New York Woodwind Quintet, Martin Bresnick, Mel Powell, Ronald Roseman, Ralph Shapey

The woodwind quintet is to the wind instruments as the string quartet is to the strings. Composers have treated the heterogenous ensemble of flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and horn as a unity for so long now that it has become a musical commonplace. The challenge in composing for the woodwind quintet is to weave a consistent musical fabric while respecting the disparate characters of the five instruments. The four composers represented on this recording meet this challenge with imagination and mastery.

Ronald Roseman (b 1933) studied with Henry Cowell, Ben Weber, Karol Rathaus, and Elliott Carter. The Double Quintet opens with a moody slow introduction followed by an Allegro energico, reminiscent of Stravinsky's Octet and Symphonies of Wind Instruments. Here neoclassical gestures are supplemented by several quasi-improvisatory and extended instrumental techniques. All ten players are given a chance to shine in solos, and there is plenty of virtuoso passagework.

Mel Powell (b 1923) worked in many musical styles, from jazz to electronic music. The eight-minute Woodwind Quintet (1985) is in an intricate, almost mannerist style characterized by flickerings and flutterings, flurries and frills, all meticulously notated and copiously annotated.

Martin Bresnick’s (b 1946) Just Time, like his Conspiracies for five flutes (1979) has a punning title. The pun here is on the complex sense of just, meaning “barely,” and just, referring to the system of “just” intonation based on the overtone series. An examination of the score shows that many of the accidentals, particularly in the featured horn part, are written with arrows attached, denoting slight “detunings” of the pitches to which they apply. These detunings are indigenous to the horn when it plays on its built-in overtones—and they are “justly” tuned intervals. The harmonic language of Just Time also seems to evolve out of the overtones of the piece's initial B-flat.

Ralph Shapey's (b 1921) Movements for woodwind quintet (1959-60) is a ten-minute work in three short movements. An examination of the music reveals that the title refers more to the kinetic character of the piece than to the unremarkable fact of its being cast in three movements. Movements recalls the music of Varèse, with its insistence on certain “chiseled” sonorities. For all of its complexity this is music that was heard before it was seen.