birds" or Antonin Dvorak's "Quiet Woods." The four new pieces for unaccompanied cello or cello with piano here under review seek to fill this gap in the repertory, with a span of technical requirements ranging from an intermediate to a very demanding level.

Augusta Read Thomas's Spring Song for unaccompanied cello is a mercurial work, changing mood and approach frequently throughout its five-minute length. Thomas primarily exploits half-step relationships, opening the piece with an eleven-note, nonrepeating row that emphasizes the interval by moving from [MUSICAL NOTES NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and so on. Nearly every measure sports its own meter, and Thomas gives special--sometimes seemingly contradictory--directions for phrasing them: "Play measures 16-33 as one long phrase, with subphrases of measures 16-24, 25-27, 28-30, 31, and 32," or, in m. 14, "freely, introverted, [and] sul tasto," as though the composer does not trust the performer's own ability to make correct interpretive decisions. Sonority is likewise carefully dictated, in both English and Italian, italicized and not: sul tasto, non vib., "sting," sotto voce, fragile, bell-like, al punta; even "spicc." is found above notes already dotted to indicate this articulation. Tempo, character, bowings, w hich string to play upon--all are minutely specified by Thomas, who, like many contemporary composers, conveys with these kinds of directions a lack of confidence in the musicians who play her works.

Musically, Spring Song alternates between three ideas: the slow, languorous style of the opening, during which the half-step motif is spun out, with phrases ending on high, drawn-out harmonics; a faster-moving section of showier character, with runs and wide leaps; and a bell-like idea relying on heavily accented double stops that stress, like the first motif, the half step. The work acquires a vague sectional form, with its segments beginning abruptly, but ending all the same: a long held note "like a sigh." Thomas creates an organic unity throughout the piece with these sustained notes, the half-step motif, and related sonorities, but in the scant five-and-a-half minutes the work lasts, the overall effect is more disjunct than desired in such a short work. A recording by the dedicatee, Scott Kluksdahl, is available on the CRI label (Lines for Solo Cello, CD 762, 1997).